NASA

One committee member’s perspective

One of the featured speakers at yesterday’s Space Investment Summit 7 in Boston was Jeff Greason, president of XCOR Aerospace. Rather than talk about his company, though, Greason talked about his work as a member of the Review of US Human Space Flight Plans Committee (aka the Augustine committee), providing his own perspectives and viewpoints on the committee and its work (emphasizing that he was not speaking for the committee but instead providing his own opinions). A few highlights follow.

Greason said he was approached by George Whitesides at NASA to be on the committee; he initially expressed concern about the time commitment but was assured by Whitesides that it would be no more than a “one-quarter time” effort. Instead he found himself, and other committee members, working 90 hours a week. “Right from the beginning of the program I learned about the value of NASA budget estimates,” he joked.

He noted that one of the key challenges faced by NASA in implementing the current exploration plan, or alternative options, was the high cost of simply running the organization. “NASA is an organization that is dominated by fixed costs. In business terms everything is in the overhead,” he said. The committee delved into agency financial accounts and estimated that the fixed cost of maintaining NASA’s human spaceflight enterprise is approximately $6-7 billion a year. “The bottom line is that they can’t afford to keep the doors open with they money they’ve got, let alone do anything with it.”

Projecting high levels of spending over long periods of time is also unwise, he said, because it’s vulnerable to changes in policy or the economy. “The number one carryaway lesson from the Apollo program that nobody ever seems to realize is: what’s the most important fact about the Saturn 5? We don’t have it any more. Do you know why? We canceled it because we couldn’t afford it.”

With that in mind, the committee said it considered Mars as the ultimate destination for human space exploration, but rejected it as the immediate destination because of technological immaturity and high costs. “If we did it we’d be sorry because we’d be Apollo all over again: we’d go there a few times and then we’d stop doing it.”

That lead to various options that either return to the lunar surface or go to other destinations (the “flexible path” option), that all prepare for eventual missions to Mars. All are necessary, he said, to prepare for Mars. “Literally the only question left is what sequence you do them in,” he said. “However, if you anticipate a world of budget constraints, there is a more obvious choice,” namely, the flexible path. That option spreads out the development costs since there’s no need for developing the lander and surface systems up front if you start with lunar orbit and NEO missions. “Unless you anticipate living in an Apollo-like era again, where NASA gets this huge infusion of funding that only lasts for a short time, one of them seems to lend themselves better to a budget-constrained environment than the other one.”

One of the most important findings of the committee, he believes, is the discussion of why to do human spaceflight, something of considerable discussion here. Science and international relations benefit from human spaceflight, but can’t alone justify the spending on it. “The reason why we’re going to space is because we’re going to live there some day,” he said. “This is what the future is about… It’s time for the real justification for human spaceflight to come out of the closet.”

124 comments to One committee member’s perspective

  • Mark R. Whittington

    Methinks Greason offers a straw man to imply support for “Look But Don’t Touch.” There is a vast middle ground between “constrained budgets” (meaning we just pretend to have a space exploration effort) and an all out Apollo effort (which no one advocates.) The Augustine Committee itself flatly said three billion extra a year or no option is viable.

  • In fact, what comes through clearly in Augustine II is that neither they nor NASA are capable of envisioning a human space program that is not modeled on the Apollo template: big program, big rockets, big budgets, racing to somewhere. The idea that “Mars is the ultimate destination” is the giveaway; that’s a sure sign that the paradigm will be fundamentally unchanged: launch everything you need form Earth. Thus, you need a big rocket. Thus, you need an increase in the NASA budget, as if that would “fix” things.

    The purpose of the Vision for Space Exploration was to set a strategic direction: move beyond LEO, but under a constrained budgetary environment. This implies an architecture that uses small, incremental, cumulative steps. Such an approach can be carried out under any budgetary environment, we just make less progress during the lean times than the fat ones. The ultimate goal is not “Mars” — it’s everything. To go anywhere at any time, build up an space faring infrastructure is incremental, stand-alone pieces.

    Another opportunity lost.

  • OpsGuy

    Let’s see, $3B/yr today and we’re not to the Preliminary Design Review (PDR) commitment. Three-billion-per-year to do preliminary design of “simple stick and capsule” (at least that’s the way it was sold)! What do we get, again, for an extra $3B/yr? No wonder Greason (and the rest of us) are worried about affordability and sustainability. Something fundamentally needs to be fixed in this industry, and it’s not just the vehicle architecture, and it’s not just playing with vehicles in the COTS/CRS arena (with their low capacity, low throughput, with low-balled pricing).

    What a mess we’re heading into!

  • Robert Oler

    ““The reason why we’re going to space is because we’re going to live there some day,” ”

    this is an entertaining statement, but it is not a given. I think that it will happen, but there is no real requirement that it does.

    The Earths oceans, the continental shelf in particular is a far friendlier environment for human settlement…there is (to mimic Dan Quayle “oxygen”, there are resources, there is gravity (the human body is sort of adapted to that) and…we have the technology NOW to do it. Except for folks living on oil wells, some minor scientific outpost and nuclear submarines (underwater) and temporary residences on vessels…very few people call the water, or under it their “home”.

    Whittington has a piece (I think he is the author of it but I am not for sure) about a Mars colony in 2059…aside from his imprinting his political beliefs on it…there is no hint as to what people who are immigrating to Mars would do for a living.

    What product would people sale to support the colony to keep it an ongoing concern…or is it just “go and live off the land”? If its the later then the viewgraph shows a substantial infrastructure that someone had to pay for (and it isnt going to get there by would be colonist selling all their goods”. One could come to “the new world” with a strong back and an axe and go off into the wilderness and sort of make it..(that or its modern equivelent would be quite a feat on even the Moon) but the instant you wanted something “more” (or say a spaceship) you needed to trade with the “old world”.

    The major problem with “we are going to live there” is that there is no space based industrial complex to support such activities.

    Worse space advocates seemed bored at the prospect of making one.

    Space advocates are always doing a lot of hand waving saying “one is going to come if we just do (insert this here)” but so far after 1/2 century of human spaceflight we are just barely on the verge of maybe having one in human spaceflight…ie lift to ISS.

    Robert G. Oler

  • Robert Oler

    Paul Spudis agreed entirely.

    The odd thing is however that it has taken most folks about oh 4 to 5 years and a meltdown in funding to come to this conclusion…when it was as clear as a bell the instant the entire system was announced…indeed Mike Griffin even had the courage to say “it was Apollo on steroids”.

    Opposition should have surfaced then

    Robert G. Oler

  • Robert Oler

    Mark Whittington

    “The Augustine Committee itself flatly said three billion extra a year or no option is viable.”

    that is not really accurate. what it said (and thats repeated in the post here) is that NASA has to find new ways of doing business.

    IE it cannot do much with 9 billion dollars being spent on viewgraphs. Ie Ares1

    Robert G. Oler

  • Opposition should have surfaced then

    It did.

  • Robert,
    I second what Dennis said. I know that I’ve at least been poking holes in the ESAS analysis since within a few months of when it came out.

    Paul,
    I wouldn’t place the blame at Jeff’s feet. He and several other members of the committee were trying to push things away from a destination-centric program to something more focused on helping us become a spacefaring society. But you can only push so hard when the other members of the panel are still stuck in older ways of thinking. I hope that we’ll get at least a little positive change out of this effort, and if it means that we have to wait for the Greason or Spudis Committee of 2015 to make another course correction in the right direction, that’s a whole lot better than being stuck on our current trajectory.

    ~Jon

  • Loki

    “the fixed cost of maintaining NASA’s human spaceflight enterprise is approximately $6-7 billion a year.”

    I’ve been wondering for a while now if perhaps it may be time for NASA to go through something like the Base Realignment And Closure (BRAC) process the military went through back in the ’90s. Of couse any decision to do so would be very politically unpopular. Although I was still in high school I remember all the gnashing of teeth when Clinton pushed the idea (I lived in Texarkana, TX then and one of the largest employers for us was Red River Army Depot which was on the closure list). One could probably argue that was one of several reasons why the republicans re-took congress in ’94.

    But back to NASA, maybe it’s time they take a serious look at closing some of their facilities and eliminating redundancies. For example could the mission ops work that’s being done at JPL for the various deep space missions be moved to JSC, and engineering work go there or other centers or vice-versa could the ops work being done at JSC be moved to JPL and various other centers? I’m just using that as an example, there may be better ones that are also more politically feasible than closing JSC. It would probably be easier to close some of the smaller centers as opposed to a monster like JSC.

    It would probably cost a lot in the short term to move people and any unique infrastructure from one site to another, but in the long run it could cut into that large overhead. Just a thought.

    As for human settlement of space, a lot of people try to compare space colonization with the New World, but it’s really not an apples to apples analogy. When the first colonists arrived here, sure some had come for reasons such as to escape religious or other persecution back home, but when they arrived here they could look around and see trees for timber, rocks for ore, and all sorts of other natural resources they could trade with the people back home in the Old World. In other words they came for a new life, but stayed for the profits. Until a self sustaining economy can be developed there’s no reason to colonize the moon, Mars, or anywhere else.

    I find it interesting that people of all political stripes, but especially conservatives who are supposed to be all about capitalism would think otherwise. I’d expect that more from a loony left space age hippie “Dude, let’s start like, a commune on Mars where we can live off the land and not have to worry about The Man coming down on us, wouldn’t that be cool .” Anyway, my 2 cents, take it for what it’s worth…

  • “The Augustine Committee itself flatly said three billion extra a year or no option is viable”

    I may split hairs here. The “committee” in the form of Augustine and Crawley said to Congress that there was no way to have an exploration program at current funding levels. We should point out that Augustine was fixated throughout the proceedings on heavy lift, even after it became abundantly clear in the “sand charts” meeting that heavy lift would eat NASA’s breakfast, dinner, lunch, and then be up milling about the kitchen looking for a midnight snack.

    Neither Crawley nor Augustine, inexplicably, ever made the point that Greason made in that sand charts meeting. Namely, that the costs in the flexible path option are of a different character than those in the other options. They are actual exploration costs, not overhead. That means you can slow down the frequency of missions much more efficiently, or slow down development somewhat linearly. Somewhere in the presentation to Congress, that point got lost. That’s a shame.

    In any case, we can fault the committee members for a lot of things: oversight, lack of clarity, lack of vision; but we cannot fault them for lack of honesty. Recommendations disguised as options aside, NASA’s current way of doing business will never go beyond LEO, and it will never lead to an HLV if that’s your fetish, and it will never inspire the public nearly enough to boost its funding for even a short period. The agency has no credibility and it hasn’t had credibility since at least Challenger. You can either accept that fact and look for an alternative, or you can ride that jackass into the ground.

  • Jon,

    I wouldn’t place the blame at Jeff’s feet.

    I wasn’t. My comment was in respect to the committee’s report, not to any specific individual.

  • It seems to me that NASA developed the Saturn 5 rocket in a period when there was no $6-7 billion fixed, up front requirement for “maintaining human spaceflight knowledge.”

    Why is it so much more costly to “maintain” this knowledge now?

  • I’ve been wondering for a while now if perhaps it may be time for NASA to go through something like the Base Realignment And Closure (BRAC) process the military went through back in the ’90s.

    Yes. If that is what this report brings about, then it has done a great service to space exploration. There are certainly some options for NASA facilities ripe for closure, politically speaking. And it need not be closure committee. I remember reading about the case for changing them into federally funded research centers rather than giant sucking overhead holes. CA is populous, but it is also a state too dyed in one color for its own good. No democratic president will lose CA for many years, and no Republican president will win it. That puts Dryden and Ames on the block. AL is not a swing state, and I think we would all love to see Senator Shelby filing for unemployment. Texas and Florida are probably untouchable, but Virginia and Lousiana might make politically viable targets.

  • Dan

    @chuck
    It’s costly to “maintain” this knowledge because the usual method is to keep the production line open– otherwise those people who know how to manufacture the thing get jobs elsewhere, and won’t come back just because you want them too.

    Even if we had the Saturn V blueprints (which afaik, we don’t) you still have to re-develop the manufacturing base.

    (Also, I would expect a lot of changes would have to be made to the Saturn V design itself, due to materials & components being out of production.)

  • Even if we had the Saturn V blueprints (which afaik, we don’t)

    We do. The notion that we don’t is an urban myth. The tooling is long gone, but we have the drawings, on microfiche. Not that building Saturns would be a good idea, of course.

  • Major Tom

    “Methinks Greason offers a straw man to imply support for ‘Look But Don’t Touch.’ There is a vast middle ground between “constrained budgets” (meaning we just pretend to have a space exploration effort) and an all out Apollo effort (which no one advocates.)”

    You “thinks” wrong.

    First, a straw man argument is an argument that misrepresents an opponent’s position. Greason isn’t arguing with anyone, so by definition, he didn’t offer a straw man.

    Second, there is no “middle ground” between an Apollo-era NASA budget and adding $3 billion to NASA’s current budget level. During the years of the Apollo lunar program (from Kennedy’s announcement in 1961 through Apollo 17 in 1972), NASA’s budget averaged $22 billion in 2007 dollars. NASA’s FY 2010 budget proposal is $18 billion in 2007 dollars. Adding $3 billion to that would bring the total to $21 billion. That’s only $1 billion, or less than 5%, away from NASA’s annual average Apollo-era budget level of $22 billion. A $1 billion or 5% difference leaves barely any “middle ground”.

    The comparison is even worse if we include the years that Apollo hardware continued to fly (through Apollo-Soyuz in 1975) after the lunar missions ended. That brings the average annual Apollo-era NASA budget down to $20 billion in 2007 dollars, which is $1 billion LOWER than the $21 billion that NASA would enjoy today if its current budget was increased by $3 billion. A budget that is $1 billion lower than what you’re aiming for leaves no (or negative) “middle ground”.

    (NASA’s budget figures in 2007 dollars are available on Wikipedia under “NASA Budget” if folks want to run their own scenarios.)

    Building on what Dr. Spudis stated, either NASA learns to build a sustainable human space exploration program using “small, incremental, cumulative steps”, or NASA is provided with Apollo-level funding, or there is no human space exploration program at NASA. My two cents is that the the Flexible Path/EELV option fits a “small, incremental, cumulative” strategy if the heavy lift decision is deferred in favor of in-space propellant management for Lagrange, NEO, and small lunar missions until the heavy lifter is actually needed (if then) for the most difficult large lunar and Mars missions.

    Third, consistent with Mr. Greason’s statement, Sally Ride’s budget charts during the last Augustine Committee hearing made it clear that Flexible Path, especially the EELV option, was the lowest cost option on the table. The options in the Summary Report do not reflect that level of detail, but the full, final report certainly will.

    FWIW…

  • common sense

    “Another opportunity lost.”

    Not yet. I think the flexible path is the closest to the incremental approach that is required to build a viable exploration infrastructure. I also think that this must go beyond the “simple” technological aspect of the infrastructure (TBD but might include a legal framework for planetary exploration for example). The flexible path might provide more knowledge as to what is required to eventually create the necessary infrastructure. Start slow and see what happens instead of full speed ahead possibly into a wall, as we all (?) see recentl. I do realize ISRU on the Moon may be one option but there may be other options. So I would see flexible path as a recon mission. Let’s go check around what may be of value and move forward. Indeed, what if ISRU on the Moon does not lead all that is dreamed about? Do we want to end up in another sort of hole? Could it be that the flexible path will finally change the current implementation of NASA organization? Say, commercial crew to LEO might just be the beginning if it is given the go-ahead?

