Congress, NASA

Senate wants NASA to follow all of the law

The theme of Wednesday’s hearing by the Senate Commerce Committee was a desire by committee members to ensure that NASA enacts all aspects of the recently-passed NASA Authorization Act, and not simply the portions it likes. Sens. Bill Nelson (D-FL) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) repeated asked presidential science advisor John Holdren and NASA CFO Beth Robinson if they planned to carry out the law, leading Holdren at one point to state, “We are going to follow the law. I can’t emphasize that enough.” Apparently he couldn’t emphasize it enough, given the number of times he was asked.

Of particular concern was NASA’s work—or lack thereof—on two key elements of the authorization act, the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (effectively a continuation of Orion) and Space Launch System heavy-lift launcher. Nelson, Space News reported, went so far as to claim “certain people within the administration” sought to block the bill’s passage and now are trying to delay implementation of its elements. Part of that delay, Robinson said, was that the agency was operating under a continuing resolution (CR) and the restrictions contained in it, and had to go though a methodical process of comparing the CR requirements with the provisions in the authorization bill, something it had not yet completed for the Orion or heavy-lift programs.

Going into the hearing some hoped, as in this Florida Today editorial, that Nelson in particular would use the hearing to push to fund NASA at the authorized level of $19 billion. Instead, though, he argued that in the event NASA gets funded at the 2010 level of $18.7 billion (through the use of a year-long CR), it should not stop the agency from implementing most programs in the authorization act. “We want to see this law implemented without a lot of griping and moaning and groaning if we’re able to get that kind of appropriation,” he said. In particular, Robinson assured the committee that NASA would be able to carry out the additional shuttle mission included in the act should the agency get funded at that level.

Nelson was less pleased, though, to find out how NASA would handle the roughly $276-million difference between the FY10 funding level and the authorized FY11 level. Robinson said that the money would most likely come from the “21st century spaceport initiative” to upgrade facilities at KSC, authorized for $429 million in FY11. That response, the Orlando Sentinel reported, led Nelson to call NASA administrator Charles Bolden after the hearing and get assurances that any money cut from the program in FY11 would be made up in future years.

155 comments to Senate wants NASA to follow all of the law

  • amightywind

    If Obama cared about his reelection he would replace the NASA management team that clearly irritates and lacks credibility with a democrat dominated congress. Can’t he see that they are a liability? What will these hearings be like when the GOP runs them? Grin.

  • Anne Spudis

    “If NASA’s implementation of the VSE had been reviewed independently on a regular and continuing basis, its fundamental programmatic and technical deficiencies would have been revealed and corrected long before the convening of the Presidential-level Augustine Commission, by which time the only solution (an untenable one) was to significantly increase the agency’s budget – to preserve the non-optimum decision made many years earlier, not to set the pursuit of the objective back on the right track.”

    http://blogs.airspacemag.com/moon/2010/11/21/keeping-an-eye-on-nasa/

    “The current administration’s decision to abandon NASA’s mission of resource utilization on the Moon needs to be revisited. The ability of the United States to routinely access cislunar space through the use of the Moon and its resources needs to be well understood and addressed. We cannot afford to remain complacent about the Moon while other countries move forward to reap the rewards of lunar return. The United States needs to make smart investments that will pay long-term dividends. Lunar return is one of those economic and technological investments.”

    http://blogs.airspacemag.com/moon/2010/11/06/can-nasa-get-its-groove-back/

  • MrEarl

    This hearing just illustrates the total lack of trust between congress and White House on this issue. See, Obama has created bi-partisanship on some issues before congress. :-)
    Between this tug-o-war and deficit cutting sure to come NASA will be directionless for the next 2 to 6 years. Private HSF will have to get by with their own resources, NASA will have to finally come to the realization that Apollo will never happen again and it well past time to start living within it’s budget.

  • Major Tom

    “If Obama cared about his reelection he would replace the NASA management team that clearly irritates and lacks credibility with a democrat dominated congress.”

    Since when do voters reelect presidents on the basis of whether their NASA administrators irritate Congress?

    Weird…

    “What will these hearings be like when the GOP runs them?”

    In yesterday’s hearing, Vitter (R-LA) stated that he wants the Administration to propose in a CR repealing the FY 2010 appropriations language requiring NASA to continue spending on Constellation, despite the fact that Vitter was one of sponsors of that language. So it sounds like there’s a potential meeting of the minds.

  • Major Tom

    “This hearing just illustrates the total lack of trust between congress and White House on this issue. See, Obama has created bi-partisanship on some issues before congress.”

    The President can’t break the laws that Congress has passed and the President has himself signed. The 2010 NASA Authorization Act calls for a new HLV (the Space Launch System or “SLS”), but there is no funding to go with it until Congress passes FY11 appropriations. Moreover, the FY10 appropriations forbid NASA from terminating Constellation, redirecting its funding, or starting new programs (like SLS).

    Congress is to blame for holding back progress on the new HLV. They havn’t provided the money necessary to start building a new HLV, and they’ve left laws on the books that forbid NASA from doing so, anyway. The White House did not create this problem, and they cannot fix it.

    Read the testimony and the GAO report presented at yesterday’s hearing before pointing your blame finger in the wrong direction.

    http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-11-216T

    “Private HSF will have to get by with their own resources,”

    The commercial crew program isn’t in the same legislative quandry as Constellation. CCDev awards have been made and another competition is ongoing.

    “NASA will have to finally come to the realization that Apollo will never happen again and it well past time to start living within it’s budget.”

    Better late than never.

  • “If Obama cared about his reelection he would replace the NASA management team that clearly irritates and lacks credibility with a democrat dominated congress.”

    Oh, Mighty, you fell for the old ‘America puts a lot of value in its space program’ story. Americans care about NASA only insofar as it exists and appears to be headed toward a goal. Once there is a course forward, then the budget cuts commence. It has been going on since the later days of Apollo and it will happen every single time we come up to the plate for NASA.

    Frankly, if we hung a placard outside a janitor’s closet saying “NASA, we’re headed to Mars!!!” few Americans would notice the change more or less care. And when it came time for money to be spent, they’d question the cost of the placard.

  • Mark R. Whittington

    The hearing demonstrates what kind of chaos the nation’s space program has been hurtled into by the Obama administraion and its minions now misrunning NASA. And if anyone think it does not have electoral conseqences, try to imagine Obama being reelected having lost Florida.

  • MrEarl

    I don’t pretend to know what Windy was thinking but it has nothing to do with, “America puts a lot of value in its space program” and everything to do with “Florida, Florida, Florida”, which has a large constituency of aerospace workers. If they feel the administration has let them down it’s probable that Obama will lose Florida making what now appears to be a difficult re-election even more so.

    On another note; since there will be so many other more important issues that need to be tackled like jobs, deficit reduction, etc; I’m surprised that the White House continues to ruffle feathers on both sides of the isle by by keeping Holdren, Bolden, Garver and the rest. Yesterday’s hearing shows that Holdren especially has zero credibility with lawmakers. These past two years have shown that Obama was not really ready to assume the presidency.

  • Major Tom

    “The hearing demonstrates what kind of chaos the nation’s space program has been hurtled into by the Obama administraion and its minions now misrunning NASA.”

    The Obama Administration didn’t create a Constellation program that was $3-5 billion _per year_ out of bed with its budget and a decade and half out of bed with its schedule. Neither did the Bush II White House, which developed the VSE but not Constellation. That buck stops (or rather it didn’t) with former Administrator Griffin. He’s the “minion” you should be blaming.

    “And if anyone think it does not have electoral conseqences, try to imagine Obama being reelected having lost Florida.”

    It’s a vanishingly small possibility that a presidential candidate is going to lose Florida on the basis of the space program. Even assuming they all voted the same way, the number votes represented by KSC workers and their families is dwarfed by the number of Florida voters influenced by other issues like retiree interests or Cuban relations.

  • Matt

    Perfect response Mark. I do believe that Obama can still win but it will be much harder to do so if Florida is lost. Therefore the opinion of registered voters in the state of Florida regarding NASA’s direction is quite important. Furthermore, Mr. Holdren said in the hearing yesterday that they would “do a better job next time”. This was in response to chiding from the board regarding the manner in which this program change was rolled out. No matter what your thoughts on the direction NASA is taking everyone should admit that this process could have been handled much better. The fact that key members of congress claim they were virtually uninformed that this was about to happen, along with the total lack of a detailed plan until months into the process are two points in particular that bother me about this. My opinion is that if the roll out had been handled better the change would have been much more streamline. Again, democrat or republican, this is a perfect example of poor presidential leadership.

  • Maybe both the Senate and House of Representatives gang of thieves should give up half of their pay to NASA since they can only muster a half-assed job. That would just about make up the difference.

    What gives them the right to tell anyone to obey any law when they themselves have a hard time doing so. Half are gone because they would not do their jobs. In a couple more years, the rest will follow.

  • Mr. Mark

    Once again all your arguments display why we need private space. That’s why ULA is moving to manrate the Delta 4 heavy for Orion for a 2013 launch.and Tuesday will be the launch of the firstt Dragon capsule aboard Falcon 9. Things are moving forward just not in the rried and true method used in the past.

  • @Anne … I think we’re in agreement. It wasn’t the VSE that was at fault, it was Griffin’s implementation of it. He was focused on building a new rocket rather than getting boots on the ground with the predictable results that we have neither.

    I would have rather have seen an upgraded Saturn V restart or multiple launches using the Delta IV Heavy and the Atlas V Heavy than sit around waiting for the development of a new rocket by committee.

    Better is the enemy of good enuff …

  • Amighty has it exactly right! Floridians love NASA and the part their state plays in manned spaceflight. Obama’s silly arrogance towards NASA certainly did not please Democrats in Florida and undermined them during the last election.

    During a Presidential election, Florida is a critical swing state. If Gore had won Florida in 2000, he would have been president. If Kerry had won Florida in 2004, he would have been president. If Obama loses Florida in 2012, he probably won’t be president in 2013!

    Obama needs to pay a lot more attention to NASA if he seriously wants to win Florida and the Presidential election in 2012. But if he wants to continue to appease the wing of the Democratic Party that has always been hostile to spending billions of government funds for manned space travel, then he will probably suffer the consequences of such a poor political decision.

  • Ferris Valyn

    Mark,
    He didn’t need Florida last time.

    And he won Florida without the space coast last time.

  • eh

    Possibly a smart move by Nelson. By suggesting that the Obama administration wants to kill SLS, he energizes a GOP House to want the opposite. Maybe if they panic sufficiently they’ll increase NASA funding just to spite Obama’s “secret motives”.

  • @Anne

    You’ve got it exactly right! The exploitation of lunar resources (hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, ammonia) is one of the major keys that could dramatically reduce the cost of manned and unmanned spaceflight within cis-lunar space and beyond!

    If America fools around and allows Asian countries to dominate these lunar resources at the Moon’s poles then America’s emerging private spaceflight companies could end up being dependent of extraterrestrial fuels and life support supplies from Asian companies rather than from American companies. That would mean more jobs and wealth created in Asia and fewer jobs and wealth created in America.

    If folks like Holdren, Bolden, and Garvey are advising Obama to abandon the Moon then they need to be fired for incompetence. The Moon is an essential key towards opening up the rest of the solar system. With the latest discoveries at the lunar poles, this is even more obvious!

  • Vladislaw

    Six astronauts on the ISS consume about 12 pounds of oxygen per day or about one ton per six months. (not including anything recycled) Water equals about 13 tons per six months at three gallons per day per astronaut. (again not including anything recycled) About two launches of Dragon. That would also be excluding all the cargo by the Russians, Japanese and the Europeans. So you believe spending how many BILLIONS to set that up on Luna would be cost effective versus a couple cargo launches by a domestic carrier? You are going to have an extremely hard time selling that one to congress.

    “let’s spend 100 – 150 billion for a launch system and 50 billion for launches and 50 billion for a lunar base so we can send one ton of Oyxgen to the ISS every six months.”

  • amightywind

    eh wrote @ December 2nd, 2010 at 12:57 pm

    Possibly a smart move by Nelson. By suggesting that the Obama administration wants to kill SLS, he energizes a GOP House to want the opposite.

    Clever. But more likely Senator Nelson recognizes that newspace mischief makers that run NASA are a liability for his 2012 reelection campaign. He is gently throwing them under the bus. He will support the ‘solid program’.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Mark R. Whittington wrote @ December 2nd, 2010 at 10:55 am

    Obama received few if any votes from “space coast” workers and few if any would have changed their minds if Obama had kept them on their technowelfare…

    If or not Obama is reelected depends on far larger issues then a human spaceflight program that was collapsing of its own weight long before he took office.

    HSF is the face of technowelfare.

    Robert G. Oler

  • William Mellberg

    Mark R. Whittington wrote:

    “The hearing demonstrates what kind of chaos the nation’s space program has been hurtled into by the Obama administraion and its minions now misrunning NASA. And if anyone think it does not have electoral conseqences, try to imagine Obama being reelected having lost Florida.”

    Amen! Bill Nelson is one of the last statewide Democrats standing in Florida, which explains his recent outburst against Obama. And the chaos at NASA reflects the chaos elsewhere across the country — the end result of this President’s total lack of experience and management skills. Hillary Clinton was right about that 3:00AM call.

    While the demise of NASA’ human spaceflight program under Obama, Holdren, Bolden and Garver probably won’t determine the results of the 2012 elections, it does reflect the growing sense that America is losing its way under this Administration. Candidate Obama promised to bring Americans together. President Obama is tearing us apart. The way he rolled out his new space policy is typical of the inept way this Administration is run. It’s the “Chicago Way” as we say here in the Windy City. Some of you might recall how Mayor Daley sent bulldozers to Meigs Field in the middle of the night to tear up the runway. Despite an earlier agreement with the State of Illinois to keep the downtown airport open, the Mayor wanted to turn it into a park. So he simply defied the law and tore up the single runway at Chicago’s lakefront airport (which was utilized by the business community and state officials). That’s the “Chicago Way” … and that’s the way NASA has been turned upside down by this president.

    Incidentally, didn’t candidate Obama promise Florida space workers that he would preserve Constellation (after previously suggesting that he would kill it)? Didn’t candidate Obama promise to keep America on track toward the Moon, recalling how he watched the Apollo astronauts returning through Hawaii as a youngster? Ah, yes. That’s the Chicago Way, too. Selective memories and broken promises.

  • Anne Spudis

    Vladislaw wrote @ December 2nd, 2010 at 1:43 pm [“let’s spend 100 – 150 billion for a launch system and 50 billion for launches and 50 billion for a lunar base so we can send one ton of Oyxgen to the ISS every six months.”]

    What architecture are you citing with those objectives and numbers?

  • Ferris Valyn

    William Mellberg,

    The person with the selective memory is you. Its not President Obama who is tearing us apart. When you have a political party whose only response to anything Obama wants to do is “No No No – my way or the highway”, who views compromise as date rape, who won’t vote for their own bills because Obama supports the bill, who claim to be dedicated to only 1 thing making sure Obama isn’t elected, and that he fails,…

    Its not the President that is tearing us apart

    As for Obama’s Florida promise – no he never promised to preserve Constellation. Go back and listen to the speech – you’ll never find the words Constellation, or Ares I, or Orion, or anything like that. Lets keep the falsehoods to a minimum.

  • Coastal Ron

    William Mellberg wrote @ December 2nd, 2010 at 3:53 pm

    While the demise of NASA’ human spaceflight program under Obama…

    The usual canard of the anti-what-nots. But there is a simple way to prove this.

    Tell us the number of people & hours U.S. astronauts would have flown in space post-Shuttle under the Bush/Griffin plan versus the same time period for Obama/Bolden. And don’t use the original Constellation plan, but the latest schedule that indicated no Moon landings until after 2030.

    I’ll take your silence to mean that it was Bush/Griffin that was ending our human spaceflight program.

    It’s also fitting that an astronaut Administrator be the one to oversee the rescue of the NASA astronaut corp…

  • Anne Spudis

    William Mellberg wrote @ December 2nd, 2010 at 3:53 pm [Ah, yes. That’s the Chicago Way, too. Selective memories and broken promises.]

    Maybe “poor roll out” is just another word for bulldozer.

  • Anne Spudis

    Lobo Solo wrote @ December 2nd, 2010 at 12:35 pm

    Griffin gambled and lost the bet that they wouldn’t shut his Constellation down.
    Now we need to get VSE back on track.

  • Anne Spudis

    Marcel F. Williams wrote @ December 2nd, 2010 at 1:13 pm

    Spot on!

  • @ Vlad

    “let’s spend 100 – 150 billion for a launch system and 50 billion for launches and 50 billion for a lunar base so we can send one ton of Oyxgen to the ISS every six months.”

    One of the reasons for going to the Moon is to figure how to survive in situ. There are several ways to extract oxygen and there is water (ice) on the moon.

  • @Vladislaw

    “Six astronauts on the ISS consume about 12 pounds of oxygen per day or about one ton per six months. (not including anything recycled) Water equals about 13 tons per six months at three gallons per day per astronaut. (again not including anything recycled) About two launches of Dragon. That would also be excluding all the cargo by the Russians, Japanese and the Europeans. So you believe spending how many BILLIONS to set that up on Luna would be cost effective versus a couple cargo launches by a domestic carrier? You are going to have an extremely hard time selling that one to congress.

    “let’s spend 100 – 150 billion for a launch system and 50 billion for launches and 50 billion for a lunar base so we can send one ton of Oyxgen to the ISS every six months.”

    Fortunately, the Moon has its own oxygen, water, and probably carbon and nitrogen resources: all of the basic elements needed for a self sustaining base which can easily be accessed for substantially less than the $50,000 to $100,000 per kilogram it would cost to bring such items from Earth.

  • If America fools around and allows Asian countries to dominate these lunar resources at the Moon’s poles

    How would any country do that?

  • William Mellberg

    Coastal Ron wrote:

    “And don’t use the original Constellation plan, but the latest schedule that indicated no Moon landings until after 2030.”

    No lunar landings for TWENTY years? Good grief! Apollo started from scratch and did it in eight years. Has the United States really fallen that far behind its former self?

    Ferris Valyn wrote:

    “The person with the selective memory is you. Its not President Obama who is tearing us apart. When you have a political party whose only response to anything Obama wants to do is “No No No – my way or the highway”, who views compromise as date rape, who won’t vote for their own bills because Obama supports the bill, who claim to be dedicated to only 1 thing making sure Obama isn’t elected, and that he fails …”

    Well, I guess that’s a fair statement (though not necessarily accurate) since I stepped into the quicksand of political commentary. The election season hasn’t ended here in Chicago where Rahm Emanuel is vying to become the next mayor early next year. But I don’t recall hearing many opposing points of view during the President’s space “summit” at the Cape on April 15th. He had Buzz Aldrin on hand (who agreed with the President’s new policy), but not Neil Armstrong or Gene Cernan (who did not). That whole “summit” was pretty much “my way or the highway.” Which is what we know here as the “Chicago Way.” And Barack Obama is a product of the Chicago political “machine.” Frankly, I’m a lot more concerned about the President’s handling of the economy and health care. I do remember his promise that my health insurance premiums would go down $2500/year. Mine just went up $2500/year, with another increase coming in January. And I don’t recall any concerted effort to find common ground while ObamaCare was being rammed through Congress. I do remember the Health Care “summit” where the President told Senator McCain, “I won, John.” An obvious fact. But not exactly an outstretched hand. And there was no outreach (and no dissenters) at the space summit, either. That’s hardball politics.

