NASA, Other

More on Constellation and the importance of human spaceflight

In this week’s issue of The Space Review I report on Mike Griffin’s defense of the current exploration architecture that he made in a speech last month. This is an expanded version of a post here on the speech, with a review of the logic that NASA followed under Griffin that led to the current two-vehicle shuttle-derived approach, as well as some of the current questions about the architecture such as the thrust oscillation issue.

The last part of the article goes into a slightly different direction, bringing up a familiar topic: whether the US is somehow falling behind China and other countries in human spaceflight. Griffin notes that China is developing the capabilities that could allow them to send humans to the Moon, while Russia already has virtually all of the pieces other than a lander and, now that the country is in better economic health, “can pretty much do it” within a half-dozen years of starting. As for the importance of all this, Griffin said, “I consider it to be impossible that other nations will be leading in space and the US still regarded has having primacy in the world. If other nations are leading in space, then the United States will be like Spain or Holland: once great, but no longer important in the affairs of humankind.”

Is that necessarily the case? Would the US lose its leadership in world affairs if other nations took a leading role in space (where “leading in space” is apparently defined by the achievements of human spaceflight)? It would probably depend on the circumstances: an ignominious collapse of a post-shuttle architecture, with nothing to replace it, could be a blow to national prestige on the global stage. On the other hand, a deliberate decision to, say, turn human spaceflight over to the private sector and focus government programs on key issues facing the nation and world today (like climate change, alternative energies, biotechnology, etc.) might be perceived quite differently, and could even enhance US leadership globally. The “human spaceflight = global leadership” argument worked during the 1960s, but may not be nearly as clear and effective in the 2010s and beyond.

36 comments to More on Constellation and the importance of human spaceflight

  • Dr. Sputnik

    The esteemed Dr. Griffin is also unsure that global warming is a problem, and even if it is, there isn’t anything we can do about it. His approach to the fundamental behaviors of solid rocket boosters doesn’t deviate from this.

  • Turning human spaceflight over to the private sector should be a national priority, but it is essential that we don’t just close down NASA and hope that private companies fill in. Out government should protect and encourage private enterprise from government monopolies and when the private companies are ready, faze out what NASA does that is redundant to the private sector and more expensively than the private sector.

  • The People

    The “human spaceflight = global leadership” argument worked during the 1960s, but may not be nearly as clear and effective in the 2010s and beyond.

    Very well put, Jeff. Griffin’s view is antiquated and harkens back to an era when the population was not as technically savvy as it is today. To complement your equivalence statement, the era also embraced the “more powerful nukes = global leadership” argument.

  • .

    if Mr. Griffin admits that Russia and China have (or will have soon) the space hardware to win the new Moon race, WHY he has made the (bad) choice to develop so complex and expensive rockets to win?

    .

  • .

    if Mr. Griffin admits that Russia and China have (or will have soon) the space hardware to win the new Moon race, WHY he has made the (bad) choice to develop so complex and expensive rockets to win that race rather than simpler and cheaper EELV derived?

    .

  • canttellya

    Gaetano asks a very good question. If Griffin considers that Russia has the pieces (save the lander) to mount a lunar mission, then why don’t we consider EELVs and a straight Apollo-equivalent capsule our assets in such a campaign? If it’s really that important to go to the Moon, why are we wasting time reinventing everything on a huge scale?

    The reality is that all of Griffin’s talk is simply rhetoric designed to boost NASA’s manned spaceflight budget. China, India, and Russia aren’t going to the Moon and it looks like neither are we. Send our robotic emissaries at a fraction of the cost and an order-of-magnitude of the per-dollar scientific payoff.

  • Charles in Houston

    Colleagues –

    This article presents many opportunities to wax eloquent, but we should stick to the heart of Jeff’s question:

    Is that [the US would be once-great but no longer relevant globally] necessarily the case? Would the US lose its leadership in world affairs if other nations took a leading role in space (where “leading in space” is apparently defined by the achievements of human spaceflight)?

    We should separate (in our discussion) the government space program from the national space economy. A huge part of the national space economy is a global communications satellite building and launching business. Even if the US did not have a manned spaceflight capability, that would still be there and be significant. The government space program is primarily a military effort [considering budget here – since it reveals our priorities] and that does not depend on a manned space capability. The remaining, well publicized, part of the national space capability is the manned and robotic NASA programs. The robotic space exploration is doing great things – though it gets very little press.

    Summarizing here, that leaves the manned space program. I would contend that (not that I would want to see this!) the US would do just fine without it!! As I say, I do not want to see that situation occur.

    We would still have the world’s largest (by far) military and you dare not dismiss a country that has such a monumental capability.