    So I don’t think the opportunity is lost… yet. But it’s not going to be easy.

    FWIW.

    PS: Still blows my mind that people think Saturn V or Apollo as a model. It is precisely what led to ESAS. Lessons lerned any one?

  • Robert Oler

    “I’ve been wondering for a while now if perhaps it may be time for NASA to go through something like the Base Realignment And Closure (BRAC) process the military went through back in the ’90s.”

    good idea but that alone will not do it.

    In fact it wont even come close.

    NASA has the same problem right now as the US military does with its major program procurements and with its operational systems…ie there are to many people needed to support an ongoing project.

    Its not just the “centers” themselves it is how many people are needed to do “X”, “Y” or “z”.

    Secretary of Defense Gates is fond of comparing the number of people who were involved both in the military and at the contractor level for the USMC’s “Cougar” armored vehicle vrs whichever mainline contractor (sorry slips my mind taking an afternoon break here) was suppose to be developing the replacement for the Humvee.

    Force protection did an excellent job developing mostly from scratch for the USMC a vehicle is has proved a life saver in Iraq and now in Afland.

    It would be akin to looking at how many people work for Musk developing his vehicles…and say Boeing…I dont know how many people are working (both in and out of government) on Ares1 but I bet you it is a far larger number then are working for Musk.

    That is the army you have to cut to cut cost.

    Robert G. Oler

  • common sense

    “That is the army you have to cut to cut cost.”

    Not to disagree here, but how do you see this happening? I mean really? Any Congress person who supports any of that can kiss there elected job good-bye. Further to the point: It’s been known for, what?, ever?, that the cost of flying Shuttle is mainly due to the workforce. So what time comes to replace the vehicle with a new less expensive one, what do we do? We choose a vehicle (Ares) ussing Shuttle components (supposedly). So let me ask it again, how do you see this happening at the political level (nothing else matters, not the technology, not the return on investement, nothing)?

  • Major Tom

    “I’ve been wondering for a while now if perhaps it may be time for NASA to go through something like the Base Realignment And Closure (BRAC) process the military went through back in the ’90s.” [Loki]

    A NASA “BRAC” is arguably decades overdue. The problem is that NASA only has ten or so centers, while the military has hundreds of installations. By spreading the pain across practically every state and congressional district, the military was able to pull off a BRAC. But if only one or two states/districts are going to get hit, their congressmen will kill BRAC legislation in committee.

    You might be able to pull it off if NASA, DOE, DOD, and other federal research facilities were all rolled into one research “BRAC”. I havn’t added up the number of facilities, but it’s probably in the scores of facilities — not as many as the military bases but maybe enough.

    “I remember reading about the case for changing them into federally funded research centers rather than giant sucking overhead holes.” [Roga]

    The Aldridge Commission recommended that. It’s a good idea as it would give NASA management the fire-and-hire authority they need (and currently totally lack) to run a rationale institution. There would be some political opposition to turning civil servant positions into FFRDC contractor positions, but if all the centers were going to go down that path, it would be easier to pass than trying to target one or two centers with a BRAC. And the end result — a rationale, efficient NASA institution — would be the same.

    FWIW…

  • Doug Lassiter

    “Methinks Greason offers a straw man to imply support for “Look But Don’t Touch.”

    Methinks that some people deride the flexible path option simply by referring to it by what they would consider an insulting title. Insulting, at least, in the context of the modern “exploration myth”, which insists that human flesh in situ is what makes exploration. Our human space flight is all about not touching. Most of the construction on ISS was done telerobotically, from the ground, and from inside the facility. What is it about fingers anyway?

    What Greason is pointing out is that there is an affordable way to do exploration in the broadest sense, with a series of incremental steps that keep us from getting stuck in any one place. The ultimate failure of Apollo to space exploration was that overall success was achieved. The flags got planted, the travelers returned safely. The job, as defined, got done. Flexible path embraces many jobs that successively exercise our technology and logistical skill. The goal is confidence building, rather than ticker tape parades. Eventually we can get fingers on rocks, if that turns out to be important. If the Chinese turn out to suffer from “finger fetish” more than we do, then I would just wish them luck in trying to eventually make their technology as good as ours.

  • Robert Oler

    I would align myself with Major Tom’s comments.

    The “Jim Oberg” (I like that name much better) option (ie flexible path) is the only “path” that in my view does three things which are sorely needed for the US to have a space future that is more then Mythic NASA heroes leaving flags and footprints.

    1. It is affordable. NASA and the NASA hangers on might have an argument for the additional 3 billion dollars if that is what fixes the entire situation. There is almost no evidence from an organization that has spent 9 billion plus on Ares 1 andproduced almost no flying hardware that additional money is the end game…ie that there will not be request for even more money later.

    2. It has the ability to create a space industrial complex that can sustain exploration.

    It is a bit of a stretch but almost all the hardware that would be needed for “flexible path” can be procured from suppliers who have built things for ISS. Or items (the ion drive that Oberg talks about) which are functional products but are significantly more then vapor ware…and all of the items might have additional commercial spinoffs.

    To “explore” a NEO for example would require new spacesuits but they are far less of a stretch then building a spacesuit that is usable in the Moons gravity…and such a spacesuit improvement would have immediate use in LEO.

    Mars is just simply out of reach for humans in todays technology (at some cost that is affordable)…but to go back to the Moon…OK Griffin could have procured commercial launch…but then there is need of a lander which is a launch vehicle in itself much less the cost of putting together some sort of “base” all of which are likely to turn out to be little “Ares 1″ in terms of how much money and the amount of people that they require.

    3. the effort improves our technology base in measurable (and affordable) lumps. By using a structure that is innovative it could be done using current infrastructure and reinforcing the use for that infrastructure and its expansion.

    So far all the “exploration” that has been argued for is almost stand alone, there is no infrastructure to pick things from that can be modified or improved to accomplish the task (and besides the current NASA system has been forever oppossed to any of that in the first place)

    If one opposes “flexible path” then it is incumbent on one to explain why it is so urgent to return to the Moon that the current infrastructure must be paid to do it.

    Indeed to support a goal of going back to the Moon with some arbitrary date to do it…one has to answer the same question….

    So far the answers are like an FM radio fully squelched.

    Robert G. Oler

  • Robert Oler

    One more comment before going back to work on the new amateur radio tower (a product of having 45 -120 days of paid leave!) is to think about the Safire statement that could have been used had Apollo 11 failed.

    We were talking about this the other night as the shuttle went flying over head (and we were chatting with it on the 2 meter setup) and the Moon and Jupiter did their ballet.

    No where in the speech does it say “we will try again”.

    Hmm probably would have but!

    Robert G. Oler

  • Robert Oler

    common sense

    “Not to disagree here, but how do you see this happening?”

    it is not all that hard in my view…

    First pick contractors that can do things with less people and make sure that “less people” is a function of the contract. Gates gives a fascinating speech about how many people it took to “field” the Cougar and now how many work building it…vrs what the mainline contractor issue was.

    The main failure of the shuttle in terms of workforce is that NASA (nor Alliance) never were pushed to see how few people that the shuttle could be flown with…and attrite down to that number…instead it usually went the other way around “safety requires another set of eyes”…

    Second make sure that the “goal” justifies the project. Arguments against buying the Cougar floundered when the fact came up that no Marine has been killed by an IED while riding in a Cougar.

    Game set match

    later…off to work on the tower

    Robert G. Oler

  • Anon

    “With that in mind, the committee said it considered Mars as the ultimate destination for human space exploration, but rejected it as the immediate destination because of technological immaturity and high costs. “If we did it we’d be sorry because we’d be Apollo all over again: we’d go there a few times and then we’d stop doing it.”

    I hope Zubrin and his Mars followers read this since it shows that Mars Direct is the Real Apollo Redux. Maybe a new bumper sticker is needed to drive the message home.

    Mars Direct = Apollo Redux

    VSE was about building a base on the Moon to learn to live off another world. If that had stayed the goal the entire Ares cul-de-sac would have been avoided since its possible with just the EELV as ULA has recently showed. Its time for NASA to drop Mars from its planning and focus on what needs to be done now. First a series of lunar rovers to follow-up on the discovery water on the Moon. Then the design of a moon base based on EELV assets. Forget the SDV heavy-lift. Dumping should cut into that 6-7 billion overhead a lot.

  • Bob

    Robert, great comments, but Safire’s speech included the following, which implied that we would try again.

    “Others will follow , and surely find their way home. Man’s search will not be denied.” — William Safire.

  • common sense

    @Robert Oler:

    Sorry but you did not answer the political aspect of the question. You only provided some obvious way to actually do it. And you even add more to my point with your remarks on Shuttle. We all saw the resistance against a COTS-D type approach from Congress.

    So again how do we do it?

    I am not sure you can lump all the research institutions into a common BRAC approach. You are actually compunding the problems creating more resistence from a larger variety of people. I think.

  • CharlesTheSpaceGuy

    Hmm. A BRAC for space? Loki said: “I’ve been wondering for a while now if perhaps it may be time for NASA to go through something like the Base Realignment And Closure (BRAC) process the military went through back in the ’90s.” ”

    In fact, moving major Center roles has happened a couple of times. At one time, the ISS Program Office moved from JSC to Reston, VA (right around the end of Space Station Freedom). Of course it did move back. Long ago, flight control was done from KSC, until the Manned Spaceflight Center was ready – and control moved to Houston, TX. That was for Mercury 3 or 4??

    I hesitate to say too much since I am very uncomfortable giving too many personal details (could be hazardous to continued income) but Spacelab illustrates some of the inefficiencies of government operations. There were a series of JSC managed Spacelab missions – that were controlled from the MSFC Payload Ops Control Center. People at KSC built up Spacelab, tested it, lived with it. They had to train the MSFC subsystems people on how the current subsystems worked, and also train the JSC flight controllers. Sure there was some residual knowledge at MSFC and JSC, but we had KSC test folks in the POCC with us to answer questions. It would have saved millions in travel, training, coordination, etc etc if the folks at KSC had built up the hardware, done sustaining engineering, done real time flight control. Sure would have saved a lot of trips from JSC to MSFC. Sure we would not have had technicians assembling racks and then doing flight control – but there was a lot of overlap that could have been cut out.

    Why did Spacehab choose to do hardware integration and flight control from their building by the south gate of CCAFS? To let a cohesive team follow the mission from end to end.

    Now, MSFC has the ISS POCC – Jan Davis defended that fervently. If we moved the POCC to KSC (along with payload people from JSC) we would eliminate a lot of overlap.

    Hopefully a commercial launch provider would integrate and control the launch vehicle from Florida – of course many people would move there from Huntsville, Alabama for continued employment. Possibly eventually people controlling the manned part could be moved to Florida.

    The NASA space flight system could be much more efficient but that is very tough politically. Unfortunately, what has to happen is an inefficient system must die – instead of becoming more efficient and remaining viable.

    By the way I am no fan of living in Florida, and hope to not move there myself.

  • Jonathan

    A BRAC-type realignment would serve NASA well. However as several of you have pointed out, it will be very difficult to implement. NASA does not have enough centers to spread the pain, so to speak.

    I still think that there are one or two instances where a center reduction/closure may actually benefit the constituency of that center. A few threads ago, a poster mentioned the case of MSFC. Huntsville has a problem in filling the Redstone jobs needed to keep the BRAC-2 consolidation on track. Shifting MSFC engineers over to the Army side would meet the near-term demand and would keep the door open to more Army-based jobs in the future. There is no doubt that with a successful consolidation, Redstone could become the principal development center for the Army.

    Before the real estate collapse, many thought ARC would be another good candidate. The argument for closing ARC has also diminished with the bleaker job situation in Silicon Valley.

    One thing for certain, any attempt to close a center in an economically depressed area would be a non-starter. If the closure however could facilitate the growth of new additional jobs, then it may have some traction.

  • Mark R. Whittington

    With due respect to Paul Spudis, a space exploration program has to be destination centric because if we just decide at the onset “we’re going everywhere” then the program gets so unfocused that we wind up going no where. Prince Henry the Navigator was specifically designing ocean going technology to get to the Indies around the Cape of Good Hope. It just so happened that decades later, a Genovese gentleman named Columbus found the ocean going caravel useful in crossing the Atlantic, he thought to the Indies, but actually to the Americas.

    I’m also not sure how one designs a program that prospers in both slow and prosperous budget years. Things tend to cost what they cost (one of the things Augustine 2 got right) and constantly slowing down and speeding up is a prescription for cost overruns, schedule slippages, and unhappy questions from the Congress and the American people.

    “Major Tom” by the way uses some statistical slight of hand by including early seventies budget numbers to “prove” that Apollo “only” averaged about twenty billion a year. NASA peaked at 33 billion in 2007 dollars and was at just over 15 billion in 1972, 11 billion in 1975. The problem is that Apollo was long past it’s development phase by the early 1970s. Augustine is proposing a 21 Billion dollar NASA during the development phase of whatever beyond LEO option is chosen.

    In any case, 21 billion in 1969 (the last year it was at that level) was a far greater percentage of the federal budget than it would be in, say, 2014.

    The bottom line, though, is that Augustine 2 stated flatly that without the extra 3 billion, there can be no exploration program, no matter what option is selected, even Look but don’t touch.

  • common sense

    “a space exploration program has to be destination centric because if we just decide at the onset “we’re going everywhere” then the program gets so unfocused that we wind up going no where”

    And this based on what argument that we have to go “somewhere”? To do what? Say you go to Mars, then what? What do you do there? And please don’t give me the colonny settlement analogy norr the ISRU. No one, no one, can live up there (and probaably not either on the Moon). It will take decades if not more until that happens. On the other hand if you set up an architecture (not a couple of LVs mind you!) to scout the Milky Way so to speak then you may come up with something really important to do, or not. You will have to come to realize that there may just be nothing to do for human beings in space. And the analogy with Colombus is well too ofetn abused. Was Columbus going to a place where he would most certainly die? Space environment is not that friendly to humans.

    “I’m also not sure how one designs a program that prospers in both slow and prosperous budget years. Things tend to cost what they cost (one of the things Augustine 2 got right) and constantly slowing down and speeding up is a prescription for cost overruns, schedule slippages, and unhappy questions from the Congress and the American people.”

    I am sorry but do you have a constantly growing income? If so good for you. But you know some people adapt to their income and still manage to make a living, just postponing some stuff until better times come. It’s called financially responsible. Are you saying we cannot properly manage NASA? Or are you saying you want everything right now? A little like what the credit industry successfully implented in people’s brain: “You can have it all, and right away sir/madam!”.

