In today’s issue of The Space Review, Charles Miller and I write part 2 of “The Vision for Space Exploration and the retirement of the Baby Boomers”. A few weeks after we looked at the impending fiscal pressures that imperil NASA and the Vision for Space Exploration. The solution to these challenges, we argue, is the development of cheap, reliable access to space (CRATS). CRATS has a lot of benefits for both the exploration program as well as commercial applications, but the real selling point may be its benefits to national security by providing a deterrent to asymmetric attacks on space assets.
The problem, of course, is the long history of previous attempts to develop CRATS. We write: “The primary issue for many of them is not whether CRATS is a good thing—they agree it is—but the fact that we have now tried several times, that we have failed just as many times, and achieving CRATS is not an easy thing to do. In fact, when they hear arguments for CRATS, they almost automatically hear another call for huge multi-billion-dollar programs, which will probably fail again.” How to avoid a repeat of past missteps will come in part 3.
It sounds like CRATS is the answer to all of our ills but forgive me if I was looking for an idea of what CRATS advocates! Smaller reusable boosters like small Solid Rocket Boosters from the Shuttle program? Winged vehicles like Virgin Galactic is planning? Proven boosters like the Atlas? What?
It claims to be able to protect us from having to drop dumb bombs, when the GPS network is destroyed. But there are no credible threats to the GPS satellites right now. And lots of bombs are guided by lasers – and do not require a GPS.
The article goes on with some very overheated claims such as: In 2006, North Korea demonstrated both a nuclear device and ballistic missiles, which in combination can be used for a high-altitude nuclear detonation. So what? No nuclear explosion is going to be high enough to affect geosynchronous communications satellites – which is a key to our economy.
The article states: Iran is also developing both ballistic missiles and nuclear technology. and so what? We still have a military that is a thousand times their size and capability. They might be able to attempt a single launch with an unproven booster but their chances of doing anything except justifying a massive retaliation are miniscule.
Anyway, the article is poorly researched and belongs at best on Fox News. Or maybe Lou Dobbs will carry it right after the threat due to angry polar bears.
i just hope that Jeff Foust doesn’t ban me forever from this site.
I thought COTS was going to provide CATS. Now its looks like CATS is not enough so we need to look for another magic bullet (aka CRATS)?
Really the solution is what it was in 1970, a TSTO Shuttle.
http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/shur134c.htm
We just need to fully fund it this time
Or waste another 40 years trying to do it on the cheap…
“And lots of bombs are guided by lasers – and do not require a GPS.”
Incorrect. Most are GPS guided. Only the F-15E uses LGB with the Lantrin pod. B-1, B-2, B-52, F-16, F-18, use JDAM
“No nuclear explosion is going to be high enough to affect geosynchronous communications satellites – which is a key to our economy.”
Incorrect, the EMP from a nuclear detonation will affect them
Charles in Houston,
It sounds like CRATS is the answer to all of our ills but forgive me if I was looking for an idea of what CRATS advocates!
Stay tuned for Part 3. I would emphasize that the key here is not a specific technology (aerospike engines, new TPS materials, magic pixie dust, etc.) but rather the process for identifying, developing, and testing various approaches in cooperation between government and industry.
As for the various national security arguments, we do have to be careful not to overstate the capabilities of potential adversaries, and hopefully Charles Miller and I haven’t overstated the case. However, those capabilities will only grow over time; wouldn’t it be nice to have a dual-use system that can serve as a deterrent on top of all the potential commercial and scientific benefits it could provide?
Anyway, the article is poorly researched and belongs at best on Fox News.
Given that many more people watch Fox News than read this blog, I’ll accept that as a compliment. However, if you feel that strongly about the article and would like to submit a rebuttal, I’d be happy to consider it for publication in The Space Review.
Some general comments:
1) the CRATS acronym has to go. You’re not just talking cheap and reliable. What you’re talking about is an economic and funding environment that fundamentally alters the original Space Act that created NASA.
2) As I mentioned at Space Access, I think one of the elements you can add to this and find a larger base is the horrible state of US science, technology and math related education. A public/private partnership of the sort being discussed (I think in Part 3) gets a big boost up if you can tie it to us _commercial_ workforce development.
