Anonymous: But within a $17 billion NASA budget, I’d argue those are easily afforded dollars and that they offer a very high potential return. Even if the processes don’t scale up and/or the winning team(s) never become a going concern, dollar-for-dollar, tangible lunar production of anything would capture the imagination and make the human lunar return element of the VSE more concrete in the minds of policymakers and the public more than anything else I can think of.

This may be phrased better, but that is exactly what I meant. I would add that this does not need to make money the first time it is tried. It only needs to be demonstrated. Then, when and if there is a real market (and I think there will be), someone like SpaceX can take it from there. Also, like space tourism, lunar oxygen delivery does not have to pay for the entire space program all at once to be considered a profitable industry. It only needs to support some activity that is being done anyway for whatever reason, and reduce the cost of doing that activity.

there’s material in the public domain regarding bigger prizes that NASA and X PRIZE have studied, for the first private lunar robotic landing and the first private human orbital flight (IIRC).

But, as applied to lunar resource development, both of these are means, not ends. It’s the ends — lunar oxygen production and delivery to a useful orbit (or some other commercial product) — that need to be demonstrated. Once that’s done, and there is a market, the means will take care of themselves. Once again, we are trying to develop a very expensive means before there is a market reason for that means to exist. It’s not going to work.

CANTTELLYA: In that case, it would be reasonable to assume that there are no economically-viable activities for humans to conduct in space, and therefore, no reason to continue with a government-funded human spaceflight effort.

But, there already is one, delivering tourists to the Space Station on Soyuz launch vehicles. By my guess / count, the Russian’s have been paid some $100 million so far. It’s a drop in the bucket, but it’s a very important drop in the bucket because it is something that could grow over time into something much grander. Meanwhile, that’s $100 million that the world’s taxpayers don’t have to cough up to fly Soyuz’ to the Space Station.

— Donald

Dear CantTellYa:

In the long term there are quite a few economically viable activities for humans to conduct in space. But the risks are just too large, and the payback period too long, and the size of the required investments are too astronomical — to close the business case.

For completely rational reasons, businesses are short term focused and risk averse. Investing in anything that does not pay off in 5 years or less (and investors generally prefer positive cashflow in much shorter time frames than 5 years) can be shown to be economically irrational for high risk industries. This has to do with the time value of money, and the risk-adjusted discount rate. The higher the risk, the higher the discount rate, and pretty soon you can’t close the business case if you started generating cashflow tomorrow.

This is why the government has naturally taken over much of the role for “basic research” — like we do in the NSF, and the NIH — and the longer term “development” in R&D like DARPA does. There is a general agreement on both sides of the aisle that long-term basic R&D is an appropriate government role.

But this system can be abused if the government research dollars are not tied to either answering fundamental and important science questions, or tied to (and focused on) concrete measurable outputs like the White House originally stated in the VSE. One reason that well laid R&D plans fail is that a government agency can become a “self licking” ice cream cone, where technology investments are not tied to development of private industry, and measured by the amount of economic growth for dollar invested, but instead are used to support the government agency’s own internal agenda.

For what it is worth, it is my opinion that if the VSE was truly tied to increasing economic activity — as Marburger said was the goal — that there are a LOT of technologies that could be quickly developed and proven that would be quite useful to private industrial uses of space. To be effective, this would require that NASA change how it does its business with business. The only thing reflecting this kind of thinking in NASA is COTS and the Centennial Challenges.

That, and three dollars, will get you a cup of coffee.

– Al

http://centennialchallenges.nasa.gov/

For the America’s Space Prize, the latest I’ve heard (from Aviation Week) isn’t too optimistic about it being won (or serious competitors appearing):

http://spaceprizes.blogspot.com/2007/02/bigelow-space-prize-doubts.html

Also, on X PRIZE, I see a bit more information on their fundraising. According to 1 source they’re up to $17M in their fundraising challenge they’re about to kick off.

http://spaceprizes.blogspot.com/2007/03/still-more-on-x-prize-plans-and-event.html

On one of the other March Storm items, I think the one about preventing science/aeronautics funding from being switched to Shuttle/ISS/ESAS may have a better chance of happening than the others, since there is a lot of pressure already being exerted in that direction.