    I might add that when John Kennedy charted a new course in space, he encouraged debate. Wernher von Braun vs. John Houbolt, for example. And NASA was the better for it.

  • common sense

    @Marcel F. Williams wrote @ December 2nd, 2010 at 1:13 pm

    “If America fools around and allows Asian countries to dominate these lunar resources at the Moon’s poles then America’s emerging private spaceflight companies could end up being dependent of extraterrestrial fuels and life support supplies from Asian companies rather than from American companies. That would mean more jobs and wealth created in Asia and fewer jobs and wealth created in America.”

    Asian countries? I thought it was all about China. Which other asian country are you talking about? Hmm Extra terrestrial fuels? Extra terrestrial life support supplies? Oh boy. More jobs in Asia and fewer in America? I assume by America you mean the USA, right? Can you please give an example of such jobs created in Asia? At least one example. Please.

  • Gregori

    Lets let the Asian countries spend trillions collecting the Moon resources. The lunar distraction will be a huge money sink that will hold back their economies and defenses for decades.

    Meanwhile, here on Earth, there are plenty of resources that the United States could mine for much less money. Most of the planet is covered in water, where new resources could be extracted. Vast areas of the land surface of the Earth have not yet been exploited. Afghanistan has at least a trillion in mineral wealth. Antarctica has been mostly untouched along with the other world deserts. We can always find ways to mine deeper and in new locations.

    These are all cheaper and wiser investments than the Moon.

    Besides, raw materials are not everything. The major growth in world economies is not in having lots of natural resources, but making something new and useful with them. Japan has very few natural resources but is the second most powerful economy in the world.
    I think too many of you are stuck in the 19th Century :D

  • red

    William Mellberg:”Didn’t candidate Obama promise to keep America on track toward the Moon”

    American wasn’t on track toward the Moon. NASA was working on Constellation instead. Per the Augustine Committee, Constellation would have made it to the Moon by the mid-2030’s. In other words, it would have never made it.

    NASA’s Moon attempt died in 2005 when Griffin’s ESAS took over, and it was obvious at the time. Most of NASA’s “exploration” effort has been for building Ares I and Orion for outrageously expensive ISS support.

    The Administration’s attempt to save NASA included the following, all of which would help get us to the Moon much quicker than ESAS (as if the ESAS approach would have ever made it):

    – commercial crew
    – more capabilities for commercial cargo
    – saving the ISS
    – actually using the ISS
    – improving the capabilities of the ISS
    – a revived robotic precursor line following up on LRO and LCROSS, including a teleoperated lunar lander looking for resources and assessing hazards and a bunch of other missions
    – in-space technology demonstration mission for solar electric propulsion
    – in-space technology demonstration mission for propellant storage and transfer
    – in-space technology demonstration mission for inflatable habitats and ECLSS
    – space tug, initially to deploy technology demonstration missions
    – plenty of funding for additional technology demonstration missions
    – Earth technology demonstration for lunar volatiles characterization
    – Earth technology demonstration of higher power electric propulsion
    – Earth technology demonstration of autonomous precision landing for use on “the Moon or other planetary body”
    – technology demonstration of exploration telerobotics at ISS
    – fission power systems demonstrations
    – plenty of funding for later technology developments and demonstrations
    – considerably increase general space technology line, some of which would be applicable to lunar missions
    – the Lunar Quest line in Planetary Science is still there
    – considerably increased human research line
    – heavy lift and propulsion research effort that might make heavy lift affordable instead of the quagmire it is in the ESAS era
    – modernized KSC and nearby infrastructure

    Yes, they also took steps to restore the Earth Observation and Aeronautics lines, and they also included an Aerocapture technology demonstration at Mars that wouldn’t apply to the Moon (at least on the outgoing trip side), but those changes are easily justified and still would have left NASA with a much stronger Moon effort than Griffin’s Constellation.

    It’s true that we would get to other destinations first (before the Moon) as Obama mentioned (and per the Augustine Committee). For example, we’d get to Earth-Moon Lagrange points and/or lunar orbit first, and possibly Earth-Sun Lagrange points, NEOs, and Mars orbit as well. Still, even if all we care about is getting to the Moon, the FY2011 plan was much better than Constellation.

    Unfortunately, Congress put back Orion and a potentially unaffordable SLS, so those Administration plans will be scaled back. However, the blame goes to Congress, not the Administration.

  • Apollo started from scratch and did it in eight years.

    Apollo was consuming four percent of the federal budget.

    We actually could get back to the moon fairly quickly and affordably, if it were important for some reason (just use existing launchers), but we can’t do that and maintain all of the existing NASA jobs, which is the primary purpose of the NASA budget these days.

  • If America fools around and allows Asian countries to dominate these lunar resources at the Moon’s poles

    How would any country do that?

    As usual Rand says it all simply with no added bs.

    The “usual suspects” here equate “Asians” with “The Evul Red Chinese” who are going to take over the Moon by 2020 with their military rockets because the Black Socialist Evul Muslim Traitor of a US President cancelled the great Apollo on Steroids Program, destroying the American Manifest Destiny in Space.

    God, what propagandized delusional hogwash!

    Never once the people ever mention that the Chinese are going a more economical route of resource grabbing by buying up criminal corrupt governments in Africa and sucking them dry.

    Partisan hacks. Do some basic economic research for God’s sake!

  • Coastal Ron

    Rand Simberg wrote @ December 2nd, 2010 at 6:30 pm

    Apollo was consuming four percent of the federal budget.”

    An important point. Just like Dorothy could always go home by clicking her heals, we have always had the ability to return to the Moon – all it would take is lots and lots of money, and national support for the decade-plus effort.

    Where that money comes from seems to be conveniently overlooked by William Mellberg, Marcel F. Williams, Anne Spudis, et al…

  • red

    Marcel: “If folks like Holdren, Bolden, and Garvey are advising Obama to abandon the Moon”

    Bolden, Garver, and many other NASA officials have said they expect NASA to get astronauts to the Moon sooner with their plan than with Constellation.

    Here are some robotic NASA Moon missions that are in play. I’m sure not all will happen, but I don’t see how you could characterize the situation as “abandoning the Moon” with all of these missions in play, plus all of the items I mentioned in my previous post that help us get to the Moon affordably and sustainably (in contrast to Constellation which was all talk and no lunar action):

    Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter – survived Griffin’s “Era of Doom” and operating in lunar orbit now
    Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL)
    Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE)
    ARTEMIS – reuse of THEMIS spacecraft for lunar heliophysics
    Moonrise – NASA New Frontiers finalist (1 of 3) for sample return from lunar South Pole-Aitken basin
    Robonaut – has ambitions to get to the Moon
    Google Lunar X PRIZE – these lunar surface robotic teams are private, but several teams have engineering data purchase agreements with NASA
    Lunar Geophysical Network – one of the Decadal Survey finalists – 4 landers – seismometer, heat flow sensor, etc
    Lunar Polar Volatiles Explorer – one of the Decadal Survey finalists – 2 meter drill, acquire and analyze samples, etc
    xScouts – low-cost robotic precursor missions – not specified yet, but lunar missions may be featured (most likely destinations are Moon, Mars, NEOs, and Mars Moons)
    Precursor missions of opportunity – these could fund instruments on other missions (e.g.: NASA Science, non-NASA), including lunar ones
    2015 Lunar Lander – large robotic precursor mission to look for resources, assess hazards, analyze volatiles, demonstrate ISRU, deploy Sojourner class rover
    Lunar Quest – lunar-specific line in Planetary Science (includes some of the above and more lunar work)

  • Vladislaw

    Anne Spudis wrote:

    “What architecture are you citing with those objectives and numbers?”

    Those numbers are NASA numbers as stated by Griffin. Posters like windy who are still in favor of the full up Constellation is in the 100-150 billion range. When Constellation was first floated it was about 104 Billion with two flights, that number mushroomed into the 140 billion range with reduced funding for the altair lander ( and no cargo only lander) and the EDS. Griffin, when asked about a lunar base, said it would comparable to the ISS. (ISS would be gone by then and with constellation finished the lunar base would be the replacement) That was roughly 50 billion for hardware and 50 billion for shuttle launches.

    Lobo Solo wrote:

    “One of the reasons for going to the Moon is to figure how to survive in situ. There are several ways to extract oxygen and there is water (ice) on the moon.”

    We do not have to send humans to Luna to test in situ it can be done robotically for a lot cheaper. If it pans out then the technology should be shoveled into the private sector and NASA should pay for a finished product or service and not be in the mining or fuel business.

    Marcel F. Williams wrote:

    “Fortunately, the Moon has its own oxygen, water, and probably carbon and nitrogen resources: all of the basic elements needed for a self sustaining base which can easily be accessed for substantially less than the $50,000 to $100,000 per kilogram it would cost to bring such items from Earth.”

    We were not talking about how a lunar base would operate, it was about the arguement that in order to do LEO infrastructure we should “bootstrap” a lunar operation for resources being sent to LEO for supplying that infrastructure like fuel.

    My arguement is we should worry about LEO infrastructure first that can support a push past LEO and worry about Luna ( Anne – manned lunar not robotic, I am pro lunar robotic exploration in the near term including in situ. ) until we have local infrastructure (and the technological tools in our tool kit) in place.

    Some of the tools and infrastructure we should have in our tool kit would be: earth return aerocapture to LEO, modular, inspace assembly, inflatable habitats, advanced power and propulsion, reusable EDS, in space fueling and refueling, fuel depot/station, inflatable habs.

    I would rather see funding for those items rather than trying to do an unsustainable apollo type lunar system that gets canceled after blowing through billions of dollars and years of dead end work.

    If would not matter who becomes President in the future because they would have the tools in place to move us outward.

    I would only want NASA testing fueling and depots, and then pushing that into the commercial sector and then just pay for a service. I would like to see NASA doing pump priming to create a space faring economy, not another “space program”.

  • Ferris Valyn

    William Mellberg,

    You didn’t hear opposing viewpoints, because that was an announcement. That would be on par with Sarah Palin inviting Obama to her Presidential candidacy announcement.

    The opposing viewpoints got their time the year before, in 2009, during the Augustine committee hearings. Go listen to all of the hours from those hearings. Every single Senator & Rep who cared to responded. Every NASA center responded. Do you want to go over all of the charts that were offered on Constellation? Cause we can go through each one.

    As for Obamacare “being rammed down” – was there even any discussion about Single-payer? Nope. Was the public option dropped to get Republican support (that never came)? Yup. Did the proposal reflect many of those from republicans offered in the 90s? Yup.

    McCain got told that because he was (and frankly, still is) acting like a spoiled child.

  • Bennett

    red wrote @ December 2nd, 2010 at 7:28 pm

    All that? Versus nothing for 8 years, and then only a LEO LV (ARES) with no destinations (the ISS deorbited), and then 12-15 more years of nothing but pork and delays before a possible manned lunar landing?

    No tech development? No knowledge enhancing robotic missions? No colony? No long term anything except jobs to nowhere?

    Tough decision!

  • Major Tom

    “Fortunately, the Moon has its own oxygen, water, and probably carbon and nitrogen resources: all of the basic elements needed for a self sustaining base which can easily be accessed for substantially less than the $50,000 to $100,000 per kilogram it would cost to bring such items from Earth.”

    You’re off by a factor of ten. Launch costs to Earth orbit are in the $5,000 to $10,000 range per kilogram, not $50,000 to $100,000.

    To provide a resource from the Moon, you have to start at $5,000 to $10,000 per kilogram to launch the extraction equipment to Earth orbit, add in the cost of designing/developing/testing that equipment before launch, add in the cost of transporting that equipment from Earth orbit to the Moon, add in the cost of operating that equipment on the Moon, add in the cost of transporting supplies and replacements to the Moon keep that equipment operational on the Moon, add in the cost of launching the extracted resources from the Moon, and add in the cost of recovering and using the resource at its destination.

    Or you can just buy the resource here on Earth and launch it to orbit or its destination.

    It doesn’t take a genius to figure out which is going to be less expensive…

    I’m all for investing in Earth-based research and affordable robotic missions to investigate the potential of lunar resources to see if a business case could ever be made. But let’s use some common sense and not base our the bulk of our civil human space flight policy and spending on economic science fiction.

  • Rhyolite

    Vladislaw wrote @ December 2nd, 2010 at 1:43 pm

    “let’s spend 100 – 150 billion for a launch system and 50 billion for launches and 50 billion for a lunar base so we can send one ton of Oyxgen to the ISS every six months.”

    Constellation was going to cost $200 billion just to do a couple of short excursions to the moon. Moon bases, mining operations, and reusable transfer vehicles would require hundreds of billions more. I suspect your low balling the estimate by a factor of three to five.

    Another way of looking at this is how much tonnage has to be launch to LEO on the way to the moon before a single kg of oxygen or propellant is return to LEO. A 1,000 tons? That’s probably too low. 10,000 tons?

    Even once you get going, maintaining an infrastructure on the moon is going to require sending people and material to the moon to keep everything running. How much mass is going to have to be launched to LEO every year on the way to the moon relative to how much oxygen or propellant is going to be delivered back to LEO. Is the input to output ratio even going to be positive?

    We are a long way from an economically sensible way of utilizing lunar resources. For the foreseeable future, we are better off concentrating on reducing the cost to LEO,

  • Anne Spudis

    red wrote @ December 2nd, 2010 at 6:27 pm [ Still, even if all we care about is getting to the Moon, the FY2011 plan was much better than Constellation.]

    Constellation was a rocket program.

    The VSE is a space development program set up with the objective of getting us everywhere. How? By learning how to use off-planet resources beginning on the Moon.

    How in the world do you make that into, “..if all we care about is getting to the Moon?”

    You start at the most logical place. That place is the Moon.

  • Anne Spudis

    Vladislaw wrote @ December 2nd, 2010 at 8:20 pm [Those numbers are NASA numbers as stated by Griffin. Posters like windy who are still in favor of the full up Constellation is in the 100-150 billion range. When Constellation was first floated it was about 104 Billion with two flights, that number mushroomed into the 140 billion range with reduced funding for the altair lander ( and no cargo only lander) and the EDS. Griffin, when asked about a lunar base, said it would comparable to the ISS. (ISS would be gone by then and with constellation finished the lunar base would be the replacement) That was roughly 50 billion for hardware and 50 billion for shuttle launches. ]

    Then, might I suggest you look at numbers from other architectures and not continue to cite the one that is not being used?

    Contrary to constant posts otherwise, lunar return never was a project called Constellation. Constellation was Mike Griffin’s dream rocket.

    The objective of the Vision for Space Exploration is to learn how to use off-planet resources to build an economical, sustainable, extensible space transportation infrastructure to get us everywhere we want to go.

  • DCSCA

    This hearing was an illustration of a bureaucracy’s arteries hardening before our eyes. This is why America’s civilian space agency is dying.

  • Helium 3 is the real reason to go back to the moon. The US must get there before any other country to make certain we get He3 at our cost and not another countries cost. Whoever gets there first will control the earth’s energy supply. He3 is worth $4 billion per ton and 100 tons will supply the entire planet for a year. The prospects look good in the long run, but then, NASA has never looked into the aspects of profitability.

    http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/19296/

  • Silence Dogood

    How many NASA folks on this site are working efforts that would be considered “not following the law”?

    Historically, when NASA has been in similar positions of political tension, there are rogue groups who find funds to keep things limping along until the tension lessens & the political tide turns.

    I believe ARTEMIS is a good example of this (from a time of earlier struggles). Would this have been considered “not following the law”?

    What would Nelson think of these?

  • Coastal Ron

    Anne Spudis wrote @ December 3rd, 2010 at 4:25 am

    Constellation was Mike Griffin’s dream rocket.

    Come on Anne, you know better. When Constellation was going, I’m sure you were as excited as hell that NASA had a plan to go to the Moon. Constellation was that plan, and though it did have two rockets (not one), it also had a CEV (Orion), EDS and lunar lander.

    Are you saying now that you think we could return to the Moon without building a new HLV? Or are you just complaining about Griffin’s choice of architecture for Ares V (which congress wants for the SLS)?

  • Anne Spudis

    Coastal Ron.

    [Come on Anne, you know better. When Constellation was going, I’m sure you were as excited as hell that NASA had a plan to go to the Moon. Constellation was that plan, and though it did have two rockets (not one), it also had a CEV (Orion), EDS and lunar lander.]

    Why in the world would those in the know be excited about a rocket that was eating up all available money, not designed for lunar return and sporting a lander that was overkill?

    [Are you saying now that you think we could return to the Moon without building a new HLV? Or are you just complaining about Griffin’s choice of architecture for Ares V (which congress wants for the SLS)?]

    Where have you been? You don’t like links, so go look them up yourself.

  • William Mellberg

    Spaceman wrote:

    “Helium 3 is the real reason to go back to the moon. The US must get there before any other country to make certain we get He3 at our cost and not another countries cost. Whoever gets there first will control the earth’s energy supply. He3 is worth $4 billion per ton and 100 tons will supply the entire planet for a year. The prospects look good in the long run, but then, NASA has never looked into the aspects of profitability.”

    Absolutely. The potential of Helium-3 to revolutionize energy production on Earth is what makes a lunar return so important. In an interview with Itogi (February 12, 2007) under the title “MoonGasTransport, Inc.”, former Energia president Nikolai Sevastiyanov said, “There is an international agreement according to which heavenly bodies cannot be owned by any state. In reality, the one who is the first to get back to the Moon, who will actually drive the stakes into the ground, will become the owner of the land.”

    The introduction to the interview (by Svetlana Sukhova) read, in part:

    “What we are talking about here is not a series of missions for purely scientific and propaganda purposes, like those accomplished by the Americans back in the 1970s. The Russian scientists are planning to get down to industrial development of the Earth’s natural satellite. To be more specific, they plan to mine the fuel of the future.”

    While “Moon First” cultists (or however someone described us here recently) are criticized for our lack of vision and wanting to repeat Apollo, visionaries in other countries (Russia, China, Japan and India) are well aware of Helium-3’s potential, as Sevastiyanov’s comments make clear. They’ve read Harrison Schmit’s book, Return to the Moon, as suggested below:

    http://www.tribuneindia.com/2006/20060203/science.htm#1

    Neil Armstrong has read it, too. In fact, he wrote the foreword. And that is why his testimony on Capitol Hill included the prospects of mining He3 on the Moon.

