If you missed it, earlier this month the Republican Study Committee released a revised version of its budget proposal, which balances the federal budget by FY2011. Most of what’s here is similar to its previous plans, including the RSC’s desire to cancel “NASA’s Moon/Mars Exploration Initiative”; less well understood is its request to “retire the space shuttle after completion of the International Space Station”, which is sort of what NASA has had in mind for some time now. (The RSC for some reason thinks NASA plans to retire the shuttle in 2012, two years later than the President’s deadline in the original VSE announcement, which NASA had adhered to.)
An editorial in Sunday’s Washington Post comments on the wide-ranging cuts proposed by the RSC. The Post is critical of many of the proposed cuts, but supportive—if realistic—about others:
Some of the proposed cuts, such as eliminating farm subsidies or killing NASA’s moon/Mars exploration program, are sensible. But they also are highly unlikely; just think how much trouble Congress had recently agreeing to a mere $40 billion in entitlement cuts.
I’m a little confused by the proposal to “eliminate the Moon/Mars initiative.” The chart on page 14 of the document indicates a cut of $625 million in FY07 (I assume that “BA” means “Budget Authority,” so what does “OT” mean?).
Where can you cut $625 million from NASA’s FY07 budget? Presumably, this is CEV development money.
So this document is proposing BOTH the retirement of Space Shuttle (in 2012 or 2010, it doesn’t matter), and the cancelation of the CEV.
Simply put, this looks like a proposal to end the American human spaceflight program.
Perhaps it is also a proposal for the United States to finish the Space Station, and then purchase rides on Russian spacecraft to reach it.
Terrible. Only a traitor to the United States would propose or imply ending the US manned space program. Traitorious pigs want to destroy out future in space.
Of course, Rep. Pence made it clear in the press release that accompanied this document that not all members of the RSC agreed with all parts of the budget. That had better be true, since three of the RSC’s members–Texas Congressmen Ted Poe and John Culberson and California Congressman Dana Rohrabacher–are on record as supporting the VSE. Indeed, Culberson is attempting to find more, not less, money for NASA to make up for the short falls in science and aeronautics.
> So this document is proposing BOTH the retirement of Space Shuttle
> (in 2012 or 2010, it doesn’t matter), and the cancelation of the CEV.
> Simply put, this looks like a proposal to end the American human spaceflight program.
“The” American human spaceflight program?
Do you think only NASA has a human spaceflight program? Or are you calling Burt Rutan and Elon Musk un-American?
> Perhaps it is also a proposal for the United States to finish the
> Space Station, and then purchase rides on Russian spacecraft
> to reach it.
Why do you exclude the possibility of purchasing rides on American spacecraft?
The NASA Administrator has said that the primary means of access to ISS after 2010 will be commercial rides procured through the COTS program, not Shuttle or CEV. Assuming NASA is serious, why would that be affected by the retirement of Shuttle or the cancellation of CEV?
Of course, the current NASA planning charts include no funding for ISS after 2016. After that date, the charts show just two manned CEV flights a year (12 astronauts a year — down from as many as 56 in past years). Simply put, that looks like a proposal to end — or at least, drastically curtail — “the” American human spaceflight program. Strange that those who support it claim to be friends of human spaceflight at NASA.
One never knows what editorial writers mean when they write things like “NASA’s Moon/Mars exploration program.” If they mean ESAS, I wouldn’t necessarily disagree. That’s not the same thing as ending the president’s VSE (though one wouldn’t expect a WaPo editorial writer to know the difference).
> Terrible. Only a traitor to the United States would propose or imply ending the
> US manned space program. Traitorious pigs want to destroy out future in space.
Do you think the US no future in space other than planting a few flags on the Moon and collecting a few more rocks for the Smithsonian?
Is it “traitorious” to think we should develop spaceflight to provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare of the United States, rather than merely supporting bread-and-circus programs?
Countries like Russia, India, Singapore, and the United Arab Emirates are looking toward the future with reusable vehicles that will drastically reduce the cost of access to space — while NASA looks toward the past and wants to build new systems that will increase the cost of access to space.
Newt Gingrich has said, “We need a ground up approach that says we‘re going to beable to leapfrog past the Chinese and the Europeans and develop a new system that‘sre usable, inexpensive, and very reliable. Second, as you‘re developing that kind of ability, you can build a sub-orbital bomber that can deliver weapons to the United Statesin 45 minutes any where in world.”
Should we allow potential enemies to be the first to develop those capabilities? Should we allow our adversaries to sieze the high ground, while the American military lacks routine access to space to carry out prompt global strike and special forces missions against terrorists and other threats?
In the 1960’s, the US cancelled military space programs like DynaSoar for the bread and circuses of Project Apollo. We escaped the consequences back then, because the technology to build reusable military space vehicles was not widespread. We don’t have the same luxury today. If we limit our “vision of space exploration” to bread and circuses this time, we risk going the same way as the Roman Empire.
One never knows what editorial writers mean when they write things like “NASA’s Moon/Mars exploration program.”
Actually, that’s almost exactly the same language used by the RSC: “NASA’s Moon/Mars Exploration Initiative”. So the Post alone shouldn’t be singled out for imprecise language.
Is there a New Vision for Space Exploration program outside ESAS?
You mean the probes?
Karen
Is there a New Vision for Space Exploration program outside ESAS?
The vision is the goal. The ESAS is NASA’s current plans to implement it. They could come up with a different (and in my opinion, much better) one.
> Actually, that’s almost exactly the same language used by the RSC: “NASA’s Moon/Mars Exploration Initiative”.
Note that this shifts ownership from the President (good) to the federal bureaucrats at NASA (bad). It will be interesting to see who in the Republican Party continues to use the phrase “The President’s Vision for Space Exploration” and who switches to this new formulation or ones like it
> Note that this shifts ownership from the President (good) to the federal bureaucrats at NASA (bad)
The President himself did that. His Jan 16 address specifically stated, “The Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration will be responsible for the plans, programs, and activities required to implement this vision.”
It’s no accident that the address was delivered at NASA Headquarters, with NASA officials sharing the podium and the military and private enterprise nowhere in sight.
> It will be interesting to see who in the Republican Party continues to use the phrase “The
> President’s Vision for Space Exploration” and who switches to this new formulation or ones like it.
No one will call it “the President’s Vision” after 2008 because G.W. Bush will no longer be the President.