    Oh well…

  • As long as we continue to confine our civilization solely to the surface of the Earth, the human species is subject to extinction in less than an hour thanks to the fact that both the US and Russia have the the thermonuclear power of life and death over the entire planet. And by the end of the century, the US and Russia could be joined in this instant extinction capacity by China, India, Japan, Europe, Pakistan, and possibly even Iran. Betting our lives that all of these nations will always be rational and nice to each other during the rest of this century– especially during a period of over population, dramatic environmental change, and limited natural resources– is quite a risk!

    We need to start expanding our civilization off this planet as soon as possible. Never put all of your eggs in one basket especially when it comes to the preservation of our species!

  • “What product would people sale to support the colony to keep it an ongoing concern…or is it just “go and live off the land”?”

    An L1 satellite manufacturing and repair facility supported with resources via mass drivers from the Moon and via light sails from the moons of Mars or the asteroids would dominate the satellite manufacturing and launch industry. Satellite telecommunications is currently a $100 billion dollar a year industry that is expected to someday grow into the trillions.

    239 tonnes of platinum was sold world wide in 2006. Platinum is currently worth about $40 million per tonne. Mining the moons of Mars or the asteroids for their rich platinum resources would allow space colonist to dominate the multibillion dollar a year platinum industry which could help folks on Earth to use fuels such as hydrogen and methanol twice as efficiently while also enabling us to produce synthetic fuels to replace the petroleum economy where we are forced to spend $30 t0 $70 billion a year defending Persian Gulf oil routes and sending $300 to $700 billion dollars a year to foreign governments– many who are hostile to the United States.

  • Major Tom

    “space exploration program has to be destination centric because if we just decide at the onset “we’re going everywhere” then the program gets so unfocused that we wind up going no where. Prince Henry the Navigator was specifically designing ocean going technology to get to the Indies around the Cape of Good Hope. It just so happened that decades later, a Genovese gentleman named Columbus found the ocean going caravel useful in crossing the Atlantic, he thought to the Indies, but actually to the Americas.”

    First, the history here isn’t even remotely correct. The caravel was designed for war and speed (to defend against faster pirate ships on the Portuguese coast) and for inland sailing in Africa (to track down the gold trade and find a mythical kingdom). Although the caravel was obviously capable of such in the decades that followed, the caravel wasn’t designed for exploration of the West Indies or the spice trade that followed.

    Please check your facts before you post.

    Second, the evidence (even wrong) disproves the argument. Instead of demonstrating a close correlation between destination and hardware, that erroneous history shows that the same hardware can be built to serve multiple destinations. It’s the epitome of a “flexible path” approach.

    Please think before you post.

    [As an aside, I personally don’t put much value in detailed historical analogies. But the broad brush strokes can point to some common themes or trends. And in the case of the Portuguese caravel, the Viking longship, the Conestoga wagon, and probably other examples, vehicles used for war and/or trade are repeatedly turned to long-range exploration and settlement. With the exception of the Apollo program, it’s very hard to find historical examples of purpose-built exploration vehicles. And since Apollo wasn’t sustainable but these other efforts were, that would seem to indicate that any current space exploration program should leverage military and commercial vehicles (EELVs, Falcon 9, etc.) rather than build vehicles that only a civil human space exploration program utilizes (Ares I/V). I wouldn’t argue that this historical analysis is definitive proof of what a sustainable human space exploration architecture should be, but it seems to point in a common direction.]

    ““Major Tom” by the way uses some statistical slight of hand by including early seventies budget numbers to “prove” that Apollo “only” averaged about twenty billion a year.”

    Sigh… it’s “sleight of hand”, not “slight of hand”.

    And it’s not inappropriate to use an averaged figure over the lifetime of a program, especially if that program’s budget had a high peak (ramping from $6 billion to over $33 billion in the case of NASA during Apollo) and you’re trying to compare that enormous budget ramp-up to a level budget increase (adding only $3 billion to NASA’s level $18 billion) today.

    “NASA peaked at 33 billion in 2007 dollars…

    It is highly inappropriate to compare the peak of a program’s budget to a level budget increase today. By that logic, the NASA budget during the 12 Apollo years would have consumed $396 billion in 2007 dollars. But it didn’t. The actual NASA budget consumed only $269 billion in 2007 dollars. That’s a $127 billion overestimate for the NASA budget during those years that bears no resemblance to the actual figures. Garbage in, garbage out.

    “In any case, 21 billion in 1969… was a far greater percentage of the federal budget than it would be in, say, 2014.”

    This statement demonstrates basic ignorance of how inflation works. That $21 billion is in 2007 dollars. It would be a much smaller figure in 1969 dollars, and a correspondingly smaller percentage of the 1969 federal budget.

    You should have someone check your math before you post on budgets again.

    FWIW…

  • common sense

    @Marcel F. Williams:

    Until the day you can put a price tag on what you wish to accomplish it’ll only stay that, a wish. Unfortunately you cannot put the budget for wars, justified or not, or what is perceived as security in the same bucket as that for HSF unless and until you can show that it will solve those perceived, right or wrong, threats. If you actually can do something like this you have a supporter here. But I see this as a much greater challenge than that of a paced program such as flexible path may end up being. I am not sure how you will change the culture on the people of the US or actually of the world in a timeframe that will let you see all you strive for. And btw, the threat of self anihilation is what kept the US and USSR from going at each other. It was tight but still (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction).

    Fear is a much better driver for budgets than anything else including peace…

  • @common sense

    The US and the Soviet Union did not destroy the world because they were two rational countries. But we did come close to doing it in 1962. How would you like to give a future Pakistan controlled by Al Queda and the Taliban the power of life and death over the entire planet? Maybe they’ll feel that the only way to purify the world of its sins is to incinerate it!

    A 22 billion dollar a year NASA budget to begin the gradual colonization of the solar system is not too much to ask, IMO.

  • ISS4Ever

    Regarding the closing of NASA Centers. When Obama is done deciding what to do, it will be clear that manned space flight center will have too many people with nothing to do. Therefore: Close MSFC and shift folks that do have something to do to JSC, or if not, to Redstone. Close KSC: NASA launches unmanned missions from CCAFS all the time, why not do the same with whatever winds up being the rocket of choice for Orion launches. Space X will be launching Dragon out of CCAFS, why not NASA.
    Close WFF: Once B. Mukulski retires that is. Yes, WFF has the only NASA owned range and they do great work. So far, they have spent their time launching DoD mission (with a few piggybacked NASA experiments) not NASA missions. Much of what WFF does is remote management of Balloons, and Sounding Rockets which can be done by Greenbelt folks in Maryland. Move all of WFF planes to LarC.Close Dryden and move their planes to LaRC also, then make LaRC the ‘only Aero’ Center in NASA. (They share lawn mowing with the Navy so there is already some synergism in cost savings and efficiency established there.) Let the Navy take over WFF base operations and NASA facilities. Turn GSFC into an FFRDC so they can compete with JPL on a level playing field; whoever loses, gets merged with the other. Turn ARC into an FFRDC so they can complete their marriage with Google. Let a few years pass for the dust to settle then start phase 2. Re-assign LaRC to the FAA. Then take the remaining earth and space science work and shift that to NAS (I know they know nothing about running space missions, but they will after gobbling up the JPL/GSFC surivor). Then close NASA HQ and anoint JSC the new NASA HQ inasmuch as they operate that way anyway.
    There. All Done. Taxpayer is the winner

  • Doug Lassiter

    “a space exploration program has to be destination centric because if we just decide at the onset “we’re going everywhere” then the program gets so unfocused that we wind up going no where”

    This isn’t about being destination-centric. Flexible path is about the lunar surface, NEOs, Martian moons and Lagrange points and other places as well. Are those not “destinations”? On the contrary, putting all of ones eggs in one destination basket gets the program so focused that we wind up either stuck there, or tired of being there. OK, we go into full-lock mode on the lunar surface. So then the Chinese decide to head for a NEO. Happy now?

    I think your problem with FlexPath is that it is not focused on colonization. That’s quite true. If off-Earth colonization were a national priority, I’d say that would be a serious problem with it. Fortunately, off-Earth colonization isn’t a national priority.

  • Rhyolite

    “It’s time for the real justification for human spaceflight to come out of the closet.”

    What if the closet turns out to be empty?

  • Rhyolite

    @Robert Oler

    “First pick contractors that can do things with less people and make sure that “less people” is a function of the contract. Gates gives a fascinating speech about how many people it took to “field” the Cougar and now how many work building it…vrs what the mainline contractor issue was.”

    Your absolutely correct that the cost of a program is approximately the number of people on the team times the duration of the project. However, the blame lies less with the contractor than the contracting mechanism.

    Mainline programs – what are called “programs of record” – are required to follow a process that will never produce anything cheaply or quickly. It starts with the way the government spends years on developing requirements that have to go through multiple oversight councils. Participants are encouraged to throw in any possible requirement because they may not get a follow-on program for decades. Each requirement adds cost, if only because it takes people to interpret the requirement, develop a verification plan, and produce the test reports. The programs themselves, depending on there size, have to go through demonstration, development, verification, and operational test phases – all of which add time and cost. The level of interaction between the contractor and the government customer often exceeds what the government personnel can handle so the government often hires another contractor, called a SETA, to help oversee the prime contractor. This all adds people and cost.

    Often the most effective programs are the exceptions that can escape this process. Cougar was procured on an urgent needs basis outside of the program of record process whereas the Humvee replacement (JLTV) is plodding along at a glacial pace through the normal process. Likewise, EELV is a program of record whereas COTS is an alternative contracting vehicle. DARPA is another escape route from the normal process.

    It is vitally important that the US revamp its procurement process. Otherwise, NASA and the DOD are going to be strangled by ever spiraling procurement costs.

    The key is a higher risk tolerances. Every hoop in the current procurement process can probably be traced back to some program that failed and a proposed fix to prevent that kind of failure from happening again. The problem is that no mater how carefully you develop a program they can still fail and the burden of excessive requirements will only increase that probability.

    The government needs to use more commercially oriented procurement processes – like COTS – and accept that programs will fail sometimes. It’s better that a commercially oriented program fail at a lower cost and shorter schedule than a program of record fail after a decade and billions of dollars spent.

  • Robert Oler

    Mark Whittington wrote:

    “Prince Henry the Navigator was specifically designing ocean going technology to get to the Indies around the Cape of Good Hope. It just so happened that decades later, a Genovese gentleman named Columbus found the ocean going caravel useful in crossing the Atlantic, he thought to the Indies, but actually to the Americas.”

    What you dont grasp about this history you cite is that neither of the folks you mention were “destination” centered (as you claim a space program must be) …they were RESULTS centered.

    Seaborne routes to the Indies were sought because 1) water transportation was far more efficient in a world where there were few roads on land…and 2) there was something of demonstrative value to society in the “east”.

    Neither Henry nor Columbus were trying to get there to “explore” or figure out the lay of the land…Columbus entire sales pitch was a simple business proposition. IE if someone gave him the money to do it, Columbus was pretty sure he could find a “better, cheaper, faster” way to the Indies then what was currently known. There doubtless was a bit of exploring, converting of heathens, and maybe even some claiming land which no European knew about…but the main theory in the entire project (and this is rather important…)

    …that Columbus could find a better, faster, cheaper way to riches which were known to exist and which society was known to use.

    Columbus wasnt seeking money to develop infrastructure or ships or any other real technology…all he needed was the money to buy those things.

    And in theory the “treasury” of the country that sponsored him would be enhanced by the effort.

    When Columbus “ran aground” (grin) he was so sure that he had found the “Indies” that well we now have Indians are a legacy of the “white mans goofs” (grin)….but more important Columbus didnt care where he was or even as it turned out that he had found “a new world”…those things were “OK”….he still turned almost immediately to the original purpose of his mission…RESULTS ie to make fortune for Spain.

    This is where all “new world” (and indeed almost all previous efforts at expanding the reach of the human race) break down while being extended to the solar system.

    Everything you and the others who want to go to Mars or the Moon or wherever want to do COST MONEY to the Federal Treasury…with little or no hope of in any reasonable time frame for returning any The attempt is made by advocates, including you, to jazz up other reasons for going…you invoke the Chinese repeatedly, there are great tales of mass drivers that shoot lunar resources into space and nanobots that mine the Moon or Mars or whatever….and all have to be paid for by the federal treasury before ANY money starts coming back.

    It is the turning of the “big government” welfare programs you use to so rage against…toward human spaceflight…spending without end or purpose.

    The closest example that The Republic has of doing what you are wanting done ie federal government investment in infrastructure build with little or no method of seeing any payback for it…that approaches a Moon (or Mars) effort…is what the nation does at the South Pole…and the only reason it does that…is that because of technology built for other reasons the effort is comparatively cheap.

    Wonder how long the money spent on Ares 1 so far would keep the South Pole efforts going.

    Unless you (or Spudis or anyone advocating a Moon return) can even remotely imitate Columbus…and explain how for an initial investment The Treasury gets richer…dont try and wrap the effort to send Federal government employees back to the Moon or on to Mars…in Columbus efforts to find a better, cheaper, way to the Indies. Or expect the taxpayer Isabellas to pawn their jewels to support the effort.

    back to bed

    Robert G. Oler

  • With due respect to Paul Spudis, a space exploration program has to be destination centric because if we just decide at the onset “we’re going everywhere” then the program gets so unfocused that we wind up going no where

    Mark,

    I can’t believe, if you have ever read ANY of my stuff, that you would attribute this view to me.

    The “go anywhere, do anything” is our ultimate goal in space. Our immediate destination is the Moon, largely (but not entirely) because it is close and has the material and energy resources we need to to build a permanent cislunar transportation infrastructure. Once we have that, we have the ability to go to the planets.

    This was the intent of the Vision for Space Exploration. NASA came up with an unaffordable, unsustainable architecture, which is why we’re in the mess we’re in. That does NOT mean that we can’t do the VSE; it just means that the way they picked can’t be done.

    I elaborate on this viewpoint at length in an essay here:

    Objectives Before Architectures – Strategies Before Tactics

  • red

    Paul Spudis: “In fact, what comes through clearly in Augustine II is that neither they nor NASA are capable of envisioning a human space program that is not modeled on the Apollo template: big program, big rockets, big budgets, racing to somewhere. …

    To go anywhere at any time, build up an space faring infrastructure is incremental, stand-alone pieces.

    Another opportunity lost.”

    I agree with Dr. Spudis that we need affordable, incremental steps rather than big programs, big rockets, and big budgets. However, I don’t think the Augustine Committee is an opportunity lost. Even though they don’t go all the way, and all of their options include an expensive HLV that’s likely to bring the whole thing down (especially if we start spending significant money on things to put on the HLV before the risky HLV is totally operational), I think there’s a lot of value coming out of the committee, and if supported politically it could get us a lot closer to the type of NASA HSF we need. For example:

    – extend ISS: This gives NASA-encouraged commercial crew and cargo launch and spacecraft services a long-term destination, makes future international participation (a good thing if done correctly with mutual benefits) a possibility, allows more useful ISS science and engineering, and presents an opportunity to introduce new types of commercial participation/infrastructure (eg: Bigelow modules, DragonLabs, Micro Reentry vehicles, station-to-station reusable spacecraft, etc).

    – commercial crew: This could close the “gap” sooner, saves development and operations money, allows new types of commercial services, gives a means to get crew to some new types of commercial space infrastructure, and provides redundancy.

