NASA

The “business case” for the Vision

AIAA is organizing a lunchtime seminar on Capitol Hill on June 12 on the topic “Making the Business Case for Space – Where’s the Value?” The “business case” here is not so much a commercial business case but instead how to sell the public on the importance of NASA and the exploration vision. As the flyer announcing the event states:

Recent research, which includes 70 in-person interviews with NASA, White House, and Congressional staff along with national focus groups with adults and science students, reveals that the American public is disconnected and disengaged with what is going on in space and its value to them personally and to the nation, especially the President’s vision and space exploration. What is also a key finding: no clear strategy exists either within the beltway or beyond to rectify this situation.

The full text of the flyer (which is a > 1 MB PDF file) is after the jump.

Making the Business Case for Space – Where’s the Value?

12 June 2006
2325 Rayburn House Office Building
11:30 am to 1:00 pm
Lunch provided on a first come, first served basis

The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) invites you to a discussion on “Making the Business Case for Space – Where’s the Value?” on Monday, June 12, 2006. The purpose of this discussion is to explore the perceptions of stakeholders – Congress, the Administration, Industry and the American Public – of the importance of space, of NASA, The President’s Vision for Space Exploration, and other related topics.

Recent research, which includes 70 in-person interviews with NASA, White House, and Congressional staff along with national focus groups with adults and science students, reveals that the American public is disconnected and disengaged with what is going on in space and its value to them personally and to the nation, especially the President’s vision and space exploration. What is also a key finding: no clear strategy exists either within the beltway or beyond to rectify this situation.

John Unland, Senior Partner of The Unland Company, a marketing strategy and brand development firm, conducted this research and works with Fortune 100 companies around the world in the development of value-based marketing and positioning strategies, will share his observations. His conclusion: those in the space community need to build and present their ‘value-based’ business case to their respective stakeholders and to the American public. Certainly value exists for space in terms of national defense and exploration, but the messages are not clear, are not resonating and impact significantly the lack of awareness and understanding with the public and frustration around a lack of strategy among other stakeholders.

Please join us in a Q & A session, moderated by Brian Berger, Space News, aimed at identifying what the space community can and should do to make the business case for space. John Unland, Senior Partner, The Unland Company, a marketing strategy and brand development firm will introduce the topic.

Featured Panelists include: Roselee Roberts, Rep. Calvert’s office, Matthew Jones, Chairman of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Space Enterprise Council; Eric Thoemmes, Lockheed Martin and AIAA VP of Public Policy, Brett Alexander, T-Space, Ed Morris, Dept. of Commerce Office of Space Commercialization (invited) and Guillermo Söhnlein, International Association of Space Entrepreneurs.

Please RSVP to Anne Ellis, annee@aiaa.org, if you plan on attending.

24 comments to The “business case” for the Vision

  • Chance

    Speaking of this, what is our strategy? Keep the ISS, go to the moon, then go to Mars? I read this board all the time and I’m still confused. Sounds like the public is as confused as me.

  • That should be our strategy, although I would insert the martian Moons and Near-Earth Asteroids between the moon and Mars. These are much easier than Mars to reach; they would achieve great science and initial resource surveys and possible extraction. They represent a much smaller threashold in expense and capability than would trying to go directly to Mars.

    The actual strategy seems to have become return to the moon, full stop. It’s better than staying in Earth orbit, but I’d like to see the methane engine restored.

    — Donald

  • So what is the “business” case other than for the contractors who will profit from the makework task that will result in collecting more rocks and hitting more golfballs?

    And please leave out the drama and rhetoric of “mankind’s aspirations, need for exploration” and the rest of that. What tangible, business case do we have for going to the moon the way it is currently being planned?

  • Bill White

    So what is the “business” case other than for the contractors who will profit from the makework task that will result in collecting more rocks and hitting more golfballs?

    In theory, four possible categories of answers, in my opinion. Can we close a business case? Different question. Very different.

    (1) Tourism. Sufficient revenue there? Opinions vary.

    (2) Materials & energy. PGM, He3, space solar power.

    I’ve never been persuaded by space solar power. He3? Need viable fusion first and that’s been 20 years out for the last 50.

    PGM? Yeah, maybe. Again maybe.

    (3) Patron sponsored science. Not governments, rich patrons. Pete Worden has talked about an enormous liquid metal telescope on the Moon able to do some incredible deep field observing. I’d pay a few thousand dollars over several years for that. Assemble emnough people with the same attitude and there you go.

    (4) Media, marketing and brand value enhancement.

    And please leave out the drama and rhetoric of “mankind’s aspirations, need for exploration” and the rest of that.