3) I guess its my typical election year malaise, but I don’t think the majority of the American public are going to be really understand the economic crapper we’re going to be in. Even that diagram that showed mandatory expenditures is to abstract for some people to understand. Here in Georgia no one really understood our water issue as a crisis until they started getting hefty fines for running their water sprinkler or cities started shutting off the water supply. So I’m not sure if anyone is going to really get behind this or anything else until their personal taxes start going up or inflation goes into the double digits again.
-MM
“Really the solution is what it was in 1970, a TSTO Shuttle.”
That is not a proven solution
I’m always amused at people who assume that there is a single-point solution, and that it’s a design problem, rather than an institutional one.
You won’t know until someone builds it.
And if it was a multiple-point solution the market would have found at least one decades ago.
Instead Elon and Rutan are just picking up where the Saturn IB and X-15 left off.
Seriously, NASA has proposed realistic solutions for CATS for 40 years, but has never been given enough funding to implement them. Then gets blamed for not succeeding with CATS.
If you want CATS or CRATS or whatever it will be called tomorrow you just need to be willing to work to get the funding for it.
Boeing, Lockheed, etc, know even better then the New Spacers how to do it, look at the recent test by Lockheed of a flyback booster in New Mexico. Look at their X-33 Proposals. But they need money to build it. No Bucks, No Buck Rogers.
Hopefully that will be discussed in Part 3.
Jeff, unfortunately, I think you Mr. Miller and are correct to point to “security” as the one justification that could allow government-developed CRATS to go forward. The key lesson we should take from the past thirty years, I think, is that CRATS will be anything but easy, and I cannot think of any other motivation that would support the scale and duration of investment required.
Thanks also for publishing Mr. Day’s excellent article on spaceflight magazines. Somewhat to my surprise, I pretty much agreed with him. I think he is a touch too harsh on AvWeek, but I would second that the two most important resources are Space News and Spaceflight.
I would also second his implied observation on the importance of investigative Journalism. Newspapers serve one critical function in a democracy, that, so far, most Internet sources have singularly failed to fulfill — at their best, they pay people to dig up information that the powers that be, whether they be government or private, do not want you to see. In the space community, Space News, and to a lessor degree, AvWeek, and very occasionally even the New York Times or the Washington Post (e.g., the former’s excellent and very detailed piece on the Future Imaging Architecture) are the only journals that provide that fuction.
Spaceflight‘s news section is a little better than Mr. Day makes out; I frequently read things there that I have not read in the American press. More importantly, Spaceflight is the only popular English language source for detailed information on news of what is happening in human spaceflight. If it were more widely read, and people in government and space communities alike knew more about what was actually going on in human spaceflight, I think there would be a lot more “balance” in opinions regarding the relative real and potential values of robotic reconnaissance and human exploration.
Every story has (at least) two sides, and, quite simply, the robot folks have done a lot better job of distributing the excitement of what they are doing. Spaceflight is one of the few places to find the other side of the story.
— Donald
Jeff, will part 3 be out next week?
I said: and I cannot think of any other motivation that would support the scale and duration of investment required.
Actually, let me clarify that. As I have repeatedly argued, I do think that the developing markets (ISS, tourism) could evolve us toward CRATS, but relying solely or largely on private investment will make this a long and slow road. The kind of short cut ti CRATS that I think you and Mr. Miller are looking for requires government invervention and probably on a large scale, and the only potential motiviation I see for that is “national security.”
— Donald
Jeff and Charles: CRATS clearly and directly addresses all three of the fundamental objectives as repeatedly stated by presidential science advisor Dr. John Marburger—as it provides major benefits in “national securityâ€, “economicsâ€, and “scienceâ€.
This is true, and what’s also true is that, unfortunately, the ESAS implementation does not provide major benefits in any of these key areas. The major benefits perhaps would come after 2020, but that’s a long time to wait, and a long time for problems to happen in the grand but vulnerable ESAS plan.
This also goes back to the April 18 Space Politics post on “Another reminder of the importance (or lack thereof) of space”:
http://www.spacepolitics.com/2008/04/18/another-reminder-of-the-importance-or-lack-thereof-of-space/
This is the one that referred to a survey where 91% of replies indicated that the top investment priorities for technological advancement are energy, medical, environment, and security/defense. Space got 3% (only 1% in the British version).