    – HLV: Many of the committee options involve smaller and potentially cheaper HLVs, possibly reducing the budget havoc implied by HLVs. One HLV variant is a 75MT EELV derivative, and I’m sure the NASA/Administration leadership is aware that the ULA presented a path to the committee from current EELVs to 40-50MT HLVs to 75MT HLVs. There’s no reason NASA couldn’t decide to stick with the 40-50MT EELV or something similar for the time being (i.e. the next couple decades).

    – Refueling: This provides a new market for commercial and international launches, and thus a spur to develop lower-cost space access. It also gives us a chance to avoid government HLV, or delay/minimize government HLV. It could also be a driver for the type of propellant ISRU that Dr. Spudis has described. Several of the committee options include refueling.

    – Research and development: The committee points out the need to bring NASA back to R&D. Depending on the details, this could have all sorts of long-term benefits.

    – Robotics: The committee hasn’t said much about this, but it’s one of the items they’re supposed to consider. I would imagine that they’ll have something beneficial to say in this area.

    – Flexible path: These committee options seem to fit perfectly with the idea of incremental, affordable steps. I’d expect some sort of infrastructure to be a part of this (eg: satellite servicing node/station at EML 1/2).

    Every one of these seems to be an improvement over the Program of Record (the ESAS-based approach to do roughly the opposite of what the VSE stated). Of course we will know more details when the actual committee report is released.

    I could see the initial exploration (i.e. beyond LEO) steps including a *much* more comprehensive robotic fleet in lunar orbit, on the lunar surface, in Earth-Sun Lagrange points waiting to be serviced, in Earth orbit waiting to be serviced, and at NEOs and Mars moons. This would involve major contributions from both SMD and ESMD, as well as lots of non-NASA participation. The initial human missions could be in GEO, lunar orbit, and/or at EML points, and could involve permanent infrastructure. No refueling or HLV should be needed for these early missions – assembly of a small number of EELV-class payloads should be enough. Reusable orbit-to-orbit spacecraft could get there and back to LEO. These steps should be achievable with a reasonable schedule and budget, and I suspect that if we accomplish them, the rest (lunar surface, Earth-Sun Lagrange points, NEOs, Mars Moons, etc) will be within reach.

  • sc220

    @Major Tom

    And in the case of the Portuguese caravel, the Viking longship, the Conestoga wagon, and probably other examples, vehicles used for war and/or trade are repeatedly turned to long-range exploration and settlement. With the exception of the Apollo program, it’s very hard to find historical examples of purpose-built exploration vehicles.

    You make an excellent point, but actually most of the Apollo/Gemini/Mercury hardware did have its roots in military systems. As you probably know, the F-1 and Saturn rockets were originally initiated to launch the large multi-megaton warheads envisioned as needed at that time. The Titan and Atlas came directly from the early ICBM program.

    Your comments drive home the point that it is imperative to use as much existing hardware as possible, at least at the major element and subsystem level.

  • Major Tom

    “The US and the Soviet Union did not destroy the world because they were two rational countries. But we did come close to doing it in 1962. How would you like to give a future Pakistan controlled by Al Queda and the Taliban the power of life and death over the entire planet? Maybe they’ll feel that the only way to purify the world of its sins is to incinerate it!”

    Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is only about 20 warheads, and they all lack a strategic delivery capability. See:

    http://www.cdi.org/nuclear/database/nukestab.html

    If smuggled into a U.S. coast, those warheads could certainly incinerate a Washington, DC or a New York City. But even in Al Queda’s hands, they’re not going to “purify the world of its sins” by incinerating it. That’s just not enough firepower, not by a long shot. The vast majority of the human species and civilization (even U.S.) would survive and go on.

    “A 22 billion dollar a year NASA budget to begin the gradual colonization of the solar system is not too much to ask, IMO.”

    I don’t want to argue that the goal is not laudable — it is. But I do think it’s important to make two points to ground ourselves in reality:

    1) Even if the Obama Administration gives NASA direction that fixes the Constellation program and adds billions in funding, NASA will not be colonizing or settling anything. They’ll be sending small crews of astronauts on six-month to two-year trips to various locations around the solar system. I’m not saying that’s bad, but just pointing out that no one is proposing to move permanently off the planet to live out the rest (or even a significant portion) of their lives at some other location in the solar system, nevertheless reproduce and raise children there. Although it’s easy to get caught up in the fantasy, we’re really not talking about space settlement/colonization.

    2) If our rationale for solar system settlement or colonization is preservation of the human species (homo sapiens) as we know it, then the goal is likely incompatible with the proposed method. Our species is adapted to Earth’s environment, not any space environment. If the human body spends significantly more than a couple years outside the Van Allen Belts, the cosmic radiation alone is likely to cause cancer that will shorten lifetimes by decades — forget successful reproduction. (And this says nothing of the other major human factors issues like gravity, supporting microbiology, etc.) Aside from confining oneself to underground environments, thick metal boxes, or ridiculously powerful magnetic fields for most of one’s life (in which case, what’s the point of living in space), the only way to get around this radiation issue is to either:

    (A) replicate the Earth’s environment in space via terraforming or massive Space Island-size habitats; or

    (B) change the human genome to be radiation resistant or transfer human consciousness to artificial minds and bodies that can withstand the radiation.

    Option A would be a staggeringly enormous undertaking that is arguably centuries (city-sized habitats) to millenia (terraforming) away from happening, at a minimum.

    Option B may be possible in the coming decades, given the current rapid growth of genetic and information technologies. But it implies that the humans that settle or colonize space are no longer actual homo sapiens — their genomes and bodies will have been artificially modified in ways that qualify them as a seperate subspecies, if not entirely different species.

    So I’d argue that if preservation of homo sapiens as we know the species is our goal, then space settlement or colonization is probably a bad way to go about it. It’s either going to take a very long time before we have the capability to build environments in which homo sapiens can successfully live out lifetimes and reproduce in space, or we going to have to turn some of our number into something more than homo sapiens so they can survive and thrive in space environments.

    Personally, I’m kind of thrilled at the prospect of our species potentially propogating into some kind of homo “stellaris”. But if we’re trying to save homo sapiens as is, we’re probably better off investing to preserve the Earth environment that we’re adapted to now, rather than spending that money trying to recreate the Earth’s environment elsewhere centuries or millenia later.

    My 2 cents… YMMV.

    FWIW…

  • Robert Oler

    common sense Sorry I could have been more clear

    The political aspect of “change” is easy.

    Each administration has its way of reversing course. Reagan when the barracks were bombed in Lebanon just said (despite the advice of his cabinet) “we are redeploying to the ships”…the speechwriters found good words to say “we are leaving”…because Ronaldus the Great simply wasnt going to keep losing people in a hopeless cause that he really didnt care much about. Reagan gave a great speech, that same evening sent the Marines ashore in Grenada pistol whip the locals (and some Cubanoes) ..and the American people…who really didnt want to get involved in a land war in the mideast said “OK”.

    Bush the last could even change course when his Presidency was crumbling…All summer of 06 he praised Donald Duck Rumsfeld, said we were going to “stay the course”…and when he was thrashed at the polls in 06 said “I am changing course”.

    How would Obama do it? To me it seems easy. The record of non performance of the current “vision” is documented in the Augustine report…

    and so the answer is to terminate a few select contracts (Ares 1 for instance), put a few sweetners to let the current bureacracy have a “soft landing” type of death…ie spend a few more years working on something like flexible path and see if they can get it together (probably with a massive rethink of the structure)…and then go to someplace like McGregor Texas (or Hawthorne CAlifornia) have the backdrop of the Falcon 9 or 1 or Dragon and talk about “jobs for this century”…

    Just like when Reagan left Lebanon (in a nice slow fashion) there were some right wing nuts who are always ready to watch others kids die saying how bad it was…but most of the American people didnt want a land war…

    just like then there will be the folks who will stand up and talk about “abandoning exploration” and most of the American people who care not one whit about Astronauts on the Moon…will go back to whatever else they are concerned with. And we will change course.

    Go watch how the Super Collider Super Conductor was taken down.

    As the Chief of Staff to Olin Teague told me when I was a boy in college (well he told my entire class) to paraphrase “when an administration is ready for change, the trick is to change in the direction the American people want to go anyway”…

    It may upset all the folks who think that the American people are just dying to explore space, spending unlimited tax money to do it….but sigh most just dont care.

    Point out that Ares 1 has consumed 9 billion dollars and done nothing while Musk has gone to orbit on less then 1/2 billion…

    change.

    Robert G. Oler

  • Robert Oler

    Rhyolite what an interesting handle

    I concur in everything you wrote, summarized in “It is vitally important that the US revamp its procurement process. ”

    as one person said to Mr. Gates “If Al Queda had our procurement system, they would be losing”

    good words you wrote. You said my thoughts much clearer then I did.

    Robert G. Oler

  • Major Tom

    “… the F-1 and Saturn rockets were originally initiated to launch the large multi-megaton warheads envisioned as needed at that time. The Titan and Atlas came directly from the early ICBM program.”

    You’re right. In addition, I suspect (but don’t have any definitive proof) that some of the technology that went into the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo capsules was first investigated by various black space reconnaissance programs that needed film return reentry vehicles. (Corona being one declassified example that ended up using a different reentry shape.)

    But at the risk of cutting the historical analysis too fine, Apollo shared a technology base in common with military ICBMs (e.g., your F-1 engine example) while the Viking, Portuguese, and American West explorers and settlers employed existing military or trade vehicles in whole (i.e., the longships, caravels, and constoga wagons as they existed with little or no modification). So, in addition to leveraging military or commercial vehicles, I’d also argue that the lesson is also not to remake those vehicles unless absolutely necessary. We’re arguably seeing that lesson relearned in Ares, and how that project is clumsily and unsustainably reinventing much of the Shuttle heritage hardware instead of relaxing requirements and leveraging as much of the Shuttle heritage hardware as is. Exploration is a very small slice of human activities in any era — to make it as effective as possible it should leverage to the greatest extent possible all the efforts put into those other human activities.

    “… it is imperative to use as much existing hardware as possible, at least at the major element and subsystem level.”

    Agreed. There may be counterexamples, but based on the historical record that I’m familiar with, that seems to be the case.

    FWIW…

  • Joe Dura

    Robert Oler wrote @ October 1st, 2009 at 10:58 am

    “What product would people sale to support the colony to keep it an ongoing concern…or is it just “go and live off the land”? If its the later then the viewgraph shows a substantial infrastructure that someone had to pay for (and it isnt going to get there by would be colonist selling all their goods”. One could come to “the new world” with a strong back and an axe and go off into the wilderness and sort of make it..(that or its modern equivelent would be quite a feat on even the Moon) but the instant you wanted something “more” (or say a spaceship) you needed to trade with the “old world”.”

    Perhaps this should be a major purpose of space program, i.e. to explore and determine what there is out there that is worth selling to the old world, and how to best obtain it. Currently there is an industry to sell information services from Earth orbit. Information is well suited since it is zero mass and low energy, thus easier to transport to Earth. Next up the food chain might be energy production, still zero mass but high energy has its costs to “transport.” After that there are options like climate modification (disperse anti-greenhouse agents into the upper atmosphere, etc) or security (from NEO impacts), tourism, and specialty medical applications. While I’m not a believer in the near term use of 3He, there may be other specialty materials found or created in space for the subsequent stages of commercialization.

    The fact is all these things become more affordable with lower launch costs since economics always requires the Earth connection. I think we need to spend more on advanced concepts to lower launch costs, while encouraging the private sector to ramp up the economies of scale.

    Joe Dura

  • common sense

    “Perhaps this should be a major purpose of space program, i.e. to explore and determine what there is out there that is worth selling to the old world, and how to best obtain it.”

    So can this not be the modus operandi of Flexible Path? I believe it is. I believe trying to get much more money for NASA is doomed to fail. Let even assume they give the extra $3B there is no chance in the world that colonization and settlement will occur in the near future. Any attempt at it with the current technology will most likely result in a lot of casualties in said colonies therefore most likely terminating the program. Scout missions of relatively small (probably 4 to 6, better 6 I believe) crew to “deep” space will help towards this endeavor.

    I also strongly believe that the comparison between NASA’ss bduget with any other budget, more so the DoD, is probably going to result in something negative for NASA. If you keep insisting down this path, some people arfe going to say something like “DoD, wars included, provide immediate security to our nation”, what is is that is as substantial with NASA HSF? The answer is nothing. Right or wrong who the heck cares? Perception is everything. Case in point: The US went to war because it was “perceived” Iraq had WMDs. Not the case. The US is going to expend its war in Afghanistan because it is perceived it is wher the ennemy lies (and in Pakistan) and that if we win the war Afghanistan will be a stable country alleviating the danger in Pakistan. All perceptions. None of these wars can be won, period. We are draining our resources there for essentially nothing. And if theerewas a way to win there it would take decades at best. Yet, the US is there and is probably going to stay there in one form or another. Finally, ending the wars there will most certainly not bring cash to NASA. Case in point: Vietnam and Cold war ended yet did NASA’s budget increase any?

    Reality is a tough companion but until the space sommunity gets real we will keep having this debate.

    Today the most realistic option is Flexible Path with an involvement of the Commercial sector. If this fails then we’ll be stuck in LEO for decades to comee and rightfully so.

  • common sense

    @Robert Oler:

    Sorry but I still don’t buy it even this way you describe. Too many players at stake. Financial failures are not an important enough drivers to terminate an agency like NASA, or the DoD would have been shut down a long time ago, or even the banks, if you see what I mean. The only thing that would take the whole thing down would have to be dramatic enough that the people of the USA demand it. Until then, there will be HSF in one form or another. It does not have to be for exploration purposes nor does it have to use made-in-the-USA LVs/RVs. And if it is not exploration and does not use US LVs/RVs the associated budget can be quite small, compared to current and estimated budget. That would possibly mean a slow death: Death sure but slow (decades).

    Oh well.

  • “Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is only about 20 warheads, and they all lack a strategic delivery capability.”

    That’s in the year 2009. We have no idea how many nuclear weapons Pakistan could have in the year 2050 or the year 2090 in its attempt to compete with India (an emerging super power that’s in competition with China) and what kind of regime will be in control of this Islamic state in the future.

    In 1944, the US and Russia had no nuclear weapons. But just 20 years later, they both had the power of life and death over the entire planet. To bet on the idea that the current balance of military power is going to remain the same during the rest of the 21st century– is a mistake, IMO.

    A full nuclear exchange between two regional super powers could not only kill hundreds of millions people but could also kill billions world wide as the result of the nuclear winter effects from the massive nuclear exchange.

  • Robert Oler

    Marcel F. Williams

    you’re statement reminds me of the folks who in the 1980’s would say “nuclear weapons kill people”…when really the correct statement is “nuclear weapons delivered on target that work kill people”

    Otherwise when they sit in the silos or in the “Sherwood forest” of the boomers…they keep the peace.

    I really DONT fear Iran getting the “gadget”. From a policy standpoint Iran getting the bomb was probably inevitable after the “axis of evil” speech and the foolhardy US adventures in Iraq and Afland. If I was an Iranian and a policy maker having watched one US President whip the American people into a fact deficit anger enough to go invade another country one that could not harm them…I would argue for the special development…and so would most of our policy makers if they were tossed into that role.

