A couple of interesting commentaries from the right have very different perspectives on NASA and manned space exploration. At Tech Central Station, Charles Rousseaux, a speechwriter for Interior Secretary Gale Norton, congratulates Congress for passing the full NASA budget, as well as the House for approving HR 5382. Rousseaux does go a little overboard, claiming that “Mr. Bush simply insisted that the vision would be funded or a veto would fall”; there is little hard evidence that Bush would, in fact, have vetoed an omnibus budget bill has NASA’s budget fallen a few hundred million short of full funding.
Not every conservative is fond of the NASA budget, though. In an essay on the web site MichNews.com (“Most In-depth, Conservative, Honest News & Commentary”) Alan Caruba decries manned spaceflight in general, specifically the shuttle and station. Many of his objections are based on an article by William Tucker in the December issue of The American Enterprise, which is also critical of the shuttle and station; unlike Caruba, though, Tucker is more optimistic about private space ventures. There are a number of flaws in Caruba’s argument, the exposition of which will be left as an exercise to the reader. However, such commentary does demonstrate that supporters of the Vision for Space Exploration still have a lot of work to do to get people on board.
It’s hard for me to put much faith in someone’s views when they start an article with such an utterly false statement such as this: “President Bush’s announcement of a 280-million-mile manned space flight to Mars caught everyone by surprise.”
That is the first line of William Tuckers’ article “The Sober Realities of Manned Space Flight” in the December issue of The American Enterprise, as referenced/linked in Jeff’s’ comments.
Ostrich. Robot lover. Risk hater. Funny number repeater. Centrifugal ignorer. Non-sequitator.
Maybe Jeff should have a FBC area of his space site family; FBC=Frequent Bad Criticism.
I’ve added the quote comparing the benefits of human versus automated spaceflight, in light of Luna-16 and Apollos-11 and -12, to the end of the 30th November “More Editorials” thread. Enjoy!
— Donald
Casting a critical eye has always been easier than proposing alternatives and critical quotes are easy stories for the mass media. These quotes are seldom verified or placed into proper context. I have yet to hear any substantial plan from the critics on NASA and the future of human spaceflight other than more robot missions. I feel that most people are not well informed about the status of spaceflight in other countries or even in our own.
NASA budget is so small, I think it’s laughable when people start saying we can’t afford it. Defense spending is $416.2 billion, Health and Human Services is $493 billion, Commerce & Justice 40 billion, Department of Energy 23 billion and on and on. I wish departments were dissected like NASA but NASA isn’t a department and it’s an easy target. 16.2 billion gets us a lot. The American public cannot draw a direct benefit from the space program other than Science events the media find news worthy. I’m not sure who NASA really has to convince the American public or the reporters reporting to the American public. In the end it will be Congress that human spaceflight is important.
Why do we still supplement AMTRACK? That’s a bigger waste than the Shuttle (Return from Investment).
If we outright cancel Shuttle and ISS, we will loose a lot of expertise needed to make any human spaceflight a success. NASA gives a target for private companies to aim and participate. Throwing more money at something doesn’t usually get it done faster. Before VSE NASA spent money on new technologies and reports in hope of using them, now they can focus money on developing technologies and methodologies to carry out a real space plan. No country has had a true open ended milestone driven approach to space. During the speeches of SpaceShipOne’s first qualifying flight, it was said that prize money wasn’t as important as the goal and the belief it can be done.
Regarding Amtrak, now wait a minute. Why is rail — physically, by far the most efficient way of moving any given mass on land — the _only_ form of transportation that is expected to operate without a subsidy? If you want to move transportation subsidies into spaceflight accounts, let’s look for the money (“Why rob banks? ’cause that’s where the money is”). Rather than pick on Amtrak’s billion or so, you would do far better to look at subsidies for the private automobile. There is nothing in the world more socialist than the American freeway system — designed and built by the government at government expense for government (primarily military) purposes — yet conservatives have no problem looking the other way while paying a small fraction of what their transportation actually costs. (The Economist, hardly a bastion of liberal thought, once argued that the way the United States funds transportation infrastructure amounts to inner city poor paying for the middle class to leave for the suburbs. That is, an urban individual riding public transit pays the same taxes as a suburbanite at the same income, yet they get a tiny fraction of the infrastructure spending.)
