40 years ago it was NASA or Nothing. Not any more.

Now we need to find new ways to commercialize space. When businesses and investors find the $ in space exploration then we will be on the road to a very exciting future in space.

NASA will still be good for supplemental programs like robotic exploration. But they will not be the only solution. We can stop worrying about only getting 1/2 of 1 percent and where that money will be used.

Someone show a business or a group of investors how they can make billions from being on the moon or Mars and you’ll get there. Not just for a joy ride but to stay.

Just to make up some numbers, suppose that the Shuttle workforce wins 1/3 of the $3.9B ISS/lunar COTS with a (reformed?) ESAS-derived approach (or approaches). This 1/3 would be supplemented by “skin in the game” from the interested contractors, so a good portion of the ESAS contractor workforce would be in a similar position after Shuttle retirement. Then suppose 1/3 goes to EELV-derived architectures or similar derivations from non-ESAS ATK/Lockheed-Martin/etc systems. “Skin in the game” again supplements these figures. If some of the workforce can be shifted around within the contractors, most of the workforce would be ok (although some may have to be retrained – which many might consider to be an opportunity rather than a problem). Let’s say 1/3 then winds up going to entrepreneurs which may wind up picking up some of the workforce slack (directly, or through subcontracts). The overall level of investment (and thus potential jobs to go around) would be greater to the extent that companies have to contribute to the investments, and there may be political friends in regions that stand to benefit from this increase.

This still disrupts the workforce, but that’s inevitable with Shuttle retirement. Some accomodation might be needed for NASA ESAS workers, for example (since NASA would not be a COTS competitor, and NASA wouldn’t need a big workforce to manage the program. Hopefully some could take jobs with the COTS competitors. Others would be needed to work on the lunar payloads (and perhaps additional ISS payloads) to convince investors that there really is a lunar (and bigger ISS) market to serve. (This payload work might decrease somewhat the amount of money available for the lunar/expanded ISS COTS, but more would be available when the Shuttle is retired).

All of this supposes that there are commercial markets that can also be served by the new transportation systems (otherwise companies will not be willing to put much “skin in the game”). The ESAS workforce and companies might find it attractive to be able to work on transportation systems that are eligible and able to serve these commercial markets. Of course there is more risk to the companies/employees in that they have to achieve difficult milestones before getting more NASA funding, but the current Shuttle workforce has a lot of experienced and smart people (caught in an environment with the wrong incentives). They should be confident they would succeed with reasonable requirements (eg: 2 passengers to the Moon) and milestones.

I should also bring up the possibility of non-NASA contributions to such a COTS program. I don’t think, for example, that the Department of Defense, NOAA, or intelligence agencies are interested in ESAS vehicles. However, they could be interested in some variants of the proposed expanded COTS program vehicles (eg: launch vehicles with Operationally Responsive characteristics, cheap launch vehicles, architectures involving orbital refueling, etc). If some of the NASA requirements overlap enough with their requirements, they might contribute funding to the program, again potentially softening the impact to the Shuttle workforce (by funding their ESAS-derivative if appropriate, or by funding other COTS competitors, leaving more NASA COTS funds available to the Shuttle workforce entry), and enlarging the long-term customer base for the COTS competitors.

To the extent, if any, that this expanded COTS allows NASA to avoid funding foreign space transportation systems, again the transformed Shuttle workforce would benefit (ie the upheaval to them would be reduced).

Having said all of that, though, I totally agree that the political hurdles involving workforce issues and rigging COTS would be huge.

— Donald

The only flaw I would suggest is that it seems too much like common sense. That is, it boils down the needs to a logical conclusion.

Since this is a Space Politics board, I feel it necessary to point out what would happen — same thing that happened when they decided not to use the Atlas — the contest will be rigged. So in the end, you’ve spent more money and actually accomplished less.

If you make it really, really simple, perhaps you could make it fly. Something like a large-scale X-Prize with 2nd and 3rd place winners for the capabilities. But you have to make it so simple that congress would have a hard time rigging the game without the cat getting out of the bag.

