Congress and NASA may be caught in a tragicomic dance about the nature and location of its projects, but Congress does not *force* NASA to waste 75% of its budget. You may not like the priorities that have grown up over a few dozen years of post-Apollo give-and-take between White House budget officials, NASA Administrators, and Congresses.

If by Congressionally-imposed waste, you mean federal acquisition rules or civil service rules, well welcome to reality. If we’re going to tilt at windmills, I’d rather fight for tax credits for commercial space investment than try to convince Congress that NASA deserves more regulatory latitude than DOD, spy agencies, or homeland security.

Give us a few specific examples, or please stop making silly excuses for dysfunction.

– Jim

They’re dropping like flies. Man is this a depressing thread…

In a way, that is the point. We, as in the space community at large, seem to place far too little value on experience and far too much on cool technology. Japan can probably beat us hands down on cool technology, but the success rate of their space program or large commercial air transports are not terribly good. The reason in both cases is experience. It’s not the lunar data that’s so important — anyone can get that of the Web — its the experience of operating there. Yes, we’ve pointlessly thrown away a lot of that knowledge base — but we’re the only ones who have any at all. We should not discount the advantage that gives us.

But that feeling doesn’t tell us what kinds of rafts and canoes to build, how much effort to put into them, and where specifically to point them.

Granted, for the most part. But, it does tell you that your effort may be worthwhile even after the first ten of them end up at the bottom of the ocean or crash into the moon! Or, when everyone dies in your first attempt at a Mars base, which is a possible, even likely, outcome. Likewise, it let’s us realize that just because we haven’t achieved all we wanted, we’ve still achieved something. I fear that we’ve forgotten those lessons and it is far past time we remembered it again.

If there’s a market in providing countries that would otherwise not have the means a capability to affordably fly their own astronauts and conduct space research, there’s arguably a market in providing these same countries with a capability to plant their flags on and wheel about the Moon.

Great idea.

And, don’t forget Space Adventures lunar free return project. Even with the Russian suppliers getting cold feet, something like that has at least as much chance as succeeding as the Google Prize. In fact, I wish Google had put their money into that. . . .

— Donald

Although I’d discount how much competitive advantage this public domain information provides the U.S., especially given the deep retirement and/or passing of most Apollo workers, your point is still well-taken. I had long-lost infrastructure and capabilities in mind, not lunar data.

“Every so often, you do need to look at that “anthropological time scale,” as you (nicely) put it, to place your achievements in perspective, as well as your failures”

I think we’re in violent agreement here. But, unless I’m missing something, it still doesn’t inform the policy discussion and help us differentiate good policies and plans from bad ones. It may give us a warm fuzzy to think of ourselves as those first Polynesians boarding those first rafts and dugout canoes on a multi-hundred year effort to settle the islands of the Pacific. But that feeling doesn’t tell us what kinds of rafts and canoes to build, how much effort to put into them, and where specifically to point them.

“Once achieved, what commercial market will it lead to?”

The most intriguing one to me is the Bigelow model. If there’s a market in providing countries that would otherwise not have the means a capability to affordably fly their own astronauts and conduct space research, there’s arguably a market in providing these same countries with a capability to plant their flags on and wheel about the Moon.

It would also be nice to see NASA take advantage of such a capability and provide, either in a resurrected RLEP program or as an adjunct to an operational human lunar program, a native market for automated lunar access services. But Worden’s encouragement aside and based on NASA’s demonstrated reluctance to go commercial unless absolutely forced to (e.g., COTS versus much easier suborbital or microgravity flight services), I wouldn’t bet on it. More likely, the builders of the X PRIZE missions would wind up as subsystem contractors on some NASA designed and operated, if NASA used them at all.

Beyond government space programs, it’s possible that corporations could compete with each other for prestige and marketshare via highly visible lunar achievements and competitions. But I’ll admit this is a more speculative market than, say, suborbital “tourism” and would probably require the ongoing tending and fueling of a NASCAR- or Olympics-like organization. I don’t know if the X PRIZE Foundation will ever become such.