    I would say that the world would be far better off if the US continues to cross flow a lot of it’s technology and human capital into manned space exploration. The world will especially benefit if we have a large, cooperative program that allows us to work together and build bridges. If the people of various countries know each other it will be harder to demonize other countries.

    So where am I going with all of this? A sustainable lunar exploration program will require significant committment from all of the major countries of the world – thank goodness. China or Russia could mount Apollo style missions to the Moon but they would have the same result that we had – they would have a hard time justifying a continued presence. Going to Mars is orders of magnitude more difficult and it is hard for me to believe that any single country could do that.

    So – either we cooperate and go to the Moon and Mars (and whereever) or we waste our opportunities racing to various mileposts in space. And once we are there, we try to recall why we went.

    Manned space efforts present an opportunity for collaborative effort more than an essential part of our economies.

    Charles

    PS I am trying to keep a complex subject short!

  • canttellya

    Summarizing here, that leaves the manned space program. I would contend that (not that I would want to see this!) the US would do just fine without it!! As I say, I do not want to see that situation occur.

    In all honesty, I have to ask: if we don’t need it, if it isn’t cost-effective, if it doesn’t return value, why keep it? That’s what any business would ask of some division that was expensive and under-performing.

  • Jeff: might be perceived quite differently, and could even enhance US leadership globally

    That may well be true, but the perception is also likely to be quite wrong. The nation or culture or group of same that sends their people to other worlds will, over time, gain cultural, trade, and yes, scientific, advantages that data alone, no matter how valuable, cannot match. These advantages may not be apparent today, especially to those who don’t want to see them, but human history makes it very unlikely that they are not there. We forfit that experience at our own risk, especially since spaceflight, human or otherwise, costs such a small part of what we spend.

    — Donald

  • canttellya

    That may well be true, but the perception is also likely to be quite wrong. The nation or culture or group of same that sends their people to other worlds will, over time, gain cultural, trade, and yes, scientific, advantages that data alone, no matter how valuable, cannot match.

    You’re making a historical analogy here that is basically flawed. There’s no court of Kublai Khan waiting for us on Mars. There’s no Aztecs with a rich empire waiting to be plundered. There’s no spice to be shipped back to an eager market. I would challenge anyone to name a substance out there in the solar system worth the cost of shipping back to Earth.

    Data and scientific advancement is what waits for us in space, not dollar signs (unfortunately).

    PS Think about Star Trek. How many episodes did the crew beam down to a planet totally devoid of intelligent life or thought? Never. Because that would have been boring.

  • Canttellya:There’s no court of Kublai Khan waiting for us on Mars. There’s no Aztecs with a rich empire waiting to be plundered.

    What you are missing is that in the first wave of human colonization of the new world, there were no pre-existing cultures either. They had to be created from scratch — and were. There would have been no Aztecs had that first colonization not taken place. That is the model that we need to be thinking about, not Spaniards plundering Aztecs or trading resources between the continents, which cannot happen on Earth or in space until the former has happened.

    There’s no spice to be shipped back to an eager market. I would challenge anyone to name a substance out there in the solar system worth the cost of shipping back to Earth.

    Probably true, but there are also likely to be a number of items that can be shipped back to LEO where they would (potentially, at this point, granted) have great value. Oxygen, to start. Over time, what is the heaviest component of any spacecraft, especially one that requires a lot of Delta-V? It is oxidizer for the fuel. Today, it seems rediculous to obtain oxygen for, say, weather or spy satellites from an asteroid or the moon, but as applications satellites continue to increase in size, and as it gets cheaper to get oxygen from space (which it will, especially if it can ride along on a transportation infrastructure built for something else), then at some point an oxygen trade could make sense. It seems a lot less rediculous when you consider the far larger oxygen requirement of the Space Station, future facilities, orbital tourism facilities, or human transport to the planets. The trick is to not imagine importing gold from the New World to Spain (which, at a guess, probably didn’t even make strictly economic sense for Spain at the time), but to imagine the world that relatively easy transportation to the new world created a few hundred years later. Moving oil between continents would have seemed absurd to the Spaniards, yet where would we be today if their idiotic search for non-existant gold had not helped to develop the skills that make that possible?

    The expansion of humanity over the Earth, like any into the Solar System, was a positive feedback over time, where — vast oversimplification here — one incremental step created a “market” for trade, which in turn allowed the next incremental step. If we want (need, if you want humanity to have a long-term future) a human future in the Solar System, then our role today is to create the beginings of that positive feedback — which means establishing initial bases on nearby worlds which make no economic sense in and of themselves but, by their existance, create markets that can justify commercial or semi-commercial resupply. That is how you create a spacefaring economy. I think it unlikely that there are any shortcuts that could make it happen easily or fast.