The implication I draw is that space needs to align itself better with these areas (Marburger’s and/or the survey ones). This would give it better political support in the short run, and allow it to more easily build on any initial successes that produce results for these popular areas.
The article shows how CATS supports Marburger’s science, economics, and especially security. I think it’s also possible to demonstrate that CATS goes well with most or all of the survey priorities (and even the low priority areas from the survey like space, telecommunications and transportation).
Not only that, but right now the space community is divided on the implementation of the VSE. The Mars Society wants to skip or skim past the Moon. The Planetary Society is considering L points, asteriods, and then Mars. Entrepreneurs and the Space Frontier Foundation aren’t much involved with it ESAS. Big commercial space (comsats, etc) aren’t helped much by it. Earth science and aeronautics interests feel bugetarily threatened by it.
The space community is divided. However, I’d suggest that all of these space interests would agree that CATS is a worthy goal. CATS would help every one of them. Even interests like the Mars Society would be helped, even presumably with no giant CATS rockets, by infrastructure capabilities (refueling, etc) enabled by CATS, and the increased ability to get robots to Mars.
Even the ESAS contractors would benefit from CATS. They probably would play a role in CATS work, for one thing. Also, CATS would help LM’s defense satellite business, for example.
Can CATS be achieved, though? I’d suggest that a good way to be helpful in finding out on the government side would be:
– more DOD and NASA direct support for numerous small X plane projects and NACA style research
– major NASA, DOD, NOAA, etc investment in using commercial suborbital rockets … including developing science instruments designed for this type of vehicle, developing or using smallsat launchers deployed on this type of vehicle as a platform, and testing X plane components with them
– more government and private prizes for space access advances along the lines of the Lunar Lander Challenge and Ansari X PRIZE
– sacrificing very expensive NASA science missions like large telescopes, Mars sample return, and big outer planet missions (much as I personally like them), exchanging them for many small science probes that can be launched on the type of vehicle that is likely to first achieve CATS
– investing more NOAA and DOD efforts in building or using numerous smallsats, even if some bigger sats need to be delayed, as additional market drivers to encourage CATS
– make progress now on the VSE while encouraging CATS by sending numerous small robotic missions to the Moon
– COTS capability D round
– government use of Bigelow stations as an additional market for CATS
This is the one that referred to a survey where 91% of replies indicated that the top investment priorities for technological advancement are energy, medical, environment, and security/defense. Space got 3% (only 1% in the British version).
The implication I draw is that space needs to align itself better with these areas (Marburger’s and/or the survey ones). This would give it better political support in the short run, and allow it to more easily build on any initial successes that produce results for these popular areas.
How? Mention SSP and space advocates laugh.
Discuss medical research on ISS and they space advocates will point out its too expensive or that it should make use of Bigelow’s system when (and if) its built.
Discuss space security and people scream that their should be no weapons in space. While space advocates point out its not cost effective.
As for environmental issues – a few robotic missions handles that. The current EELVs are more then up to the job.
So what is left? Tourism for the super rich? Robotic missions?
Really what value is space if its not able to handle any of Earth’s real problems, at least in the eyes of space advocates.
Ray: The space community is divided. However, I’d suggest that all of these space interests would agree that CATS is a worthy goal. CATS would help every one of them. Even interests like the Mars Society would be helped, even presumably with no giant CATS rockets, by infrastructure capabilities (refueling, etc) enabled by CATS, and the increased ability to get robots to Mars.
This is an most important point: a successful COTS could benefit everyone. In fact, OSC is already looking at using the same rocket for both COTS and as a Delta-2 replacement for scientific missions. If that results in reduced costs, it benefits ISS, other LEO projects, and science missions, potentially allowing still lower costs as the same infrastructure is amortized over a larger number of customers.
— Donald
Someone: How?
By going after Cheap Access to Space, involving multiple efforts (many would be quite small and focused), government and private efforts, multiple agencies (eg: DoD, NASA, NOAA), using “push” R&D and “pull” demonstration of markets (eg: numerous suborbital ride buys and smallsat or mediumsat launches for the initial CATS vehicles which probably wouldn’t be huge), involving and helping big and little space, universities and non-profits, and all NASA centers and areas (including often-forgotten aeronautics).
