With Congress just now returning from its summer recess, it’s been a relatively quiet time (at least in public) on domestic space policy issues, outside of the COTS and Orion contract awards, so it’s a good time to see what sort of debates and developments are taking place outside the US on space issues:
In an op-ed published over the weekend in the Edmonton Journal, Marc Garneau, the first Canadian in space and the former president of the Canadian Space Agency, said it’s time for Canada to decide whether it wants to maintain its small astronaut corps, given the scarcity of flight opportunities once the ISS is completed and the shuttle retired in 2010. “Unless Canada decides to participate in a major new venture such as the U.S. ‘Moon, Mars and Beyond’ initiative, its astronaut program will come to an end,” he writes. To do that, though, “the federal government will have to make an important decision. That decision will require a significant new infusion of funds.” Garneau added that “I believe the cost is worth it.”
Unlike Canada, the UK doesn’t have its own astronaut corps, and has tended to turn its back on manned spaceflight in general. Some Britons, though, hope that the Vision for Space Exploration will give the UK a new opportunity to send its citizens to the Moon and elsewhere. The Daily Telegraph surveyed a number of British space scientists and found “an undercurrent of enthusiasm for getting Britain to the moon or Mars, but many remain unconvinced about the benefits of sending humans.” (Unfortunately, the newspaper limited its survey only to space scientists; would they have gotten different responses from engineers or other experts?) The article does note “strong support among the polled scientists for the creation of a dedicated space agency”, apparently with a little more money and activity than the BNSC.
Russian president Vladimir Putin, on a state visit to South Africa, pledged increased cooperation between the two countries on space issues. Nothing specific appears to be in the works immediately; a RIA Novosti article notes that “Cooperation could cover areas like space research, probes and monitoring of Earth from outer space, relevant information technology and services, materials sciences, space medicine and biology, communications and related technology and service.” Just about anything, really.
It makes me crazy when these bonehead journalists automatically assume that the people to ask about these things are scientists at all, let alone space scientists.
Rand, it has been firmly established that the writers for The Daily Telegraph aren’t journalists.
“Unless Canada decides to participate in a major new venture such as the U.S. ‘Moon, Mars and Beyond’ initiative, its astronaut program will come to an end,”
Duh .. what about Da Vinci and Canadian Arrow ? CSA might not have to disband its astronaut corps if it would provide some incentive or assistance to them. A local X-Prize or something.
In any case, the Space Station isn’t going anywhere. The Space Shuttle is required to build the base, but it is not required to maintain it, use it, and to replace failing modules which can be designed to launch on, say, the Proton. Once established, these kinds of projects have tremendous political and logistical inertia – witness the political effort to make the Space Station a national laboratory. Look at how the real national laboratories are still around long after their reasons for existance vaporized over two Japanese cities. Look at the resiliance of NASA’s terrestrial bases, and the various bases in Antarctica. Look at the history of Mir, which would be in space today if Russian poverty had not coincided with intense political pressure from the United States. Mark my words, the Space Station (albeit without most of its current elements, which will be replaced over time) will orbit over our heads the day I die.
Which is exactly why I think the project is so important to us. That market for supplies and resources (whether delivered from Earth or from space) will be around and growing for the foreseeable future.
And that is what Elon, et al, so despirately need.
— Donald
One other note in proof: Both Russian and European politicians have made it clear they intend to continue utilizing the Space Station to attempt to amortize their investments even after the United States goes haring off to the moon and Mars. . . .
— Donald
Donald:
Russian and European politicians have little incentive to fly supplies with American COTS ventures no matter how long ISS orbits.
Europe’s top priority is dividing space spending among the nations that fund ESA. In the near term, they’ll fly cargo on the Ariane 5 CTV. If they ever do try to create an ISS market for crew/cargo delivery, they’ll likely charter and then subsidize a Spacebus to monopolize it.
Russia’s involvement in ISS looks to be mostly an endeavour to attract foreign capital – plus they already have those trusty Progress cargo ships.
John, I don’t disagree with any of that, but so what? Keeping the Soyuz / Progress in business is every bit as much (or as little) “commercial space” as COTS. Likewise, Ariane — although the Europeans have out done even we Americans in producing a rediculously complex freighter vehicle. In the short term, the Space Station primarily will benefit existing vehicles, it is true.
