Congress, NASA, Other, White House

Is space settlement a long-term goal of NASA? Should it be?

Some people in the space advocacy community have a long term goal that goes beyond going back to the Moon or sending human expeditions to Mars: they want to see people working and living—permanently—in space. From the early visions of space colonies by the L-5 Society to the modern-day desire of Mars Society members to establish an outpost of human civilization on the Red Planet, these people want to do more than explore space; they want to see people making it their home. Should that vision be part of national space policy—or is it already?

Over the last 18 months advocates of space settlement have been getting mixed messages from the White House and NASA leadership on this topic. In his speech at the Kennedy Space Center in April 2010, President Obama appeared to endorse, albeit indirectly, the concept of space settlement: “Our goal is the capacity for people to work and learn and operate and live safely beyond the Earth for extended periods of time, ultimately in ways that are more sustainable and even indefinite.” Obama never used the “s-word”—settlement—but the idea of living and working in space in “indefinite” ways certainly sounds like it.

But at a town hall meeting at the Johnson Space Center in late September, NASA administrator Charles Bolden seemed to suggest space settlement was not part of the agency’s vision. “Bolden says we’re not looking for other places to live, [we’re] going to explore to better understand our place in universe and life on Earth,” read one tweet about Bolden’s comments from an attendee of the event. “Bolden asks who wants to live on Moon, skeptical we’ll build habitats on Mars. Discusses expeditionary approach to both,” read another.

To add to the confusion, just a few days later a NASA center director suggested space settlement is the best rationale for human space exploration. “Within a few decades Earth life will permanently live off Earth and prosper,” Pete Worden, director of NASA’s Ames Research Center, said in a keynote speech at the beginning of the 100 Year Starship Study Symposium on September 30 in Orlando. “Indeed, I think this is the best justification for our human exploration program.”

This discussion comes as the National Academies is set to perform this fiscal year (2012) “a review of the goals, core capabilities, and direction of human space flight” as directed by the 2010 NASA authorization act. Some have likened this to a “decadal study” for human spaceflight, analogous to those performed in the sciences, although there is a debate about how useful such a study will be.

“We’ve charged in the bill the National Academies to do some work to try to help identify a consensus for what are the reasons for human spaceflight, what are some of the destinations that make the most sense,” Jeff Bingham, a senior advisor on the staff of the Senate Commerce Committee, said during a panel session of the AIAA Space 2011 conference last month in Long Beach, California. Space settlement advocates will soon find out how well their arguments stand up against other rationales for human spaceflight in that study—which, in turn, could provide some clarity for future space policy.

251 comments to Is space settlement a long-term goal of NASA? Should it be?

  • It doesn’t matter what President Obama or Administrator Bolden want. If there will ever be any permanent settlements, it will have to be approved by Congress. Since no voters live on the Moon, and the Moon is not represented in Congress, therefore Congress couldn’t care less. No pork in it.

  • SpaceColonizer

    It should be no surprise thatI am a settlement advocate, just check the name tag. Of course settlement should be the goal of HSF. If we’re not trying to live and work in space… why are we trying to find out how to live and work in space? Even if NASA might not be considered “responsible” for starting/substaining permanent settlements, they’re exploration goals should be focused on laying the groundwork in terms of technological development. If you don’t think settlement is a goal, then HSF isn’t a strategy worth the cost of employing… might as well just send robots if all we’re doing is science.

  • pathfinder_01

    Space settlement really isn’t NASA’s job. They could perform r/d for it. They could help with making a business case in certain ways but in order for settlement to happen the price of spaceflight is going to have to fall such that additional governmental and private agencies can afford to do it.

  • Robert G. Oler

    No…there is no point in it. Space settlements if they happen will happen when the technology, the market, and politics all push it. NASA having it as some mission would simply delay it. They are functionally incompetent RGO

  • mike shupp

    Makes sense for me. I’d really love to see a couple colonies on the Moon and Mars and farther out during my lifetime, and I’d even bet that a large share of the public would be willing to see some space colonies, as long as it didn’t substantially affect their taxes anyhow.

    OTOH, I think a substantial fraction of the public – about one third — would go absolutely friggin’ nuts. Hopefully not nuts enough to try to kill a President, but still … It’d be just the sort of thing to persuade a lot of Democrats that they couldn’t support Obama’s re-election; there’d be people refusing to pay their income tax “on principle”, there’d be folks in the State Department going bat-s*** insane because this would so complicate our friendly relations with Chile and Sierra Leone and Indonesia; there’d be distressed editorials at the NY Times and Huffington Post and the Politico and Crooked Timber….

    My suspicion is that the US isn’t going to adopt settlement as a space program goal under this administration, or the next, or the next, or ….
    The arguments for it may be compelling, so the government will keep the possibility alive, but the political costs are so high that the government won’t act until / unless the Chinese or some other country is stupid enough to make an open grab for possession for the planets. Instead, we’ll hear some nice words about what great pioneers Amereicans have always been, and the colony idea will get kicked down the road for another decade or two. I’m sure we can get Norm Augustine and a dozen Distinguished Authorities together to form a committee that will study the idea and make Serious Recommendations.

    My money’s on the Chinese, to build the first bona fide lunar colony about 2060.

  • Mark R. Whittington

    Confusion at Obama’s NASA. I am shocked, shocked.

    And, yes, space settlements should be the goal. Of course it would mean totally revamping Obama space policy, but that would be a good thing.

  • amightywind

    To set an ambitious goal like ‘settling the solar system’ is absolutely pointless without a large launch vehicle. Here in the US of A we really need more practically minded people setting space policy. The moon is sitting there, ready to become a US territory.

  • “Is space settlement a long-term goal of NASA? Should it be?”

    In answer to the first question. It should be if it isn’t. In answer to the second question. Yes, but the only way we’ll be able to do it with the money Congress will be willing to budget for NASA is to get rid of SLS.

  • Coastal Ron

    Stephen C. Smith wrote @ October 9th, 2011 at 12:00 pm

    It doesn’t matter what President Obama or Administrator Bolden want. If there will ever be any permanent settlements, it will have to be approved by Congress.

    Agreed. Not that Congress or Administrations actually follow the NASA charter to the letter, if we want NASA to have an explicit goal to “settle space”, then it needs to be codified by Congress into NASA’s charter. Anything less is an exercise in futility.

    However when I raise the subject of space settlement amongst people I know, they don’t see that happening for centuries. Not just living, but 100% sustainable eco systems where people live out the full cycle of life – birth to death – without needing or visiting Earth. I too think that level of settlement will take a long time, but I do want it to happen.

    So for the next number of decades, I agree with President Obama when he says “Our goal is the capacity for people to work and learn and operate and live safely beyond the Earth for extended periods of time, ultimately in ways that are more sustainable and even indefinite.”

    You have to start somewhere.

  • Gary Warburton

    We`ve all read science fiction novels of great Lunar and Marsian cities but is that really going to happen? To answer that have a look here on earth. Are there great cities on the Antarctic continent? You know the answer is no. Why is that? Because the living conditions are not exactly pleasant but at least you can breath the air. On the moon you wouldn`t even be able to do that.You wouldn`t even be able to live on the surface. Your existance would be more akin to a mole. You would live underground. Mars wouldn`t be much better although you would have some air it is mostly carbon dioxide with an air pressure equivalent to 100,000 feet here on earth. You might be able to live on the surface for short periods but you would constantly have to limit the amount to prevent too much radiation exposure. You can forget terra forming Mars. There is a reason why Mars has a thin atmosphere and it is because it is just too small. At 4,212 miles in diameter and a mass about half of earths it isn`t going to hang on to a terra formed atmosphere for very long. So what can we expect? We can expect bases eventually like we have at antarctic and maybe a hotel for adventurers on both bodies but little more. The bases will be for scientists who wish to study these bodies and maybe even some astronomers who want to build an observatory. There won`t be anyone staying for more than 5 years at a time. After a stint that long they would be dreaming of lying down in grassy fields with a blue sky overhead.
    So what is the point? To live and work in space and learn to survive there; And to build new and better ways to get there. What for? So that one day when we have developed the means to go there we can go to the stars. That`s why the James Webb Telescope is so important. It will allow us to find other worlds just like earth, where we can survive.

  • DCSCA

    Is space settlement a long-term goal of NASA? Should it be?

    The question of is, should -or even if is provincial. It’s more a matter of when. It’s human destiny. As Mike Collins noted, people have always gone where they’ve been able to go.

  • Robert G. Oler

    DCSCA wrote @ October 9th, 2011 at 3:24 pm
    “As Mike Collins noted, people have always gone where they’ve been able to go.”

    Mike is wrong on that, if by “go” he means settles….there are lots of places people can go, but there will never be settlements. It would be 1000 or more times cheaper and easier to settle the ocean floor, or even just the 20 fathom line…and there are none and probably will never be any long term birth to death settlements there RGO

  • Robert G. Oler

    mike shupp wrote @ October 9th, 2011 at 12:52 pm

    Makes sense for me. I’d really love to see a couple colonies on the Moon and Mars and farther out during my lifetime, and I’d even bet that a large share of the public would be willing to see some space colonies, as long as it didn’t substantially affect their taxes anyhow. ”

    then that means that there will never be any…RGO

  • Robert G. Oler

    Gary Warburton wrote @ October 9th, 2011 at 2:24 pm

    a well written and thought out post… RGO

  • William Mellberg

    What a discussion for the Columbus Day weekend.

  • If all we want to do in space is to explore then robots can do that a lot cheaper and safer than humans can. Sending humans to other worlds simply to explore is more of a stunt rather than good science.

    Sending humans into space only makes scientific sense if we are attempting to discover how well humans can adapt to extraterrestrial environments as a possible prelude to colonization of extraterrestrial environments.

    We already know that microgravity environments are inherently deleterious to human health. Additionally, we now we know that a significant number of astronauts that have been in space two weeks or more are returning to Earth with blurred vision similar to a symptom called papilledema that in some cases could lead to blindness.

    We still don’t know if low gravity environments like those that exist on the Moon and Mars could also be deleterious to human health. There were hints from the Apollo program that suggest that astronauts that went to the Moon exhibited fewer deleterious effects than astronauts who traveled only into orbit. But does that mean there were no deleterious effects for Apollo astronauts that walked on the Moon?

    In theory, artificial gravity environments in large diameter rotating space stations or interplanetary spacecraft could eliminate the need for humans to spend days or weeks in microgravity environments, therefore eliminating the deleterious effects of a microgravity environment on the human body. But what might the side effects be for humans living in such rotating environments– if any?

    These are some of the things NASA should be focusing on, IMO. And its shocking to think that we’ve spent over $300 billion in today’s dollars sending humans into space for nearly 50 years– yet we still don’t know if artificial gravity is the solution to the deleterious effects of a microgravity environment and we still don’t know if living under a low gravity environment on the Moon or Mars is deleterious to human health.

  • vulture4

    Our lives are bounded by space and time, and in my youth I had the hubris to think I might break those bonds. We cannot leave the earth, nor even survive here more than fivescore trips around the sun. Pushing these two barriers back, even a little, is a long-held dream.

    Life has come full circle. Over 30 years ago I joined one of the first chapters of the L-5 society. Now I realize many of our dreams were naive. But I think humanity will expand into the universe; I just think we will do it slowly, and not necessarily biologically. We don’t live beneath the sea, but millions of people visit the top 30 meters of the ocean, which a century ago was the domain of only a handful of professionals in hardhats. Billions fly by air, where within living memory only a few barnstormers ventured. We can develop the technology to allow a modest part of humanity to live, at least temporarily, in LEO. I don’t think it is living birth-to-death which is as critical as beginning to open space for ordinary people.

    At the same time, I believe the distinction between man and machine will blur. Machines have led the way in space since Sputnik, but since then computers have beaten biological humans at checkers, chess, even Jepoardy. By midcentury they will be our equals in intelligence, and there is no reason to think they will stop there. When we talk about “downloading” our personalities into another brain, hey, having brought up a couple of children, I think this is what every generation does already. I cannot believe it could be much harder to teach a computer to act like a mature adult. At the same time, AI escapes many of the costs and barriers biologicals would face in traveling deep space. The question of whether humans will reach the stars is really the question of whether we will see our constructed children who will make the journey as different, in any fundamental way, from our biological children who will, for the present at least, remain with us.

  • mike shupp

    Gary Warburton –

    You’re mistaken. It’s not the unimaginable harshness of life there that prohibits building cities in Antarctica, though I grant it wouldn’t have been very practical before the last century. It’s that several internation treaties have signed and ratified to the effect that Antarctica is not to be claimed by any nation and its resources are not to be plundered. In effect, it’s covered by something like the Outer Space Treaty.

    I’ll leave the moon “up in the air” so to speak. Probably it’s going to be sparsely inhabited for centuries to come, with people living in (mostly) underground cities. Science fiction’s prepared me for that.

    As fro Mars, odds are we could give a thicker atmosphere over time by dumping aerosols and water vapor and oxygen into the air. Maybe quite a bit of time — I seem to recall Martyn Fogg made a 6000 year estimate. This wouldn’t be like Paris in the summertime, probably more like upland Peru in the winter, but hey! people live in Peru during the winter. As for losing that nice new Martian atmosphere… it wouldn’t happen all at once; it’d take thousands of years to dissipate as well, assuming the terraforming effort came to a stop. (Yes, I know that atmospheres can leak away, but consider the thick hot atmosphere of sun-parched Venus and the scarcely noticable gas about poor frozen earth, so far in comparison from the sun — which is the “natural” state for an atmosphere? The thick one, I suggest, looking at Jupiter andSaturn and Uranus and Neptune; the thick one.)

    Give up the notion that “terraforming” is something quick and immediately visible like flood fighting; it’s going to be a constant part of our descendent’s lives, something always ongoing like pulling Holland out of the ocean, or spreading grass and cattle across the American west. It’ll be … forgive me, please, this Vile Blow, so seldom struck among space partisans… environmentalism.

    As for the distant stars, the “other worlds just like earth”, don’t hold your breath. Worlds with comfortable 1-g gravity (or thereabouts) will be uncommon; worlds with breathable air even rarer, and worlds with life rarer yet. After all, for most of Time, even _our_ world has not been a recognizable Earth — there’s been enough oxygen to breath for only the last billion years or so, and it’s only been the last 300 or 400 million years, out of 4.5 billion, that life of any form stood (or rooted) on dry land, and estimates are that in a bare half billion years more, the steadily warming sun will bake the planet’s surface beyond endurance for animals of our size. Terraforming indeed! We’ll need all those tricks and techniques learned on Mars and Venus to keep our native world habitable, as well as drive a myriad tracks of man-crafted worlds across the galaxy.

  • mike shupp

    Robert Oler –

    “….as long as it didn’t substantially affect their taxes anyhow. ”
    then that means that there will never be any…RGO

    Oh come now! Even in our fiscally decrepit dying agonies, we’re able to spend over 700 billion bucks per year on “defense”, over five per cent of GNP, while virtually every other nation on the globe spends three to four per cent, or even less. Somehow, somewhere, someday, under some Administration, we’ll be able to put together a few scant pennies to colonize the planets.

    Or if not, as I said, the Chinese in fifty years.

  • Just to show how Congress is an impediment to any progress in space …

    Doing some research this afternoon, I came across a March 4, 2010 Orlando Sentinel article about how “every federal lawmaker from Florida” had signed a letter written by Space Coast Rep. Bill Posey opposing the Obama administration’s 21st Century Space Launch Complex program.

    The modernization of KSC passed Congress in spite of their porkery attempting to defend the status quo.

    In recent days, news stories have reported on NASA hiring an architect to design the 21CSLC, which will replace 50+ year old buildings with new facilities that will help KSC compete for launch services with the new Russia facilities at the Vostochny Cosmodrome and other sites around the world.

    It’s hard to believe that a bunch of Congresscritters who opposed legislation to modernize facilities in their own district because it might eliminate obsolete jobs would have the vision to approve a permanent space settlement — unless it somehow preserves jobs in their districts.

  • Daddy

    Ultimately we MUST get off this planet. The Earth is changing, growing, and may one day become less than ideally habitable for humanity. Whether man has anything to do with that change is immaterial. It has happened and is happening, and we are part of the eco-system, participating in our environment’s evolution. The only question is whether we choose to be an interplanetary (or interstellar) species capable of adapting to other environments and expanding our livelihood. To think that we can do ever-more expansive research and exploration in space without establishing progressively far-reaching settlements is foolish and impractical If NASA doesn’t start doing it, who will?.

  • morganism

    There are no cities in antartica because it is prohibited. I know climbers that would love to live down there. Lots of folks live in deserts, and some of them are there just to get away from “pragmatists”.

    There will be permanent colonies of humans in space, or there won’t be any humans left in the solar system. One of these CME’s is going to wipe this planet clean, and if there are no eggs out of the basket, it is going to be an empty nest.

    If we don’t get out there and start mining Luna and the asteroids, we are going to run out of raw materials, and poison the entire gravity well in so doing. Am tired of folks saying that this should be a corporate venture.

    There is not a single positive of corporate power or responsibility out there.

    That is what the “occupy” groups are talking about. The old geezers are busy protecting their portfolios, the scientists protecting their flawed astro theories, and the defense and engineering corps are protecting the status quo. The IMF is keeping GE and all the other big corps going through tax credits from foisting large engineering projects on third world countries, or doing large scale efforts of green energy projects that are properly micro scale solutions. (think of all those busted windmills out in California)

    I have talked to 100s of folks that want to do this, and they are out there in small groups as diverse as Yahoo and as tangenital as Seasteading and hydroponics gardening clubs.

    To say that someone happy at home in a suburb is representative of ANY group of people in the world is disengenious. The folks doing protein folding on their computers, and the kids doing research at Zooniverse are all working towards the same thing. Living or at least working in space as a telecommuter.

    The government is the only ones that CAN do this. Business will come later to skim off the cream, but have no taste for anything longer than are longterm, and the first couple failures will make insurance prohibitive.

    While i have great enthusiasm for the start ups, it doesn’t look like they could possibly do it by themselves.
    The whining of folks that say that NASA is no-can-do are ignoring the fact that they are standing on the shoulders of millions of hours of figuring out HOW to do everything, from organizational skills, to computer programing and 3-d modeling. Material out-gassing and internal arcing would be enough to de-rail any private enterprise after the second failure.
    All the private projects are sucking the govt. teat with mostly NASA or it’s subcotractor trained personnel (admittedly fed up with paperwork and bureaucracy) while screaming to let them go without regulation.

    If you want to see something exciting happen at NASA, then do the same thing you are supposed to do at any bureaucracy. Get the turf wars done, and the amount of divisions down.
    For gosh sakes, i cant even FIND most of the info i want , let alone even know what i’m missing. Worst of all, there is NO science info on the NASA web sites. It seems it is all warehoused in different databases. Millions of people are interested in what is going on, they just don’t KNOW what is going on, and certainly not at the operation, engineering, or research levels.

    I would love to see the interviews that these scientist’s give consolidated on the websites, and links to speakers at the meetings, bucause then you can find out what surprised them, and what they didn’t expect, rather than just having to read a dry paper (a lot of them behind paywalls), trying to explain how they are contorting some finding to fit into an un-realized expectation.

    Perhaps it is time to change the fundamental direction of american society to a focus on space and engineering. Focusing on banking, insurance, fast food, weapons and medical hasn’t done anything for the country……

  • John Mankins

    Yes: making possible human settlements beyond Earth’s biosphere must be a long-term goal of the US (and other) civil space programs. It is not essential that governments establish such settlements, but the goal MUST be — including programs to pursue the development of enabling technologies and future space capabilities that can advance this goal.

  • SpaceColonizer

    @Mike Shupp

    Couldn’t have said it better myself.

  • Mr. Right

    NASA should develop bases and infrastructure throughout the solar system. Just like the US Gov built forts in the old west that went on to became cites. After the initial infrastructure is in place provide incentives to companies and people to reach into the solar system. The only way a space settlement can work is for it to pay its own way. One day they will.

  • Doug Lasiter

    “Is space settlement a long-term goal of NASA? Should it be?”

    This is actually a stunning development. Not because space advocates are talking about it (which they have been doing, loudly, for generations), but because *someone* at NASA is talking about it. The rationale for such off-world settlement is pretty clear. It’s easy to come up with this as a strategy to fulfill the mandate of species survival. Now it’s not a panacea for species survival. A terrestrial force that has the capability to kill people elsewhere on the Earth probably can figure out how to kill them on Mars. A rogue contagion that threatens the populace on Earth will be enormously difficult to keep off of Mars. But there are other ways that humanity could perish. No less than Stephen Hawking has signed on to this off-world strategy for survival.