FWIW…

But for all practical purposes, NASA is starting over from zero with regards to lunar exploration — or any human space exploration — after a multi-decade stand-down.

This I don’t agree with at all. While we did break our learning curve and I’m sure there is a lot of institutional knowledge that’s been lost, Apollo provided a huge base of practical and scientific knowledge of a regolith-dominated surface and how to operate there. No amount of theoretical studies or remote observations or even robotic rovers could replicate that knowledge. Just because we choose pretty much to ignore it today, for reasons I find totally inexplicable, does not mean that knowledge base isn’t out there and readily available. Hopefully private groups and other nations are looking at this base of practical experience. It’s worth noting that this knowledge base is something no other nation has direct experience with, it is a huge competitive advantage in Solar System operations, and it should give us a far greater economic advantage than any transportation architecture if and when we actually go back to the moon.

have to say that, while I think there’s value in occasionally stepping back and looking at space exploration/settlement on an anthropological timescale, step back far enough and none of these decisions make a difference. . . . Development or evolution over thousands of years is driven by dozens and dozens of decisions made on much smaller timescales. We have to make some of the right decisions and move forward on those smaller timescales or we’ll forever be stuck in neutral or moving backwards on the larger timescales.

I also strongly disagree with parts of this, while also accepting your last point. You have to start somewhere, and since we are capable of exploring and exploiting parts of the inner Solar System, we should. However, to avoid despair, we also need to keep in mind the difficulty and scale of what we are trying to do. While we should not have infinite patience, we also need to realize that this is a project for centuries and not get discouraged when it doesn’t happen in decades. We, as space advocates, look at what we should have achieved (mostly, apparently, because it’s what a small group of German engineers looking from the end of World War II thought we should have achieved by now). We fail to look at what we have achieved. In only fifty years, we’ve done some basic geological exploration of the moon, successfully built a first generation large reusable spacecraft, learned how to successfully build a vast and complex structure in a microgravity environment that dominates the universe but we had almost zero experience with, and, yes, sent our robots to the major bodies of our star system. Every one of those are amazing achievements, and even more amazing collectively, accomplished in what is by any measure an amazingly short period of time. Every so often, you do need to look at that “anthropological time scale,” as you (nicely) put it, to place your achievements in perspective, as well as your failures — otherwise, you’ll set totally unrealistic goals for the immediate future and / or give up in frustration.

The lesson of the first fifty years of spaceflight is that we will not storm the Solar System in a human lifetime, or even several handfuls of them, but given an “anthropological time scale” we do have a very good chance of succeeding. Nobody wants to look at this lesson because it is not what they want to hear, but that unfortunate fact makes it all the more important.

Finally, I agree that the Google prize is probably achievable. But I also agree with Jeff’s analysis that, this time, it’s not clear what the commercial market is. Once achieved, what commercial market will it lead to? Without identifying that, the exercise is essentially pointless.

— Donald

I think our ideals depend on whether we’re from the left-end (pro-public sector) or right-end (pro-private sector) of the political spectrum.

(Although a couple folks from both of those extremes have argued the exact opposite of their political leanings on this forum.)

“If so, I’m not sure why we call it a ‘weird situation.'”

It’s weird from the point-of-view of good policy principles (not political dogma). Government 101 tells us that there is a public sector and a private sector, and that the public sector exists (among other reasons) to take on risks in the public interest that the private sector is unwilling to underwrite.

I would argue that lunar activities are much higher risk than ETO or LEO activities. Logically, then we should see the private sector in ETO and LEO and the public sector at the Moon. Or at least we should see the public sector being active on the Moon before the private sector.

But with respect to U.S. robotic lunar surface activities, the combination of the Google Lunar X PRIZE and the effective termination of NASA’s RLEP and prize programs is producing the exact opposite situation, where one or more private sector efforts — pursuing a privately funded purse — may well be active on the lunar surface years before NASA or a NASA funded activity — robotic or human — are active on the lunar surface.