    The response (mostly from right wing troglodytes) to iran claiming that it is on the verge of having the gadget reinforces the situation. The IDF would not even be thinking about a “raid on Iran” if there were four or five silos filled with missiles and a functional warhead. (an IDF raid on Iran would be the end of US influence in the Mideast).

    Deterrence, MAD whatever you want to call it works at a micro and macro level…

    The two fears that I have with “pygmy” nuclear powers are 1) they do not have the systems to verify the other powers “non launch” status…ie most of them only have very primitive radar networks and only the IDF has access to satellite systems (ours) that will give confidence that a launch has not occurred…and 2) is that if an accident because of that happens…then will be a volley back and forth before the major powers shut it down…and the volley in the scheme of things will not (with they size of the weapons that these pygmy powers have) not be much worse then WWII…and after the cities are rebuilt etc some idiot might start thinking “that wasnt all that bad”.

    So for instance I can see the Iranians jumping to a conclusion that an IDF preemptive launch has occurred…and there be a volley back and forth…the damage wont be much “worse” then Hiroshima…and that might be the opening for a preemptive thought latter on (“I am not telling you that we wouldnt get our hair mussed”….General Turgidson Dr. Strangelove)

    When the US went “rogue” after 9/11 and started doing things that had no relationship to the attack, we all but guaranteed a Iranian bomb.

    Nuclear weapons and good diplomacy…keep the peace.

    Robert G. Oler

  • Robert Oler

    common sense. “Until then, there will be HSF in one form or another.”

    I am afraid that I am not communicating clearly. I never said that there would nto be HSF in one form or another. Quite the contrary I have said it will continue to exist.

    I just dont see a big deal changing the course of how it is done

    Robert G. Oler

  • Robert Oler

    Joe Dura I could endorse all what you said.

    The problem for the “exploration” people is that none of them can come up with a realistic method in the near term (50 years much less a presidential term or two) that the Moon or Mars fit what you said…and yet they are still asking for lots of money

    Robert G. Oler

  • Robert Oler

    Bob

    greetings.

    ““Others will follow , and surely find their way home. Man’s search will not be denied.” — William Safire.”

    you are correct and actually I had forgotten that part of the speech…so my statement was “less”…but I guess it didnt stick with me because I did not see it as all that definitive, which of course might not have been appropriate given the circumstances.

    thanks for the correction

    Robert G. Oler

  • common sense

    “I just dont see a big deal changing the course of how it is done.”

    I think this is where we “disagree”. The players in this game won’t let it happen easily. Be it the political types, NASA and the cost-plus-addicted contractors. A lot of people, a lot of influential people. Remember the Sen from Alabama recently? Or that from Florida?

  • @ Robert Oler

    I don’t fear a country having a few nuclear weapons. But I don’t like the idea of several countries having tens of thousands of nuclear weapons before the end of this century– especially crazy religious countries who don’t mind killing themselves to get to heaven.

  • common sense

    @Marcel F. Williams:

    You are way, way over simplifying the issues in these countries. This kind of over simplification is what led to the wars you (and I) dislike so much. Said issues will not be resolved with nukes. And I am sure these countries leaders know it very well. Yet the question you should actually ask is: “What is it that leads a people to suicide in order to kill others?”. Forget religion.

    Also, I would fear any amount of nukes. The number does not really count. What counts at least as much is the delivery vector. Missiles sure? What else? You can do quite a bit of damage with 20 nukes. Yet I don’t think we raided Pakistan so far, did we? Would it be sane to raid a country with nukes? Do you think that we would have raided Iraq if we had not been sure they could not retaliate with nukes?

    But this is way way off-topic, I think. As I said this is a losing argument to support HSF. How about we go back to HSF now?

    Oh well.

  • Major Tom: if we’re trying to save homo sapiens as is, we’re probably better off investing to preserve the Earth environment that we’re adapted to now, rather than spending that money trying to recreate the Earth’s environment elsewhere centuries or millenia later.

    We need to do both, especially since investing in the latter is relatively less expensive (at least in the short term) than the former. I.e., conterintuitive though it may be, it costs far less to establish the odd experimental base in LEO (done!), on the lunar surface, and an asteroid or Martian moon or two, than it does to “save” Earth’s environment.

    I’m one of that sub-species I call “environmental technocrats” — my politics is very close to Al Gore’s. Saving the Earth and colonizing the Solar System are not, and should not be — and I expect cannot be — mutually exclusive.

    — Donald

  • “You are way, way over simplifying the issues in these countries.”

    Yeah. Right! Many Jews and in Germany thought that there was no way a silly character like Adolf Hitler could ever come to power. And if he did, he really didn’t mean what he said. And no one in a rational country like Germany would ever seriously endorse his policies. They were wrong!

    We’re just another Great Recession or Great Depression away from other nut cases coming to power– maybe even in our own country (we actually had a religious nut case like Sarah Palin as a vice presidential candidate!).

    Continuing to confine our civilization solely to our planet of evolutionary origin would be extremely foolish over the next century!

  • common sense

    @Marcel F. Williams:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preemptive_war

    I will close with this since you are so worried about those “rogue” states to compare them with early 20th Century Germany:

    Which state, in the early 21st Century, attacked another country without being attacked itself? Think this one over and over again please and why it is especially important. And when you’re done, think some more. And then ask yourself why some of those “rogue” states are looking to arm themselves up. And then ponder how simple or complex the situation we’re in really is.

    Again I personally will stop this exchange here and now since it is as far removed from HSF as it can be.

  • Doug Lassiter

    “it costs far less to establish the odd experimental base in LEO (done!), on the lunar surface, and an asteroid or Martian moon or two, than it does to “save” Earth’s environment.”

    It sure would cost far less to establish an “odd experimental base” than to save the Earth’s environment. But seriously, how does accomplishing the first in any way offset a failure in the latter? You’re saying that we kill off the Earth, but it’s OK, because we’ve got an “odd experimental base” in space?

    The kind of wholesale migration into space that would “save” the human species is a proposition that is just as fiscally boggling as saving the planet. But really. Who wants to live on the Moon? I sure don’t. I agree that saving the Earth and colonizing the solar system should not be mutually exclusive, but they need not be complementary either.

    A dark Darwinian thought is that a civilization that can’t keep it’s home planet survivable probably has no business colonizing anything else.

  • Major Tom

    “We have no idea how many nuclear weapons Pakistan could have in the year 2050 or the year 2090 in its attempt to compete with India…”

    Technically, we don’t know anything about the future, and you may end up being right. But based on trends in Indo-Pakistani relations over the past half-century plus, the trend seems to be moving further and further away from war. The conflicts are getting smaller and more spread out in time. For example, the last spasm of violence — last year’s terrorist attacks on Mumbai — wasn’t even sponsored by the Pakistani government, which was asked by the Indian government to help (and did so) in tracking down the plotters.

    “what kind of regime will be in control of this Islamic state in the future”

    Again, we don’t know anything about the future and anything is possible. But when the Taliban tried to take over a couple provinces earlier this year, the Pakistani army and intelligence service did not take the threat lightly and uprooted the Taliban presence.

    And even if Pakistan’s government became lazy, it’s unlikely that the U.S. and NATO are going to pull out of Afghanistan and Pakistan until Al Queda’s presence in that region is effectively exterminated, anyway.

    “Continuing to confine our civilization solely to our planet of evolutionary origin would be extremely foolish over the next century!”

    But we probably have no choice. It was 73 years from Columbus to the founding of St. Augustine, the first successful European (Spanish) settlement in the New World, in 1565. It was another 42 years until the founding of Jamestown, the first successful English settlement, in 1607. By that time, there was only one other Spanish settlement on the continent. So it took over a century just to get three toehold settlements in an environment where humans are protected from solar storms and cosmic radiation and enjoy one g of gravity below them, one bar of atmosphere above them, breathable oxygen, and water and food supplies. (And if you decide to count from when the Norse discovered Newfoundland circa 1000, then we’re talking centuries, plural, from first exploration to settlement.)

    Because any space environment lacks most or all of these critical factors for human survival, it’s almost certainly going to take longer than a century-plus to establish settlements in space.

    (And again, my two cents is that the radiation alone is likely a showstopper to living permanently and reproducing in space unless we change the human genome or take other radical steps.)

    For better or worse, for the next century or so, we either learn to manage ourselves on this planet in a survivable fashion or we cease to exist as a species. Looking at the century-plus gap between exploration and settlement historically and at the enormous mismatch between the human body and the space environment, there is likely no alternative.

    FWIW…

  • common sense

    “A dark Darwinian thought is that a civilization that can’t keep it’s home planet survivable probably has no business colonizing anything else.”

    or: “has no business living on its home planet in the first place!”

    Nature/Earth has ways of healing itself that go a little beyond anything we can put up against it… I may be wrong but I believe I read or heard a theory that the Khmer civilization behind the splendors in Angkor Wat eventually disappeared because they abused their surrounding ecosystem with deforestation and drawing too much on their water resources. Temples are still there though. I don’t actually have a reference to that so take it for what it is. Maybe this: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/01/opinion/01diamond.html

  • Doug: You’re saying that we kill off the Earth, but it’s OK, because we’ve got an “odd experimental base” in space?

    That’s not what I said at all, but it cuts to the chase of why I so profoundly disagree with all you we can do it later folks. What I did say is, “we need to do both.” It is probably quite impossible to keep alive the current population of the Earth indefinitely, and it is certainly impossible to keep any population alive on Earth “forever.”. At the same time, we will not be colonizing the Solar System in the sense of establishing reproducing populations on other worlds anytime soon. However, we will never do it if we don’t start practicing the tasks we need to be able to accomplish to achieve that goal. We are capable of getting the earliest start now. The longer we put that off “to solve problems closer to home” (however you define that), the longer it will be until we can achieve a successful migration (or, better, several).

    they need not be complementary either.

    On the contrary, they do need to be complementary. Even the natural Earth will not be habitable forever, and a number of papers have suggested that, as the sun continues to warm, it wouldn;t be a whole lot long. Even the cultures that supposedly lived in equilibrium with their environments did not — and, it’s become clear just how far from equilibrium they lived. It is almost certainly impossible to keep an industrial civilization — even a well-planned one that looks to the future — that maintains anything that we would understand as a quality standard of living for, say, tens of thousands of years. As a scientist (I believe), you should understand intuitively that there is no such thing as a truly closed system.

    This issue is not migration alone. It is undoubtedly true that we could maintain an industrial civilization on Earth for far longer if their were input (and, probably, output, in the sense of waste disposal) external to the system. Even if it does prove impossible to maintain reproducing populations off Earth (which I don’t believe for a minute), a “solar system economy” could keep things going for a lot longer than a purely terrestrial economy could.

    All of this is simple physics.

    — Donald

    — Donald

  • We’re just another Great Recession or Great Depression away from other nut cases coming to power

    Too late… ;-)

  • common sense

    Any one saw this?

    10.02.2009 – The committee has determined that another public meeting is required. See the press release for details

    http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/391240main_M09-186%20October%208%20%20Augustine%20Meeting.pdf

  • common sense

    “(And again, my two cents is that the radiation alone is likely a showstopper to living permanently and reproducing in space unless we change the human genome or take other radical steps.)”

    It is most definitely a driver. I think if we, say, include UVs in the definition of radiation it can be said without much controversy that they already are very harmful to human beings on Earth. And save for staying in caves there is not much we can do about it. So, if you include all sorts of harmful radiation in space… Fo’get about it!

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanoma
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_adaptation_to_spaceflight

  • common_sense: Well, humanity has lived in caves before. The odd lunar or Martian lava tube is probably no worse than living in a modern air conditioned house and never going outside except in an equally air conditioned automobile — which is distressingly close to the way many Americans choose to live today! By “migration” i’m not necessarily arguing for transporting our current lives to space. That would defeat the purpose, if that is improving long-term chances of survival. Humanity will adapt to the conditions we find — or we won’t.. The modern American lifestyle did not evolve in the home African rift valley, nor even in Europe. Living in space will change us even more profoundly. We learned to live in our modern air conditioned splendid isolation by adapting our pre-existing cultures in response to the new environment we found ourselves in; Just maybe, future humans will _like_ living in caves. . . .

    — Donald

  • Robert Oler

    Donald F. Robertson

    “Well, humanity has lived in caves before. The odd lunar or Martian lava tube is probably no worse than living in a modern air conditioned house and never going outside except in an equally air conditioned automobile —”

    I dont think so.

    even in the example you use you leave out a few stops. People leave their climate controlled houses to go in the climate controlled cars to climate controlled malls, sports arena’s, get in the climate controlled airplanes to go see the grandparents (before the left wing pulls the plug on them! LOL) sail on the climate controlled cruise ships…etc etc etc.

    Aside from the medical implications which I am not qualified to even guess at (but I bet that they are severe) I would bet you that the vast majority of Americans are not “game” to go live in a space for the rest of their lives that makes an LA class sub seem spacious.

    Go Rich Kolker’s face book page…and look at his digs in Benin…state department folks in Iraq (at the start) and now in Afland well some live in the equivalent of shipping containers…go see why it is easier to get people to go to Benin then Afland! LOL

    and the folks in Afland get to go outside. Americans will adapt to anything…but that doesnt mean that they will chose it.

    Most people who want to go into space…without making any judgments on any individual would last about a week before the gray tape would need to come out!

    Robert G. Oler

  • Robert Oler

    Donald

    sorry it isnt Rich’s facebook try this

    “http://hogline.wordpress.com/”

    when I finish it I’ll send you to our facebook which will have some pictures of the digs for the last bunch of years (all four of them) and the current QTH.

    Lavatubes are less

    take care

    Robert G. Oler

  • Robert: I would bet you that the vast majority of Americans are not “game” to go live in a space for the rest of their lives that makes an LA class sub seem spacious.

    Of course not. The vast majority of Africans did not leave Africa (which is why the genetic diversity in native Africans is far higher than for the rest of humanity); the vast majority of Europeans and Asians did not leave for the New World. The vast majority of Americans will go nowhere outside of their world. So what? It only takes a (figurative) two; or a small group with sufficiently diverse genetics.

    Okay, I admit it, even I don’t want to go live in space — though I’d love to visit and yet hope to someday, at least in a suborbital hop. I dream about one of those Zondish loops around the moon Space Adventures is trying to find someone to help the Russians finance. But, if humanity did not want to live in space, why all the interest? Why is so much of our culture, our effort, our money spent on this dream? Few if any people now alive will go to live in space. But, I’d bet my last dollar (even if it weren’t a safe bet because of my last sentence) that somebody recognizably human, sometime, somewhere will.

    — Donald

  • Robert Oler

    Donald

    “But, if humanity did not want to live in space, why all the interest?”

    there really isnt all that much interest in going to live in space or on the Moon or Mars…

    what makes you think that there is

    wow the Moon is lovely…harvest thing. The ducks are enjoying it…

    Robert G. Oler

  • sc220

    @Robert Oler

    The closest thing we have to a base on another planet is the U.S.’s Amundsen-Scott Station at the South Pole. People who are serious about establishing outposts on other worlds should seriously study this as a true representation of what it takes for humans to live in a challenging environment.