However, as long as the Space Station is there and being used, there will be pressure to reduce prices. If the COTS folks come up with something useful and NASA continues to support them (two really big “ifs” I admit), the United States will probably apply political pressure to use them for some station resupply.
I didn’t say any of this would happen fast. But, if the goal is to sustain and grow and further develop a commercial orbital launch capacity, it all has to start with a market, and as far as LEO is concerned, the Space Station is the only large game in town. That is likely to remain more-or-less so for at least the next decade, and probably longer.
Markets always benefit existing suppliers first. Then, once a market of sufficient scale is proven, new suppliers can attempt to reduce costs with better technologies. However, it is likely to happen incrementally, not revolutionarily — e.g., the Europeans building an equatorial launch site for upgreaded Soyuz’ or the American COTS project.
Actually, we are fortunate in the space industry to have ideologues like Elon who are not motivated purely by markets. He is willing to poor money into something in the hope that the market will appear. That should speed things up beyond the normal course of events, but it won’t make things happen as fast as all of us would like.
I fully expect the next market to be tourism (which, already, is paying some of the bills to keep the Soyuz in business). But large numbers of orbital tourists probably aren’t in the cards for at least a decade, and it probably dependent both on the current Space Station market continuing to succeed and on COTS (or something like it) succeeding.
In the mean time, it’s the Space Station, stupid!
(Which, to be clear, is not intended as a personal insult to you!)
— Donald
Very interesting conversation as normal.
But let’s think outside the box and ask if ANY country will have a national astronaut program (for any reason except inertia) in about ten years?
We can (as some of the other writers have pointed out) expect the Station to continue orbitting. We can continue to see the commercial organizations continue to innovate – such as Virgin Galactic.
Given a few years (conservatively estimate ten) they can develop a launch vehicle with sufficient energy to dock with the Station. These vehicles should be able to beat the venerable Soyuz booster since it is long in the tooth and inefficient. They can beat the heavily subsidized Ariane.
What happens when there are more opportunities to fly with a commercial vehicle and more tourists then scientists then entrepreneurs have flown than have national (test pilot, etc) astronauts?
Will the number of Canadians that have flown increase faster due to them paying to fly rather than being paid to fly?
Who knows what will happen – given a few more breakthroughs? But who would have thought that a MicroSoft billionaire would have teamed with Burt Rutan to show us that it can be done in a new way?
>”But let’s think outside the box and ask if ANY country will have a national astronaut program (for any reason except inertia) in about ten years?”
I prefer to ask not if any country WILL have an astronaut program, but whether any country CAN have a national astronaut program over the next ten years.
If you can buy a Bigelow module for $250m, plus two cargo flights and three manned flights each year from Elon for $70m each, even New Zealand could afford to have a space program.
While I have enormous enthusiasm for the commercial space sector, I think predictions like the above may be expecting too much. In the long run I think you are right, but the timeline could be 10 years, or it could be 25 years. We can’t even make really educated guesses until the 2008-2010 timeframe when Virgin Galactic et al have begun commercial operations.
Please excuse this off topic post about aerospace careers:
http://www.aviationnow.com/avnow/news/channel_awst_story.jsp?id=news/SURVEY.xml
During the past 10 years, Aviation Week & Space Technology has conducted an annual overview of the Aerospace and Defense (A&D) job market–the skills most in demand, compensation compared with other technological industries and what attracts talented men and women.
Over that decade, the workforce has shrunk and then rebounded to more than 600,000 employees, according to the Aerospace Industries Assn. (AIA). Now, the mystifying question ( mystifying to whom, Sherlock? ) is whether the industry faces a looming talent crisis.
A vocal group of A&D leaders warns that the industry confronts a dip in engineering, mathematics and science talent; and that the U.S. is losing its innovation edge. Their concern is on three levels–an aging workforce, a shortage of professionals in the 38-52 age group and the resulting stress of youthful professionals accepting workloads that may exceed their experience.
…
Gosh, what a mysterious mystery: why oh why is there currently a shortage of aerospace professionals in the 38-52 age group?
I fully agree with Chance. Commercial space will happen — it is happening before our eyes — but it will always happen much slower than any of us want.
