Is the goal of moving humanity into the Solar System important enough to do what you have to do to get there? Or, is it just important enough to do the “right thing,” however you define that? While there are clear limits (e.g., I would not send anyone to the gas chamber to get to the moon), if I can support this disaster of an Administration after all the hundreds of billions they’ve wasted in Iraq, surely you can support the waste of the odd hundred billion to achieve a far more worthy goal.

Ares-1 is a complete waste of money, Orion is not. Unfortunately, at this point in time, Ares-1 and Orion are politically tied together, therefore I support the waste to get the product we need. In the future, I think the equation is likely to change — but only if we don’t kill the whole thing in fratricidal warfare right now.

Do that, and we’ll be back to developing the technology to “do it right” in open-ended play pens that will never create the markets that can actually get us to the moon.

Unfortunately, the Administrations wider budgetary disasters seem increasingly likely to make that the outcome no matter what we do or support. . . .

— Donald

If we took a poll and stated that:

“we’ll end up with something like the Space Station. The whole thing (VSE) will get under-funded, the next Administration will re-plan the whole thing at great expense and delay, and we will eventually end up with a lunar base — decade(s) late and bazillions over budget.”

… I am betting that few people would say “that’s an okay outcome”.

I agree with you that your scenario is increasingly likely to happen. I just think this outcome it is completely unacceptable. Furthermore, considering the reasoning & creative (and sometimes brilliant) creatures that we are, given advance notice we should do something different.

I don’t understand why anybody would willingly go along with this future, knowing that this was the outcome — excepting those who are the recepients of the taxpayer largesse. I am a huge supporter of COTS, but I never would have suggested that the taxpayer’s of this nation spend $100 Billion on a space station to create a justification for COTS or commercial ISS cargo delivery. The same is true for a lunar base.

If you made this argument to any serious policy person, or politician, that we should spend hundreds-of-billions on creating a lunar base in order to create a justification for a lunar COTS program a couple decades in the future, I think you would be laughed out of the room.

You are a serious and thoughtful person, so I don’t understand why you continue to stick to this viewpoint. If you were given responsibility for the taxpayer’s money, I have to believe that being the responsible person you appear to be, that you could not look at yourself in the mirror every day and still carry out such a policy.

– Al

For what it is worth, my reading of recent votes is that the Democrats are pro-human spaceflight (or at least not anti-human spaceflight), but more passively so. Unfortunately, a dramatic initiative like the VSE is unlikely from them, but an outright cancellation of human spaceflight is far more unlikely today than it has ever been. I think the Democrats (in Congress or in any future Presidency) will shift money toward their environmental and “traditional space science” priorities, but they are extremely unlikely to cancel the VSE outright. Thus, we’ll end up with something like the Space Station. The whole thing will get under-funded, the next Administration will re-plan the whole thing at great expense and delay, and we will eventually end up with a lunar base — decade(s) late and bazillions over budget.

If hardly the first choice, that’s an okay outcome of the political sausage machine, because then you have a Lunar space station that provides the political justification for something like a lunar COTS. Nobody ever said that this would be quick or easy, but I am still hopeful that it will ultimately happen. . . .

— Donald

I agree that China is doing this for completely strategic reasons, and that we in the West don’t really understand what their objectives are. Several other posters have commented on this — one was Dwayne Day, another was also anonymous, and a 3rd was Rand Simberg.

I too am interested in this subject; and I can only hope that the leaders of our country are doing real research and thinking on this. I have perused armscontrolwonk.com a little, but have not freed up the time (yet) to read through the postings.

Too bad I don’t know who you are, because I would buy you a beer some time to talk about this and other subjects.

********
ANON SAID:
Although I doubt the Goldman Sachs GDP scenarios for China — they just have too many population, standard of living, and environmental problems to keep growing at their current rate for decades to come — your scenario is still a fair one for where we might be with China in the next few decades. I just don’t know if folks in power are that farsighted technologically.
********

Last March there was a discussion here on almost this exact subject between Dwayne Day and I. In summary

If you look at the advanced industrial nations, on a per capita productivity basis, they generally all fall within a given range on a per capita basis. (There is a lot of debates on economic comparisons among economists, but most of it is trying to wring out errors of 10% or less).

If you believe that China WILL eventually become an advanced industrial nation, this means is that unless China pulls a Brazil that China’s GDP will probably (eventually) become 3-4 times that of the U.S. I see no reason — short of a global catastrophe of some kind — that China will not repeat the success of the countries they are economically modeling … e.g., Japan, South Korea, and Singapore.

Yes, It will take some time to get there. But, I don’t get too hung up on whether they pass us in GDP in 2040. IMO, it is a matter of when, not if.

I recommend that those who are interested read the thread.

http://www.spacepolitics.com/2006/03/31/waving-the-red-flag-once-again/

As you say, “FWIW …”

– Al

Although I doubt the Goldman Sachs GDP scenarios for China — they just have too many population, standard of living, and environmental problems to keep growing at their current rate for decades to come — your scenario is still a fair one for where we might be with China in the next few decades. I just don’t know if folks in power are that farsighted technologically.