    Now consider that for the last few decades, NASA has hidden behind the word “exploration” in justifying human space flight. Humans were supposed to go, and learn, understand and I guess thereby “conquer” new places. Sort of like we now do with Cassini, Galileo, MERs, and … . That is to say, and it’s getting a lot easier to say it, we don’t need humans to satisfy our curiosity about other worlds anymore. They’re handy, but we don’t need them. Humans used to be the only way to explore. They are not any longer.

    That being the case, the e-word is not something that NASA can easily hide behind any more in doing human space flight. Pete Worden understands this, and is challenging us. But human expansion is a species mandate, and you simply can’t do it with robots.

    In view of this, the reluctance of NASA and Congress to admit to it is perplexing. I guess the question could be asked whether “species survival” should be the responsibility of any one country. In that sense, species survival has to be, by definition it would seem, a multilateral enterprise. It is not covered in the Space Act but, of course, neither is human space flight.

    With the understanding that this is a long-term proposition, it’s hardly a rationale that should lead to rapid development of new launch technology and or planetary habitat technology. It’s about a reason to go in the first place. There are no deadlines we need to meet. It’s a reason, not a race.

    It should be understood that the humanity that finally settles on another world may well not be a lot like us. So we’re talking species survival rather than cultural survival. We are who we are culturally in large part because of the planet we live on. That may be the reason why nations, which are products of culture, have been loathe to commit to such settlement.

    But the name of the human space flight game is survival insurance, we’re being told. It isn’t “exploration”, and it isn’t resource capitalization either.

  • Robert G. Oler

    morganism wrote @ October 9th, 2011 at 6:00 pm

    “There are no cities in antartica because it is prohibited. ”

    I dont think that is the reason. Take North America for instance…the farther up one goes in latitude, the less “settlements” there are especially once one hits the canadian border.

    Alaska is one of the least dense populated states in the US…

    the reality is that to have settlements (cities) you have to have some viable economic reason for them. Now you suggest lunar minerals etc and those well may be the key, but it is right now hard to see how from “this” position equates to cities…it might in the future but it is a far future.

    RGO

  • Robert G. Oler

    mike shupp wrote @ October 9th, 2011 at 5:53 pm

    Robert Oler –

    “….as long as it didn’t substantially affect their taxes anyhow. ”
    then that means that there will never be any…RGO

    You replied:
    Oh come now! Even in our fiscally decrepit dying agonies, we’re able to spend over 700 billion bucks per year on “defense”, over five per cent of GNP, while virtually every other nation on the globe spends three to four per cent, or even less…………

    but I still think that makes the point I agreed to work. IF THE PEOPLE had to pay taxes for those wars, hundreds of billions for defense…I dont think we would spend that much money…but so far we have simply deficit spent.

    Imagine if Bush the last in his Philly speech where he babbled on about “dangers gather near our shores” had also said “And I believe that this effort in Iraq will end up costing the American people over 3 trillion dollars and so I am proposing an increase in the national tax rate of all incomes to pay for it, with a special every year 5 percent tax that goes directly to the war”.

    Now at that point you would have seen every lawmaker other then just the extreme islamophobia people saying “hold on Tonto, maybe we ought to think out how dangerous the storm clouds really are”.

    Instead Bush or more correctly his band of idiots simply said “the war will pay for itself” well then wow lets go…

    It is COMPLETELY POSSIBLE THAT in the future a mixture of events will move to start using say lunar raw materials…but it is hard for me to see a effort where the US commits oh say 20 billion a month to doing it…like we are in say Afland..

    RGO

  • DCSCA

    Robert G. Oler wrote @ October 9th, 2011 at 3:47 pm

    No, he’s not. Collins is correct. And settling the ‘ocean floor’ is going no place. Last time humans checked, that was still and Earthbound locale.

  • DCSCA

    Doug Lasiter wrote @ October 9th, 2011 at 6:58 pm

    Yes and given the state of the technologies and sciences at this point in human evolution, the next logical location for human settle off the Earth is our moon. Overcoming the harsh extremes at such a settlement would properly prepare the human species for further expansion out into the solar system.

  • @Marcel Williams

    OMG, you actually wrote something that makes extraordinary sense. You have finally demonstrated to me that you are capable of logic and reason at a high level. I just hope that you eventually apply that depth of thinking to all of your positions, because if you do, you will come to realize what this last part of your comment really means:
    “These are some of the things NASA should be focusing on, IMO. And its shocking to think that we’ve spent over $300 billion in today’s dollars sending humans into space for nearly 50 years– yet we still don’t know if artificial gravity is the solution to the deleterious effects of a microgravity environment and we still don’t know if living under a low gravity environment on the Moon or Mars is deleterious to human health.”

    You speak of over $300 billion dollars with so little to show for it, but SLS will be a continuation of maximal investment with minimal return. Even if it is assumed that a super HLV is necessary, SLS resume the past trend of giving us very little return for dollar spent as far allowing the type of research that you say we need. Whether we go the large HLV route or use currently existing launchers with depots, let’s do it in a way where we have enough funds left to do those other things we need to advance into the solar system.

  • Das Boese

    If settlement isn’t the goal, then what good is HSF? At all?
    There is no other reason to do it, and there shouldn’t be.

    People are simply afraid to admit it.

  • NASA Fan

    Not gonna happen via NASA.

    Now, Elon Musk – there is guy who see’s himself as an enabler of Human Settlement of MARS.

    Look in his direction for exciting goals,,,not NASA

  • vulture4

    morganism wrote @ October 9th, 2011 at 6:00 pm:
    There are no cities in antartica because it is prohibited.

    Not true, there are several towns on the Antarctic Continent with permanent resident colonists. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentine_Antarctica

    It isn’t forbidden by international law to live there, it’s just that most nations do not recognize their territorial claims.

  • wodun

    “Is space settlement a long-term goal of NASA?”

    If the question has to be asked, then it must not be an overt goal.

    “Should it be?”

    Of course it should be; especially if there is a strategy designed to enable NGO’s to take part in the settlement.

    Obama’s initial plan to demonstrate technologies was great but we can only tread water for so long before we decide if we are going to swim someplace or sink.

  • wodun

    I dont think that is the reason. Take North America for instance…the farther up one goes in latitude, the less “settlements” there are especially once one hits the canadian border.

    Alaska is one of the least dense populated states in the US…

    The people that live in Alaska are probably happy that you think it is too inhospitable to live there =p

    People think it rains all the time where I live but it doesn’t. I seldom correct them because the less people that know how awesome our climate is, the less people that move here.

  • Stan

    There is pork in getting there.

    Why else send humans in space if not to prepare for an eventual settlement? There is no point in going there unless we stay.

  • Byeman

    Mr. Wrong. Space settlement is not the task of NASA nor the US gov’t.

  • RGO, we have plenty of reason to be way north of the Arctic circle up here in Canada. I live just outside Edmonton (53 degrees North), and there’s over a million people in the greater Edmonton area.

    The reason is oil. Some of the largest deposits of oil in the world are North of here. There’s the Oil Sands – Mother Nature’s oil spill, we’re just cleaning it up – and billions of barrels of conventional oil and trillions of cubic feet of natural gas in wells from here to Ellesmere Island. And on top of that, some of the biggest diamond mines in the world are up in the North West Territories.

    Edmonton (along with Calgary) acts as a logistics hub for the North West Arctic. Both cities started as forts used by the fur trade.

    If people were allowed to make a profit in the Antarctic, you’d see cities there too.

  • Fred Willett

    NASA’s job as conceived by congress is to deliver jobs. The only way that these congress persons can see this happening is to build big rockets.
    It doesn’t matter that all those jobs could just as easily be supporting a different space program, one that might lead to actual exploration and actual settlement. They just see the jobs that exist right now and want to keep them.
    But the fault is not with the congress persons. Those wanting settlement in space have failed to convince the congresspersons that settlement will lead to real growth, real jobs and an expanding space economy. The idea of settlement on the moon or Mars remains just too fantastic for many to grasp. Even here, on this forum there are those who can not see it ever happening, who state that Mars is too inhospitable an environment to ever settle. If we can’t convince ourselves how can we hope to convince the congress critters?
    But I do not despair. 99.99% of Europeans did not sail with Columbus and every few Europeans ever emigrated to America, or anywhere else. It doesn’t matter what the average person does or thinks. History is never made by the timid or the doubters. It is made by the enterprising few. You only have to look around the new space industry at the many many people working towards a future in space. Can you tell me that every last one of them will fail?

  • reader

    Its probably totally close to heresy to say that here, but i’d be totally happy to see a fully robotic, partially teleoperated “city” ( for a lack of a better word ) on lunar surface, producing something of value.

    And oh, should i win a a lottery and the transportation options become affordable, i’d totally go sightseeing there ..

  • DCSCA

    NASA Fan wrote @ October 9th, 2011 at 8:50 pm
    Now, Elon Musk – there is guy who see’s himself as an enabler of Human Settlement of MARS.

    Tick-tock, tick-tock… Musk has not launched anybody into orbit and returned them safely. The only settlement of Mars he’ll make is buying a retirement condo in Mars, Pennsylvania.

  • No, space settlement is not the long-term goal of NASA. NASA has no goals; decades of authorizations and appropriations have left it the potpourri agency that expends upwards $20 billion a year doing something concerns space somehow

    Space settlement should not be NASA’s long term goal. It should be its immediate, even sole reason for existence.

  • @DCSCA:

    Tick-tock, tick-tock… Musk has not launched anybody into orbit and returned them safely.

    Neither has most of NASA.

  • @Gary:

    We`ve all read science fiction novels of great Lunar and Marsian cities but is that really going to happen?

    Don’t forget hollowed out asteroids, which would ultimately provide homes for the majority of a human diaspora beyond low orbit.

    To answer that have a look here on earth. Are there great cities on the Antarctic continent? You know the answer is no. Why is that? Because the living conditions are not exactly pleasant but at least you can breath the air.

    Nah, it couldn’t be because the Antarctic Treaty prevents commercial development of the continent.

    But then again you wouldn’t want that for the Moon or any other celestial body, would you? Look, but don’t touch, right? And fork over billions so you can do whatever is it you do to those otherwise useless reams of pretty pictures of space dust, right?

    That`s why the James Webb Telescope is so important. It will allow us to find other worlds just like earth, where we can survive.

    What a load of crap. You’re whining about the cost of inhabiting the solar system but you’re just fine with dumping money into pointless science projects in the hopes of discovering Earth-like worlds your descendants for God knows how many generations will almost certainly never visit?

  • amightywind

    Mr. Wrong. Space settlement is not the task of NASA nor the US gov’t.

    You couldn’t be more wrong. The history of the second millennium suggests that settlement and conquest is indeed the job of government. There would be no United States if government did not lead settlement. Indeed, if the US were to apply the settlement strategy that was used with the American West we would be establishing a military frontier on the moon.

  • Explorer08

    @vulture4

    Those Antarctic “towns” you refer to in your post are not towns but, rather, research stations tightly controlled by the various treaties. I’ve seen them up close and personal. They remind me of the very types of scientific outposts we’d see on the lunar surface.

  • GeeSpace

    Frederick Jackson Turner in his Frontier Thesis states that the western frontier is (was) the basis of the greatness of the United States. The frontiier of the Solar System cab be the basis of the betterment *greatness) of humanity here on Earth and other places/
    Let’s hope that the expansion of hymanuty into the solar system will come to be. .

  • amightywind

    The frontiier of the Solar System cab be the basis of the betterment *greatness) of humanity here on Earth and other places

    I am all for this ‘we are the world’ garbage as long as it doesn’t require tacit tolerance of despotism in Russia and China. Otherwise, who needs them?Expansion in the Solar System must occur on US terms.

  • John Malkin

    I don’t think NASA should “Settle” the solar system but they can help develop the infrastructure to make it possible. It is sad that after 30 years we can’t even put a mining robot on the moon or anywhere else in the solar system. Building L5 type structure will require resources from other places than Earth and deep space exploration would be cheaper if we could mine from anywhere in the solar system and process those resources in space.

    I think it’s better to learn to fish on Mars than to buy the fish from a grocery store on Earth and send it to Mars or send it to a Pluto space expedition. Personally I don’t see the point to land feet and leave. Apollo is a good example.

  • Dennis

    First, yes NASA should seek out a space settlement for mankind, be it on the Moon, and or on Mars. Second Congress could indeed make it a pork project, if they wanted. Whatever it would take it would be a good move. If Mars flights are finally taken, then methods should be put in place for long term stays on the red planet, with even volunteers staying their whole lifetimes.

  • Coastal Ron

    wodun wrote @ October 9th, 2011 at 9:19 pm

    Obama’s initial plan to demonstrate technologies was great but we can only tread water for so long before we decide if we are going to swim someplace or sink.

    Treading water implies some ability to actively save yourself in case of emergency, and we can’t even do that right now. Our current analogy is more like floating in a fragile little inflatable boat with undersized paddles.

    Until we can travel at will to/from space and have the ability to support small outposts at EML-1 for long durations, we won’t be treading water. Put the transportation and logistics systems in place and the capabilities will soon follow – it’s a simple formula that has served us well for hundreds of years.

  • Martijn Meijering

    Put the transportation and logistics systems in place and the capabilities will soon follow – it’s a simple formula that has served us well for hundreds of years.

    True. What’s also true is that if NASA starts buying commercial transport to a location, then market forces will establish any necessary infrastructure. LEO and L1/L2 are the most strategic locations, and propellant is the most convenient cargo. Put these two truths together and we have a way for NASA to further the cause of settlement without any direct involvement.

  • Mr Earl

    The mission of NASA HSF should not be colonization/settlement of the solar system, but to create the conditions that will allow it to happen.
    NASA is the trail blazer, establishing space stations and research and exploration facilities on the moon, Mars and other bodies in the solar system that once established become opportunities for commercial entities to resupply, re-crew and eventually exploit the resources found there. We have a space station to start, now on to the moon.
    NASA is the leader, doing research designed to create safe environments and new types of propulsion to allow humans to travel the great distances required to become a multi-planet species.
    NASA is the cheerleader, encouraging young people to invest in the exploration and exploitation of space whether it be through becoming an astronaut, an engineer, a scientist or supporter. NASA is also tasked with showing companies the commercial possibilities of exploiting the resources in our own solar system.
    Finally:
    NASA is the enabler, by doing those things mentioned above NASA creates opportunity for our country and the world to grow and prosper in the decades ahead.
    Now, what I just wrote is not always true of the NASA of present day. Like all government agencies of a certain age, it has become blotted and highly politicized. I believe that a reorganized NASA HSF, based on the principles I listed above, would become a key part of renewing the spark of creativity and entrepreneurial spirit that has been slowly dying in our country and give our nation true value on the taxes invested.

  • Vladislaw

    Windy wrote:

    “settlement and conquest is indeed the job of government.”

    Can you point out where that is defined in the constitution? Our constitution says just the opposite. We were not going to be like old Europe and their endless wars of land conquest. Although that didn’t apply to the Native Americans so we had to do it with lawyers and treaties.

    “There would be no United States if government did not lead settlement.”

    Europeans in North America had been breeding for over two hundred years before America was born, more were being born here then were coming over from the old world. The United States was not formed because of settlement, it was formed because:

    “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

    I don’t see much about settlement in that, because most people’s families had already been here for a long time.

    “Indeed, if the US were to apply the settlement strategy that was used with the American West we would be establishing a military frontier on the moon.”

    This makes no sense at all. America was not devoid of people like Luna is now. The land was already occupied by indigenious people for at least 13,000 – 22,000 years. As America moved west we first signed legal treaties with the Native Americans BEFORE we screwed them and stole all their land. There is no one on the moon to sign a treaty with before we screw them and start slaughtering them, so the analogy doesn’t work. Why do we need forts on Luna if there isn’t any people we are going to slaughter before we steal their land?

  • @Dennis:

    First, yes NASA should seek out a space settlement for mankind, be it on the Moon, and or on Mars.

    NASA’s proper role is as a pathfinder in search of an American fortune up and out there. The rest of mankind can struggle for a piece of the action; this international cooperation crap has done awfully little to advance US interests in any regime of space compared to what raw competition achieved in decades prior.

  • @John:

    I don’t think NASA should “Settle” the solar system but they can help develop the infrastructure to make it possible.

    That sort of aimless “de-scoping” is precisely the kind that bloated the agency into the unproductive monster it is today. A government is by its very nature the risk taker of last resort; throwing billions around while waiting for commercial boldness to emerge is a waste in and of itself.

    It is sad that after 30 years we can’t even put a mining robot on the moon or anywhere else in the solar system.

    There’s no physical or technical reason why Americans can’t. We simply haven’t had a policy to do so for any number number of reasons; the leading one being American space policy’s first and foremost role in political, commercial and scientific stakeholders’ nebulous search for prestige.

    I think it’s better to learn to fish on Mars…

    It’s better to learn to fish on an asteroid, or even the Moon. And only the Moon because you’ll need to go through that monster to get to anything interesting.

  • @Willet:

    But the fault is not with the congress persons. Those wanting settlement in space have failed to convince the congresspersons that settlement will lead to real growth, real jobs and an expanding space economy. The idea of settlement on the moon or Mars remains just too fantastic for many to grasp.

    Which says a lot about the state of professional space advocacy today. On the other hand, the settlement’s crowd reflexive hostility towards heavy lift–i.e., preserving the pork that’s about the only thing sustaining Congressional interest in the space program–hasn’t helped much.

  • amightywind

    As America moved west we first signed legal treaties with the Native Americans BEFORE we screwed them and stole all their land.

    Let it be a lesson too. In 100 years time I hope we will be able to do more than bellow at the unfairness of Russian and Chinese exploitation of the moon. There is no possible way a minute stone age population could withstand the massive influx of a technological civilization, so don’t feel guilty

    There is no one on the moon to sign a treaty with before we screw them and start slaughtering them, so the analogy doesn’t work.

    No. But sooner or later there will be contention for its valuable resources and strategic position.

  • Robert G. Oler

    DCSCA wrote @ October 9th, 2011 at 7:21 pm

    Robert G. Oler wrote @ October 9th, 2011 at 3:47 pm

    No, he’s not. Collins is correct. And settling the ‘ocean floor’ is going no place. Last time humans checked, that was still and Earthbound locale.”

    the myth of space fans is that the only frontiers left are “off world”. RGO

  • Robert G. Oler

    Ed Minchau wrote @ October 9th, 2011 at 11:48 pm

    RGO, we have plenty of reason to be way north of the Arctic circle up here in Canada. I live just outside Edmonton (53 degrees North), and there’s over a million people in the greater Edmonton area.

    The reason is oil”

    the problem Ed, is that there is no lunar equivalent to oil, or to the transportation system that makes oil “fungible”.

    Oil can make even places like one of the Dakota’s (which one? I think it is the one without Mount Rushmore but they were going to be a single state anyway and it is so confusing…grin) places to live…It is a commodity that people want and that has a long established and relatively cheap transportation system to get it from Creator foresaken (grin) places to where civilization is.

    None of htat is true for anything on the Moon.

    Now I AM CONVINCED that the Moon is just chocked full of things that some future society is going to want…and given correct federal policy (the Presidents plan) we will start to evolve the transportation system so that those things on the Moon work out to be more competitive with similar things on EArth…but we are so far from that now that its ridiculous to think of using lunar resources to even take care of a “lunar” outpost for four federal employees.

    RGO

  • Martijn Meijering

    reflexive hostility

    No, rational hostility.

    the pork that’s about the only thing sustaining Congressional interest in the space program

    That’s not true, Congress as a whole would be happy to sustain NASA indefinitely without the Shuttle infrastructure. It’s only the special interests that care about heavy lift. And even if Congress as a whole did care it still wouldn’t matter, since we’re getting nowhere without cheap lift and SLS would prevent spending on that. Heavy lift buys us nothing.

  • Robert G. Oler

    GeeSpace wrote @ October 10th, 2011 at 10:46 am

    Frederick Jackson Turner in his Frontier Thesis states that the western frontier is (was) the basis of the greatness of the United States”

    yes. We are the nation we are because we took the land from the Atlantic to the Pacific (and then a little farther on) from what “How the West was Won” (the narrator Spencer Tracey) described as “a primitive people” there are however quite a few issues with applying the Turner thesis to space.

    First space is not the Great American west. The technology that was needed to “move west” was easily (or more or less) acquired by the average American…and particularly after the Long Henry came out, it was decisive. SEcond people who went west from “the east” could live a self contained life (or in very small groups) of rugged individualism or families.

    Third conquering technology issues is not the same as conquering a people.

