Campaign '08

Giuliani wants to “aggressively pursue space exploration”

The Tallahassee Democrat reports on a meeting that Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani held yesterday with Republican legislators and governor Charlie Crist in Florida. The article states that, after his speech, Giuliani said he “supported continuing to aggressively pursue space exploration”, but the article offers no other details. Instead, the article notes that the former New York City mayor drew parallels between the original space race with the Soviet Union and the need for the US to become energy independent:

Giuliani said the United States should prioritize energy independence much like it did the space race, when Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson fired up the gears of industry and imagination after the Soviet Union beat the U.S. into space.

The result was a bipartisan thrust to the moon that transcended several presidencies and spawned a generation of national pride and scientific spin-offs.

”Politics aside and national interests first. Not only did it help us ultimately win the Cold War, it helped us in countless other ways, in scientific development and products,” Giuliani said.

”We can do the same thing with energy independence. But we’ve got to have a president who knows how to get things done.”

This, of course, means that Giuliani is in lockstep with Al Franken, the comedian running for US Senate in Minnesota as a Democrat: Franken states on his web site, “We need to get serious about renewable energy by funding a real Apollo Program to explore new sources.”

29 comments to Giuliani wants to “aggressively pursue space exploration”

  • That’s all well and good, but given the current apathy towards math and science, and the total lack of glamor of an energy independence program versus manned spaceflight to the moon, it will be hard to get students and everyday joes and janes to jump on the bandwagon. If it could be combined with new space goals such as figuring out a better way to harness all that free solar energy in space or maybe some strides on nuclear fusion devices in spaceflight (with applications here on Earth such as power generation), people might be more interested. It’s a shame it has to be that way, but it is..

  • anonymous-prime

    Going back to the moon in the same manner that grandpa did is hardly glamorous. When you look at how little new technology is being used for the ESAS approach, the argument for space exploration as an engine for new technologies falls flat on its face.

    I think Giuliani and Franken are absolutely right. Much as I like space, I’d gut it in a heartbeat to free up resources for a national initiative aimed at developing promising energy alternatives. Minimizing or eliminating our dependence on fossil fuels has a much higher priority, in my mind, than sending a handful of civil servants on joyrides to the Moon.

  • richardb

    Gutting humans in space reminds me of my ancestors. If they weren’t curious about their environment I wouldn’t be living in America. Space is no different than any other place, just more exotic to get there. Besides the point now anyway, too many people inside and outside of USG are determined to go, so let a thousand launchers bloom.

  • Anonymous-Prime

    Your ancestors and mine were smart. They were motivated by the opportunity for potential profit or improvement in their life. They didn’t explore for starry-eyed esoteric reasons, like the clap-trap we’re fed by NASA.

    Space is different. Hiking to see what’s on the other side of the hill makes sense when all you have to do is pack up some water and walk a few miles. It’s definitely not worth it if you have to spend 0.3% of the GDP. Much better to send robotic probes.

    Time to get down to earth, just like when our ancestors set out to find new trade routes and new arenas for economic conquest. This time we need to concentrate on developing new alternative methods of energy production. Without it, kiss goodbye any hope of a decent standard of living for future generations.

  • It’s a nice sentiment and all, but having lived in NYC during most of the Giuliani years, a large chunk of that in a sketchy (at the time – FGP) neighborhood in Brooklyn, that makes me about, mmm… 0% more likely to vote for him. Current likelihood? 0%. Were he elected I would be looking for the exit.

    The one thing that troubles me is that when a lot of people think of energy independence, they don’t think of solar power from space. Given that most of our energy use is second or third-hand solar power, why not plug directly into a 4.5 billion year power supply?

    No, the whole thing is not going to be built in 10 or 20 or 40 or 75 years. It’s a long term investment, the sort of thing for which you issue 100-year bonds. Like AT&T when they were laying the telephone network. We can build much better bonds nowadays, and we can tap global capital markets.