    — Donald

  • Al Fansome

    I am struck by the amount of agreement here that Mike Griffin and his ESAS strategy is out of tune with the times.

    I want to dig into one of Donald’s statements. There is an important truth buried in it … but the truth is not clear from his statement.

    JEFF: might be perceived quite differently, and could even enhance US leadership globally

    DONALD: That may well be true, but the perception is also likely to be quite wrong. The nation or culture or group of same that sends their people to other worlds will, over time, gain cultural, trade, and yes, scientific, advantages that data alone, no matter how valuable, cannot match. These advantages may not be apparent today, especially to those who don’t want to see them, but human history makes it very unlikely that they are not there. We forfit that experience at our own risk, especially since spaceflight, human or otherwise, costs such a small part of what we spend.

    Donald,

    I agree that you are correct in the VERY LONG-TERM. However, I think you agree that a short-term gap in human spaceflight is a national security issue is disingenuous. If true, the DOD would be speaking up in agreement.

    So, we need to take your statement a step further.

    The requirement for LONG-TERM success in what you (and I and many others) want to see happen — specifically “sending people to other worlds — is that it ” must be both 1) Sustainable, and 2) Supportable.

    If we start from these first principals, we can quickly see that the current system is neither economically sustainable or politically supportable.

    This means two things —

    * “It’s the economics stupid!” (NASA must decisively transform its relationship to the private sector ala the Aldridge report.)

    * “It’s the political strategy, stupid!” (NASA must figure out first what the politicians want, and then design its approach to give the politicians what they want. This should replace the current NASA strategy of “Let’s figure out what we want, and then try real hard to sell what we want to the politicians.”)

    I am convinced that by far the biggest space policy mistake that the Bush Administration committed in the last 7 years was putting a rocket scientist in charge of NASA. If Bush had selected a “James Webb” type of person for NASA Administrator, I am convinced we would be having a much different conversation these days. I am convinced that the VSE would have much more support today. I am convinced that a James Webb kind of Administrator would have adopted many of the Aldridge Commission recommendations.

    If you recall, James Webb was the politico. The Deputy Administrator (Hugh Dryden) was the engineer.

    – Al

    “Politics is not rocket science, which is why rocket scientists don’t understand politics.”

  • Anon

    CANTELLYA: I would challenge anyone to name a substance out there in the solar system worth the cost of shipping back to Earth.

    Actually, there is already something that is worth the cost of “shipping” back to Earth. Just look at telecommunications satellites. Those satellites beam energy (and information) to Earth.

    There is virtually-unlimited clean energy in the solar system, which can be beamed back to civilization on Earth.

    As others have pointed out, doing so in an cost effective manner is a “tremendous challenge”. However, human civilization really does need a very large source of clean virtually inexhaustible energy. Our politicians are climbing over each other trying to prove they are more committed (than the other guy/gal) to solving this energy/environmental problem. They even invoke “Apollo” as a mental model for attacking the energy problem.

    Building off the “theme” of this thread …

    QUESTION: A hundred years from now, do you want America to be selling energy to China and India, do you want America to become an energy exporter, or do you want America to buy power from them?

    – Anon

  • I completely concur that the exploration enterprise – in whatever form – needs to return value. The ongoing discussion about whether ESAS will do so is problematic (in part) because little systematic work has been done to define precisely what the nature of “value” is or might be in this context. We all have our opinions (I certaintly have mine!) – but I’m struck as I read Jeff’s post and comments that many of the responses here could be read as attempts to address these questions… What value(s) do we want our exploration program(s) to return? How do we measure value? How do we direct national efforts to return value? There are several potential domains in which value could be defined (international/strategic; scientific; market-stimulating; etc.) – and of course many of these overlap. I’m willing to entertain the probability that we haven’t discovered what the best of these might be, since many of our referents are historical. Innovative/emergent approaches may require us to break away from the past. Until there is a cogent, focused effort in the community (gov’t/industry/advocates/policy circles) to seriously undertake a value discovery and prioritization process, I fear we’re going to keep spinning our wheels.

  • canttellya

    QUESTION: A hundred years from now, do you want America to be selling energy to China and India, do you want America to become an energy exporter, or do you want America to buy power from them?

    I want America! That’s why I’m so glad we have so much uranium and thorium. We’ll be all set if we go ahead and start using this magnificent resource.

  • Al: I agree with about every word. That’s why I think the VSE with it’s emphasis of using currently available technology to get started on bases that might become markets, was a breakthrough strategy. It’s also why I think ESAS is such a disaster. It’s unnecessarily wasteful by failing to use our current capabilities without advancing the State of the Art, and it’s too slow to achieve politically sellable resaults.

