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Reacting to China’s space white paper

Last week the Chinese government issued a white paper titled “China’s Space Activities in 2011″ that outlined the country’s recent activities in space as well as, more importantly, its plans for the next five years. Most of what that white paper included had been previously announced by Chinese officials, including robotic lunar landers, continued progress on its long-term space station plans, and development of new launch vehicles. However, the compilation of those plans into a single document have triggered a wide range of reactions in the West.

Syndicated columnist Cal Thomas sees China as “attempt[ing] to fill” a vacuum created by the US decision to cancel the Constellation program in 2010. He believes that China’s space efforts, including long-term plans for human lunar missions, have a military motivation. “Who doubts that China will use trips to the moon to build a permanent colony and will operate that colony, at least in part, to further its military goals?” he asks, without describing exactly what military purposes a lunar base would support. He also suggests that China’s satellite navigation system, which currently only serves China and surrounding regions but will be expanded globally by the end of the decade, can “jam or make mischief with America’s global positioning system network,” again without further explanation.

Thomas blames the Obama Administration for its decision in 2010 “to cut NASA’s budget” although, in fact, the administration’s FY2011 budget request, released in February 2010, called for a modest overall increase in the agency’s budget. (NASA ended up getting less money than either in that request or what it received in FY10, but that came after protracted deliberations in Congress that were not wrapped up until more than halfway into the fiscal year.) “The next president should declare a rebirth of the U.S. space program, with clear goals, such as a U.S. moon colony and a trip to Mars,” Thomas concludes. “A reduction in unnecessary government spending will help pay for it.”

Apollo 11 Buzz Aldrin also sees China’s space plans as a cause of concern in an op-ed published in The Huffington Post. “The Chinese challenge comes at a time of a dangerous convergence, the international debt crisis and a contentious, highly consequential presidential election,” he writes. “In short, 2012 is an inflection year — the year we will and must decide whether the U.S. has the will and ability to lead the world in human space exploration.”

Yet Aldrin’s prescription is very different from what Thomas argues. Aldrin makes no call for a lunar base. Instead, he supports development of commercial crew transportation systems, with NASA’s own Orion MPCV evolving “to become a dedicated exploration system” (which, arguably, is the agency’s plan today, with an ISS crew transportation role for the MPCV as a belated backup for commercial crew at best.) Much of Aldrin’s piece describes his concept for Earth-Mars “cycler” spacecraft that would reduce the launch mass required for human expeditions to the Red Planet.

“In a nutshell, the advantages — not least for the U.S. economy and permanent leadership in space — are almost incalculable if we begin from this first step,” Aldrin concludes. “On the other hand, if we wander aimlessly, pick our way from one short-term goal to another, lose vision, ambition or commitment, we will find ourselves spending the next fifty years the way we have spent the last — without significant outward movement.” That conclusion would also fit well into Thomas’s column. However, the fact that the two disagree about what direction those initial steps should take us suggests that making progress may be easier said than done.

148 comments to Reacting to China’s space white paper

  • Obama’s decision to destroy Project Constellation was the most misguided, callously ignorant blunder ever done by a President with regard to manned spaceflight! This country is going to pay a heavy price, strategically, for that horrible presidential decision, for a huge stretch of time. Our astronauts now have paltrily little to do. Could you blame them if they quit & retire quietly from NASA, in droves? Most of them now, aren’t going to get the chance to fly. It’s looking so gloomy, the future prospects: I would bet that not a single U.S. astronaut flies into space on board an American built vehicle, for the rest of the decade! Commercial Space is a wholesale fraud!! Those entrepreneur companies are flatly dependent on federal government spending to get anywhere near getting anything off the ground. They are completely relying on the continued, longer-run existence of the ISS, for their very reason-to-be! What makes a true space enthusiast so immensely mad, is to just look at all of the great, glorious, grandiose things we had to give up, just so that some rocket hobbyists could have their hour in the Sun to re-invent the wheel. So that they could launch a handful of millionaires into LEO? So that they could re-create, via a for-profit mode, the 1960’s Mercury capsule flights; [even if this time, they are taxiing those capsules to the ISS;]? So that we could do nothing else but LEO, for the next twenty years? This dismal farce of a national space program, that President Obama has created, seems destined to stand as a decade-long monument of mediocrity. The fact that the nation could’ve done so much better, but is not allowed to anymore, is cause for depression. Flexible Path has been nothing but a poison to the American space program! FP tells us that we can no longer build manned lander vehicles, simply because they are “way too difficult & expensive” to develop; yet any proposed new space craft that’d be designed to withstand the multi-months-long rigors of far-deep interplanetary space, in order to go anywhere-but-the-Moon, look in-detail to be vastly more difficult & expensive to create & develop & actually fly. Any proposed Mars lander craft, for a crew, would need far more complex engineering solutions, than would a second-generation Lunar landing one. Denying any American access to the Moon, the most easiest planetary body in which technology can permit a visit, has been the biggest thing wrong with Flexible Path! True exploration has always been about going back to where you have been; building & expanding upon the acheivements of predecessors who had reached there before. Throughout history. If the Chinese belatedly recognize all of this, and initiate a return-to-manned-Lunar-landings program, I wish them the greatest of luck! Because then, America will finally have to respond to real competition!

  • Sandholtz

    Chris Castro wrote: “Obama’s decision to destroy Project Constellation was the most misguided, callously ignorant blunder ever done by a President with regard to manned spaceflight!”

    Sorry to disagree with you. Constellation was misguided and even today the MPCV is a big blunder. There is no need for it. I can see rationale for a heavy lift booster, though there may be alternatives that are much less expensive than SLS. But I see no rationale for a throwaway capsule, especially of the size and characteristics of MPCV. If we had need for an ‘exploration capsule’ then one modified from Dragon or CST or another commercial supplier would make more sense and could have been delivered much earlier for much lower cost. The idea that MPCV is designed for beyond earth travel while the others are only for LEO is a lot of hogwash. In fact, if we had found cost effective ways to get a capsule and booster, we might have been able to afford a lunar lander too.

    What would have made more sense was systems and modules derived from the ISS that were long term, maintainable, supportable, refurbishable, not throw away at all. A few years ago what would have made sense was a Shuttle derived side-mount HLV. NASA’s lack of intelligent leadership takes us from one stupid idea to another.

  • amightywind

    Cal Thomas’ picking up on the tragic mess that is NASA is a signal that the GOP intends to make it a campaign issue. He is is right to point out that Obama decimated NASA budget in the only place that matters, NASA’s replacement for the space shuttle. You can parse words all you want about Obama’s modest NASA budget increase, but it’s only paying Obama’s crony entrepreneurs, and supporting institutional climate activism at NASA, not cutting metal and building large rockets.

    There is no doubt China has military ambitions in space with the Tiangong battle station. I am comforted by the fact that the US military hasnoticed it.

    Aldrin is a quixotic crank who lost his influence to shape events when he stood in support Obama and his bandits at NASA during his ruinous KSC speech.

  • @Chris Castro
    “Denying any American access to the Moon, the most easiest planetary body in which technology can permit a visit, has been the biggest thing wrong with Flexible Path!”
    More hysteria from you with your usual associated weird looooong Alice-In-Wonderland (as in rambling and babbling) disjointed rant.

    The most effective way of denying American access to the Moon is the continuation of SLS. Booz-Allen has said it can only stay within budget for a few years. NASA itself has research results that indicate SLS is not necessary and even if it were built, it would be both impractical more expensive than alternatives:
    http://images.spaceref.com/news/2011/21jul2011.pdf

  • Doug Lassiter

    amightywind wrote @ January 6th, 2012 at 9:15 am
    “There is no doubt China has military ambitions in space with the Tiangong battle station. I am comforted by the fact that the US military hasnoticed it.”

    I was inclined to consider this just sloppy journalism, but I am struck by the similarity of the orbits. Spaceflight reports that the orbital inclination of X-37B is now 42.8 degrees. Exactly that for Tiangdong (for which the orbital inclination is similar to that for previous Shenzhou missions). That’s certainly not a coincidence. The orbit for X-37B is about thirty miles higher than Tiangdong, but you can see a lot from that distance every time you swing past, which you do regularly.

    That being said, what surprised me about the new space white paper from China is how non-committal that country is about putting humans on the Moon. “Who doubts that China will use trips to the moon to build a permanent colony and will operate that colony, at least in part, to further its military goals?”, Cal Thomas asks. Well, with the release of this white paper, just about everybody can doubt that.