    Right now we’re at the point of developing the materials to be used, and figuring out the sources of those materials. We need to be looking at optimising the doping materials in the cells for translating raw, unattenuated sunlight into the forms we need. Focusers for moving that energy to other locations, such as distributing to LEO/MEO/HEO assets. Figuring out the best collection methods. That sort of thing. It’s not like it’s all going to be gathered together here on Earth and launched on thousands upon thousands of rockets all at once.

    Instead you look at materials that come from cheaper gravity wells. The Moon is a much better place to start, as you again receive raw, unattenuated sunlight, there’s a lot of the basic materials lying around waiting to be processed into useful stuff, and the vacuum is handy for things like metal purification and cold welding. And you might be able to find some chunks of PGMs a la Dennis Wingo’s Moonrush.

    But if you’re looking at a 25+ year time frame then asteroids will win out in the end as they are much more manageable and more ideally suited for the support of cislunar assets. They’ve got metals, water, etc. and large masses can be parked at strategic locations like L-4 and L-5, or even SEL-4 and SEL-5.

    Things that would help in this regard would be a whole lot of Baby Boomers buying solar panels. The municipalities have been doing a bang-up job trying to switch to solar cells and batteries for things like street lights. But if the Baby Boomers started individually buying solar cells, that would be huge. The capital investment could allow for some significant advances, and unless you think that solar cells are like rockets and there can be no price advantage to mass production then the cost will come down as well as more facilities ramp up production. Sensitization to the idea of the sun providing electricity can help in the promotion of large solar cell fields parked out at GEO.

    That’s the kind of legacy of which a generation can be proud.

    Although at this point any moves in that direction is a good idea, and I’m also in favor of wind power, geothermal, hydroelectric, and smart nuclear fission, and fusion. We’re a very, very lucky planet to have so large neighbor in the Moon so close by which has helped to shield us, however marginally, from impactors and also given us really useful Lagrange points. We’d be fools not to use them to build a permanent energy supply for our nation.

  • What claptrap, Anonymous-Prime. Why don’t you compare Apples and Apples, e.g., the amount of GNP the Spanish spent exploring the Americas with what we spend on spaceflight, or the resources needed to climb out of the airlock and look over the other side of the hill?

    Your ancestors, like mine, most likely ended up in the new world for religious or political reasons, having little or nothing to do with “potential profit.” They probably considered “opportunity” in only the broadest and most abstract senses.

    No, your ancestors probably ended up here for many of the same reasons that I advocate we do the tasks now that will let our children colonize parts of the inner Solar System: curiosity, escape from impending tyranny, to establish a new religion or escape an old one. (Note that robotic exploration is useless for any but the first of those reasons, and as I have argued elsewhere of limited utility even for that one.) It is a safe bet that maintaining “a decent standard of living” as it is defined today did not even enter their considerations.

    — Donald

  • Anonymous-Prime

    What claptrap, Anonymous-Prime. Why don’t you compare Apples and Apples, e.g., the amount of GNP the Spanish spent exploring the Americas with what we spend on spaceflight, or the resources needed to climb out of the airlock and look over the other side of the hill?

    I’m referring to the continuous stream of noblesque cliches that stream NASA PAO. I have absolutely no problem with privately funded ventures, which have a concrete profit motive.

    Robotic exploration makes a heck of a lot more sense until we find something worth pursuing with civil servant rocket jockeys. It is far more important to our near and far-term future to foster energy independence.

    Ironically, a vigorous sustained program in advanced energy could ultimately provide a stronger foundation for space exploration, specifically in higher performance propulsion technologies. Chemical propulsion will always drive us to exorbitant costs.

  • canttellya

    Ironically, a vigorous sustained program in advanced energy could ultimately provide a stronger foundation for space exploration, specifically in higher performance propulsion technologies. Chemical propulsion will always drive us to exorbitant costs.

    Yup!

  • richardb

    Why is it that as nations that were previously Third World are now preparing ambitiious programs to learn about living in space or researching the physics of space? Why is it that many First World nations spend modest but consistently modest funds to live, work and explore the zero G world? Space is as compelling a
    mystery, enigma, puzzle, fantasy as we have.