That’s why I described it as a weird (or flipped, reversed, abnormal, etc.) situation. The public sector has arguably abdicated its role in an activity that clearly falls within its domain on the frontier, and the private sector is stepping into the gap and taking up a frontier role and activities that do not normally fall within its domain.

Note that, except with respect to NASA and the Congress not fulfilling the public sector funding role in lunar robotic exploration and/or prizes, I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. Just a weird thing.

“The government(s) have landed on and roved over the moon, and now the private sector is attempting to follow in their wake… Human lunar (and asteroid and Martian moon) exploration, which are (with the possible exception of the first) not yet ready for private investment.”

If NASA (or whatever public space agency) had a presence on the lunar surface today, or was moving on to NEOs, Mars, or another deep space target, I’d agree with you.

But for all practical purposes, NASA is starting over from zero with regards to lunar exploration — or any human space exploration — after a multi-decade stand-down. And thanks now to the Google X PRIZE, the private sector may well beat NASA to the “restart” line, at least as it extends to the lunar surface and supporting robotic activities.

Again, without passing judgement good or bad except as regards to the poor funding for RLEP and NASA prizes, it strikes me as a weird, reversed situation where the private sector, not the public sector, is now at the tip of the spearthrust for the restart of lunar surface exploration.

“Like many (most) space advocates, I think you look on far too short a time scale.”

I’ll be the first to admit that one or two small lunar robotic rovers are tiny in the big scheme of things.

But it’s the overall trends, more than the single prize, that I find interesting, and arguably troubling for NASA.

Since the VSE was announced, we’ve seen the public side retreat time and again — from 2017 to 2020 for the first human lunar mission, from 2012 to 2015 for the first CEV mission, from a lunar-capable Block I CEV to an ISS-only Block I CEV, and from any lunar robotic surface exploration at all — mostly for reasons of poor planning but also due to some funding issues.

The private side has arguably done the exact opposite, with several firsts for that sector, including the development start of purpose-built human space flight launch vehicles and capsules, the testing of sub-scale LEO space stations, and now a private lunar robotic effort.

I’m not predicting either way. But if the NASA trend continues, NASA is headed towards a future where public human space flight is again restricted to LEO, both technically and budgetarily, by the operational weight of the ISS and Ares I albatrosses.

And if the private sector trend continues, it’s not yet clear where the private sector’s reach is going to exceed its grasp. The Google Lunar X PRIZE may fail, but on the basis of both specific feasibility and general prize precedents, I’d probably bet the other way and guess that the private sector will succeed at lunar robotic activities and be eyeing human follow-ons — at least circumlunar flights — sometime in the next decade or two.

And if that happens, on top of private ETO human transport and private space stations, and NASA is still stuck in LEO and can’t even contemplate human NEOs or Mars missions, then I’d argue NASA human space flight will have achieved irrelevance and obsolesence. I don’t see how the White House and Congress continue NASA’s human space flight programs, at least in their current form, in such a future.

It’s one possible future. Not the only one, but I’d argue a more likely one than in the past looking at the trends and in light of the recent Google Lunar X PRIZE announcement.

“However, I do believe, unlike your position as I understand it, that ESAS is at this point in time the only game in town, and thus I do not oppose it.”

If we buy into the trends outlined above, there is arguably another private sector “game” emerging. And that says nothing of existing private sector capabilities (EELVs) or just smarter public sector approaches (DIRECT).

“Space advocates have too little imagination, not too much. They see exploring the Solar System as a cursory endeavor for flybys or orbiters, or as an extension of air travel, not the inconceivably vast project that makes the 10,000 year project of colonizing Earth’s surface look like a cakewalk.”