    First of all, A-SS is no where near being a paradise that attracts mass migrations and colonization. It is an inhospitable environment and is solely the purview of a few adventurous scientists. Even then, no one, at least from what I can tell, has decided to make Antarctica their permanent home.

    Secondly, compared to Mars and even the Moon, the South Pole is a veritable paradise. Not only does it have plentiful water and oxygen, but it is also fairly accessible from McMurdo Station and Christchurch, NZ (certainly more accessible than a 3-day journey from Earth aboard the Orion).

    Before we start seriously thinking of placing bases on the Moon, Mars and other planetary bodies, we should perfect technologies for establishing long-term human settlements in Earth’s most extreme environments.

    Bottom line, when I see people wanting to make Antarctica their permanent home, I’ll start believing those who see space exploration through their Conestoga Wagon lens.

  • There are lots of people who would like to live and work in space. In fact, I’d guess there are at least tens of millions of people who would currently like to live on the Moon, Mars, or in a large artificial gravity space station.

    And when the day comes when we have the economic ability to build O’Neil type space islands, I believe most people will want to live on these paradise worlds. And there’s enough asteroid material to build space islands with Earth-like environments for at least hundreds of trillions of people.

  • @Paul Spudis

    I agree with you that NASA’s human space exploration program should include infrastructure development as part of its objectives in establishing an architecture. I also agree with you and Dennis Wingo that the Moon is the most logical destination of choice to establish a science and industrial lunar research base with a goal toward developing lunar resources which could potentially be used in further infrastructure development. My stumbling block comes with your argument for incrementalism which by that I assume you mean using current EELVs to assemble in LEO spacecrafts with multiple components capable of travelling to the Moon, to build fuel depots/transfer stations in LEO and at EML1, and to launch reusable transfer vehicles to operate between fuel depots all of which the costs could be spread out over the long term under a constrained budget..

    For one, incrementalism in space development requires a sustainable, long-term space policy resistant to the changes in the political winds in our government. As we are painfully aware that is virtually impossible task proven by the last 51 years of NASA’s history. What is more, if we attempt create a government agency that is insulated from politics, then we run the risk of creating an institution that is unable to respond to economic conditions and technological changes that may occur in the future and thus continues on a path that is no longer economically viable or technologically feasible.

    Another difficulty is that using EELVs and building spacecrafts with multiple components may not really be cost effective or cheap over the long term. The ISS is an excellent example the kinds of costs issue that arises when building and assembling a spacecraft in LEO. Just as the space shuttle limited the capacity of the ISS, the EELV weight limitations will limit payload capacity of each component requiring multiple modules to be built and launched. What many in the general public did not know about is that in the case of the ISS is that for several of the ISS modules a backup module was built. Russia built 2 FGB modules of which the first was named Zarya. However, Russia, Energia specifically, was also suppose to build a backup for the Zvedza module. They would not have even finished the first Zvedza module without additional financial support from NASA, and then NASA had to turn around and build their own backup module in case Zvedza failed to achieve orbit and connect with the ISS. That whole debacle delayed ISS construction for two years and drove up construction costs. And the reason that backups are necessary? Because of potential for launch failures. The 2003 Columbia space shuttle disaster also further delayed ISS construction due to the necessity of investigating the causes and redesigning the EFT all which drove up ISS costs. If an EELV should fail, then we can expect a similar investigation, redesign, and delay in space infrastructure development. Even the multiple launches of EELVs would create a number of logisitical and operational issues at KSC.

    But the reality that incrementalism would lead to is government cost plus contracts since there is simply no market beyond LEO to support commercial development of a space infrastructure. Despite the excessive cost of ISS, the fundamental value of the space station was in establishing a market for human space travel by establishing a human presence in LEO. Russia helped to solidify this market by allowing private astronauts to pay for the extra berth on Soyuz to travel to the ISS. That market has helped spurred the recent commercial launch development for LEO access and increased private investments into New Space companies.

    Historically, transportation and supporting infrastructure only developed where markets existed. Someone in the previous comments made an excellent point that Columbus did not receive funding to explore the New World, he got the money to find a new route to existing markets in Asia. He stumbled onto the Americas by accident. But there were no ports for his ships to moor at. The ports came after the towns were built and a market was established. The same can be said of the railroad, commercial aviation, and automotive industry. In each case the infrastructure was built to support the existing markets. And that is when commercial companies became interested in investing in that infrastructure development. When they knew they could make a profit. So if we want to expand into space or to the Moon through utilizing commercial development then we have to establish a market first and foremost. The best way to establish a market? By establishing a permanent human presence on the Moon subsidizing the ability of private citizens to travel to the Moon and and developing industrial base there. Trying to build an infrastructure first is a flexible path to nowhere.

  • sc220

    @Marcel F. Williams

    There are lots of people who would like to live and work in space. In fact, I’d guess there are at least tens of millions of people who would currently like to live on the Moon, Mars, or in a large artificial gravity space station.

    Tens of millions of people, huh? Then why is space such a non-issue with the American populace? I’m sure that plenty of people would want to live the fantasy lives of the Jetsons, Babylon V or Star Trek. Truth be told, we are far, far from that, and until we start recognizing that it’s going to take more than just putting people on the surface of other worlds, the sooner we will see something real happen.

  • Polls show that a majority of Americans say that space program cost are justified– especially those between the ages of 18 to 49.

    http://www.gallup.com/poll/121736/Majority-Americans-Say-Space-Program-Costs-Justified.aspx

    And every poll that I’ve conducted on the Daily Kos has shown strong support for the US space program.

  • Gary,

    So if we want to expand into space or to the Moon through utilizing commercial development then we have to establish a market first and foremost. The best way to establish a market? By establishing a permanent human presence on the Moon subsidizing the ability of private citizens to travel to the Moon and and developing industrial base there. Trying to build an infrastructure first is a flexible path to nowhere.

    There actually is an emerging market I have in mind — it’s the space asset complex in cislunar space.

    Virtually all of our space assets — communications, remote sensing, national security — reside in the volume of space between Earth and Moon. We cannot access most of these space assets to expand, refurbish, or build systems — we are locked into a template of disposable, expendable one-off designs: build, launch, operate, and abandon. We go to the Moon to learn how to use what we find there to create space faring capability, specifically making rocket propellant. A transportation system that can routinely access the lunar surface can also routinely access any other point in cislunar space. So we gradually move from disposable space systems to expandable and maintainable systems.

    The government’s role is its traditional one — risk mitigation. No one knows if such a system is workable. We don’t know how to harvest and use lunar resources. This is an appropriate goal for NASA, to answer these questions with some reasonable degree of technical and financial detail. It also lays the groundwork for their future missions beyond the Moon, in both experience and logistics.

    Such a program can be done incrementally, starting with significant robotic capability on the Moon, which is close enough to conduct teleoperations. We can experiment with resource extraction and processes remotely, then move into production when humans arrive. We make constant, steady progress, regardless of any given year’s budget.

    Yes, a market for all this does not exist now. But proceeding along this path allows one to develop in tandem with the effort. The alternative is to continue down our current unproductive path, spending large sums of public money and getting very little to show for it.

  • red

    I agree with Dr. Spudis that ISRU and satellite servicing/space infrastructure maintanance are important aspects of HSF. If ISRU and servicing/maintenance can be done economically, these can be major ways HSF can return benefits of all sorts (national security, economic, environmental, science, disaster warning, disaster relief, telecommunications, etc) to the nation by improving the existing satellite infrastructure. Whether you go “Flexible Path” or “Moon First”, you can start now, well before astronauts get to these destinations, the same way with lots of robotic missions on/around the Moon and adding “servicability” to lots of robotic missions destined for Earth orbit and Lagrange points.

    Refueling capability in HSF vehicles and satellites is an important part of both of these approaches. Refueling isn’t just a matter of doing the job now assigned to Ares 5 in a better, faster, cheaper way – it’s crucial all the way through HSF operations.

  • Robert Oler

    Marcel F. Williams

    There are lots of people who would like to live and work in space. In fact, I’d guess there are at least tens of millions of people who would currently like to live on the Moon, Mars, or in a large artificial gravity space station. …

    Marcel. there is no data to support that analysis.

    and the polls at KOS are meaningless…

    Robert G. Oler

  • Robert Oler

    sc220 wrote @ October 2nd, 2009 at 9:22 pm

    @Robert Oler

    The closest thing we have to a base on another planet is the U.S.’s Amundsen-Scott Station at the South Pole….

    thank you for the post, I concur completely.

    Mark Whittington has on his web site, although it is scrolling down…a story (which I think he wrote) about a Martian colony in 2059. The viewgraph (which he didnt do) depicts a very large colony…but nowhere does he mention what the thing does to support it (although according to him it has “low taxes”…right)…or how it got there…or why anyone in their right mind would want to live the rest of their lives there.

    The south pole station actually does “science” (and I believe but cannot prove that it also has some military functions) but life there, while harsh to Santa Fe or Clear Lake TX standards is a peach compared to what the Moon or Mars is going to be like.

    Through amateur radio I know exactly two people who have “wintered over”…one person is on a 5 year contract to “winter over”…but during the summers (which are the mild time there) the two people I know come back home.

    The people who say “but everyone wants to live in a Dyson Sphere” or whatever…oh sure…and we are going to build those tomorrow.

    I concur completely in your thoughts. Off to get some more paint on the barn before it rains.

    Robert G. Oler

  • Marcel,

    Thank you for providing the link to this Gallup poll from last July. The poll backs up the earlier DKos polls about the American public’s attitudes toward human spaceflight and support for US space program. This why I have argued that it is not the American public that needs convincing with compelling reasons. The issue is with the level of necessity. Our government provides huge funding for our military programs because national defense is perceived to have a high level of necessity. Just as our social programs like Social Security and Medicare receive separate funding because they are regarded as at high level of necessity. Our space program made significant progress in the 1960’s because it was considered as a necessity to our image as a technologically supreme superpower and to national security, so NASA received strong funding. Thus, for NASA to get more funding today the level of necessity for the space program must rise in order for our government to increase appropriations.

  • @Gary Miles

    You’re welcome. Americans are a pioneering culture and humans are a pioneering species. Our culture is obsessed with space travel (Star Trek, Star Wars, Battle Star Galactica, Babylon V, Star Gate, 2001: A Space Odyssey). We’re ready to go! I think NASA needs to take advantage of this natural human instinct to pioneer and colonize new environments.

    I don’t think the public wants a space program designed for an elite few! Nor do they want this politically correct– and extremely boring– space program that is restricted to LEO. They want a program that’s going eventually allow them or their children to travel to space stations and to colonies at the L1, L2, L4, and L5 points, and to the Moon and Mars and beyond. A strong government space program is a great thing because it will pave the way for private enterprise to eventually allow us all, or at least our children, to venture and to settle the New Frontier.

  • Major Tom

    “The poll backs up the earlier DKos polls about the American public’s attitudes toward human spaceflight and support for US space program…”

    Not when it comes to the critical issue of budget priorities. If by “support” you mean “increase funding for” the U.S. space program, the Gallup poll shows that only 14% of Americans want NASA’s funding to increase. More than double that amount, or 40% (plus or minus the no responses), want NASA’s funding to decrease. With only 46% staying the course at NASA’s current budget levels, the pressure on NASA’s budget from the public is clearly downward, not up, regardless of responses about how happy the public is with NASA or whether the public thinks past NASA investments paid off.

    “This why I have argued that it is not the American public that needs convincing with compelling reasons.”

    But they do. If your objective is to increase NASA’s funding or retain current funding, then the public has not been convinced of any compelling reasons. They may be happy with NASA, they may think that the benefits of past investments in NASA are justified, but they don’t yet have a compelling reason to increase NASA’s budget (otherwise more than 14% would vote to do so), and they are actually inclined to cut NASA’s budget below current levels.

    FWIW…

  • Anon

    @Major Tom,

    Your analysis of the poll clearly contradicts the analysis of the Professionals who conducted the poll.

    “Americans remain broadly supportive of space exploration and government funding of it. In fact, Americans are somewhat more likely to believe the benefits of the space program justify its costs at the 40th anniversary of the moon landing than they were at the 10th, 25th, and 30th anniversaries.

    Although support for keeping NASA funding at its present level or increasing it is lower now than it has been in the past, the fact that 6 in 10 Americans hold this view in the midst of a recession suggests the public is firmly committed to the space program.”

    And I will take the analysis of professionals over an unknown commenter anytime.

    So given that the majority of the public thinks NASA is doing a good job with the money they are getting I think the agency could easily make a case to the public for the increased in funding if, as the Augustine Committee reports, the lack of the increase means America’s space program is not sustainable. What NASA needs to do is make sure the America public is aware of the call of the Augustine Committee for more money.

    Americans do want a strong, space program and when they become aware that we won’t have one in a couple years, with American astronauts having to hitch rides with the Russians or on tourist vehicles, they will not be happy with Congress or the President.

  • Major Tom

    “Your analysis of the poll clearly contradicts the analysis of the Professionals who conducted the poll.”

    No, it doesn’t. The Gallup writeup that you quoted clearly states:

    “…support for keeping NASA funding at its present level or increasing it is lower now than it has been in the past… ”

    There are fewer Americans who want to keep NASA at it current funding level or increase it than there have ever been in the past. That’s consistent with my statement:

    “… the pressure on NASA’s budget from the public is clearly downward, not up…”

    The rest of the Gallup writeup that you quoted only states that “Americans remain broadly committed” to NASA and that the “public remains firmly committed to the space program”. That only means that the public doesn’t want to zero out NASA budget or otherwise make the agency disappear. It doesn’t mean that the public wants NASA to get a budget increase (only 14% of them do) or that NASA’s budget isn’t going to go down (which ~40% of them do want to happen).

    And regardless of what Gallup wrote, their numbers don’t lie. Only 14% of Americans would increase NASA funding, and only 46% would keep NASA at its current budget levels. That leaves another 40% (plus or minus “don’t know” responses) that would decrease NASA’s budget levels — well more than double the number would increase NASA’s budget and nearly as many as would keep NASA’s budget at its current levels. Put another way, 86% of Americans would keep NASA at its current budget levels or cut NASA’s budget. Assuming NASA’s budget was determined by popular vote (and it’s not), the best the agency could hope for is to keep the funding it has, and, given the likely margin of error, there’s a decent shot it’s funding would go down.

    “So given that the majority of the public thinks NASA is doing a good job with the money they are getting I think the agency could easily make a case to the public for the increased in funding if”

    NASA is not an employee up for their annual job performance review. For NASA, just doing a good job is a necessary, but not sufficient, reason for getting a raise.

    NASA is a federal agency that has to provide a strong reason for why the taxpayer should increase its budget. Without that, it doesn’t matter how good a job the agency does. We could have a National Juggling and Hackeysack Agency that consistently wins every worldwide juggling and hackeysack competition, but if the American public doesn’t think that juggling and hackeysack is a worthwhile use of their taxpayer dollars, then that agency’s budget is going down. (I’m not saying that NASA activities are as low a priority as juggling or hackeysack, but I hope it makes the point that doing a good job is not enough.)