    I can guarantee you that if Nasa’s human space program was zero’d out for the next 10 years, not one child today living in poverty would be better off. Not one corporate farmer would be any richer. Not one extra plug-in hybrid car would be gracing our roadways. The money would disappear into Washington’s event horizon of waste. So given that, I don’t see any moral issues, budgetary issues, philosophical issues with spending these modest funds to sprinkle humans as far as possible in our solar system.

  • canttellya

    Why is it that as nations that were previously Third World are now preparing ambitiious programs to learn about living in space or researching the physics of space?

    Because they want other nations to stop considering them as third-world nations and think of them as emerging great nations. They see space activities as prestigious indicators of such status.

    Why is it that many First World nations spend modest but consistently modest funds to live, work and explore the zero G world?

    Because they have learned over the years that national space programs activities (like NASA, ESA, JAXA, RSA, etc.) have little to contribute to economic growth or advancement, but are powerful symbols of national greatness. Note that I separated national space programs from space activities (GPS, weathersats, comsats, etc. that have economic value).

    I can guarantee you that if Nasa’s human space program was zero’d out for the next 10 years, not one child today living in poverty would be better off. Not one corporate farmer would be any richer. Not one extra plug-in hybrid car would be gracing our roadways. The money would disappear into Washington’s event horizon of waste.

    You’re probably right, but why does money wasted at NASA have any more importance than money wasted somewhere else in the government? Frankly, this reminds me of the argument I used to use on my parents as a teenager, when they would try to correct some unpleasant behaviour of mine and I would hasten to point out to them that I could be a drug-dealer, or pregnant, or a runaway, but look what a great kid I was.

    So given that, I don’t see any moral issues, budgetary issues, philosophical issues with spending these modest funds to sprinkle humans as far as possible in our solar system.

    If NASA was doing this, it would be a lot easier to support them. But the ESAS implementation of the VSE is not about opening the space frontier for economic development and human settlement, it’s about maintaining a political status quo for the purpose of maintaining or augmenting funding levels, and that’s not getting anyone anywhere.

    Ironically, it’s choking off the very nascent market forces that could spur technological breakthroughs and attractive economic returns.

  • Chemical propulsion will always drive us to exorbitant costs.

    Like it or not, chemical propulsion to low earth orbit is what you’ve got. Rather than bitching about it over and over, you need to accept it, and work with it. building massive throwaway launchers is not accepting reality and working within it. It’s generally referred to as pissing into the wind.

    There are numerous ways to reduce chemical launch costs to low earth orbit. The most glaring and obvious example is to combine the launch and space colonization process via single stage to orbit with on orbit wet launched retrofittable launch vehicles designed for space colonization. With hydrogen as primary boost fuel, nearly an order of magnitude increase in payload capability to low earth orbit is almost immediately obtained.

    Reality based space colonization requires working within the existing laws of physics, not bemoaning them and then dreaming about changing them.

  • canttellya

    There are numerous ways to reduce chemical launch costs to low earth orbit.

    I think the one that offers the most payback for the least amount of effort is to use tethered launch assist, as proposed by Dr. Robert Forward. Depending on the strength of materials used to build the tether, this can provide 50% or more of the total energy to orbit needed by the spacecraft, and it’s reusable and propellantless.

  • Adrasteia

    With hydrogen as primary boost fuel, nearly an order of magnitude increase in payload capability to low earth orbit is almost immediately obtained.

    Yeah, Boeing keeps telling us that with their Delta IV. Wishing doesn’t make it so.

  • Yeah, Boeing keeps telling us that with their Delta IV. Wishing doesn’t make it so.

    The Delta IV Medium is a two stage to orbit launch vehicle with a throwaway first stage. Is that simple truth beyond your comprehension? Considering upper stage pollution, if the Delta IV were flying to the ISS, an immediate 15% increase in payload capacity is realized by NOT throwing away the upper stage, since for all practical purposes, it is already at the ISS. Anybody with any brains at all can see that fundamental truth.