    Well, if American PR companies can profit by selling Brand X bottle water in preference to Brand Y, I am sure some good marketing types can use lunar exploration to make money selling stuff.

    – – – > But don’t play for just one killer app – – cobble them together. Have tourists visit the PGM mines before they head off to visit the liquid mercury observatory, with everyone wearing mandatory Nike logo spacesuits.

    = = =

    Mitigating the potential giant asteroid strike is a perfectly legitimate public sector mission, in my opinion. That new idea for a gravity tractor is waaay cool and not all that expensive.

    = = =

    National pride clearly falls outside “business case” but nations have been known to do dumber things than moon missions all for pride and the ego satisfaction of leaders.

  • only one question remains:

    is that grape or cherry-flavoured kool-aid?

  • Bill White

    Kool Aid is an extremely valuable part of Kraft’s family of brands:

    Today, Kool-Aid is a flagship brand for the refreshment beverages category of Kraft Foods Inc., the world’s second largest food and beverage company. Kool-Aid is a leading branded beverage choice of moms and kids.

    Don’t go dis-respecting the money making power of Kool Aid.

  • Shubber: So what is the “business” case other than for the contractors who will profit from the makework task that will result in collecting more rocks and hitting more golfballs?

    Oxygen, oxygen, and oxygen (plus everything Bill listed).

    And please leave out the drama and rhetoric of “mankind’s aspirations, need for exploration” and the rest of that.

    I don’t know that I’ve used any of that rhetoric, but I’ll agree to leave that out if you leave off the personal attacks disguising as reasoned debate. It could be that I let my enthusiasm get ahead of myself, but that is far better — and is likely to accomplish far more — than is simple negativity. Rather than unreasoned attacks on my (and other’s) plan, let’s hear your plan to get from where we are now to a deep spacefaring civilization.

    — Donald

  • let’s hear your plan to get from where we are now to a deep spacefaring civilization.

    Cheap, reusable, reliable access to space.

    Until we solve that, all this hand waving about lunar mining, L5 colonies, SSP satellites at GEO, etc., is about as useful as arguing about the configuration of the control panel for a warp core reactor.

    Oh, gee. that’s right – we don’t have warp drive yet.

    It makes for pretty powerpoint charts, lots of duped angel investors who throw good money after bad on dreams, visions, and kool-aid. How much time is spent “designing” habitats for Mars, for example? Give me a break already.

    You show me a reasoned argument, and i’ll counter accordingly. You show me a kool-aid inspired posting, and i’ll respond accordingly.

  • Oxygen, oxygen, and oxygen (plus everything Bill listed).

    And the market for that right now is…?

    Take your time, i’m not going anywhere.

  • Bill White

    Cheap, reusable, reliable access to space.

    Chickens and eggs.

    Until we have a source of revenue, no one serious will invest in developing cheap, reuseable reliable access to space in the first place. Unless you can dupe an angel investor into believing in your pet scheme for CATS. Going into space is impossible, unless you build MY shiny new SSTO, with fins and racing stripes. Yup. I’ve heard that before. ;-)

    LEO is indeed halfway to anywhere but as ISS proves, halfway to anywhere is really no where interesting or useful. With MXER tethers, lunar LOX and r-LSAMs together with Proton or SpaceX fuel tankers sending payload to the moon is not all that expensive, today.

    = = =

    As for markets, what would the global TV rights be worth to place a Frenchwoman on the Moon, before NASA? A Russian, a Brazilian? a South Asian? Using Russian rockets?

  • Bill White

    Elon Musk is an exception to the above (no one will invest) except I seem to recall that SpaceX prices per pound to LEO will still be higher than Russia’s Proton.

  • Bill is correct (but please don’t stoop to Mr. Ali’s level, e.g., with the racing stripes comment).

    Mr. Ali, I have posted the markets for oxygen to this site, repeatedly. But, quickly, oxygen is needed in quantity by any activity we do in space, especially those involving human beings. The first market will be human activities on the moon (yes, that’s circular, but most markets are; why do you need jet fuel but to fly jets?). The second market is the Space Station, which is there today and needs large quantities of oxygen for drinking, breathing, potentially for propulsion, and for experiments. A third market is oxidizer for propulsion in cis-Lunar space. A fourth market will be any future human activities in space, e.g., Mars or asteroid missions, tourism. Finally, relatively far future applications satellites could be designed to utilize lunar oxygen for propulsion.

    Cheap, reusable, reliable access to space.

    Nonsense. Humanity expanded over much of the Earth long before deep sea transportation was cheap or reliable, and usually before it was reusable. Even today, on the order of five hundred to a thousand people die every year in deep-sea accidents. Humanity did not wait until we had modern freighters to colonize the New World (let alone the Pacific Islands). They did it as soon as it was possible, with the technology they had at the time, thus providing reasons and markets for new technology. Likewise, we must get started now with the technology and equipment we have, and create the markets that will justify better and lower-cost technology in the future.