    The Turner thesis is probably not a good fit for human spaceflight and vica versa…

    RGO

  • Coastal Ron

    Mr Earl wrote @ October 10th, 2011 at 12:29 pm

    I believe that a reorganized NASA HSF, based on the principles I listed above, would become a key part of renewing the spark of creativity and entrepreneurial spirit that has been slowly dying in our country and give our nation true value on the taxes invested.

    I think we’ve all come up with out own fantasies for how we would re-org or re-make NASA, but the political reality is that nothing will happen until there is political will to make major changes. And that will only happen when there is something that creates major interest in NASA or space.

    Until then we’re going to have to settle for these micro-battles for funding and direction, since NASA is too small be be a major concern for any party or any President (or the candidates vying for the office).

  • Rhyolite

    Space settlement is too distant and nebulous of a goal to be the objective of a federal agency. NASA should be focused on reducing the cost of access to space, which will have immediate benefits for space applications that are in our vital national interest: communications, navigation, reconnaissance and earth observation. Ultimately, reducing the cost of space access is the only way settlement will ever become practical.

  • @Martijn:

    No, rational hostility.

    The record indicates otherwise.

    That’s not true, Congress as a whole would be happy to sustain NASA indefinitely without the Shuttle infrastructure.

    Don’t you mean the Saturn V infrastructure? You know, the one we’ve kept on life support for the past five decades?

    It’s only the special interests that care about heavy lift.

    *You’re* a special interest, so I fail to see your point.

    And even if Congress as a whole did care…

    Which she doesn’t; kinda my point.

    …it still wouldn’t matter, since we’re getting nowhere without cheap lift and SLS would prevent spending on that.

    Neither of those claims are even remotely true.

    Heavy lift buys us nothing.

    70+ tons to LEO; wouldn’t call that nothing.

  • @Coastal Ron:

    I think we’ve all come up with out own fantasies for how we would re-org or re-make NASA.

    Speak for yourself. I see no reason to doubt post-VSE’s NASA capacity or posture towards delivering real gains along the path to settlement.

  • Vladislaw

    Windy wrote:

    “so don’t feel guilty”

    I have nothing to feel guilty about, it wasn’t my name on those documents. It is a blot on our National character though. I would have had no problems if it would have been the policy to do a straight out conquer of North America. We didn’t do that though, instead we wrote treaties giving our solemn word as a Nation, then we lied, cheated, stole, murdered and broke the oath we gave as a Nation, no “American Exceptionalism” there. And certainly nothing to be proud of.

    “sooner or later there will be contention for its valuable resources and strategic position.”

    I agree with you, but hopefully we have evolved enough, in the last two centuries, that it can be settled peacefully instead of lying, cheating, stealing and murdering to aquire our piece of the pie.

  • DCSCA

    @Robert G. Oler wrote @ October 10th, 2011 at 3:20 pm

    “First space is not the Great American west.”

    In fact, it is, and the inability to recognize this separate those who’ll press on with progress and those who’ll be left behind. ‘The meek shall inherit the earth’ as it were. And just as it was in the 19th century, many Americans and many from other lands rose to the challenge and moved Westward with a variety of motivations, over great expanses and over many decades of time, employing different methods of transport. Some chose to go- some stsyed put, safe in the East. We’ll list you with the stay-puts.

  • @Robert G. Older:

    First space is not the Great American west.

    No, it’s not. It’s mind-staggeringly richer.

    The technology that was needed to “move west” was easily (or more or less) acquired by the average American…

    Depends where you chose your starting point. An honest analogy would start somewhere in the dark heart of Poland. And the average Pole didn’t buy his own ocean liner to get here.

  • @DCSCA:

    In fact, it is, and the inability to recognize this separate those who’ll press on with progress and those who’ll be left behind.

    Your dependence on flimsy metaphor does not serve your point well.

  • Martijn Meijering

    *You’re* a special interest, so I fail to see your point.

    Let me explain the point. You said that pork was the only reason Congress supported NASA. I pointed out that that is only true for the special interests in Congress. Therefore your claim is false.

    Neither of those claims are even remotely true.

    No commercial development of space without cheap lift. Billions spent on SLS are billions not spent on cheap lift. Easy.

    70+ tons to LEO; wouldn’t call that nothing.

    A capability we don’t need. It doesn’t get us anywhere we couldn’t go with 20-30mT launchers. Cheap lift on the other hand would open up the moon to commercial manned spaceflight.

  • Martijn Meijering

    Which she doesn’t; kinda my point.

    My point was that Congress as a whole did not care about heavy lift, which is kinda the opposite of your point. For the past thirty years it has been happy to fund NASA. It doesn’t care where the money goes, mainly politicians in Alabama, Florida and Utah do.

  • @Rhyolite:

    Space settlement is too distant and nebulous of a goal to be the objective of a federal agency.

    That’s a load of crap. Settlement is ever increasing numbers of people living, working, screwing, fighting and dying in a brand new place. It’s a very concrete part of human heritage in general, and government has millenia of experience facilitating the colonial enterprise, and wherever possible public subsidy affords society the room and time to weight cost and return generationally.

    NASA should be focused on reducing the cost of access to space…

    NASA can walk and chew gum at the same time, and if settlement is not the goal then who cares about lowering the cost of access to space? The satellite market is doing just fine.

  • @Martijn:

    My point was that Congress as a whole did not care about heavy lift, which is kinda the opposite of your point.

    Only in some bizarro world where you get to make up positions on my behalf.

    For the past thirty years it has been happy to fund NASA.

    She’s been happy to pay for the Shuttle infrastructure, and the Saturn V infrastructure that birthed it. I don’t see how you read this as evidence that Congress is willing to spend on space regardless of where the money goes.

  • Vladislaw

    Robert Oler wrote:

    “Oil can make even places like one of the Dakota’s (which one? I think it is the one without Mount Rushmore but they were going to be a single state anyway and it is so confusing…grin) places to live”

    Careful Robert, you are talking about my state, North Dakota. The land of two seasons, winter and the Fourth of July. (smiles)

    Actually researchers here have discovered a new cutting edge use for sheep … wool.

    “the Moon is just chocked full of things that some future society is going to want”

    I have long argued that Luna is a 9 billion acre asset just waiting to happen. Property rights is the real issue. I wouldn’t mind if 6 billion acres where given to the people of earth. One acre for every man women and child on the planet and then let the free market loose on the buying and selling of either mineral rights or outright sales. We don’t even have to go there to let it start creating markets and wealth.

    In North Dakota, we have about 800 years of coal left at present consumption levels. Coal mineral rights have been bought and sold here for over a century and the vast majority of them never actually get exercised. They are just bought and sold and held as an asset. An asset you can borrow against, exercise or just held an as asset in the account ledger.

    There are alot of mineral assets that actually never get mined, or if mined and processed, just sit, the only thing that changes is who owns the asset. Gold in particular, it gets buried away in a vault and then never moves, the only thing that changes is ownership. What does it matter if you have a ton of gold buried in a vault in New York, Switzerland or on Luna. The ownership and banking is all done electronically but the gold generally just sits there, it will be the same on Luna.

  • @Martijn:

    Let me explain the point. You said that pork was the only reason Congress supported NASA. I pointed out that that is only true for the special interests in Congress. Therefore your claim is false.

    You’re gonna have to clean that up, since all I see is a huge leap even Evel Keneival would envy.

    No commercial development of space without cheap lift.

    We’ve had sixty years of commercial development of space without cheap lift. So…um…wrong.

    Billions spent on SLS are billions not spent on cheap lift.

    And…

    Easy.

    …oh, I thought you were going to make an actually…welll…argument.

    A capability we don’t need.

    Says you.

    It doesn’t get us anywhere we couldn’t go with 20-30mT launchers.

    I don’t subscribe to the Church of “trust me, it’ll fit.”

  • Coastal Ron

    Prez Cannady wrote @ October 10th, 2011 at 4:28 pm

    I don’t subscribe to the Church of “trust me, it’ll fit.”

    What about the church of “build the SLS and funded payloads needing it will appear”?

  • Coastal Ron

    DCSCA wrote @ October 10th, 2011 at 4:00 pm

    We’ll list you with the stay-puts.

    Until you load your family and possessions onto a Conestoga Rocket and shoot them into space, we’ll count you with the “stay-puts” too… ;-)

  • Martijn Meijering

    She’s been happy to pay for the Shuttle infrastructure, and the Saturn V infrastructure that birthed it. I don’t see how you read this as evidence that Congress is willing to spend on space regardless of where the money goes.

    Why should any member of Congress who isn’t in one of the states where that money is spent care? And for the past thirty years the infrastructure hasn’t been used in support of an HLV, nor has there been manned spaceflight beyond LEO. Americans broadly support having some sort of manned spaceflight program that looks vaguely plausible and vaguely useful and so does their Congress.

    Says you.

    We can go to the moon, NEOs, Mars and beyond with 20-30mT launchers. That’s not an opinion, it’s a fact. There are many studies that support this.

    I don’t subscribe to the Church of “trust me, it’ll fit.”

    No, you clearly belong to Gary’s Church of “trust me, it won’t fit” . But actually, belief is not necessary, simple mathematics shows that 20-30mT (less even) would be enough. All you need is docking and orbital refueling. Which we know how to do.

  • Rhyolite

    “NASA can walk and chew gum at the same time”

    A review of NASA recent program failures, delays and cost overruns would suggest otherwise.

  • Coastal Ron

    Prez Cannady wrote @ October 10th, 2011 at 3:48 pm

    I see no reason to doubt post-VSE’s NASA capacity or posture towards delivering real gains along the path to settlement.

    The VSE, which has no force of law, is just a slogan. If you think it has meaning, more power to you.

    As to NASA’s capabilities, it has a lot of talented people and lot’s of great facilities, but despite what any President or NASA Administrator wants, it will always be limited by what the relevant Senate and House sub-committees want it to do (or not do).

    And since Congress is not supporting any plans for space settlement, I wouldn’t start packing boxes for a lunar colony just yet.

  • Byeman

    Windy is wrong again. Westward expansion is not a relevant analogy to space settlement. An off world settlement provides no useful benefit to the US or its govt, and actually, would be a burden to the US, since it would require constant support from earth. It is not going to be like the African colonies and send valuable resources back to the US. The US gov’t is and will be only concerned with its terrestrial borders. And if any offworld settlement did become self sufficient, it is going to want self determination.

  • Martijn Meijering

    We’ve had sixty years of commercial development of space without cheap lift. So…um…wrong.

    I meant with manned spaceflight.

  • Mr. Right

    We may find metals on the moon or mars to make a base worthwhile. H3 is a very good reason to build a base on the moon. I think it’s our destiny to push on to Mars, the moons orbiting outer planets and then to the stars. I believe man will stand on a planet orbiting a near by star in the next 200 years.

  • pathfinder_01

    “Now I AM CONVINCED that the Moon is just chocked full of things that some future society is going to want…and given correct federal policy (the Presidents plan) we will start to evolve the transportation system so that those things on the Moon work out to be more competitive with similar things on EArth…but we are so far from that now that its ridiculous to think of using lunar resources to even take care of a “lunar” outpost for four federal employees.”

    This is about the status of Antarctica at the moment. There are resources present, but no economical means to ship them out and limited means to ship things in. (i.e. Ports freeze and the weather is bad)The moon is even worse. Even with the treaty there is no reason to break it. I mean it is not like there is farm land waiting to be planted if only you get rid of the natives ( i.e. a motive).

    The difference is that you can sustain an Antarctica base for a lot less than a lunar or mars one. I.e the Antarctic program only costs like $298 million. Just keeping the shuttle cost 4-5 billion all by itself!

    Once the price drops such that you can afford a moon base it can happen but so long as you use rockets that have no other users (SLS) and refuse to involve commercial to the maximum extent possible it will be too expensive.

  • Nice to see people have similar space policy.

    …ditto pathfinder_01

    Exactly;

    “At present, most of the commercially available lunar material are rare lunar meteorites which can sell for more than $1,000 a gram. One carat (0.2 gram) of one of the Soviet moon rocks recently sold for $442,000 ($2,210,000 per gram). A few grams of dust retrieved from Apollo spacesuits sold for $42,000.”
    http://interorbital.com/Lunar%20Sample%20Return_1.htm

    So now you ask with the US dollar losing value despite its global reserve status. Lost over 94% of it original value.
    How would you increase the value of the U.S. dollar?
    With a ceramic coin relief made from REAL Lunar dust/soil 100% tested true certificate coinage.

    You too can make money on the moon.

    Maybe human lunar base pharma company experiment finds cancer cure.

    The cheapest space transport is NTR Nuclear Thermal Rocket system!

  • JohnHunt

    BEO, the most sensible, sustainable approach is to establish a lunar ice harvesting system in order to produce decent quantities of in-space propellant. When that is achieved, you are already producing water and oxygen. Constructing a basic underground room should not be too difficult. reducing the frequency and costs of launching humans. The next tempting step would be to use solar concentrators to produce in situ metals and glass thereby reducing cargo launches and getting the base that much closer to a self-supporting colony. Throw in some boxes with hundreds of computer chips, cameras, and radio equipment and you’ve got a base that could last a hundred years.

    Since these steps are achievable using Falcon Heavy-like prices, then NASA should pursue settlement as one of it’s goals.

  • Frank Glover

    Not a specific line-item goal for NASA, no. (among many other things, it would be hard to define and judge when space settlement was successfully accomplished).

    Technology development that lends itself to that and other ends is where it belongs. Besides, ‘space settlement’ is only going to happen for commercial reasons of one kind or another, including reasons that no one’s thought of yet. And NASA is (supposedly) already directed to ‘seek and encourage, to the maximum extent possible, the fullest commercial use of space.’

    NASA should be the enabler on this (among other things), not the actual do-er..

    However…

    @Mr Right:

    “H3 is a very good reason to build a base on the moon. ”

    To use for…what?

    Yes, I know what *can* be done with Helium-3, but until/unless there are commercial fusion reactors that can use it, there’s no market, no one to sell it to. It would be like having gasoline in, say, 1870. Maybe a major use for it one day, but for now…

    “I am all for this ‘we are the world’ garbage as long as it doesn’t require tacit tolerance of despotism…”

    OMG. Windy said something I can find essential agreement with. Infinite monkeys, I guess…

  • William Mellberg

    Fred Willett wrote:

    “The idea of settlement on the moon or Mars remains just too fantastic for many to grasp.”

    Mr. Willett, you have identified what could be the biggest hurdle of all.

    Over the years, I have talked with a number of financial people about the commercial potential of helium-3 from the Moon for use in fusion powerplants here on Earth. At first, their eyes widen as they learn about this alternative source of energy and its relative abundance in the lunar regolith. But then their eyes glaze over as they start to ponder the steps that would be necessary between the start of the enterprise and the beginning of some return on their investment. Not very many (if any) investors are willing to wait 25-50 years for a return on their money after sinking hundreds of billions of dollars into the infrastructure (including the fusion technology at this end). And that is why governments will probably have to take the lead in this effort if it is to ever happen (and why the Chinese government might be the only one in a position to do so).

    Apollo 17 Scientist-Astronaut Harrison Schmitt covered some of these hurdles in his book, Return to the Moon, and he has addressed them in countless speeches and interviews, as well. Dr. Schmitt believes the first step toward the commercial mining of helium-3 on the Moon could be the development of new isotopes for medical use (radiology) here on Earth. Such medical isotopes would be valuable by-products in the development of helium-based fusion technology, as well as stepping stones on the way to bigger and better things. And, of course, such medical applications would be more likely to attract investors as they would produce returns in a much shorter time span.

    But the bottomline remains what you said:

    “The idea of settlement on the moon or Mars remains just too fantastic for many to grasp.”

  • E.P. Grondine

    The answer to the “Why?” question still remains CAPS.

  • Robert G. Oler

    William Mellberg wrote @ October 10th, 2011 at 8:04 pm

    this is the conundrum the GOP right wing who loves NASA and the Moon etc finds itself in. There is not a scintilla of a chance that the Moon will be “settled” without some massive government effort to do it…and yet they hate those kind of projects…and the American people are not interested in them RGO

  • Robert G. Oler

    Prez Cannady wrote @ October 10th, 2011 at 4:12 pm

    @Robert G. Older:

    First space is not the Great American west.

    You replied:
    No, it’s not. It’s mind-staggeringly richer.

    …..

    probably…the problem is however that it is mind staggeringly more difficult to establish a cheap transportation system that can make it all work..and right now there is a mind staggering bureacracy that is determined to stop any progress along those lines

    it will come but it wont be here in the next 50 years RGO

  • gbaikie

    I wonder what people think of as “long term”.
    I think about century. Some people might think late afternoon
    tomorrow.

  • Robert G. Oler

    pathfinder_01 wrote @ October 10th, 2011 at 5:20 pm

    at the shuttle rate of “ground worker” to person flying in space we would have the entire world quickly employed just doing “ground” work for a few hundred folks in orbit…full employment.

    in the end what kills any effort to settle “space” is the economics of it. I am convinced that Major Tom is also correct, that the human body will probably “not play well” (my words but a fair approximation of his statements) in a non 1 gee environment.

    In my view we are going to be lucky to get the price down to have South Pole type research stations…and perhaps the equivelent of oil rigs in space over the next oh 50 years. RGO

  • In 100 years tens of thousands of humans will be living and working in space. It is the natural course of human civilization to expand off planet. There are unlimited material and energy resources out there. Humans will go get them. In the end, the benefits of space development will dwarf the costs. It is only a matter of planning, organization, time and will.

  • vulture4

    Helium-3 is a rationale for going to the moon, not a reason. It has minimal advantages over D-T fusion and is much more difficult, and we don’t even have D-T fusion. And if we got D-T fusion, and then 3He fusion, we could easily make 3He by the same method used now, waiting for tritium to decay. It’s only recently that the price of 3He got above $100/L. Plenty of unused tritium is available from CANDU reactors where it is produced from deuterium, and If we needed more, we could make tritium in unlimited quantities by lithium irradiation. I do not know why Dr. Schmidt believes this process is economically viable, but unfortunately there is no evidence to support it.

  • Beancounter from Downunder

    Currently there’s no desire by any nation to set up a base on the Moon. For heaven’s sake, we can barely make it to LEO and people think we ready to go the whole hog with Moon and Mars bases. Well we aint. That’s a fact. We don’t currently have cheap (relatively anyway) lift and so far our technology isn’t sufficiently advanced to enable us to stay put. We also wouldn’t be sufficiently self sufficient. There’s also no funding either public or private for such an effort.
    Now I’m actually a supporter for such an effort probably for the same reason as Elon. No real commercial reason however, only philosophical. My preference would be using existing LVs with Bigelow habitats as staging points for support facilities, fuel dumps, etc. But what do you do without funding – bugger all really. Elon seems to be the only one actually with some sort of plan to make it happen. Countries are mired in debt and have bigger issues. NASA has to deal with the politics. Not much gonna happen there. So it’s make haste slowly boys and girls.

  • Rhyolite

    “H3 is a very good reason to build a base on the moon.”

    Lest we forget, D-H3 fusion is considerably harder than D-T fusion because of the higher Coulomb barrier. We are probably going to have to build a generation of D-T fusion reactors before we figure out how to build any D-H3 reactors. And before we do that, we are going to have to build at least one demonstration reactor (DEMO) that demonstrates commercial viability. And before than, we are going to have build at least one test reactor (ITER) that demonstrates sustained fusion. And even that is 15 years away from first D-T operation.

    We have a long haul ahead of us and we are not moving very fast. At present, the US spends 20 times as much on HSF as we do on fusion research. The Ares-1X model rocket alone cost more than a year’s worth of fusion research. If H3 is going to be a justification for HSF, then we are seriously miss-allocating research funds. We should be spending more on actual fusion reactors and less on finding ways to fuel second generation reactors.

  • Coastal Ron

    JohnHunt wrote @ October 10th, 2011 at 7:03 pm

    Throw in some boxes with hundreds of computer chips, cameras, and radio equipment and you’ve got a base that could last a hundred years.

    That is a fantasy. And not just a little one, but a real honest to goodness completely unrealistic fantasy. Maybe you’re confusing reality with the “Iron Sky” comics?

  • Rhyolite

    Regarding Antarctica, I don’t think the treaty is holding anything back. If a sufficient economic justification ever arises, countries will abrogate the treaty and lay claim to the resources. One of the reasons the US keep research bases there is because we have reserved the right to make future claims there and it keeps our hand in the game.

    The reality is that 98% of Antarctica is covered in ice at an average thickness of 5000 feet. Sure, there are resources there and we have the technology to drill through a mile of ice, but there are cheaper places to get resources so no one bothers. The treaty holds by default.