Tourist flights are just starting to pay for some of the Space Station’s bills. So far, it’s a tiny, tiny amount, mostly subsidizing (wrong word, but I can’t think of another) Soyuz crew exchange flights. However, over time, that percentage will grow as people find other commercial uses for a base in LEO and more logistics and operations costs are handed off to commercial entities of one form or another. Some day, probably decades in the future, we’ll wake up one day and find that, while governments are still using and supporting whatever the station has become, they are no longer the primary users.
That is my prediction. I hope I live long enough to find out.
— Donald
Commercial space will happen — it is happening before our eyes — but it will always happen much slower than any of us want.
Definitely. I’m the last to underestimate the psychological importance of Tito and SS1 and Virgin Galactic. But to project potential growth, you have to go beyond market research and ask: what does it cost to get into the game? And when you do, how long does it take to get into the black?
In the early 1920s one could buy a Fokker FII or Handley Page O/400 for low seven figures in 2006 dollars (or buy and convert a WWI Vimy bomber for high six figures), and start flying 4-8 people between Berlin and Munich or London and Paris. Lufthansa and Imperial Airways and KLM were going concerns very quickly.
It’s a richer world now, in both relative and absolute terms — but it’s going to take a lot of SS2 barnstorming, and a lot of ISS and Bigelow Hilton traffic beyond that, to drive down to that level in real costs, and up to that level in ROI.
Monte: what does it cost to get into the game? And when you do, how long does it take to get into the black?
That’s an interesting question in the space tourism arena. I have no idea how much Space Adventures paid to get into the game, but my impression is that it wasn’t a lot, as space investments go. They found a very smart way to exploit government-developed capabilities, and one government’s desperate need for cash, to exploit an existing niche. Since tourists probably pay most or all of the cost of supplying their otherwise empty seats, in theory it’s even possible to claim that this is not a subsidized business.
For commercial space to happen soon, this is exactly the sort of game that others need to play. (The only comparable example I can think of today is the company proposing to use excess Ariane capacity to launch space tugs to allow commercial comsats to continue operating after their fuel is gone.) I would look to Space Station logistics for future opportunities. What surplus and currently unused government capacity can be used to supply some critical need for the Space Station?
One thought: right now, the Space Station’s water is supplied by the Space Shuttle’s power supply. Soon, that source may no longer be around. Is there some other way to supply water and oxygen to the Space Station using surplus capacity on spacecraft going there anyway? One possibility: rocket stages are rarely burned to depletion. What happens to the oxygen left in the stages that deliver cargo spacecraft to the Space Station, or on the cargo craft themselves? Is there any way to decompose left over storable oxidizer (I doubt it, but it’s worth a thought)? For another possibility, think about ballast. . . .
Another thought: what’s going to happen to the CEV’s (and Kistler’s and the Dragon’s) solar arrays (if they have them) after they leave the Space Station? Could they be detatched from their respective vehicles and assembled into new power supplies at the Space Station, or possibly for later use on the moon . . . or even on other spacecraft?
Sure, these are tiny steps, but these are the sorts of things that, over time, can grow into enormous businesses.
— Donald
Chris, that is absolute bullshit, and I might add you are a liar.
If you look at the budget of New Zealand, the revenues are $38.29 while the fixed expenditures are $36.12 billion. That is a difference of $2.17 billion, which in in American dollars (if converted presentl) equals to $1.38 billion.
Are you are meaning to tell me that New Zealand can feasibly afford to spend half (!) of its elastic income for an astronaut program? You are full of shit. Perhaps you should look at some statistics before you spout off at the mouth. You are a liar.
— Greg
John Kavanaugh said:
{Russian and European politicians have little incentive to fly supplies with American COTS ventures no matter how long ISS orbits.}
John,
Not sure what point you are making. Russian and Europe look at COTS, and NASA’s desire for ISS cargo delivery, purely from an industrial/commercial perspective. Their incentive is that NASA pays them for delivering a service.
Right now NASA is buying COTS-like services from Russia. NASA is paying Russia for crew transfer services (Soyuz), and possibly cargo delivery services (Progress). NASA is paying for these services out of their “ISS crew and cargo services” program.
Russia needs no other incentive.
Meanwhile, the Europeans have:
1) Offered NASA a similar deal for cargo delivery on the ATV, and
2) Partnered with one or more of the US big guys, during COTS, in offer(s) to deliver ISS cargo via an ATV on an EELV.
– Al
Given the unfortunate tenor of the discussion here, I am closing comments on this post. In addition, I have deleted two recent comments because of inappropriate language.