    But the white paper does serve notice that space capability, quite aside from colonizing the lunar surface, is of paramount importance to China. Of some interest is the fact that China doesn’t seem to put any emphasis on development of what we would call a HLV. In fact, with regard to human space flight, this white paper sounds a lot like our flexible path. Seems to me that’s where the real challenge is that they’re offering.

  • Robert G. Oler

    “Who doubts that China will use trips to the moon to build a permanent colony and will operate that colony, at least in part, to further its military goals?”>>

    Well almost anyone whose notion of military strategery consist of something more then simple fear mongering and is grounded in reality.

    What the GOP is good at these days (and Cal is one of their shrills) is taking almost anything and turning it into a sinister threat. They are amazing in their leaps of logic. One minor thing (say a primitive Chinese aircraft carrier, a carrier with less capability then CV 16 which is a museum ship in Corpus …) turns into a major naval building program…and then a threat to take the Pacific into their domain.

    Thomas does this here. No matter how many times Taylor D. or Mark Whittington or Wind or any blow hard from Fox tries to spin any sort of lunar effort as a military one; there is no serious military use of the Moon.

    Think of it this way. During the Bush years military spending was almost unquestioned…we bought one goofy thing after another…and no ONE NO ONE in the administration proposed going back to the Moon as an answer to anything military.

    (the same could be said of the Chinese navigation system which is no different in its purpose then Galileo).

    the tragedy of the right wing is that they are EASILY bought, easily excited into making the smallest thing seem as if it is the start of the next cold war. Bush used this to launch his goofy adventures and now we are treating the Iranians as, what was Newts words “Hitler” and “Nazi German”…and Iran is a country that has less industrial output then Mississippi (if that is possible).

    I see Wind has already refered to the Chinese space station as a “battle station”…goofy

    Why is the right wing so in need of an enemy? Anyway it is nothing to base space policy and politics on…

    Robert G. Oler

  • Robert G. Oler

    amightywind wrote @ January 6th, 2012 at 9:15 am

    There is no doubt China has military ambitions in space with the Tiangong battle station. I am comforted by the fact that the US military hasnoticed it.”

    It is not as funny as the Rumsfeldian claims that the Iraqis under Saddam were going to launch balsa wood drones from tankers to attack our cities with their non existent WMD’s.

    But its funny Really funny RGO

  • Egad

    > I was inclined to consider this just sloppy journalism, but I am struck by the similarity of the orbits. Spaceflight reports that the orbital inclination of X-37B is now 42.8 degrees.

    Check out the RAANs of the two satellites. The orbits are actually far from coplanar and any encounters will be infrequent and very short, like seconds.

  • Coastal Ron

    Chris Castro wrote @ January 6th, 2012 at 8:09 am

    First of all Chris, you need to learn about paragraph breaks. Man, one long boring paragraph really makes peoples eyes glaze over.

    Our astronauts now have paltrily little to do.

    LOL. I think it’s really funny when Cx supporters conveniently forget that the Bush/Griffin plan was to remove all of our personnel from space for over a decade, and then just do a couple of flags & footprints missions – leaving no one in space. Their plan decimated the astronaut corp, but with the ISS we have a destination that requires a constant stream of trained astronauts and scientists through at least the end of this decade. And they are doing real work – figuring out how to live, work and survive in space – instead of riding in a tin can or picking up rocks.

    Commercial Space is a wholesale fraud!

    LOL again. Boeing, ULA, Orbital Sciences, and Sierra Nevada Corp. are all frauds? You my friend live in Cloud Cuckoo Land.

  • Sorry Oler but Iraq was a paper tiger. But China is a real tiger!

    And the ruling oligarchy in China’s attempt to economically and strategically dominate both the heavens and the Earth– is no joke!

  • SpaceMan

    Sounds like someone opened the gates of the kennel of the Dogs of Hysteria this morning.

    Get a grip people, history isn’t written in a couple of months or years.

  • Robert G. Oler

    amightywind wrote @ January 6th, 2012 at 9:15 am

    “There is no doubt China has military ambitions in space with the Tiangong (space module)” I substituted the words in paren sorry I just couldnt do “BS” without well laughing at the bull.

    However I am pretty certain you are correct here…that the Chinese have ambitions for the Tiangong space modules or their successors which are in some part military in nature.

    Oddly enough they might be the same that the US military has for the X37 class of vehicles and some other followons they are thinking about.

    The reality of space assets is that we are coming to the point where the ability to service military space assets (including improve them) is starting to come together. The Holy grail of space recee assets is 1 meter resolution all the time any time anywhere on the Earth…and thats a Geo market most likely with large mirrors and probably a serviceable system.

    The Reds no doubt have looked at the same numbers.

    Sadly for folks like you…all these assets are stabilizing assets in terms of maintaining the peace. But I would not be surprised to see the Chinese looking at large space platforms in Geo orbit that are recee assets in almost all wavelengths. we are

    Robert

  • Egad

    An observer set up this tracking page for them: http://www.n2yo.com/?s=37820|37375

    It shows that they’re currently far apart and, more importantly, the ground tracks and thus the orbits are at close to perpendicular to each other.

  • common sense

    @amightywind wrote @ January 6th, 2012 at 9:15 am

    “There is no doubt China has military ambitions in space with the Tiangong battle station.”

    Battle station? Nah! Death Star? A huge cylindrical piece of metal with suspicious empty space inside. All this empty space MUST hide something sinister. And we need NASA to go look inside..

    “I am comforted by the fact that the US military hasnoticed it.”

    Oh me too. Let’s hope they do not find some guy from Iran who knows how to get into the GNC of the X-37. Never know. It can happen. After delivering a CIA drone to Iran we might deliver an AF drone to China. How cool would that be? Then we can always demand they return it to us. I believe China once returned an Orion to us, did they not? Bad, bad people.

    http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/12/iran-drone-hack-gps/

    http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL30946.pdf

    “Aldrin is a quixotic crank who lost his influence to shape events when he stood in support Obama and his bandits at NASA during his ruinous KSC speech.”

    Look who’s talking. Cornell EE? Whose accomplishments are? Did you not once babble about Jeff Greason? All those bad people right?

  • Robert G. Oler

    Doug Lassiter wrote @ January 6th, 2012 at 11:25 am

    Yeah hang out on the Seesat board and this has been noticed for sometime and the military implications of it pretty much dismissed.

    At times the orbital tracks phase so there is some dwell time but at other times the tracks are nearly opposite of each other almost “perpendicular” with not a lot of substantial crossing opportunities.

    The Reds put the vehicle in that inclination for obvious reasons…X37? They clearly had a lot of delta vee with the Centaur so they could have done a lot of things, even some dog legs but the most likely explanation it seems to me is that the vehicle, if it has some ground based recee assets is designed for a higher number of look times over points of interest in Africa and the Mideast then the Chinese space station.

    Right now this instant for instance my tracking program shows both the Space Station and X-37 not having a lot of mutual opportunities to “see” each other. (or course the elements I have for X-37 are amateur ones ie generated off Seesat )

    This is sloppy journalism. RGO

  • Robert G. Oler

    Marcel F. Williams wrote @ January 6th, 2012 at 12:40 pm

    “Sorry Oler but Iraq was a paper tiger. But China is a real tiger!

    And the ruling oligarchy in China’s attempt to economically and strategically dominate both the heavens and the Earth– is no joke!”

    Economic and strategic domination of anyplace does not necessarily require military power…only the right wing of the GOP thinks that.

    When Ike did not like what the French and Brits and Israelis were doing in the Suez effort…he didnt even put the 6th fleet on alert. He simply had the Secretary of the Treasury start selling Franks and Pounds and cut off the Israelis from dollars.

    All three currencies started flying to collapse and all three countries got the message…stop.

    If one believes the notions of SDI what helped (at least) the Soviets go under is spending that their economy could not afford on things which essentially did nothing to help their economy.

    The US essentially in the last decade engaged in its own version of SDI counterbuild. We invaded and spent a lot of money in Iraq and Afland on nothing that actually helped the US economy grow more competitive.

    Now people like you would advocate a lunar effort which spends a lot of money but which you cannot justify a single reason for doing so…that even in the long run helps the US economy…it just spends money.