    Getting resources from Antarctica is still orders of magnitude cheaper than anywhere else outside of earth.

  • Rhyolite

    “We’ve had sixty years of commercial development of space without cheap lift. So…um…wrong.”

    An FSS operator can wring a billion dollars in revenue from a standard 5000 kg, C/Ku satellite over its 12 year lifespan. When you can wring a billion dollars in revenue out of every 5000 kg of space settlement, we will be ready to do space settlement without cheap lift.

  • @Coastal Ron:

    What about the church of “build the SLS and funded payloads needing it will appear”?

    This is the doom of any lifter of any class lifting what hasn’t been lifted before.

  • @Martijn:

    Why should any member of Congress who isn’t in one of the states where that money is spent care?

    Not sure how it works where you come from, but the Zen of Pork boils down to “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.”

    And for the past thirty years the infrastructure hasn’t been used in support of an HLV, nor has there been manned spaceflight beyond LEO.

    And you’d be kicking yourself in your own ass if you knew why.

    Americans broadly support having some sort of manned spaceflight program that looks vaguely plausible and vaguely useful and so does their Congress.

    Americans don’t give a crap about the plausbility or utility of their space program. They only require it be awesome. Not even Michael Bay awesome, but awesome enough to justify the $20 billion a year expenditure. And what is more awesome than space settlement?

  • @Martijn:

    I meant with manned spaceflight.

    Forward the burgeoning Russian manned spaced industry, right?

  • @Right:

    H3 is a very good reason to build a base on the moon.

    Plain old water is a better reason.

  • @pathfinder:

    The difference is that you can sustain an Antarctica base for a lot less than a lunar or mars one. I.e the Antarctic program only costs like $298 million. Just keeping the shuttle cost 4-5 billion all by itself!

    Antarctica doesn’t give you the solar system.

  • @William M.

    Mr. Willett, you have identified what could be the biggest hurdle of all.

    No he didn’t. We just spent $100 billion on a space station that does nothing. Are you seriously telling me that settling space is that fantastic?

  • Fred Willett

    Too many people here see the problem in terms of what NASA can or should be doing.
    To me the problem of NASA has been descided in the negative. They have chosen to devote the next 10 years or so to building an unaffordable heavy lift. What a waste.
    Let’s say their minimum cost estimate is correct – highly debatable. But let it stand. $18B to build and fly – just twice – a 70t lifter.
    That’s 140t vs 7000t lifted on F9H for the same price.
    Consider. SpaceX is not only making their F9H available for just $125M a flight they’re swallowing ALL the development costs.
    $18B for 70t versus $0B for 53t.
    Which is the greater value to the taxpayer?
    First flight 2017 versus first flight 2013-4.
    Which is available sooner?
    But none of this matters really.
    The real killer is that NASA has chosen to develop an expensive fully disposable vehicle, the SLS while SpaceX is chasing the goals of cheap, reliable and reusable.
    Not that I’m saying SpaceX will necessarily achieve it’s goal of reusability. But next year it starts really churning out the flights. After Falcon 9 flight 5 and with Grasshopper starting its sub orbital hops the rest of the launch industry is suddenly going to get nervious. What if SpaceX succeeds? The years of next to zero expendature on reusable LV development will end. So even if SpaceX ultimately fails they could well force the rest of the launch industry to look seriously at developing RLVs.
    And if that happens NASA, with their super expensive HLV is going to look extremely silly.
    If it doesn’t already.

  • In related news …

    The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter found titanium on the Moon.

    A new map of the Moon has revealed an abundance of titanium ore that is up to 10 times richer than on Earth, a finding that could one day lead to a lunar mining colony, astronomers said on Friday …

    Titanium is as strong as steel but nearly half as light, which makes it a highly desired — and also very expensive — metal.

    On Earth, titanium is found, at the very most, in around one percent of similar types of ore. But the new map found abundances in the lunar maria that range from about one percent to 10 percent, the conference organisers said in a press release. In the lunar highlands, abundance was around one percent.

  • vulture4

    Rhyolite wrote @. If H3 is going to be a justification for HSF, then we are seriously miss-allocating research funds. We should be spending more on actual fusion reactors and less on finding ways to fuel second generation reactors.

    My point was not simply that helium-3 fusion is difficult, it is that helium-3 can be, and is, manufactured on earth quite easily and far more cheaply as it is produced by radioactive decay of tritium. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3
    It’s inexplicable that advocates of lunar helium-3 for fusion don’t do their homework and consider alternative sources.

  • Dennis

    The prospects for gathering resources out there is limitless. If our species is to expand as our numbers grow, we MUST move out into space. It used to be the numbers predicted for human populaton growth were 6 Billion, and now they are upwards of 9 Billion. How can our planet sustain these numbers, without a constant supply of resources at our fingertips. It will be expensive and more so at first, but if we can get a grip and harness the abilities to do these things, our efforts wll pay off. I do believe we are here to populate the Universe. Perhaps there are others out there, and maybe we will even meet them, but to do that we must leave this planet. It would be such a waste of Universal resources, if we are the only planet with life and or the only place that the needs for life can be sustained. Mars will probably be a treasure trove of resources for us to exploit on the grand scale. Just think if oil should be found there!

  • Coastal Ron

    Dennis wrote @ October 11th, 2011 at 9:37 am

    It will be expensive and more so at first

    Sounds like you would be in favor of a special tax to fund space exploitation and settlement?

    Because otherwise where is the money coming from for all the hardware you’re going to be sending away from Earth in order to do the exploitation and settlement?

    Congress already spends as much as it desires to spend on NASA, regardless of how much it spends on [insert the agency you dislike here], so why should Congress want to spend more?

    See this is a money issue, plain and simple, not one of technology or desire amongst the faithful (us on this blog). Provide the money, and we’ll get going.

  • Coastal Ron

    Just for fun, let’s have Prez Cannady answer his own questions with witty one-liners…

    Prez Cannady wrote @ October 11th, 2011 at 1:21 am

    Are you seriously telling me that settling space is that fantastic?

    Prez Cannady wrote @ October 11th, 2011 at 1:16 am

    And what is more awesome than space settlement?

  • Das Boese

    Prez Cannady wrote @ October 11th, 2011 at 1:21 am

    We just spent $100 billion on a space station that does nothing

    Might I suggest you take some time to familiarize yourself with the ongoing research on-board the ISS before making idiotic statements out of ignorance (to borrow a phrase from Major Tom).

  • common sense

    Wow. Despite some it seems to me that we have agreements between even some ferocious policy enemies. So yes, I too believe settlement MUST be the eventual goal of Human Space Flight.

    And now the trick will be to work and change the Space Act to reflect that notion. If we all were smart we should try to push it down the throat of Congress. Then we will fight again with how to achieve this goal. Who will lead this fight? Charles Bolden? How great such a victory in your long accomplished career? Pete Worden? Who? If I had my say: The President ought to push that. I am almost sure he will have NASA backing him all the way. Then he’ll have to deal with the Hutchinson/Shelby/Nelson trio but if the whole NASA agrees…

    Why do we need to do this? Very simply. This is the famous “why” we are all longing for. Why do we go to space? To settle new planets. Why do we need to do that? To further the survival of our species. Done. No more questions. No more jobs program nonsense. No more “the Reds are coming” idiocy.

    The next goal on the agenda is “how?”. And we can come back to our private/government partnerships for LEO and the rest of the Universe combat.

    First things first. Change the Space Act to reflect the new space policy. Settlement.

  • Rhyolite

    vulture4 wrote @ October 11th, 2011 at 7:02 am

    That is a very good point. The value of Lunar H3 will never exceed the cost of alternative sources. This is a classic case of a solution looking for a problem.

  • Robert G. Oler

    common sense wrote @ October 11th, 2011 at 12:27 pm

    “First things first. Change the Space Act to reflect the new space policy. Settlement.”

    the hearings on that would be the most comical thing since was it NSS members appeared before Congress in Star Fleet Uniforms. If there was no so much political comedy I can see it just whizzing around the great comedy shows RGO

  • William Mellberg

    vulture4 wrote:

    “I do not know why Dr. Schmidt believes this process is economically viable, but unfortunately there is no evidence to support it.”

    Apparently you haven’t read Dr. Schmitt’s visionary book, Return to the Moon. He lays out the business case and discusses the economics of extracting lunar He-3 in detail. And if you were to read his book, you’d learn that he compares the cost of He-3 to current energy sources such as coal, oil and nuclear fission. Schmitt also cites the energy needs of Third World countries where affordable power is a major factor in economic development. Climate change also means that more energy will be required by the industrial nations. Increasing environmental concerns are another factor. All of which impacts the future cost of current sources and the potential value of He-3.

    Speaking of environmental concerns …

    One other point worth mentioning is that He-3 fusion would produce little or no radioactive waste.

    Finally, Dr. Schmitt’s name is spelled with two t’s.

  • Coastal Ron

    William Mellberg wrote @ October 11th, 2011 at 2:01 pm

    Apparently you haven’t read Dr. Schmitt’s visionary book

    I haven’t either…

    He lays out the business case and discusses the economics of extracting lunar He-3 in detail.

    …but if it’s such a great idea, why aren’t governments and companies investing in it? Has he tried raising capital to pursue his idea?

    Lots of people have great ideas, but not as many have ideas worth pursuing or investing in. The jury is still out on his.

  • the hearings on that would be the most comical thing since was it NSS members appeared before Congress in Star Fleet Uniforms.

    That never happened.

  • common sense

    @ Robert G. Oler wrote @ October 11th, 2011 at 1:35 pm

    “the hearings on that would be the most comical thing since was it NSS members appeared before Congress in Star Fleet Uniforms. If there was no so much political comedy I can see it just whizzing around the great comedy shows RGO”

    Hey I did not say it would be easy.

    But here is what NASA HSF is facing: Irrelevance.

    So either it changes or it disappears. As far as I know it will soon disappear, especially with SLS/MPCV as their main projects. Great companies have gone before that were pioneers, e.g. Pan Am, MDD and more. It WILL happen. A great recession/depression might just be the trigger. Just watch.

    I don’t want NASA HSF to go away. I just don’t. Note that a real good synergy between NASA and the commercial sectors would help both. Commercial are tributaries to funding and time. NASA only to time but they eventually need to produce something. SLS and MPCV are not it. In a few years from now after thy fail yet again someone might just pull the plug, especially if others regularly fly to space. The problem is that companies cannot afford the R&D that NASA can. So eventually they might just die as well…

    We need BOTH.

  • Dick Morris

    At this point, establishing “settlements” on the Moon, Mars, or elsewhere in space should not be an official goal for NASA, though it wouldn’t hurt to identify that as the direction in which we are heading. Settlements in space will be established as a consequence of other activities rather than as ends in themselves. As on Earth, settlements will be built in space where and when they make economic sense. Building bases for scientific exploration is an appropriate goal for NASA (and long overdue) and some of those bases may evolve into settlements sooner or later, but at a time when NASA can’t even launch a crew into LEO, talk of settlements seems a bit premature.

    Goals, to be useful, should be within reach, and at this point we don’t even know for sure that human beings can adapt to the low-gravity environments on the Moon or Mars. Crews have adapted reasonably well to the zero-g environment on ISS for at least 6 months at a stretch, though not without problems. “Settlement” implies that people will be living somewhere more or less permanently, and we have zero experience with the long term effects of reduced gravity. I suspect that people will be able to adapt, and that space settlements are only a matter of time.

    The reasons for space settlement are a bit vague at this point, though some possibilities can be identified. There are more than a few towns which have the word “Fort” in their names because they grew up around military installations. Bases for scientific exploration on the Moon (and eventually Mars) could perform a similar function once they become well established. Mining has led to a much greater number of settlements on Earth, and the development of lunar resources could do the same on the Moon. The production of propellants for Earth-return propulsion will be an essential early capability for an affordable lunar base program, and that would lead naturally to settlements producing propellants, and perhaps construction materials, for export to other destinations in cis-lunar space.

    Combine a lunar propellant production capability with a fully-reusable Earth-to-orbit launch vehicle and lunar tourism becomes a serious possibility. Tourism is one of the largest industries on Earth, and lunar tourism will require an extensive network of settlements to support the transportation systems and provide lodging and other services for the tourists, some of whom may decide to become settlers themselves.

  • common sense

    @ Dick Morris wrote @ October 11th, 2011 at 3:03 pm

    You’re mixing up things. You’re mixing how and why. What you’re describing is a embryonic settlement approach.

    A policy is to indicate the purpose of an activity. Read the Space Act and think about the commercial aspect of it. It is a goal and it is barely implemented now.

    A goal can be vague. It is a goal and nothing but.

    Settlement can be a goal and can be the number one priority of NASA HSF as expressed in a revised Space Act.

    We cannot let Congress get used to providing designs (SLS). We need them to define the laws and nothing but the laws. They can enact settlements as law and let NASA and others more competent say how.

  • Egad

    > Titanium is as strong as steel but nearly half as light, which makes it a highly desired — and also very expensive — metal.

    “Very expensive” appears to get into the range of $100 US per kilogram for preformed titanium stock. $30/kg for bulk seems to be more typical. At those prices, I don’t think we’re talking about shipping Ti from the moon back to the earth, which already has plenty of the stuff. Maybe using it in situ on the moon or in cislunar space — someday.

  • Coastal Ron

    Dick Morris wrote @ October 11th, 2011 at 3:03 pm

    Tourism is one of the largest industries on Earth…

    Yes, it’s about 10% of the global GDP.

    …and lunar tourism

    This is a classic error on the part of people trying to forecast a market. There are lots of people that can afford the $100M Space Adventures is charging to orbit the Moon, but so far they only have one taker. You ever wonder why?

    Take the whole tourism market and eliminate everyone that doesn’t do adventure travel, then eliminate the people that don’t like roughing it, tiny enclosures, and life-threatening situations, and then see how many of that population is left that has $100M in disposable income… it’s a pretty small market.

    The same will be true for the destinations on the Moon because of the “chicken and egg” situation of not having facilities and activities for tourists until there are tourists, but there are no tourists because there are no facilities and activities. That’s why tourism is usually an outgrowth of the capabilities that are put in place for real work, which in the case of the Moon will likely be exploration, services and exploitation. Tourism won’t lead the way.

  • Egad

    > There are lots of people that can afford the $100M Space Adventures is charging to orbit the Moon, but so far they only have one taker.

    I’m sure there are lots of market studies of the real tourist industry; does anyone here know what the far right-hand tail of it looks like in terms of cost per person per tourist event? Like chartering a megayacht for you and your SO to take a year’s sail around the planet, stopping at really expensive places along the way?

    I’m guessing that we’re talking about tens of millions, but not $100M. How many people shell out that kind of money per decade?

  • Martijn Meijering

    Forward the burgeoning Russian manned spaced industry, right?

    Well, the Russians are certainly ahead of the rest of the world in this area, but I wasn’t arguing the mere existence of NASA gets in the way of commercial manned spaceflight. The way NASA spends its money stands in the way of commercial synergy and without that synergy it is going to be a long time before we see independent commercial manned spaceflight.

  • William Mellberg

    Coastal Ron asked:

    “…but if it’s such a great idea, why aren’t governments and companies investing in it?”

    I already answered this question when I mentioned the long-term nature of the enterprise and the long wait (25-50 years) for a return on the enormous investments (hundreds of billions of dollars) that would be required. Moreover, it’s a dual challenge. Not only would the lunar infrastructure and space transportation system have to be developed and built; so would the fusion technology and powerplants here on Earth. Which, as I pointed out previously, is why it will probably take government to lead the way — and why the Chinese government might be the only one in a position to do so.

    Coastal Ron also asked:

    “Has he tried raising capital to pursue his idea?”

    Yes, but that effort has focused more on funding the ongoing He-3 fusion research at the University of Wisconsin where Dr. Schmitt has been an adjunct professor for many years. As I mentioned previously (and as Schmitt points out in his book), it would appear that the more immediate interest from the investment community might be in the development of medical isotopes that would be by-products of the He-3 fusion research. Those isotopes could be very beneficial in cancer treatment, etc. If you have any interest in the subject, I suggest you find a copy of Dr. Schmitt’s book.

    Coastal Ron opined:

    “Tourism won’t lead the way.”

    I agree with you for the reasons you cite. Lunar tourism would be very appealing as the reduced gravity has been described as a very pleasant experience, and there would be some nice locations for lunar resorts (i.e., places offering some spectacular scenery). I think such resorts will exist some day. But not for a very long time, and not until other enterprises have taken the lead in lunar development and settlement. As you say, the “chicken and egg” situation comes to mind.

  • John Malkin

    NASA Lands Team of Seven Astronauts on MARS!

    Today NASA successfully completed a multi-decade mission to land the first NASA Astronauts on Mars. Utilizing six Ares VII rockets to lift nearly 1,000mT of supplies including the SpaceX Interplanetary spacecraft and the Orion MPCV. The program nicknamed “Mars or Bust” cost nearly 3.6 Trillion dollars.

    Elon Musk’s youngest son, Peter Musk will do a ceremonious exchange of Mars rocks this evening, Earth time. After which the Astronauts will join him for a dinner at Elon City not far from the Orion landing site.

    :)

    It would be a miracle if Bolden can make SLS successful. He should be given a huge reward if SLS is really successful. However I think we will have several “successful” missions that are way over priced and do little to advance technology benefiting planetary colonization. At least CCDev is funded and hopefully will continue to be funded and expanded.

  • aberwyse

    Patience.

    Read some books about how cathedrals were built. Once you understand the lives, the politics, the human nature, the disbelievers, you’ll see the same dramas played out here.

    It will take longer than 40-50 years.

  • Dick Morris

    Coastal Ron wrote @ October 11th, 2011 at 3:40 pm:

    “This is a classic error on the part of people trying to forecast a market…….Tourism won’t lead the way.”

    I didn’t actually try to forecast the market, and I certainly don’t believe that tourism will lead the way. As you say, it will be a follow-on activity: It will start small then bootstrap to greater volumes as facilities are constructed and costs come down. But there won’t be an “extensive network” of anything on the Moon for decades, at least, after the start of commercial passenger flights.

    I frankly don’t wonder at all that there is only one taker at $100 million per ticket to ORBIT the Moon. That’s why I assume that there will not be any significant market for lunar tourism until we have a fully-reusable launch vehicle to get the cost of transportation down to a reasonable level. We have had the technology for fully-reusable (2-stage) launch vehicles for over 40 years, so that could happen sooner than a lot of people think. With a fully-reusable transportation system between the Earth and the Moon, I would guess that a round-trip ticket might cost $5 million once the system is in full operation. As the traffic builds up, that cost could come down quite a bit.

  • Dick Morris

    common sense wrote @ October 11th, 2011 at 3:26 pm:

    “You’re mixing up things. You’re mixing how and why.”

    That reminds me of an essay (or book chapter) by Arthur C. Clarke titled “Concerning Means and Ends”. The two are closely related – two sides of the same coin almost. The “ends” generally determine the “means”, since what you are trying to accomplish is the primary design driver. If, for example, all you want to do is preserve jobs in certain congressional districts, then SLS will work, at least for a while. If, on the other hand, you want a long-term human lunar and planetary exploration program, then SLS will be no more successful than the Saturn V. In other words, the “means” can also determine the “ends”. They generally need to be discussed together.

    When I say “official” goal for NASA I mean something that is indeed written into law, and accompanied by the appropriations required to make it happen, and I believe that would be premature at this time, given the current level of our knowledge and capabilities. As to whether NASA is capable of implementing such a goal, if established, I offer two examples: SEI and VSE. As RGO remarked earlier, making NASA responsible for space settlement may be the most effective way of preventing it from happening, or at least delaying it.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Rand Simberg wrote @ October 11th, 2011 at 2:52 pm

    the hearings on that would be the most comical thing since was it NSS members appeared before Congress in Star Fleet Uniforms.

    That never happened…

    I’ll take your word for it. I thought I had seen pictures or something of it decades ago but…again I will take your word for it…thanks RGO

  • Robert G. Oler

    common sense wrote @ October 11th, 2011 at 2:53 pm

    But here is what NASA HSF is facing: Irrelevance.

    So either it changes or it disappears. As far as I know it will soon disappear, ”

    OK Simberg says the star fleet uniform thing never happened…sorry.

    but you are correct NASA HSF is on a short but painful track to disappearing and it is because it has no relevance…we agree on that much . I dont think ‘space settlements” make it relevant.

