Over the weekend SpaceRef.com published an essay by Dennis Wingo on the Vision for Space Exploration, including the role of the Moon in the overall Vision as well as ways to promote commercial endeavors related to its implementation. Wingo is particularly pleased with presidential science advisor John Marburger’s speech at the Goddard Symposium back in March, in particular this passage:
The ultimate goal is not to impress others, or merely to explore our planetary system, but to use accessible space for the benefit of humankind. It is a goal that is not confined to a decade or a century. Nor is it confined to a single nearby destination, or to a fleeting dash to plant a flag. The idea is to begin preparing now for a future in which the material trapped in the Sun’s vicinity is available for incorporation into our way of life.
As Wingo writes, “It is incredible to me that this speech by Marburger is not on the wall of every single space advocate, and on the front of ever space advocate group’s web page.” However, he believes that “NASA alone is inadequate to the task” of carrying out the vision, and believes that the private sector should play a bigger role. He offers a couple of suggestions, including reviving the long-moribund “Zero-G, Zero Tax” legislation. An innovative suggestion he offers is to take the expected fine to be levied against Boeing for using proprietary Lockheed documents in the original EELV procurement, and use that money—perhaps $500-750 million—and use it as a fund for public-private space development projects. “It would be a wonderful irony that Boeing’s misdeeds end up supporting the development of commercial space opportunity for entrepreneurial space ventures!”
In today’s issue of The Space Review, Eric Hedman offers his own alternatives to the current VSE plan. Hedman believes that too many big decisions are being made too soon, particularly regarding the development of key hardware and other systems for sending humans back to the Moon. He offers several alternatives, including making enhanced use of the ISS. He also sees a greater role for the commercial sector, such as supplying propellant for an orbital fuel depot that could be used for lunar missions (a suggestion that Wingo also offers in his essay.) “This could be another opportunity for COTS-type procurement, increasing the market potential for the companies competing for ISS resupply,” he writes.
Throw away attitude!
NASA developed the Apollo/Saturn 5 program then
basically threw it away for STS. NASA had a huge
space station called SkyLab then let it burn up
for lack of a space tug. NASA developed the STS,
the Space truck to do the haulin’ to orbit. Attempted to follow on with VentureStar and the X vehicles but abandon that! Now the STS MUST retire in 2010! What military plane was retired before it’s replacement was on line for years? NASA has ISS, well Russia has ISS, ever notice how all control is from Moscow and all the vehicles to/from ISS are NOT NASA, now we will abandon ISS.
Not even use it as a orbital rendezvous site for exploration? This notion that the STS must be 99.999% safe, Why? Must the airlines or autos be that safe? At the start it was stated that problems would occur approximately every 50 missions. We can spend $XXX billion a year on a war in Iraq and have nothing afterwards, or we can spend a portion of that and be THE space faring nation. But don’t throw it away every 20 years,
build on the current program. Have a truck and a
VW to space. Persist in technology — VentureStar is doable with just a little fortitude. Space program is not Republican or Democrat it is National program worth constant funding, funding on the order of defense (better offense) and Home security!
Shitburger is an embarrassment to the republic.
While I haven’t yet read Dennis’ essay, I too have been impressed by John Marburger’s retoric. However, I draw a slighly different conclusion. Human space exploration is part of the background culture of us baby boomers and the generations that immediately follow. As time goes on, people who genuinely believe our vision way will increasingly make it into positions of power. That cannot be a bad thing.
However, among today’s teenagers, I detect a lack of interest in the kinds of exploration mythology that attracted my generation. If so, that would be a bad thing.
— Donald
Cosmicray-
Your oversimplified arguments and assertions piled one on top of the other allow no room for comment. Suggestion: either tone down the argument or split it into smaller parts.
>This notion that the STS must be 99.999% safe, Why? Must the airlines or autos be that safe?>
It’s hard to address the auto part of that because the metrics are so different, but the airlines are considerably safer than 99.999% on a per-launch basis.
I agree with Wingo’s point — that NASA is not currently organized to deliver significant “economic or security” benefits to the nation as part of exploration. I also agree that NASA will not see significant growth in support for its budget without delivering more in those areas. (NOTE: NASA does deliver a lot of “science benefits” but that is a one-legged stool.)
If NASA really cared about delivering “economic” benefits to the nation, then it would be doing a lot more than COTS. (NOTE: COTS is less than 1% of NASA’s budget in every year of its funding profile.) There are a lot of areas of investment with a more significant economic return (that would fit within Marburger’s criteria) that NASA is doing very little about.