    However, I would be careful to avoid looking only at economic sustainability. No space strategy that can get us anywhere will be economically sustainable in the near future. It can be politically sustainable. (Look, for example, to the Space Station which is economically unjustifiable, at least in the short term, but has been politically sustainable over decades of development and now deployment. Clearly, political and economic sustainability are not synonymous.)

    All that said, government human spaceflight to the moon or asteroids needs to be as inexpensive as possible in the near term, which, I think most of us agree, is where ESAS fails the test. “Facts on the ground” (the existing Space Station, a lunar base) provide a lot more market than theoretical plans for something that never happens.

    — Donald

  • canttellya

    All that said, government human spaceflight to the moon or asteroids needs to be as inexpensive as possible in the near term

    The best way to make your statement come to pass is to take the word “human” out of it.

  • No, Canttellya, because that compromises the results too much. You get (limited) data in the short term, but you get extremely limited field work, no experience building the large structures that could lead to large permanent instruments or industrial facilities, no eventual commerce and trade, and no long-term future. Humanity does not live by data alone. . . .

    — Donald

  • canttellya

    On the contrary, Donald, it is the human in the equation that compromises the results. Compare a $100B human lunar mission with four people spending less than 7 days on the lunar surface, 3/4th of which is spent eating, sleeping, getting into and out of the suit, doing PR tasks for the home audience vs. a $500M lunar rover like MER that can operate day and night for years and traverse many kilometers.

    Is the human return 200 times better than the robotic mission?

    Take some of the savings and build the large structures you want.

  • Canttellya:

    Is the human return 200 times better than the robotic mission?

    Yes, and that is an enormous underestimate. Set aside your bias for a moment and read up on the purely scientific results of the Apollo project (which was hardly optimized for science). The astronauts quickly did wide-ranging taverses on steep tallus-covered slopes and obtained intelligently collected samples over very wide areas. Apollo-17 did a fairly comprehensive geologic survey of an entire alpine valley in just three days. To this date, the Apollo database remains the standard by which the rest of the Solar System is measured (consider absolutely dated cratering rates which are an exclusive product of Apollo and have yet to be duplicated since, on the moon or anywhere else). I suggest you read Exploring the Moon: the Apollo expeditions by David M. Hartland, especially the section on Apollo-16 before continuing this argument. This myth that clockwork robots can somehow duplicate the field work that can be casually implented by geologists on site is just that, and it is far past time for a closer examination of what “everyone knows.”

    — Donald

  • Ray

    Canttellya: “Gaetano asks a very good question. If Griffin considers that Russia has the pieces (save the lander) to mount a lunar mission, then why don’t we consider EELVs and a straight Apollo-equivalent capsule our assets in such a campaign? If it’s really that important to go to the Moon, why are we wasting time reinventing everything on a huge scale?”

    With some political help, he could perhaps have started the lunar program using these Russian pieces and concentrated on the lunar lander and the stuff you want to actually use on the Moon when you get there. This might have been a lot cheaper, gotten results quicker, and (given the strange NASA approach where commercial participation for some reason needs to wait until after a government lunar transportation system is made) could have started commercial participation sooner. It could have also had diplomatic advantages. Maybe the transportation system would have only been Apollo-equivalent (e.g. 2 astronauts per trip), but more trips probably could have been made, and to beef up the capabilities some of those could perhaps have brought just cargo (or commercial space could have served that role).

    Other nations could also have been brought into the effort early.

    This would have left other nations in the critical path of the effort. Big deal, given the advantages (if Russia, for example, is truly in such a good position already as Griffin suggests). There’s nothing in this approach that would have precluded mixing and matching transportation pieces when the basic architecture is finished, or earlier. In fact, that could have been put into the plan right from the beginning – U.S. adding the launcher and CEV equivalent later, perhaps (maybe through something COTS-like?), Russia adding their own lunar lander, etc … to make the transportation system more robust, and not depending on the political whims of any one country.

    Or … as Canttellya suggests, a U.S. only transportation plan that begins with EELVs and an Apollo-level capability (maybe with refueling or multiple dockings) would have been a good place to start. It seems that ULA and Bigelow think EELVs are safe enough for astronauts, despite NASA’s claims. Again commercial space could have been tasked with the bulk cargo transportation. The savings from not having to develop big Ares/Orion/Ares V systems could have paid for commercial cargo delivery and development of the cargo itself so even a limited 2-person mission would have lots of capability when the commercial cargo gets started.

  • Ray

    Charles in Houston: “Summarizing here, that leaves the manned space program. I would contend that (not that I would want to see this!) the US would do just fine without it!! As I say, I do not want to see that situation occur.”