    If the Chinese put a module on the Moon and wrote on it “Laser battle station” the GOP right wing would think it was.

    RGO

  • Coastal Ron

    Golly gosh, China wants to do what the U.S, Soviet Union/Russia, Europe, Japan, Canada, India, Brazil and many other countries have been doing – expand their activities in space. Wow, that was hard to predict.

    At the pace they are going, it will be another 20 years or so until they can build a space station the size of the ISS, and it will be likely more than 10 years before they can mount a “flags & footprints” type of lunar excursion.

    Now if I remember correctly, we have thousands of nuclear warheads that we can use to obliterate the entire world, and we have the largest military in the world, by far. Now take into account that China gets most of it’s foreign revenue from friendly relations with America and our allies, and that China holds a small but significant amount of our debt (~8%), and I don’t see a basis for China to act aggressively to the U.S. Sure they want to defend their economic security, just like we do, but we’re far from butting heads on that right now.

    I don’t see them any differently than any other country that is trying to eat our lunch economically, and I certainly don’t see them doing anything in space that we haven’t already done. If we’re going to make up excuses to give NASA more money, we’re going to need something better than this China one…

  • amightywind

    After mastering manned orbital flight with the Soyuz, Russia’s first order of business was to set up a surveillance and weapons platform in the Salyut. It supposedly housed an artillery rifle. Who knows what is housed on the Tiangong? My guess is they could make quite a mess in LEO if they wanted.The Chinese are now going through precisely the same exercise with Shenzhou and Tiangong. They are working their way through the 1960’s and into the ’70s. One wonders what they will do when they run out of things to copy in the current era. Buy SpaceX probably.

    Whose accomplishments are?

    Its not about little old me. Its about American space. Buzz is free to refute me.

  • common sense

    @ amightywind wrote @ January 6th, 2012 at 2:05 pm

    “It supposedly housed an artillery rifle.”

    Oh come on! It did not work as intended, way too expensive. We had similar programs that never made it either. There are more effective ways to wage battles in space, possibly from Earth. Don’t you know????

    “My guess is they could make quite a mess in LEO if they wanted.”

    Sure but why with a station that might be in the middle of the mess they create?

    “They are working their way through the 1960′s and into the ’70s. One wonders what they will do when they run out of things to copy in the current era.”

    Okay we still have what? 4 decades to go…

    “Buy SpaceX probably.”

    It would help our trade balance deficit. And at least they would buy stuff from us, not the other way around. But more importantly what could they do with SpaceX???

    “Buzz is free to refute me.”

    I suspect Buzz does not care one bit of people with pseudonyms on the Internet. Unless maybe if they make sensible claims which has not been your forte so far.

  • amightywind

    The Holy grail of space recee assets is 1 meter resolution all the time any time anywhere on the Earth…and thats a Geo market most likely with large mirrors and probably a serviceable system.

    A satellite has visibility to less than 1/3 of the earth’s surface at GEO. The distance works against you for one meter resolution. It is a good place to hunt for missile plumes, but a horrendously bad place to track a terrorist and put ordinance on him. It is much better to use a LEO constellation or just a drone. Geo observation platforms belong on the same newspace scrap heap as fuel depots.

  • Doug Lassiter

    Egad wrote @ January 6th, 2012 at 1:09 pm
    “It shows that they’re currently far apart and, more importantly, the ground tracks and thus the orbits are at close to perpendicular to each other.”

    Thanks. Very helpful. You make a very good point. It takes more than the inclinations to be identical. The line of the apsides has to be as well, in order to do surveillance over a decent period. They sure aren’t right now. The orbits will precess at slightly different rates. So at some point they will be aligned, if just briefly. I do find it very curious that the inclinations are identical to within a fraction of a degree.

  • common sense

    China’s threat is so 20th Century…

    http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=39513

    ETs are coming to eat our lunch… Time to partner with China! We need the Ares D!!!

    Whatever…

  • We can thank President Obama for killing the waste that was Constellation.

    Even as underfunded by GOP House last year. NASA is in a much stronger position to challenge China with the “New Commercial” efforts underway. SLS properly funded would leave China in the dust, as is it detracts from US overall capabilities for a decade or more giving China a window to catchup and overtake.

  • gregori

    A Chinese orbital battle station makes no sense. Keeping humans alive in space is expensive and they add nothing to it. A couple of grams traveling at orbital velocity are enough to puncture this so called “battle station” and kill whomever is inside. Humans are essentially defenseless up there. There are any number of things you can do to attack a space station, but there are not a lot of things the space station can do back except be a sitting duck.

    Taking humans out of the loop is going to predominate the future of war. Helicopters and bombers are doing their missions without a pilot in the actual vehicle. Cars that drive themselves are already available and this can be extended to other vehicles.

    Besides, both powers involved here have ICBM thermonuclear warheads. I would be a lot more scared of those than someone floating armed wth a peashooter in a tin can in a visible known orbit.

    There would be no mystery about what China was doing with it’s station if they had simply been allowed to join the ISS and add their module to the station. The US would even have redundant access to crew transport right away in the event of a Soyuz failure or the Russians trying to charge too much. The US already buys everything else from China, make a stand over something as trivial as human spaceflight seems petty and childish.

  • Aberwys

    I agree with CS: one world united against ETs!

    Let’s find someone far away to focus our aggressive tendencies towards!

    Let’s show our planetary might across light years!

    Happy Friday (the threat is not China, it’s our lack of an economic driver in our economy)

  • It’s amazing that we keep coming back to this nonsense.

    Among other things, one reason China will never attack us is that their economy’s foundation is based on our long-term payment of the debt we owe them. If they attack us, those payments end and their economy collapses.

    Even if they did spend the trillions to build and staff a military outpost on the Moon, in the four days it would take a missile to reach here we could wipe out their country with a full-out nuclear strike.

  • Robert G. Oler

    amightywind wrote @ January 6th, 2012 at 2:32 pm

    “A satellite has visibility to less than 1/3 of the earth’s surface at GEO. The distance works against you for one meter resolution. It is a good place to hunt for missile plumes, but a horrendously bad place to track a terrorist and put ordinance on him.”

    distance requires larger mirrors, we are not building the sats for terrorist a threat that is overstated…you use drones to track terrorist and put ordnance on them F minus for you RGO

  • SpaceMan

    the threat is not China, it’s our lack of an economic driver in our economy

    Which boils down to a lack of leadership in Congress over the long term (last 30 + years). Mr. Juncker “gets it”.

    “We all know what to do, but we don’t know how to get reelected once we have done it.” – Jean-Claude Juncker

  • common sense

    I think there is some threat from China and actually from Asia. It is economic dominance.

    Not a military threat.

    As the chinese economy grows and they become more and more wealthy they will start buying services. Today cheap labor and cheap services essentially are in Asia, in China. But it will change. When? I don’t know. But the people of China will most likely start to demand more benefits for their labor such as health, retirement and the likes. Seeing how we keep devaluing those benefits in the US and how they become less and less affordable, in the end we might become the cheap labor source. And maybe it only is a cycle.

    But once China has made the necessary changes to their society (it will probably not be a US like democracy) and they no longer need infusion of technology from us, what will they need? You think it is far fetched? Well, look where China was only 10 years ago. What if they were doing us a Reagan trick? Spend crazy amounts on wars (that they partially financed through our debt) on a nutty SLS/MPCV until we outspend ourselves, on idiotic healthcare system, etc? Until we can no longer afford to invest in the necessary things for our society to thrive. Then what?

    If you think that a battle-station is a threat then you have no clue as to what China might be as a threat and you will lead this country into oblivion.

    For once people, THINK.

  • @ Chris Castro:

    “Our astronauts now have paltrily little to do. Could you blame them if they quit & retire quietly from NASA, in droves?”