    I dont think it has been relevant for decades…and they need to try and figure out something that makes them that way. Obama’s policy in my view does that…but …RGO

  • Robert G. Oler

    John Malkin wrote @ October 11th, 2011 at 5:43 pm

    and the speeches were very well done..(both on the landing and on the exchange of rocks) RGO

  • @Das:

    Might I suggest…

    No, you may not. Drool over all the pointless makework you want, just do it by yourself.

  • @Dick Morris:

    At this point, establishing “settlements” on the Moon, Mars, or elsewhere in space should not be an official goal for NASA, though it wouldn’t hurt to identify that as the direction in which we are heading. Settlements in space will be established as a consequence of other activities rather than as ends in themselves.

    Great idea. Let’s subordinate national space policy to armchair futurism and pray settlement eventually emerges from the primordial stew of “other activities.”

    As on Earth settlements will be built in space where and when they make economic sense.

    Funny thing about economic determinism. Treated generously, it’s unfalsifiable fluff–a settlement is built because someone valued its construction. Treated strictly, it collapses under the weight of expansion driven by religious edict, persecution, glory seeking, ethnic strife, and the pursuit of women.

    I suggest you leave the notion on the ash heap where you found it.

    Building bases for scientific exploration is an appropriate goal for NASA (and long overdue) and some of those bases may evolve into settlements sooner or later…

    Give me one reason why not flip it on its head. Build the settlements now, then send the damned poindexters up to go nuts over space dust?

    …but at a time when NASA can’t even launch a crew into LEO, talk of settlements seems a bit premature.

    Premature in what way? Do you think the stakeholders are so mentally handicapped they can’t fathom anything more than the most immediate technical challenge facing national space policy? Do you expect their heads to explode if you talk, let alone devise and execute strategy, concerning anything other how to do something that’s been done for over fifty years?

    Goals, to be useful, should be within reach…

    What’s not to reach?

    …and at this point we don’t even know for sure that human beings can adapt to the low-gravity environments on the Moon or Mars.

    There’s a quick way to find out. Toss some humans there. Besides, the Moon is just a pit stop. Mars is a luxury pipe dream. The asteroids are the prize.

    The reasons for space settlement are a bit vague at this point, though some possibilities can be identified.

    There’s this big huge ball of nuclear fusion and a crapload of raw materials up there. Doesn’t get more specific than that.

    There are more than a few towns which have the word “Fort” in their names because they grew up around military installations.

    Most were founded prior to the birth of a large standing American army. Settlements grew concurrently with–or even preceded–standing up a post as the men garrisoned there brought their families.

  • DCSCA

    @John Malkin wrote @ October 11th, 2011 at 5:43 pm

    ROFLMAOPIP. Fun in the backyard of a retirement home in Mars, Pennsylvania. Musk has not launched orbited or returned anybody from Earth orbit. And you’re prattling on abot Mars. LOL Tick-tock, tick-tock.

  • Dennis

    I think the idea of space tourism is a false hope for we little people. Even if it could get down to 5 mil. a pop, that certainly leaves out most of us. A cost factor like that willl not get a large movement of people off Earth and out there to colonize. First a base must be acquired, no doubt with financial help from some governement. After that maybe commercial would tag along, unless there are no profits to be made with the endeavor. I think the first step should be an immediate return to the lunar vicinity with a Soyuz mission. This would once again get the ball rolling in the right direction.

  • @Dennis:

    I think the idea of space tourism is a false hope for we little people. Even if it could get down to 5 mil. a pop, that certainly leaves out most of us.

    Yachting is out of reach for most people, too, and yet there’s clearly a market–albeit an exclusive one–for it. More importantly, it’s an industry not only of manufacturers but operators as well.

    For man in general to access space, government, enterprise, and the wealthy must attain it regularly first.

  • Dennis

    While I support the effort Mr. Musk is making with regards to human spaceflight, I fear that a failure of one of his missions, will certainly put a crimp into his plans. Whether he could or would want to continue after that remains to be seen. I wonder how both NASA and Congress would respond to a failure. Look at how they are acting with the Russian failure of one of their Progress spacecraft.

  • @DCSCA:

    Musk has not launched orbited or returned anybody from Earth orbit.

    Neither has the vast majority of the past and present leadership of NASA.

  • Dennis

    Heres a thought! If the USA is willing to pay upwards of 62 mil. a seat on a Soyuz for a ride to the ISS, with two seats costing 124 mil, why not add the extra cash and go on a manned lunar mission, taking up the other seat with an astronaut, on the planned for commercial lunar flight next year? Lets rock and roll!

  • Robert G. Oler

    Prez Cannady wrote @ October 12th, 2011 at 9:15 am
    “For man in general to access space, government, enterprise, and the wealthy must attain it regularly first.”

    and then it all trickles down? More failed economic policy.

    I HOPE that you and others are correct about space tourism; which I define as space ventures that is robust enough to build some sort of on orbit infrastructure. I would be pleased to be wrong…

    but I dont think that any real earth bound analogies work in human spaceflight particularly at the price bar.

    I also dont agree with your statement much. In my view to man in general attain human spaceflight, human spaceflight has to find something that makes “man in general” useful in space. I think such an app exist, but one has to look hard to see those apps emerging (but I think that they are) RGO

  • common sense

    @ Robert G. Oler wrote @ October 11th, 2011 at 10:48 pm

    “I dont think ‘space settlements” make it relevant.”

    I don’t think we are really talking about the same thing. For years NASA has been lost in developing whatever crewed vehicle. All resulting in failures. The point is that NASA cannot do that. They just can’t. Those who can build hyper-complex systems are the likes of Boeing, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin. It is called system integration. It is not easy. The commercial space companies took another route. That of simple. That of what Constellation should have been and never was. It cannot be simply because of the way NASA is organized. Even with the best managers it cannot do it. Period.

    So there are idiots who thin NASA should persevere and fait again and again and again. This time the failure will be even worse. Look at those little guys flying to/from space and we the almighty NASA cannot even build a rocket.

    Okay then. We can turn NASA’s weakness into a strength. What is NASA really good at? Research. Probably the best in the world as an organization. Take this knowledge and smart and transfer it to the commercial sector. Done.

    But once you’re done with LEO what do you do?

    If we were to say that the policy of the US government, through NASA and its contractors, was to build space settlements then you can use all the imagination, creativity and smarts at NASA to define ways to do it. For example, Nautilus-X. Great. But who is going to build it? Does it have to be exactly a NASA design? No. But the smarts put into it, the mission design can be transferred. Then we can talk about human settlements and do the same thing. All the while we create new technology for human sustainability in space, propulsion, communication. All attributes that the private sectors cannot fund. No way.

    So again settlements will possibly make NASA HSF relevant again. Not the current HSF but a renewed, reinvigorated HSF. Dedicated to the advancement of humans in space – with its commercial partners.

    “I dont think it has been relevant for decades…”

    Again they used the same old tired model for decades and this model has run its course: Cold War.

    “and they need to try and figure out something that makes them that way. Obama’s policy in my view does that…but …RGO”

    Yes but this policy is a good start and should have been implemented today. The question remains what do we do after that? And btw the answer might be: Nothing and show folds but I would rather not.

  • I fear that a failure of one of his missions, will certainly put a crimp into his plans.

    He has already had three mission failures. It didn’t put a crimp in his plans.

  • Dennis

    The idea that NASA can no longer provide access to space, well I ask all of you. Which craft would you rather board, a NASA built Orion, or oneof the commercial jobs? I know which one Id pick, due to NASAs success rate! As to Musk failures, Im talking not just an occurance or early engine shut down, but a catastrophic failure that destroys a Falcon!

  • William Mellberg

    Dick Morris wrote:

    ” I would guess that a round-trip ticket might cost $5 million once the system is in full operation. As the traffic builds up, that cost could come down quite a bit.”

    You’d have to pack that spacecraft with lots of paying passengers to bring the cost down to anything close to $5 million (i.e., as with airline economics, it all comes down to the cost per seat, and the more seats the lower the cost per seat). That isn’t going to happen in any of our lifetimes.

    Dennis wrote:

    “I think the idea of space tourism is a false hope for we little people. Even if it could get down to 5 mil. a pop, that certainly leaves out most of us.”

    Which is a point I have made many times with regard to Concorde. Very few “little people” could afford $10,000 a pop, much less $5 million. Thus, the market for supersonic travel was exceedingly small, and it eventually fizzled out altogether with no replacement aircraft in sight. The market for space tourism will be even smaller at $5 million a pop. How many people book the Queen Mary 2’s ultra-luxury suites at a mere $100,000 a pop? (Answer: not many)

    Rand Simberg wrote:

    “He has already had three mission failures. It didn’t put a crimp in his plans.”

    Thus far, Musk’s missions have gone largely unnoticed by the general public. But now that the Space Shuttle has been retired, there will be much more attention focused on SpaceX — especially on Capitol Hill. Musk can ill afford a major failure now that he’s seen as the “front runner” in the NewSpace race. For the sake of America’s space program, I wish him complete success.

  • @Oler:

    and then it all trickles down? More failed economic policy.

    You’re either being deliberately obtuse, or you simply can’t read.

    I HOPE that you and others are correct about space tourism;

    What’s this me and others crap? I’m on record as pointing out that if space tourism takes off, it will be a Cheez Wiz.

    …which I define as space ventures that is robust enough to build some sort of on orbit infrastructure.

    If you seriously think that a general space economy can emerge from a single niche market, then it’s probably time you passed the blunt.

    but I dont think that any real earth bound analogies work in human spaceflight particularly at the price bar.

    That’s a pretty foolish point of view. There are plenty of earth bound activities with operating costs in the billions.

    I also dont agree with your statement much. In my view to man in general attain human spaceflight, human spaceflight has to find something that makes “man in general” useful in space.

    Now you’re being downright sophomoric. Please, find me a single, mentally stable man on the street who wouldn’t say “don’t do it unless it’s worth doing.”

    I think such an app exist, but one has to look hard to see those apps emerging (but I think that they are) RGO

    Look hard? Give me a break. The vectors for runaway growth in space are well known. Hell, they even neatly fall into four categories: putting crap in space, putting crap on celestial bodies, extracting crap from celestial bodies, storing and distributing energy throughout space. We’ve already cracked the market on one of them. The only question is how long Americans are going to stare at their navels before getting started on the other three.

  • @Dennis:

    The idea that NASA can no longer provide access to space, well I ask all of you. Which craft would you rather board, a NASA built Orion, or oneof the commercial jobs? I know which one Id pick, due to NASAs success rate!

    Really? What’s Orion’s success rate?

  • The idea that NASA can no longer provide access to space, well I ask all of you. Which craft would you rather board, a NASA built Orion, or oneof the commercial jobs? I know which one Id pick, due to NASAs success rate!

    NASA has killed seventeen astronauts. Unlike the Dragon, Shuttle never had a launch escape system. That’s NASA’s record.

    As to Musk failures, Im talking not just an occurance or early engine shut down, but a catastrophic failure that destroys a Falcon!

    That has already happened.

    Stop flaunting your ignorance and illogic. Adding exclamation marks doesn’t render dumb statements smarter.

  • Dennis

    If SpaceX is to survive, the next mission which is a mixture of the Cots 2 and 3, tied together, must succeed. If Dragon is captured and is then docked to the ISS successfully, then I think Musk has a very good chance of succeeding in his quest. Time here will tell. I wish him the best of luck too, and the sooner the better. The only way however that I see any really big move off Earth to colonize another world, is that tickets will HAVE to drop to within the range of an airline passage. Even at 5 mil. a pop, it wont happen without government.

  • DCSCA

    Rand Simberg wrote @ October 12th, 2011 at 11:30 am
    “I fear that a failure of one of his missions, will certainly put a crimp into his plans.He has already had three mission failures. It didn’t put a crimp in his plans.”

    His plans being to go no place fast. Tick-tock, tick-tock.

  • If SpaceX is to survive, the next mission which is a mixture of the Cots 2 and 3, tied together, must succeed.

    No, it doesn’t. That’s why it’s a test flight.

  • Martijn Meijering

    If SpaceX is to survive, the next mission which is a mixture of the Cots 2 and 3, tied together, must succeed.

    Oh really? What would you know of such matters?

  • @Dennis:

    If SpaceX is to survive, the next mission which is a mixture of the Cots 2 and 3, tied together, must succeed.

    It’s a wholly artificial standard symptomatic of an indecisive, bloated space policy, but that’s the real world for you.

  • Martijn Meijering

    It’s a wholly artificial standard symptomatic of an indecisive, bloated space policy, but that’s the real world for you.

    Translation: I hope it fails and that it will take down SpaceX with it, but I’ll pretend to be opposed to it because I am too cowardly to take responsibility for it?

    How did I do on the translation?

  • Coastal Ron

    Dennis wrote @ October 12th, 2011 at 2:37 pm

    If SpaceX is to survive, the next mission which is a mixture of the Cots 2 and 3, tied together, must succeed.

    From a purely hardware related perspective, SpaceX has something like five Dragons in production, as well as multiple Falcon 1st and 2nd stage sections. At worst they would lose a whole assembly (Dragon + Falcon 9), but if something minor happens and they don’t dock, they can recover the Dragon capsule and reuse it later for crew (which they would do anyways). Then all they lose is the money and effort put into the Falcon 9, which is likely in the 10’s of millions at most (Falcon 9 retail price is $59.5M).

    Now if the same happened to the MPCV/SLS, that would be a $1B+ waste of money, since the MPCV is not designed for reuse and the SLS is horribly expensive to build and launch. And in order to repeat the test, they likely would have to get more money from Congress.

    Do you understand the economic differences involved here?

    Could NASA’s budget survive a MPCV or SLS failure? That is the better question…

  • pathfinder_01

    Small pointer Dragon crew will be slightly different than Dragon cargo and NASA is not allowing reuse at the moment for ISS COTS flights. That being said, the used capsule could be tasked as a Dragon Lab of which there is one flight already scheduled plus I expect NASA might allow reuse latter(space X agreed to this and there is some logic to it).

    Right now reuse isn’t a huge thing because Dragon is expected to change a bit in the early models but it has lots of cost saving implications later.

  • pathfinder_01

    “The only way however that I see any really big move off Earth to colonize another world, is that tickets will HAVE to drop to within the range of an airline passage. Even at 5 mil. a pop, it wont happen without government.”

    True, but NASA can’t sell tickets. Only commercial can( and should). In order to get to that point commercial must be engaged. SLS does nothing to do so. Orion launched on anything other than a commercial rocket likewise. The first of anything usually costs a lot.

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

    The first “Airlinear” of sorts…nothing but a joy ride subsidized by a city. Anyway two things have to happen. The number of people it takes to get a rocket off the ground must either be reduced or the flight rate greatly increased and reusability. This will not happen if Government is the sole owner and user of the system.

  • @Martijn:

    Translation: I hope it fails and that it will take down SpaceX with it, but I’ll pretend to be opposed to it because I am too cowardly to take responsibility for it?

    Translation: Can’t I at least get a slow clap for my super-neato depoting storables idea? Oh foul, cruel world.

    You can’t seriously be this dumb. Why would anyone want SpaceX or any other medium lifter to fail? Can’t very well have HSF without lifting the meatbags, and do you seriously need to lift them 70–or even 20–tons at time?

    How did I do on the translation?

    Stick to Dutch.

  • @Coastal Ron:

    From a purely hardware related perspective…

    From a purely hardware perspective, Challenger and Columbia had three sisters.

  • William Mellberg

    Coastal Ron wrote:

    “Could NASA’s budget survive a MPCV or SLS failure?”

    There is more than just economics involved in your question. There is national prestige. And the public (through their elected representatives in Congress) might see a failure in what is viewed as a “national” space program in a different light than a failure in what is seen as a “commercial” space program. I should emphasize the word “might” because I don’t know how they would view a catastrophic failure with a future Dragon flight (i.e., loss of life). Would the public say “SpaceX needs to fix the problem and move on” … or would Congressional hearings tend to focus on blame rather than on fixes? And would Musk’s Congressional critics use such a fatal accident to ask why NASA went to low bidders and start-up firms rather than to more established aerospace corporations to build spacecraft? In other words, would political concerns outweigh economic factors in the aftermath of a major accident? (The questioning might not be nearly as harsh if the failure were to happen during an unmanned cargo mission.)

    You might recall that following the Apollo 1 fire, there were calls for NASA to remove the Command/Service Module contract from North American Aviation. NAA did wind up having to remove Harrison Storms from the project, and the company’s stock took a beating because of the negative publicity which allowed Rockwell to “swallow North American wholesale, and on bargain-basement terms” (see “The Man Who Ran NASA” by Piers Bizony, page 171).

    What saved North American was President Kennedy’s deadline to land a man on the Moon by the end of the decade. With that deadline fast approaching, it would have been difficult to remove the CSM contract from NAA without adding further delays to the schedule (in addition to those already caused by the fire). Moreover, the Soyuz-1 accident just three months after the Apollo 1 fire drove home the point that risk goes with the territory in human spaceflight.

    So, with the benefit of taxpayer dollars behind them, North American pressed on, and Apollo turned into a grand success (with the exception of Apollo 13 where another fatal bullet was barely dodged). National prestige was on the line, and the public supported the notion to move on despite the fire. Indeed, the lessons learned from the Apollo 1 accident helped increase the chances of success for the overall program, including Apollo 8 and Apollo 11.

    As for space accidents, in general …

    Soyuz survived two fatal accidents (Soyuz-1 and Soyuz-11) and two failed missions (Soyuz-3 and Soyuz-10) early in the program. Once again, national prestige kept the program going despite the added costs.

    Ditto for the Challenger and Columbia accidents. Unfortunately, both of those accidents were the result of flying in the face of known problems. Both accidents could have been avoided if there hadn’t been political pressure to keep flying before the problems were fixed. Which, of course, produced catastrophic outcomes.

    In the private sector, it might be useful to review a little commercial aviation history. The Lockheed Electra’s problem with wings falling off in-flight resulted in airline sales for that aircraft grinding to a halt and passengers (and even pilots) avoiding the type for quite some time. The various problems associated with the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 produced a similar effect, and the company never fully recovered from the negative publicity. However, as some have said here in previous threads, that didn’t stop the public from flying. Nor did it stop the Electra and the DC-10 from going on to enjoy many years of productive service. But the cost to the manufacturers of those accidents in terms of dollars lost and reputations tarnished was very high.

    Could SpaceX (or Virgin Galactic) survive a similar problem? There is really no way to tell. It’s part of the risk that goes with any enterprise.

    Let’s hope they will never have to find out. But these are the sorts of unknowns Gene Cernan is referring to when he says, “They don’t know what they don’t know.” No doubt he’s thinking of his own brushes with the unknown during the Gemini 9 and Apollo 10 missions, as well as Neil Armstrong’s close call on Gemini 8. And he is surely thinking about his friends from the Apollo 1 crew, as well.

    Again, I hope Dragon’s first trip to the ISS is a complete success. The same goes for every flight that follows.

  • Juan Avenada

    Tick-tock for all of you sitting on your laurels. Start talking more when you are actually doing something instead of moaning and groaning and acting like 7th graders………yes it is……..no it isn’t……..I am right……you are an idiot…….geez…..the only thing that changes about little boys is the size of their toys. You want a space settlement? Get your rear in gear and pay for education instead of your theoretical launch requisites and your “opinions” about how to pay for this and how that won’t pay and how you don’t have an original idea but are very willing to taunt those who do. GET OFF YOUR LAURELS! (emphasis intended) you knuckleheads

  • Dennis

    While governments can survive catastrophic failures, with regards to finances, Im not so sure about commercial. A cots failure on say the next flight would certainly give people the idea that SpaceX cant cut the mustard. I think they can with time, but they still have to prove themselves and that is a long ways off.

  • Coastal Ron

    William Mellberg wrote @ October 13th, 2011 at 2:56 am

    But these are the sorts of unknowns Gene Cernan is referring to when he says, “They don’t know what they don’t know.”

    As I’ve pointed out before, you don’t know what you don’t know, and neither does NASA. Nobody does. So Cernan’s favorite saying is nothing more than an empty soundbite, and doesn’t help people focus on addressing the real problems.

    The basic problem is developing a survivable and redundant cargo and crew transportation system. Failures will happen, so don’t hope they don’t, plan for what happens when they do.

    For cargo that means having a backup for non-replaceable things like instruments and such, but otherwise most normal cargo can be lost without affecting the operation of the ISS.

    For crew that means having what the Shuttle didn’t – launch abort systems, as well as less fragile protection systems for return to Earth. Other systems need redundancy too, but those are the two that have killed the most for the U.S., so it’s a good place to start. And the good news is that all of the CCDev participants have those things, so when a launch failure happens there is a higher likelihood of survival with commercial crew than with NASA equivalents.