1 – the MoonROx challenge is not being run by Space Florida – Its now being run by the California Space Research institute (Same people who are putting on the Excavator Challenge)
2 – while the capabilities of the Excavator challenge are open to some debate, I’d argue that the MoonRox challenge really has some viablity to it, assuming 1 – CSRI gets their act together on it, and start putting out more about it, and 2 – someone actually comes close or does win it.
3 – Since we are on the slight tangent of Space Prizes, anyone have any idea on the current status of the America’s Space Prize? Is it dead in the water? Is it going somewhere? Is anyone pursuing it?

Non-sequitur.

You’re right. It’s some of both — internal NASA budget reductions and lack of Congressional funding.

Yes, Ray has it right. Sorry if my sloppy writing misled anyone.

“The prizes are for $250,000, which isn’t quite in the range you’d need to be in to inspire a demo on the moon … once again we return the Centennial Challenge funding issue.”

Exactly. To induce teams to attempt a sub-scale, robotic demonstration of actual lunar ISRU, you’re probably talking a prize of at least a few tens of millions of dollars (and that probably assumes someone like Space-X succeeds in offering a cheaper launcher). But within a $17 billion NASA budget, I’d argue those are easily afforded dollars and that they offer a very high potential return. Even if the processes don’t scale up and/or the winning team(s) never become a going concern, dollar-for-dollar, tangible lunar production of anything would capture the imagination and make the human lunar return element of the VSE more concrete in the minds of policymakers and the public more than anything else I can think of. It’s what someone like Marburger (the President’s science advisor, who has been so big on extending our economic sphere into space) should be pushing NASA to do, rather than letting them build rockets that can barely reach orbit and that compete with commercial alternatives for Orion business.

“On another note (not so much related to space or politics, but related to this discussion), it’s possible that the X PRIZE Foundaton will be getting in the news again soon with a new fundraising effort at Google and new prizes on the way. They seem to have an easier time with funding than Centennial Challenges. I haven’t heard about any space-related prizes, though”

Right now, NASA Centennial Challenges and Northrup Grumman are the sponsors of the only ongoing, space-related X PRIZE (the Lunar Lander Challenge). However, there’s material in the public domain regarding bigger prizes that NASA and X PRIZE have studied, for the first private lunar robotic landing and the first private human orbital flight (IIRC).

Someday… maybe someday…

You misspelled, “Congress has never appropriated”…

http://spaceports.blogspot.com/2006/11/moonrox-challenge.html

http://www.californiaspaceauthority.org/regolith/

http://exploration.nasa.gov/centennialchallenge/cc_index.html

On another note (not so much related to space or politics, but related to this discussion), it’s possible that the X PRIZE Foundaton will be getting in the news again soon with a new fundraising effort at Google and new prizes on the way. They seem to have an easier time with funding than Centennial Challenges. I haven’t heard about any space-related prizes, though:

http://spaceprizes.blogspot.com/2007/02/bambi-franciso-interviews-x-prize.html

http://spaceprizes.blogspot.com/2007/02/new-x-prizes.html

This would be good news indeed. By helping to create future markets, i think that a successful demonstration on Earth’s moon (or anywhere else in a relatively shallow gravity well) would do more to advance new-technology launch vehicles than any amount of government money thrown at these projects.

I argued a couple of years ago that, rather than investing in Ares-1, NASA should use an EELV or three to put a prototype oxygen producing plant on the moon, and do an early demonstration of the return 0f some initial lunar oxygen to the Space Station for use there and to fuel applications satellites and early space tourism facilities.

Then, your lunar transportation infrastructure would have a potential market before you even built it.

— Donald