    And just how many flight opportunities did you think Constellation was ever going to offer the NASA Astronaut Corps? The first manned Orion/Ares-1 would not have been until 2017, and doing little that Apollo-7 didn’t already do…

    And Ares 5 would come, how many years after that? Flown (somewhere) how often? One, maybe two Lunar missions per year? (and circumlunar repeats of Apollo-8, until money for lander development appears from somewhere…there are cheaper ways to just do Lunar orbit, if that’s all you want. And the affordable mission rate would certainly be no greater once you had something like Altair. )

    Even in that environment, I’d be leaving and looking for Commercial Crew work, too.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Stephen C. Smith wrote @ January 6th, 2012 at 6:31 pm

    It’s amazing that we keep coming back to this nonsense.>>

    no it is a sign of both our politics and almost a half century of human spaceflight that has failed to develop any real solid reason to continue the effort.

    our politics are such that the GOP is now run by people who cater to a base that really needs an enemy. Gingrich and the rest of the GOP field have a country, Iran, which has less of an industrial base then Mississippi (and that is last in our country ) now being Nazi Germany…why? They need some reason to sustain the Military industrial complex…which is part of the GOP money machine.

    Space politics? There is no real reason for human spaceflight to continue after almost half a century of it…other then well…rhetorical ones. I think that can change, but it will never change as long as the rhetorical reasons are where all the money is thrown…but those notions feed into both pork (that explains the Dem involvement in it) and the “Leadership/greatpower” nonesense that the GOP throws out.

    The Chinese are a threat…it is an economic one and that threat is hard to face up to. It requires essentially dumping GOP economics and trying to protect the industrial base in this country; but the GOP is only interested in that for defense…because cheap goods are important.

    So we are hanging on with the politics of the Chinese trying to take over the Moon. Sigh

    RGO

  • @Frank Glover;…..Look man, Commercial Crew is a wholesale fiction!! As for repeats of the past: some modest-goal demonstration flights will always be necessary. I would completely expect an Apollo 7-type of LEO flight, plus an Apollo 9-type of flight, in order to prove the initial viability of both the Orion CEV & the Altair L-SAM spacecrafts, in LEO space in the beginning. But the beauty of it is that: We will NOT be hovering in LEO for long!! The primary mission of Constellation was the Moon, NOT taxiing crews to a damned LEO space station!! Hence, an Apollo 10-type of mission, would definitely have been next in the works, in order to test fly the Orion-Altair stack all the way out to lunar orbit, and ride out the details of spending multiple days circling the Moon way out there. Nothing wrong with that! Then, following those shakedown cruises, an Apollo 17-plus-type of manned landing would take place, lasting anywhere from four days to a fortnight, on the surface. [Maybe the option of leaving one crewman on board the Orion orbiter craft, could be done, as an extra safety measure, during the first few landings.] Sortie landings at various selenologically intriguing sites would continue. Once an unmanned, automatic variant of the Altair was developed, one-way uncrewed landings would begin, emplacing large-mass cargo & supplies upon an outpost site. A later-landed crew would afterwards put together a base, either for an extended surface stay, or for the first permanent installation. And guess what?—unlike Skylab, we wouldn’t have to worry about it crashing back down to Earth. If the astronaut visits there were intermittent, that’d still be okay!

  • gregori

    @Chris Castro

    That’s a nice list of the things you would like to see happen. Its not a list of the things that are going to happen. There is no money to develop an Altair or launch it regularly.

  • @Chris Castro
    I think you need a few more exclamation points! If you don’t have anything that makes practical economic sense, a little emphatic punctuation makes up for it! In my comments all of this time I have been confusing you and everyone else with logic and common sense! But you have shown me that all I need to get my point across are more exclamations! You have won me over to your side! SLS is the way to go because of !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Oops, also forgot I need to put all of my thoughts into one paragraph, even when one paragraph for each primary thought makes it more readable! It doesn’t have to be readable or understandable as long as I KNOW I’m right! To hell with documented evidence to the contrary! Just forgive me for now because it’s going to take a while to get all of that education out of my head!

    ;)

  • @gregori:

    There is no money to develop an Altair or launch it regularly.

    Sure there is. There’s north of $10 billion a year for it, $5 billion if you’re being conservative.

  • @Coastal Ron:

    At the pace they are going, it will be another 20 years or so until they can build a space station the size of the ISS

    By your dubious yardstick, try 40 to 80 years (depending on whether we’re talking total mass to evolved mass put in space). Your forecasts are looking more and more like gut speculation.

    …and it will be likely more than 10 years before they can mount a “flags & footprints” type of lunar excursion.

    It will likely be ten years before the US can mount any sort of manned lunar mission.

    Now if I remember correctly, we have thousands of nuclear warheads that we can use to obliterate the entire world…

    So that’s why the past sixty years or so have been utterly peaceful.

    …and we have the largest military in the world, by far.

    No, America doesn’t.

    Now take into account that China gets most of it’s foreign revenue from friendly relations with America and our allies, and that China holds a small but significant amount of our debt (~8%), and I don’t see a basis for China to act aggressively to the U.S.

    If you define “aggression” to exclude anything short of direct, armed confrontation, you barely have a point.

    Sure they want to defend their economic security, just like we do, but we’re far from butting heads on that right now.

    China’s principle goal vis a vis the United States is achieving parity in the Western Pacific. Historically, this pursuit of this objective has not proven costly to Beijing’s economic interests.

    I don’t see them any differently than any other country that is trying to eat our lunch economically, and I certainly don’t see them doing anything in space that we haven’t already done.

    You do know that the US isn’t just launching Carebears into space, right?

    If we’re going to make up excuses to give NASA more money, we’re going to need something better than this China one…

    The Chinese bid to compete in space has nothing to do with NASA’s budget, though it may have implications for DoD space priorities. As a matter of national space policy, however, the US should consider any move Beijing makes to develop cislunar space a threat.

  • Robert G. Oler

    The Economic utilization of near Earth Space.

    in large measure, to me anyway the right wing Cal Thomas (and others) driven debate over Chinese military intentions concerning human spaceflight obscures the real issues…

    the confrontation over the next decade or two between US and Chinese space efforts is likely to be over which country can field an economically viable space use system; including uncrewed but also crewed assets. In large measure because I think that eventually uncrewed military (and possible large civilian) assets will require human servicing…if that can be made economically useful.

    We should in my view examine why the Soviets never were able to do much of anything in human spaceflight militarily, in fact in any form other then just keep people in orbit for long periods of time. Frankly I dont think that they had the technology to do anything very useful in spaceflight. As Phobos Grunt in my view proves the Soviets/Russians are not capable of complex technological efforts. This legacy goes all the way back to the first and only payload for the uncrewed Energia. If you believe the legends this payload is a large almost “battlestation” type platform that hangs up on a fairly minor malfunction.

    I dont think that this is a problem with the Chinese. The Reds have access to western technology of course; but they also have internally mechanisms that embrace that technology and modify it and its use for their economic and cultural system. The Soviets never really had that.

    We have uber technology (at least in our military systems) to thepoint where we have at times priced even ourselves out of the market mostly in my view due to a decades long “deembrace” of innovation.

    The battle over the next few decades is going to be as to which country (US or PRC) can innovate new uses of human spaceflight and do so in an affordable manner…if that happens then the uses of human spaceflight are in my view going to multiply enormously.

    I dont know what X-37 is really doing…but I do know (and this just from public sources) what the USN is doing. The Navy is on the brink of 1) buying a crewed replacement for the P-3…but it is 2) buying and testing a drone replacement for the P-3 which is a) air to air refuelable and 2) armed with c) multi day endurance’s….that will change the notion of submarine warfare far more then the P-8 will.

    The race is between a society with a controlled government industrial base (the PRC) and a society that at least in theory embraces technological and free enterprise innovation.

    To the winner in my view lies dominance in human spaceflight…and its economic and other national returns

    Robert

  • vulture4

    I work with several people from both China and Taiwan. The idea of a space race with the US is laughable. If they lost, they would look incompetent. if they won, they would irritate their biggest customer. The US and China are economic rivals, but not adversaries. It’s doubtful either country could afford even a protracted “cold war”, and it would be absurd since there is little difference between the two countries in ideology.

    Most of the buzz about military conflict in space comes from people within NASA and other space enthusiasts who are caught in a time warp from the 60’s and think they will get a blank check to run to the moon and play golf. Paradoxically they do not remember that in the Sixties they paid much higher income taxes to finance it.

  • DCSCA

    “There is no real reason for human spaceflight to continue after almost half a century of it…other then well…rhetorical ones.”

    Your disdain for HSF is well documented on this forum. Oler’s the same fella who insisted the PRC has had no plans to head moonward- in spite of past evidence to the contrary and now this fresh white paper. ‘Wong’ as usual.

  • Coastal Ron

    Prez Cannady wrote @ January 7th, 2012 at 12:33 pm

    The Chinese bid to compete in space has nothing to do with NASA’s budget, though it may have implications for DoD space priorities.