Everyone could pitch in, and everyone could benefit. A multi-layer effort would be adjustable according to budget changes, and resistant to failure in a way that a monolithic, all-or-nothing effort like ESAS would not be. It could begin achieving results fairly quickly by giving incentives to assure that lower-cost suborbital and orbital vehicles already being built succeed.
Someone: Mention SSP and space advocates laugh.
Space launch cost is one of the roadblocks that has to be overcome before SSP can succeed. With CATS, and especially with the kinds of associated changes Jeff and Charles anticipate CATS would produce in areas like space infrastructure, SSPs become a lot more feasible. I won’t give guarantees that CATS would solve everything for SSPs or the other items below, but it would be very helpful and enabling.
Someone: Discuss medical research on ISS and they space advocates will point out its too expensive or that it should make use of Bigelow’s system when (and if) its built.
CATS would be quite helpful to ISS and Bigelow-style medical space research.
Someone: Discuss space security and people scream that their should be no weapons in space. While space advocates point out its not cost effective.
CATS would be helpful to space security whether or not it involves space weaponization. As the article mentions, CATS would allow space military hardware to be replaced after an assymetric attack, making such an attack much less likely to be made in the first place. In that sense it’s a stabilizing capability. It also allows defensive, stabilizing efforts like better and more spy satellites (no jumping to conclusions about what your adversary is up to) and adding defensive capabilities to military satellites (situational awareness, ability to move out of harm’s way, shielding, etc).
Someone: As for environmental issues – a few robotic missions handles that. The current EELVs are more then up to the job.
My opinion is that a lot more satellites are needed than the world currently uses for environmental issues and related efforts (natural and man-made disaster alert and response (eg Cyclones, Tsunami, Hurricanes like Katrina, etc), weather satellites, data for truly myriad commercial uses like fishing, GIS for urban planning and so on, agriculture, insurance, etc). LEO satellites simply need more clones for better temporal coverage. There are a lot more instrument types, wavelengths, resolutions, etc to apply.
So what is left? Tourism for the super rich? Robotic missions?
These too would be helped by CATS.
“By going after Cheap Access to Space, involving multiple efforts (many would be quite small and focused), government and private efforts, multiple agencies”
Finally!!! So little progress is made in blogs, I had given up. I am reminded of that scene from 2001 — “The Dawn of Man”…
Now that this discussion is headed for the archives I feel that a reply to an earlier reply would not distract from talking about the actual subject.
On May 6th, “me” said something that mainly revealed their misunderstanding of the topic. Without being pedantic, I would like to clarify the discussion.
Anyway, some of my earlier comments are in here, but “me” said (though this person should have reconsidered before clicking “Submit”):
“And lots of bombs are guided by lasers – and do not require a GPS.â€
Incorrect. Most are GPS guided. Only the F-15E uses LGB with the Lantrin pod. B-1, B-2, B-52, F-16, F-18, use JDAM
“No nuclear explosion is going to be high enough to affect geosynchronous communications satellites – which is a key to our economy.â€
Incorrect, the EMP from a nuclear detonation will affect them
On the topic of laser guided bombs vs GPS – total degradation of the GPS system would be really tough to accomplish with even a large number of attempts. But let’s say for arguments sake that some group accomplished that. And let’s say that the US was reduced to only dropping laser guided bombs from F-15Es (hardly credible) – this would leave us with about 200 F-15Es dropping plenty of bombs. That could do a lot of damage. But then maybe the Navy would loan us an aircraft or two (I assume that they knew that the F-18 was a Navy aircraft)? And what about NATO aircraft? We would probably not have too much trouble getting plenty of aircraft capable of dropping laser guided bombs that all of the effort to negate the GPS would be wasted.
And also I said that a space nuclear detonation would not cripple our economy – “me” said that the EMP would “affect” them. A close study of orbital dynamics would show you that the vast majority of geosynchronous satellites would be shielded by the Earth. The EMP is largely a line of sight concern. And the effect on a geosynch satellite from a low altitude burst would be debateable. The earlier orbital tests (Starfish, etc) affected the early satellites mainly by charged particles. These would not be able to penetrate the Earths magnetic field lines to rise to that altitude.