> Note that this shifts ownership from the President (good) to the federal bureaucrats at NASA (bad)
The President himself did that. His Jan 16 address specifically stated, “The Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration will be responsible for the plans, programs, and activities required to implement this vision.”
It’s no accident that the address was delivered at NASA Headquarters, with NASA officials sharing the podium and the military and private enterprise nowhere in sight.
> It will be interesting to see who in the Republican Party continues to use the phrase “The
> President’s Vision for Space Exploration” and who switches to this new formulation or ones like it.
No one will call it “the President’s Vision” after 2008 because G.W. Bush will no longer be the President.
Sorry, NASA is a congressional and executive agency, they only do what the president and congress tell them to do. And in our case, congress basically rubber stamps what the president tells them to do.
Thus : George W. Bush bad, Congress good, NASA good. Too bad. With this administration, good is bad, and the citizens of the United States of Merka have nothing to do at all with it. Say it while you still can.
Thomas, in my civics class, I was always taught that agencies like NASA are executive agencies, that answer directly to the President. I’ve never heard of a “Congressional agency.” Am I wrong?
Rand: They could come up with a different (and in my opinion, much better) one.
It could be they just have. According to this week’s Space News, NASA is considering replacing the SSME with the RS-68. The latter is a more modern engine, produces more thrust, and is much cheaper to manufacture.
I consider this good for two reasons. While it is an emotional shame to completely retire the SSME, using the less expensive RS-68 would reduce the number of engine types in the inventory. It would also increase the RS-68 manufacture rate, presumably resulting in economies of scale.
Using the same engines on the EELV and on the VSE vehicles would partially achieve my goal of reducing costs for everyone by flying the same rockets more often.
— Donald
> Using the same engines on the EELV and on the VSE vehicles would
> partially achieve my goal of reducing costs
No, it won’t.
Replacing the expensive Shuttle with a more-expensive Shuttle-derived vehicle will not reduce costs, no matter how many times you say so.
If you want to minimize short-term development costs costs, you should support the use of existing ELVs.
If you want to minimize mid- to long-term development and operating costs, you should support the use of new commercial RLVs.
Instead, you support the use of new Shuttle-derived ELVs, which will maximize development and operating costs in both the short and long term.
You are doing exactly the opposite of what you would do if your goal was to reduce cost.
A thought just occurred to me. If I understood correctly, AvWeek reported last week that spacecraft returning from the lunar south pole would have to skip off the top of Earth’s atmosphere above a pole, to reenter again to reach a landing site at temperate lattitudes.
If so, it seems to me that it would be a short step from that to aerobraking into a high-latitude Earth orbit, say that of the Space Station. There, you could store and service your tankage and engines for reuse.
Any engineers or orbital dynamicists out there care to comment?
— Donald
Congress has to authorize the money. Am I wrong?
The SSME/RS-68 switch is real bad, for the simple reason that we already have a launch vehicle that uses the RS-68 – the Boeing Delta IV Medium, and we already have a launch vehicle that uses the SSME – the space shuttle. We should have been, and should be, flying the shit out of these vehicles. Chalk it up to more massive damage inflicted on our space infrastructure by the Bush administration. It’s going to take decades to recover from this.
While we are flying the hell out of the vehicles we already have, we could be using these same vehicles to develop the next generation of launch vehicles. Here shuttle derived has a undeserved bad reputation. We need to be taking the best of the shuttle, and discarding the worst of it. The SSMEs stay, SRBs go. Something like an ET stays, the foam goes. Obviously the silica tiles go. The wings and landing gears go. What you have left is a stripped down cryogenic SSTO with space colonization built in, serviced by the Delta IV Medium, until a fleet of winged commercial two stage manned launch vehicles can be developed.
Common sense is not an option. I like that.
It could be they just have. According to this week’s Space News, NASA is considering replacing the SSME with the RS-68.
I said much better, not slightly better…
I said much better, not slightly better
Rand (and Edward and everyone else), I believe that one of the things that the space community has consistently done wrong is let the better become the enemy of the good enough. There are many technical reasons we have not returned to Earth’s moon, but every one of them is dwarfed by the political reasons. And primary among the latter is that, rather than do the politically achievable minimum required to return to the moon, we’ve always gone haring off after the single-stage-to-orbit flavor of the week.
I don’t disagree with any of you that there are better ways to do this. I argued long and hard, in print in every place I could, that we should go with the EELVs to reduce the up-front investment in money and time required to return to the moon. I lost that argument.
But, to continue to re-fight it now is only to shoot ourselves in the foot and _guarantee_ that we do not get back to the moon this time, either.
We have a realistic, if not the best, strategy to establish an outpost on the moon. A modest beginning to commercial transport to orbit is part of that plan. If it continues, it will become a precedent that can be used later to lead to supplying the lunar outpost. Then, you have a market for better transportation.
For once in our lives, now is the time to think like politicians instead of technocrats. We need results soon and we need them at NASA’s current budget and we need them without disemploying the Shuttle work force. Dr. Griffin has come up with an imperfect strategy that simultaneously fulfills all of those goals, plus starts commercial supply. It will be very, very easy, once again, to lose all of that, and the space community fighting among ourselves over strategy is a very good way to make that happen.
If all of the reusable launch vehicle and technology development that was going on in the 1990s is really what we want to return to, than we know exactly how to return to that. Surely, if I can hold my nose and support Mr. Bush, a man I despise, on the VSE, surely some of you can get behind something less than lily-white perfection and go for good enough.
— Donald
Donald:
Well said! It’s time to get past our failed arguments of the past and move tword the future with the tools we have been given. The goal is not the hardware but the exploration and hopefully colonization.
Just remember; No dosen’t mean no forever, it just means “not right now”.
> There are many technical reasons we have not returned to Earth’s moon
There are no technical reasons. Only economic reasons. Reasons that are compounded by your insistance on turning VSE into a political pork program.
Who is “we,” by the way? I’ve never been to the Moon, so it’s impossible for me to “return” to it. Have you been to the Moon, Donald? Or are you going to give me the line that “we” will “return” to the Moon by watching it on television?
> And primary among the latter is that, rather than do the politically
> achievable minimum required to return to the moon, we’ve always gone
> haring off after the single-stage-to-orbit flavor of the week.
“Always”??? Do you NASA never tried anything except SSTO? Do you think the Shuttle was SSTO? Do you think Apollo was SSTO?