I have to say that, while I think there’s value in occasionally stepping back and looking at space exploration/settlement on an anthropological timescale, step back far enough and none of these decisions make a difference. That, to me at least, doesn’t do much to inform the policy discussion. Development or evolution over thousands of years is driven by dozens and dozens of decisions made on much smaller timescales. We have to make some of the right decisions and move forward on those smaller timescales or we’ll forever be stuck in neutral or moving backwards on the larger timescales.

“But I wish Google all my luck — they’ll need it.”

Google arguably needs no luck — they’ll get publicity from this race regardless of whether the prize is ever won.

And my 2 cent bet is that the prize is achievable, both technically and budgetarily. The cost precedents set by BlastOff, Lunar Prospector, Mars Pathfinder, and numerous other small missions; the availability of cheap Ruskie LVs and the coming availability of cut-rate Falcon Is; the availability of the Allen Array and USL for solving the up-/downlink problem; Armadillo’s work on cheap/reliable TLI and lander stages/rockets/software; the readily available rover and small mission expertise of folks like Whittaker and Spears in the universities and private sector; and the demand for sponsorships and other revenue streams to compete with/be associated with Google. I worry a little about the 2012 timeframe, but 2014 would appear to be within reach.

My 2 cents… FWIW.

You are off topic (as is this), but modern economic theory has advanced greatly since 1929, and has shown that the depression was not caused by the stock market crash, but by extremely tight money (we did not understand monetary policy at the time) and was exacerbated by protectionism.

Because of the tight money, the banks stopped lending, and this killed business, which laid off people, who stopped buying, which killed more companies, who laid off people.

Economic cycles these are much more manageable, because of modern economic theory and practice.

– Al

2. “I cannot help but raise a dissenting voice to statements that we are living in a fool’s paradise, and that prosperity in this country must necessarily diminish and recede in the near future.”
– E. H. H. Simmons, President, New York Stock Exchange, January 12, 1928

“There will be no interruption of our permanent prosperity.”
– Myron E. Forbes, President, Pierce Arrow Motor Car Co., January 12, 1928

3. “No Congress of the United States ever assembled, on surveying the state of the Union, has met with a more pleasing prospect than that which appears at the present time. In the domestic field there is tranquility and contentment…and the highest record of years of prosperity. In the foreign field there is peace, the goodwill which comes from mutual understanding.”
– Calvin Coolidge December 4, 1928

4. “There may be a recession in stock prices, but not anything in the nature of a crash.”
– Irving Fisher, leading U.S. economist , New York Times, Sept. 5, 1929

5. “Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau. I do not feel there will be soon if ever a 50 or 60 point break from present levels, such as (bears) have predicted. I expect to see the stock market a good deal higher within a few months.”
– Irving Fisher, Ph.D. in economics, Oct. 17, 1929

“This crash is not going to have much effect on business.”
– Arthur Reynolds, Chairman of Continental Illinois Bank of Chicago, October 24, 1929

“There will be no repetition of the break of yesterday… I have no fear of another comparable decline.”
– Arthur W. Loasby (President of the Equitable Trust Company), quoted in NYT, Friday, October 25, 1929

“We feel that fundamentally Wall Street is sound, and that for people who can afford to pay for them outright, good stocks are cheap at these prices.”
– Goodbody and Company market-letter quoted in The New York Times, Friday, October 25, 1929

6. “This is the time to buy stocks. This is the time to recall the words of the late J. P. Morgan… that any man who is bearish on America will go broke. Within a few days there is likely to be a bear panic rather than a bull panic. Many of the low prices as a result of this hysterical selling are not likely to be reached again in many years.”
– R. W. McNeel, market analyst, as quoted in the New York Herald Tribune, October 30, 1929

“Buying of sound, seasoned issues now will not be regretted”
– E. A. Pearce market letter quoted in the New York Herald Tribune, October 30, 1929

“Some pretty intelligent people are now buying stocks… Unless we are to have a panic — which no one seriously believes, stocks have hit bottom.”
– R. W. McNeal, financial analyst in October 1929