    “as the Augustine Committee reports, the lack of the increase means America’s space program is not sustainable”

    That’s not what the Summary Report states. It states that to have a human space exploration program that is executable within a reasonable timeframe given all the other constraints currently placed on the NASA budget, increased funding is necessary. It doesn’t say that the entire civil space program, or even just the human space flight program, is not sustainable without a budget increase, or even that an exploration program isn’t executable within the existing budget if other constraints came off that budget. It would be ludicrous to claim that a lack of $3 billion is going to suddenly make the entire civil space program unsustainable given that NASA has been sustained at the $17-18 billion level for years now.

    “What NASA needs to do is make sure the America public is aware of the call of the Augustine Committee for more money.”

    As a federal agency, NASA can’t lobby legislators or the public. It’s forbidden by law.

    “Americans do want a strong, space program…”

    The Gallup poll didn’t ask whether Americans want a strong space program. It asked whether the benefits from past space investments were worthwhile; whether NASA’s funding should go up, down, or stay the same; and whether NASA is doing a good job. None of those are the same thing as asking the public whether they want a “strong” space program. (And honestly, it’s a useless question anyway because different people are doing to define “strong” differently.)

    “when they become aware that we won’t have one in a couple years, with American astronauts having to hitch rides with the Russians”

    The public won’t care. U.S. astronauts flew on Soyuzes for two years after Columbia and there wasn’t any hue or outcry (or even a peep) from the public.

    “or on tourist vehicles,

    Again, the public won’t care. There’s a tourist who’s effectively a clown using U.S. equipment on the ISS right now, and there’s no hue or outcry from the public.

    “And I will take the analysis of professionals over an unknown commenter anytime.”

    You do realize that your signed your screenname “Anon”, right?

    Please think before you post.

    Look, I’m not trying to be a wet blanket, but if you or the other poster want to argue for good space policy and program decisions, then you have to deal with hard, cold reality — not marginal arguments that stretch facts or that are actually contradicted by the numbers.

    FWIW…

  • Robert Oler

    Marcel F. Williams wrote @ October 3rd, 2009 at 2:48 pm
    Our culture is obsessed with space travel (Star Trek, Star Wars, Battle Star Galactica, Babylon V, Star Gate, 2001: A Space Odyssey). We’re ready to go! …

    lol two points

    first do you think that spaceflight in the near future is anything like depicted in those shows…

    and two …do you really think that the popularity of a TV show is equal to support for spending billions in space?

    NCIS is popular…does that mean everyone wants to be an NCIS agent?

    Robert G. Oler

  • Major Tom,

    That same Gallup poll showed that support for NASA has increased over the last 28 years and is increasingly more popular with the younger generation of Americans. As far as increasing or maintaining funding for NASA showed that 60% of Americans supported either maintaining or increasing NASA’s budget. The analysis did not call this a ‘downward trend’ but a reflection of the economic conditions similar to what occurred in 1993. So your comment is rather misleading. Also, the question was not asked in the poll was that if extra funding were necessary to continue NASA’s human exploration program beyond LEO would the public support that increase and to what level would they be willing to increase the budget. I venture that the response would have been to the affirmative. Of course we will never know since the question was not asked.

  • Major Tom

    “That same Gallup poll showed that support for NASA has increased over the last 28 years…”

    No, it shows that more Americans (58%) today think that the space program has brought benefits that justify its cost than Americans circa 1980 (41%). That doesn’t mean that they support NASA budgetarily. Those are two different things.

    And in fact, the poll shows that there is no correlation between the question about the benefits the space program and support for NASA’s budget. Support for NASA’s budget has dropped many times faster over the past five years (from 75% to 60%, a drop of 15%) than the growth in the question about the benefits of the space program over the same time period (maybe a 3% increase).

    “As far as increasing or maintaining funding for NASA showed that 60% of Americans supported either maintaining or increasing NASA’s budget.”

    So what? The poll also shows that 86% of American support either maintaining or decreasing NASA’s budget.

    It’s not a majority, but there are clearly many more Americans who think NASA’s budget should be smaller (~40%) than Americans who think NASA’s budget should grow (14%). Although most Americans wouldn’t change NASA’s budget (46%), the pressure on NASA’s budget from the Gallup poll is clearly downward.

    And that’s consistent with other polls about budget priorities and the relative position of space spending and NASA in those priorities. For example, this Harris poll asked respondents what two government programs they would cut to reduce the deficit, and the overwhelming number one response — and the only majority response — was space at 51%. The next highest response was welfare, at 28%.

    http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=746

    In both the Gallup poll and this Harris poll, when the rubber meets the road and Americans have to assign a dollars to space spending, they trend towards or clearly favor cutting NASA’s budget.

    I’m not saying I like it. I don’t take any pleasure in this. But that’s where we’re at and patting ourselves on the back about non-scientific, self-selecting internet polls on Daily Kos or about feel-good questions that don’t require the public to think about spending or priorities isn’t going to move any space policy or program forward.

    Finally, to the extent the Congress is suppossed to reflect voter opinion, these polls are also consistent with the action (or lack thereof) we’ve seen on NASA’s budget in Congress for years now. Despite two bills authorizing larger amounts, both Republican- and Democrat-controlled Congresses have failed to meet their VSE budget commitments every fiscal year since 2004. NASA supporters in Congress led by Sen. Barbara Mikulski, who sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee, have tried for years to pass a bill appropriating a one-time increase in NASA’s budget of $1 billion to pay NASA back for Columbia and Katrina damae, and they’ve failed to even bring a bill to a floor vote. And earlier this year, the House appropriators cut Constellation by more than half a billion dollars.

    The pattern is clear that the best NASA can hope to do is to hang onto the budget it has and there’s nothing indicating that’s going to change anytime soon. For those of us who care about making progress in the civil space program, it’s far past time to stop whining about an extra billion dollars here or three billion dollars there, and make the most of the nearly $18 billion that NASA gets (especially the $10 billion that the civil human space flight program receives) every year.

    “The analysis did not call this a ‘downward trend’”

    It doesn’t matter what the analysis called it. Support for NASA’s budget dropped 15% in about five years. It’s not a “downward trend”; it’s a large drop.

    “… the question was not asked in the poll was that if extra funding were necessary to continue NASA’s human exploration program beyond LEO would the public support that increase and to what level would they be willing to increase the budget. I venture that the response would have been to the affirmative.”

    Based on what? Hopes and dreams?

    I’m sorry, but based on multiple poll questions that actually deal with budget priorities and based on how Congress has been treating NASA’s budget, there’s no indication that’s true. If 51% of the American public would cut space spending before any other budget priority, if 86% of the American public would only maintain or cut NASA’s budget, and if Congress won’t pay NASA back for Columbia and Katrina damagewith no public outcry, then the public is highly unlikely to support a large NASA budget increase, for any reason.

    FWIW…

  • @ Robert Oler

    I guess you just don’t understand it Robert. But even the wealthiest amongst us want to go and are willing to put down the big bucks in order to do so.

    http://www.space.com/news/space_poll_020520.html

  • Major Tom

    “@ Robert Oler”

    Not to horn in on Mr. Oler’s conversation, but he was talking about public financing of human space flight (taxpayer dollars) and this space tourism poll is about personal financing of human space flight (private dollars).

    Just because a gazillionaire wants to buy a ride, doesn’t mean that taxpayers and voters (including that gazillionaire) want to pay their government to put professional astronauts in space. They’re not the same thing.

    “But even the wealthiest amongst us want to go”

    On a minority of the wealthy. Only 20% of the wealthy were interested in paying, and that was for a suborbital hop five years ago. It’s enough to make a market, but it’s hardly a majority and it’s hardly Star Trek/Star Wars.

    “and are willing to put down the big bucks in order to do so.”

    Depending on just how wealthy they are, $100K is not necessarily “big bucks” for the wealthy.

    FWIW…

  • Anon

    Major Tom,

    If you are so negative about the future of American space flight, twisting poll results to say something counter to what the analysis who design the polls say, why are you still a space advocate? Why not just give it up and leave the field to those who have the dream? Those who still think space is humanity’s best chance at survival and who still have faith that America is a frontier nation that wishes to sail on what President Kennedy called this “New Ocean”.

    You must be from the boomer generation to be so cynical. Maybe its time to let a younger and less cynical generation take over the dream and make it reality. One that is not looking for the gloom in every poll and press release.

  • eng

    Well I am not from the boomer generation, but I don’t know if the often used flowery language about destinies (the entire humanity’s no less!), sailing among the stars, and venusian dreams, or the obligatory JFK rhetoric homilies will help human space flight extract that more funds much after so many decades of trying by the desperate space cadets. “It’s dead, Jim”

    I think it’s time for cold hard realities to try do some ‘convincing’ (if there is any point to HSF) Profit motif if any, billionare tourists, crazy enterpreneurs maybe? That I could understand.

  • Major Tom

    “If you are so negative…”

    I’m not. I explicitly stated earlier that we’re better off putting our efforts into making the most of NASA’s existing $18 billion per year budget than wasting more years of effort trying to get another billion or three (that Congress never delivers anyway) based on self-selecting or fluffy polls.

    And why are you personalizing this argument? I havn’t thrown any insults at your persona.

    Argue the post, not the poster. If you can’t without throwing insults, then take it elsewhere.

    “twisting poll results”

    The numbers are what the numbers are. The Harris poll clearly states that 51% of Americans, a majority, would cut space spending before they’d cut spending on any other federal priority. And the Gallup poll clearly states that only 14% of Americans, a tiny minority, would increase NASA’s budget.

    I didn’t twist anything. The numbers are what the numbers are.

    “…the analysis who design the polls say…”

    Please take an English class. You write sentences that are incoherent.

    “Why not just give it up and leave the field to those who have the dream?”

    Because when it comes to complex and difficult endeavors like space exploration, dreams are rarely worth the paper they’re written on. Someone has to deal with the world as it is and develop policies and programs that fit within the budgets, technical realities, and natural laws that actually govern what’s possible and what’s not.

    “Those who still think space is humanity’s best chance at survival”

    How is humanity going to reproduce and survive in low-gravity environments where:

    The reproductive organs of plants become sterile…

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11541358

    Invertebrate embryos exhibit bent legs, dropping movement, and looping behavior after birth…

    http://sciencelinks.jp/j-east/article/200005/000020000599A0852524.php

    Mice embryos have trouble with cell division and maturation, inhibiting implantation in the uterine wall…

    http://sciencestage.com/resources/detrimental-effects-microgravity-mouse-preimplantation-development-vitro

    If we’re already getting these kinds of bad reproductive results across such a range of lower lifeforms, the effects are not going to be less benign in higher lifeforms (like humans) with more complex embryonic development cycles. Based on what we know today, it’s highly unlikely that humans will be able to safely reproduce in low gravity environments.

    And that says nothing of the radiation hazards. Just to to make a two-year trip to Mars safe, experts are now talking about screening astronauts for radiation resistance in the near-term and genetic engineering in the long-term. See:

    http://commercialspacegateway.com/item/34382-future-outposts-beyond-leo-require-r-d

    If that’s what’s needed for a two-year trip to Mars, forget living out an entire life and reproducing outside the Van Allen Belts without massive reengineering of the human genome.

    Humans are adapted to life on Earth, not any space environment, and our best chance for survival remains here. Outside short trips to space under a couple years in duration, space is the best place to kill humans and ensure that they can’t reproduce, not humanity’s best chance for survival.

    Anyone who thinks otherwise needs to lay off the science fiction and start taking some hard science classes.

    “and who still have faith that America is a frontier nation that wishes to sail on what President Kennedy called this ‘New Ocean’.”

    Learn some policy history. Kennedy started Apollo to beat the Soviets in a Cold War competition, not out of some vague sense that the United States is a “frontier nation” or wanted to sail a “‘New Ocean'”. See:

    http://history.nasa.gov/moondec.html

    “You must be from the boomer generation to be so cynical.”

    No, I’m not.

    And why are you slandering an entire generation? That’s uncalled for. Apologize or take your ugly venom elsewhere.

    Yuck…

  • Robert Oler

    Marcel F. Williams

    I guess you just don’t understand it Robert..

    actually that is the problem…I do understand it…or some of it anyway.

    There is a difference between have a dream, which is by definition devoid of reality, and having a vision; which has as its core modifying reality to allow a future different then the present.

    The former invents Dyson spheres with the stroke of a keyboard or sees movies as precursors of the future and the later tries to figure out how to evolve from a government financed government run, floundering space program toward something that evolves on a reasonable basis.

    Just as I looked at a few artillery shells of aging chemical or bio weapons and didnt see a wave of WMD being “dangers gathering near our shores” ….I dont look at tv shows or a few very very wealthy people who are a small percentage of the population as a whole and a small subset of the mindless wealthy…and see a flood of change in the populations theories on what the future will be.

    To be blunt.

    What has gotten the US (and the world for that matter but I only care about the US) into trouble in space are the folks who are always apologizing for NASA and for various space policies of various administrations…because it is space.

    Where space advocates will go a long way toward “growing up” (and I dont direct this at anyone) is when they stop viewing space and space policy as anything special, other then in the fact that it is special because they are interested in it.

    Once they figure that out, then more rational decisions and discussions can be had.

    Robert G. Oler

  • Anon

    @Major Tom,

    Ok, I’ll bite. If you were Obama what would YOUR space goals be? How would you fix this mess? You do a pretty good job criticizing the plans and opinions of other posters, which is always easy to do. Now let’s hear what your plan for opening the space frontier is. Or do you have one?

  • Robert Oler

    Anon wrote @ October 4th, 2009 at 11:45 am

    @Major Tom,

    Ok, I’ll bite. If you were Obama what would YOUR space goals be?..

    Major Tom can speak for himself (he does it well)…but I’ll take a crack at this.

    If I were king..my space goals would be to create a space economy which had a multiplicative effect on the American Republic not was a drain on it…ie one that generated a net plus in tax dollars solely on what it does…not one that continually fed at the government trough.

    How to do that?

    First privatize and really privatize it…lift to ISS. Second move the American part of ISS to some non NASA organization which runs it as a national resource rather then a space agency one.

    That would do three things. First lower cost of lift to space, two lower cost of operating in space and three open operations on the ISS to a broader group of American industry then it is now.

    Robert G. Oler

  • Now let’s hear what your plan for opening the space frontier is. Or do you have one?

    Actually, you are supposed to offer a plan yourself, not demand one.

    Everybody knows my plan, since I’ve published it long ago.

    Feel free to tell us your plan, or better yet, publish it.

    Augustine, et al., is about to publish their plan.

  • Lurker

    Gee, what happened to Major Tom? The question Anon asked is a reasonable one. Major Tom seems to know a lot so it would be good to hear his plan.

  • Major Tom

    “Gee, what happened to Major Tom?”

    Major Tom has a day job and had to work a major review this weekend.

    “The question Anon asked is a reasonable one.”

    I’ll post some consolidated bullet points based on comments I’ve made in this forum before in the next day or two.

    “Major Tom seems to know a lot so it would be good to hear his plan.”