I only go to this length to hopefully let us discard this idea that cheap access to space is somehow justified (leaving political reasons out, here) by national security. We don’t need to reconsitute the GPS system in a week. We don’t need to replace a lot of geosynch satellites in a week.
We need realistically be able to convince commercial operators to spend money to make access cheaper – so I can get up there!
Ray,
But we are back to the beginning. Who will fully fund CATS?
The Shuttle was suppose to be CATS but NASA never received enough to build it the way it was suppose to be built. So it failed to achieve CATS.
X-33 was suppose to lead to CATS, but when the tank problem surfaced no one would pay the funds needed to fix it. And NASA only received enough funding for a single version.
OSP was suppose to lower costs, but not funded to completion because of the change in focus to the VSE.
SLI was suppose to lead to CATS, but not fully funded.
DC-X and the Military Space Plane (MSP) were USAF efforts at CATS, but the money to build them were cut, the MSP being vetoed by Clinton. And DC-X was only funded because of Star Wars.
Now its COTS, but the survivors SpaceX and OSC are just offering new ELVs. Yes, maybe Elon will be able to salvage Falcon stages fir reflight, but that is not CATS.
So where are we?
Back to the beginning. Without a serious reason to go into space there will be not be adequate funding for CATS to be completed. Yes, I am sure there will be another program for CATS, or CRATS as its now called. But the funds will be cut before anything is finished/ Or it won’t be enough, as with COTS, to achieve the goal.
So how do we tie space to an issue that is critical enough to the nation to get the money needed to build CATS? And one that space advocates will not torpedo? For that is the ONLY way to bring this endless do loop to an end.
Someone, my bet based mostly on historical precident is that it will happen slowly, far more slowly than most of us would like, but that ultimately it will happen. The key words are “time” and “evolution.” I think we’ve finally reached the point where, over time, we can bootstap existing space commerce into an industry large enough to support CRATS.
It starts with the ISS and possibly limited orbital tourism as intial markets. It was the advent of Mir and the ISS, the first real LEO “facilities” that appeared to be capable of supporting initial businesses like tourism and which provided the political and economic justification for COTS, respectively. If COTS succeeds, and if the ISS continues as a market, it may also provide a political and economic market for an evolution from the COTS winners (whoever they end up being) toward CRATS. With the impending collapse of ESAS, it looks like we can write off the near-term possibility of a lunar base increasing the market, but new private and public facilities in LEO are looking increasingly likely (and are more important for this evolution, anyway), so the market may slowly expand. As costs slowly come down, tourism and other potentially large markets will slowly expand. But absent large government investments, all this will take decades, probably many decades.
Any shortcut to a faster CRATS is dependent on the government, and probably the military market. It is worth noting that much of the innovative reusable orbital spacecraft developmment going on now is funded, directly or indirectly, by the military, even on the new space side.
Suborbital tourism, if it succeeds as a business, would help orbital tourism get money and attention, but, again, I expect the evolution of suborbital businesses to orbital ones to take decades. Those who think it will happen fast assume that nothing will go wrong, that there are no large technological barriers that we have not yet stumbled into, and that raising money for this activity will be consistantly possible. I think the history of spaceflight suggests that all of these assumptions are overly optomistic, to put it mildly.
I hope I am wrong, but short of a large strategic investment, that is my prediction.
— Donald
Suborbital tourism, if it succeeds as a business, would help orbital tourism get money and attention, but, again, I expect the evolution of suborbital businesses to orbital ones to take decades. Those who think it will happen fast assume that nothing will go wrong, that there are no large technological barriers that we have not yet stumbled into, and that raising money for this activity will be consistantly possible. I think the history of spaceflight suggests that all of these assumptions are overly optomistic, to put it mildly.
Donald, 2 points worth noting
1 – the suborbital business is not limited tourism. I know thats what most people assume to be the big and possibly only driver in sub-orbital business, but thats not the case.
2. As for the money, I would argue that once its demonstrated to Wall St that there is money to be made (and the more I listen, substantial money) money will find its way in.