    “Moon First” proponents are not interested in repeating history. We’re excited about laying the foundations for the future … for all humankind. Helium-3 could bring much-needed, environmentally-friendly to Third World countries around the globe, enabling them to expand their economies. It could provide a clean source of energy for the industrial nations, as well.

    The problem, of course, is that we need to return to the Moon to fully assess the possibilities of mining He3 from the lunar regolith. The question is, who will that “we” be?

  • Major Tom

    “The US must get there before any other country”

    US astronauts got to the Moon “before any other country” way back in 1969. No other country has seen enough value in sending humans to the Moon to undertake the costs of a human lunar mission in the 40+ years since.

    “to make certain we get He3 at our cost and not another countries cost.”

    If another country recovers lunar helium-3 before the US, what would keep the US from being the second (or third or fourth) country to do so?

    “Whoever gets there first will control the earth’s energy supply.”

    How? There are no property or mineral rights on the Moon (or anywhere else in space), and no police or military force there to enforce them, anyway.

    “He3 is worth $4 billion per ton”

    Says who? Reference?

    “and 100 tons will supply the entire planet for a year.”

    How do you know? There is no prototype or operational helium-3 fusion reactor with which to assess energy production efficiency and back out the amount of inputs needed to power hundreds or thousands of such reactors. (Heck, there’s no operational fusion reactor, period.)

    “The prospects look good in the long run”

    Not according to the non-advocacy expert in the very article you cited:

    “But a serious critic has charged that in reality, He3-based fusion isn’t even a feasible option. In the August issue of Physics World, theoretical physicist Frank Close, at Oxford in the UK, has published an article called ‘Fears Over Factoids’ in which, among other things, he summarizes some claims of the ‘helium aficionados,’ then dismisses those claims as essentially fantasy.

    Close points out that in a tokamak–a machine that generates a doughnut-shaped magnetic field to confine the superheated plasmas necessary for fusion–deuterium reacts up to 100 times more slowly with helium-3 than it does with tritium. In a plasma contained in a tokamak, Close stresses, all the nuclei in the fuel get mixed together, so what’s most probable is that two deuterium nuclei will rapidly fuse and produce a tritium nucleus and proton. That tritium, in turn, will likely fuse with deuterium and finally yield one helium-4 atom and a neutron. In short, Close says, if helium-3 is mined from the moon and brought to Earth, in a standard tokamak the final result will still be deuterium-tritium fusion.

    Second, Close rejects the claim that two helium-3 nuclei could realistically be made to fuse with each other to produce deuterium, an alpha particle and energy. That reaction occurs even more slowly than deuterium-tritium fusion, and the fuel would have to be heated to impractically high temperatures–six times the heat of the sun’s interior, by some calculations–that would be beyond the reach of any tokamak. Hence, Close concludes, ‘the lunar-helium-3 story is, to my mind, moonshine.’

    … Kulcinski’s He3-based fusion reactor, located in the Fusion Technology Institute at the University of Wisconsin, is very small. When running, it contains a spherical plasma roughly 10 centimeters in diameter that can produce sustained fusion with 200 million reactions per second. To produce a milliwatt of power, unfortunately, the reactor consumes a kilowatt. Close’s response is, therefore, valid enough: “When practical fusion occurs with a demonstrated net power output, I–and the world’s fusion community–can take note.'”

    “NASA has never looked into the aspects of profitability.”

    NASA is a government agency, not a private corporation. NASA isn’t assessed on its “profitability”.

  • John Malkin

    Everything would be fine with Constellation IF Constellation was on schedule and the gap wasn’t widening, Constellation was at or under cost and the big one Congress was fully funding the complete Constellation program including Ares V, Altair development but…

    So we need a plan where dollars = program objective. The White House and Congress agree that the ultimate goal is Mars and beyond. We need a way to develop the ability to go to Mars in a cost effective way.

    Unmanned exploration is a good template. An example of a prime goal of unmanned missions is looking for life. We have requested proposals and developed missions for missions to seek out life and habitats. Each mission has specific goals that move that forward. Each mission has an effect on the direction of later missions and therefore they need to adapt the missions to the latest findings. (Flexible Path)

    This is why I think technology development and demo missions (real working hardware) are very important to Human Space Flight because it defines the direction to getting to Mars which may or may not include earth’s moon and HLV.

  • Vladislaw

    “Then, might I suggest you look at numbers from other architectures and not continue to cite the one that is not being used? “

    As per Nelson in that last meeting, NASA already told President Obama no to technology they want a HLV. Congress does not want inexpensive for NASA and they never have, they want to protect NASA jobs which means it doesn’t pay for me to cite other systems because the way it is shaping up those ideas are not going to funded anyway. We are going to end up with another big expensive system, so I will stick to the numbers cited until I see something other to justify a change in thinking.

    As Rhyolite wrote, he thinks I was lowballing those numbers and indeed I was because if I citied numbers on what I think things are really going to cost if NASA just does another same ole same ole ‘space program’ I can safely say the costs will be on the high end in both time and money.

  • Everything would be fine with Constellation IF Constellation was on schedule and the gap wasn’t widening, Constellation was at or under cost and the big one Congress was fully funding the complete Constellation program including Ares V, Altair development but…

    That’s not true. Even if Constellation had met its cost and schedule goals, it was too costly, with too little capability, to be politically sustainable.

  • Doug Lassiter

    “Helium 3 is the real reason to go back to the moon.”

    No Helium 3 fusion reactor has ever been built. It is likely to be easier to do so than for a Helium 4 fusion reactor. But there are very significant technological challenges, and it hasn’t been done. If the real reason to go back to the Moon is to harvest fuel we don’t know how to use, that’s just dumb. Yes, Helium 3 on the Earth is expensive, but there is easily enough of it on the Earth to make the investment to (someday) develop the technology to use it, and easily enough to kickstart a power generation economy once we do.

    Oh, Neil Armstrong believes the Helium 3 myth? Let’s just say that he may have gotten some lunar dust in his eyes. The people who understand nuclear physics don’t agree with him. That Nikolai Sevastiyanov preaches Helium 3 is no surprise. His incentive is that he sells the rockets that would be used to get to the Moon. People believing the myth are like cash in his pocket.

    That the Helium 3 on the Moon requires human miners to be there to extract and refine it is also a bit daffy. Any such resource recovery effort would start with a telerobotic one to prove extraction concepts. None is planned. What’s the TRL for lunar Helium 3 extraction, refinement, and use? I don’t think the scale goes that low.

    Unfortunately, the real reason to go back to the Moon may not really be a lot better than Helium 3, and that’s a major, major problem, and a hugely embarrassing one for lunar return advocates who rely on Helium 3 as rationale.

  • Anne Spudis

    Vladislaw wrote @ December 3rd, 2010 at 1:06 pm [As Rhyolite wrote, he thinks I was lowballing those numbers and indeed I was because if I citied numbers on what I think things are really going to cost if NASA just does another same ole same ole ‘space program’ I can safely say the costs will be on the high end in both time and money.]

    Let’s have an exercise of “What if?”

    What if there was a way to get to the Moon, set up robotics, communications, the whole kit and caboodle (even some human presence) and start producing, storing and exporting water in a workable time frame (although the free variable is time because any program should be extensible)?

    What % of NASA’s yearly budget would your gut tell you would be sufficient to fund this architecture — 10%, 20%, 30%, 50%, 75%?

    What do you think this entire architecture would cost?

    How many years would be reasonable for program completion? 10? 15? 20?

    What do you think we would have if it was successful?

    If the cost was sufficiently low, would we be wise to do it?

  • Vladislaw

    Anne wrote:

    “What if there was a way to get to the Moon, set up robotics, communications, the whole kit and caboodle (even some human presence) and start producing, storing and exporting water in a workable time frame (although the free variable is time because any program should be extensible)?”

    There was a recent article on SpaceNew from the ex head of Surry Sat., which was taken over. He was saying he wanted to provide a constellation of small sats for Luna to provide lunar internet. So for the communications, i would like to see that handled as a private sector enterprise and NASA agree to a FIXED price service agreement rather than have anything to do with it internally, other than providing a very short list of requirements. I believe they could buy this service for around .5 to 1% range as this could be a shared service because private enterprise could utilize it also for robotic work.

    Lunar robotics, I would like to see some REALLY SERIOUS ‘xprize’ type of contests handling a lot of the basics of digging and analysis and conversion and NASA just buy data. This is great work for the private sector and university work for our up and coming PHD’s and enterpreneurs.

    Again, rather than NASA be in charge of water production and launch/retrieval, NASA would once again, after proving out the concepts with x prizes, buy the water for fixed price contracts for a finished good.

    As Rand stated in the above, we were looking at a NASA system that was shaping up to cost 1 billion per launch of Ares I and 1.5-2 billion per launch of Ares V. it would cost 6 billion a year for just two flights per year and no hardware for Luna at all.

    Once we have commercial crew and cargo to LEO and NASA focused on BEO infrastructure ( about 3 billion per year ) and we can do routine refueling and aerocapture returns we should be able to do lunar orbits for 1/2 billion a pop @ four trips per year or 2 billion. (this price does not include research and development or ammortized costs). Once there is routine travel to Lunar orbit it would in Bigelow’s interest to have an orbital lunar station. (NASA could act as an anchor tenant and lease space, I would limit this to the 1/2 billion to 1 billion per year.)

    I believe that is a key ingredient for commercial lunar surface to lunar orbit vehicle and commercial operations, again both masten and armadillo and blue origin seem to be shaping up to where they could provide that service and NASA would again just be buying a ride to the lunar surface.

    With today’s budget, I believe we could have this in place over the course of the next 2 decades. As I repeatedly state, i want commercial brought along every step of the way. It is the dual use of systems, NASA/commercial interests that will help NASA get goods and services at lower prices.

    Numbers I have looked at that shows NASA could achive this with the 10 billion per year HSF budget.

    I really do not believe NASA has to build much of anything for Lunar operations they should be able to use lease contracts, finished products with fixed price contracts and fixed priced service contracts.

    Just as a lot of palo/archelogy finds are discovered because of mining/excavation projects a lot of science that NASA wants to do on the moon can be mearly a scientist monitoring commercial mining operations.

    I do want lunar operations and there is no reason my kids can not see them in their lifetimes, I just never ever want to see it as a NASA program only, but as a NASA acting as an anchor customer and buying goods and services to house their lunar researchers.

    None of what I have outlined is beyond America’s aerospace industry or american aerospace workers. We have the ability it is a question of breaking a 50 year old cycle and switching to standard commercial operations that handles all of NASA’s other transportation, hotel housing and off the shelf products they routinely buy in other areas of NASA. It is well past the time NASA human spaceflight joins the 21st century.

  • Anne Spudis

    Vladislaw wrote @ December 3rd, 2010 at 3:47 pm

    Thank you for taking the time to post your proposal and for answering my “what if” questions Vladislaw. It is appreciated and I found it very interesting. You should save it for future reference. With honest brokers using sound architectures and making good progress, your kids as adults will look up at the Moon and truly understand that they live in a Solar System and that humans need not be confined to Earth. Imagine how that will change their outlook and way of thinking.

  • Coastal Ron

    Anne Spudis wrote @ December 3rd, 2010 at 4:23 pm

    …your kids as adults will look up at the Moon and truly understand that they live in a Solar System…

    Um, that may have been a Freudian slip on your part, since you’re so Moon centric, but you have to look to the Sun to realize that we live in a Solar System. Looking at the Moon only tells you that we have a natural satellite in orbit around the Earth…

  • William Mellberg

    Anne Spudis wrote :

    “…your kids as adults will look up at the Moon and truly understand that they live in a Solar System…”

    Coastal Ron wrote:

    “Um, that may have been a Freudian slip on your part, since you’re so Moon centric, but you have to look to the Sun to realize that we live in a Solar System. Looking at the Moon only tells you that we have a natural satellite in orbit around the Earth…”

    Anne,

    I appreciated your point. And the Moon does reflect the light of the Sun!

    But I like to think back to the days when I was a 15-year old, peering through my telescope at Flamsteed and picturing in my mind’s eye the Surveyor 1 spacecraft that had just touched down there. A few years later, I was looking at Mount Hadley and the Valley of Taurus-Littrow as astronauts were exploring the lunar surface. And I can imagine another generation of young people staring at the Moon’s south pole and thinking about the scientists exploring the area around Shackleton crater.

    That’s the nice thing about the Moon. You can see it up close and personal through even a modest telescope. That is not the case for an asteroid or even for Mars. I watched Vesta skim past Jupiter through the eyepiece of my telescope a few years ago. Because I knew what I was looking for and where to look, I spotted Vesta and tracked its movement over several nights. (It passed directly above Jupiter, which made it easy to spot.) But it looked like a small star — and it’s one of the biggest asteroids. The Moon, on the other hand, is a world anyone can ‘visit’ with a modest telescope. Mountains, valleys, craters and rays are all easy to see. And I believe people of all ages — but youngsters, in particular — would find great enjoyment and inspiration looking through an eyepiece as fellow humans explore the lunar surface.

    Of course, I get a kick out of seeing the ISS pass overhead, too. I recently pointed it out to some people in a parking lot at my local grocery store. “That’s the International Space Station,” I told them. “Bulls__t!” replied one man who displayed zero interest. “That’s just an airplane.” But he couldn’t have said that about the Moon.

    In any case, I think your point was a good one … and no Freudian slip.

  • Coastal Ron

    William Mellberg wrote @ December 3rd, 2010 at 6:07 pm

    The Moon, on the other hand, is a world anyone can ‘visit’ with a modest telescope. Mountains, valleys, craters and rays are all easy to see.

    A number of people have raised this point as something they think would be “inspirational”, and thus part of the reason we should go to the Moon. I see two problems with this:

    1. The amount of detail visible with 99.9% of the telescopes would not show much human activity – dots maybe.

    2. If activity can be seen, then you have to be prepared for the negative views concerning tearing up the lunar surface. For instance, most strip mining happens well out of sight of 99.9% of the population, but strip mining the Moon will be visible to all that want to look.

    And I believe people of all ages — but youngsters, in particular — would find great enjoyment and inspiration looking through an eyepiece as fellow humans explore the lunar surface.

    You can tell what generation you are – the vast number of people watching activity on the Moon (or anywhere off-world) will be doing it through video feeds, not telescopes.

    In fact video feeds provide a great way to build enthusiasm for off-world exploration, since robotic explorers will only become more and more capable, which means the video will be so much more interesting (especially with the video game/internet generation).

    My $0.02

  • Here is a link to an excellent paper on Helium-3 supply and demand issued by the US government in September 2010

    Warning, pdf file

    http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R41419.pdf

    Bottom line?

    Helium 3 can be produced today (and has been produced) via tritium decay and we can make as much as we want simply by making more tritium in nuclear reactors.

    Cost is the limiting factor.

    Can we mine lunar He-3 at a lower price than making He-3 in terrestrial reactors? I don’t know.

    But we don’t need to go to the Moon to acquire He-3.

  • How to manufacture Helium-3

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3#Manufacturing

    Might lunar mining of He-3 be cheaper? Sure. And, maybe not.

  • Anne Spudis

    Thank you William. You got my point and made it soar. I did imagine that those looking at the Moon would be looking at a place we’d returned to and that their lives and their imaginations would be better for it.

    Good point about looking up. Our last trip to the Grand Canyon was memorable. The Milky Way is almost too much to comprehend. It takes your breath away.

    Keep looking up and keep telling others what they’re missing!

  • DCSCA

    @William Mellberg wrote @ December 3rd, 2010 at 6:07 pm
    “I was looking at Mount Hadley and the Valley of Taurus-Littrow as astronauts were exploring the lunar surface. And I can imagine another generation of young people staring at the Moon’s south pole and thinking about the scientists exploring the area around Shackleton crater.”

    Except not this generation- or the one before it– has shown much imaginative interest in it at all, as their parents walked away from it after Apollo. Your benchmarks for space are men exploring the moon; kids today have benchmarks of Columbia and their parents, Challenger. And they can relive the same experiences of Littrow and Hadley you had via DVD as it’s all available commerically now for them at your local Best Buy if not already up on YouTube. After all, not much has changed up there since ’71-’72. Point is, kids have minimal interest in it now as it has no practical value to developing competitive and marketable skills in the world of 2010. My own nephew excels at the sciences and mathematics and even with a life long exposure to all things space related from his uncle, the kid saw no career future in the space field and opted to pursue life sciences and bio-engineering in college for a very down to earth reason- $$. He sees a promising and lucrative future in that. Space exploration, trips to Mars and the Moon– not so much.

  • William Mellberg

    Coastal Ron wrote:

    “You can tell what generation you are – the vast number of people watching activity on the Moon (or anywhere off-world) will be doing it through video feeds, not telescopes.”

    Looking at a screen cannot even begin to match the thrill of seeing lthe Moon’s craters and mountains, Jupiter’s Galilean satellites and Saturn’s rings with your own eyes. I’ve set up my telescopes on the front sidewalk many a night and given neighbors and passers by their first look at the Cosmos. ALL of them — young and old alike — are blown away by what they can see with their own eyes. And the interesting thing is to watch them turn away from the eyepiece and look up at the Moon or Jupiter or Saturn or countless other heavenly wonders. But it’s he Moon, in particular, that always draws the most “oohs” and “ahs” from people. The craters and mountains stand out so magnificently — especially at First Quarter when the terminator is dotted with wonders for all to see. Saturn ranks second … it’s mind-boggling to be looking at those rings with your own eyes. The wonder of it all struck me as an 11-year old kid when I got my first telescope as a birthday gift. And I still stand in awe as I look up to the sky. Get away from your computer screen sometime and just spend a night under he stars. Stargazing has nothing to do with age or generation — and everything to do with imagination. As Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

    And to Anne Spudis …

    Yes, let’s follow the advice of the late Jack Horkheimer: “Keep looking up!”

    (His program emphasized naked eye or binocular viewing of the heavens.)

  • William Mellberg

    DCSCA wrote:

    “My own nephew excels at the sciences and mathematics and even with a life long exposure to all things space related from his uncle, the kid saw no career future in the space field and opted to pursue life sciences and bio-engineering in college for a very down to earth reason- $$. He sees a promising and lucrative future in that. Space exploration, trips to Mars and the Moon– not so much.”

    I’m sorry that he values money over adventure. As for this generation not being interested in the Moon, you should have been in Abingdon (Virginia) this past summer when Harrison Schmitt spent five days in town for “Space Week.” He appeared at a dozen or more events where hundreds of young people (and thousands of adults) enthusiastically surrounded him and asked what it was like to live and work on the Moon. At one event, the film “The Wonder of It All” was shown. When Dr. Schmitt talked afterward about the President’s decision to cancel our return to he Moon, the audience was dumbfounded.