I also agree with Wingo’s point about the “competitiveness initiative” — This initiative is designed to give more more money to those areas which deliver a major economic return on investment — a MUCH higher economic return on every dollar invested than NASA does.
Griffin is a smart guy, and almost certainly knows this. But he could not tell the truth to the politicians like Senators Shelby & Mikulski last week when they brought this up in the hearing.
COTS is a good beginning, but it will take a bigger change in direction than Griffin appears to be willing to institute to execute on Marburger’s interpretation of the President’s VSE.
– Al
Jeff
Thanks for the link and comments. See you in LA this week!
Also, I have recieved more mail from this article than from any that I have written previously. It has been very nice.
It is my understanding that the confab of lunar folks in DC last week came to generally the same type of conclusion, in that it is economic development, not science that drives the return to the Moon (or at leas should do so).
Dennis
Just in case others are not paying attention, the numbers used by Dennis Wingo in Moonrush are obsolete.
Dennis proposed a baseline of $800 per ounce for platinum and suggested it could go lower. Today’s price is $1,163 per ounce.
Rhodium has tripled over the last year. $1,520 per ounce on May 3, 2005. $4,800 per ounce today.
PGM prices are easily tracked at home, right here:
http://www.platinum.matthey.com/prices/price_charts.html
Here’s another take on these issues, from Space Daily,
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Space_Advocate_Reviews_The_Vision_For_Space_In_2006.html
— Donald
Rhodium has tripled over the last year. $1,520 per ounce on May 3, 2005. $4,800 per ounce today.
Interestingly, the stable isotope of rhodium makes up about 2-3% of the fission products in fission reactor waste. This makes spent fuel the richest rhodium ore on Earth, and possibly anywhere in the solar system. A 1 GW(e) reactor will produce roughly 20 kg of rhodium per year. It’s mixed with Rh isotopes with halflives of 2.9 years or less, but there’s plenty of spent fuel around in which much of the radioactive rhodium has decayed away.
Spent fuel is also a potential source of xenon, should Dennis’ plan need more of that for his ion engines than could be supplied by air separation plants. About 10% of the mass of the fissioned uranium is converted to xenon.
I think that fission product abundance was off by a factor of two (misread a chart).
Dennis Ray? “Cozmic Ray”? Is that alias???
> What military plane was retired before it’s replacement was on line for years?
The PBY? The Spruce Goose? Dirigibles? Hot air balloons?
The military does not operate planes just for the heck of it. It operates planes because they perform useful missions. When the military realizes that an aircraft like the Spruce Goose is not useful, they cancel it. They don’t insist it has to remain in service until they can build an equally useless replacement.
> This notion that the STS must be 99.999% safe, Why? Must the airlines
> or autos be that safe?
Yes, they must. If they weren’t, they would be too expensive to operate. Like the Shuttle (which was never designed to be 99.999% safe — I don’t know where you got that idea).
The difference, in fact, it more than the numbers alone indicate. For aircraft, reliability means returning the crew, passengers, crew, *and* airframe intact. Shuttle and ELVs never return the airframe intact — by design — even on a “nominal” mission.
> At the start it was stated that problems would occur approximately every 50 missions.
There’s a difference between a “problem” and a fatal accident.
Airliners have problems all the time. Most are never noticed by the general public and are fixed before the next flight. So do military and general aviation aircraft. Aircraft are designed for operability. They have enough redundancy to handle most single- and even multiple-point failures without a catastrophe. To get routine, affordable access to space, we need highly operable spacecraft that are designed for similar operations. ELVs and Shuttle are
> We can spend $XXX billion a year on a war in Iraq and have nothing afterwards,
> or we can spend a portion of that and be THE space faring nation.
Not all Americans regard freedom as “nothing.”
As for being “THE” space faring nation, jingoism aside, the US government has already spent more than a trillion dollars on space programs, and that hasn’t made us a spacefaring nation. It has made the astronaut office in Houston a spacefaring organization — to a *small* degree — but the rest of nation still has no access to space. That will not be changed by putting more money into the same failed programs.
> Space program is not Republican or Democrat it is National program worth constant
> funding, funding on the order of defense (better offense) and Home security!
That’s an old, tired argument. The military is a national program because the Constitution requires the government to provide for the common defense. Their is no Constitutional requirement to spend an equal amount of money to fund NASA (or any other social program). However, the Federal government actually spends more money on social programs than it does on defense, so “liberals” really need to get a new argument.
It is not the “National space program” that’s going to make America a spacefaring society. It is the private programs.
Ed Sez
Dennis Ray? “Cozmic Ray”? Is that alias???
_____________________
Ed
No, quit obsessing. I have no problem ever telling you what I think without an alias.
Dennis