I’ve been doing a little research into what could have driven the Chinese to conduct such a test. There’s a solid blog with some very good entries on the subject — armcontrolwonk.com — by Dr. Jeffrey Lewis from the Kennedy School at Harvard (who apparently was the first to break the news). He also wrote a book based on his doctoral thesis — Minimum Means of Reprisal — which does a great job explaining Chinese strategic doctrine and mindset.

According to Lewis, China is not interested in space weapons for the sake of space. Instead, they’re interested in preserving the effectiveness of their small nuclear arsenal. They’re worried about future U.S. preemptive strike capabilities that could take out their nuclear arsenal in a single attack and leave them with no means of strategic retaliation. These new capabilites are emerging thanks to our heavy spending on missile defense, our vast lead in space, and changes in our overall foreign policy doctrine since 9/11. China was in a similar situation with the Soviets during the 50’s — a situation they refer to as nuclear blackmail — and want to ensure that their small nuclear arsenal remains credible enough in the face of new technologies to prevent such threats from being made against their homeland in the future.

Viewed in this context and in the context of China’s increasing interest over the past decade in establishing a international regime to ban space-based weapons, the ASAT test was likely conducted to cajole the U.S. into talks on these larger strategic balance and collective security issues. If I understand Lewis’s writing correctly, China is basically saying, fine, if the U.S. wants to pursue expensive technologies and first-strike capabilities that will upset the minimal nuclear arsenal we’ve put in place to ensure our strategic security, then we (China) will pursue asymmetric capabilities to show how easy it is to defeat those those technologies and first-strike capabilities at low-cost and encourage the United States to forgo such capabilities in favor of international treaties or other collective security measures that limit or ban their use.

Whether anyone besides Lewis is smart enough to figure this out — especially anyone in power — and step back from this new arms race and give China the small security measures that nation is asking for (however clumsily) remains to be seen.

Fascinating stuff… like trying to read a chess game several moves ahead.

I agree that we can and should take many of short-term actions that are easier and lower cost. I even think that we probably will.

I also agree that the capabilities I mention will take 1-2 decades.

However, I don’t think a Chinese ASAT that can take out a couple satellites at 500 miles is the biggest threat to the U.S. For example, such a capability will not threaten our precision strike capability, which depends on a GPS constellation at a much higher alttitude. Any nation that starts a war with the U.S., but does not take out our precision strike capability, is being foolish.

I believe the real national security threat to the U.S. is over the “mid-to-long” term. China is a rapidly emerging power whose GDP, by some projections, will pass that of the U.S. by somewhere in the 2040 time frame … and then keep on going. By the end of the 21st Century, China could easily have twice the GDP of the U.S.

Economic power will translate into military power.

I think that an operational system — based on RLVs + orbital propellant transfer capabilities — that came on line in a “decade or two” would be showing up right when we really needed it.

If we could think “long term”, and if the WH and Congress really wanted its investment in NASA exploration to pay dividends for national security (and in economic returns in the form of a thriving commercial space industry) this is the way we would proceed.

– Al

1) Commercial RLVs that launch smaller payloads (including prop) very cheaply and rapidly, but in larger numbers of flights, and

2) On-orbit propellant transfer and storage capabilities.

The first capability — RLVs — provides ORS, which is a key capability needed to mitigate ASAT capabilities. The second capability (on-orbit prop transfer), when combined with the first (RLVs), would provide a transformational capability for our national assets.

Our national assets would be provided with on-orbit refueling, making it quite feasible (and relatively low cost) for them to take aggressive high-thrust evasive maneuvers in orbit to avoid ASAT attacks. As they use up their prop doing so, they get refueled by the RLVs.”

From a commercial perspective, such a shift in priorities would be fantastic. But it probably could not be fielded in an operational way for a decade or two, depending on funding priority and our ability to rethink our satellite infrastructure.

But assuming we assess the threat as credible, I would suspect that we’d respond to the Chinese test with more short-term measures — through diplomatic means (no civil space cooperation with China, treaty to ban destructive ASAT testing in orbit in the name of reducing orbital debris, etc.); non-destructive and reversible countermeasures (e.g., jamming, lasers); and better tracking and targeting of China’s mobile ICBM/IRBM assets.

That option would be a lot cheaper and more effective in the short-term than developing an operational responsive spacelift capability (even after picking up on DARPA’s FALCON program) and adjusting our satellite tail to it — as much as I would love to see the latter option happen.

FWIW…

I don’t know if that’s true. It was a Republican-controlled Congress that passed the NASA authorization endorsing the VSE, and they did so before Griffin’s ESAS study and plan.

Beyond the House’s half-billion dollar reduction to the budget request for exploration in the 2007 continuing resolution, the fact that only 40 congressmen signed a letter in support of NASA against the cut, and the fact that the Congress is no longer controlled by the President’s party, we don’t have much else to go on as to whether the new Democrat-controlled Congress will continue to give exploration the same level of support as the prior Congress.

But all of those indicators are pretty negative, IMO.

FWIW…

No, I think this government and future US governments see (will see)lower earth orbit operations as a waste of NASA dollars and boring, and if money is going to be spent on human operations in space, it has to be beyond earth orbit. There is now and will be in the future bipartisan support for beyond earth orbit operations. We will get beyond earth orbit some way reguardless of cost. The interest of future generations of young people will never be captured by continuing low earth orbit operations for the next 30 years and the government knows that. The government knows low earth orbit operations are a waiste in the future.

– Al