    I’ve talked to many young people myself about the Moon and planets, including a large group of engineering grad students from across the country who were working as NASA interns. I moderated a spirited discussion with them about human exploration of the Moon and Mars. Those very bright students were very enthused about the prospect of seeing their generation pick up the baton that was dropped by President Nixon — and which has been dropped again by President Obama. Incidentally, we met at the Von Braun Planetarium in Huntsville where they were all thrilled to attend a stargazing party after the lecture and discussion. No computer screens. Just telescopes and Mk.I eyeballs.

    Oh, yes. I talked with a young lady this past summer (a University of Wisconsin engineering major) who had been planning to go into aero/astro engineering, but who was reassessing her plans following the President’s change of course for NASA. “He doesn’t seem to be interested in exploring space” she opined. Talk about killing enthusiasm. She had been thinking about a career with NASA.

  • William Mellberg

    Coastal Ron wrote:

    “In fact video feeds provide a great way to build enthusiasm for off-world exploration, since robotic explorers will only become more and more capable, which means the video will be so much more interesting (especially with the video game/internet generation).”

    I don’t disagree. However, if my choice is between viewing a fabulous “virtual” tour of the Canadian Rockies — or actually backpacking through those magnificent mountains as I’ve done many times — I’ll take the real thing. “Virtual” reality doesn’t come close to actual reality.

    In recent years, I’ve been struck by how few kids are outside playing ball in the sunlight and fresh air during the summer. When I was a kid, my friends and I spent the entire day outdoors. (And at night my friend and I looked through our matching telescopes.) Today’s kids seem to be busy playing video games indoors while munching on junk food. And the results speak for themselves. The Internet is a wonderful tool. But it also has its down side. I suppose that’s one of he reasons people are so rude on blogs … they aren’t actually looking eye-to-eye at the people they’re insulting.

  • William Mellberg

    DCSCA wrote:

    “And they can relive the same experiences of Littrow and Hadley you had via DVD as it’s all available commerically now for them at your local Best Buy if not already up on YouTube. After all, not much has changed up there since ’71-’72.”

    No, they can’t. Because when I was looking at the Moon through my telescope at that time, I had the thrill of knowing that humans were actually walking there as I was observing Littrow and Hadley. And THAT made QUITE a difference!

    Kids today need to get outdoors and experience the REAL world, as well as watching DVDs.

  • Justin Kugler

    William,
    I went back to my high school in February to give a presentation about the work I do on the ISS and talk with the students about space exploration. This was barely two weeks after the FY2011 budget proposal was released.

    This is something I do almost every year. It wasn’t Constellation that captured their attention. It was the things we’re doing on-orbit now, the opportunities in commercial spaceflight, and the chance to do something really different in space exploration that had their interest.

    I’ve never had as good a response from the crowd as I did this year.

  • Coastal Ron wrote @ December 3rd, 2010 at 10:50 pm

    My belief is that video feeds of robots doing science would be very, very interesting to a select few but generally ignored by the majority of humanity, except for occasional moments of:

    “Wow, that’s really cool! Okay, next channel.”

    On the other hand, I believe that video feeds of live people working on the Moon (or Mars) to lay the foundations for our species becoming a multi-planet species would be more persistently popular.

    The real trick (IMHO) is figuring out how to make money from those video feeds, since as DCSCA says, many young people believe space is “cool” – – they just don’t see any way to make much money working in space related fields.

    Anyway, capturing revenue from “cool” is what Nike & Red Bull do every day. And they make lots of money doing it.

  • Oh, yes. I talked with a young lady this past summer (a University of Wisconsin engineering major) who had been planning to go into aero/astro engineering, but who was reassessing her plans following the President’s change of course for NASA. “He doesn’t seem to be interested in exploring space” she opined.

    That’s because she was misled by all the pork-protecting nonsense that’s been dished out all year. The new plan offers a lot more opportunities for exploring space than Constellation did, and is much more in keeping with the VSE.

  • Coastal Ron

    Bill White wrote @ December 4th, 2010 at 10:22 am

    On the other hand, I believe that video feeds of live people working on the Moon (or Mars) to lay the foundations for our species becoming a multi-planet species would be more persistently popular.

    My thinking too. Telescopes may provide a better sense of realism, but they suffer from the problem of distance and accessibility. Video is far more close-up and immediate, and would actually provide more details and variety.

    The other advantage of video is that it provides a better sense of reality. If we want people to get excited about space, then today they can watch NASA TV and watch astronauts and researchers working and living at the ISS. To me, that provides a much better idea of whether I want to be an astronaut than looking at the ISS through a telescope (sorry Mellberg).

  • Coastal Ron

    William Mellberg wrote @ December 4th, 2010 at 8:06 am

    Oh, yes. I talked with a young lady this past summer (a University of Wisconsin engineering major) who had been planning to go into aero/astro engineering, but who was reassessing her plans following the President’s change of course for NASA. “He doesn’t seem to be interested in exploring space” she opined. Talk about killing enthusiasm. She had been thinking about a career with NASA.

    Let’s hope you’re not her only source of career advice.

    I’ve asked you this before, but now it seems all the more important. Did you know that the new NASA plan will result in more people in space, and far more hours in space, than the Constellation plan? The comparison is not even close.

    Previously you have admitted that you were unaware of how far out the Constellation program had slipped (no Moon landings until the 2030’s). With the new Congressionally approved NASA plan, NASA will be able to keep a much bigger and more active astronaut corp to maintain the ISS for the next decade (and likely two decades). With the old plan, our participation in the ISS would have ended after 2015.

    What would Constellation have needed? Not too many astronauts, because they wouldn’t be able to afford many LEO excursions, and it would be at least 15 years before we would have been ready for the Moon. That is how over-budget and over-schedule Constellation was, and that was why Congress agreed to kill it. You may “blame” Obama, but Congress agrees with him, not you.

    And as Rand alluded to, the commercial aspects of the new plan also provide far more job possibilities, with the payoff being a robust commercial space industry. Constellation was just a NASA program, and it could only support jobs as long as it got votes in Congress – not a solid foundation for post-college job prospects.

  • Anne Spudis

    If we want people to get excited about space, then today they can watch NASA TV and watch astronauts and researchers working and living at the ISS.

    Why should it be anyone’s job to get people excited about space?

    There are important reasons for us to get back to the Moon and have routine access to cislunar space. If someone has an interest, and sees opportunity to work in that area, they will step up.

  • @ Vlad, I was responding to the assertion that we can spend billions of dollars just to take oxygen and water to the Moon. I was pointing out that you wouldn’t need to spend billions of dollars because there is already oxygen and water on the Moon.

    We do not have to send humans to Luna to test in situ it can be done robotically for a lot cheaper.

    That’s a fallacious argument at best.

    1. This is not a robotic v human argument. We’re discussing human exploration here and the options for that.

    2. I think it might have been Paul who said that all the work done on Mars by robots over the YEARS could have been done by two men in a couple of weeks. Are you talking about a few rovers that would conduct a few experiments in extracting the water and oxygen or full scale production facilities?

    3. The important thing is to get boots on the ground. How much faster could a couple of astronauts check samples over a wide area for the best place to start mining? And thus, significantly speed up the exploration and commercialization process.

    Having robots explore and mine … while feasible … is not exciting except to a very few and certainly wouldn’t gather a lot of continued congressional support.

    @Bill, I agree. I don’t think He3 mining will pay for the costs of going to Moon … at least not yet. However, it couldn’t hurt to send some back to help defray a few costs.

    Let’s face it folks. Going to the Moon will not pay for itself in the near future. Maybe … maybe … if things fall into place … after about 20 years after we set foot back on the Moon, there will be significant industrialization that will justify commercial operations. Until then, it’s going to consume funds.

  • Anne Spudis wrote @ December 4th, 2010 at 12:19 pm

    Q: Why should it be anyone’s job to get people excited about space?

    A: To obtain the funding needed to send humans into space.

    If tax dollars are to be used, at a minimum the people in Congress (and/or their staff) need to be excited about space.

    For funding models that are not taxpayer based, selling the “excitement” of space is pretty much the only business model I see as closing in the immediate future.

    To be clear, I would claim space tourism as a business model premised on selling the excitement of space.

  • Coastal Ron

    Lobo Solo wrote @ December 4th, 2010 at 1:05 pm

    2. I think it might have been Paul who said that all the work done on Mars by robots over the YEARS could have been done by two men in a couple of weeks.

    No argument there, but we couldn’t have sent two people as soon as we did with the Mars robots, and we couldn’t have sent people for anywhere near the price. Because of that, robotic explorers were/are the only feasible & affordable way to start the exploration process.

    3. The important thing is to get boots on the ground.

    Not at this point.

    At this point it’s all about putting the capabilities in place, and gathering as much knowledge as possible. For the capabilities, we need to get a robust, dependable and affordable LEO crew transportation system in place – once you’re in LEO, crew can transfer to vehicles bound to anywhere, so this is a keystone for any exploration.

    While we put our transportation in place, we can be sending larger & more capable robotic explorers to the Moon and NEO’s. Especially with the Moon (since it’s so close) we can send bigger and more capable robots than the ones going to Mars, and we get much faster information feedback.

    I would argue that we are very close to the point for where lunar robots can be more productive than humans, especially when you compare costs. Not that they can do everything a human can, but they can do a vast amount of the grunt work needed for exploration, as well as the preparation needed for the eventual colonization of the Moon. A small fleet of robotic explorers can cover more ground over a longer period of time than what we can support with humans at this time. Oh, and let’s not forget how much less expensive they are, which means it’s easier/quicker to get there, and it won’t bankrupt the American Taxpayer while doing it. Win win.

    Having robots explore and mine … while feasible … is not exciting except to a very few and certainly wouldn’t gather a lot of continued congressional support.

    We’re not going to the Moon for excitement. Mining water on the Moon is not exciting, nor is strip mining for He3. And if people are not glued to their sets watching the astronauts flying around on the ISS, they will likely lose interest in a couple of astronauts walking around on the Moon picking up rocks. Unless there is drama or danger, you won’t be able to attract people into watching mundane activities – not unless it’s made into a drama like Ice Road Truckers (and I’m not subsidizing Ice Water Diggers Of Luna).

    We are going into space to expand our knowledge and our civilization. Oh, and it pours money into some key congressional districts. That’s last part is the most important… ;-)

  • Vladislaw

    “@ Vlad, I was responding to the assertion that we can spend billions of dollars just to take oxygen and water to the Moon. I was pointing out that you wouldn’t need to spend billions of dollars because there is already oxygen and water on the Moon.”

    The conversation I was having with Anne was a continuation from another thread, it was not about bringing water and O2 to Luna, it was about in order to create a LEO infrastructure we should utilize resources from Luna to start it. My arguement is we do not need lunar resources to create a LEO infrastructure and we should be building the infrastructure that we need close to home first in order to make our push out BEO more sustainable.

    “That’s a fallacious argument at best. “

    No it wasn’t, in order for it to be a false arguement you would have to show how in situ testing could not be done robotically and could only be accomplished with hands on human involvement.

    “1. This is not a robotic v human argument. We’re discussing human exploration here and the options for that.”

    I was not making it a robotic versus human arguement. If you followed the almost two hundred threads I did on the DKOS you would know that 99% of the time I am against robby the robot astronaut because he has all the advocates he needs and it is my strong belief that a key enabler for lower prices is to have more humans in space, even at times when it is cheaper to do it robotically. The conversation we were having was about where and when to use robots versus humans. Again, I believe we should hold off on humans to Luna and conduct it robotically until we have a LEO infrastructure in place first.

    “2. I think it might have been Paul who said that all the work done on Mars by robots over the YEARS could have been done by two men in a couple of weeks. Are you talking about a few rovers that would conduct a few experiments in extracting the water and oxygen or full scale production facilities?”

    I believe the Nation should handle the data gathering that NASA needs through private enterprise incentives like Xprizes. From the history of those prizes we know that for every dollar of prize money spent from 4 to almost 30 dollars in private investment takes place. Would it be wiser for NASA to spend 500 mil on probes/experiments or offer 500 million in prize money and get a couple billion in private economic activity and increasing the odds for a commercially exploitable eureka moment?

    “3. The important thing is to get boots on the ground. How much faster could a couple of astronauts check samples over a wide area for the best place to start mining? And thus, significantly speed up the exploration and commercialization process.”

    It was also important during the cold war to get “boots on the ground” as fast as possible. “Waste anything but time”. We have 40 years of experience illustrating why that method was unsustainable.

    To repeat it would not be in the best interest of sustainablity. We need commercial coming with us EVERY step of the way this time or we are doomed to another Apollo. NASA will never get 4% of the budget in the forseeable future. The only way is to have private investment making up the difference and that means bringing the private sector with. The only way to get private investment to make up the difference is if NASA changes the way it does business. It is the commerical/civic dual use of stations and vehicles and bringing America with, every step of the way that Luna will happen.

  • William Mellberg

    Justin Kugler wrote:

    “I went back to my high school in February to give a presentation about the work I do on the ISS and talk with the students about space exploration. This was barely two weeks after the FY2011 budget proposal was released. This is something I do almost every year. It wasn’t Constellation that captured their attention. It was the things we’re doing on-orbit now, the opportunities in commercial spaceflight, and the chance to do something really different in space exploration that had their interest. I’ve never had as good a response from the crowd as I did this year.”

    Justin, I applaud you for going back to your old high school like that. I was a mentor at my old high school (and Hillary Clinton’s old high school, I might add) for many years and spoke at quite a few all-school assemblies, as well. It’s great to give back … and IMPORTANT to do so. It’s also very rewarding. During the past few days, I’ve heard from three of the “kids” I mentored (now in their 30s and 40s). They’ve all gone onto enjoy good careers in various fields. Another gentleman who I hear from often has been with NASA for 25 years now — due, in part, to my mentoring and encouragement. In any case, you’re doing a great thing!

    But I suspect that if Jack Schmitt had talked to the students at your old high school, they would have been just as excited about going back to the Moon. That’s certainly the reaction he and others (Neil Armstrong, Jim Lovell, Gene Cernan, et al.) get whenever they speak to young people — which they still do quite often. And Dr. Schmitt speaks to them regularly as an adjunct professor of engineering at the University of Wisconsin (Madison) where he’s been teaching a class in “Space Resources” for many years.

    The bottomline is that young people are excited about space: period. They’re excited about opening near space for commercialization … and they’re excited about venturing back into deep space for exploration. The sad fact is that we (humankind) haven’t had any experience in the human exploration of deep space (beyond Earth orbit, at any rate) for nearly 40 years.

    Incidentally, if you’ve read Harrison Schmitt’s book, Return to the Moon, you might have noticed that he points to a cadre of young space engineers and scientists as an important factor in any ambitious enterprise in space. Most of his colleagues and associates during his years at NASA were in their 20s, 30s and 40s. Indeed, my Dad was 42 when he became responsible for the design and development of the cameras for the Surveyor lunar landers. His age was a plus given the long hours he spent in test labs.

    BTW, I had the thrill of holding the Surveyor cameras in my lap as we drove to the airport to ship them to Hughes Aircraft for final assembly with the spacecraft. I held one of those cameras in my hands several years later — after the Apollo 12 astronauts brought the Surveyor III camera back to Earth. It’s now on display at the Smithsonian.

    Keep up the good work … and the good comments! I appreciate both.

  • William Mellberg

    Bill White wrote:

    “To be clear, I would claim space tourism as a business model premised on selling the excitement of space.”

    Personally, I can’t get very excited about multi-millionaires enjoying the excitement of space on my tax dollars. Just like British and French taxpayers weren’t excited about spending the equivalent of the Apollo budget on building SSTs for wealthy business travelers.

    But I am inspired by the prospect of professional astronauts and scientists exploring other worlds. At least they’d be coming back to Earth with new knowledge about the Universe.

    That said, I do applaud Sir Richard Branson. At least he and his customers are using their own money for joy rides to 60 miles.

  • red

    William Mellberg: “When Dr. Schmitt talked afterward about the President’s decision to cancel our return to he Moon, the audience was dumbfounded.”

    We didn’t have a real return to the Moon in progress. Certainly Griffin’s program was nothing like the Vision for Space Exploration. Ares I and Orion were just going to start going to the ISS by 2019 – a few years after the ISS would have been lost in order to fund Ares I and Orion. Even Griffin acknowledged that he was really only working on that ISS capability. Unfortunately, Ares I/Orion were devouring and destroying everything else in NASA to develop the Ares I/Orion bridge to nowhere: aeronautics, Earth observations, the Shuttle, use and long life of the ISS, the Vision for Space Exploration elements like space technology innovation, commercial participation, lunar lander, robotic precursors, robotic science/exploration missions, lunar ISRU … everything else.

    Obama didn’t cancel the Moon program, because there was no Moon program to cancel. Griffin in effect canceled it in 2005. The new NASA plan was to restore numerous NASA elements that Ares I/Orion squashed, and to even make a few of them quite a bit better than ever before. A lot of that has been squashed again by the Congressional “Son of Constellation”, but as grim as Congress is making the situation, we’re still a lot better off than under Constellation … including on the path to the Moon.

  • Coastal Ron

    William Mellberg wrote @ December 4th, 2010 at 4:03 pm

    The bottomline is that young people are excited about space: period.

    You keep arguing that what is holding us back from going back to the Moon is “excitement”. It’s not.

    We we lack is the will to spend the huge amounts of money that even modest programs like Constellation were going to require.

    “Oh, but I wasn’t a Constellation fan” you might say. Fine too, but Constellation was a window into the abilities NASA currently has for running large complex programs. And the conclusion would be is that they don’t know how to run large complex programs.

    IF we’re going to eventually get back to the Moon, it’s going to be as the result of it being much closer technology and budget-wise. For instance, if we do get a commercial crew industry going, then all NASA will need to budget is the GSA Schedule price for rides to LEO – no need to get Congress to fund a new rocket and capsule, and no need to wait 10+ years for them to finally get it built.

    We have plenty of people that would accept the challenge to return to the Moon – what we don’t have is affordable infrastructure. Yet.

  • William Mellberg

    Red wrote:

    “use and long life of the ISS”

    How long do you expect that life to be? I have nothing against the ISS. I think it’s a fabulous engineering achievement and a valuable resource for research. I’ve been an enthusiastic supporter of the ISS from the beginning. In fact, I gave a speech in one of my college classes calling for the development of a large space station in Earth orbit (long before Reagan gave a similar speech). But Mir didn’t last forever. And neither will the ISS. The core modules are already 10 years old. Maintaining the ISS as parts begin to wear out will become a time-consuming task, as it was in Mir’s later years. And it will be more costly, too.

  • Personally, I can’t get very excited about multi-millionaires enjoying the excitement of space on my tax dollars. Just like British and French taxpayers weren’t excited about spending the equivalent of the Apollo budget on building SSTs for wealthy business travelers.