Or are just feigning ignorance to come up with a (very weak) argument?
The “politically achievable minimum required to return to the moon” would be a Gemini-class capsule on an Atlas or Delta booster — one of numerous cost-saving options that you reject.
> I argued long and hard, in print in every place I could, that we should
> go with the EELVs to reduce the up-front investment in money and time
> required to return to the moon. I lost that argument.
You didn’t lose. You gave up, at the first sign of resistance. There’s a difference.
> But, to continue to re-fight it now is only to shoot ourselves in the foot
> and _guarantee_ that we do not get back to the moon this time, either.
Non sequitur. Apollo didn’t get me to the Moon before, and it won’t get there this time, either.
> We have a realistic, if not the best, strategy to establish an outpost on the moon.
Actually, I can think of many strategies. You insist that I must reject all of those strategies except one. One that has been tried and shown to be too expensive to support any follow-on. Please tell me, why should I follow you down that dead-end road and ignore every other road that might not be a dead end?
> A modest beginning to commercial transport to orbit is part of that plan.
You’re either misinformed or misrepresentin the facts. Commercial transport to orbit is not part of the lunar plan. It’s part of the ISS plan, which in no way depends on the lunar stuff.
> If it continues, it will become a precedent that can be used later to
> lead to supplying the lunar outpost. Then, you have a market for better
> transportation.
Did Apollo create a market for better transportation? Six guys sitting in a tin can are not a significant market. To create anything more than trivial demand, you need to have lots of people and lots of activity. Which can’t happen with the super-expensive Apollo architecture. Catch 22.
Expensive transportation leads to low levels of activity, which leads to insufficient demand for new forms of transportation.
> For once in our lives, now is the time to think like politicians instead of technocrats.
Donald, I spend quite a bit of time talking to politicians. More than you, I’m willing to wager. And quite frankly, I find the average politician is a lot more open-minded than you or Cecil or Mark. So, please, stop pretending you speak for every politician in America.
> We need results soon and we need them at NASA’s current budget
You could have results, soon, within NASA’s current budget — if you were willing to consider new ideas. You aren’t willing, so you won’t see results any time soon and even long-term results will require large increases in the NASA budget. Thus the whining about how mean old Congress won’t give you all the money you want.
> we need them without disemploying the Shuttle work force.
Ah, now we come to the truth.
This isn’t about space exploration at all. It’s about pork. Protecting the Shuttle work force, to buy votes in central Florida.
> Dr. Griffin has come up with an imperfect strategy that simultaneously
> fulfills all of those goals
All of your goals, Donald. It fulfills none of ours. It does not significantly reduce the cost of space transportation. It does not allow non-trivial numbers of humans to explore space. It does not enable significant space commercialization.
If you think protecting Shuttle jobs is more important than developing routine access to space, large-scale space exploration, and robust space commercialization, then you should support Dr. Griffin’s plan.
I don’t agree with those priorities, so I can’t support his plan.
> If all of the reusable launch vehicle and technology development that
> was going on in the 1990s is really what we want to return to,
“All the reusable launch vehicle development that was going on in the 1990s”???
In what fantasy world did that take place? Oz? Dinotopia?
Perhaps you’re thinking of SpaceShip One, which was developed in the 2000’s?
The goal is not the hardware but the exploration and hopefully colonization.
Giddy up cowboy, horseys on the Moon!
What a crock of shit. Another Space Review Weenie!
I think we can pretty much disregard anything you say now. Don’t forget to hold your breath!
A thought just occurred to me. If I understood correctly, AvWeek reported last week that spacecraft returning from the lunar south pole would have to skip off the top of Earth’s atmosphere above a pole, to reenter again to reach a landing site at temperate lattitudes.
If so, it seems to me that it would be a short step from that to aerobraking into a high-latitude Earth orbit, say that of the Space Station. There, you could store and service your tankage and engines for reuse.
Any engineers or orbital dynamicists out there care to comment?
I don’t think it’s practical for a manned spacecraft. Multipass aerobraking is out, since that means spending considerable time in the Van Allen belts, which would require an impractical amount of radiation shielding. Single-pass aerobraking incurs a lot of heating, so you’ll still require a massive heatshield, though not quite as much as direct-to-surface requires. It’s also highly sensitive to variations in atmospheric density, so it would be almost negligent not to include an “abort-to-surface” option – which will eliminate *any* mass savings from the heatshield. That same sensitivity will make it difficult to hit a particular target orbital plane, so best not to be too choosy about what high-inclination orbit you wind up in. The propellant reserve required to reach a particular orbital target, such as ISS, is likely to be prohibitive.
The reason we haven’t been to the Moon in decades is that NASA has been chasing RLV’s since 1969 when they started pushing the shuttle. They paid for the intial design studies with the money to keep the Saturn 5 assembly line open, assuring we could never go back. Since we didn’t have the technology to build an RLV, we got a turkey. I don’t think any of the shuttle hardware is good because the whole thing is a kluge which is highly dangerous.
Continuing to employ the shuttle work force will guarantee VSE will be starved for cash.
A low launch rate doesn’t necessarily mean a small base if stay times are in the years. The NASA plan now is to have crews of 4 rotate every six months. If stays are 2 years instead of 6 months and flight rate is increased to 3 crew flights a year from 2 we can have a base of 24 people 28 at crew change. Which would significantly change the aproach and results of all the trade studies in favor of using lunar resources and manufacturing on the Moon. A big step towards colonization.
I am very disapointed in the current launch system and plan. I am worried that the enphasis on completing the station will mean delays and decisions harmfull for a return to the Moon. But at least now that is our next goal.
Karen: A low launch rate doesn’t necessarily mean a small base if stay times are in the years. . . . If stays are 2 years instead of 6 months and flight rate is increased to 3 crew flights a year from 2 we can have a base of 24 people 28 at crew change. . . . A big step towards colonization.
Very interesting point, Karen. It feeds into my thoughts that efficient transportation is not necessarily a requirement for settlement. However, I do not see how this and the current architecture are mutually exclusive. Using existing technology and systems to get a start, get a bunch of people on the moon to create a market, and then use that market to provide a political and technical reason for a new and better (and commercial) transportation system.
— Donald
To Donald and everyone who supports VSE and the like, answer me this – will VSE provide space colonization to the average person in 20 years or less? Because, at least for me (and I’d be willing to bet for most others) that is what we want. If you can demonstrate that, you’d get me onboard.