    As Charles says, even without the NASA manned program, we’d have a lot of prominent and important space activities – NASA’s unmanned program, the multi-faceted commercial space realm, military space, NOAA, and even commercial suborbital space, commercial sort-of space (Zero-G, Lunar Lander Challenge, Rocket Racing, etc), and possibly commercial orbital human spaceflight in the future.

    That’s not too bad.

    In the “worst” scenario that seems likely, the VSE is cancelled, and NASA use of the ISS continues, supplied eventually by Ares 1 and/or COTS. That’s not too different from what we have now. Probably even in a very bad case for NASA manned spaceflight, Ares or COTS would be used eventually for some or all of the following (at least 1 or 2 of them), even if none of the big human exploration missions (Moon, Mars, asteroids) get funded:

    – NASA use of crewed suborbital spaceflight
    – additions to ISS
    – new government space station following ISS (man-tended or permanently crewed)
    – NASA use of Bigelow (or other commercial) modules
    – satellite servicing of some kind (LEO, GEO, L-point)
    – lunar orbiter

    All of these strike me as being achievable from the funding point of view, even with major cutbacks. They would all be gravy compared to what we have now in NASA human spaceflight. Advances in commercial space have the potential to make some or all of these even more achievable.

    In fact any of these, from my point of view, would be better than ESAS, for the simple reason that I don’t think ESAS will ever reach the Moon.

  • Al Fansome

    Mary Lynne,

    Welcome to spacepolitics.com!

    DITTMAR: I completely concur that the exploration enterprise – in whatever form – needs to return value. The ongoing discussion about whether ESAS will do so is problematic (in part) because little systematic work has been done to define precisely what the nature of “value” is or might be in this context.

    Would you also concur that to be most effective that we first should evaluate and prioritize our “value-based strategic objectives”, and only then start evaluating/choosing system options to deliver that value … considering that we will be stuck with that choice for 30-40 years?

    The Griffin approach is … 1) Down-select among the many many options first using Griffin’s values, and then 2) Hire marketing companies to help him sell his self-selected approach. The $160k to pay for a “brand” is the most recent example of this.

    DITTMAR: I’m struck as I read Jeff’s post and comments that many of the responses here could be read as attempts to address these questions… What value(s) do we want our exploration program(s) to return? How do we measure value? How do we direct national efforts to return value? There are several potential domains in which value could be defined (international/strategic; scientific; market-stimulating; etc.) – and of course many of these overlap.

    I think that is exactly what people here are attempting to do.

    DITTMAR: I’m willing to entertain the probability that we haven’t discovered what the best of these might be, since many of our referents are historical. Innovative/emergent approaches may require us to break away from the past.

    I think a lot of people here will tell you they know “what the best” will be. The problem being there is not sufficient consensus (yet).

    However, I think we can generate much more consensus if we conduct real market research for which the answers are not pre-selected, and the survey unnecessarily constrained. I think we would all like to see hard data about what the American people would really support.

    I think hard data from scientific market research would end some of the endless debating, and bring people together for action.

    While you and others know how to do this kind of research, the sad fact is that the powers that be do not want it — and others will not pay for it either (because doing so would risk angering the powers that be.)

    I would much prefer that NASA spent $160,000 doing real market research, rather than throwing away $160,000 for “branding” of a system they have already picked.

    DITTMAR: Until there is a cogent, focused effort in the community (gov’t/industry/advocates/policy circles) to seriously undertake a value discovery and prioritization process, I fear we’re going to keep spinning our wheels.

    I concur.

    That said, it is hard to have a “cogent, focused effort … to seriously undertake a value discovery and prioritization process” when the NASA Administrator is not supportive as he fears that a “value discovery and prioritization process” might lead to an answer he does not like.

    I do believe there would be a great deal of latent support for such an approach, but it will have to wait for a new leader.

    I think Tom Matula’s market survey work is suggestive of the kind of approach we need to adopt to find out exactly where the American people think the “real value” lies. (My apologies, but I am less familiar with the details of your work … but I believe you are just as qualified if not more qualified to conduct the same kind of research.) I would like to see this kind of “market research” conducted by national space policy leaders in the next Administration.

    – Al

  • Gaetano,

    concerning why ‘Mike’ didn’t use EELV launch systems, the language in the VSE authorization is clearly biased towards a Space Shuttle derived system.

    “The Administrator shall, to the fullest extent possible consistent with a successful development program, use the personnel, capabilities, assets, and infrastructure of the Space Shuttle program in developing the Crew Exploration Vehicle, Crew Launch Vehicle, and a heavy-lift launch vehicle.”