    Trying to do the latter before the former — to create a transportation system for which no market exists — is extremely difficult, because it puts the cart before the horse.

    — Donald

  • Al Fansome

    {Elon Musk is an exception to the above (no one will invest) …}

    Let’s not kid ourselves.

    Elon is NOT in this business as an “investor”, at least not in the traditional sense. A traditional investor requires an “adequate risk-adjusted return on investment” on that investment.

    Elon does not.

    Elon has at times stated:

    A) he does not expect to get his $100 investment back, and that his financial objective is to break even on cashflow (e.g., so he does not have to put more money in.)

    B) the very old joke about the way you make a small fortune in space is to start with a large fortune.

    Since Elon’s money it is not an investment, let’s call it what it really is — a philanthropic contribution.

    Why would Elon donate $100 million (and possibly even more) of his fortune to space? Elon has been pretty clear about his motivations — he OFTEN talks about his philanthropic objectives, like creating the next branch of human civilization on Mars.

    Same thing goes for Jeff Bezos. In fact, Bezos’ high school girlfriend was once quoted that Bezos’ plan was to go get rich, so he could then afford to build his own space station. Bezos’ has a 20-year plan to spend some of his wealth on Blue Origins (NOTE: This is absolutely counter to traditional investor approaches, which (because of the time value of money) quite rationally (from a financial perspective) do no look at markets beyond a 3-5 year time horizon)

    If anybody really doubts this, I could go dig up references to all the above.

    I really hope that Elon (and Jeff Bezos) succeed, but if they do, we should not expect their success to persuade the traditional investment markets to turn on the spigots of investment cash for other commercial ventures.

    The opportunity here is to figure out how to encourage more of this behavior. What will it take to get Beal or Allen to get back in to the game? There are many more billionaires out there who might do something like this for philanthropic reasons.

    Meanwhilte it is really dangerous to ascribe this activity to “investment based” purposes, and kid ourselves that we have succeeded in encouraging “investment” in new space activities. If we make this mistake, we will stop looking for solutions to the real barriers to investment.

    There are trillions of dollars of investment capital available, in the traditional financial markets. Space business has been an almost complete failure at tapping those traditional capital markets (outside of the narrow business of telecommunication and earth-observing satellites, which only beam RF energy around.)

    – Al

  • Al, I agree. What is happening now is in some ways similar to the “Gentlemen Explorers” of Victorian England. These folks were wealthy enough to spend their own money in essentially amateur scientific and exploratory expeditions. Many dedicated their entire lifetimes to their projects. Jeff and Elon are maybe a bit before their times, but they are trying to do much the same thing.

    In many ways, since they are not motivated by profit-and-loss or anything else you could express in Excel, they are our best prospect. I, too, wish them every success.

    — Donald

  • Monte Davis

    LEO is indeed halfway to anywhere but as ISS proves, halfway to anywhere is really no where interesting or useful.

    Halfway to anywhere could be very interesting and useful… if you could get there often enough, with propellant left in your tanks (or waiting in a depot), and money left in your budget. That’s what we have yet to achieve.

    Much of the bitching about ISS strikes me as learning the wrong lesson. It would be a very different story if we’d had a transportation system capable of building it faster, completing it (take your pick of the successive plans), and fully crewing it so that maintenance doesn’t eat up the majority of working hours.

    ISS does not prove that a large LEO space station was an intrinsically bad idea. It proves that if you tackle such a project under the delusion that you have a “space truck” capable of building it cost-effectively, 22 years later you probably won’t be happy with the results.

  • Bill White

    Halfway to anywhere could be very interesting and useful… if you could get there often enough, with propellant left in your tanks (or waiting in a depot), and money left in your budget. That’s what we have yet to achieve.

    Propellant left in your tanks is actually a means to travel the second half of the journey. Forget ISS. Why would staying in LEO without the means to go further interest anyone? Robert Bigelow sure as heck isn’t interested in LEO-only space facilities.

    Total focus on Earth to LEO with little focus on LEO to Luna (or Mars, or NEOs) will result in a situation where everyone whines for CATS and a re-useable RLV and no one can offer a business case for funding the R&D needed to build one.

    With apologies to Janis Joplin: Oh Lord, won’tcha buy me a Mercedes RLV – – there are a zillion ideas for low cost Earth-to-LEO and no serious investors willing to fund them.

    As for Elon Musk, he is an angel, not an investor. He is spending his PayPal money out of love for the prospect of humanity becoming spacefaring, NOT because he thinks he will earn as much as he could investing it elsewhere. And Musk himself isn’t too concerned about whether he personally ever gets to go.