    Some do equate China’s efforts in space with NASA’s budget. I don’t, but people that perceive China’s efforts in space as nefarious do.

    As a matter of national space policy, however, the US should consider any move Beijing makes to develop cislunar space a threat.

    Threat to what? What will their expansion do to affect us? Toll booths at L1? They get first dibs on building McNoodles on the Moon? Provide some examples.

  • DCSCA

    “Syndicated columnist Cal Thomas sees China as “attempt[ing] to fill” a vacuum created by the US decision to cancel the Constellation program in 2010.”

    Cal Thomas is simply hitting a wedge issue against Obama and Thomas’s knowledge base as a ‘go to’ authority is nil. Aldrin’s effort to rekindle focus on manned missions to Mars may be an exercise in stating the obvious, long-term, but the methodology- that is, ‘what next’ and the ‘way to go’ remains the real focus of debate in the near future. This ‘visit an asteroid’ stuff is just a waste of dwindling resources. Send a robotic probe, not people. Then there’s the other side of Buzz. The showbiz Buzz who weakened his ‘gravatas’ by moonwalking at a Canadian WWF event and yelled at the moon, “I walked on your face!” in an episode of ’30 Rock’ w/Tina Fey. Hard to shake those images w/t younger generation.

    Kraft’s on the right track for a long-term, 25-30 year space project of scale. His musings for tapping existing global assets, developing a g/p spacecraft, a return to the moon to perfect systems, procedures and hardware as well as long-stay habitation techniques is the way it will be done- a la Gemini was for Apollo- then when proficency and confidence coincide, launch out on a Martian expedition. And make no mistake- a 300 million mile manned mission to Mars makes the Apollo landings look like a trip to your local 7/11. Getting people out to Mars, down on it and back off it, then back safely to Earth is going to be a complicated, costly and dangerous endeavor in this era so the rationale to go has to be a good one in the Age of Austerity and a ‘geopolitical’ race to leave footprints and flags isn’t it. Of course, the immediate heavy-lift debate for lunar and Martian missions goes on w/moonwalker and former NM Senator Schmitt supporting it.

    Still, as more robotic Martian probes survive the trip out (and unlike the latest one- get cheaper) and return a flood of imagery and data on Martian conditions, the question remains on whether it’s worth sending manned missions there for two year stays given the state of the art and the budgets available at this time. What’s the hurry? Ultimately it is an inevitable objective to be sure someday, but the infrastructure, architecture and most importantly, the funding to finance it as a go-alone U.S. expedition simply isn’t there in the Age of Austerity.

  • E.P. Grondine

    I hope that some here will remember that I was the first journalist to spot China’s renewed manned program.

    If you do remember that, then perhaps you may begin to understand why from 1997 to 2005 until stopped by my stroke I worked on the impact hazard.

    I have emphasized multiple times that China’s space program is 1)commercial and 2) a diplomatic tool.

    The Chinese have claimed may times that they do not want the weaponization of space, but I wil not comment now as that is well beyond me.

    AW, the fault lies with ATK, a crummy company which could not deliver a crummy launcher anywhere near on time or on budget. And when it comes to cronyism…

    China has stated that they will be unable to match SpaceX’s launch prices. We will see if SpaceX can deliver.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Prez Cannady wrote @ January 7th, 2012 at 12:05 pm

    @gregori:

    There is no money to develop an Altair or launch it regularly.

    Sure there is. There’s north of $10 billion a year for it, $5 billion if you’re being conservative.>>

    goofy and do nothing else…a political non starter RGO

  • gregori

    @Prez Cannady

    Would that be Monopoly money?

  • @ Chris castro:

    “@Frank Glover;…..Look man, Commercial Crew is a wholesale fiction!!”

    I’m sure that the CC companies who have actually cut metal and composites for their vehicles, would be quite surprised to hear that. How much has Son of Constellation actually built so far? (besides Orion, which can, and apparently will, still be launched to LEO for testing, on something that already exists.)

    “Apollo 9-type of flight, in order to prove the initial viability of both the Orion CEV & the Altair L-SAM spacecrafts,”

    And where in the current or expected NASA budget does it call for development of anything like Altair? Pointless though it is, at least money has been allocated for SLS for now.

    “The primary mission of Constellation was the Moon, NOT taxiing crews to a damned LEO space station!!”

    As if there was nothing more for humans to do in LEO for all time, and it absolutely no longer matters. But yes, it absolutely *is* overkill for that function. Thus, Commercial Crew.

    As for the rest, where do you think the money for this will come from? The necessary increase in the NASA budget to possibly enable that, is *not* happening. Nor would it be the best use of that money to achieve a human Lunar presence, if ti did.

    “And guess what?—unlike Skylab, we wouldn’t have to worry about it crashing back down to Earth.”

    And yet, Skylab and anything else in LEO is easier to reach. (and we now have orbital re-boost options that didn’t exist for Skylab) Is that the best you can say? Spend billions inefficiently, because the Moon won’t de-orbit?

    “If the astronaut visits there were intermittent, that’d still be okay!”

    For what the mission cost would be, ‘intermittent’ is all that you could possibly hope for. And my idea of Lunar exploration and utilization requires something more than ‘intermittent’ presence, which Son of Constellation is simply too expensive to support.

    Apollo is over. Returning to the Moon need not, and should not look like it.

  • @Coastal Ron

    Some do equate China’s efforts in space with NASA’s budget. I don’t, but people that perceive China’s efforts in space as nefarious do.

    Some people equate space period with NASA, despite the fact that DoD $10 billion last year on space related activities (that figure ran up to $20 billion not more than five years ago). To harp on this point is nothing more than pedantry; it’s obvious to everyone we’re talking about national space priorities as a whole.

    Threat to what?

    The Seventh Fleet for starters.

    What will their expansion do to affect us?

    Increase their capacity to cover and position across the Pacific.

    Toll booths at L1? They get first dibs on building McNoodles on the Moon?

    You seem to have this stubborn notion that the value of anything up there can only be realized further out.

  • @Oler:

    goofy and do nothing else…a political non starter.

    Give me a break. SMD exists to give national launch something to do. This seems to be something you’re crowd never learned to appreciate, which explains your quixotic fixation on SLS.

  • If there is no money to develop the Altair lunar lander nor to launch it regularly, what makes all of you so sure that there’ll be dung-loads of money to develop, build & fly a far-deep space/ interplanetary habitation module, and send it out to rendezvous with a dinky asteroid??! Ha! Sure, designing a new lunar lander is impossible—-but why don’t we go ahead and develop a nautilus-type of habitat module, plus a manned Mars lander-craft while we’re at it!! Recall if you will, that a nautilus module would need to withstand the rigors of interplanetary space for several months at a time, with no resupply from Earth at any point in its supposed asteroid-reaching journey. Since Flexible Path forbids us from ever venturing Moonward, there could never be a Lunar shakedown cruise, of the to-be-used hardware—-just more easy-street test-flying of it, in LEO, where regular earth resupply would be a simple snap to do; plus the earthian ionosphere would be there to shield you from the worse of space radiation. (Safe as kittens within the Van Allen Belts, once again.)

  • Doug Lassiter

    DCSCA wrote @ January 7th, 2012 at 3:49 pm
    “Oler’s the same fella who insisted the PRC has had no plans to head moonward- in spite of past evidence to the contrary and now this fresh white paper.”

    I’m a little confused here. If anything, this new white paper dramatically reduces the degree to which China looks like it’s desperate to land people on the Moon. Did you really read it? There is one reference to human space flight and the Moon in many pages of policy. One sentence.

    “China will conduct studies on the preliminary plan for a human lunar landing.”

    Doesn’t say they will. Doesn’t say they’ll even try. Doesn’t say it’s a priority. Just says that they’ll study a preliminary plan. That’s just about the weakest statement of commitment I could imagine.

    Now China may well have deep, dark, and concerted plans to colonize and conquer the Moon, but this white paper sure doesn’t say that, at least as far as I can see. The interpretation that this white paper is proof of the motives of China to put their people on the Moon seems quite bizarre. What am I missing?