    But as a taxpayer, you should be excited that NASA will save a lot of money by purchasing rides to LEO at a far lower cost than it would take to do it itself, and have a much more sustainable and affordable program. The “rides for millionaires” is just a useful side effect. The first people to buy VCRs were millionaires. They kicked off the industry that enabled everyone to own one a few years later. Do not denigrate the market of millionaires in terms of its ability to advance technology.

    But I am inspired by the prospect of professional astronauts and scientists exploring other worlds. At least they’d be coming back to Earth with new knowledge about the Universe.

    I think that Richard Garriott would take great umbrage at this slam against him. And I’m pretty sure that there are many NASA astronauts who didn’t “come back to earth with new knowledge about the universe.” How much “new knowledge about the universe” did we get from a typical Shuttle flight?

  • Coastal Ron

    William Mellberg wrote @ December 4th, 2010 at 6:20 pm

    How long do you expect that life [the ISS] to be?

    Too early to tell, but they have talked about at least 2028.

    But Mir didn’t last forever. And neither will the ISS. The core modules are already 10 years old.

    And because it is so modular, it could be upgraded in-place – modules added or swapped out, and it can even be expanded more. We have the capability to deliver the same modules to the ISS today, even without the Shuttle, so there is no real limit to how long the ISS can be there. That’s the advantage of modular construction in space.

    Maybe our kids or grandkids will visit the ISS museum in LEO someday…

  • red

    “How long do you expect that life to be?”

    I’m satisfied with the 2020+ lifetime that’s now planned, instead of the 2015 end planned under Constellation. We can take another look at the end date in a few years as circumstances dictate.

    Note that removing Constellation doesn’t merely give us the 2020+ lifespan for the ISS. It also gives us a substantial ISS funding boost each year compared to the Constellation plan even in the years before Constellation would have caused us to abandon the station. That funding boost will allow us to be able to actually use it much more, and to add to the station’s capabilities. That ISS increase was one of the non-controversial aspects of the new plan, as far as Congress was concerned.

    That increased ISS funding line isn’t the whole story, either. Many of the other new or increased funding lines in the FY2011 budget proposal (and, in very shrunken form, in the compromise Authorization) also allow us to make use of and/or support the ISS better, even though they don’t fall in the ISS budget line:

    – inflatable habitat flagship exploration technology demonstration mission deployed at the ISS
    – space tug to deploy the inflatable habitat at the ISS (this tug might also be used for other ISS jobs later like deploying a Node 4, per the early NASA point of departure documents)
    – ECLSS exploration technology demonstrations performed at the ISS
    – keep the Space Shuttle flying a bit longer to support the ISS
    – ISS Earth telerobotics exploration technology demonstrations
    – likely some ISS work through the increase to the general Space Technology line
    – likely some ISS work through the increase to the Human Research line
    – improved commercial cargo capabilities
    – commercial crew

    All of these either make valuable use of the ISS (thus justifying keeping the ISS around even more), support the ISS while at the same time providing a more robust and affordable foundation for future exploration missions, or both. Some of them also help lay a foundation for future space stations (e.g.: commercial LEO stations, specialized government cislunar space nodes) so that a potential eventual loss of the ISS will not destroy government or commercial HSF as the 2015 ISS loss well might have.

    Plus, even setting all of the above aside, I’m convinced that even the new and increased areas (at the expense of Constellation) in the FY2011 proposal that don’t have much at all to do with the ISS (i.e. fleet of robotic precursor main missions, fleet of robotic precursor scout missions, non-ISS flagship exploration technology demonstration missions, non-ISS exploration technology developments, non-ISS Human Research increase, non-ISS general Space Technology increase, Earth observation increase, Aeronautics increase, Pu-238 production, NEO search increase, heavy lift and propulsion R&D, major KSC infrastructure modernization) alone are a good trade compared to Constellation.

  • William Mellberg

    Rand Simberg wrote:

    “I think that Richard Garriott would take great umbrage at this slam against him. And I’m pretty sure that there are many NASA astronauts who didn’t “come back to earth with new knowledge about the universe.” How much “new knowledge about the universe” did we get from a typical Shuttle flight?”

    Mr. Simberg,

    There you go again (to borrow an old line).

    I said nothing about Richard Garriott or any of the other tourists who’ve bought seats on Soyuz. Nor did I mention the Space Shuttle, although Garriott’s father certainly came back with new knowledge about the Universe following his Spacelab-1 mission (STS-9) in 1983. What I said was, “But I am inspired by the prospect of professional astronauts and scientists EXPLORING OTHER WORLDS.” They are the ones — geologists, biologists, astronomers and others — who will be bringing back new knowledge from the Moon, Mars and other destinations beyond low Earth orbit.

    As for Richard Garriott, I certainly didn’t slam him. On the contrary, I thought it was quite cool that the son of a Skylab/Spacelab scientist-astronaut should follow in his father’s footsteps … as have two cosmonauts. Please don’t take my remarks out of context or, more to the point, put words in my mouth. I have the greatest respect for Owen Garriott and admiration for his son. Period.

  • William Mellberg

    Coastal Ron wrote:

    “And because it is so modular, it could be upgraded in-place – modules added or swapped out, and it can even be expanded more. We have the capability to deliver the same modules to the ISS today, even without the Shuttle, so there is no real limit to how long the ISS can be there. That’s the advantage of modular construction in space.”

    I hope that’s the case because I would like to see the ISS remain in service as long as possible to get the most benefit from the facility. I also see the value of those modules in testing and proving habitats and hardware for the Moon and Mars. As I wrote previously, I have been an advocate of a permanent space station for a very long time. And I am inspired every time I see the ISS soaring overhead.

  • Vladislaw

    Rand wrote:

    “But as a taxpayer, you should be excited that NASA will save a lot of money by purchasing rides to LEO at a far lower cost than it would take to do it itself, and have a much more sustainable and affordable program. The “rides for millionaires” is just a useful side effect.”

    Great point that for the life of me can’t understand why people can not see it. It shouldn’t matter who the hell rides the system, after it is in place, as long as they pay for the ride and NASA gains the ability for routine access to LEO for both cheaper development costs and time then they can do it themselves and the seat price for NASA is cheaper than they can do for themselves.

    After 50 years the Nation is entitled to have routine travel to LEO. The shuttle was never routine as the recent delays, once again, illustrate.

    Routine travel by a rental car, airline, cruise ship, to me means, if my flight gets canceled for whatever reason, I schedule a new flight with that airline, if that airline goes bust, I reschedule with another airline. Under no circumstances does travel by that transportation system grind to a dead stop for whatever reason.

    It has to be the same for flights to LEO, if my flight gets canceled I reschedule another or with another company. The idea, that after 50 years of travel to LEO, the entire NATION is held hostage by NASA and our entire national human space flight grinds to a halt with absolutely no other domestic means of travel. This is a travesty considering how cheap it would have historically cost, relative to what NASA was spending for LEO access, to get that sector started.

  • William Mellberg

    @Justin Kugler

    Justin, further to my previous remark about Harrison Schmitt commenting in his book about the young age of most of the engineers and scientists involved with Apollo, he does the same in his speeches. You can see one of them at:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmKJks0Dldw&feature=player_embedded#!

    Jack talks about that age factor early on. The program is about one hour long. Much of the first 40 minutes is his standard lunar travelogue. But the Q&A session during the last 20 minutes addresses Helium-3, the ISS, humans vs. robots as explorers, the future of NASA’s human spaceflight program, etc . Jack was still Chair of the NASA Advisory Council at the time of this speech, which was delivered to the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition. I think you might enjoy hearing his views. Dr. Schmitt was in the first group of scientist-astronauts selected by NASA (with Owen Garriott) and later served a term in the United States Senate (R-NM). He was the first and only geologist to explore another world. And, in the interest of full disclosure, Jack wrote the foreword to my 1997 book, Moon Missions.

    I think this speech is well worth hearing when you have an hour to spare.

  • I said nothing about Richard Garriott or any of the other tourists who’ve bought seats on Soyuz.

    You certainly implied it. You may not have meant to, but you did. He was one of those “millionaires” on a joy ride.

  • William Mellberg

    Vladislaw wrote:

    “Great point that for the life of me can’t understand why people can not see it. It shouldn’t matter who the hell rides the system, after it is in place, as long as they pay for the ride and NASA gains the ability for routine access to LEO for both cheaper development costs and time then they can do it themselves and the seat price for NASA is cheaper than they can do for themselves. After 50 years the Nation is entitled to have routine travel to LEO. The shuttle was never routine as the recent delays, once again, illustrate.”

    Vladislaw, what makes you think “commercial” space will be routine? It will never be like going to the airport in our lifetimes because there will never be enough launches in our lifetimes to prove any space launcher/spacecraft system as “routine” (i.e., as safe and routine as boarding an airliner). And why is the Nation “entitled” to routine travel to LEO? Where is that “entitlement” mentioned in the Constitution? For the life of me, I will never understand people with an entitlement mentality. Or people who are “offended” by professional astronauts. After being stuck in LEO orbit for nearly 40 years, I don’t believe the Nation is “entitled” to send humans into deep space again. What makes you think the Nation is “entitled” to routine travel to LEO after 50 years? “Entitlements” are for socialists. But I’m concerned about my “rights” as granted by the Creator (enumerated in the Declaration of Independence) and guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States. If you want to ride into LEO, you have the right to come up with the money to pay for it. But you aren’t entitled to the trip … unless you think the “pursuit of happiness” means subsidizing your ticket with your neighbors’ hard-earned tax dollars.

  • William Mellberg

    @Vladislaw

    One further point … commercial airliners are proven safe and reliable through test programs involving hundreds of flights and thousands of hours. That isn’t possible for rocket launches. So the idea of human spaceflight becoming “routine” and like boarding an airliner is as ridiculous now as it was 30+ years ago when NASA was suggesting that the Space Shuttle would be as safe and as commonplace as flying aboard a DC-9. That was hype … not reality.

  • Ferris Valyn

    Mr. William Mellberg

    The reason we say we are entitled to having routine access is because we’ve spent 50 years doing something, and it was suppose to deliver cheap reliable routine access. It failed.

    As for being offended about professional astronauts – what offends me is when they aren’t doing anything that actually advances the cause of becoming spacefaring. What offends me hero worship under the guise of claims of science & tech development. Particularly when so many people are hurting.

    Finally,

    One further point … commercial airliners are proven safe and reliable through test programs involving hundreds of flights and thousands of hours. That isn’t possible for rocket launches

    Yes it is. You can’t do it with Expendables, but you can certainly do that with reusables. And, arguable, even with EELVs, you can develop the rockets as interchangeable parts, and have good enough tolerances, you can test it enough times to get it to the point of having it be quite routine & reliable.

    And this is really the major point – you keep claiming that we can’t make it routine. Can you demonstrate for Vlad, for Rand, for myself, that the technology isn’t there to make it routine – that its not just about operations?

    Finally, whats wrong with being a socialist?

  • One further point … commercial airliners are proven safe and reliable through test programs involving hundreds of flights and thousands of hours. That isn’t possible for rocket launches.

    Actually, it is, if they’re not expendables.

  • Vladislaw

    “Vladislaw, what makes you think “commercial” space will be routine? It will never be like going to the airport in our lifetimes because there will never be enough launches in our lifetimes to prove any space launcher/spacecraft system as “routine” (i.e., as safe and routine as boarding an airliner). And why is the Nation “entitled” to routine travel to LEO? Where is that “entitlement” mentioned in the Constitution?”

    What makes you think NASA will make space routine and which is more like to provide a routine transportation system, NASA or the Private sector?

    I already said what makes a transportation system and the service it provides routine, multiple service providers, the reason that NASA can never become routine is because they have always been a single fault system. If anything happens, from the weather to a faulty part and the entire Nations space access suffers, and this is something we would not tolerate in any other system, only with the NASA monopoly do we allow this to happen.

    You say it will never happen in our lifetime .. well I can promise you, if we NEVER step out of the box NASA has us in, then you are correct, it will not only never happen in our lifetime.. but in anyone’s lifetime.

    The Nation is entitled to this because of the 41 years of mine and other’s taxes that have went into funding a monopoly that I and others no longer want to support. Do not for a minute believe that I am alone in this view, I have read to many blogs, articles, polling over the last 20 years and it is becoming the majority voice.

    As a taxpayer I have the right to have my government wisely spending my tax dollars. I would rather have NASA fund the commercial sector than for them to waste another decade and billions of dollars and in the end, giving us flawed systems.

    If a commercial company creates a flawed system the company goes broke, or at the very least people get fired… Not NASA.. they are rewarded with more money and promotions. I am tired of it.

    I do not want NASA having this monopoly any longer. Not when it can be shown over and over that it would be cheaper if NASA was out of the launch business.

    There was a reason NASA’s mandate had to finally be changed. NASA has dragged their heels on this forever and Congress finally had to change their mandate and still they fight to keep the status quo.

    Does it bother you that a NASA astronaut has to ride a commercial airline? Does it bother you that America has to go hat in hand to Russia begging for rides because NASA was so inept they could not provide crew access to the ISS with 10 billion dollars and six YEARS? .. think about that. 10 BILLION dollars .. say that over about a thousand times .. 10 BILLION dollars and they could not achieve crew access to LEO

  • William Mellberg

    Ferris Valyn wrote :

    “The reason we say we are entitled to having routine access is because we’ve spent 50 years doing something, and it was suppose to deliver cheap reliable routine access. It failed.”

    Entitled?

    “As for being offended about professional astronauts – what offends me is when they aren’t doing anything that actually advances the cause of becoming spacefaring. What offends me hero worship under the guise of claims of science & tech development. Particularly when so many people are hurting.”

    First of all, I don’t think very many people can name one current astronaut. So your “hero worship” claim is rather difficult to comprehend. Secondly, I don’t think very many of the people who are hurting — including scores of people I know who have lost their jobs, their small businesses, their health insurance, their livelihoods, their life savings and their homes during the past two years — are really thinking much about an “entitlements” to Low Earth Orbit. They’re worried about down to Earth problems like paying their bills, keeping their kids in school, avoiding foreclosure, etc. They’re also concerned about a President who, during an economic crisis the likes of which hasn’t been seen since the Great Depression, has failed to instill or inspire confidence in the economy. Have you seen the latest unemployment figures? This President promised to keep unemployment at 8%. He’s failed miserably. He promised health insurance would become more affordable. It hasn’t. Premiums are soaring. If you’d like to pay the recent hikes I’ve had since ObamaCare was passed, I’d be happy to send you the bills since you seem to embrace redistribution.

    “… you can develop the rockets as interchangeable parts, and have good enough tolerances, you can test it enough times to get it to the point of having it be quite routine & reliable.”

    You cannot afford to test rockets as aircraft are tested for certification. It would require hundreds of launches and billions of dollars.

    “Finally, whats wrong with being a socialist?”

    Sooner or later, you run out of other peoples’ money. As Winston Churchill described it, “Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the gospel of envy.”

    The “envy” part sure seems to come through when you talk about “hero worship” offending you and “entitlements” to space travel. Such thoughts might thrive on college campuses … but not in the real world.

    Rand Simberg wrote:

    (One further point … commercial airliners are proven safe and reliable through test programs involving hundreds of flights and thousands of hours. That isn’t possible for rocket launches.)

    “Actually, it is, if they’re not expendables.”

    And who is going to pay for the hundreds of test flights that would be required to come even close to the sort of testing that gets commercial aircraft certified? I said it isn’t possible because it isn’t affordable. It’ll be very interesting to see the contracts people will be required to sign before boarding a commercial spacecraft. They’ll be literally signing their lives away because there is no record of safety and reliability for rockets and spacecraft as there is for airliners. We’re talking MILLIONS of take-offs and landings and many millions of air hours.

  • Coastal Ron

    William Mellberg wrote @ December 5th, 2010 at 3:21 pm

    Vladislaw, what makes you think “commercial” space will be routine? It will never be like going to the airport in our lifetimes because there will never be enough launches in our lifetimes to prove any space launcher/spacecraft system as “routine” (i.e., as safe and routine as boarding an airliner).

    Space travel as safe as boarding an airliner? The airline industry has been around for 101 years, so let’s calibrate our expectations a little. I think commercial crew will be safer in it’s first decade than airlines were in their first decade. And there are many reasons for that.

    One reason would be is that we understand space travel so well, after having done government-run space travel for so long.

    Another more significant one would be that our ability to design, simulate, manufacture and test using modern tools, which when combined with non bleeding-edge designs (i.e. keroLox rockets & simple capsules) means that safety can be more predictable and easier to attain.

    And why is the Nation “entitled” to routine travel to LEO?

    I interpreted Vladislaw’s “entitled” comment as meaning “should”, as in:

    After 50 years the Nation should have routine travel to LEO.

    Or, my version:

    Why the heck don’t we have routine travel to LEO after 50 years???

    Once the last Shuttle returns home, many people are going to wondering the same thing…

  • Ferris Valyn

    William Mellberg,

    I think Coastal Ron put it the best, on terms of being entitled to cheap spaceflight. And let me carry it just a step farther – the reason we feel “entitled” to it is that NASA promised it would happen with shuttle. It didn’t. NASA broke a huge promise to us

    First of all, I don’t think very many people can name one current astronaut. So your “hero worship” claim is rather difficult to comprehend

    The issue isn’t “most people” – the issue is you, and other space cadets. When you talk about “inspiration”, and “spinoffs” and “science”, you are hero worshiping the Apollo astronauts. You talk about spinoffs, but the reality is that spinoffs from NASA are pretty mediocre at best. The reality is that sciencetific bang for the buck is much better for doing lots of unmanned, than a single manned mission. And that leaves you with inspiration, which is a hero-worship of the Apollo astronauts.

    And so, when you talk about spending $8-9 billion a year on something that won’t address things like clean water, things like long term job growth, and so on, whose claims about spinoffs & science are mostly garbage, and you are left with “inspiration” – thats hero worship of Apollo.

    As for Obama and his failures – he’s not dictator. When you have a minority of congress, actively refusing to even have a discussion about how to run the country, well, its not Obama who I have the most anger at.

    You cannot afford to test rockets as aircraft are tested for certification. It would require hundreds of launches and billions of dollars.

    You can if you can bring prices down to a point where there is a mass market. We don’t need it to be at a level that air travel is currently at to find a mass market.

    This all comes back to a question of can you have cheap space travel using current tech and more effiecent systems.

    Sooner or later, you run out of other peoples’ money. As Winston Churchill described it, “Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the gospel of envy.”

    The “envy” part sure seems to come through when you talk about “hero worship” offending you and “entitlements” to space travel. Such thoughts might thrive on college campuses … but not in the real world.

