Jim Muncy: “2) Taking the broad outlines of the VSE as a start, and Ray’s list of challenges as the metric of success, design an implementation strategy for the VSE that maximizes the chance of a high score (adding up the progress across all the challenges). Does your strategy look anything like ESAS?”

I’ll give this an amateur’s shot using HBV’s environmental damage as an example “Big Problem” that concerns a broad swath of the public. This example may be over-focused on 1 “Big Problem”; if NASA can show the VSE contributing something significant in the next few years (not 2020+) to solving any number of other well-recognized “Big Problems”, it will be in much better shape. To get a general idea, I’ll use very gross guestimates of $4B per year available in lieu of ESAS and related efforts during the rest of Shuttle’s career, and $4B more per year available upon Shuttle retirement. Chalk up any overestimates I may have made in the ESAS/Shuttle budgets to additional funds available because of additional public support. I’ll also note that the VSE isn’t supposed to be simply returning humans to the moon — it’s that, plus completing ISS, retiring the Shuttle, robotic lunar missions, and other robotic missions, all in the context of security, economics, and science.

Yearly Changes Before Shuttle Retirement:

~$500M – Supplement NASA’s Earth Observations with more satellites and science analysis. Consider data purchases from U.S. commercial vendors or deploying instruments on commercial satellites (e.g.: Iridium). Launch with EELVs or new commercial launchers. Consider smallsats. Retire risk for operational environmental satellite programs (eg: NOAA/DOD NPOESS or follow-on programs).

~$500M – Supplement NASA’s existing robotic planetary science and “Sun-Earth” missions. Emphasize planetary missions with high “comparative planetology” (with Earth) relevance.

~$1B – Supplement existing COTS ISS Cargo, and start COTS ISS Crew transport. With $1B/year, 3 competitors could be funded at ~$300M/year, with ~$100M going to a pot to reward any U.S. entities (COTS-funded or not) that meet the requirements, including crew safety. This should justify significant matching commercial investment. Shuttle-derived and EELV concepts would be eligible to compete. Shuttle technology would be completely retired from NASA in 2010 but eligible to be transitioned to commercial use. My unprovable personal opinion: at less development cost, this would result in earlier, cheaper to maintain, and more robust ISS cargo and crew transport than ESAS, and could even result in a thriving, more efficient post-Shuttle workforce getting the benefits of commercial launch business. After successes, funds go to operational ISS transport.

~$500M – Supplement ISS with additional Earth observation instruments. Purchase time for Earth observations on commercial space stations or commercial ISS add-on modules. Develop improved closed-loop life support systems and other “dual use” technologies relevant to both space stations/habitats and Earth’s biosphere. Develop a small demo solar power satellite (eg: to power other space vehicles or mobile emergency power applications on Earth).

~$500M – Purchase Earth observation time on suborbital rockets. This could include remote sensing, atmospheric sampling, and delivery of UAV-mounted instruments. Existing rockets and various New Space suborbital systems would be considered. Develop appropriate instruments and integrate into vehicles. Offer Centennial Challenges to increase performance of suborbital vehicles (i.e. altitude, payload, lower vibrations, etc, as needed by the Earth observations). Test space EO instruments on suborbital rockets. Reward the best Earth Science or Environmental Engineering teachers with suborbital rides so they get a chance to literally see what they’re working for.

~$500M – Supplement NASA Aeronautics with work on cleaner-burning jet engines, more efficient air traffic management (less circling airports), long-duration solar-power aircraft for Earth monitoring, and the like.

~$500M – Start lunar parts parts of VSE with robotics. Include lunar exploration and Earth observation from the Moon and/or Earth/Moon L1. Develop VSE advocate community of lunar scientists and lunar Earth-observation scientists. See pages 84-98 of NASA Advisory Council Workshop on “Science Associated with the Lunar Exploration Architecture” on ideas for Earth environment monitoring from the Moon or lunar orbit:

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/oer/nac/reccommendations/Recommend-5-07.pdf

After Shuttle retirement:

~$4B – Supplement any of the above that show promise, yet need more money. When COTS 1 success is in sight, begin what I’ll call COTS Phase 3 (lunar cargo transport). When COTS 2 success is in sight, begin what I’ll call COTS Phase 4 (minimal lunar crew transport).