> The reason we haven’t been to the Moon in decades is that NASA has been chasing RLV’s since 1969 when
> they started pushing the shuttle. They paid for the intial design studies with the money to keep the Saturn
>5 assembly line open, assuring we could never go back.
Now, Karen, you know that isn’t true.
NASA never needed the Saturn 5 to go to the Moon. It could have done Lunar Gemini without the Saturn 5, but Lunar Gemini wasn’t expensive enough.
NASA could go back to the Moon without the Saturn 5 today — if you weren’t hell-bent on making it so expensive.
> we didn’t have the technology to build an RLV
Now, Karen, you know that isn’t true, either. Burt Rutan proved it was possible to build an RLV without super-high-technology. The Air Force and NASA proved it long ago, with the X-15. Those may not be vehicles that satisfy Karen Cramer, but they provide a path to low-cost spaceflight for the American people, not just a handful of government scientists.
> A low launch rate doesn’t necessarily mean a small base if stay times are in the years. The NASA plan now
> is to have crews of 4 rotate every six months. If stays are 2 years instead of 6 months and flight rate is
> increased to 3 crew flights a year from 2 we can have a base of 24 people 28 at crew change.
You overlook all the extra resupply flights needed to keep crews on the Moon for 2 years instead of 6 months. You also overlook the flights that would be needed to build such a base to begin with.
Even if it were as simple as you say, 24-28 people is a VERY small base. Smaller even than the NSF outpost at the Sout Pole.
> Which would significantly change the aproach and results of all the trade studies in favor of using
> lunar resources and manufacturing on the Moon. A big step towards colonization.
Do you think the NSF base is a big step toward colonization of the South Pole? How much manufacturing goes on there?
Industries like manufacturing require a critical mass of people with a mix of skills. If you selfishly insist on making travel to the Moon supercostly, again, so that no one but a few NASA astronauts can go, then your will fail, again, just as Apollo failed.
Those who do learn from history are condemned to repeat it.
> I am very disapointed in the current launch system and plan.
That’s strange, because it’s essentially the same plan you’ve advocated for years — giant Saturn-class ELVs. Your notion that Saturn 5 required less labor than the Shuttle is not supported by the historical evidence.
Ferris, space colonization in twenty years or less is in no way an achievable goal no matter how much money we spend on it. Read my Op Ed piece in Space News last week for some of the reasons why. People who advocate for this are dreaming, not looking realistically at the difficulty of the task, the alien nature of the many environments involved, the extreme risks , how vast a task it is, and at the history of past successful effots at tackling similar tasks.
What we can hope to do in our lifetimes — if everything goes completely perfectly right — is establish some initial bases at nearby locations like the moon, the Martian moons and near Earth asteroids, and possibly on Mars. We can start an initial trade in oxygen and other logistic expendables between the bases and possibly delivering some high value commodities or manufactured goods back to Earth. Closer to home, we can get a LEO tourism industry under way, and develop second and third generation reusable spacecraft.
I think that is rather a lot for one generation to attempt, but these are realistic achievable goals. Colonization in the sense that I believe you mean it is not. That is a task for our children, using the foundation we lay today.
— Donald
Hm, that might be an interesting experiment; a dry run. Attempt to colonize antartica in order to determine what mix of incentives and policies might work for the moon. Impractical I know. Just brainstorming.
Chance, Antarctica is a politically unlikely colonization goal, but there are plenty of uninhabited arctic islands that would probably be even better models. This would be a natural extension of what the Mars Society is doing, and I think it’s a great idea.
— Donald
Donald
Your going to have to link to it – I can’t seem to find it.
http://www.spacenews.com. I’m afraid you have to subscribe or find it at a library. My contract does not allow me to distribute it to others until a month after it’s appeared.
— Donald
I’ll have to look for it at the libarury (although I doubt they’ll have it), or else I’ll have to wait a month until you can self-publish it. Subscribing is out of my price range. However, I promise to read it. I did read your article about San Francisco, and while I agree about needed a destination, I think a) Nasa has to learn to give up a certain amount of control (and its going to be a lot of control, and given Nasa’s reluctance to allow private citizens on the Station, they’ve still got quite a ways to go) b) your timeframe is far more conservative that it needs to be. But I think, with a little work, ISS is/could become the first true colony in space.
Finally, the problem with buidling a foundation is, IMHO, we are out of time to simply be building a foundation.
Ferris: Nasa has to learn to give up a certain amount of control (and its going to be a lot of control,
This will almost certainly happen, as NASA’s interest in the Space Station currently is limited to fulfilling our obligation to finish building it. After that, the use and maintenance of the station will probably fall largely to the partners. That said, as it becomes institutionalized, I think it is unlikely be abandoned in the foreseeable future. Big infrastructure projects like the Station have tremendous political and economic inertia — for our purposes, that is its chief value. As it continues to exist and slowly grow, it is will be a large and steady market for logistics from Earth, and, eventually, lunar oxygen. That market is already helping to keep the current generation of launch vehicles in business (especially the Soyuz launcher), and is helping SpaceX and Kistler to keep their projects going.
A decade from now, the market will be institutionalized enough for the financial industry to consider it part of the background noise, and, when the next batch of SpaceXs comes forward with proposals to lower the cost to LEO, Wall Street may be more willing to listen.
If a lunar base gets established, the same will happen there.
It won’t happen as fast as we want, but if we build these bases and keep them in business, it will happen because, as Karen would say, that is the only way they can afford to stay in business.
Notes in proof: Look at how extremely reluctant the Russian government was to give up Mir, which they only did under the most extreme financial pressure and political pressure from the United States. Look at how extremely reluctant Congress is to give up the Shuttle, no matter how expensive it is. Look at how reluctant we were to leave the Space Station uninhabited during the last couple of years, despite the logistical and political difficulty of keeping it occupied. Look at how reluctant the Europeans have been to write off their investment, keeping the pressure on us to make good on that investment. That reluctance and pressure is not likely to disappear once their hardware is in orbit; most likely, it will increase.
As many scientists will happily tell you, none of this comes from any useful product at this time. It is strictly political and economic inertia, a hope for future gain, and a political reluctance to risk missing out on this possible gain especially if others (read China at this point in time) might find that gain. (I expect that gain to be realized, but many who are making the decisions to keep these project going do not.)