    Oh please
    1. The real socialism in space isn’t those of us who feel we’ve been screwed by NASA for failing to deliver. The real socialism is NASA.
    2. We aren’t talking about a pure socialist model, or a pure capitalist model. We live in a mixed economy, and there are degrees of socialism & capitalism. Don’t play with bogeyman words.

  • Martijn Meijering

    The “envy” part sure seems to come through when you talk about “hero worship” offending you and “entitlements” to space travel. Such thoughts might thrive on college campuses … but not in the real world.

    Obviously I can’t speak for Vladislaw, but I think his feelings are similar to mine. I’m not in the least offended at the existence of a professional astronaut corps and in a way I find it inspiring. Not that that is necessarily a good reason for spending other people’s money on it, but it’s still true: I do find it inspiring.

    You will probably have seen this picture of Tracy Caldwell Dyson in the ISS Cupola:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tracy_Caldwell_Dyson_in_Cupola_ISS.jpg

    It’s a wonderful picture and even the vicarious pleasure of seeing someone else enjoy this fills me with a strange feeling of peace and hope. I don’t begrudge her this, nor do I even envy her. I am totally resigned to the fact that I will in all probability never make it into space. It’s not an entitlement, it’s a privilege. It’s also a privilege to be alive at the dawn of a new era in which wonderful things will happen in space. I’ve had the luxury of spending a good part of the past two years devoting myself to learning as much as I could about manned spaceflight and the science, technology (and sadly politics) behind it. That too is a privilege and one that most of the people who’ve ever lived in the history of mankind have never had. We’re all spoiled.

    What I do object to is that some people are eager to keep private citizens out of space, or more precisely they appear to be determined that commercial manned spaceflight should not be helped through synergy with NASA manned spaceflight. And when they talk about millionaires going on joy rides, then that smacks of envy to me.

    There is no need for NASA to operate its own launchers, nor to invest in development of new ones. There is no need for NASA to have an Orion capsule that can only be used by NASA when it could easily use multiple spacecraft that have a dual use, both government and private. NASA should go out there and explore, making its astronaut corps do ever more wonderful things in ever more distant parts of the solar system.

    You have complained of a lack of an integrated, holistic plan for exploration of the solar system. I share the desire for such a plan and I would want to combine it with an integrated, holistic plan for commercial development of space. I don’t much believe in top down planning, other than as an existence proof. Also, I believe that NASA should not be in the infrastructure business and that infrastructure should never be developed up front. Sadly, even some of the more far sighted commercial space advocates, those who definitely understand incrementalism and the power of free markets, fall into that trap for reasons I can only guess at. Hence we see elaborate statist, top-down sketches of programs.

    And the solution seems to be one that should make NASA’s astronaut corps happy: go out and explore, indirectly funding R&D for commercial development of space through competitive procurement of launch services. ICT investment is mostly funded from sales and the same should be true of launch services, crew transport services, orbital refueling and transport services etc.

  • Doug Lassiter

    “3. The important thing is to get boots on the ground.”

    May I also disagree with this?

    Especially for the Moon, for which the communication delay is just a few seconds, telerobotic discovery is the way to go. You can look at the strong use of telerobotics in contemporary mining, and even in surgery by telepresence and understand the potential. With several second delays, dexterous manipulators (far more dexterous than fingertips in suit gloves could be), high resolution imagers, and a decent comm bandwidth, I could pick up, turn over and inspect more rocks with a robot by telepresence than could any astronaut. With the robot properly equipped, I could be doing it 24/7. What would happen if my robot broke? Well, gee, I’d just send another few, keeping well under my Congressionally allocated budget.

    As for humans being able to do in a few weeks what Spirit and Opportunity did on Mars in six years, well, sure. But let’s think about it in terms of discovery per unit cost. For the cost of a human mission to Mars, we could sprinkle rovers all over Mars, getting insight about vastly different locales. Unlike humans, these robots could, in fact, work for many years, and we wouldn’t need to bring them back to Earth when they were done.

    Humans may need to go to other worlds to settle and colonize, but not to do science, and perhaps not even to do resource development. Exploration by boots is an old story that modern telerobotics has turned into a myth. The important thing is to get our intelligence on the ground. If you keep your intelligence in your boots, well then, I guess you need to leave some footprints with those boots. If not, then just keep them under your desk in Pasadena.

  • Coastal Ron

    William Mellberg wrote @ December 5th, 2010 at 5:36 pm

    You cannot afford to test rockets as aircraft are tested for certification. It would require hundreds of launches and billions of dollars.

    This is some sort of fictional barrier you keep putting up. Launch service companies already do testing, so it’s not like they throw something together and hope it works.

    Would reusability be nice? Of course, but as the Shuttle has shown us, just being semi-reusable doesn’t mean that it’s low cost, and it doesn’t mean that it’s completely safe.

    I think one lesson from Shuttle is that we need to rethink how we want to get to/from LEO. Personally I think that the future is Two-Stage-To-Orbit, but since NASA hasn’t helped the industry figure this out, we’re left falling back to basic capsule designs.

    NASA is faulted in this because it is a tax-supported agency whose self-described mission statement is to “pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research.” Where is the technology road map for the Shuttles replacement? Griffin retreated from the knowledge and effort we put into the Shuttle, and gave us Ares I/Orion – what a waste.

    So in many ways we are resetting the clock back to the 1960’s, and it’s going to take a while to “push the envelope” on space travel. But the advantage that commercial companies have today over the 1960’s is 50 years worth of knowledge and experience, and their simple capsules are more inherently survivable than any other current design. Even if they are not 100% reliable, the crew is safer than riding on the Shuttle. Ya gotta start someplace.

    My $0.02

  • And who is going to pay for the hundreds of test flights that would be required to come even close to the sort of testing that gets commercial aircraft certified?

    Whoever is developing them, and wants to ensure their customers that they are safe.

    I said it isn’t possible because it isn’t affordable.

    And I said it is affordable, as long as you don’t throw them away each flight. It needn’t cost “billions.”

    In any event, we aren’t going to have certification for some time — the industry is far too immature for that, but they will be test flown enough to provide some level of comfort that they’re safe.

  • Rhyolite

    “2. I think it might have been Paul who said that all the work done on Mars by robots over the YEARS could have been done by two men in a couple of weeks.”

    I have to disagree with this point. A couple of people could not replicated the work done by robots over the years in a couple of weeks. A single expedition to Mars with only two people would likely only be able to visit on location. Even with a rover, their range would be limited. There is only so much you can learn in one place.

    The half a dozen or so robotic landers we have sent so far have visited very different locations on opposite sides of Mars. Replicating that data set with humans would require multiple manned missions over many years. Actually determining Mar’s history and surveying it’s resources will require visiting many locations spread over mars.

    Moreover, for the cost of one manned mission we could build hundreds. For the cost of a $200 billion dollar mars mission (its not going to be less expensive than Cx) we could launch 100 MSL rovers or 400 MER rovers (not counting any economies of scale). That would keep hundreds of science teems operating for years and provide a far complete picture of Mars.

    The bottom line is that we will learn less about Mars by concentrating on a manned mission rather than on many robotic ones.

  • Coastal Ron

    Coastal Ron wrote @ December 5th, 2010 at 8:11 pm

    When I said TSTO, the specific type I was thinking of was a winged carrier with a winged orbiter on it’s back. Maybe something like the X-33 running on RP-1/LOX instead of LH2/LOX?

  • Rhyolite

    Typo…only be able to visit one location.

  • William Mellberg

    Coastal Ron wrote:

    “Space travel as safe as boarding an airliner? The airline industry has been around for 101 years, so let’s calibrate our expectations a little. I think commercial crew will be safer in it’s first decade than airlines were in their first decade. And there are many reasons for that. One reason would be is that we understand space travel so well, after having done government-run space travel for so long. Another more significant one would be that our ability to design, simulate, manufacture and test using modern tools, which when combined with non bleeding-edge designs (i.e. keroLox rockets & simple capsules) means that safety can be more predictable and easier to attain.”

    On the whole, I agree with these comments. However, as an historical note, the airline industry is generally regarded to have started in 1919 with KLM flying Fokker F.IIs (although some historians would disagree). Airlines didn’t really take off in the United States until around 1926 or 1927 (about the time of Lindbergh’s flight to Paris). At that time the Fokker and Ford tri-motors were the latest thing in technology. (I’ve flown in a Ford Tri-Motor. The cars below us were passing us!) So you’re probably right. The first commercial space vehicles will be safer than the earliest airliners … but not as safe as today’s airliners.

    “I interpreted Vladislaw’s ‘entitled’ comment as meaning ‘should’, as in:

    ‘After 50 years the Nation should have routine travel to LEO.’

    Or, my version:

    Why the heck don’t we have routine travel to LEO after 50 years???”

    Well, that would definitely change the meaning of his remark … if that is, in fact, what Vladislaw meant to say. Indeed, I’d echo that question myself, although it depends on your definition of the word ‘routine’. To some extent, travel to LEO is already routine. Soyuz and Progress spacecraft have been operating like clockwork for decades in all sorts of weather. But I don’t think that’s what you have in mind, nor do I. ‘Routine’ would be more along the lines of what was originally forecast for the Space Shuttle … up to 50 launches a year (by some accounts). But I’d probably regard half that number as ‘routine’ at this point.

    “Once the last Shuttle returns home, many people are going to wondering the same thing…”

    Yes, and I’ll be one of them. I have nothing but admiration for the Russians and the record of the R-7 for more than 50 years and the Soyuz for more than 40 years But crews are crammed into the spacecraft like sardines, and we should certainly have something better to be servicing a 21st Century Space Station (i.e., the ISS). On the other hand, it’s a tribute to Korolev’s original design team, as well as their dedicated successors, that Soyuz is still operating. But going back to your first point, flying the Soyuz spacecraft in the 21st Century is a bit like having Ford Tri-Motors in frontline airline service back in the late 1960s. (Island Airlines was, in fact, flying Ford Tri-Motors in scheduled service at that time out of Port Clintion, Ohio.) I look forward to seeing the Soyuz replacement(s).

  • Dennis Berube

    I see commercial crew working just as long as our government doesnt stifle it should an accident happen. It of course will with time. As to the Soyuz, through the years, it has been upgraded internally. I thought Russia was planning a bigger version to carry upwards of six crew?

  • William Mellberg

    Martijn Meijering wrote:

    “What I do object to is that some people are eager to keep private citizens out of space, or more precisely they appear to be determined that commercial manned spaceflight should not be helped through synergy with NASA manned spaceflight. And when they talk about millionaires going on joy rides, then that smacks of envy to me.”

    No, Martijn, you have misinterpreted my comments in that regard. What I am trying to suggest is that “millionaires going on joy rides” does not constitute a viable market. How many people were able to fly aboard Concorde? Not many. Not enough, at any rate, to support Air France and British Airways keeping more than a handful of aircraft in service (with government subsidies). The SST proved to be impractical from a business point of view. Nobody else has built one for more than three decades. And none are being developed. Incidentally, I don’t begrudge anyone who flew on Concorde. Several of my associates did, and I wish I could have joined them! The aircraft was a technological wonder, and by and large Concorde proved itself in daily supersonic service. But it proved itself only from an operational point of view — not economical. Moreover, it wasted fuel as it guzzled fuel. But I digress.

    I have nothing against millionaires buying rides into space. They are genuine pioneers. But they are not a viable market. I suspect the available pool will become even smaller following the first accident with a commercial space vehicle.

    In short, I believe, as I’ve stated previously, that “commercial” space will be dependent on government contracts to survive for a long time to come. The ‘need’ for humans in space simply isn’t that great. It is not like the airline industry where transportation between Point A and Point B is a vital service.

    Frankly, some of the claims made by commercial space proponents remind me of the hype associated with the Space Shuttle when it was being developed. That, too, was supposed to be just like an airliner. BTW, NASA didn’t “lie” to us about the Space Shuttle as Ferris has stated. They simply didn’t understand the problems that would be encountered with such a revolutionary space vehicle. It’s not the first time that an aircraft failed to live up to expectations. Concorde was but one other example among many.

    I was involved with several press presentations at the time Spacelab was announced as Fokker was part of VFW-Fokker, and ERNO was part of VFW-Fokker, too. I was young (resh out of school) and starry-eyed … and I, too, told the press that Spacelab would be making “scores” of flights aboard Space Shuttles because I (we) fully expected that it would.

    In any event, I do not suffer from class envy. In fact, some of my best friends are millionaires. I don’t begrudge them their success, even though I live far more modestly than they do (to say the least). Which is why I resented another gentleman’s false accusation that I was smearing Richard Garriott. No way!

    And yes, when I see photos of ISS astronauts enjoying the view from the Cupola, I think it’s fantastic and inspiring, too. Moreover, you found the right word to describe the experience those men and women have shared … it’s a “privilege” for them to fly in space representing the rest of us who are stuck on terra firma. And I wish them the very best They have studied hard and worked hard to get to where they are. They are a “privileged few” … but they didn’t have success handed to them as an entitlement. They made it the old-fashioned way … they earned it.

    Oh, yes. Like you, I also bemoan the politics of space. I’m reminded of what the great Sir Sydney Camm said following the demise of the BAC TSR.2 (not an exact quote, but close):

    “Every aircraft has three dimensions: wingspan, length and politics.”

  • Martijn Meijering

    @William:

    Again, we mostly agree. I wasn’t thinking of you when I spoke of envy, it’s just that you just mentioned the word. We can’t know for sure yet, but it seems likely that commercial manned spaceflight is a long way away from being to stand on its own. But since the DoD needs assured access to space it pays for most of the fixed costs of the EELVs. NASA could easily use them as well, as it does for some spacecraft. In addition NASA wants CRS and is therefore paying SpaceX and Orbital. Because of this we will soon have both competing commercial launchers and at least one crew vehicle. If the money NASA intends to spend on Orion were spent on another commercial crew vehicle (perhaps Orion Lite, no need to disadvantage LM), then we could have two competiting crew vehicles. With the fixed costs and development costs taken care of, what matters is whether commercial manned spaceflight would be viable purely on a variable cost basis. And experience with Space Adventures and the ISS suggests it could be. Throw in Bigelow and the foreign governments he hopes to attract as clients and we might see manned spaceflight more than double at no extra cost to NASA. Bigelow’s success is not a given, but it is certainly worth a try.

  • Anne Spudis

    William Mellberg,

    Professor! You have initiated a class discussion that is very interesting.

    Your students have raised many questions and shared a lot of viewpoints.

    You have kept them engaged and eager to engage you in a healthy exchange of ideas!

    Education happens from such discussion. You’re filling in a lot of blanks.

    Bravo.

  • Vladislaw

    Here is how I mean’t the word entitled, if you are paying premium prices (tax payers are paying a premium because NASA has both a government monopoly on HSF and a monopsony) you are entitled to get what you are supposedly paying for:

    “2: to furnish with proper grounds for seeking or claiming something (this ticket entitles the bearer to free admission)”

    Congress mandated NASA to utilize commercial services, taxes were levied and given to NASA to carry out their mandated obligations. Therefore tax payers are entitled to get what they are supposedly funding.
    (the ticket)

    COTS D was laid out for commercial services but were back burnered to fund Constellation. If NASA would have did what they were mandated to do we would have stopped having this arguement 10 years ago and the Nation would already have a new domestic space sector providing for new high tech jobs, NASA would have a low cost redundant space access, and a side benifit would have been the opportunity for private citizens to have that same lower cost access.
    (the admission)

    Should instead of entitled would have worked also .. I just wanted to express a little more anger and frustration with the system than should implied.

  • Vladislaw

    “Obviously I can’t speak for Vladislaw, but I think his feelings are similar to mine. I’m not in the least offended at the existence of a professional astronaut corps and in a way I find it inspiring.”

    As I have said many times, I would rather fund Robby the Astronaut then robby the robot astronaut. That said, I think it is a diservice to our Astronaut corp with the path taken.

    I remember posting on here a excerpt from a Russian news paper article when NASA signed the contract for soyuz flights. They were heartbroken because their cosmonauts were being reduced to “taxi drivers”. I feel the same way. Our professional astronaut corp deserves to be on the cutting edge (BEO) and commercial astronauts/astrotechs should be doing the support for that goal. (lower cost LEO access, commercial fuel depot/station, lower cost cargo transport)

  • Vladislaw

    “You have complained of a lack of an integrated, holistic plan for exploration of the solar system. I share the desire for such a plan and I would want to combine it with an integrated, holistic plan for commercial development of space. I don’t much believe in top down planning, other than as an existence proof. Also, I believe that NASA should not be in the infrastructure business and that infrastructure should never be developed up front.”

    Great comment and I share that Ideal. I look at it like this, commercial market X can not quite close the business case because the cost of an intregral part of that is the need for widget Y. NASA funds and develops widget Y and shovels it into the private sector and the business case closes and the Nation enjoys a new market,, lower cost services and opening up the ability for more people to take advantage of the lower costs and becomes a self sustaining new market. NASA then moves on to the next widget that opens up more commercial dual use markets.

    When you read this part of the Space Act.:

    “(2) The improvement of the usefulness, performance, speed, safety, and efficiency of aeronautical and space vehicles;”

    For me that means NASA looking at commercial products and how they can marginally improve systems, like what has been done historically for the airline industry.

    A monopoly does not worry about lowering prices, they are enjoying extra normal profits. When a monopoly lowers prices it is generally for two reasons:

    A. They are mandated by government intervention ( think of public utilities, a state sanctioned monopoly) their rates of increase are set by an external force.

    B. Ease of access by competitors. Capital automatically flows to extra normal profits, those profits come at the introduction of a new product with higher rates of development costs. From cars to eyeglasses, telescopes and refridgerators all were a high cost good at one time.

    Virgin Galatic is a classic example. At 200k they will be making extra normal profits. A second player can close the business case and copy what they are doing if they can also charge 200k to recoup development costs.

    Virgin Galatic is planning on chopping prices in half after a few hundred customers, I doubt they are doing this to increase the customer base, they will do it so that a competitor has a harder time closing the business case because they have to come at the new 100k price rather than enjoying those same extra normal profits gained by VG.

    NASA does the same thing, by saying HSF is ungodly expensive and gosh just look at all the safety regs YOU will have to follow ( but we don’t have to) driving costs to entry up.

    Constellation is just a sign of that monopoly power, price didn’t matter. Now that it looks like price is going to matter that gets shut down and they present a still high priced HLV but they lowered the price only because it is being forced on them, it was never their first choice. Low cost has never been their first choice becasue it would lower the bar on ease of access.

    SpaceX has clearly shown what can be accomplished without access to billions of dollars. Bigelow is another example of what can be accomplished without billions of dollars of funding. NASA is having a harder time closing the business case for those high prices that they have constantly told America is the only way you can have HSF.

  • William Mellberg

    Anne Spudis wrote:

    “Professor! You have initiated a class discussion that is very interesting. Your students have raised many questions and shared a lot of viewpoints. You have kept them engaged and eager to engage you in a healthy exchange of ideas! Education happens from such discussion. You’re filling in a lot of blanks. Bravo.”