7. “The decline is in paper values, not in tangible goods and services…America is now in the eighth year of prosperity as commercially defined. The former great periods of prosperity in America averaged eleven years. On this basis we now have three more years to go before the tailspin.”
– Stuart Chase (American economist and author), NY Herald Tribune, November 1, 1929
“Hysteria has now disappeared from Wall Street.”
– The Times of London, November 2, 1929

“The Wall Street crash doesn’t mean that there will be any general or serious business depression… For six years American business has been diverting a substantial part of its attention, its energies and its resources on the speculative game… Now that irrelevant, alien and hazardous adventure is over. Business has come home again, back to its job, providentially unscathed, sound in wind and limb, financially stronger than ever before.”
– Business Week, November 2, 1929

“…despite its severity, we believe that the slump in stock prices will prove an intermediate movement and not the precursor of a business depression such as would entail prolonged further liquidation…”
– Harvard Economic Society (HES), November 2, 1929

8. “… a serious depression seems improbable; [we expect] recovery of business next spring, with further improvement in the fall.”
– HES, November 10, 1929

“The end of the decline of the Stock Market will probably not be long, only a few more days at most.”
– Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics at Yale University, November 14, 1929

“In most of the cities and towns of this country, this Wall Street panic will have no effect.”
– Paul Block (President of the Block newspaper chain), editorial, November 15, 1929

“Financial storm definitely passed.”
– Bernard Baruch, cablegram to Winston Churchill, November 15, 1929

9. “I see nothing in the present situation that is either menacing or warrants pessimism… I have every confidence that there will be a revival of activity in the spring, and that during this coming year the country will make steady progress.”
– Andrew W. Mellon, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury December 31, 1929
“I am convinced that through these measures we have reestablished confidence.”
– Herbert Hoover, December 1929

“[1930 will be] a splendid employment year.”
– U.S. Dept. of Labor, New Year’s Forecast, December 1929

10. “For the immediate future, at least, the outlook (stocks) is bright.”
– Irving Fisher, Ph.D. in Economics, in early 1930

11. “…there are indications that the severest phase of the recession is over…”
– Harvard Economic Society (HES) Jan 18, 1930

12. “There is nothing in the situation to be disturbed about.”
– Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon, Feb 1930

13. “The spring of 1930 marks the end of a period of grave concern…American business is steadily coming back to a normal level of prosperity.”
– Julius Barnes, head of Hoover’s National Business Survey Conference, Mar 16, 1930
“… the outlook continues favorable…”
– HES Mar 29, 1930

14 “… the outlook is favorable…”
– HES Apr 19, 1930

15. “While the crash only took place six months ago, I am convinced we have now passed through the worst — and with continued unity of effort we shall rapidly recover. There has been no significant bank or industrial failure. That danger, too, is safely behind us.”
– Herbert Hoover, President of the United States, May 1, 1930
“…by May or June the spring recovery forecast in our letters of last December and November should clearly be apparent…”
– HES May 17, 1930

“Gentleman, you have come sixty days too late. The depression is over.”
– Herbert Hoover, responding to a delegation requesting a public works program to help speed the recovery, June 1930

16. “… irregular and conflicting movements of business should soon give way to a sustained recovery…”
– HES June 28, 1930

17. “… the present depression has about spent its force…”
– HES, Aug 30, 1930

18. “We are now near the end of the declining phase of the depression.”
– HES Nov 15, 1930

19. “Stabilization at [present] levels is clearly possible.”
– HES Oct 31, 1931

20. “All safe deposit boxes in banks or financial institutions have been sealed… and may only be opened in the presence of an agent of the I.R.S.”
– President F.D. Roosevelt, 1933

The bottom line is it’s up to congress how much compliance they want to pay for. If NASA wanted to launch a 1 kg brick into space, it would now cost >$1M in unavoidable paperwork; in contrast, the price of launch is about $10,000/kg. So, paperwork binds us to this Earth more strongly than gravity, and on our present course the future belongs to the universities and billionaires.