The key fact that most space advocates and opponents alike are missing, mostly because they’re not looking at history, is that these kinds of decisions are never made for logical or practical reasons. If the space settlement succeeds in the United States, it will be because NASA comes up with a strategy that fulfills the political and economic needs of the President and Congress for long enough a period of time. It won’t succeed because it is the best plan, or because it will get zillions of people into orbit next year, or for some “manifest destiny” of space colonization — unless doing that fulfill’s a political (or religious) need.
The route to space will be paved by establishing political and economic “facts on the ground” that provide a motivation for people, most of whom really don’t care, to invest in it and then protect their investments. Trying to establish a route to space before there are markets and requirements to meet and protect has not had a good history.
— Donald
IIRC, International agreements prevent the colonization of Antarctica.
Revised last paragraph:
The route to space will be paved by establishing political and economic “facts on the ground” that provide a motivation for people, most of whom really don’t care, to invest in it and then protect their investments. “Facts” that either must be supplied or abandoned. If the decision is made not to abandon them, than the costs of supplying them must be reduced. Thus, politicians will be presented with the uncomfortable choice of abandoning an “outpost on the frontier,” a phrase that has tremendous resonance with Americans, or helping the alt.space crowd come up with cheaper ways to supply these facts. I’m betting that most politicians will opt for the latter.
— Donald
Space colonization will occur if and only if someone comes up with the engines and launch vehicles that allow it to happen. Propulsion and launch aren’t facts, they are physical devices and machines. I posit the human race is already in possession of enough physical facts necessary for this to occur.
What I continually ask myself is : why isn’t it happening? What is the problem here? The answers that continually come back to me are human greed and stupidity. Human beings, in general, don’t have the right stuff. Americans in particular, don’t have the right stuff. There is the occasional glimmer of hope, STS and ISS, SLI, the X-Prize, but then some political nonsense like VSE and ESAS comes along and smashes up the dream.
Failure is inevitable. It’s usually better to have small failures than real big expensive ones.
Between Tom and Donald we have the classic “chicken and egg” scenario. Will technology push space demand or will demand in space push technology?
I think you will find far more examples of demand pushing technology than the other way around.
One example of demand pushing technology in space is the fledgling space tourism market. Demand for “extreme” vacations like helicopter skiing or climbing Everest has motivated private industry to provide what could be called the “ultimate” experience, a sub-orbital ride into space. (The Russians providing $20million space vacations didn’t hurt either.) Why do you think teams kept developing sub-orbital spacecraft even after the X-Prize was won? There’s money to be made in sub-orbital joy rides. The next “ultimate experience” will be once around trips then orbital flight and so on.
That is how the private sector will become more involved in our development of space, first supplying the space station then crew transfer on to lunar re-supply and then construction etc..
What I’m saying is that if the need is there industry will develop the technology to fill the need. We need NASA and the VSE to provide the need.
For NASA to do that they have to keep in mind their constituencies, which is the President and Congress. That means providing employment (or maintaining it) while keeping expenditures as low as possible, keeping development on time, while also keeping our ISS partners satisfied. ESAS, while not my idea of great inspiring technology, will be able to fill the bill of providing the need by establishing small lunar outposts that need to be supplied. It’s then that I hope that the re-supply and growth need will inspire the technology to do it better.
Donald – I wish I had as much faith, concerning Nasa giving up control. When I was in DC for ProSpace, there was general concensous that Congress (at least a large chunk of congress) that the CEV was gonna fulfill all needs for the station, even in terms of resupply.
And for that matter, why make the CEV totally dependent upon 1 launcher, which it is? Why not leave it open, so that it can be launch by any rocket that meets the specified weight?
Congress, and by extention Nasa, doesn’t want to give up that control.
In terms of Wall street listening, the thing is, I think that they will listen this time, if for no other reason than we actually have companies building crafts. Space will have its Netscape moment this generation.
As far as markets, Nasa isn’t the only one, nor is it necassarily the biggest one.
Finally, its not an issue of happening as fast as we want it to – It will happen in the next 20 years, or not at all. I wish those weren’t the options, but that is the unfortant truth. We have reached the crecfice where its either all or nothing.
One last thing – you’ve answered why I can’t support VSE – because the goal is colonization in 20 years. That should be the goal. To use Zubrian’s quote, albeit slightly modified “If you want Colonization, ask for colonization. Don’t ask for science.”
mreal – the problem is, by embracing those constituancies, we don’t allow for anything to change, and we are limited to the kind of things we are already doing. I go back to my point about the CEV – there were a decent number of Senators/Congresspeople who were of the opinion that CEV could provide all necassary resupply. THEY WON’T WANT TO GIVE IT UP! So it won’t inspire the technology, or even if it does, implementing that technology will be next to impossible
Because the issue is how integrated the current VSE structure is. You wanna launch a CEV? You can only put it up on the stick. You wanna put the lunar lander up? You can only do it on the Shuttle Derived heavy lift.
That is why the tourism market is seen as so vibrant – because only market forces are driving that. Rutan and whitehorn comments about the price dropping from 200,000 the first year to 50,000 in 5 years or less isn’t made to simply impress people – they think they can do it. There hasn’t/isn’t any reason for the big companies to inovavate, and the required up front capital required has scared away many people.
Ed, if a Gemini could have gotten as to the Moon in the 1960’s the Russians would have beat us to the Moon.
Maybe with superior control technology we could use them now but it would require multiple launches per mission which is inherently more dangerous than single launch scenarios.
Spaceship 1 was build this century not in the 1960’s Burt had the benefit of 40 years of technical progress in all fields. Just because space technology is basically stopped doesn’t mean the rest of the world is. No, I am not I am counting on a larger base forcing NASA to send up production equipment instead of finished goods. While a larger base would require some more supply launches my point was we really don’t need a different launch system to build a reasonable sized lunar base affordably. We just need to change the approach.
The proposed launch system has two main problems, it is shuttle derived and it requires two launches per crewed mission.
We will never really know what the cost of Saturn 5 would have been because the cost of the original Saturns included development. I am sure the second run off the assembly line would have been significantly cheaper than the shuttle costs.
Karen, I’ve heard hearsay that the Saturn-V cost about $1 billion per flight in then-year dollars. I have no idea what the derivation or truth of that is.
Ferris, okay what’s your plan to get settlement in twenty years. I’m genuinely curious.