    Now, get to the Moon with LEO to Luna via MXER tethers, r-LSAMs and lunar oxygen to lower the cost of the 2nd half of the journey and that will help create business opportunities to encourage genuine investment in low cost Earth to LEO.

    We can deploy innovative technologies in those arenas today – at lower costs that Musk promises with Falcon – just by buying Russian carrier rockets. And that runs us smack dab into ITAR.

  • Monte Davis

    Propellant left in your tanks is actually a means to travel the second half of the journey.

    Thanks, Bill — I’d been thinking of it entirely as a bracing aftershave, but darned if you aren’t right!

    Total focus on Earth to LEO with little focus on LEO to Luna (or Mars, or NEOs) will result in [etc]

    If I see anyone advocating such a focus, I’ll be sure to pass it on. To argue (as I did) that cheaper access to LEO is a necessary precondition for any other large-scale or self-sustaining activity, from LEO to Pluto, is very far from arguing that LEO is a sufficient destination in itself.

  • Chris Mann

    Why would staying in LEO without the means to go further interest anyone?

    I know plenty of materials scientists who would be quite interested in cheap, frequent access to microgravity, if it were available.

    Why would spending $100B to hit golfballs interest anyone?

  • Bill White

    If I see anyone advocating such a focus, I’ll be sure to pass it on. To argue (as I did) that cheaper access to LEO is a necessary precondition for any other large-scale or self-sustaining activity, from LEO to Pluto, is very far from arguing that LEO is a sufficient destination in itself.

    What efforts are being made to lower LEO to Luna transport costs? Lunar O2? Yup. One good example. But, an X Prize for tethers would be another. Toss 1000 kg from Earth to the Moon (crash landing?) with zero use of Earth launched propellant.

    = = =

    MXER tethers use solar power to re-boost and then transfer kinetic energy to payloads with lower orbital energy. The kinetic energy used to toss payloads to the Moon is harvested “out there” not lofted up from Earth. Solar ion propulsion does use Terran xenon for propellant but sunlight for energy.

    Right now, its about 5 to 1 to soft land payloads on the Moon meaning 5 kg in LEO yields 1 kg on the lunar surface. Now, if we improve that ratio significantly with solar ion tugs or MXER tethers or lunar oxygen and r-LSAMs then the net Earth-to-Luna mass fraction ratios are very significantly increased even without lower cost Earth-to-LEO launch capability.

    Then, lower cost lunar access will create demand for funding better Earth-to-LEO launch capabilities. There are zillions of good Earth-to-LEO ideas and right now little apparent ability for anyone to close the business case.

    = = =

    I’ve use the “golden spike” metaphor before. When the transcontinental railroad was built, we went west from St. Louis AND east from California.

    Let work in parallel on lowering LEO to Luna costs AND on lowering Earth to LEO costs.

  • Bill White

    I know plenty of materials scientists who would be quite interested in cheap, frequent access to microgravity, if it were available.

    Proton is ~$1000 or $1200 per pound today. Without volume purchasing. How low does this market need to go before those materials scientists start spending money? How much might they pay for the R&D needed to deploy $100 per pound to LEO?

  • Chris Mann

    Solar ion propulsion does use Terran xenon for propellant but sunlight for energy.

    Nah, use krypton. If you can get low leo equatorial launch costs down to less than ~$750/kg using an upscaled ‘aquarius style’ vehicle it’s heaps cheaper. Xenon’s only really worth the extra money if you’re paying $50,000 per kilo to GTO.

    Grab it as low as you safely can given solar activity and atmospheric density with a tether for boost.

  • Chris Mann

    How low does this market need to go before those materials scientists start spending money?

    Low enough that some slightly nutso but quite brilliant philanthropist buys a Space Act licence from NASA, does a few years of development, and gets the ball rolling.

    Said philanthropist may or may not have an undisclosed gentlemans agreement with another richer, geekier, music space and basketball obsessed philanthropist if said first philanthropist runs out of development funding. Said second, richer philantropist is friends with another, richer, geekier philantropist, who may at some stage be corralled into chiping in…

    I’m expecting soon, is really what i’m saying.

  • Chris Mann

    By the way, as a point of disclosure, I work for a company owned by said ‘rich’ and ‘richer’ philanthropists. I have in the course of my work only met ‘richer’.

  • Chris Mann

    Further disclosure. I ofcourse am only making conjecture about said gentlemens agreement. It may or may not exist. However, based on what I have heard from second parties about the personality of said gentleman, it’s highly likely that it might soon, pending a certain russian launch.

    Octopus needs a cousin, is basically what i’m saying.