    Even if Mike were a fan of shoe horning VSE into 5m fairings, which anyone who knows anything about manned spacecraft isn’t BTW, he couldn’t have pursued this path by law. This clause was added to the bill by the politicians as a direct reaction to the lobbying that preceded the VSE authorization that advocated shutting down MSFC and KSC as we know it and directed us towards a 100% EELV solution. 90% of the people representing the very powerful interests groups that put this little clause in there will still be there even after the next President is elected.

    Having bigger fish to fry the President’s advisors interacting with Congress will ultimate set our nations space policy post election. Going out of your way to hack up someone’s district is no way to make friends. We aren’t going to fix the serious resource problems ahead of us by shutting down what represents less than one days worth of spending at the federal level. A political savvy President will want to preserve this goodwill for issues that will be more important and where painful decisions can be spread more evenly.

    What both the 100% EELV and current Ares-I/V concepts share is that neither of them are Space Shuttle derived as measured by utilization of the existing manufacturing, integration or launch infrastructure. Something DIRECT specifically solves which brings it into actual compliance with the VSE authorization as signed into law. Imagine that a VSE implementation plan that actual works within the authority given to it by Congress. The mind boggles. You mean you actual intend to do something like you were actually authorized to do what’s the world coming to.

    Congress writes the laws and the President (and his designees like Mike) executes the laws. It’s not Mike’s personal space program. Why Congress has not sent a strong statement to Mike via the President at this point is beyond all understanding. Mike is only a temporary steward of the public trust as authorized by our elected representatives. NASA and its resources is not his own personal play toy to build monuments to his ego in a vain attempt to be a greater engineer than Wernher Von Braun.

    Forgetting the law for a minute since that seems to be all the rage (something that Mike, 100% EELV and Stanford Clubs all share in common), if the objectives of the VSE were to be a nostalgic return to the moon than I think EELV would work fine in the way the Russia and China are planning. They haven’t even been there once so they get a pass on their approach in my book, good for them if the succeed. For America though we need to build up from our legacy not just re-live it in some nostalgic multi-billion dollar equivalent of a Civil War battle reenactment. To build upon that legacy we need more mass and volume something the EELV or even direct derivatives of EELV cannot provide. In fact the best a direct EELV derivative can do ends just where the entry level Jupiter-120 begins. Going beyond that would require a new rocket altogether along the lines of the Saturn V. Or we could just add an upper stage to the Jupiter-1 series making it a Jupiter-2 series beating both the Saturn V and Ares V in terms of implementation time, payload, volume, and cost to orbit.

  • Mary Lynne Dittmar,

    I read your piece in the Space Review a little while back and your recent post reminded me of some comments I just haven’t had the time until now to write down. First I understand the importance of value and branding. In fact I sometimes wonder if we couldn’t fund the space program just by charging royalties on all the NASA related stuff being sold. If NASA cost just pennies a day for everyone citizen in the country then it’s not a stretch to think that a dollar royalty on fuzzy Space Shuttle toy would start to bring in some serious revenue. When we spend more on dog treats than Space Exploration one has to wonder if we couldn’t at least cover a portion of what we doing in Space Exploration using this method.

    There is no replacement for success and as such the implementation plan plays a big part in everyone’s value assessment to the degree it affects success. So the little debates we engineers are having on better approaches towards implement the VSE will play an important role in establishing value. How many people would buy a car that won’t start even if it was effectively marketed? Will the impending engineering failure of Ares-I improve or decrease the perceived value of NASA?

    I read a survey that showed that the average American’s guess on what NASA spends as a percentage of the National budget was more than 10 times higher than what is actually spent. This is both good and bad. It’s good in the sense that the average American believes that the level of money required to do what NASA does is much higher than what it cost to achieve. It’s bad because for those who dispute the value of NASA altogether it represents more money than is actually available to solve problems they believe are more important.

    What is the value of NASA? It depends on the mindset of those you ask really. For those who believe that America is the primary source of most if not all evil in the world, no amount of public relations or well crafted mission statement will help. In fact NASA only serves to remind them that occasionally we can get things right and so they seek to diminish NASA’s accomplishments and importance in order to reduce the cognitive dissonance associated with their world view. It’s the same mindset that claims that the President was behind 9-11 and that America never even landed on the Moon. They explain way or cast any world event into their mindset. In summary these people are hopeless and need some serious psychiatric evaluation before being allowed anywhere near voting booth.

    Now for American’s we already have deep love for our nation and the predominately positive role it has played in the history of mankind. Never has just 5% of the world’s population been so instrumental in bring about the peace and prosperity seen in the world today. Having defeated Feudalism, Slavery, National Socialism and Communism we are now confronting an ideology born in the Arabian Desert a thousand years before American became a nation yet has many of the same totalitarian attributes we have fought since our founding.