The public interested in the environment would view the (broadly-defined) VSE favorably. NASA would likely be rewarded with better budgets and more interesting work. Big aerospace and NewSpace would both benefit from numerous opportunities to efficiently direct their efforts to both NASA and commercial business at the same time. The healthier commercial space business that should result would be better for the overall workforce, and if the relevant companies embrace the commercial opportunities, potentially beneficial even to the Shuttle workforce.

Donald,

I think you miss one of my points. You can sustainably execute this strategy without any significant increases in NASA’s budget. So I am not sure why you find it dubious.

NASA’s ESMD has a multi-billion dollar annual budget. The existing ESMD budget that is going to the Scotty rocket, in fact, should be divied up between “RLV investments”, “COTS like investments in more/cheaper commercial launch solutions”, “COTS like investments in propellant depot(s)”, and “lunar infrastructure investments (ISRU, lunar lander)”. You go as you pay. Of course, certain budget items will have higher priority. Propellant depot funding may take priority over RLV investment, since the depot is the central point of the architecture.

Next, politically, RLV investment is MUCH easier to sell than building the duplicative Scotty rocket. Beyond eliminating wasteful duplication (an easy political benefit), other benefits of the approach are an obvious large impact on national security (it needs to be obvious for politicians … you talk about Chinese ASATs … and then you say “NASA is part of the solution to this national security problem”), and a large impact on commercial space development. Politicians want to buy both national security and “economic/competitiveness” benefits — in fact, if you look at the ORS effort … which is being driven by Congress down the DOD’s throat — you see clear indications that this is what Congress wants to buy.

As has been mentioned, we implement a LEO propellant depot strategy, we can also immediately use EELV’s and any new low-cost U.S. LVs that arrive (e.g., Falcon IX). The approach is not dependent on RLVs showing up by some certain date.

Our international partners can immediately contribute, by launching propellant to the depot on their domestic LVs. It is inherently international.

Again, this ALL can be done within the EXISTING NASA budget.

SUMMARY: It is much easier to sell this approach, since it is intentionally designed to give our elected leaders more of what they are asking for.

– Al

Thanks to Keith, Al, Donald, Anon, CTY, etc for their kind words.

I would defend Mike Griffin’s speech comments a little bit, in that by “economic benefit” or “national security” he was probably talking about what PASSES FOR “benefits” in the normal rhetoric of the NASA.

Mike also probably would argue that an Ares 1/5 transportation architecture preserves the U.S.’ ability to make new ICBMs and SLBMs (i.e. the large-scale solid rocket industrial base), and therefore contributes to national security that way.

But Mike’s “real reasons” are, in effect, all about exploring for exploring’s sake, in the way we have explored in space before. That devolves to a strategy of rebuilding the ability of a [articular U.S. governmental agency to do what he (and most people, including some of us on this blog) believe ONLY a U.S. government agency can do, and that is send humans beyond Earth orbit.

Since I agree that exploration (the kind I want as well as the kind NASA did in the 1960s) will happen faster with USG help/leadership, I won’t question the value of rebuilding NASA’s exploration capabilities here.

What I question, what really bothers me, is this unstated acceptance of the idea that exploration is too hard to “make relevant”. Donald touched on this when he said:

Our job, as I see it, is to tie that to the wider goals of the nation.
I think where you and Jim have it right is that this is a very difficult
thing to do.

In one way it is hard, in that it requires giving up our assumptions about how whomever does exploration. But once you do that, it’s actually quite easy to make exploration serve the broader body politic.

For example, if you took Steidle’s approach to the humans-to-LEO segment of the humans-beyond-GEO market, and aggressively pursued multiple commercial approaches that could acheive $5m/person prices, then you wouldn’t have to “human rate” your CEV launcher. Just that would save billions. And create an ability to fly not one but dozens of teachers a year to LEO for a fraction of NASA’s education budget.

Tell me that wouldn’t mean something to school parents.

But then you have to give up the idea that Moon or Mars-bound astronauts ride on a NASA rocket to LEO, and you add another “rendezvous” (i.e. element of mission complexity) to the lunar architecture.

My generic point here is that all too often, in the pursuit of what people honestly believe is the only/best path for successful exploration, everything quickly devolves to institutionally-motivated priorities which are indeed IMPOSSIBLE to sell to a broad public constituency and its concerns.