    I have to say that it’s strange to ask this of me, when the posters making the request have offered little more than “space-is-good” platitudes in this thread.

    Pot, kettle, black, and all that.

    FWIW…

  • Lurker

    @Major Tom

    Thanks. Perhaps yours could be a model of how they should be thinking.

  • Anon

    @Top Dog

    My plan is simple, fix the LEO mess first.

    Kill Ares I and V, that what happens when the head of NASA is more interested in being chief engineer then an administrator.

    Then do Orion lite (3 man) on an Atlas V with a operational date of 2016.

    Then offer $500 million each to two COTS-D winners for a system to carry at least 3 men to ISS by 2016. It would include an incentive of 25% ($125 million) for each year they are able to succeed before 2016 to put a fire in their belly. I would also make it clear to Lockmart that if the COTS-D team succeeds a year or more before Orion, Orion will be canceled. That will put a fire in their belly to build it fast.

    I would keep ISS in orbit until at least 2025. Its stupid to spend 16 years designing it, 12 years building it and only 5 years operating it. I like Robert’s suggestion and would look for an NGO that could run it under a fix price contract. Perhaps an United Space Alliance model. But I suspect it would have to stay under NASA given beltway politics.

    I would end the Shuttle as soon as politically possible to get funds for the above.

    I wouldn’t worry about HSF beyond LEO until the LEO mess is fixed. 2017 would be a new administration so that would be a good time to look at options there. But I would require the Orion and the COTS-D winners could be upgraded for operations beyond LEO. I would also look to develop orbital refueling technology, budget permitting.

    The above should be possible within the current budget.

  • Loki

    At the risk of being accused of naysaying…

    “Then do Orion lite (3 man) on an Atlas V with a operational date of 2016″
    You do realize that would require a massive re-design to make the capsule diameter smaller, which is not trivial in the least, and drastically reducing weight, also not trivial, all in a span of less than 7 years? Not gonna happen, sorry. You’d be just as well off canceling the existing contract and starting over from scratch.

    “I would also make it clear to Lockmart that if the COTS-D team succeeds a year or more before Orion, Orion will be canceled”
    I’m no lawyer but I’m pretty sure threatening a private company that already has a contract in place is illegal, even for NASA. If, however, the contract were modified or scrapped and replaced, then you could make this a perfomance requirement. Of course, going that route there’s no guarantee that LM, Boeing, or anyone else would actually want to bid on it. They don’t really like to be threatened from the very start of a contract with cancellation for failure to meet a goal that is probably impossible anyway.

    “look for an NGO that could run it under a fix price contract. Perhaps an United Space Alliance model.”
    I may be wrong, but I though USA was under a cost plus contract to operate the shuttle and ISS. If I am I’m sure someone will correct me. In general, as othere have pointed out previously, going to fixed price contracts instead of cost plus is not a bad idea in general, though.

  • Loki

    Since a couple of folks have already posted their “king for a day” scenarios, here’s mine, FWIW.

    1. Remember the “NASA BRAC” discussion from earlier in this thread? Do that as part of a larger overhaul of NASA’s operations to make them a leaner more efficient organization. This means reducing redundancies (does NASA really need more than one aeronautics center? or more than one space operations center?).

    2. Reform government procurement processes across the board. Go away from huge cost plus contracts and go towards fixed price and incentive based contracts instead. These first 2 things are aimed at reforming the culture. IMO, it doesn’t matter what “program” you change to if the same old people and the same old culture are still in place, you’re still going to have the same old SNAFUs.

    3. Cancel Ares 1 and go instead to man rated EELV heavies to launch Orion. Orion should be able to be launched on them without having to under go a drastic weight reduction redesign, making it easier to keep it on schedule.

    4. Offer an award of $500 million to the first company to actually demonstrate COTS-D and a $250 million reward for the second. They don’t have to actually fly people for the maiden flight, so long as the spacecraft is able to demonstrate the ability to dock with the ISS, has a fully functioning ECLSS system, meets all man rating requirements, and obviously returns safely. I would favor an award rather than just giving a big chunck of money up front, seeing that neither Spacex nor Orbital has actually even test launched yet.

    5. Commit to operating the ISS for as long as it is safe to do so. Also, the idea of turning it over to an NGO or some other group to operate on a fixed price basis is not a bad idea.

    6. Continue some kind of HLV program. It may entail some kind of evolutionary approach. For instance, first start with the “shuttle-C” aka sidemount idea that was pitched to Augustine and has been floating around for the better part of a couple of decades. Then “evolve” into an in-line system, which is really all Direct 3.0 is. After that, you can further evolve into a system using 5.5 segment SRBs, which is the main difference between the proposed Ares 5 and Direct’s Jupiter 242 configuration.

    7. Bring back the NIAC to explore new technologies and capabilities such as propellant depots, NTRs, BPP, etc. and other more “pie in the sky” high risk high reward kinds of R&D projects.

    These are just a few of my “king for a day” ideas, take them for what they’re worth…

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  • I only know of one thing that needs to be done now, should have been done yesterday, and should have been done four years ago now : cancel Ares I.

    Barack Obama just needs to walk over and knock that freaking thing down.

  • Anon

    @Loki,

    “require a massive re-design to make the capsule diameter smaller, which is not trivial in the least, and drastically reducing weight, also not trivial, all in a span of less than 7 years?”

    The Apollo capsule was built in that time frame with slide rules before anyone knew what worked. I would assume with CAD and 50 years of a new capsule could be built in the same time frame. Its not like you are asking them to do anything revolutionary.

    If a new RFP is needed to include those provisions than so be it. And if none of the old space firms want to bid on Orion under those terms it looks like it would be an opportunity for some new space firms to try their luck on a traditional contract :-)

    I though Boeing was running the ISS program at the moment and until construction was completed, but perhaps someone here could clarify it.

  • Anon

    @Loki,

    I like you idea of an award, but wonder if new space companies would be able to raise the capital to gamble on it. That is why COTS had milestone payments.

    But major point I would disagree with you on would be a HLV. There is no evidence HLV is needed at this point. And if it was the last thing you want to do is use the Shuttle infrastructure for it. Its 30 year old technology with huge amounts of legacy costs. A HLV based on it would kill the budget. If the case for heavy lift is made in the future I would prefer a clean start with a clean sheet design instead of dragging technology from the middle of the last century into the future.

  • Anon

    Just saw that a few words was left out of the post above. It should be “50 years of knowledge of spacecraft design a new capsule…” That is what happens when you get old and your eyes start to go.

  • Loki

    Anon:
    You’re right, the Apollo capsule was designed and built in only 7 years (and after the Apollo 1 fire it was re-designed in only 2). However, they also had ~400,000 people nationwide working on Apollo (I’m not sure how many of those were working on the Saturn rockets and how many were on the Apollo spacecraft). Orion only has, last I heard, ~2,000 people on it. It’s possible if Ares 1 were cancelled that some of the money freed up could be put towards Orion, but probably still not enough.

    As for the HLV, I guess I kind of take the opposite approach. I.e., if it can be shown that an HLV is not necessary then it can be cancelled. For instance, a tech demonstration program for fuel depots, perhaps a joint project of DARPA and a reborn NIAC, that demonstrates the feasibility of on-orbit refueling. We may have all the technology to do it, but it’s still a capability that has never actually been demonstrated. Then the only question is whether it would really be less expensive to use fuel depots and multiple EELV/ Falcon 9 class launches instead of 1 big HLV for beyond LEO exploration. I think the jury’s still out on that.

    Also, I too would prefer to start with a clean sheet for a new HLV, but the budget reality is that it would probably be cheaper to “evolve” an existing LV. Whether the shuttle is used as the starting point or the EELVs isn’t that big a deal as far as I’m concerned, I just used shuttle as an example.

    I’ll also confess that I’m a bit more of an “HLV hugger” than some. There’s few things I’d like to see more than a big Saturn 5 or larger rocket launching towards the moon or points beyond in my lifetime. I was born too late to see any of the Apollo launches. That may bias my judgement when it comes to the HLV question. As Tim Allen might say “that thing just needs more power!”

  • Loki

    Oh and to clarify Boeing’s role on ISS:

    Boeing designs and builds the modules and delivers them to NASA. Then United Space Alliance has responsibility for ground operations of the shuttle at KSC including payload integration, and real time flight operations once the modules are launched and become part of the ISS.

  • Anon

    Loki,

    That number of 400,000 is a common number for NASA and its contractors during the Apollo era. The Apollo CSM was just one small element. In addition to the Saturn V you had the Saturn 1B, LEM, Surveyor, Lunar Orbiter, Gemini, and so one. I don’t have the actual number that worked on the Apollo CSM, but would be surprised if it was more then 10,000 and probably a lot less.

    And also remember that building a capsule that would go to the Moon was a radically new idea, so you had a lot of testing to do to get the correct shape, parachute systems, etc. Today that is all historical knowledge that is available for the Orion. For example the shape of the Orion is identical to the Apollo capsule, but weights twice as much to accommodate the 6 people.

    Also don’t overlook the value of Computer Aided Design replacing the rooms full of engineers at drafting tables and the many people who were actually number crunching by hand, slide rules and old adding machines. The computer you are writing this on probably has more power then all the computers NASA had for Project Apollo combined.

    And back then they needed to do lots of wind tunnel tests and actual drop tests to get the design right. Today much of that could be done with computer simulations with only a few tests to confirm the numbers generated. And of course you have the legacy data from Apollo. That is why I find it very difficult to see why an oversize clone of the Apollo Command Module, simply updated with new electronics and materials, is going to take so long. You aren’t really breaking any new ground except perhaps in the land recovery aspect, and I don’t see a problem with going back to ocean recovery.

    But real problem they have with the current Orion is with its weight, and that is a result of designing it to carry six people. The Orion recover capsule is about twice as heavy as the Command Service Module. Cut the number of astronauts in half and the weight issue goes away and gives you the margins needed to make designing most of the other systems a challenge. It also eliminates the need for an upgraded Atlas V heavy or Ares I.

    BTW Does anyone know where the requirement for 6 astronauts came from? The only place I could think of is that its equal to the crew size of the ISS so you could evacuate everyone in one Orion…

    In terms of HLV, I think its something we need to agree to disagree on. It would be nice to have when we go beyond LEO, but in the current budget constrained environment its a luxury that NASA is not able to afford. Especially if its based on Shuttle hardware.

    Think about it. If you don’t use SDV for heavy lift you could get rid of Michoud, the barges and tugs used to transport the ETs, the SRBs and the infrastructure needed to support them including recovery boats, the crawlers, the VAB, the support for the SME and mothball (or demolish) the two shuttle pads. That is a big saving in overhead when NASA needs every penny. The savings could then be plowed into a new generation HLV when one is actually needed.

  • Anon

    @Loki,

    So in regards to the ISS it doesn’t look like their is one unifying contract as with the Shuttle and USA.

  • common sense

    ” For example the shape of the Orion is identical to the Apollo capsule, but weights twice as much to accommodate the 6 people. ”

    Absolutely wrong. It may look like Apollo but it is very different. Different enough that all the aerodynamics and aerothermal environment had to be redone. Granted a lot with computer simulation unlike Apollo.

    “And of course you have the legacy data from Apollo. ”

    Not as much as you would like to believe. A lot of data was lost. A lot.

    “That is why I find it very difficult to see why an oversize clone of the Apollo Command Module, simply updated with new electronics and materials, is going to take so long.”

    The reason is that none of those working Orion were around during Apollo, none. So people have to be re-educated. Such is life.

    “You aren’t really breaking any new ground except perhaps in the land recovery aspect, and I don’t see a problem with going back to ocean recovery.”

    A lot of people disagree with you here. If land-landing were to be easy it would not have been dropped in favor of ocean splash-down.

    “Cut the number of astronauts in half and the weight issue goes away and gives you the margins needed to make designing most of the other systems a challenge. ”

    Overly simplistic I fear. Show us the numbers you work with.

    “Think about it. If you don’t use SDV for heavy lift you could get rid of Michoud, the barges and tugs used to transport the ETs, the SRBs and the infrastructure needed to support them including recovery boats, the crawlers, the VAB, the support for the SME and mothball (or demolish) the two shuttle pads. That is a big saving in overhead when NASA needs every penny. The savings could then be plowed into a new generation HLV when one is actually needed.”

    I am afraid you don’t understand then why NASA went with Shuttle “derived” hardware.

  • Anon

    @common sense

    Yes, there are challenges with it, but they are much less then were faced with Apollo when no one had done it before. And have much more powerful tools to work the problem. So its still incredible its going to take them longer to build Orion then it took with the Apollo Command Module.

    I know, jobs will disappear as well. But it still boggles the mind to think it will be more efficient to drag 35 year old technology into a 21st Century HLV then start with a clean sheet.

  • I know, jobs will disappear as well. But it still boggles the mind to think it will be more efficient to drag 35 year old technology into a 21st Century HLV then start with a clean sheet.

    This is a government program. Why would you think that efficiency is on the table at all as a criterion, let alone a significant one?

  • common sense

    @Anon:

    The reason why you choose a capsule over something else is that the most important portion of the flight (hypersonics) does not care whether it is a capsule or anything else. A capsule is much easier to design than anything else and will cost much less. It is not easy though. And the choice of the OML ought to be based on something else than national pride, hence CEV looking like Apollo. All of the accumulated experience tends to show that a Soyuz like OML would be much safer but again the USA flying a “Soyuz”? Anyway.

    Again the problem was to educate the workforce at the same time you were designing and building all those vehicles. Hence the time required with the given budget. Forces pushing towards this design were essentially fooling themselves. Period. Not that any other design would have been much quicker.

    The choice for Shuttle derived vehicles was precisely to save the workforce. How can you then save money? This “saving money” is all political baloney, sorry.

  • Anon

    @common sense,

    When NASA made the decision to save the workforce in the 1970’s they didn’t build a Saturn derived launcher, they started with a clean sheet.

    The Shuttle may not have lived up to expectations but it was a lot better then a capsule on a firecracker and its sad we are being forced back to that type of system. I don’t see why a similar clear sheet decision for a new HLV would not only save the workforce but also education them in building launch vehicles, a skill that NASA is now lacking as you stated.

  • common sense

    @Anon:

    I am not arguing they could have done it in some other way! BUT they wanted to preserve the solid rocket motor expertise in particular. And it looked like a DOD “requirement”… Anyway.

    Remember better faster cheaper? I would venture it was the basis of the decisions for all of the Constellation program. We know where this philosophy leads…

    I have my personal preferences some of which is based on analysis as to what RV we could use. But it’s a different story.

  • A capsule is much easier to design than anything else and will cost much less.

    It may cost less to design and develop, but it doesn’t cost less to operate.

  • common sense

    “It may cost less to design and develop, but it doesn’t cost less to operate.”

    Well that all depends on your CONOPS. Say you do land landing vs splash down there would be a difference in your life cycle cost. If it is reusable also. It may not be cheap but compared with Shuttle it may sound like it. So I don’t know you can just draw a statement like this without more analysis on your CONOPS and design requirements.

  • […] Greason, reflecting on his experience with the Augustine commission, said that with NASA overhead at $6-7 billion a […]

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