    For American’s arguing the value of the America’s space program is not a tough sell. The only thing we are looking for is that the space program is efficient and continues to move forward. By national policy NASA manned space exploration was confined by law to LEO. The VSE authorization removed that restriction and specially directs NASA to begin a gradual process towards moving manned exploration beyond LEO and out into the solar system. Whether it takes 20,30,40,50 or 100 years is really up to how efficiently we use whatever resources are provided by the political and/or free market process. This must also be seen as a generational endeavor different than America’s expansion into the west but that still builds up a great Nation’s sense of self-actualization. There in is your value statement. One that you will never convince those among us that hate America and one you don’t have to convince us American’s of. Modern day pyramids placed throughout the solar system.

  • Dr. Strangelove

    Stephen, can you tell me where you got your tinfoil hat, and what brand it is, because my home brewed tin foil hat just isn’t doing a very good job for me.

    Seriously, your rhetoric is nauseating. You need to take a good look at the civilization you’ve got, because pyramids are several civilizations out of date, and we all know what happens to skyscrapers built with the pointy side down.

    Those previous civilizations are gone, and yours is going the very same route.

  • Habitat Hermit

    What a typical “criticism” devoid of any actual specifics and replete with name-calling and nonsensical irrelevancy by Dr. Strangelove. A person who quite likely hasn’t ever seen the movie since he names himself after that character. Or perhaps Dr. Strangelove truly is the most fitting name? Perhaps he’s Dr. Strangelove’s favorite (fictional) national socialist?

    It’s safe to say most here prefer Von Braun over such an imagined (and quite mad) stereotype but you probably don’t know much about him either… ^_^

  • Dr Strangelove,

    Please by all means expand on the tin foil hatyness of my comments and how you take exception to an ‘American Exceptionalism’ view point. Just google that phrase for a definition if you already don’t know it.

    Here is a quick quiz just so I can place your mindset in the proper context for your answers to the above.

    Do you think George Bush was in someway behind 9-11 attacks?
    Do you think that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon July 20, 1967?
    Do you think the United States is the primary source of evil in the world?

    Say hi to Slim Pickens for me :)

  • canttellya

    Do you think that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon July 20, 1967?

    I sure don’t think Neil and Buzz walked on the Moon THAT day.

  • Canttellya,
    Extra-Credit, I threw in trick question :) not really. Just plain messed up. Hey I was two at the time.

    Dr Strangelove, make that 2:56 UTC July 21, 1969

  • Dr. Strangelove

    http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

    http://www.ibiblio.org/lunarbin/worldpop

    http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/

    http://www.actionbioscience.org/newfrontiers/eldredge2.html

    Seriously Mr. Mentschan, your rhetoric is obscene. Not only are we going to destroy at the voting booth, we are going to invalidate are reverse all of your policies for the last disastrous seven years. It’s over, give it up.

    Surrender would be your best move at this point. Direct is finished.

  • Habitat Hermit

    Oh ok so it’s Elifritz.

    I apologize to all for feeding the troll.

  • Dr Strangelove

    Okay, so you’ve told me what you are against. What would your space exploration policy be?

    BTW American’s don’t surrender.

  • Dr. Spunik

    BTW American’s don’t surrender

    No, they just fail, and then withdraw. It’s not such a big deal, it’s happened before, and it happened with the Russians. Just don’t let your pride stand in the way of fiscal solvency.

    I have published my manned space development position in the form of a NASA JSC-COTS-2 submission, you are free to read it at your convenience :

    http://webpages.charter.net/tsiolkovsky/proposal/IPO.doc

    I’m not suggesting you shelve your ideas about clean stack SRB assisted launchers, I’m just suggesting that the time frames involved, it’s current financial vulnerabilities and your choice of engines and expendability are extremely suspect, given than launchers do exist that use these engines.

    There may come a time in the future when space exploration strategies can be again entertained, but that time isn’t now, and that time is well beyond the several almost nearly insoluble crises that must be solved in order for sustainable space exploration to proceed. Your rhetoric only serves to further inflame an irrational and unaffordable enthusiasm for the fiscally, politically and technologically irresponsible acts that are the hallmark of this administration, and the popular electorate that elected them – twice now.

    My personal opinion is that given the exigencies of of our existing planet and the human biological, environmental and political conditions that exist upon it, that your continued insistence and patronization of the now clearly untenable hypothesis of human deep space exploration via expendable heavy lift boosters, indeed borders on the immoral, if not unethical.

  • Dr Spunik,

    I see nothing in your proposal that works within the constraints of the VSE authorization or works towards the VSE objectives. What I do see is a light version of what we have been doing in manned space exploration over the last thirty years. The Columbia disaster brought home the fact that our objectives in manned space exploration should be worth the blood and treasure required to achieve them regardless of how the budget may restrict the rate of our progress as we move beyond LEO.