    What will be the reaction to a commercial launch failure where the crew survives? Praise for their safety designs, or derision because they had a failure? Ask the future passengers to get the most relevant answer.

  • common sense

    @ William Mellberg wrote @ October 13th, 2011 at 2:56 am

    Even though a failure of SpaceX may lead to its end, it has nothing to do with prestige. You’re mixing up different epochs. You’re projecting the time when there was a space race and it was of national concern to put someone on the Moon. A time when a President made it a case to the US public. Nothing of the sort exists today. If SpaceX fail and folds then others will take its place, including Boeing which is always conveniently forgotten in your rhetoric. This is the whole point behind commercial space. Unlike say Constellation, or Shuttle, we do not put our eggs in the same basket. I find it difficult to believe that you don’t understand something that simple. Unless you have an agenda? There is no President Kennedy. There will never be one again. Not for space exploration of any kind. And however many times we repeat it you again conveniently ignore that putting a man on the Moon was prompted by Cold War issues. And nothing but.

    Personally I want commercial space to succeed. Not one given company. SpaceX, so far, is the front runner so my and others hopes lie with them. I am impatient to see the other companies progress and we’ve seen some very cool stuff from Sierra Nevada.

    So again if you and Dennis and all the people who really want a space program of some kind were honest to your aspirations you and others would support commercial space. Skepticism is a good thing when it is based on facts and I support skepticism. But make it on facts.

    No one here (except amightywind) has addressed the video of fully reusable rockets shown by Elon, possibly since there was no thread dedicated to it. But here you have tons of reasons to be skeptical. Then again one needs to have some understanding of those systems. How much risk is Elon putting in those ideas when he could right away nail the launch market? Is it real? Is it a smoke screen?

    Oh well…

  • Vladislaw

    “The only way however that I see any really big move off Earth to colonize another world, is that tickets will HAVE to drop to within the range of an airline passage. Even at 5 mil. a pop, it wont happen without government.”

    Who gives up everything to goto a new location of harsh conditions to carve something out of the “wilderness” but then at the end of the day, you do not own anything for your efforts? I hardly think people will be rushing off without the idea they will own the land they settle after pouring in all the time and money.

  • Rhyolite

    “While governments can survive catastrophic failures, with regards to finances, Im not so sure about commercial.”

    Commercial satellite launches that are worth several times the cost of a Falcon 9 / Dragon fail all of the time. They pick up the pieces, collect their launch insurance and fly again. It’s just part of the business.

    “A cots failure on say the next flight would certainly give people the idea that SpaceX cant cut the mustard. ”

    It doesn’t matter what people think. They have a contract. If the fail at the COTS 2/3 objectives this time, they will re-fly a couple of months and collect the milestone payments when they succeed.

  • @Juan Avenada
    “Tick-tock for all of you sitting on your laurels. Start talking more when you are actually doing something instead of moaning and groaning and acting like 7th graders………yes it is……..no it isn’t……..I am right……you are an idiot…….geez…..the only thing that changes about little boys is the size of their toys. You want a space settlement? Get your rear in gear and pay for education instead of your theoretical launch requisites and your “opinions” about how to pay for this and how that won’t pay and how you don’t have an original idea but are very willing to taunt those who do. GET OFF YOUR LAURELS! (emphasis intended) you knuckleheads”
    Or should I address you as, “Mr I’m-so-much-smarter-and-more-responsible-than-everyone-else”

    Who says we don’t do both expressing our opinions on space issues and advocating investing in education. The one valid point you made was that if we don’t educate the next generation properly, everything else iis moot. I not only advocate that financial investment for the future, I am actively investing my own personal time for the cause by promoting interest in science and mathematics with presentations at youth groups and schools. Not to mention my public service educational websites:
    Astro Maven Blog
    and
    Singularity Scientific
    What are YOU doing, you NARS?

    In case you don’t know, the acronym stands for “Not A Rocket Scientist”

  • William Mellberg

    Common Sense wrote:

    “So again if you and Dennis and all the people who really want a space program of some kind were honest to your aspirations you and others would support commercial space.”

    I have repeatedly expressed my wish that SpaceX and other ‘commercial’ space efforts succeed. I also expressed my enthusiasm for Dragon’s first successful mission last December, and I added my own congratulations to the SpaceX team.

    Unfortunately, it seems some NewSpace proponents have a Them vs. Us mindset whereby they automatically assume that if other people advocate a space program that gets America out of Low Earth Orbit, those people must be opposed to ‘commercial’ space. That assumption is wrong. Sadly, the two sides in the space debate seem to be talking past each other much of the time, failing to notice their points of agreement and missing the opportunity to find the common ground that would work in favor of both causes. Part of the problem is that some people don’t understand that insults fail to persuade. Most missionaries don’t insult the people they’re trying to convert. But insults seem to be the norm in the blogosphere.

    Common Sense also wrote:

    “And however many times we repeat it you again conveniently ignore that putting a man on the Moon was prompted by Cold War issues.”

    So was sending people into Low Earth Orbit.

  • Robert G. Oler

    William Mellberg wrote @ October 13th, 2011 at 2:56 am

    interesting post. I would note this

    In the end Shuttle could not survive its last accident. Oh they kept flying it but after Columbia went bang the political powers that be figured out that they needed to end it; before another one went bang. If Columbia had not been lost it is likely that we would still be flying shuttles to the station and doing other meaningless things with it.

    National policies and programs end at catastrophes’ when the politicians on watch figure out that there is no reason to continue the effort that is worth the cost of another accident. They never end quickly; they have to be phased out…but they end.

    It is not just space shuttles blowing up. When the Marine Barracks was destroyed in Lebanon, that was the end of US involvement on the ground there (at least openly) because the POTUS had no interest in losing more people in a matter that he (correctly in my view) thought not very important. Had Bush told the American people we would spend trillions, lose thousands and be in Iraq for decades; we would not have gone into Iraq…instead he told everyone or had his flunkies say that the effort was short, would pay for itself and conjured up visions of Desert Storm like victories.

    There is no support for anything SLS is meant to do…much less for SLS…and thats why it simply wont get much past this year.

    Commercial flights are another matter. I read with interest your notes on the Electra and the DC-10. while I agree both had bad press after bad accident(s) the reality was that both had other issues in terms of their staying in commercial service.

    I predict a Dragon/Boeing whatever launch with a crew that ends in some issue…will be something we work past.

    RGO

  • DCSCA

    “Again, I hope Dragon’s first trip to the ISS is a complete success. The same goes for every flight that follows.”

    But that’s unrealistic, as NASA knew- and experienced- all too well from the first days of selecting test pilots to ride ‘rocket propelled systems with not much better than 60 percent reliability’ as Chris Kraft has stated. Musk’s Dragon/Falcon system will experience failures just as the M/R, M/A systems did; as did the Russian systems, including Soyuz and Progress; as Gemini 8 did; as Apollo’s 1 & 13 did; as Skylab did; as Challenger and Columbia did. The real question is if a quarterly driven, for profit enterprise can absorb a loss of vehicle, cargo and crew. We’ve seen how government-managed spaceflight operations deal with such setbacks. And the marketplace has deemed losses in the airline industry as acceptable risks weighted against the rewards to be gained. This has yet to be determined for the limited marketplace that is commerical HSF ventures.

  • common sense

    @ William Mellberg wrote @ October 13th, 2011 at 3:01 pm

    “I have repeatedly expressed my wish that SpaceX and other ‘commercial’ space efforts succeed. I also expressed my enthusiasm for Dragon’s first successful mission last December, and I added my own congratulations to the SpaceX team.”

    Fair enough.

    “Unfortunately, it seems some NewSpace proponents have a Them vs. Us mindset whereby they automatically assume that if other people advocate a space program that gets America out of Low Earth Orbit, those people must be opposed to ‘commercial’ space.”

    I am afraid this attitude exists in both camps. I believe you’ve been pretty vocal yourself about President’s Obama space policy, haven’t you?

    “That assumption is wrong. Sadly, the two sides in the space debate seem to be talking past each other much of the time, failing to notice their points of agreement and missing the opportunity to find the common ground that would work in favor of both causes.”

    Very true. Again “divide and rule” works for a lot of people.

    “Part of the problem is that some people don’t understand that insults fail to persuade. Most missionaries don’t insult the people they’re trying to convert. But insults seem to be the norm in the blogosphere.”

    Well you have been an actor in this debate and even though I don’t recall any profanity I recall plenty of insulting, condescending assertions from you. You see when people have worked all their lives in this sector and someone tells them what they should do and how they should do it well it tends to rub them the wrong way. Now. If you’d taken the time to read one of my earlier post you would have seen that I think we have common ground. But my priority is now focused on commercial space. The reason is that we must have low access to space and if we don’t you will not have the program you crave for. NASA or no NASA. And at the current trend it’ll probably be “no NASA”.

    I and others have advocated a shared strategy. Commercial access to LEO and anything beyond LEO to NASA. For now. As the capabilities grow I fully expect a commercial take over of the beyond LEO capabilities. We should not commit our scarce resources for HSF to redoing Apollo. It is idiotic. It is.

    What we need is a template for a plan that shows how we financially go from LEO to wherever you like. The key word is “financially”. As a conservative Republican you should understand that. Or is conservative just a word that the GOP is happy playing with?

    The greatness of the USA does not come from NASA. It comes from its ability to create business(es). The reality of life is that NASA is trying to reinsert itself into a business model (possibly NACA like).

    So where do we go now? Tell me your plan and let’s see how comprehensive you can be.

    “So was sending people into Low Earth Orbit.”

    Yes it was and ISS is the last child of NASA under Cold War rules. But the fact of the matter is that ISS is there. Whether you like it or not. It is international. Whether you like it or not. We have commitments to our international partners. Whether you like it or not. We must deal with those. Therefore there is “a” market. And no it is not subsidies or any of that. You do realize that using the word “subsidy” does insult a lot of us commercial proponents, right?

    Again. What is your plan? Not that of Schmitt, not that of Cernan, YOUR plan.

  • Coastal Ron

    DCSCA wrote @ October 13th, 2011 at 3:40 pm

    The real question is if a quarterly driven, for profit enterprise can absorb a loss of vehicle, cargo and crew.

    Ask Boeing, Airbus and every other aircraft manufacturer that has had one of their products crash. For that part ask the operators too, since they bear part of the responsibility for the safe operation of the aircraft.

    As we saw with the Shuttle, when there is no alternatives you suck up your courage and do dangerous things like continuing to fly the vehicle. If there is competition the equation is different, since there is choice, and if the perception is that the company will be safe going forward, well then you continue to use them. If you think they won’t be safe, well you have choices, and maybe they end up losing too much business and going out of business. That’s the way it works.

    So the answer to your question is YES.

    As a point of info for you, three of the four CCDev participants aren’t in fact publicly held “quarterly driven” companies, and the one that is would make so little on their crew service that they won’t be driven by stockholder perceptions.

  • @William Mellberg
    “Unfortunately, it seems some NewSpace proponents have a Them vs. Us mindset whereby they automatically assume that if other people advocate a space program that gets America out of Low Earth Orbit, those people must be opposed to ‘commercial’ space. That assumption is wrong.”

    I know I said I would not respond to you again, but this statement is such a complete distortion of the situation that I feel inclined to address it. Most people who back commercial do so because they think it is both the fastest and most economical way to go beyond LEO. They just don’t want to waste large amounts of resources on SLS, which even if built would be too expensive to fly frequently. Opposition to SLS does NOT equal opposition to deep space exploration as soon as possible, but support of SLS is at the very least unintentional retarding of progress in that direction.

    Either way, whether we choose to go beyond LEO via a large HLV or with existing EELVs with fuel depots, there are more cost-effective ways that can actually get greater numbers of people out there sooner than SLS (assuming its ever finished).

    I suggest that you check out this article that was reported yesterday called Internal NASA Studies Show Cheaper and Faster Alternatives to The Space Launch System:
    http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1577

  • Dennis

    I totally support the efforts of SpaceX and hope only success for them. I also hope that Mr. Musk can indeed send us on to Mars. In the mean time however, until his hardware is a proven, I think NASA should certainly push on toward human spaceflight out to the planets. This will surpass SpaceX, and happen sooner, unless Musk can pull a rabbit out of his hat. How soon before he dispatches a Dragon out to the lunar environment? NASA will do it sooner! That is the crutch of the whole issure, at least for me! I support any endeavor in the space effort and even wish China total success, even if they beat us back to the Moon. At least somebody will be going!

  • Dick Morris

    William Mellberg wrote @ October 12th, 2011 at 12:44 pm

    “You’d have to pack that spacecraft with lots of paying passengers to bring the cost down to anything close to $5 million…… That isn’t going to happen in any of our lifetimes.”

    If NASA had selected a fully-reusable, 2-stage, VTOL design for the Shuttle, instead of trying to “push the technology” with a horizontal landing design, it could have happened 10-20 years ago. With a GLOW less than that of the Shuttle, the VTOL RLV could have had a lift capacity of about 40-50 tons. That would equate to at least 50 passengers with a ticket price to LEO of about $1 million initially. Refuel the orbiter in LEO and it could land those passengers on the Moon. Refuel the orbiter with propellants produced from indigenous lunar resources and it can return to LEO with aerobraking. There is about a factor of 5 multiplier for lunar transportation relative to LEO transportation, for a round-trip ticket price to the Moon of about $5 million. Note that that is the IOC ticket price, and as we introduce refinements such as propellant transfer in LLO, and perhaps a separate lunar surface to LLO shuttle, and as the traffic builds up, the price can come down by an order-of-magnitude, or more.

    “The market for space tourism will be even smaller at $5 million a pop.”

    That’s for lunar tourism, not “space” (LEO) tourism. In the long term, I would not be surprised to see ticket prices for LEO tourism approximate the quoted price for a Concorde ticket, and lunar tourism approximate the quoted price for the QE2 ultra-luxury suite. There are almost certainly at least a few orders-of-magnitude more people who would pay that amount for a trip to the Moon(!) than for an ocean voyage.

  • Martijn Meijering

    @Prez:

    Not bad on the rhetoric, not bad at all. Of course, had I been looking for praise, I would be telling people what they like to hear.

  • Robert G. Oler

    common sense wrote @ October 13th, 2011 at 12:04 pm
    ” How much risk is Elon putting in those ideas when he could right away nail the launch market? Is it real? Is it a smoke screen? ”

    this is actually the brilliance of the plan…Musk and his engineers, can nibble at this all he wants to while “nailing” the launch market…

    there is nothing to stop him on each luanch from incrementalizing some of the test features to see how they play, they are already doing some of that…and they can use that “Grasshopper” to test out a few key things…it wouldnt take much to “fire” just a first stage and do a test…

    Nibbling at this notion of reusability is a good thing RGO

  • Coastal Ron

    Dennis wrote @ October 13th, 2011 at 5:15 pm

    Here’s an alternative version of what you said:

    I totally support the efforts of NASA and hope only success for them. I also hope that NASA can indeed send us on to Mars. In the mean time however, until NASA’s hardware is a proven, I think SpaceX should certainly push on toward human spaceflight out to the planets.

    Now what do you think?

    This will surpass SpaceX

    Dennis, you have this odd thought that NASA is in competition with SpaceX – they’re not.

    NASA gets money from Congress to do things in space, and SpaceX wants to provide lower cost services so that NASA can do more. How is that competition?

  • @Dennis
    “I totally support the efforts of SpaceX and hope only success for them. I also hope that Mr. Musk can indeed send us on to Mars. In the mean time however, until his hardware is a proven, I think NASA should certainly push on toward human spaceflight out to the planets.”

    I just don’t understand why you and most other pro-SLSers act as if SpaceX is the only company participating in Commercial Crew. Remember Boeing? ULA? Hardly “unproven” companies. And you can’t say that ULA’s hardware is unproven. Their current rockets have launched billion dollar satellites reliably for years. Some of those are military satellites that the lives of American troops rely on as well as other spacecraft that are crucial to the defense of this country.

    Most of us who are against SLS also think NASA ought to be doing human space flight out to the planets because that isn’t profitable for commercial companies. We just don’t want NASA to do it the inefficient way that you think they ought to do it. We want NASA to do the truly exciting and cutting edge stuff rather than develop big expensive impractical launchers like SLS. Recycling old shuttle hardware to make another rocket is beneath the potential of NASA’s top knotch engineers and keeps NASA from obtaining the greatness it could achieve.

  • Vladislaw

    William Mellberg wrote:

    “I have repeatedly expressed my wish that SpaceX and other ‘commercial’ space efforts succeed. I also expressed my enthusiasm for Dragon’s first successful mission last December, and I added my own congratulations to the SpaceX team.

    Unfortunately, it seems some NewSpace proponents have a Them vs. Us mindset whereby they automatically assume that if other people advocate a space program that gets America out of Low Earth Orbit, those people must be opposed to ‘commercial’ space. That assumption is wrong.”

    Okay, we ‘believe’ you. We know you ‘support’ commercial crew. Sometimes it is hard to determine if you ‘really supports’ commercial crew efforts. Sometimes there is a disbelief of your ‘support’ for commercial crew though because of the way you phrase it.

  • Vladislaw

    Rick Boozer wrote:

    “I suggest that you check out this article that was reported yesterday called Internal NASA Studies Show Cheaper and Faster Alternatives to The Space Launch System:
    http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1577

    It was a very interesting report. It didn’t matter in which launch system or if you mixed and matched, after each system was looked it, the bottom line was that it saved BILLIONS of dollars ( more hardware with the savings) and it saved time.

    Advantages

    * Tens of billions of dollars of cost savings and lower up-front costs to fit within budget profile
    * Allows first NEA/Lunar mission by 2024 using conservative budgets
    * Launch every few months rather than once every 12-18 months
    -Provides experienced and focused workforce to improve safety
    -Operational learning for reduced costs and higher launch reliability.
    * Allows multiple competitors for propellant delivery
    -Competition drives down costs
    -Alternatives available if critical launch failure occurs
    -Low-risk, hands-off way for international partners to contribute
    * Reduced critical path mission complexity (AR&Ds, events, number of unique elements)
    * Provides additional mission flexibility by variable propellant load
    * Commonality with COTS/commercial/DoD vehicles will allow sharing of fixed costs between programs and “right-sized” vehicle for ISS
    * Stimulate US commercial launch industry
    * Reduces multi-payload manifesting integration issues

    Did you notice that all the different configurations had one thing in common. The MPCV was launched empty and commercial crew actually put the crew in space. I bet that saved billions also.

  • DCSCA

    Coastal Ron wrote @ October 13th, 2011 at 4:42 pm

    Clearly you didn’t read very well- the qualifier for air carriers in general being the rewards outweigh the risk metric, pegged at an acceptable level, with improvements minimizing risk over a century of commerical air travel. In fact, there is no definitive answer to that question with respect to commerical HSF. When Musk loses a cargo and incinerates a crew– or when VirginGalactic losses a vehicle and passengers- we’ll see how a quarterly driven-for profit space firm deals with it (which includes subcontractors/suppliers, etc., fella, which DO have stockholders); how investors react financially and how the marketplace assesses both the loss and the management/engineering involved. And, of course, if government regulation is tightened. For instance, for all intents and purposes, the loss of PanAm 103 coupled with other economic pressures ended the airline, but flight goes on. As of today, though, given the limited market for commercial HSF, the rewards for private capital investors do not outweigh the risks. Tick-tock, tick-tock.

  • Martijn Meijering

    NASA’s top knotch engineers

    Who are these top notch engineers? The same ones that ran Ares into the ground? There is more launch vehicle and manned spacecraft design expertise in the private sector than there is inside NASA.

  • Dennis

    Boozer, I didnt say ULA wasnt tried and true. In fact I said that Orion should be launched on aDelta heavy. I said SpaceX still needed to prove itself. Even ATK has proven itself over the years with its shuttle boosters, or SRBs. If Dragon can get us to Mars, let see a high speed re entry demo, etc. etc. I think it can be done, but to date hasnt.

  • Dennis

    I think Mr. Musk and his efforts to supply a totally reusable system is certainly a good thing. However remember NASAa shuttle was supposed to do the same thing, but it never did. Somehow most of the time plans do not materialize exactly as hoped for. I too am anxious to see SpaceX succeed. Wheres the Beef?

  • @Dennis
    “I think Mr. Musk and his efforts to supply a totally reusable system is certainly a good thing. However remember NASAa shuttle was supposed to do the same thing, but it never did.
    The fact of the matter remains. Whether SpaceX ever achieves reusability or not, Falcon 9 will get astronauts to ISS for far less expenditure per flight and per astronaut than shuttle did (or even the Russians) and Falcon Heavy will be able to haul twice as much payload as the shuttle for a mere fraction of the cost. Reusability or no.

