Nobody today knows that. In fact, I think there is a good chance that both of them, but especially the latter, will achieve just that — or that their immediate descendents will.

focus that budget on developing the Reusable Launch Vehicle technologies and other space flight systems that will drastically reduce the cost of space access.

Until the VSE, NASA was doing just that, and a rather miserable job of it. Mr. Bezos and Mr. Bransom, et al, at least appear to be doing a better job on their own. I believe the VSE (as opposed to the ESAS implementation of it) was exactly right to encourage creating destinations with current technology, to provide political and economic reasons for investment in cheaper transportation. Right now, except for supplying the ISS, there is no immediately compelling reason for lowering the cost of space transportation, so why should anyone invest in it? The lesson of the ISS and COTS is, build a destination and the political and financial wherewithall may well come about to try and supply it. The lesson post-Apollo is, without that destination, we got essentially nowhere until the destination was built.

The next destination should be a lunar base requiring supplies, and it should be built quick-and-dirty with as close to current technologies and techniques as possible. Waiting for perfect transportation when you’ve already got some that is good enough (vis Apollo), before you build your destination, guarantees that you will wait forever before you see the dream in your last paragraph. COTS is almost certain to get us there a lot faster than, say, Virgin Galactic, or even Blue Origins. It is unlikely in the extreme that space tourists will be flying past the ISS in 10-15 years in the absense of COTS. More importantly, COTS and the suborbital folks together will create a far larger commercial space industry than either would separately.

— Donald

These are examples of ENABLING infrastructure investments that fostered significant private commerce and activity that far outstripped Federal investments and contributed to national development and growth. ISS and COTS do not comprise a similar type of infrastructure. They are limited, very expensive, publicly held research projects. I’ve been hearing about how Space Station Freedom/ISS will serve as the anchor tenant for economic activity for 25 years — it hasn’t and cannot follow through on this so long as the cost of space access remains high ($10,000/lb.) and inflexible in terms of operations.

“Can you be more specific about what you would suggest?”

I believe I have been. NASA should get out of the spaceflight operations business for now and focus that budget on developing the Reusable Launch Vehicle technologies and other space flight systems that will drastically reduce the cost of space access. NASA should help the private sector develop these technologies, such as what Jeff Bezos is doing with Blue Origin and Bransom with Virgin Galactic, *and* lay the policy and regulatory framework for regular space operations in conjunction with the OCST and other groups. If they do this, they would be in a position within five years of being able to do more manned space operations for less money — not to mention the private sector would be able to do a lot.

As it is, on the current path (should Bezos’ and Bransom’s ventures pan out) I see a time in the next 10-15 years when space tourists will fly by an aging ISS, held together with duct tape, and snap pictures of the quaint, antiquated facility (the maintenance of which consumes 75% of each astronaut’s working day) and then dock at the LEO Hyatt for a 2-3 day stay before flying home again.

Now, let’s search-and-replace ISS with “regional waterways” or “railroads,” both of which were built or heavily subsidized by the governments of the time, and the statement is still true. but regional waterways or railroads are not and do not constitute “significant” economic activity. There were kept alive by politics and wishes, and if the politics changes they would have gone away.

The ISS is a start, funded by the government, and yes I would like to see it (or more likely follow-ons) privatized to the extent economically and politically possible.

You seem to be defining “significant economic activity” as only those things that are funded from scratch only by private money. If so, “significant economic activity” rarely exists in the real world, and nothing new would get started, particularly on a (broadly defined) new frontier where costs are inevitably higher than the money that can be made in the short term.

By providing the economic and political justification for COTS, the ISS is not (yet) generating economic activity greater than its costs, but it is generating economic activity. A market does not need to be cost effective, self-sufficient, or anything else to generate economic activity and be a market. It only needs to be something that someone is willing to pay for, and the space station demonstrably is that.

Look at it another way: the entire airline industry throughout its history has yet to make a total net profit. But, are you seriously going to argue that the airline industry does not generate a lot of economic activity. People want airliners, so they look the other way when the government uses their taxes to prop up an industry that is not making money or likely to in the foreseeable future. If you look at total costs, the same is true of the “private” automobile industry. Yet, many people would argue that our world is a better place for having both of these industries that are net drains on our economy.

The same can be, and should be, true of space, and in the long term, since space can be a net source of new knowledge and resources (neigher of which is particularly true of the airline industry or the personal automobile), spaceflight has far more chance of being self-supporting than either of the existing examples.

— Donald

John,

Many of us can agree that this is, in general, a good idea.

Can you be more specific about what you would suggest?

– Al

There is no economic justification for ISS and COTS. The ISS is a great R&D platform, but it is not and does not constitute “significant” economic activity. It is one outpost kept alive by politics and wishes, and if the politics changes it goes away. What we need is the foundation for real, sustainable, growable economic activity, to treat space flight infrastructure the SAME way we treated regional waterways and the railroad in the 19th century, and aviation and highways in the 20th century. In each of these four important areas the government decided that it must support transportation infrastructure that was critical to economic growth and progress. Space has thus far been kept captive to the government. Can you imagine what our rail network would have looked like if the US Government had kept total control over the railroads in the 19th century?? Are you not the slightest bit annoyed that the US first went to the Moon almost FORTY YEARS AGO!?!? In the 40 years from Kitty Hawk we went from the Wright Flyer to prototype jet aircraft and helicopters. Now with COTS, in the 40 years from Moon landings we’ve gone from the man-in-a-can Apollo system to….the man-in-a-can Apollo system.

ISS/COTS is now reduced to the same tautology under which Shuttle/ISS operated for so long — Shuttle, therefore Station; Station, therefore Shuttle. Now we have Station, therefore COTS; COTS therefore Station.

That said, I would like to see COTS D started sooner rather than later.

— Donald

Unless and until NASA funds COTS D, that statement is also demonstrably wrong. COTS has been relegated to a cargo service — there’s no “human orbital flight”, commercial or otherwise, involved.

FWIW…

This is demonstrably wrong. The ISS is providing the political and economic motivation for COTS, which is the best chance we have to get commercial human orbital flight in the near term. Without the ISS, no COTS, and no commercial human orbital flight until some other political or commercial motivation appears. . . .

— Donald

But there’s no way this path will lead to an affordable sustainable space operations infrastructure. By continuing with expendable vehicles — launch systems, re-entry systems, etc., you’re doing nothing to address the main barrier to your goal of “permanent outposts on other celestial bodies.” If the cost of getting into orbit remains $10,000+/lb or more, any manned space flight operations is going to be expensive and prone to a herky-jerky hot-cold public funding process — and it will continue to restrict space access to a handful of highly trained astronauts.

“We might be better off if NASA concentrated on exploration and created more potential markets (bases in space) for these vehicles once they are developed and privatized.”

NASA can’t create potential markets in space that can sustain a space-based economy, they can barely construct a Sky Lab replacement at 10x the cost and time-to-operation. There’s no way ANY NASA programs will lead, with their current approach, to any significant human activity or presence in space. If NASA helped build the infrastructure for economical, practical space flight operations you’d see a boom of commercial activity in space. NASA *should* be doing what DARPA is doing. As the NACA it was tasked with innovating aeronautics systems to facilitate the growth and success of the US aviation industry. Now NASA does not innovate as it should, and its manned space programs suck all its resources away. Perhaps this time the DOD will actually be able to complete their program — after all, NASA preemptively killed the SSTO project through a political power grab in the 1990s after DARPA’s DC-X looked like it might succeed.