Put in Peter Drucker’s language, it’s easy to market space exploration if you’re willing to change what it is you’re doing to fit with customer wants and needs, but it’s really hard to sell the “new and improved” Apollo (“now on Steroids”) to people with other legitimate priorities.

Well, end of rant. I have a plane to catch back to the lower 48.

– Jim

— Donald

Just to be clear, although I think an EELV/small CEV approach is superior to Ares I/Orion, I do not pretend to know whether it is the BEST option to replace Ares I/Orion. I think strong cases can also be made for an all-heavy lift approach (like DIRECT 2/Jupiter 120), for an expanded COTS approach (in which EELV might compete), or for some combination of two or three of these options. Deep, independent analysis and competition (the kind that was never undertaken in ESAS) is needed to ferret out the optimal solution.

I’d also point out that Mr. Fansome’s propellent depot-centric approach and Mr. Robertson’s EELV-centric approach are not mutually exclusive. Given the high costs and difficulties of evolving EELVs to the kind of heavy lift necessary to support a lunar or Mars architecture in the absence of propellant depots, they may even be co-dependent over the long-run.

My 2 cents… FWIW.

The one key point I would make is that on top of these policy/program disconnects, Ares I/Orion (and Constellation overall) are technically and budgetarily compromised. NASA’s human space flight programs are going to have substantial credibility issues with the new White House when staffers realize in January 2009 that NASA, despite the clear direction in the VSE to get humans back to the Moon, has spent the past half-decade (VSE was rolled out in January 2004) and almost $10 billion for a couple of vehicles that will:

— Duplicate (poorly) the lift capabilities of existing military/commercial launch vehicles.

— Require at least another $10 billion to complete.

— Inflict at least a half-decade gap on U.S. civil human space flight and leave U.S. access to ISS in the hands of foreign partners and an underfunded commercial effort.

— Not be capable of supporting NASA’s lunar architecture due to unsafe performance/mass margins and will have to be substantially redesigned and redeveloped at some unknown additional cost and time to bring that lunar architecture into being.

— Even then, still require the development of a heavy lifter, earth-departure stage, and lander — none of which has been started — to actually land a few astronauts on the Moon sometime during the tenure of the next President.

This credibility gap is going to get really bad if NASA’s human space flight programs are asking to extend STS operations beyond 2010 to complete ISS. The credibility gap will become untenable if private efforts like Bigelow or Space-X are also up and flying.

Before NASA can have a discussion with the new White House about how relevant (or not) their human space flight programs are to the nation, whether the VSE should be continued, and what changes in implementation need to be made to ESAS, NASA’s human space flight programs are going to have to prove to the next White House that they can just do what they say they’re going to do. Right now, based on all of the above, it doesn’t look like NASA’s human space flight programs will have any credibility to spare when January 2009 rolls around. When that shoe drops, the easiest thing for the next White House to do will be to give NASA just enough money to get off STS, finish any outstanding foreign commitments on ISS, complete the ISS-capable Ares I/Orion, and then cancel the rest of the VSE/ESAS and use that money elsewhere.

I do not envy the job of the next NASA Administrator — for human space flight, he or she will probably be little more than an Orion/ISS caretaker.

That said, in the event that the next White House just doesn’t take the easy path out of this mess, Mr. Muncy’s challenge is a good one. If we criticize, then we should also offer alternatives. Time allowing, I’ll take my best stab at an alternative (within the limits of this forum) and post back here.

My 2 cents… FWIW.

I think the solution will be a lot closer to Anonymous’ (and my) return to a EELV-based architecture or something similar, rather than your “invest heavily in” new technology.

— Donald

– Al

Of course, I agree. But I was writing to us, not to ten random taxpayers. To quote myself: this is a very difficult thing to do, and I also admit that my stabs at this so far are not very convincing. That said, how about something constructive — you’ve restated the problem, not the solution — what would you say to your ten random taxpayers to get them to voluntarily pay for the VSE.

(Note, though, that “taxpayers” are not our only audience — we are also trying to convince politicians, “captains of industry,” scientists, military officers, stockholders in large aerospace companies, and all the other stakeholders and potential stakeholders in this endeavor.)

Also, I believe that Rand is entirely correct in his statement. This Administration gave the space community their chance and the opportunity to do with it what we will. Politically, whatever happens now, for better or (probably) worse, happens on autopilot.

— Donald