    But again, ULA lofting Boeing CST-100 and/or Dream Chaser will be able to send astronauts at less cost than shuttle and at least on a par with the Russians. And you can’t say the reliabilty of ULA launchers is unknown. Also even with no reusability (except for the spacecraft, which NASA won’t reuse because they want a new spacecraft with every flight even though they will be reusable). Again, you completely ignore other players. Why the monomaniacal obsession with SpaceX?

    What’s your beef?

  • @Dennis

    My apologies, I did not see the comment addressed to me that was above the comment that I quoted you from where you said.

    “In fact I said that Orion should be launched on aDelta heavy. “

    I most humbly take back the “monomaniacal obsession” comment. I was wrong. Not the first time, or the last! :)

    However, the rest of my last post regarding cost still stands.

  • Dennis

    As to the shuttle, I have considered to be always a white elephant. We should have stayed with the lunar flights and Apollo. I hope Mr. Musk ca deliver on his price range for launches. I do agree that ULA is better tha the shuttle also. Remember how the shuttle was supposed to lower cost to orbit operations and it never did. Will Mr. Musk deliver with his Falcon and Falcon heavy? Remember usually you get what you pay for, and today it is not even that anymore.

  • Dennis

    Im concerned also that once the private sector has a failure, with regards to carrying passengers, that presto, our government will move in and nip it in the bud, making so many more rules and regulations that commercial customer spaceflight will be over.

  • @Martijn Meijering
    “Who are these top notch engineers? The same ones that ran Ares into the ground? There is more launch vehicle and manned spacecraft design expertise in the private sector than there is inside NASA.”
    Ares was run into ground because Griffin put forth a lousy launch system with cost plus contracts to boot. The latter alone made sure that minimal progress was made for maximal cost. Even if he had some of the best engineers in the world working on it, nothing could have saved that turkey.

  • @Dennis
    “Will Mr. Musk deliver with his Falcon and Falcon heavy? Remember usually you get what you pay for, and today it is not even that anymore.”

    According to an Air Force/NASA study, SpaceX is doing better than that. That study concluded that if NASA had designed and developed a launcher equivalent in capabilty and quality to the Falcon 9 that it would have cost several times more. The problem is not that SpaceX is cutting corners to get lower costs, it’s that the established companies have not bothered to significantly upgrade their methods of design and production. Why would they strive to bring down costs, when they can make a profit with little or no competition and not have to fork out money to upgrade their manufacturing facilities, especially with cost-plus contracts that guarantee that no matter how much money they spend the government will reimburse them for it?

    “Im concerned also that once the private sector has a failure, with regards to carrying passengers, that presto, our government will move in and nip it in the bud, making so many more rules and regulations that commercial customer spaceflight will be over.”

    Why? People die in airline crashes every year and no one calls for the end of airline flights. Are you saying the lives of people in a 747 are worth less than people in a spacecraft?

    The reason why the airline industry continues is because if one model plane gets grounded due to a calamity, there are other completely different vehicles that can continue to fly. If SpaceX and ULA are both flying people, why would an accident with one stop the other from transporting people to space?

    Your argument makes no sense.

  • Rhyolite

    Rick Boozer wrote @ October 13th, 2011 at 5:03 pm
    Vladislaw wrote @ October 13th, 2011 at 8:11 pm

    I think everyone should go and read the link provided by Rick. It’s extremely telling that NASA’s own internal studies show that SLS is a bad idea. We can do the same missions faster and cheaper with existing launch vehicles:

    http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1577

  • common sense

    @ Robert G. Oler wrote @ October 13th, 2011 at 6:25 pm

    “this is actually the brilliance of the plan…Musk and his engineers, can nibble at this all he wants to while “nailing” the launch market…”

    You take it fwiw but I’ll say this. I think you’re wrong. I think it is a potential risk. Note this: This type of game requires resources. Let me say it again. It requires resources, i.e. cash and personnel. You make whatever you want of this.

    “there is nothing to stop him on each luanch from incrementalizing some of the test features to see how they play, they are already doing some of that…”

    Not true as you say it. A launch system is an integrated system – even more so a reusable one – and it is very difficult to add this or that (sub)system without proper design. Go ask Ares I and Orion. The things MUST be concurrently designed to work well. Now this being said it does not keep you from collecting data so long they are relevant data. BUT. What I saw in no way is an incremental design. The incremental design approach works best for subsystems. Again taking what was designed as an expendable and turning it into a reusable just like that is not realistic. I hope it works but I doubt it. Not withstanding the issues with the aerodynamic and aerothermodynamic environments associated with this approach.

    “and they can use that “Grasshopper” to test out a few key things…it wouldnt take much to “fire” just a first stage and do a test…”

    Agreed and here what I think will come out of this. Vertical landing data. For it to be applicable to F9 1st stage they would have to launch the thingy at hypersonic velocity and it does not seem they will. Very limited but possibly useful data.

    “Nibbling at this notion of reusability is a good thing RGO”

    Absolutely. But here is my prediction. The reusable LV will look nothing like F9. Nothing.

  • Robert G. Oler

    common sense wrote @ October 14th, 2011 at 1:57 pm

    I have no doubt that a reusable SpaceX vehicle will look little like an F-9…I have no doubt of it.

    But using the current F9 flights as test flights to try things wont be that hard even as the systems are integrated. They can for instance try things on the first stage (assuming that they have the performance margins) that are of a test variety as soon as the second stage goes on its own. I suspect that they will do things like that…for instance working some ballute issues to stop the tumbling.

    Musk is bringing to rockets what is routinely done by a manufacture in airplanes…

    I dont have ANY inside SpaceX information but I suspect at somepoint that they are going to push the Grasshopper or its successors through a full range of flight modes all the way to first stage burnout…it wouldnt cost them a lot to build a full up first stage with the Grasshopper changes and fly that sub orbital even if it is simply straight up…and see if they can work it back down. Since their guidance is not in the first stage…they are going to need electronics etal which “come alive” after the second stage leaves.

    but all this is speculation.

    What I find impressive is that they are thinking “how to push the design” particularly how to push the components. Thats after 40 years of a shuttle which really changed little in terms of how they took the components.

    “Go ask Ares I and Orion.” sorry I have so little respect for the people who designed those systems I am simply amazed that they didnt consume more money RGO

  • DCSCA

    As of October 14, 2011, SpaceX has not launched, orbited or safely return any crewed Dragons. Nobody. End of story. Any chatter on Master Musk ‘settling Mars’ or zipping ’round the planet with crewed spacecraft is NewSpace poppycock. Tick-tock, tick-tock.

  • common sense

    @ Robert G. Oler wrote @ October 14th, 2011 at 2:45 pm

    “But using the current F9 flights as test flights to try things wont be that hard even as the systems are integrated.”

    Well again they don’t have that many test flights left before they MUST work their contracts. UNLESS they pay for them. They may as they make cash.

    “They can for instance try things on the first stage (assuming that they have the performance margins) that are of a test variety as soon as the second stage goes on its own. I suspect that they will do things like that…for instance working some ballute issues to stop the tumbling.”

    Again fwiw. Unlikely. Things would need to change quite a bit. Take it for what it is. I know you’re fond of saying that Americans will go for the right thing after they’ve tried everything else. Now replace Americans with SpaceX and you’ll get the idea.

    “Musk is bringing to rockets what is routinely done by a manufacture in airplanes…”

    Some of it yes. BUT the flight environment of even the fastest airplane is far more benign than that of a LV/RV. Worse actually. What works best at hypersonic velocity plays against you, literally, at lower speeds. They are very contradictory. The engineering and the physics I will dare say are not continuous from Mach 3 to Mach 9 and above. So what we do for airplanes is little applicable to hypersonic vehicles. Not the way you describe it anyway.

    “I dont have ANY inside SpaceX information but I suspect at somepoint that they are going to push the Grasshopper or its successors through a full range of flight modes all the way to first stage burnout…”

    It would make some sense.

    “it wouldnt cost them a lot to build a full up first stage with the Grasshopper changes and fly that sub orbital even if it is simply straight up…and see if they can work it back down. Since their guidance is not in the first stage…they are going to need electronics etal which “come alive” after the second stage leaves.”

    Yes again. Vertical landing data. BUT look at Grasshoper and you’ll find a lot of reasons why it is unlikely to go hypersonic. Does it have retractable gear/legs? If not it will be a problem. Just an example.

    “but all this is speculation.”

    I know. I am trying to only give you a perspective different from that of the aviation one. They are very distinct worlds.

    “What I find impressive is that they are thinking “how to push the design” particularly how to push the components. Thats after 40 years of a shuttle which really changed little in terms of how they took the components.”

    No question.

    “sorry I have so little respect for the people who designed those systems I am simply amazed that they didnt consume more money RGO”

    Nah don’t oversimplify it. Yes they screwed up but they were given a ridiculous task. And the lack of integration between Ares I and Orion is the most blatant problem since they kept changing the requirements as they went. I am not qualifying the work itself but rather pointing that the lack of integration is mostly what killed Ares I and as a result brought the cost to very high altitude for Orion (not only but a significant part).

  • Robert G. Oler

    common sense wrote @ October 14th, 2011 at 3:09 pm

    Well a few points.

    First the “it is faster then any airplane” thing doesnt cut much water with me (grin). Engineering competence is engineering competence and the same stuff that goes into making airplanes better, is the same competence that makes subs better that makes computers better that …makes space launch vehicle better.

    I guess it comes from living in Clear Lake and hearing all the “real men of genius” telling me how hard it is to do everything from the “new” shuttle cockpit (“It flies in space”) to why NASA’s T-38’s were so much more expensive to put a modern cockpit in then the USAF’s were (“people who fly in space fly them”…grin…side note amazing how many astronauts it took to be on the panel that did the T-38 cockpit mod …and not many of them at that it got so expensive) and at the USAF they just had regular Majors doing it …

    I dont see any reason why after the first stage falls away, they cannot “play with it” on any flight…assuming that they have the margins in performance to carry the “toys” Up.

    Again I am not hung up in the first stage of a reusable looking like the first stage of the F9…my guess is that it takes on more a DCX type appearance.

    As for Ares/Orion…that was a cluster flack of engineering. OK they had some political goals which drove engineering but then again, the folks who were working on it at NASA have in the last 20 years done far less engineering then the guy/gal building their homebuilt airplane.

    RGO

  • DCSCA

    “Musk is bringing to rockets what is routinely done by a manufacture in airplanes…”

    Airplanes carry crews and passengers. Musk’s toys carry nobody.

  • common sense

    @Robert G. Oler wrote @ October 14th, 2011 at 3:33 pm

    “I dont see any reason why after the first stage falls away, they cannot “play with it” on any flight…assuming that they have the margins in performance to carry the “toys” Up.”

    They have to design it to the hypersonic environment on reentry. More difficult than ascent. The vehicle is structurally and environmentally designed to go up. Essentially straight up so to speak – very little alpha. Not down at positive alpha and in some cases large alpha. Look at some vide of reentering SRBs and they come back at much lower altitude and velocity. But I am not talking about the “docking at Mach 25″ stuff you seem to refer to. Please give me a little more credit than that. You have it seems entries at JSC. I am sure you can find competent people to tell you a little about those things. Forget Constellation and go for those who were running Shuttle. Those who understand design. They are there. Or go ask Boeing if you are in the Houston area.

    “Again I am not hung up in the first stage of a reusable looking like the first stage of the F9…my guess is that it takes on more a DCX type appearance.”

    My problem is that what Elon showed is not adequate. As it is I do not believe it would work even though he mentioned that their simulation showed it “can work”. My contention is that the simulation, if done properly, probably showed those vehicles won’t work as depicted.

    It may take a DCX appearance if it has control systems for the propulsion. Which means he’ll have to bring up more fuel etc. And redesign the whole thing. But there are issues with the thermal environments and the nozzles going backward. And more. Again go ask others. Don’t take my word for it. A little clue they got right I think: It seems they remove the nozzle of the 2nd stage on entry, a la Ares. There is a reason why…

    “As for Ares/Orion…that was a cluster flack of engineering. OK they had some political goals which drove engineering but then again, the folks who were working on it at NASA have in the last 20 years done far less engineering then the guy/gal building their homebuilt airplane.”

    Political mingling is what ruined the whole game. Possibly and likely management blindness. You can still see it with SLS and MPCV. Try and find documents related to the Phase 1 of CEV when O’Keefe was in charge… You will SEE the difference. Same NASA different politics…

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p176UpWQOs4

    AT 1:35 the attitude is not realistic for example.

    FWIW.

  • Martijn Meijering

    AT 1:35 the attitude is not realistic for example.

    Why not?

  • Vladislaw

    As of October 14, 2011, SpaceX has not tried to launch a crew into orbit because they have only started on building the systems.

  • common sense

    @ Martijn Meijering wrote @ October 14th, 2011 at 5:44 pm

    “AT 1:35 the attitude is not realistic for example.

    Why not?”

    Because the vehicle should be flying at an angle of attack. If you look at their TPS it is spread on the cylinder of the body and on the front. It is a CG location issue. The movie shows the thing flying at zero alpha. Look at the “shock” depiction…

  • Vladislaw

    Didn’t Musk say in the press release that the video left a lot of things out? I think he is more worried about propriatory information being shown, he doesn’t seem to be taking the patents route either because of those fears. So maybe the video was expressly made to not show anything of real value on how they plan on going forward.

  • Robert G. Oler

    common sense wrote @ October 14th, 2011 at 5:29 pm

    “My problem is that what Elon showed is not adequate.” I did not take it as anything more then a great PR video, showing which direction that they think that they are going to go, ie the essence of what task they have in front of them…and am really not all that hung up on anything in the video…but the song which I think is neat.

    As I said I am prepared (and expect) that if they get to reusability then the “Falcon reusable” will look a lot different then the 9 does…I would even be surprised if the 9 looks like the 9 in a few years. I can see other changes I think that they are going to try first.

    “competent people” I make a living in part by judging competence period and that includes engineering. I can figure out pretty quickly if the engineering/management of say a nuclear reactor or even a hospital is competent…the traits are the same in all engineering/management organizations just the tools are different.

    Musk is slowly putting together a very competent, lean organization which is doing amazing things. A blind person could see that in their Falcon 1 operation (and I said so here) how it was stalking for the 9…and I suspect that they will either master reusability in some manner or decide it doesnt work for them.

    ” Political mingling is what ruined the whole game. Possibly and likely management blindness”

    A rule of thumb out of JSC and Marshall since the late 1980’s is that all projects fail for the same reasons which is a combination of management stupidity which is passed down from generation to generation and a dysfunctional NASA/contractor relationship.

    Ares 1 should have been flyable ready to go for under 3 billion dollars, even given the stupidity there at NASA, but they cannot even build a shuttle toliet now for under a billion.

    When you lose two shuttle orbiters for the same underlying reason spanning a few decades…well the reality is that like the buildings incompetence and sloth are a foundation RGO

  • DCSCA

    The press reported yesterday that NASA has contracted for three VirginGalactic flights for ‘research’ purposes. Of course, given NASA’s half century of high altitude flight research along with the USAF’s and NACA’s data, this is simply a bogus effort to subsidize yet another commercial HSF enterprise w/scarce and dwindling tax dollars. Be it Musk or Branson, neither need nor deserve a dime of dwindling Federal taxpayer funding for commercial space projects. It’s absurd to be handing millions of tax dollars to multi-millionaires capable of raising capital in the private sector and NASA deserves to be severely criticized for wasting precious funding while denying dollars to space science projects and cutting other space exploration and research efforts.

  • Vladislaw

    DC Society for Creative Anacronisms wrote:

    “Of course, given NASA’s half century of high altitude flight research along with the USAF’s and NACA’s data, this is simply a bogus effort to subsidize yet another commercial HSF enterprise w/scarce and dwindling tax dollars.”

    Virgin Galactic has already signed over 400 customers, I hardly think those 3 flights amount to more than a drop in the bucket.

  • common sense

    @ Vladislaw

    “Didn’t Musk say in the press release that the video left a lot of things out?”

    Yes he did.

    “I think he is more worried about propriatory information being shown, he doesn’t seem to be taking the patents route either because of those fears.”

    I don’t know about the patents. But I know patents take a while to get. They potentially prevent others to use your technology without paying a fee. Maybe he does not think there is enough competition.

    “So maybe the video was expressly made to not show anything of real value on how they plan on going forward.”

    As I said earlier. “A smoke screen”?

    Now that is pretty good:

    “DC Society for Creative Anacronisms”

    What about our friend amw? American Movement of Workers?

  • Vladislaw

    common sense wrote:

    “I don’t know about the patents. But I know patents take a while to get. They potentially prevent others to use your technology without paying a fee. Maybe he does not think there is enough competition.”

    They only prevent others from using your technology if the country enforces patent law. China doesn’t and a patent literally provides a roadmap to how to do something. Companies afraid of Chinese patent infringement are not filing patents because they just use that to copy your product.

  • Martijn Meijering

    Because the vehicle should be flying at an angle of attack.

    Don’t you want it to be flying at zero angle of attack? Or are you saying it can’t? If so, why not? After all, that’s what it does during the early phases of ascent.

  • DCSCA

    @Vladislaw wrote @ October 15th, 2011 at 3:56 pm

    “I hardly think those 3 flights amount to more than a drop in the bucket.”

    Apparently you’ve missed what’s going in the real world of late- hnce the hardly think line is quite apt for your posting. All the more reason for NASA not to be wasting funds on it what witrh 400 contracted flights on the ledgers for VirginGalactic. ‘A drop in the bucket’ to you- and those accustomed to spending other people’s money- TAXPAYER MONEY- but at an agency weeping over science programs being slashed, it’s a colossal waste of dwindling resources. NASA whines about not having funding and science projects go without- or go black. But in the Age of Austerity, particularly for the cry babies at NASA weeping over budget cuts, it’s a foolish expenditure — of which 42 cents of every dollar is BORROWED. NASA deserved severe criticism for this kind of wasteful spending and any further program cuts are justified given the weak judgement and poor management now in place at that bureaucratic, Cold War antique.

  • Vladislaw

    DCSCA wrote:

    “Apparently you’ve missed what’s going in the real world of late”

    Apparently you missed the point. You said NASA was subsidizing VG. Two flights, or 6 seats plus experiment payloads, is hardly subsidizing Virgin when it represents a miniscule amount of their projected revenue stream.

    If you want to talk about wasteful spending okay, but do not call it subsidies when it is clearly not. NASA is acting as a customer buying a service. If you want to call it wasteful spending okay.

  • common sense

    @ Vladislaw wrote @ October 16th, 2011 at 12:10 am

    Note I said “potentially” prevent… Indeed. Even in the US.

  • common sense

    @ Martijn Meijering wrote @ October 16th, 2011 at 1:29 am

    “Don’t you want it to be flying at zero angle of attack?”

    Yes you would want that, especially in the entry phase down to after max-heating and max-Q. IF the vehicle has the proper TPS. But for stability reason and structural reason probably a 0-alpha is better in this phase at least. Again design is important…

    “Or are you saying it can’t? If so, why not? After all, that’s what it does during the early phases of ascent.”

    What I am saying is this. The vehicles 1st and 2nd stages have a CG biased aft the vehicle. On ascent it is all well since thrust goes through CG and you can gimble the nozzles to compensate deviation from 0 or little alpha. On reentry the bias stays aft but you have no control. Forget 1st stage for now. The 2nd stage has an aft CG and no controls (be it control surfaces or RCS). On entry this bias tends to make the vehicle fly somewhere between 0 and about 15 deg alpha. The only way to make it fly at 0 alpha is to ballast the front end to move the CG fore. But you have to put additional mass. Shuttle did it and Apollo did it as well to fly at a given alpha, despite RCS and control surfaces. Whatever they have in the back of the 2nd stage I believe will not be enough to stabilize it. If you have access to a simple Newtonian fluid code you can run these test cases and look at the pitch moment Cm vs alpha. You will see that 0 alpha is an unstable trim while a stable trim is somewhere around 15 deg of course depending on your configuration.

    Another thing to consider. Say you can fly at 15 deg alpha. You have to put TPS on the side of the vehicle. But where? Unless the CG is offset in one direction (like for a capsule) there is no reason the vehicle will not roll. Therfore you have to spread the TPS on every side. In their video they pur it only say on the West side to use a satellite terminology, what about the other sides?

    Hope this helps.

  • The press reported yesterday that NASA has contracted for three VirginGalactic flights for ‘research’ purposes.