Compared to the freeway, highway, local road, and airline subsidies, Amtrak is small potatoes. Let’s remove _all_ subsidies for _all_ forms of transportation and let them compete in a true free market. It’ll never happen, but if it were, for reasons of basic physics rail would win hands down, at least on price.
— Donald
Rail would be more efficient if the infrastructure was anywhere near modern standards but AMTRACK doesn’t innovate and we are left with interstate rail system that cost far more than the bus system. Buses are more flexible at meeting demand in remote areas. High volume destinations such as major cities are better met with trains. The train tracks in my hometown have been ripped out of the ground for decades being a low volume destination. I would like to see all subsidies gone and so would Boeing (i.e. Airbus).
The space elevator will probably become the railroad of the future but even with a space elevator you would still need spacecraft that can maneuver between orbits.
However, again, busses (and airlines) are not expected to pay for their own infrastructure. The road systems and airports and air traffic control, et cetera, are all provided for small fractions of their costs. Only fraight rail has to build and maintain its own infrastructure, and only passenger rail is expected to.
For fair competition, one of two things has to happen:
1). The government provides the nation’s various rail systems with modern tracks (which, while expensive, would cost far less than the road systems and airport infrastructure). Then, the companies could compete on efficiency and quality of service.
Or,
2). Drivers and flyers should pay the _full_ cost of their infrastructure, like conservatives want rail user to do, e.g., full-cost recovery toll roads throughout the nation.
But we are still failing to discuss whether space exploration should be Saganaut; von Braunian or O’Neillian, or what combination thereof.
Sorry, premature posting. . .
Form folows function. WHY we do space exploration at all is a significant factor in how we do it and who should pay for it.
If its O’Neillian, then (IMHO) NASA’s budget should be increased 10x – – Saganaut or von Braunian? Okay $16 billion is about right.
I think this whole “Saganaut; von Braunian or O’Neillian” thing is a little misleading since, as people have pointed out, there is some pretty broad crossover if you look at the people after whom they are named. Wouldn’t it make more sense to just call it “no one goes, the chosen go, and everyone goes”?
It’s a little more complex than that.
The O’Neillian version requires huge up front infrastructure investment. Since there’s no quick way to make money, it would have to be done by the government. It’s the equivallent of Apollo. The Saganaut version is meaningless, the equivallent of learning about the world by reading the newspaper or watching television.
The von Braunian version (as adapted by Zubrin) can be bootstrapped. It’s conseivable that it could be paid for by private individuals who don’t need a fast return on investment. (E.g., Mr. Gates could probably afford his own Mars mission.) You can trade risk for money and do it on the cheap.
My own version starts as cheap as possible. Go to the moon for water. Do a couple of quick-and-dirty missions to the Martian moons and near-Earth asteroids, the easiest natural destinations to get to. Build up a base of experience and knowledge on the cheap while also benefiting the Saganauts (keeping as broad a coalition as possible). Establish initial science bases on the moon, the Martian moons, and the easiest asteroids. Use the lunar water (and, if practical, water from the Martian moons) to supply the bases. Once that infrastructure is in place, you can use it to supply fuel and breathing air to facilities in Earth orbit. Then you’ve got the beginnings of trade and you are well on the way to the O’Neil vision, all while “living off the land.”
Once that is established, you can, in theory, go anywhere.
My personal belief is that something like this vision is the only realistic way to get from here to there.
— Donald
There are “critics on the left, critics on the right”, but the opposite is true too. There are supporters on the left and supporters on the right.
It’s important to read the criticism to keep in touch with mainstream opinion. Although the critics keep repeating the same tired arguments ad nauseam.
Posted by John Malkin at December 2, 2004 02:56 PM
During the speeches of SpaceShipOne’s first qualifying flight, it was said that prize money wasn’t as important as the goal and the belief it can be done.
I was wondering if you gentlemen could give your opinions on an issue that has bothered me about the new space exploration policy. I’m a typical taxpayer with a passing interest in space endeavors.