    A Delta IV upper stage is composed of a space rated restartable reusable engine (surely you can think of something to do with that) an oxygen tank (who needs one of those?), a hydrogen tank easily large enough to function as a habitation module, and the pressurization and attitude control system, plus a load of residual fuel, which can easily be converted to potable water.

    Just keep telling yourself that chemical energy is expensive, soon everybody who doesn’t possess critical thinking skills will believe you.

    The US launch industry and NASA is laughable at best, tragic at worst.

  • Anonymous Prime: I have absolutely no problem with privately funded ventures, which have a concrete profit motive.

    Certainly at first, Spanish efforts were in no way privately funded, unless you are talking about the “private” account of the head of state.

    Ironically, a vigorous sustained program in advanced energy could ultimately provide a stronger foundation for space exploration, specifically in higher performance propulsion technologies. Chemical propulsion will always drive us to exorbitant costs.

    I agree. However, as I have argued elsewhere, we have spent decades playing in technological sand boxes, trying to improve propulsion technology with no application that requires it. We will make far faster progress if we have destinations (the Space Station, lunar bases) in place requiring resupply, day in and day out, resulting in more focussed research to supply those destinations. Nobody outside of the space community would be panicking about the impending loss of the Space Shuttle’s capability, nor subsidizing commercial alternatives, nor pushing to get the government project done sooner, if the Space Station weren’t there. Yet, all of those things are now happening in Congress. Destinations placed with what you have drive transportation improvements, not the other way around.

    Cantellya: Because they want other nations to stop considering them as third-world nations and think of them as emerging great nations. They see space activities as prestigious indicators of such status.

    This is a gross oversimplification that ignores many of the complex geopolitical and economic motivations that are driving China, India, and Japan (and even, in a small way, Australia) toward human-related spaceflight spending. But even if that were the full truth, so what? How is that different from the motivation of the Soviet Union and United States to place the first automated spacecraft in orbit, which led directly to the applications and science satellites you like so much? How is it different than your neighbor buying a bigger car because you’ve been washing yours in the driveway. This is easy for the guy with the bigger car to belittle, but it seems very important indeed to the “little guy.” This is human nature, and we are hardly immune from it — nor should we be. If we don’t consider human nature important — at bottom, if we are not “humanists” — than we could indeed stick to robots. But human motivations are and should be important reasons to explore the Solar System, and until and unless that changes, human beings are at least a part of what we should, and will, send.

    Note that I separated national space programs from space activities (GPS, weathersats, comsats, etc. that have economic value).

    But, every one of these grew out of “national space programs” motivated for greater national glory during the cold war. Again, so what? Advanced capabilities are developed for reasons. They don’t need to be rational reasons, but they do need to be there. (Which is why transportation follows perceived need, whether that need is to bomb somebody else’s cities or to supply space stations or lunar bases.)

    Ironically, it’s choking off the very nascent market forces that could spur technological breakthroughs and attractive economic returns.

    Huh? How is ESAS “choking off” the nascent tourist industry? Granted, it’s not helping it, but your own argument seems to be that the tourist or any other industry should sink-or-swim on its own.

    Thomas, while I wish your tone were a little different, you make some potentially important points regarding the Delta-IV.

    — Donald

  • Thomas, while I wish your tone were a little different, you make some potentially important points regarding the Delta-IV.

    And with a mere wave of the hand, ground truth gets reduced to a potentially important point. I’m not referring to just the Delta IV, I’m referring to the entire ‘method’ by which boost phase launch to low orbit is conducted. The sheer waste of momentum is staggering, and then people have the audacity to claim that ‘chemical energy is expensive’, when the reality is that chemical energy is oil cheap for the most part, and reaction engines in particular, are in essence the most efficient chemical heat engine imaginable. Then they dredge up concepts like tethers and elevators, that are so far from reality that it just makes me cringe.

    Chemical energy is dirt cheap. It’s the method by which the launch industry chooses to waste that energy, that makes the launch business expensive.

  • Robert Oler

    The really sad thing that this statement shows is how badly mangaled the “effort” of Apollo is/was in American culture and Politics. Apollo really accomplished nothing of value past the PR and the historical effort of putting men on the Moon. Otherwise it had no permanancy of value.