  • DCSCA

    @Doug Lassiter wrote @ January 8th, 2012 at 12:41 am
    =yawn= yeah….sort of like, “I believe this nation should commit itself before this decade is out of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth.” One sentence works wonders, doesn’t it. Of course, they’ve noted same in earlirt papers in recent years as well

  • Now China may well have deep, dark, and concerted plans to colonize and conquer the Moon, but this white paper sure doesn’t say that, at least as far as I can see. The interpretation that this white paper is proof of the motives of China to put their people on the Moon seems quite bizarre. What am I missing?

    You are missing the fact that people worried about China taking over the moon are idiots.

  • pathfinder_01

    Well Chris one of the nice things about using commercial is that you might not have to develop everything all at once. It is rather the difference between me attempting to make my own bread totally from scratch (need rotting fruit or leftover bread dough or yeast from beer for yeast-and this culture must be feed/maintained regularly (time), need to grow and process wheat (more time and money), ect., need to mine salt, need to fetch water) and either buying a premade loaf or buying the items I need commercially (i.e. Flour, yeast, salt from store), water from tap et. One of these methods will be both faster and cheaper and require less startup money than the other.

    A bigleow module could be an excellent starting point for a habitation module for a NEO mission or a L1 space station. A modified Cygnus might be a bit small but again could be used to store supplies or maybe as an airlock. Both are more available than any lunar lander. Both are light enough that they don’t need a heavy lift vehicle to get to deep space.

    Also Flexible path does not prevent lunar shake down cruises. The idea of flexible path was that we would no longer be committed to the fiction of a CXP lunar landing. We would go where budgets and technology allow instead of attempting redoing Apollo, like Apollo, without an Apollo budget to go with it. (In other words spinning our wheels spending a lot of money and watching the proposed date of landing slip and slip into the future).

    Also depends on the NEO. You can get to some NEO in a few weeks others take longer. You would go for longer and longer missions. Also one nice thing about a NEO mission with electric propulsion is it is possible for your habitation module to return for reuse. The crew would depart early but the hab module could return to a high earth orbit like an L point.

    As for resupply, well one of the nice thing is you could bring the thing back to LEO but that would be wasteful. You could simply use the EELV to resupply a craft in high earth orbit between missions. Also something the size of sundance could hold enough supply for 3-4 people for 3 months or so.

  • @Lassiter:

    I’m a little confused here. If anything, this new white paper dramatically reduces the degree to which China looks like it’s desperate to land people on the Moon.

    “Desperate” is your word choices, and the white paper reduces nothing. It reaffirms the schedule that we’ve known the Chang’e program would pursue for the next five years, and is the first official word that Beijing is considering mounting manned missions following.

    Did you really read it? There is one reference to human space flight and the Moon in many pages of policy. One sentence.

    Not surprising, since the manned space flight section is 4 sentences, and the overarching purpose of the white paper is to report progress and next steps in current space activities. Lunar discussion is limited to the second-phase “orbit, land, ascent” (《绕、落、回》) plan.

    Doesn’t say they will. Doesn’t say they’ll even try. Doesn’t say it’s a priority. Just says that they’ll study a preliminary plan. That’s just about the weakest statement of commitment I could imagine

    Attempting to divine present, let alone future, intentions in the face of China’s improving capability is a piss-poor basis for setting counter-policy.

    Now China may well have deep, dark, and concerted plans to colonize and conquer the Moon, but this white paper sure doesn’t say that, at least as far as I can see.

    It says China is on track for completing the Chang’e project, and that it presently has enough experience to proceed to the planning preliminaries for manned cislunar spaceflight and lunar landing.

    The interpretation that this white paper is proof of the motives of China to put their people on the Moon seems quite bizarre. What am I missing?

    About a decade of context.

  • @Simberg:

    You are missing the fact that people worried about China taking over the moon are idiots.

    A group that consists of virtually no one. China needn’t take over the moon to pose a threat to America, no more than America need conquer it in order to vastly reinforce its presence dominance in space.

  • vulture4

    Motivation is the key issue. The motivation of China’s _human_ spaceflight program is not to “defeat” the US in a “race”, nor is it to claim any mythical lunar resources or create direct military threats. It is to demonstrate, to both the domestic and foreign audience, that China is a member of the exclusive club of world leaders. China’s preference was to achieve this by being invited to join the ISS program, a strategy that would have been more desirable for the US as well as China since it would have helped to diffuse tension between the nuclear powers, but this was defeated by Congressional jingoism, Failing such an invitation, China will proceed alone. The pace is very deliberate; it is simply necessary that the world be reminded often enough not to forget about it. The closest recent parallel was the 2008 Olympics, but this had the disadvantage of ending at a specific date and being largely forgotten.

  • Paul Bryan

    “There is no doubt China has military ambitions in space” – amightywind.

    Does the USA have military ambitions in space?

  • E.P. Grondine

    Hi V4 –

    I don’t follow this closely anymore, as my stroke prevents that. That said:

    The opposition of fundamentalist Christians here to China’s abortion policies and harvesting of ogans from executed criminals is well known.
    Rep Wolf represents that, but his ammendment is framkly un-constitutional, as it interferes with the President’s ability to conduct foreign policy.

    There are more partners in ISS than simply the US, and China has to be on good terms with all of them for participation to be possible.

    As a matter of national science poloicy, China is committed to gaining world standards in all fields, including space.

    My thinkng has been that China obatined the CAPS plan aby the time of their 2000 planning cycle, nd that is still their goal for the next decades.

    (I did not give it to them, but if I had of known they were interested, given my frustration with NASA’s managments’ respose to this hazard, I might have been tempted. I’d rather make money telling them my analysis of how that occured, which I did pre-stroke. In other words, they can bring their wallets.)

    China’s decission now will be between heavy launch and re-usability for lower launch costs. I think they’ll go with option B, and a modular approach, but that is just a guess.

    Once again, I am no longer able to follow these matters closely.

  • @vulture4:

    Motivation is the key issue.

    That’s like saying clairvoyance is the key issue. The PRC is a rival and potentially a hostile belligerent. A responsible grand strategy addresses its capabilities, not what may or may not be its ambitions at a given time.

    The motivation of China’s _human_ spaceflight program is not to “defeat” the US in a “race”…

    Who brought up any such thing?

    …nor is it to claim any mythical lunar resources…

    Lunar resources are not mythical.

    …or create direct military threats.

    An obtuse qualification. A missile is no direct threat militarily; it’s warhead is.

    It is to demonstrate, to both the domestic and foreign audience, that China is a member of the exclusive club of world leaders.

    That’s a sentiment, not an ambition. This is an ambition:

    “The Chinese government makes the space industry an important part of the nation’s overall development strategy, and adheres to exploration and utilization of outer space for peaceful purposes. Over the past few years, China’s space industry has developed rapidly and China ranks among the world’s leading countries in certain major areas of space technology. Space activities play an increasingly important role in China’s economic and social development.”

    China’s preference was to achieve this by being invited to join the ISS program…

    You completely made this up.

  • @pathfinder:

    Well Chris one of the nice things about using commercial is that you might not have to develop everything all at once.

    That’s a fact of life no matter what you do or what you use. The question is whether or not you have sufficient resources to walk and chew gum at the same time. If you do, then why is it preferable not to do so?

    It is rather the difference between me attempting to make my own bread totally from scratch…[blah, blah, blah]…”

    No, it’s not. The population of ten to twenty ton lifters is just now starting to expand, and there are no 70 ton off-the-shelf lifters.

    A bigleow module could be an excellent starting point for a habitation module for a NEO mission or a L1 space station.

    Nice. What’s wrong with having additional single launch lift capacity if and likely when the time comes?

  • Robert G. Oler

    Prez Cannady wrote @ January 8th, 2012 at 11:17 am
    ” China needn’t take over the moon to pose a threat to America, ”

    the “threat to America” rhetoric is really tiresome.

    On paper the ONLY country that has this century invaded another country, without that country being a direct threat to the country that did the invading…is the US. I think that the IDF invasion of Lebanon was about the dumbest military and political thing that they have done…but at least they had a cause celeb…a reason that directly affected their national security.

    The US has been since GOP rhetoric started talking about “threats to America” and equating all of those with a military solution almost a rogue nation. For some reason people like you tend to keep using it…now we are hearing about how Iran with an industrial output near Mississippi has become Nazi Germany or its leaders Hitler (several GOP candidates).

    The Chinese (the PRC) pose no military threat to the US and are unlikely to do so in the next 10-15 years…there seems to be no reason other then our own rhetoric for them to try and do that.

