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).

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 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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.”

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!

Finally!!! So little progress is made in blogs, I had given up. I am reminded of that scene from 2001 — “The Dawn of Man”…