    It’s not fo ‘research’ purposes, you idiot. It’s for research purposes. It gives them suborbital flight research for a small fraction of the cost of a sounding rocket.

  • Coastal Ron

    DCSCA wrote @ October 16th, 2011 at 2:15 am

    ‘A drop in the bucket’ to you- and those accustomed to spending other people’s money- TAXPAYER MONEY- but at an agency weeping over science programs being slashed, it’s a colossal waste of dwindling resources.

    Too bad you don’t understand how government works. Your beef is with Congress, since they are the ones that determine how much money NASA gets and what it can spend it on.

    NASA merits accolades for finding less costly ways to do the same research, which in this case is using commercial capabilities instead of building and operating their own. For a measly $4.5M for up to three flights, NASA gets this:

    This arrangement dramatically increases the access researchers currently have to space. Each mission allows for up to 1300 lbs of scientific experiments, which could enable up to 600 experimental payloads per flight. Virgin Galactic will provide a Flight Test Engineer on every flight to monitor and interact with experiments as necessary, a capability that has never before been available on suborbital vehicles. If requested, these experiments can be quickly accessed after landing, a feature critical to many types of experiments.

    If you have a less expensive way for NASA to get his same amount of science, then by all means let us know. I’ll take silence as proof you can’t.

  • Martijn Meijering

    Hope this helps.

    Thanks for the detailed explanation! I’m going to have to chew on that for a while…

  • common sense

    @Martijn Meijering wrote @ October 16th, 2011 at 3:33 pm

    For example: Even though here they seem to seek an ideal trim at 90 deg which I believe is for deceleration you can expand the reasoning. But I did not read it in detail.

    http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19850008599_1985008599.pdf

    “Since the parachute design requirements were directly dependent on the SRB initial deceleration phase, it was paramount that the initial SRB deceleration phase be investigated first. If the booster center of gravity were ideally located at approximately 53 percent body length from the SRB nose (near centroid of area) the booster would tend to trim at an angle of attack near the optimum 90-deg. The booster center of gravity at burnout, however, is 5 or 6 percent further aft which causes the booster
    to tend to trim in a somewhat tail first and lower drag attitude.”

  • DCSCA

    @Coastal Ron wrote @ October 16th, 2011 at 2:37 pm
    =yawn= It’s as redundant as making excuses for ‘research’ aboard the ISS while ignoring decades of same from MIR, Saylut and Skylab, not to mention volumes of data obtained in high altitude research by NACA, the USAF and NASA during a large segment of the 20th Century. Wasting dwindling resources on redundant “research” — as a backdooor effort to funnel funnding to private sector firms is a massive waste of taxpayer funding. But then, you like spending government money to subsidize private enterprise, dontcha. In fact, it is you who doesnt understand how government works, because it doesn’t work, as recent history has shown.

  • DCSCA

    Rand Simberg wrote @ October 16th, 2011 at 2:06 pm

    Don’t be so hard on yourself. Trying to make excuses for ‘research’ – “sounding rocket research” no less, something that has volumes of prexisting data from ‘sounding rocket research’ flights since the late 1940s is a waste of tax dollars and a back door effort to funnel funding to private enterprised firms. It’s a waste of dwindling funds and current NASA management from the top down deserves severe criticiam for wasting monies in this fashion.

  • DCSCA

    @Vladislaw wrote @ October 16th, 2011 at 12:14 pm

    Whther you want to accept it or not- that’s a backdoor subsidy, particularly the massive volumes of data already existing on suborbital-styled “research” flights, conducted since the late 1940s by the Army, the USAF, NACA and from ’58 on by NASA. It’s a waste and if you’re honest with yourself, you’d agree it is as well, especially when some science project gets cut while funding goes out the door for this boondoggle. It’s just another example of poor management at NASA. Time to clean house there ASAP.

    William Mellberg wrote @ October 11th, 2011 at 2:01 pm

    Schmitt’s tilting at windmills. He was pushing for back side lunar landings back when Apollo was winding down as well. The Economist ran a piece some months back and asserted the Space Age is over. And the chapter championed by the likes of Schmitt, Glenn and so on likely is. And the sad postscript to it is the useless ISS, which cost 100 billion-plus and has returned nothing of value, nothing practical, and nothign inspirational. Too bad this isn’t 1953, as it would have been a much more lauded project. today, not so much. Space is simply a luxury in an era of necessities America can no longer afford.

  • Rhyolite

    common sense wrote @ October 16th, 2011 at 12:57 pm

    “The 2nd stage has an aft CG and no controls (be it control surfaces or RCS).”

    Where did you get the idea that the 2nd stage doesn’t have an RCS system? One is definitely shown between 1:19 and 1:25 in the video.

    “Say you can fly at 15 deg alpha. You have to put TPS on the side of the vehicle. But where? Unless the CG is offset in one direction (like for a capsule) there is no reason the vehicle will not roll.”

    Use the RCS system for roll control.

    The fact that they show the TPS to be bias to one side at 1:26 strongly indicates that they do intend to reenter with an non-zero alpha, just as they do with Dragon, even if the video doesn’t show it between 1:32 and 1:38. That is likely a detail that escaped the animators but not the engineers.

  • Rhyolite

    common sense wrote @ October 14th, 2011 at 5:29 pm

    Regarding the first stage you said:

    “They have to design it to the hypersonic environment on reentry.”

    “But there are issues with the thermal environments and the nozzles going backward.”

    I think you may be missing a key point about a boost-back trajectory: you use the main propulsion to kill your hypersonic down range velocity above the atmosphere so reentry takes place at a much lower velocity.

    Here is an AFRL paper on the thermal advantages of boost-back compared to a more traditional fly-back system:

    http://tfaws.nasa.gov/TFAWS05/Website/files/InterdisciplinaryPaperSession/TFAWS05_GMoster_ID.pdf

    The heating rate comparison is shown in Figures 8 and 9. The reentry pulse for boost-back is much smaller than for a fly-back system. Likewise, stagnation temperatures shown in Figures 10 and 11 are much lower. They indicate that the reductions are sufficient to eliminate most or all critical TPS for the booster.

    The conclusions of the study are:

    “The jet engine fly-back booster is smaller both in size and launch weight than the rocket engine boost-back booster, but not in empty weight. Typically, empty weight is considered the acquisition cost driver, so the rocket boost-back booster would normally be expected to be cheaper. The cost savings is compounded by the possibilities of using normal aircraft materials without TPS and not requiring jet engines. Eliminating the TPS and jet engines combined with normal aircraft materials may drive the cost of the rocket boost-back system down to half of the fly-back booster and make the option selection straightforward. The simplicity of the larger boost-back may more than make up for it’s larger size with operations cost and turn-time reductions too.”

    SpaceX’s concept uses a vertical landing – the one they are planning to test with Grasshopper – but the thermal advantages of boost-back should carry over from the AFRL study. I don’t know if they will succeed but it seems worth trying.

    To tie this back to the thread topic, given that there are relatively low cost ways of testing re-usability and other means lowering launch costs like this, it seems foolish to lock high launch costs for decades to come with a program like SLS.

  • Martijn Meijering

    Thanks again!

  • Coastal Ron

    DCSCA wrote @ October 16th, 2011 at 10:19 pm

    It’s as redundant as making excuses for ‘research’ aboard the ISS while ignoring decades of same from MIR, Saylut and Skylab, not to mention volumes of data obtained in high altitude research by NACA, the USAF and NASA during a large segment of the 20th Century.

    Sure. Just like the Model T Ford is just as good a car as a 2011Ford Taurus – the both have a motor, four tires and a steering wheel, so what’s the diff?

    Your argument against any research today seems to boil down to the premise that “everything that can be invented already has been”, right? That we don’t need to research anything, only look back in the reams of handwritten notes and decaying computer records from the 60’s, and we’ll find the answer to every question we have about micro-gravity effects and the latest attempts to mitigate zero-G effects on the human body. That’s your whole point?

    You are nuts if you believe that. But then again you keep vacillating between wanting a government subsidized golf course on the Moon and shutting down NASA altogether, so it’s hard to understand what you really believe sometimes…

  • Don’t be so hard on yourself.

    I’m not being hard on myself — I’m being hard on a troll who’s too moronic to realize it.

  • common sense

    @ Rhyolite wrote @ October 17th, 2011 at 12:27 am

    “Where did you get the idea that the 2nd stage doesn’t have an RCS system? One is definitely shown between 1:19 and 1:25 in the video.

    Use the RCS system for roll control.”

    I cannot se an RCS system. What I see is more akin to the Shuttle OMS.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Orbital_Maneuvering_System

    Not RCS:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_control_system

    Maybe they can but I doubt their OMS (RCS?) are properly located wrt CG to be effective on reentry.

    “The fact that they show the TPS to be bias to one side at 1:26 strongly indicates that they do intend to reenter with an non-zero alpha,”

    It is not the fact they “intend” but rather that they do not have a choice, again, unless they ballast the nose. And I still see nothing to stabilize the 2nd stage.

    “just as they do with Dragon, even if the video doesn’t show it between 1:32 and 1:38.”

    In order to achieve a non zero alpha with a capsule you need to offset the CG off the centerline. Easier said than done. But yes I am sure they did it. Depending on the alpha they seek though they most likely will have to ballast the capsule a la Apollo.

    “That is likely a detail that escaped the animators but not the engineers.”

    I did not say it necessarily escaped the engineers. I said they do not show the proper vehicle to achieve an orbital velocity reentry for the 2nd stage.

  • Vladislaw

    DCSCA wrote:

    “Whther you want to accept it or not- that’s a backdoor subsidy,”

    If you pay a producer not to produce, that is a subsidy, like paying farmers not to grow a crop to produce an artificial higher price.

    If you pay a producer to produce a high end product that would not have any customers unless the costs are offset by the subsidy allowing for an artifically lower price to consumers.

    Neither of the above examples fit with what NASA is proposing. NASA is paying for a service, they are not subsidizing VG in way. If you can not understand that I suggest you take a few courses in economics and actually learn about what a subsidy is.

    The going rate is 1.2 million per flight. NASA is paying 1.5 per flight because they want to run experiments which will mean added costs for intergration. Not a subsidy, you can type that 1000 times and it will not make it true.

    If you want to complain it is wasteful spending so be it, but it is not a subsidy.

  • common sense

    @Rhyolite wrote @ October 17th, 2011 at 1:24 am

    “I think you may be missing a key point about a boost-back trajectory: you use the main propulsion to kill your hypersonic down range velocity above the atmosphere so reentry takes place at a much lower velocity.”

    Okay. But the fact remains for the nozzles that they are not designed, usually, to take side loads. Further (POST figures are usually done for a 1 ft or 1 m sphere and only indicate a trend, not local heating that are geometry dependent) the heating on the nozzle is dependent upon the nozzle config. If they use regenerative cooling on ascent they most likely will have to use it on reentry. Not in 1 or 3 nozzles but in all of them. Which means they have to bring up additional propellant, obviously, but how much? Reentry takes time so to speak. In this particular case again the vehicle will reenter at low alpha which means higher Gs on reentry on the overall structure. If there is no flow through the nozzles how do you “gimbal” them? One is enough? 3? How many to keep them from moving around? It is not “velocity” per se that is important, it is velocity to which the vehicle is designed and acceleration it will be submitted to. If you fly at a non zero alpha you will need to beef-up the structure (same as 2nd stage).

    Let me be a devil’s advocate. If it were so simple to do where is the boost-back AF vehicle? Just askin’. The paper you refer to is nice for a mission ops poit of view but a bit simplistic in its approach to aerothermal issues.

    “SpaceX’s concept uses a vertical landing – the one they are planning to test with Grasshopper – but the thermal advantages of boost-back should carry over from the AFRL study. I don’t know if they will succeed but it seems worth trying.”

    I hope thy put more effort than there is in this paper though, otherwise I agree it is worth trying if you have the cash. BTW a well set up simulation should give you a lot of those answers…

    “To tie this back to the thread topic, given that there are relatively low cost ways of testing re-usability and other means lowering launch costs like this, it seems foolish to lock high launch costs for decades to come with a program like SLS.”

    I am not arguing in favor of SLS, never did, never will. I am arguing in favor of sound engineering. There is a difference.

  • @Boozer:

    [Cost-plus] alone made sure that minimal progress was made for maximal cost.

    Cost-plus generally offer little to no incentive to control costs, but they do not inherently maximize them.

  • common sense

    @ Prez Cannady wrote @ October 17th, 2011 at 5:23 pm

    “Cost-plus generally offer little to no incentive to control costs, but they do not inherently maximize them.”

    Yes it does by nature. A contractor will bid the smallest amount possible to a contract. Anything in addition to that bid comes as cost-plus. It is in the interest of a contractor to bid the smallest amount for the smallest amount of work especially for a program of such complexity as Constellation. Anyone who’s done that knows that the idea is to anchor the program and then to keep the money flowing from the upcoming requests from the customer.

  • Rhyolite

    common sense wrote @ October 17th, 2011 at 12:44 pm

    “If it were so simple to do where is the boost-back AF vehicle? Just askin’.”

    The paper is relatively recent. At the rate at which the AF currently develops vehicles, we will need to check back in about 20 years to see if anything comes of it. More to the point, to one said it would be easy.

    Boost-back does look plausible, it has some heritage and it looks like a way of mitigating some the issues with hypersonic reentry so SpaceX is not coming out of left field. Given that a number of the relevant quantities have terms that go as the square of velocity or the Mach number, reducing the first stage reentry velocity from 3000 m/s to 1000 m/s is a major improvement.

    “I hope thy put more effort than there is in this paper though, otherwise I agree it is worth trying if you have the cash. BTW a well set up simulation should give you a lot of those answers…”

    Certainly.

    “I am not arguing in favor of SLS, never did, never will. I am arguing in favor of sound engineering. There is a difference.”

    I didn’t mean to imply that you were. I was trying to make the broader point that there are a lot of ideas for how we could reduce the cost of space access that we could try for a fraction of the cost of SLS. We are more likely to advance spaceflight by funding a dozen SpaceX size projects that have a chance of reducing launch costs than we are by funding SLS, which has no chance at all.

  • @Prez
    “Cost-plus generally offer little to no incentive to control costs, but they do not inherently maximize them.”
    You’re quibbling about semantics here. Because it offers no incentive to control costs, it typically leads to costs that are higher than they would have been without it. An example, is Constellation. Part of the reason it’s final cost was higher than its originally quoted cost was because there was no incentive to control costs above the initially quoted cost, due to cost-plus contracting. Thus, it led to the final cost being greater than the initially quoted cost. Given that its cost under those conditions would be higher than the quoted cost no matter what, it had a tendency to increase towards maximum cost: that is the definition of maximize.

  • common sense

    @Rhyolite wrote @ October 18th, 2011 at 2:53 am

    Heating is like velocity cube… But no matters I did not say boost back is not plausible but in teir scenario they do not reenter nozzles first. Right?

    Reusability will make space more affordable no question. But my concern was this again: SpaceX is weady to nail the LV market. Is it reasonable for them with limited resources to look at changing F9? Especially that what they showed does not look like a viable concept.

    I say first thing first: Get the LV market, make a fortune and then think reusable. Or at least do not make major design changes that can ruin a great company.

    The road to the pad is littered with promising career or something like that…

  • Rhyolite

    :”But no matters I did not say boost back is not plausible but in teir scenario they do not reenter nozzles first. Right?”

    We have been making that assumption but I went back and looked at the video and they don’t actually show the reentry phase for the first stage. They cut from the three engine boost-back maneuver to the single engine powered decent.

    “Reusability will make space more affordable no question. But my concern was this again: SpaceX is weady to nail the LV market. Is it reasonable for them with limited resources to look at changing F9?”

    That is a valid concern. They need to get F9 and cargo Dragon into full scale production and regular service at the same time they are developing the manned version of Dragon, FH and a new launch site. They seem to be biting off a lot without embarking on and RLV development. I hope they can chew it.

    “Especially that what they showed does not look like a viable concept.”

    I don’t think they have shown us enough to decide whether it is viable or not. We can see some of the elements of their concept in the video but not the details – that’s where the devil is – and they have said they have left other elements out.

    “I say first thing first: Get the LV market, make a fortune and then think reusable. Or at least do not make major design changes that can ruin a great company.”

    That’s probably how I would do it but it not my company. They may feel they have a limited window to push the state of the art before the investors starting wanting a regular return on investment and corporate sclerosis sets in. Or maybe it’s just start-up enthusiasm getting the best of them.

  • common sense

    @ Rhyolite wrote @ October 18th, 2011 at 1:56 pm

    “They may feel they have a limited window to push the state of the art before the investors starting wanting a regular return on investment and corporate sclerosis sets in.”

    Mine neither. But if you want to avoid this kind of things you spawn the SpaceX Research Company. For example Skunk Works and Lockheed Martin at its greatness. Or possibly the SpaceShip Company and Scaled Composite…

    “Or maybe it’s just start-up enthusiasm getting the best of them.”

    At a time of unlimited budget it was told I believe that the crew of NASA Apollo 1 fell to “Moon fever”. Let’s hope we’ve learned something from that era. No Moon fever this time. No RLV fever. We are not in such a rush.

  • @Rhyolite
    “We have been making that assumption but I went back and looked at the video and they don’t actually show the reentry phase for the first stage. They cut from the three engine boost-back maneuver to the single engine powered decent. “
    Though they don’t show the rentry phase of the first stage, you will notice when they have a “looking down” view (when the first stage starts its powered landing) that there is what appears to be heat shield material on the top of the stage. By that I mean, it has the same color and cross-hatching (from tiles?) as the heat shield material on the second stage. The first stage’s reentry would be so much slower than the second stage’s that they may only need shielding on the very top end that will face the main brunt of the oncoming atmosphere during reentry. Ergo, no “nozzles first” reentry.

  • common sense

    @ Rick Boozer wrote @ October 18th, 2011 at 6:04 pm

    “Ergo, no “nozzles first” reentry.”

    Possible but highly unlikely. Think about it, first you have to flip the vehicle “nose” down to go past max-heating and max-q and then you have to flip it again nose up to land with nozzles first. And the last flip you have to do in pretty thick atmosphere. It ain’t no ol’ F-16 if you see what I mean. ;)

  • common sense

    @ Rick Boozer wrote @ October 18th, 2011 at 6:04 pm

    Oh and btw what you see on top of the first stage is not TPS but rather the tank.

  • DCSCA

    Vladislaw wrote @ October 17th, 2011 at 12:38 pm

    In fact, it is a backdoor subsidy. Just as Romney never hired illegal aliens– he let his contractors do the dirtywork– and the yardwork for him.

  • common sense

    @ Rick Boozer wrote @ October 19th, 2011 at 10:17 pm

    “Looks like TPS to me.”

    Nope I don’t think so.

    BUT here is a piece of pretty good news from nasawatch.com. Very nicely done.

    http://nasawatch.com/archives/2011/10/nasa-approves-s.html

  • Vladislaw

    DCSCA wrote:

    “In fact, it is a backdoor subsidy.”

    In fact it is not. A subsidy has to support the institution to keep it from failure, NASA’s represents less then 5%. VG’s business will not rise or fall on NASA. NASA bought a service, end of story. You can type subsidy another 1000 times, it will not make it true. Happy typing.

  • Dennis

    I dont understand why they dont just recover the boosters at sea, much like the SRBs? It would not be as difficult as making it carry extra fuel for a hard landing! They could still be recovered via a nose first water landing and then taken back to the launch pad.

  • @common sense
    “Nope I don’t think so.”
    Until SpaceX releases more details about what they actually plan, neither of us knows the answer. At best what either of us have is what my undergraduate physics professor would have referred to as a SWAG: Scientific Wild Ass Guess. As the Zen master said in the ancient parable, “We shall see.”

  • common sense

    @ Rick Boozer wrote @ October 20th, 2011 at 2:41 pm

    “Until SpaceX releases more details about what they actually plan, neither of us knows the answer.”

    Indeed. Maybe ;)

    “At best what either of us have is what my undergraduate physics professor would have referred to as a SWAG: Scientific Wild Ass Guess.”

    Possibly but you at least almost figured my other name… Scientific Wild Ass Guy

  • pathfinder_01

    “I dont understand why they dont just recover the boosters at sea, much like the SRBs? It would not be as difficult as making it carry extra fuel for a hard landing! They could still be recovered via a nose first water landing and then taken back to the launch pad.”

    SRB’s are basically empty solid steal tubes. Liquid fueled rockets are not, they are built more like airplanes or pop cans. A land landing would be prefered(no salt water to deal with and fewer crew needed to bring it back) and gentler on the structure.

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