I am convinced tourism will be a major driver of spaceflight, in the near term possibly the major driver. But, all the hype aside, we’re a long way from a vibrant tourism industry that is directly relevant to space settlement. At this point, I have no doubt that suborbital tourism will be a major market, and probably in the next few years, but that is a long way from orbital tourism. I think that will happen, and the suborbital business might even pay for it to happen, but it’s still going to take a lot of time and money to develop. Right now, the going rate for an orbital tour is $20 million and I don’t see dramatic reductions in that in the next decade or so.
Orbital tourism is easy compared to learning everything that you have to learn to survive for an extended period on the moon, getting there with useful payloads, keeping people alive in an extremely difficult environment, paying for them to stay there through some tradable good, et cetera. Even if we have cheap orbital tourism in ten years or less, that is still a long, long way from a colony.
— Donald
Also, Ferris, I’m not sure why your deadline. Yes, we’re trashing the environment and conducting senseless wars, but short of a large-scale nuclear war I don’t see the Earth becoming uninhabitable, or unable to support an industrial civilization, in the next twenty years. Things are bad enough, and Mr. Bush is making them worse, but we’re probably not on the edge of ecological collapse just yet.
That said, I think it likely that if and +when the collapse does happen, there will be very little warning. Biological systems tend to absorb abuse up to their limits, then collapse very suddenly. I think we’re still a fairly long way away from that, but of course nobody knows. . . .
— Donald
The Billion per Saturn 5 launch was the first batch off the assembly line and included development costs. What would have been the cost per rocket of the second batch considering that development and manufacturing set up costs were already paid?
I doubt we will ever know unless Boeing makes public some internal company memos of what they were considering charging the government if a second order came in.
People … The Saturn V is gone.
Get over it.
> Ed, if a Gemini could have gotten as to the Moon in the 1960’s the Russians would have beat us to the Moon.
So, Pete Conrad and McDonnell Douglas were wrong?
Please tell us what mistakes you think they made. What do you know that they didn’t?
Show your math.
> Maybe with superior control technology we could use them now but it would require multiple launches per
> mission which is inherently more dangerous than single launch scenarios.
Karen, I suggest you get an engineer to explain the concept of redundancy to you.
You have the fixed idea that multiple launches are incredibly hard. Gemini demonstrated multiple launches and orbital rendezvous in the 1960’s — no super modern control technology required. So did the Russians.
The Strategic Air Command was prepared to launch hundreds of ICBMs at a moment’s notice. So were the Russians.
Even commercial airlines do multiple launches. Thousands of them, every day.
You need to talk to people who operate vehicles in the real world. Don’t just rely on the word of Bob Zubrin.
> Spaceship 1 was build this century not in the 1960’s Burt had the benefit of 40 years of technical progress in all fields.
So, Burt Rutan says it could have been done in the 60’s — and Karen Cramer says it couldn’t?
What do you know about SpaceShip One that Burt doesn’t?
What about the X-15? Do you think that was a hoas?
> No, I am not I am counting on a larger base forcing NASA to send up production equipment
> instead of finished goods. While a larger base would require some more supply launches my
> point was we really don’t need a different launch system to build a reasonable sized lunar
> base affordably. We just need to change the approach.
Unfortunately, Karen, your approach seems to be to avoid doing any math.
Building a moon base is not like jumping in your car and driving across town, Karen. You can’t count on finding a gas station if you run out or a McDonald’s if you get hungry. It requires careful planning and calculations.
> The proposed launch system has two main problems, it is shuttle derived and it requires
> two launches per crewed mission.
Two launches are not a problem. Or 20 launches, for that matter. Techniques for multiple launches were demonstrated in the 1960’s, even if Karen Cramer refuses to believe it.
> We will never really know what the cost of Saturn 5 would have been because the cost of the original
> Saturns included development. I am sure the second run off the assembly line would have been
> significantly cheaper than the shuttle costs.
How much cheaper? “If you can’t say it in numbers, it isn’t science, it’s opinion.”
Anyone who understands the learning curve can predict how much the next Saturn 5 would have cost. The fact that you think it’s impossible is one reason I can’t take your statements seriously.
Donald, I’ll try to respond tonight, but it might not be till tomorrow. Needless to say, yes, I do have something in mind (not fulling fleshed out, but its there)
Ed, if it were possible to go to the moon with a Gemini sized rocket they would have and the space race would have been much shorter. The entire reason the Moon was chosen as the destination for the space race is going there and getting back would require an entirely new class, meaning size of rockets much bigger than anything previously built and the US had a good chance of beating the Russians in its development because of our superior system of nation innovation and production. All the discussions I have read were considering even bigger rockets not smaller ones. No one was motivated by not spending enough.
All ways to get to the Moon and back with smaller rockets require multiple launches. In the beginning of the1960’s they didn’t know how to rendezvous in space. I seem to remember one nearly fatal attempt to figure out how to do it.
The reason multi-launch missions are more dangerous is because all rockets used long term have very similar failure rates regardless of size, less than 2% but greater than zero since any rocket will fail if it is flown enough. So multiple launch missions will nearly always have a larger failure rate than single launch missions. Plus the added factors of the multiple launch requirement, such timing and codependency? Then we add launch pressure with will make it more likely that warning signs will be dismissed because of pressure to launch caused by the rest of the mission already being up there.
As for all the nuclear weapons, as the saying goes close only matters in horse shoes, hand grenades and nuclear war heads.
While it may have been possible to build Space Ship 1 in the 1960’s why didn’t he? I really don’t care the answer because Space Ship One seems to be a technological dead end. Space ship one has only made a handful of flights and none since it won the x-Prize. If it is such a break through why isn’t it flying regularly?
Sure it gets to space, technically but not far enough to be interesting. Technically my daughter went on a play date to China since her friend lives in the Chinese Embassy. Is it important to her future? Not really.
If Space Ship one is no improvement over the X-15 who care about it? So Peter Diamantes found a creative new way to pay for stunts.
I am not counting on there being a gas station or a MacDonald’s on the Moon I am counting on a critical mass of people causing NASA to Mine , lunar resources, manufacture things with local materials and send up green houses so they can grow there own food. This would be a real step toward space development. We want space development not space camping.