    The GOP and people like you need the historical model of US/USSR competition to be projected onto China because it keeps the various industries which are invested in the war machine going…and it aides the simple minds that listen to Cal Thomas and Fox news to stay engaged and understand the issues.

    But past that it has no real value. The Chinese are pursuing their own national interest so far and most likely in the future in a manner which is consistent of the normal commerce between nations. To use “threat” in terms of their response is to elevate the rhetoric and heat it up.

    In the end there probably is a competition between the US and PRC to define the world economic system and that competition will shape the future far more then a military competition.

    The thoughts you and Whittington and most of the people on Fox News project are one dimensional in terms of dealing with reality.

    Robert G. Oler

  • Oler: “Now people like you would advocate a lunar effort which spends a lot of money but which you cannot justify a single reason for doing so…that even in the long run helps the US economy…it just spends money.”

    Since NASA is already spending lots of money on things they really should not be doing after 2015 like the ISS at $3 billion a year, I’d rather have that money spent on a lunar base program. And the $8.4 billion a year that Obama inherited from the George Bush administration for manned spaceflight activities is plenty for an SLS based lunar base program that will:

    1. Finally tell us if a 1/6 hypogravity environment deleterious to human health and reproduction

    2. Enable us to evaluate the proper level of hydrogen or water mass shielding for manned space stations and manned interplanetary vehicles beyond the Earth’s magnetosphere

    3. Enable us to evaluate the efficiency of exploiting extraterrestrial water resources for drinking, air, and fuel which may be applicable for exploiting similar resources on the moons of Mars which could substantially reduce the cost of a future manned Mars mission

    4. Enable us to evaluate the efficiency of mining and processing aluminum for the manufacture of mirrors that could be used to enhancing solar power systems in space for communications satellites and energy producing satellites

    5. Enable us to evaluate the efficiency of growing food on other worlds so that such resources won’t have to be exported from the Earths huge gravity well

    6. Serve as a refuge for personal of private companies trying to establish private facilities on the lunar surface

    7. Cheap sources of oxygen and water from the lunar poles for orbiting space hotels because of the Moons low gravity well

    8. Allow us to fully use robotic rovers to thoroughly explore the lunar surface while returning their samples to a manned lunar base for eventually export back to Earth.

    There is no one reason to establish a permanent base on the Moon because there are in fact numerous reasons for establishing a permanent base on the Moon. And it perfectly affordable!

  • Coastal Ron

    vulture4 wrote @ January 8th, 2012 at 11:20 am

    Motivation is the key issue.

    It seems like most people that are pointing to China’s space efforts are reactionary in their comments – what do we do to respond, how to we block them, etc. While “playing defense” is OK in the short run, it’s a poor way to focus on the future.

    The best way for our nation to have a strong space policy that supports an expansion into space is to have consensus on what the goals and solutions are. We don’t have that today, both at the political level, industry and the space community. Moon First, Mars First, Flexible Path, commercial crew, government only, mega rockets, existing assets – there is far more everybody disagrees on than we agree with.

    Short of an agreed upon “National Imperative” like a recognized asteroid threat, or something that forces everyone to come together in a cause, we’re not likely to have a grand overall plan for space.

    Now that’s not a bad thing, as historically humanities expansion into new territories have not been finely planned affairs. So absent a grand overall agreement and plan, what I would want is a NASA that focuses on exploration while relying on the commercial sector for those things that are no longer new. That will mean some constraints on the part of NASA, which isn’t a bad thing, but it also means that NASA needs to focus on getting the most exploration for it’s budget.

    The impediment I see to this particular approach is the SLS and MPCV, since they are the last two large hardware programs that were not gestated from within NASA, and they demand large portions of NASA’s budget going forward. Of course we don’t have consensus on this issue either, so I won’t belabor the point.

    Circling back to the question of China, China by itself cannot expand out into space as fast as the U.S. and our current ISS partners can. If we continue to partner with others as we expand out into space, there is no question that we will be able to maintain our dominance in space, regardless if that’s our goal or not.

  • A group that consists of virtually no one.

    Except the people who are the subject of this post, like Cal Thomas.

  • @Chris Castro
    “Since Flexible Path forbids us from ever venturing Moonward, there could never be a Lunar shakedown cruise, of the to-be-used hardware—-just more easy-street test-flying of it, in LEO, where regular earth resupply would be a simple snap to do; plus the earthian ionosphere would be there to shield you from the worse of space radiation.”

    If only knowledge of space related issues had monetary value and I could buy you for what you actually know and sell you for what you think you know, then I would be a wealthy man.

    Flexible p\Path always had the moon as an option. Flexible Path was called Flexible because you could adjust how you go about moving out into deep space as you go along (depending on what both your current economic and technical capabilties are at any particular time).

    “If there is no money to develop the Altair lunar lander nor to launch it regularly, what makes all of you so sure that there’ll be dung-loads of money to develop, build & fly a far-deep space/ interplanetary habitation module, and send it out to rendezvous with a dinky asteroid??! “
    Another distortion of the facts. What was said was that as long as a hyperexpensive government developed HLV is being pursued, there will not be money to develop Altair landers, fuel depots or just about anything else, because SLS’s enornous appetite for funds eats the money from other efforts. For example, Look at the money that was taken from the Commercial Crew budget to keep SLS’s budget from being cut. That is the very reason SLS is called the “rocket to nowhere” because we can’t develop/build SLS and also develop/build an exploratory vehicle to launch on it.

    Your Pollyanna reality distortion field continues unabated.

  • @Oler:

    the “threat to America” rhetoric is really tiresome.

    Your ignorance is astonishing.

    On paper the ONLY country that has this century invaded another country, without that country being a direct threat to the country that did the invading…is the US.

    2008. South Ossetia. Strike 1.

    I think that the IDF invasion of Lebanon was about the dumbest military and political thing that they have done…

    Of course you do, but then your type usually any action taken in self-defense an act of stupidity.

    The US has been since GOP rhetoric started talking about “threats to America” and equating all of those with a military solution almost a rogue nation.

    Then move.

    The thoughts you and Whittington and most of the people on Fox News project are one dimensional in terms of dealing with reality.

    Even if that were true, it’s still a one dimension improvement over your world view.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Marcel F. Williams wrote @ January 8th, 2012 at 1:12 pm
    “Since NASA is already spending lots of money on things they really should not be doing after 2015 like the ISS at $3 billion a year, I’d rather have that money spent on a lunar base program. And the $8.4 billion a year that Obama inherited from the George Bush administration for manned spaceflight activities is plenty for an SLS based lunar base program that will:”

    there are 10 or 12 assumptions that you have made all of which are wrong (including the amount of money being spent)…but the kicker is that you think that a NASA which spent 15 billion on Cx and got nothing can on the same dollars being spent right now…do far more then it has proven capable of doing on the same dollars.

    NASA HSF should be capable of doing a lot of things on 3-4 billion dollars…but the key fact is that what it is doing right now is absent major contractor and internal reform…ALL IT IS CAPABLE OF DOING.

    We then would have issues about the specifics you lay down, but there is not a chance that with th emoney that they have today NASA could given its method of operation do any of those things and there is no more money for an inefficient system RGO

  • @ Earth to Planet Marcel
    “There is no one reason to establish a permanent base on the Moon because there are in fact numerous reasons for establishing a permanent base on the Moon. And it perfectly affordable!”
    Agreed, I am truly being serious when I say that it probably is perfectly affordable (even within typical NASA budgets) and maybe even worthwhile. That is, as long as SLS gets axed. Absent that common sense fix, the affordability and sustainability in the long-term for a permanent American crew on the Moon is an impractical fantasy.

  • @Oler:

    there are 10 or 12 assumptions that you have made all of which are wrong (including the amount of money being spent)…but the kicker is that you think that a NASA which spent 15 billion on Cx and got nothing can on the same dollars being spent right now…do far more then it has proven capable of doing on the same dollars.

    Why not? Isn’t this the argument for off-the-shelf commercial anyway? That NASA can do more with the same dollars being spent right now? Hell, you make that point yourself…

    NASA HSF should be capable of doing a lot of things on 3-4 billion dollars…

    …right here.