    Anne,

    Many thanks for your kind words, although I think you’re overly generous. But I appreciate your recognition of my efforts to steer this dialogue away from the usual exchange of insults into an exchange of ideas. Intelligent dialogue beats mindless diatribes any day, and I’m pleased to see people defending their ideas with logic rather than barbs. No one has a monopoly on good ideas, and a healthy discussion does, indeed, result in education. I know I’ve learned some things myself these past few weeks. And I hope others have, too.

    Again, thank you for your kind words. I return them with my compliments on your own efforts to bring reason and intelligence into this discussion of our future in space (and on the Moon)!

    Bill

  • Gregori

    Oh dear god.

    We don’t know how to build working fusion reactors…..but even if we did, there is no reason to travel 100 000’s of miles to get fuel for them. It would be much cheaper to get deuterium, tritium, boron and hydrogen from Earth.

    Any nation that pays the expense of “dominating” the moon’s He3 Supply is going to be very economically sorry. The He3 is dispersed over the entire moon and would cost billions to mine useful quantities. The Moon is huge, so the nation would have to install massive military installations which lots of personnel on the moon to prevent anybody else simply just landing on some part of the Moon and using it resources. This probably costs endless trillions to achieve.

    Even if we could do it, there is no evidence that fusing He3 will be more economical than all the other sources of power we could use like Thorium, Plutonium, Uranium, Geothermal, Wind, Solar, Hydro, Space Solar, Tidal, Oil, Coal, Biofuel, D-T fusion, P-B11 fusion, Tar sands, incinerating waste…….

    You can get a lot of energy out of tiny amounts of fissionable nuclear fuels, and the technology to do that has existed for 60 years, yet countries that have lots of Uranium don’t all of a sudden dominate the world energy market. For one thing, fission is very very expensive compared to the rest and fossil fuels beat it economically. I’m willing to bet fusion will be very expensive too despite the amount of energy you can get out of it, simply because the device is much much more complicated than a fission reactor and the closest to an operational device has been priced at over 20 BILLION dollars!!!!

    The REAL reason to go to the Moon, is simply, because its THERE, we can see it, in the sky. Its close, but far away. This is not a logical, economic, political or survival reason. Its just a childish wanting to explore unusual places we’ve never been. I believe it to be spiritual and metaphysical. All the other so called “reasons” are just bad excuses to hide the real reason and to trick people into throwing money at a DREAM! I become more embarrassed at the justifications for program made in the space community every day.

  • Vladislaw

    “The REAL reason to go to the Moon, is simply, because its THERE, we can see it, in the sky. Its close, but far away.”

    It is a 9 billion acre unclaimed asset waiting to be put on the books.

  • William Mellberg

    Gregori wrote:

    “The REAL reason to go to the Moon, is simply, because its THERE, we can see it, in the sky. Its close, but far away.”

    Or, as Moe, Larry and Curly put it: “For duty and humanity!”

    Seriously …

    If memory serves me right, your comments are pretty much the same reason Edmund Hillary cited for climbing Mount Everest. But in the case of the Moon, there are also plenty of scientific reasons for exploring its surface in greater detail, despite the challenges and cost. As the Apollo 13 mission patch read: “Ex Luna, Scientia.” (“From the Moon, Knowledge.”)

    The question we must answer is: How much is that knowledge worth?

    When the Vikings (my ancestors) returned from Vinland a thousand years ago, they decided the New World wasn’t worth very much. The French and the British had a different opinion when they travelled to North America some 500 years later. Everyone has his or her own opinion about what knowledge is worth and what exploration might produce in the long-run.

  • Anne Spudis

    William Mellberg wrote @ December 6th, 2010 at 4:54 pm

    I hope your efforts are contagious Bill.

    Thank you for your generous contributions.

  • William Mellberg

    Vladislaw wrote:

    “Should instead of entitled would have worked also … I just wanted to express a little more anger and frustration with the system than should implied.”

    For what it’s worth, the Space Shuttle wasn’t the first government project — and NASA isn’t the first government agency — that didn’t deliver as promised. And they certainly won’t be the last. Taxpayers haven’t been getting their dollars’ worth for decades (from federal, state or local governments).

    I share your frustration that the United States is about to lose the capability to send humans into space. But it isn’t the first time we’ve been in this situation. There was a six-year gap between Apollo-Soyuz and STS-1. And we left a fine space station (Skylab) abandoned because we had no means to reach it.

    Which is why I’m hoping that all goes well with the upcoming test of Dragon. The sooner SpaceX gives us the ability to at least reach the ISS with cargo ships, the better. It is a capability that we should have had long ago. And I hope SpaceX gets the manned version of Dragon operating sooner rather than later. I will be among the first to applaud their success because we need that capability. NASA-owned or privately-owned, we need vehicles to take us into space. It serves the national interest.

    But I am also very frustrated, as I recall my witnessing the Apollo 17 launch, that we haven’t sent anyone beyond Low Earth Orbit in nearly four decades. The night of that launch, my Father said, “That’s the last time I’ll ever see humans go to the Moon.” I replied, “Oh, no. We’ll be back.” Dad is 90, and it’s pretty obvious he won’t be seeing humans going back to the Moon, even if he lives to be 100. I’m not too sure I’ll see it, either. That notion never would have crossed my mind as a 20-year old in 1972. The signs around the Cape at the time read: “Apollo 17: The End of the Beginning.” Little did I imagine that they could have shortened those signs to just “The End.”

    Well, it was swell while it lasted.

    But humans will return to the Moon some day. And they’ll get to Mars, as well. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was the Road to the Stars. I just hope people haven’t become so obsessed with matters closer to home that they’ve lost the will to explore the Universe. As the Apollo images of Earth made clear, we’re just a very small blue dot in the vastness of space.

    Some day we will leave this planet once again and set sail once more on the “New Ocean” of space.

  • @ William Mellberg

    The English came here (North America) to stay and raise children, not visit for a while and return home with scientific knowledge.

  • William Mellberg

    Bill White wrote:

    “The English came here (North America) to stay and raise children, not visit for a while and return home with scientific knowledge.”

    The British came here to colonize the New World … AND to utilize (exploit) its resources! Which is why the British carefully documented the flowers and fauna of the New World. Over the centuries, the British have been big on collecting scientific knowledge as they explored the globe — knowledge that proved useful back home. One of the reasons for that island nations inordinate success (inordinate compared to its size) was its embrace of science and technology, and its application of that science and technology to engineering development
    (steam power, for example).

    Among other treasures, the British needed large trees to provide wood for the Royal Navy and their merchant fleet. These they found in abundant supply in North America, along with furs for coats and caps. Both the British and the French were keen on the fur trade. It provided the economic stimulus for exploring the interior of North America. The names of many cities here in Illinois and Wisconsin reflect the French fur traders who explored this territory centuries ago (Prairie du Chien, Des Plaines, etc.). The same is true across Canada.

    Yes, some early settlers came to the New World to raise families — and, just as importantly, to find freedom. But others came to reap resources … and to keep looking for that elusive shortcut to the Orient. That shortcut was finally built a couple of hundred years later by linking Atlantic and Pacific seaports by rail.

    And when the first Asian explorers crossed the landbridge and came to what is now Alaska many thousands of years before that, they no doubt had an economic incentive, as well … they were looking for better hunting grounds. They must have liked what they found as they eventually settled all of North and South America long before the Vikings even stopped by for a visit. It is human nature to explore … at least it has been for the past several thousand years.

    The Moon is the next world to explore. It holds a wealth of resources, too — resources that can make it possible to explore even deeper into space.

  • @ William Mellberg

    The Moon is the next world to explore. It holds a wealth of resources, too — resources that can make it possible to explore even deeper into space.

    I agree 200% and I would add that whichever subset of humanity best harvests those resources will disproportionally shape the future history of our species. If would be nice if the US Congress recognized this but I don’t advise holding one’s breath over this.

    Therefore, we Americans may need a Plan B that is not entirely dependent on US tax dollars.

  • Vladislaw

    William Mellberg wrote:

    “For what it’s worth, the Space Shuttle wasn’t the first government project — and NASA isn’t the first government agency — that didn’t deliver as promised. And they certainly won’t be the last. Taxpayers haven’t been getting their dollars’ worth for decades (from federal, state or local governments)”

    True that the feds drop the ball on other projects and NASA in particular, but what makes this one more unique is that it is fundamentally a transportation system. The Nation’s history on transportation and how it opens markets is a long established one. The federal government is usually trying to be a catalyst for it. For space access that has not occured. From roads, bridges, airports, shipping ports, canals, railroads et cetera the feds have invariably worked ot it as a fundamental infrastructure investment that will benifit the many at the end of the day.

    Here it has tried to always keep it as a monopoly much like a public utility and NASA gets mandated it’s “rate increase” to maintain that monopolistic public utility rather than a private sector transportation service.

  • William Mellberg

    Bill White wrote @

    “I agree 200% and I would add that whichever subset of humanity best harvests those resources will disproportionally shape the future history of our species. If would be nice if the US Congress recognized this but I don’t advise holding one’s breath over this. Therefore, we Americans may need a Plan B that is not entirely dependent on US tax dollars.”

    If you haven’t done so already, you need to read Harrison Schmitt’s “Return to the Moon” which basically spells out that ‘Plan B’ from cover to cover. Dr. Schmitt believes it is the private sector that will ultimately harvest the Moon’s resources. He also believes that the private sector can follow a step-by-step approach toward Helium 3 based fusion research — including the production of medical isotopes for use in cancer treatment. It’s all fascinating stuff by a fellow who truly has “been there and done that” … the first (and only) professional scientist to set foot on the Moon and to explore another world.

  • William Mellberg

    Vladislaw wrote:

    “True that the feds drop the ball on other projects and NASA in particular, but what makes this one more unique is that it is fundamentally a transportation system.”

    Yes, but so was Concorde. Transportation systems don’t always work out as planned. In the Space Shuttle’s case, the complexities and inherent dangers made the promised “routine access” to space all but impossible to achieve. I still remember thinking 35 years ago that it was a mistake to be putting all of NASA’s (and many of DoD’s) payload ‘eggs’ into the Space Shuttle basket. Likewise, the Space Shuttle was going to launch scores of commercial satellites. But it proved to be far too costly (because it proved to be far too dangerous) to use a manned launcher when expendable launch vehicles could do the same job for less. NASA’s intentions were good. But, as the old saying goes, “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.” The intentions behind the SST were good, as well. But, in practice, things didn’t pan out as the designers had planned.

    That’s true with many, many things in life. Do you remember the famous (infamous) “Galloping Girdie” bridge in Seattle that failed many years ago because the designers hadn’t realized it would behave like an airfoil? Or how about the “unsinkable” Titanic? More recently, we have the 787 and the F-35, neither of which has followed a smooth path toward service entry.

    On the other hand, the Space Shuttle is a remarkable technological achievement which was even more remarkable 30 years ago. It still represents, in some important ways, the space vehicles of the future. The lessons learned from the Space Transportation System will be applied to other vehicles. And even if you don’t think so, I’m here to tell you that the Space Shuttle gave us access to space and capabilities in space that we never had before. The people who designed, built, maintained and flew the Space Shuttles can be very proud of their achievements over the past 30 years, despite two tragic accidents (both of which could have been prevented if politics hadn’t been a factor).

    I still remember what it was like BEFORE the Shuttle. We’ve come a long way since then. But we still have a lot farther to go to make space truly accessible.

  • Likewise, the Space Shuttle was going to launch scores of commercial satellites. But it proved to be far too costly (because it proved to be far too dangerous) to use a manned launcher when expendable launch vehicles could do the same job for less.

    Whether it was manned or not was pretty much irrelevant. The problem was that the vehicle was too unreliable for a reusable system. NASA had plenty of astronauts, but only four orbiters. The reason that it shouldn’t have been launching commercial satellites was that it was unfair competition for commercial launchers. The notion that we shouldn’t “mix crew and cargo” is one of the many false lessons from the Shuttle. Air transports mix crew and cargo every day.

  • William Mellberg

    Rand Simberg wrote:

    “Whether it was manned or not was pretty much irrelevant … The notion that we shouldn’t ‘mix crew and cargo’ is one of the many false lessons from the Shuttle. Air transports mix crew and cargo every day.”

    Mr. Simberg, your comparison is irrelevant. Air transports are pretty much the same whether they carry cargo or passengers. The biggest difference is usually a large cargo door in the side of the aircraft, and rollers on the floor for moving freight around. Indeed, ‘QC’ (Quick Change) aircraft can carry passengers by day and freight by night simply by removing the seats. We did this when I worked for Ozark Airlines with a pair of FH-227Bs. After their last flights into St. Louis and Chicago each evening, a crew would remove the seats, and the aircraft would be loaded with cargo. One plane would fly to St. Louis, and the other to Chicago. After the cargo was unloaded, the seats would be reinstalled, and they’d be carrying passengers again the next morning. The aircraft were the same whether they carried people or freight.

    But such is not the case with rockets. The minute you add humans into the equation, you need a vehicle that can keep humans alive in space. And that adds a lot of weight (and cost) while reducing payload (and profit). Which is all basic Transportation Economics 101. The mistake with the Space Shuttle was planning to launch commercial payloads (communication satellites, etc.) with a manned vehicle when unmanned, expendable rockets could have done the same job for less cost. The human factor raised the cost of launching those payloads significantly (prohibitively).

    You do not need pressurized cabins, redundant safety systems and all of the other hardware and equipment associated with manned spacecraft when you’re flying unmanned vehicles into space. THAT is why your comparison with the airline industry is irrelevant and invalid.

    “NASA had plenty of astronauts, but only four orbiters. The reason that it shouldn’t have been launching commercial satellites was that it was unfair competition for commercial launchers.”

    It had nothing to do with ‘fairness’ and everything to do with cost. Using manned spacecraft to do what expendable launch vehicles could do cheaper cost this country one very expensive Orbiter and the precious lives of seven NASA astronauts. That is why NASA got out of the commercial launch services business. The Challenger accident demonstrated that lives should not be risked needlessly.

  • William Mellberg wrote @ December 7th, 2010 at 4:43 pm

    The problem – IMHO – with He3 as the key to lunar development is that we can produce He3 by making tritium in terrestrial reactors and allowing it to decay.

    Could well be a cheaper route to He3 than going to the Moon.

    I am partial to PGMs (see Dennis Wingo’s Moonrush) and water ice as the commercial drivers. Anyway, I agree with this:

    Dr. Schmitt believes it is the private sector that will ultimately harvest the Moon’s resources.

    But the “private sector” from what locality?

    Sovereign wealth funds offer an intriguing funding source.

  • Rhyolite

    “Air transports mix crew and cargo every day.”

    True but that is because people and cargo are going to the same places on Earth. That’s not usually true with space launch. There is not much of a passenger market to GTO. The better lesson might be “don’t make cargo dependent on people”, at least for the foreseeable future.

  • William Mellberg

    Bill White wrote:

    “Sovereign wealth funds offer an intriguing funding source.”

    H-m-m-m-m … that’s an interesting suggestion!

  • Gregori

    “It is a 9 billion acre unclaimed asset waiting to be put on the books.”

    They landed on it 40 years ago and never went back or claimed it because it costs more to go to than any possible thing you could mine from it. You will lose quite A LOT of money trying to pursue the so called “assets” of the Moon. It would be a foolish drag on any bodies economy. This is the equivalent of what they call throwing good money after bad…..

    71% of the Earth is covered in water, and their are massive untapped “assets” that have yet to be mined there. Unlike planetary bodies there are no treaties forbidding exploiting these. It would be easier economically to do than the Moon. There is no gold rush to the bottom of the ocean! Only one company I know of has has tried to salvage minerals from there, and they’re now in financial trouble. Only oil and gas is routinely extracted from the seafloor ( the moon doesn’t have that) which makes sense since its far more valuable to the high tech economy than PGM metals.

    Actually, many of the deserts of Earth have yet to be exploited for minerals. Afghanistan has about a Trillion worth of them. Antarctica is virtually untouched. ALL of these are orders of magnitude easier to exploit than the Moon, not many are even thinking of doing it. People generally try to do the easier things first. If they’re not doing these things, it takes A LOT of wishful thinking to believe they’re going to mine the Moon.

    The largest part of modern economies is not how merely the amount of raw resources you can acquire, its in what you can intelligently do with those resources. Lots of countries that are FULL of resources are actually pretty poor. Japan is the second largest economy in the world and has very few natural resources!!!

    They may use the Moon’s resources one day. The day when we have a Reusuable Fusion SSTO Shuttle!!! When that day comes, I believe other resources in the Solar System will look far more lucrative than the Moon. When that day comes, the Moon will more likely be a place of scientific research and romantic holidays for two. Partial gravity would allow for sports impossible on Earth, that could be beamed back to Earth!!

  • Vladislaw

    “Unlike planetary bodies there are no treaties forbidding exploiting these.”

    So when are you going to start mining antartica? oh wait, you can’t mine that because of international treaties. Why don’t you start drilling for oil in the artic where it is melting? Oh wait countries are trying to plant flags on the ocean bottom and claim it for themselves but international treaties are preventing them. Why are you not pursing assets a few miles off the coast of a country that isn’t doing it? Oh wait international treaties defing what is international waters.

    The outer space treaty of 1967 predates landing on the moon, it was already in place so there was nothing to claim the treaty forbid the U.S. from making a claim.

    By claiming the moon you create an asset and wealth. If you do some research you will find that even though a terrestrial resource is not actively being exploited, it is being held as an asset. You will also find that the mineral rights to the resource has also already been defined and is activing being bought and sold, used as collatoral for loans to fund other mining operations or just held as an offseting asset on the books.

  • Anne Spudis

    Gregori wrote @ December 8th, 2010 at 4:58 am

    Gregori,

    The resources of the Moon are valuable because they are ON the Moon and not on Earth.

    Significance and value of of the Moon to space exploration:

    It’s close. Unlike virtually all other destinations in space beyond low Earth orbit, the Moon is near in time (a few days) and energy (a few hundreds of meters per second.) In addition to its proximity, because the Moon orbits the Earth, it is the most accessible target beyond LEO, having nearly continuous windows for arrival and departure. This routine accessibility is in contrast to all of the planets and asteroids, which orbit the Sun and have narrow, irregular windows of access that depend on their alignment with respect to the Earth. The closeness and accessibility of the Moon permit modes of operation not possible with other space destinations, such as a near real-time (less than 3 seconds) communication link. Robotic machines can be teleoperated directly from Earth, permitting hard, dangerous manual labor on the Moon to be done by machines controlled by humans either on the Moon or from Earth. The closeness of the Moon also permits easy and continuous abort capability, certainly something we do not want to take advantage of, but comforting to know is handy until we have more robust and reliable space subsystems. If you don’t believe this is important, ask the crew of Apollo 13.