I can’t say how much cheaper the second run of Saturn 5’s might have been because I have no access to the data; at this point only Boeing does because it bought all the Saturn 5 contractors. But it is basic economics that we a new technology product comes out the price is significantly higher than it will be latter since the first buyers pay for the development. After the company has earned back it’s sunk cost the price drops to the marginal cost plus profit. The price of the first run of Saturn 5’s included development and assembly line set up. The second run would only need to pay for materials, workers and profit. Plus improvement could also have reduced the price. How much this reduction is I have know way of knowing but it is highly doubtful it is less than 10%
And Ed if you are so smart why can’t you get my name right. It is obvious you react rather than attempt to read and understand. My last name hasn’t been Cramer for over 7 years.
And I almost never talk to Zubrin these days.
Karen, my partner runs a horse ranch, and I’m pretty sure that she’d dispute your suggestion that close counts in horse shoes!
I’m still interested in your analysis of why beginning a small base on Earth’s moon with Dr. Griffin’s suggested vehicles could not lead to your critical mass of people causing NASA to Mine, lunar resources, manufacture things with local materials and send up green houses so they can grow there own food, and sooner than developing new vehicles from scratch. Note, however, that I am not opposed to new vehicles; I just want to get started now rather than wait until they are developed.
— Donald
The saying I believe is about the game of horse shoe throwing and its scoring.
I actually said it could begin by using NASA suggested vehicles. Just not there suggested stay and launch rate. I suggested earlier how if we increase the stay length to 2 years and the launch rate to 3 crew flights a year from 2 we could have 24 person base. 28 at crew change.
The next thing I would recommend is upping the crew capacity. With a crew of 4, half the people who go to the Moon need to be pilots. Since they need a pilot and a copilot for back up. This is not going to allow many specialists to get to the Moon. Whether they are mining engineers, scientists, doctors, hydroponics specialists, we will need specialist to develop the Moon not just people who will abandon there own work to train at NASA for years before they can fly.
All the discussions I have read were considering even bigger rockets not smaller ones. No one was motivated by not spending enough.
Really? You never read about the EOR/LOR mode debate or about Lunar Gemini? And here I thought you were well-read on the subject…
All ways to get to the Moon and back with smaller rockets require multiple launches. In the beginning of the1960’s they didn’t know how to rendezvous in space.
And yet, the method ultimately chosen (LOR) not only relied on rendezvous, it relied on it in lunar orbit rather than Earth orbit.
I seem to remember one nearly fatal attempt to figure out how to do it.
Which flight was that?
I can’t say how much cheaper the second run of Saturn 5’s might have been because I have no access to the data; at this point only Boeing does because it bought all the Saturn 5 contractors.
I can assure you that no one currently at Boeing has the slightest clue how much a Saturn V cost. Boeing bought those contractors for their current programs, not their past ones. No doubt the data still exists somewhere, but it will be about as easy to find as the Ark of the Covenant.
Genimi 8 was the flight I was refering to.
I had read it, I just dismissed it as a idea not worth pursuing like those in the 1960’s did.
One thing you have to realize is we were in a race for global domination with the soviets and the Moon race was part of it. Sure landing a person on the Moon in a minimalist lander would satisfy the President’s order but would not have been suffient to declare our domination of space and our ability to do what ever we wanted on the Moon.
Broadcasting to the world the scenes of 2 American Astronauts Dune Buggying around on the Moon did that quite effectively.
Gemini to the Moon would not have declared our unbeatable technological and production superiority. Since the soviets probably could have done something to top it soon after.
Karen: I suggested earlier how if we increase the stay length to 2 years and the launch rate to 3 crew flights a year from 2 we could have 24 person base. 28 at crew change.
And, I wrote that I thought this was a very good idea. I have consistantly argued that for the VSE to succeed it must be executed with the lowest possible cost. Keeping crews on the moon for long periods of time, reducing transportation costs, especially if you can mine your oxygen, is an obvious way to do that.
Regarding Gemini versus Apollo, one of the interesting things in Asif A. Siddiqi “Challenge to Apollo” history of the Soviet effort is that the Soviets did not give up right after losing to Apollo. They kept trying for several more years (I forget off the top of my head, but it was well into the 1970s). It was only after the repeated failures of the N-1 that they finally gave up and pretended that they were not racing at all. Had the overly complex N-1 succeeded, or had the Soviets concentrated their resources on a single lunar project (they ran several in parallel, which was extremely wasteful of both talent and money), they may well have flown to the moon shortly after us. If so, history might have been very different and there might today be two lunar bases. Or, maybe not.
— Donald
> Ed, if it were possible to go to the moon with a Gemini sized rocket they
> would have and the space race would have been much shorter.
Yes, they should have. Instead, they rushed Apollo into service before it was ready and killed three astronauts as a result.
It’s better to learn from the mistakes of the past than to repeat the mistakes of the past.
> The entire reason the Moon was chosen as the destination for the space race
> is going there and getting back would require an entirely new class,
No, it doesn’t. It was used to justify an entirely new class of rockets. That doesn’t mean it required them.
You can use trips to the grocery store to justify buying a new Cadillac. That doesn’t mean trips to the grocery store require a Cadillac.
> All the discussions I have read were considering even bigger
> rockets not smaller ones. No one was motivated by not spending enough.
Then you should expand your reading. Start with the Lunar Gemini articles on Astronautix.com. Then read up on Apollo Earth Orbit Rendezvous (von Braun’s preferred approach).
If you still want to say Earth Orbit Rendezvous is impossible, please provide technical arguments to prove it. Don’t just say Wernher von Braun was wrong because Karen Shea says so.
> All ways to get to the Moon and back with smaller rockets require
> multiple launches. In the beginning of the 1960’s they didn’t know
> how to rendezvous in space.
Pete Conrad disagreed with that statement. Mostly because he has done it.
Even if that were true, this is no longer the 1960’s. Rendezvous has been done many, many times since then. Every Apollo lunar landing required an orbital rendezvous.
> The reason multi-launch missions are more dangerous is because all
> rockets used long term have very similar failure rates regardless
> of size, less than 2% but greater than zero since any rocket will fail
> if it is flown enough. So multiple launch missions will nearly always
> have a larger failure rate than single launch missions.
The difference being, the loss of a single launch in a large program is nothing more than a nuisance. Whereas, a single loss of your Great Big Rocket would bring your program to a screeching halt, just as the loss of the Shuttle brought ISS to a halt.