Keith Cowing: Yes, they used to dump on the previous crowd when they arrived for “lack of progress”. Now they have actually made negative progress by comparison. If the next Administration decides to go back and start over (switch to EELVs) because Ares 1 is unworkable the gap that Griffin so despised will have grown as a result of his bad decisions.

Are they spending something like $3.9 billion per year on Ares I/Orion (ISS version), with 2 goals (ISS backup in case COTS doesn’t make it to the human transportation phase, and lunar transportation)? How about scrapping ESAS altogether and funding COTS at a level that has a better chance than the current rather small program with this $3.9 per year?

This expanded program would include the current COTS phase 1 capabilities, the ISS human transport capabilities, and lunar capabilities (eg: cargo, or 2 astronauts to the moon with life support). As with the current COTS program, NASA would make it clear (through development of, for example, lunar payloads) that the services would be used (by the winners, or anyone else with a better system). The competitors would need to have “skin in the game”. The ESAS contractors (but not the NASA team) could compete for any of these COTS levels with their architecture. The Shuttle workforce would be safe as long as they have (or adjust themselves to have) a viable and competitive architecture. However, they would be obliged like any other competitor to contribute investments and to achieve significant milestones before getting funding increments. A team could try to handle just 1 capability, or all of them. There would be multiple competitors at each level. The $3.9B per year, plus private investment, would allow different architectures to compete, increasing the chance that viable solutions are found to the transportation problems. The NASA contribution to the “lunar level” might have to be funded more heavily than the others to account for both technical difficulty and difficulty in identifying a non-NASA market for the transportation services.

I’m not overly surprised. The plan when Bush unveiled it seemed a bit too good to be true. I knew that Bush would take any opportunity to gut environmental programs wherever he could. And if you read about how they ran the Iraq war and occupation, you know this administration really doesn’t execute complex programs particularly well.

I suspect everyone will probably paper this over (having far more vital things to worry about) and then whoever ends up in the White House will have a real mess on his/her hands.

I totally agree. The real problem with 60-day studies isn’t even the 60 days. It’s the fact that everyone on the study thinks “I have no time to look at anything” and so all the major decisions are made within the first few days of the study, or even in the pre-study formulation. Thus most of the branches of possibility are pruned even before they start.

…that and no one can be bothered to go to the library once the study starts and actually read papers about what people who have done the same study before you came up with–and what their constraints were–and what might have changed between now and then.

“The Jupiter-120 (Ares-2) is a safer more capable replacement of the STS’s, leverages 90% of the existing STS’s production, integration, and launch infrastructure all while using proven existing engines ELV engines run at lower throttle levels.”

It is a shame that ESAS dismissed innovative approaches like L2 rendezvous out-of-hand and totally missed important LV configurations like Jupiter 120.

Between SEI, the ISS blue ribbon study, and ESAS, one of my fondest hopes is that using 60-day studies to determine the fate of two decades of human space flight investment becomes a thing of the past.

FWIW…

Gee Mark, last time I checked you were a founding member of the “Internet Rocketeer Club” with your pals Kolker and Oler ….

The Jupiter-120 (Ares-2) also increases America’s space exploration capability (ie 2x payload and 4x volume) over the best ELV anywhere and sets the exploration capability bar (both manned and unmanned) higher than at any point in time since the Saturn V was turned into a lawn ornament.

From this stable capability base we can (budget, politics permitting) upgrade the Jupiter-120 to a Jupiter-231 (Ares-3) by adding a third main engine, earth departure stage, and J-2XD engine.

A 2xJupiter-231 Lunar architecture will send enough mass to the moon to restore the original objective of all site access and anytime return by delivering more mass to the Moon than the Ares 1/5 1.5 plan. With full NASA GR&A Margins I might add. All while doubling the launch rate of a common vehicle which will easily cost less than half as much to develop than the Ares 1/5 dysfunctional disparate family.

It’s getting increasingly hard to understand why NASA won’t adopt this obvious approach of aligning politics, with budget, with engineering.

Maybe Scott’s moving on in October will open the door to better STS derived ideas.

Hope springs eternal.

Back to the AIAA paper.