The Apollo era produced great national pride and demonstrated to the old Soviet Union that the U.S. was a force to be reckoned with. However, public support diminished as the cost of this exploration policy escalated.
NASA then began the space shuttle program, promising that these expenditures would eventually yield a monetary return on investment through the development of a commercial industry that would not require government funding.
Then NASA began the space station project. This project was also touted as important to the commercialization of manned space flight, on orbit and beyond.
Now we are being told that we need to abandon the space shuttle and the space station, 2010 and 2017 respectively. Instead we will redevelop the Apollo style spacecraft and restart the exploration of the Moon.
Does this mean that NASA and the federal government are going to ignore the development of a commercial industry, independent of government funding? How will this new exploration policy develop an orbital, commercial market in the manned space flight industry?
Thanks
Dale,
Commercial spaceflight and NASA spaceflight will develop independently at first. Commercial spaceflight is doing mostly suborbital flights and NASA is doing orbital flights and beyond.
If commercial spaceflight develops an orbital vehicle, then there could be some commercial deals: NASA could purchase orbital flights, etc.
On Tuesday I attended NASA’s Capability Public Road Map Workshop. There I met many of the chair people and members of the various groups within NASA charged with planning the new Vision for Space Exploration. In public speeches and private conversations they made it clear to me and others at the conference that private industry would be playing a much larger role in the VSE than in other NASA missions. The emphasis seemed to be on either buying “off the shelf” or refining what was there as apposed to heavy NASA development. What most struck me was that it was the mid-level engineers at the NASA centers that kept pushing for an “in house” solution. I remember one from Marshal giving a talk on habitats and he had no knowledge what so ever of inflatables or Trans-Hab/Bigalow.
Things are starting to change but it has to come from the top down
NASA didn’t commit the US to the Space Shuttle or Space Station; it was the presidents of the time. There was no clear capability outlined in these endeavors, there ‘Purpose’ was evolutionary. This is bad practice in R&D. the best practice for R&D is to have a clear definition for the use and capability of the systems.
Rutan is a long way from producing spacecraft with capabilities of Boeing, Lockheed, ESA or even China. What Rutan did was great but he doesn’t have the same infrastructure or R&D budget as the large aerospace companies. These companies have spent billions of there own money to develop both reusable and expendable vehicles. Their investments are based on the customer who will buy their products. Rutan has one buyer for 5 suborbital spaceships for a product that is currently in development.
America cannot wait 15 or 20 years for a replacement for the Shuttle so it will look to a combination of private companies, mostly large aerospace to build and service whatever space systems are required. The U.S. cannot be stuck on the ground, VSE or not.
O’Neilians don’t require a large infrastructure and as matter a fact Gerard O’Neil develop plans using robots to mine and build the first habitats on the moon. His plan was very affordable and is incorporated in many of the plans today. He developed the first rail gun for use on the moon to send raw materials into space. Gerard O’Neil combine vision and practical means. He is truly missed today.
http://www.ssi.org/obit.html (This is a good summary of O’Neil by Freeman Dyson)
John,
Just to clarify, I am not opposed to the O’Neil vision — though, personally, I think I will stick to planets rather than glorified suburbs in the sky. I was only arguing that to get to O’Neil, it’s best to start as small as possible.
Dale,
My answer to your question is here,
http://www.speakeasy.org/~donaldfr/sfmodel.pdf
Arguing by historical analysis, it takes a market to drive commercial space development, and, at least initially, that market has to be put in place by the government. The upshot is, no private organization is going to build the transportation to get to a lunar base until the lunar base is there. However, once that transportation is commercialized, it allows the existing lunar base to grow into a town and then a city.
— Donald
The vision is the destination not the path. O’Neil combines vision with practical development. SSI continues his concepts and vision. When he was alive, space exploration was at its worse. Under the light of today and the discoveries on Mars, I’m sure he would want to focus on the planets. Who started smaller than O’Neil? I think he would say we need a cheap and reliable way to get off the planet before we do anything else.
Posted by John Malkin at December 3, 2004 12:04 PM
I don’t think its Sagan vs. O’Neil, etc. I think it is Kantian vs utilitarianism just like “To kill a Mockingbird”. There is at least finally agreement that it is simply a matter of establishing trash day.