That’s why Columbus took three ships instead of one on his first voyage (and on later voyages, when he could afford more ships, he took more). There were much larger ships available in Columbus’s day, but he didn’t want to put all his eggs in one basket.
> Plus the added factors of the multiple launch requirement, such timing
> and codependency? Then we add launch pressure with will make it more likely
> that warning signs will be dismissed because of pressure to launch caused
> by the rest of the mission already being up there.
Southwest faces the same problem — on a larger scale — every day. It’s hardly insoluble. In the event of a nuclear war, a US Navy SSBN has to launch dozens of missiles in a matter of minutes — under wartime conditions. You think it’s impossible to launch two or more rockets, hours apart, in peacetime?
Also, since you think so highly of the physicists who build atomic bombs, you might want to do some research on the “Great Expeditions” lunar and Mars program proposed by Lowell Wood and others at Lawrence Livermore National Labs. Their approach relied on then-existing rockets (Delta, Atlas, Titan).
> While it may have been possible to build Space Ship 1 in the 1960’s why didn’t he?
Because he was too busy attending grade school?
Now you’re just getting silly.
> I really don’t care the answer because Space Ship One seems to be a
> technological dead end. Space ship one has only made a handful of
> flights and none since it won the x-Prize. If it is such a break through
> why isn’t it flying regularly?
For the same reason the Wright Flyer isn’t flying regularly.
> Sure it gets to space, technically but not far enough to be interesting.
Right, just as the Wright flyer did not go “far enough to be interesting” and microcomputers are not “powerful enough to be interesting.”
As Pat Bahn would say, you don’t understand disuptive technology.
> I am not counting on there being a gas station or a MacDonald’s on the Moon
> I am counting on a critical mass of people causing NASA to Mine , lunar
> resources, manufacture things with local materials and send up green
> houses so they can grow there own food. This would be a real step toward
> space development. We want space development not space camping.
Apollo “mined” a few hundred pounds of rocks. They could have taken a few plants and called it a greenhouse if they wanted to.
> I can’t say how much cheaper the second run of Saturn 5’s might have been
> because I have no access to the data;
Only because you haven’t bothered.
> at this point only Boeing does because it bought all the Saturn 5 contractors.
Nonsense. Do you think the contractors never sent reports to NASA?
> But it is basic economics that we a new technology product comes
> out the price is significantly higher than it will be latter since the
> first buyers pay for the development. After the company has earned back
> it’s sunk cost the price drops
Not enough that anyone but NASA will be able to afford them.
It’s sad that Moonies are only interested in transport systems that would make spaceflight rare and expensive and reject any approach that would allow significant numbers of people to go.
Genimi 8 was the flight I was refering to.
Gemini 8 experienced a thruster failure after docking. That had nothing to do with “figur[ing] out how to do” rendezvous. The rendezvous was already successfully complete by that point.
I had read it, I just dismissed it as a idea not worth pursuing like those in the 1960’s did.
Ah, the truth comes out… it’s a good thing Von Braun was more open-minded than you, since he admitted to John Houbolt after Apollo 11 that rendezvous was essential to going to the moon.
Now let us explore the relationship between what you said above and what you said below:
One thing you have to realize is we were in a race for global domination with the soviets and the Moon race was part of it. Sure landing a person on the Moon in a minimalist lander would satisfy the President’s order but would not have been suffient to declare our domination of space and our ability to do what ever we wanted on the Moon.
So, you are admitting here that the alternate approaches were not dismissed due to lack of merit, but due to the special circumstances of the space race in the 1960s? If so, good – because I agree. In particular, the “beat the Soviets” goal and the 1970 deadline pushed NASA into design choices for Apollo that they would not have made if the goal were, say, an economically sustainable settlement of the moon. That resulted in a program that was too expensive to sustain once the primary political goals were met.
Since the special circumstances of the 1960s no longer exist, I think it’s time to re-examine the design assumptions made under those circumstances.
Nemo,
I don’t think a moon program based on large rockets would be too expensive to sustain, just give me the money that is now going to the shuttle and the station and has been for decades and I will develop the Moon.
While large rockets are expensive and out of reach of private entities we need lots of equipment up there to make it possible to live and manufacture with lunar resources. Until we get over a certain concentration of utilities no one will make any money off the Moon.
As for Gemini 8 you are forgetting the part where they were spinning out of control about to pass out. If they hadn’t stopped to spinning before they passed out, they would have both been dead.
Ed,
The Apollo 1 astronauts were not killed by equipment failure; they were killed by the usual cause of all astronaut losses, NASA hubris. Ah we don’t need to test 17 psi of pure oxygen for flammability we got away with it earlier. Ah, we don’t need to test the O-rings bellow freezing they work fine above. Ah, we don’t need to worry about dropping foam, after all its just foam.
Ed there is a big difference between rendezvousing with something you brought with you and rendezvousing with something launched separately. Separate launches increase the complication greatly.
Now if there was sufficient redundancy in the system this might not be an issue but NASA is only proposing trips to the Moon Months apart which will not provide redundancy.
As for the cost of the Saturn 5 in routine production I don’t think there are any reports to NASA with that data. That would have been the bids on the second run, which never happen. I doubt any where there is a breakdown of the cost of the Saturn 5 in terms of development, assembly line set up, materials and labor. These might be derivable from internal company documents but I don’t think they were ever derived by anyone. At least not in terms of the entire rocket since there were 3 separate contractors.
Ed, significant numbers of people will never go to the Moon until we have a large base up there using large percent of lunar resources for base supply. I would say 80 or 90% percent of the mass required for base requirements.
It is damn expensive to get to the Moon because it requires a lot of energy and is very dangerous. While the price may drop significantly, getting to the Moon will never be cheap.
Ed, I think with in 2 years after the Wright Brothers flight there were multiple flights with similar vehicles. Where are the Space Ship 1 copies?
Space Ship 1 hasn’t been disruptive and I know disruptive.
As for Gemini 8 you are forgetting the part where they were spinning out of control about to pass out. If they hadn’t stopped to spinning before they passed out, they would have both been dead.
I didn’t “forget” it. I am challenging your ridiculous and unsupportable assertion that the mishap had anything to do with “figur[ing] out how to do” rendezvous. The mishap could just as easily have happened during some other phase of on-orbit flight, and would have been just as dangerous (remember, the worst spin rates were after the Gemini had undocked from the Agena).