    Swapping out the Space Shuttle for an EELV and leaving the mission objective of doing laps around LEO while trying not to kill the crew on ascent, in orbit or on return is not what the VSE is all about. Launch cost is only 20% of the life cycle cost of most space exploration as well so its ability to lower overall cost is very limited even if it was an utopian gas and go 100% RLV system. Shoe horning spacecraft into 5m is a great way to increase the spacecraft development and mission cost more than the actual launch cost as well. The Jupiter-232 hits below $5K/kg at around five launches per year a number even SpaceX can’t touch. Though SpaceX will still be safe in its market because beyond manned space exploration there is little need for 10m and 100mT per launch.

    While I agree the US has some serious problems ahead us you aren’t going to solve those serious problems by shutting down NASA and saving less money than what the Federal Government spends in a day.

    At some point someone is going to have to give everyone the bad news that Social Security will need to gradually reverted back to a social safety net for those who are unable to work due to old age but our not self-sufficient which I agree 100% with. How a nation treats the weakest among us is a sign of just how great it is and also part of American Exceptionalism which was part of FDR’s new deal.

    Here is a series of American Exceptionalism statements that should turn your stomach.

    -President John F. Kennedy, Houston, Texas Rice University (September 12, 1962)
    “Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolutions, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it–we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding.

    Yet the vows of this Nation can only be fulfilled if we in this Nation are first, and, therefore, we intend to be first. In short, our leadership in science and in industry, our hopes for peace and security, our obligations to ourselves as well as others, all require us to make this effort, to solve these mysteries, to solve them for the good of all men, and to become the world’s leading space-faring nation. We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people.”

    And so as to be bi-partisan;

    Ronald Reagan, January 26, 1983.
    “This country was founded and built by people with great dreams and the courage to take great risks.”

    Ronald Reagan, speech to Congress. January 1, 1984
    “America is too great for small dreams.”

    America is rich enough to spend less than one day of our federal budget on space exploration. Again sorry for turning your stomach yet again.

  • Dr. Spunik

    I see nothing in your proposal that works within the constraints of the VSE authorization or works towards the VSE objectives.

    Except for shuttle workforce retention. These are core stages that are not simply insulated with foam, and can be packed into transport aircraft and delivered to anywhere in the United States and beyond. We’re talking about flight rates that ultimately approach one per week, when full reusability and second generation reusable engine capabilities are well established.

    You don’t see anything about VSE in there because there is nothing to VSE.

    It’s a dead program, our space program involves space colonization in low earth and high earth orbit, and Earth and near Earth asteroid monitoring.

    This is a COTS proposal, an order of magnitude more ambitious than anything out there, and I have presented a very real and attainable path to high flight rate space flight, an order of magnitude reduction in low Earth orbit transportation costs, and a very clear flight test method of reusability development, which preserves our infrastructure and workforce assets.

    I have defined space flight for the next ten years at least. If after that you want to hang some SRBs onto this thing and go to Ceres or the moons of Mars, that’s your problem, but you aren’t going to do it without foam free resuable or retrofittable core stages with high performance regenerative engines, for the very clear physical and financial reasons I have outlined.

    It just isn’t going to happen, and having your people lie about the veracity of reusable engine costs, or reliability, isn’t going to make it happen. The SSMEs are the greatest assets in the technological portfolio of the United States of America, and I am not going to allow anyone to trash them beyond salvage, and then resurrect them again 40 years from now, without at least speaking out against it, and providing some rational solution to save them, especially when we already have two very good launch vehicles on the pad, one of which incidentally already uses the RS-68 for which it was designed.

    I’ll just run through the numbers quickly rounding them off for simplicity.

    We assume $10 billion total for 50 engines and 250 flights through 2000, which is a cost of $200 million per engine, with five flights per engine on average. That’s $40 million on average per engine flight, but these engines are still sitting in the shop (14 of them at least). That is within a factor of two for estimated RS-68 engine costs. Some of these engines have more than 20 flights on them, and they are rated for up to 55 flights. With these kinds of flight rates, these engines already approach the F1 in overall cost.

    http://groups.google.com/group/sci.space.shuttle/msg/snipped

    http://groups.google.com/group/sci.space.shuttle/msg/snipped

    http://www.angelfire.com/fl/Jacqmans/SSME.html

    I have handed a viable solution to Mr. Griffin’s (and indeed your own) problem, and if you aren’t smart or astute enough to recognize that, it’s your problem, not mine. I have done what I needed to do to solve this.

    If you want to retain shuttle workforce and assets, and you want America to lead in the post Sputnik space race Version 2.0, this is the way to start.

    My ass is suitably covered by my clothes and my conscience is clear on this.

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