    It’s interesting. The Moon offers scientific value that is unique within the family of objects in the Solar System. The Moon has no atmosphere or global magnetic field so plasmas and streams of energetic particles impinge directly on its surface, embedding themselves onto the lunar dust grains. Thus, the Moon contains a detailed record of the Sun’s output through geological time (over at least the last 4 billion years). The value of such a record is that the Sun is the principal driver of Earth’s climate and by recovering that detailed record (unavailable anywhere on the Earth), it can help us understand the details of solar output, both its cycles and singular events, throughout the history of the Solar System. Additionally, because of the Moon’s ancient surface and proximity to the Earth, it retains a record of the impact bombardment history of both bodies. We now know that the collision of large bodies has drastic effects on the geological and biological evolution of the Earth and occur at quasi-regular intervals. Because our very survival depends on understanding the nature and history of these events as a basis for the prediction of future events, the record on the lunar surface is critical to our understanding. A radio telescope on the far side of the Moon can “see” into deep space from the only platform in the Solar System that is permanently free from Earth’s radio noise. The Moon is a unique, rich and valuable scientific asset.

    It’s useful. In my opinion, this is the most important and pressing argument for making the Moon our first destination beyond LEO. Because of the detailed exploration of the Moon undertaken during the last 20 years, we have a very different understanding of its properties than we did immediately following Apollo. Specifically, the Moon has accessible and immediately usable resources of both energy and materials in its polar regions, something about which we were almost completely ignorant only a few years ago. For energy, both poles offer benign surface temperatures and near-permanent sunlight, as the lunar spin axis obliquity is nearly perpendicular to the plane of Earth’s orbit around the Sun. This relation solves one of the most difficult issues of lunar habitation – the 14-day long lunar night, which challenges the design of thermal and power systems. In addition, once thought to be a barren desert, we have recently found that the Moon contains abundant and accessible deposits of water, in a variety of forms and concentrations. There is enough water on the Moon to bootstrap a permanent, sustained human presence there. Water is the most important substance to find and use in space; not only does it support human life by its consumption and provision of breathable oxygen, in its form as cryogenic liquid oxygen and hydrogen, it is the most powerful chemical rocket propellant known. A transportation system that can routinely access the lunar surface to refuel, can also access all of cislunar space, where all of our national strategic and commercial (and much of our scientific) assets reside (many satellites reside above LEO and are inaccessible for repair). Such a system would truly and fundamentally change the paradigm of spaceflight and can be realized through the mining and processing of the water ice deposits near the poles of the Moon. Space exploration should be a driving force in our economy not merely a playground for scientists or a venue for public entertainment.

    http://blogs.airspacemag.com/moon/2010/04/16/%E2%80%9Cwe%E2%80%99ve-been-there-before-buzz-has-been-there-%E2%80%9D/

  • Vladislaw

    William Mellberg wrote”

    “Yes, but so was Concorde. Transportation systems don’t always work out as planned”

    The Concorde was not the make it break it concept that was going to usher in airtravel, air travel, as a transportation system has already been commercialized. It was also not set up as a monopoly to prevent other competitors.

    That is the part of the debate you are not addressing in your response. NASA has a state sponsered monopoly and the shuttle was a part of that. Commercial were going to use it not by choice but it was the only game in town. The airforce finally said the monopoly is not working for us and we need our own independant launch systems.

    There is no reason that commercial space access should not be fundantmently funded as an investment in basic transportation infrastruce like ALL other transportation systems, they are all commercial and all at one time or another were gaining funding from federal state and local governments.

    NASA as a monopoly has activing worked to maintain this. It has never been about it being commercialized unless they are brought to the table kicking and screaming and having it forced onto them.

  • @ Anne Spudis

    I am a former Zubrin-ista (Mars or bust!) who has been persuaded to love the Moon by your husband, Paul Spudis, and by Dennis Wingo. The Moon simply is where humanity needs to begin its economic expansion out into the solar system.

    That said, while I have considerable emotional sympathy for this statement:

    Space exploration should be a driving force in our economy not merely a playground for scientists or a venue for public entertainment.

    I also would suggest, unfortunately, that public entertainment (and brand value creation) has already become a very significant driving force in our economy.

    For better and mostly for worse, America creates brands that are slapped on products made in China.

    Nike makes far more money adding logos to shoes made in Asia than they could ever earn making shoes themselves. Sara Lee doesn’t bake cheesecakes, they add a logo to cheesecakes baked by low wage workers not on Sara Lee payrolls. The profits are found in the Sara Lee brand, not in the baking.

    Entertainment is also a very significant component of the total dollar value of current American exports.

    I am not happy about this, but it is the current reality we face, and not merely in the realm of space exploration.

    I also do not see ANY viable lunar business model that comes close to closing unless entertainment and brand value revenue streams are added to the mix.

    I wish I were wrong and will cheer loudly if someone proves me wrong by actually launching a viable lunar commercial enterprise that does not have entertainment or brand value components, however I am skeptical whether hat is feasible.

    He3? Nope, terrestrial tritium decay could very well be cheaper. Besides, we haven’t yet invented fusion reactors that can use He3

    PGM? Too thin of a market for lunar PGM to stand alone even if it could be a valuable piece of the puzzle.

    Lunar water? A fabulous lever to reduce the cost of lunar exploration, commercialization & settlement but not a revenue producer by itself.

    Did I miss any? (Tourism, of course, is an entertainment based business model I do support.)

  • Air transports are pretty much the same whether they carry cargo or passengers.

    So are properly designed space transports.

    You do not need pressurized cabins, redundant safety systems and all of the other hardware and equipment associated with manned spacecraft when you’re flying unmanned vehicles into space. THAT is why your comparison with the airline industry is irrelevant and invalid.

    A pressurized cabin with life support is just a payload, like a palletized cargo for a freighter. You don’t need a different space transport design for it.

    “NASA had plenty of astronauts, but only four orbiters. The reason that it shouldn’t have been launching commercial satellites was that it was unfair competition for commercial launchers.”

    It had nothing to do with ‘fairness’ and everything to do with cost. Using manned spacecraft to do what expendable launch vehicles could do cheaper cost this country one very expensive Orbiter and the precious lives of seven NASA astronauts.

    No, it didn’t. Challenger would have been lost regardless of its payload.

    That is why NASA got out of the commercial launch services business.

    Yes, that was the stupid reason. But it was a good thing for commercial. Government often does the right thing for the wrong reasons.

    The Challenger accident demonstrated that lives should not be risked needlessly.

    In what way did it demonstrate that?

  • Anne Spudis

    Bill,

    Once lunar development is initiated, there will be more ways to use it than we have imagined. That watershed is what some fear and what others will continue to fight for. The point being, it can’t remain the domain of science probes and one-off stunts. We need to learn how to develop resources off planet in order for people to migrate off Earth. There has to be a goal, followed by an architecture, to begin our journey. If we have the will, we will find the way.

  • William Mellberg

    Anne Spudis wrote:

    “The Moon is a unique, rich and valuable scientific asset.”

    That says it all very succinctly. For the moment, I’m not looking for an economic justification to return to the Moon. That can follow. But the Moon is still a unique world that needs to be further explored — all the more so since the Apollo astronauts literally only scratched the surface (although making some important discoveries in doing so). As you point out, we’ve already learned some very important new things about the Moon during the past few years — things (like water at the poles) that weren’t known at the time of Apollo. In short, we’re still in the exploration phase of lunar development. But for the reasons you cite, that exploration is an important step both scientifically and economically.

    As for Bill White’s comment about lunar tourism … I see that happening some day many years from now. The 1/6 G environment of the Moon would be far “friendlier” than Zero-G for visitors, and it ought to be lots of fun for sports! The view of Earth will be spectacular, too, as our Home Planet remains essentially ‘fixed’ in the sky as the phases change (crescent Earth, First Quarter Earth, Full Earth, etc.). But, as I said, that’s a long time away.

    Meanwhile, kudos to SpaceX on what appears to be a highly successful test of Falcon and Dragon today. Very exciting … and very promising!

  • William Mellberg

    Vladislaw wrote:

    “That is the part of the debate you are not addressing in your response. NASA has a state sponsered monopoly and the shuttle was a part of that.”

    I’m not too sure you can describe NASA as a state monopoly, unless you’re talking about human access to space (which you probably are). But commercial satellite operators have had their choice of commercial launch providers (e.g., Arianespace, Orbital Sciences and Sea Launch) for quite a few years. Up until now, the private sector hasn’t seen any profit potential in human spaceflight. Which is why human access to space has been provided by three ‘state monopolies’ (USSR/Russia, USA and China). Today’s apparently successful test of Falcon/Dragon looks to change that situation in the not-too-distant future.

    As for Concorde …

    SSTs were seen as game-changing aircraft during their development in the 1960s. They would shrink the world by half — or more. And they would increase productivity as a result of their speed. But in the end, they (both Concorde and the Tu-144) were incredible fuel guzzlers in an age of soaring fuel prices. Although “Time is Money” (as the old saying goes), SSTs didn’t save enough time to be worth the money. The introduction of wide body (jumbo jets) in the early 1970s were the real game changers as they reduced seat/mile costs so significantly while still offering the advantage of relative speed (600 mph) and comfort. Not many people would have foreseen that outcome in 1960 when speed, not economics, was seen as the most important factor in new air transports. Which is why Convair developed its beautiful, but fuel-guzzling, 880 and 990 jetliners. They flopped because Boeing’s 720 matched their speed with greater capacity — which produced superior economics. That might have provided the first clue that speed was not as important as economy in air travel.

    And now spaceflight is reaching the point where economics are the driving force toward the future.

  • For the record, I fully support spending US tax dollars to return humans to the Moon to do science and lay foundations on how to develop resources.

    Unfortunately, “Congress” isn’t likely to listen to me. ;-)

    But also, as a wannabe future historian, I am particularly interested in thinking about the inflection point where our species transitions from taxpayer funded space exploration to for profit space exploration that can actually make sustainable profits, without continued taxpayer funding.

    I also agree with Anne Spudis that “one off” publicity stunts are not what we need. Repeatable publicity stunts are a different matter, however.

    After all the Super Bowl or the Daytona 500 are essentially publicity stunts and yet they happen year after year on a regular and dependable basis.

  • William Mellberg

    @Rand Simberg:

    The Challenger accident demonstrated that lives should not be risked needlessly because there was no need to launch TDRSS (or most of the shuttle’s planned payloads at that time) aboard a manned spacecraft (i.e., the Space Shuttle) when unmanned launch vehicles could have done the job without the risk. The idea was to bring down the cost with a reuseable system. But adding humans into the equation drove up the cost of that system beyond what anyone had imagined.

    That said, your point about Challenger being lost that day — no matter what the payload was — is, of course, correct. That’s where politics contributed to the accident. With the media focused on the Teacher-In-Space — as well as all of the delays and postponements that had already taken place — there was pressure (if only psychological) to get that mission off the ground. But since O-ring problems and burn-throughs had already occurred on previous missions, the Shuttle fleet should have been grounded until the problem was fixed. And the launch certainly should have been postponed given the ambient temperatures that morning as engineers had warned.

    That said, there should have been more lifeboats aboard the Titanic.

    Humans aren’t perfect.

  • William Mellberg

    Bill White wrote:

    “But also, as a wannabe future historian …”

    I think you would be a good one.

  • Coastal Ron

    William Mellberg wrote @ December 8th, 2010 at 3:18 pm

    SSTs were seen as game-changing aircraft during their development in the 1960s.

    Maybe. But in reality Concorde was really competing in the luxury travel market. People had choices, and it boiled down to how quickly you wanted to get there, and how much you were willing to spend. It wasn’t that the Concorde went someplace that no one else did, and their failure boiled down to pure economics – they cost too much to operate.

    For human space flight, there are really only two choices today – paying Russia for possible open seats on Soyuz, or convincing the U.S. Government that you deserve to ride on the Shuttle.

    What a commercial crew capability would make possible is the purchase of a trip to LEO without having to buy it from a government. Even though the initial market will be for the ISS, it leaves open the possibility for new businesses in LEO, and they could leverage the system that the U.S. puts in place.

    Someone always has to be the first customer, and it’s not unusual for governments to be those customers – commercial crew is not anything new economically or marketwise.

  • William Mellberg

    Coastal Ron wrote:

    “For human space flight, there are really only two choices today – paying Russia for possible open seats on Soyuz, or convincing the U.S. Government that you deserve to ride on the Shuttle. What a commercial crew capability would make possible is the purchase of a trip to LEO without having to buy it from a government. Even though the initial market will be for the ISS, it leaves open the possibility for new businesses in LEO, and they could leverage the system that the U.S. puts in place.”

    Good points … all the more so if and when Bigelow offers some destinations other than the ISS. In any case, today’s launch by SpaceX was good news — and an historic event.

  • The Challenger accident demonstrated that lives should not be risked needlessly because there was no need to launch TDRSS (or most of the shuttle’s planned payloads at that time) aboard a manned spacecraft (i.e., the Space Shuttle) when unmanned launch vehicles could have done the job without the risk. The idea was to bring down the cost with a reuseable system. But adding humans into the equation drove up the cost of that system beyond what anyone had imagined.

    You don’t seem to understand the problem with the Shuttle. It is not that it “mixed crew with cargo.” The problem with the Shuttle was that it was advertised as a reliable system, and it turned out not to be that, not because it was reusable, but because it was insufficiently so, and it turned out to be uneconomical for delivering anything — crew, cargo, whatever — for a reasonable price or for reasonable reliability. The solution was not to separate crew and cargo, but to come up with a better design, or rather, to come up with requirements for an industry with multiple better designs, which is finally starting to happen, as demonstrated with today’s flight…

  • William Mellberg

    Bill White wrote:

    @ Anne Spudis

    “I am a former Zubrin-ista (Mars or bust!) who has been persuaded to love the Moon by your husband, Paul Spudis, and by Dennis Wingo. The Moon simply is where humanity needs to begin its economic expansion out into the solar system.”

    I cannot agree with you more. Mars is a remarkable world. I am all for the exploration of Mars by robots and humans. But I will always remember what Ernst Stuhlinger told me: “Mars must wait until we have nuclear propulsion to get us there … and experience in lunar habitation that will prove to be invaluable when we travel beyond the Moon.” In other words, he believed we need to return to the Moon first … “for many reasons.” I do, too. That doesn’t sound exciting to the “Mars or Bust” proponents. But I believe it makes the most sense. I must confess, however, that when I see some of the Mars Rover images, the Red Planet looks very appealing for human explorers! That said, given the current economy, both the Moon and Mars look farther away than ever.

  • William Mellberg wrote

    That said, given the current economy, both the Moon and Mars look farther away than ever.

    If we expect the US taxpayers to write most or all of the checks, then I agree with you.

    However, if we are willing to think outside the box and be willing to support efforts that are not NASA-centric then other opportunities may exist.

    My personal hobby horse is for the deployment of an EML-1 Gateway owned and operated by the private sector and flagged to a small neutral power such as Singapore or Isle of Man that otherwise is NOT a traditional spacefaring nation. This facility would offer logistics, depot and transportation hub services to all the other spacefaring nations, present and future.

    In geo-political terms my EML-1 Gateway would be a patterned after the historical entrepot cities such as Singapore, Hong Kong, Capetown and Dubai; small politically independent and neutral cities that trade with everyone.

    The sci-fi TV show Babylon-5 also offers a partial analogy for my vision.

    = = =

    Despite the current economy, global sovereign wealth funds have ample cash. Thus, Singapore could build an EML-1 Gateway by simply buying the necessary hardware and launch services “off the shelf” from any nation willing to sell — US, Russia, China, India, EU etc . . .

    They just need a business model that would produce profit.

  • William Mellberg

    Bill White wrote:

    “However, if we are willing to think outside the box and be willing to support efforts that are not NASA-centric then other opportunities may exist. My personal hobby horse is for the deployment of an EML-1 Gateway owned and operated by the private sector and flagged to a small neutral power such as Singapore or Isle of Man that otherwise is NOT a traditional spacefaring nation. This facility would offer logistics, depot and transportation hub services to all the other spacefaring nations, present and future. In geo-political terms my EML-1 Gateway would be a patterned after the historical entrepot cities such as Singapore, Hong Kong, Capetown and Dubai; small politically independent and neutral cities that trade with everyone.”

    Again, a very interesting idea … all the more so because your focus is on the financing part of the equation..

    As I think I mentioned in a previous post, it isn’t just an aircraft manufacturer that has to come up with the money to design and build new airliners … the airlines also have to come up with the money to buy and operate the aircraft. And that factor can sometimes be the fly in the ointment that stops a new aircraft from moving forward.

    As I’ve also mentioned, I don’t see the real “commercialization” of space transportation happening without more destinations in space. Your idea would present at least one such destination. And if one country did it, others might follow — offering expanded opportunities for others to access space (both LEO and beyond).

    In short … an interesting concept, indeed. And definitely thinking outside of the box.

  • William, thanks for the kind words.

    I did write a novel about this idea. Click my name for the link.

  • PS – To riff on General George Patton, don’t mine the moon yourself, make money by selling logistics to other poor saps who go down to the lunar surface to mine.

    Persuade Russia, China, the EU, India & the US that their global prestige “requires” that they too have a lunar mining base and by being the middleman at EML-1 you could make a fortune.

  • William Mellberg

    Bill White wrote:

    “I did write a novel about this idea. Click my name for the link.”

    Very good! Today’s dreams are tomorrow’s realties … as proven yesterday by the likes of Jules Verne and Konstantin Tsiolkovsky! Moreover, an interesting story can often spark the imagination more than a dry engineering tome (or history book). I wish I had more of a flair for writing fiction myself. Kudos!

  • Gregori

    “The resources of the Moon are valuable because they are ON the Moon and not on Earth.”

    The Moon is not special in this regard but it is a huge desert, drier than many of the deserts here on Earth. We could argue the resources of the ocean are valuable because they are on the Ocean Floor and not the land, so lets send people to colonize and integrate the ocean into our economy!!! But its just really silly!!!

    It can’t be a driving force in the economy because the simple economics of it means its will always cost more resources than can be gained from the Moon itself unless we get amazing new cheap technology. Even if we had cheap, reliable spaceflight, it would undermine using local resources since it would simply be cheaper to send most of them from Earth than build up an entire replica of our industrial system on another world.

    If we can’t trade the resources of the Moon with Earth, they are of no real economic value. They don’t produce wealth or make the pie bigger. Some of them could be used to support lunar astronauts and lower costs, but the whole endeavor would still cost millions and billions. A base is possible but there is little purpose in colonising the Moon, other than, because we can do it, if we really try. It would never be sustainable or a wise investment. The point of a base would be to allow science to be performed, but it would be much cheaper, safer and more efficient to just use tele-operated robots.

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