Ferris, I don’t disagree with either of your statements, but think about it a minute. Virgin Galactic has already had one major setback; even assuming no further setbacks (unlikely in the extreme) how long, realistically, will it be before they fly their first vehicle? Then, how long before they are testing regularly? Then, how long before they fly their first passengers? Regular passenger flights? Even if each one of those is only one year, we’re talking four years. Then, given that costs and risks will both be greater than expected today — that is a given! — how long until they make money? How long until competitors make money? How long to recover from the inevitable disasters? How long until Wall Street takes the money seriously enough to invest in them instead of, say, guaranteed oil income?
If everything goes just right, we’ve already racked up a decade, and everything will not go just right. Now, how long until the suborbital market is secure enough to start financing far more expensive and risky orbital endeavors? Lunar endeavors? And, so on.
Anyone who thinks there will be a profitable space tourism industry that is not riding off a large government project (read subsidy) like the ISS in five or ten years, is smoking something pretty good. But, then, the space advocacy community has always been far better at dreaming than producing financially and politically realistic strategies. . . .
— Donald
Someone: “But we are back to the beginning. Who will fully fund CATS?”
I think you’re right about the problems with past efforts to fund CATS. My point was that agencies like NASA *should* be funding CATS efforts rather than ESAS because CATS would be helpful in solving a variety of real immediate problems our society faces (while also being helpful in space exploration which most of us here value, too), but it seems that NASA has given up on CATS and wants to build Apollo-like rockets instead. I suspect they’ll regret not going with CATS, which seems to me to be a more productive and politically sustainable approach.
I think Jeff and Charles may have something to say on this point in Part III of their article series. The last sentence in the original post above seems to indicate that.
I’d suggest the following approaches:
1. Don’t try a huge effort straight to a big operational system. Divide the problem into many focused, competing and complimentary efforts that, individually, don’t cost a lot and don’t take long to complete. Some will succeed in their modest goals, and some will fail. Make it clear ahead of time that that is to be expected. The successes will enable future progress. The small funding amounts for individual CATS efforts should be easier to pass.
2. Divide the efforts across NASA, DOD, NOAA, and other agencies.
3. A big part of the effort should be in the form of “market incentives”. These would not be “painful” in the sense of working on a CATS vehicle in an agency that wants to explore, do science, or do engineering tests. They would be doing what these agencies want to do in the first place.
For example, have NOAA buy lots of commercial suborbital service for science measurements of the atmosphere and oceans. Have them buy what’s out there (currently traditional suborbital rockets, hopefully ~100km reusable rockets soon, and let it be known that more capabilities that are economical will be rewarded. Also have NOAA develop smallsats. These won’t require CATS to run at all. However, they will be incentives to commercial developers to make CATS vehicles.
Similar approaches could be taken with DOD, NASA, and other agencies. These can be directed to those “critical issues” as appropriate for each agency (security for DOD, environment for NOAA, several for NASA, etc).
Let’s see what Part III of this series holds. It’s been a great series so far. I hope it doesn’t turn out like Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, with a bit of a letdown in Part III.
Ray,
NASA has not given up on CATS as much as given up on Congress giving them the money do it. There are many people working at NASA who would love to do CATS if they had the money. And they also have some very good ideas how to do it.
The key is how to make space important enough to get the necessary stable funding. The other of course is waiting for Griffin to leave so ESAS is put out of its misery.
I agree and I shouldn’t use the term “NASA” as if it’s a single organizational “person” that can do something like “forget about CATS”. Definitely the NASA leadership, Congress, and the top of the Presidential Administration have a lot to do with what NASA does regardless of what the rest of NASA, or its supporters for that matter, want.
The whole time I read the article, I just kept thinking, “We should try to build a Space Shuttle! It could go up in orbit like 50 times a year, and that would make space cheaper…”
I like the idea, and the concept. But it’s not like the space companies aren’t trying to do it. They are. That’s what SpaceShip 2 and possibly SpaceShip 3 is about. SpaceX. There’s probably a lot more I could give credit to if I was more educated on such matters.
The point is, it’s being done. Whether the money should go into NASA is the question, I guess. I would argue that we’ve already tried giving it to NASA. They created some innovative technology from that project, and it’s time to let them do something else that small companies cannot afford to (like put men on the moon), while the small companies tackle the problems they can afford to (like CRATS).