    Robert

  • Apollo … had no permanency of value.

    Apollo’s value was it’s impermanence. It was a development program with a specific and challenging goal which was supposed to lead us to a higher way. In a sense it did, we got a space station, winged spaceplane and a closed cycle reusable cryogenic engine out of the deal. These too can be viewed as development programs with challenging goals, equally impermanent, but leading to a higher way. That higher way is certainly not another Apollo.

    The goal now is launch. The time to deal with that problem is now, and all of our development work and space assets are in place. That a rational space colonization program and solar power satellites must necessarily be tied into the launch process, is dictated by physics, not engineering, since the engineering is essentially trivialized by the launch development process.

    Any other goal (ESAS) is merely a costly and time consuming blunder. Twenty or thirty years from now all we will have learned from ESAS is how NOT do conduct space launch operations.

  • Adrasteia

    You’ve still not convinced me that hydrogen isn’t entirely useless as a first stage propellant.

  • There is only one stage, and when you are finished with it, it is in orbit, with some payload to spare. The cost of putting that stage into orbit is prepaid, so you had better well design it to be useful. I can’t quite think of anything more useful in orbit than an entire booster stage, complete with residual fuel and a pressurization system. The hydrogen is ephemeral. It all ends up as water.

  • Anonymous-Prime

    Like it or not, chemical propulsion to low earth orbit is what you’ve got. Rather than bitching about it over and over, you need to accept it, and work with it. building massive throwaway launchers is not accepting reality and working within it. It’s generally referred to as pissing into the wind.

    I have no argument with you when it comes to ETO transportation. Perhaps I should have been more explicit in my statement. The benefit of attainable advanced technologies is for in-space applications.

  • Ivan

    Robert Oler is against anything others see as having value.

  • Robert: The really sad thing that this statement shows is how badly mangaled the “effort” of Apollo is/was in American culture and Politics. Apollo really accomplished nothing of value past the PR and the historical effort of putting men on the Moon. Otherwise it had no permanancy of value.

    This is dead wrong. To this date, the only absolute dating for any large body surface in the Solar System come from the large collections intelligently obtained over wide areas by the Apollo astronauts. The entire edifice of dating from Mercury to Neptune’s moons is based on the resulting crater counts. They are little more than educated guesses and almost certainly will prove to be over-similifications (at best, more likely they’ll be simply wrong) once future astronauts do similar studies on other planets.

    Apollo astronauts managed to find pieces of the orginal lunar crust, although it proved far more difficult than anticipated — something no robotic mission could have accomplished, then or now. (It just might be possible to automate obtaining samples today, but only because of what we learned from Apollo.)

    And so on. Read the Harland book I’ve recommended before, then make that statement.

    — Donald

  • Adrasteia

    $200B+ through 2025 seems like a lot of money to be spending on radiometric dating.

  • Adasteia, well we have spent comparable amounts over the past few decades getting a lot of pretty pictures that provide relative measurements for a few of the larger bodies in the Solar System, but don’t actually answer the question of how old any planetary surfaces really are, let alone whether there might be fossils or sampled detailed stratigraphy over wide areas. Is that truly money better spent?

    — Donald

  • Paul Dietz

    Radiometric dating can be done with sample return. It’s regularly done with samples from space — meteorites. Why does it require humans on site?

  • Mike

    A few of you talk about solar power as a renewable power source but right now it’s just not efficient enough but scientists are working on it. Also someone asked about nuclear fission to get us to mars, well I attend Florida Tech and one of the Grad students is working on that possibility right now. Also the reason why they are going back to an Apollo type craft to go back to the moon is because IT WORKS, and IF IT AIN’T BROKE DON’T FIX IT!

  • […] candidates of either major party, has said little about space exploration other than that he wants to “aggressively pursue space exploration”. Perhaps not that aggressively, though: he told a Heritage Foundation audience earlier this week […]

  • […] Source: Tallahassee Democrat (via Space Politics.com), “Giuliani Wants to ‘Aggressively Pursue S… […]

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