    If your objection is building lifters out of what amounts to a multi-state slush fund, then note that NASA clearly demonstrated the capability to field such a vehicle, launch it, and do Great Things(tm) for thirty years. If that’s the price to pay for implementing and expanding the viable access infrastructure for the long-term, you better learn to work around it.

    …there is not a chance that with th emoney that they have today NASA could given its method of operation do any of those things and there is no more money for an inefficient system.

    There’s $15 billion a year on top of that spent to keep Congress agreeing to a relatively stable budget–$5 billion if you want to be conservative about it.

  • Doug Lassiter

    Prez Cannady wrote @ January 8th, 2012 at 6:04 am
    “Attempting to divine present, let alone future, intentions in the face of China’s improving capability is a piss-poor basis for setting counter-policy.”

    My point was simply that attempting to divine present, let alone future, intentions on the basis of a white paper with a vague and half-baked statement of interest is a piss-poor basis for setting counter-policy. That basis is what a lot of the response to the white paper in this thread was about.

    Taken as a whole, including “a decade of context”, one can speculate quite freely about Chinese intent. But this thread wasn’t about a decade of context. It was about this white paper. My point was that THIS WHITE PAPER presents a surprisingly brief and non-committal statement about the interest of China in landing people on the Moon, in view about such speculations. Beyond this white paper, I guess you’re free to believe anything you want.

    DCSCA wrote @ January 8th, 2012 at 1:43 am
    “=yawn= yeah….sort of like, “I believe this nation should commit itself before this decade is out of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth.” One sentence works wonders, doesn’t it.”

    Yes, it does work wonders. A commitment to a clear mission, from a national leader, with a hard schedule. Show me that sentence in the Chinese white paper.

    Rand Simberg wrote @ January 8th, 2012 at 2:47 am
    “You are missing the fact that people worried about China taking over the moon are idiots.”

    Let’s just say that I was diplomatically avoiding it.

  • vulture4

    @E.P. Grondine – I agree there are other partners in the ISS but I’m not aware of any other than the US that have expressed anything like hard-and-fast opposition to Chinese participation. It seems absurd to invite Russia but not China, a major trading partner and the world’s second wealthiest country. Chinese participation would help to diffuse tensions between the major powers, not just US-China but also China-India, China-Russia, and China-Japan.

    Prez Cannady: “The PRC is a rival and potentially a hostile belligerent.”

    v4: Then our first priority should be to better understand the situation. This isn’t the Sixties. China is not trying to turn the world Communist; nowadays they aren’t even Communists themselves. Our primary rivalry is economic. Why would China attack its biggest customer with bombs from space? They’d have to be idiots, and that is one thing they aren’t.

    Conversely, if we spend $100B racing ourselves to the moon, and this money can’t be raised by tax increases because we vote out anyone who suggests it, then the money will have to be borrowed. Effectively, much of it will be borrowed from China. That means even more of what little we can bring into the country through exports and raise through taxes will go to China as interest payments. We can get to the moon first and be losing ground economically every step of the way.

    V4: “China’s preference was to achieve this by being invited to join the ISS program…” Prez Cannady: “You completely made this up.”
    V4: Actually I work with people from the PRC every day and have discussed it with them at length. Why do you think they were incensed when Griffin openly rejected collaboration and insulted them by disparagingly refusing an invitation to visit their launch site? Bolden extended feelers to China and was stomped on by Congress for his trouble.

    Lastly, if we are really interested in keeping up with China economically, NASA’s first priority should be to support the US civil aviation industry, and particularly export-oriented aircraft manufacturers, which generate a positive balance of payments but are struggling because the US does not provide adequate R&D support. In fact, this is exactly what NACA was created to do almost a century ago. If we want to compete in satellite manufacture and launch services, we need to get rid of ITAR ASAP and cut the cost and delay of launching from the Eastern Range by at least 50%. Otherwise even SpaceX won’t make a go of it here.

  • gregori

    At the rate China are going, they might be on the Moon in the 2030’s for limited sorties.

    The scare mongering about China is hilarious. They launched a total of six people to LEO in nine years. They are planning in having a Mir-class space station in the 2020’s and have sent two probes around the moon. If they copy the Apollo model, they will have to build a gigantic rocket that they have no other uses for and which will have high costs. Once they have achieved the goal of landing, they might make the same conclusions as the USA in 1972 and shut the program down. The prestige will have been achieved.

    The economy of China is not destined to grow at its current rate forever and hiccups or failures could see high expense programs like manned spaceflight get postponed or cancelled. Growing wages are going to lead to manufacturers locating elsewhere so the current pace of growth is not a given.

  • @vulture4:

    Then our first priority should be to better understand the situation.

    Don’t worry. The situation is well understood, and has been for decades.

    This isn’t the Sixties. China is not trying to turn the world Communist…

    You do understand that there’s an entire spectrum of hostility between grudging peace and nuclear war, right?

    …nowadays they aren’t even Communists themselves.

    That’d be news to Beijing, or even Lenin himself.

    Our primary rivalry is economic.

    An economic rivalry consists of two or more parties isolating themselves from one another. The PRC lost that war in the decade after splitting with the Soviet Union and ultimately with Mao’s death. US-Chinese rivalry remains a fundamentally strategic matter, dealing with China’s longstanding interest in achieving primacy in WestPac and American and allied opposition to such ambitions. It’s the reason why Americans still walk a line with South Koreans, arm the Japanese and Taiwanese, and maintain our largest fleet in the theater.

    Why would China attack its biggest customer with bombs from space?

    Once again, there’s a whole spectrum of threats between peace of doomsday.

    They’d have to be idiots, and that is one thing they aren’t.

    You don’t have to be an idiot to get into a war, all you need is enough capability within close proximity to an adversary to trigger an incident. Your choices there are to abandon your interests in the area–which is tantamount to telling trade partners valuable enough to be called allies to shove it–or project sufficient power to deter the other guy from making mountains out of molehills.

    Conversely, if we spend $100B racing ourselves to the moon, and this money can’t be raised by tax increases because we vote out anyone who suggests it, then the money will have to be borrowed.

    How do you figure? Spending $100 billion racing ourselves to an international hugfest in low-wearth orbit didn’t result in tax increases.

    Effectively, much of it will be borrowed from China.

    Don’t worry about it. Even in a shooting war Beijing bondholders aren’t dumb enough to sink shy of a trillion dollars out of spite.

    That means even more of what little we can bring into the country through exports and raise through taxes will go to China as interest payments. We can get to the moon first and be losing ground economically every step of the way.

    Not in the way you describe.

    Actually I work with people from the PRC every day and have discussed it with them at length.

    I’m sure you could find someone in the PRC who wants to amalgamate with Liechtenstein. What matters is diplomatic history, and there is no evidence that Beijing was ever interested in ISS partnership.

    If we want to compete in satellite manufacture and launch services, we need to get rid of ITAR ASAP and cut the cost and delay of launching from the Eastern Range by at least 50%. Otherwise even SpaceX won’t make a go of it here.

    Not sure what ITAR has to do with SpaceX’s prospects.

  • @gregori:

    At the rate China are going, they might be on the Moon in the 2030′s for limited sorties.

    The schedule calls for unmanned descent and ascent by 2017. Expecting Beijing to sit on her thumbs for the 13 years after smacks of wishful thinking.

    The scare mongering about China is hilarious. They launched a total of six people to LEO in nine years. They are planning in having a Mir-class space station in the 2020′s and have sent two probes around the moon.

    Five probes, including a lander and ascender, within five years.

    If they copy the Apollo model, they will have to build a gigantic rocket that they have no other uses for and which will have high costs.

    Beijing already has a 25 ton Long March 5 configuration. What China plans to do in the way of super-heavy lift is anyone’s guess; her missile program is thoroughly socialized and classified.

    Once they have achieved the goal of landing, they might make the same conclusions as the USA in 1972 and shut the program down. The prestige will have been achieved.

    That’s a rosy assumption, given that Beijing’s official line is that Moonshot is but part of a broader exploration and development program.

    The economy of China is not destined to grow at its current rate forever…

    Doesn’t have to. Even an expensive, corruption riddle program run by Americans can succeed under budgets constrained by the recent recession.

  • @Lassiter:

    My point was simply that attempting to divine present, let alone future, intentions on the basis of a white paper with a vague and half-baked statement of interest is a piss-poor basis for setting counter-policy.

    An official white paper is the closest thing to a budget request you’re likely to see out of Beijing, only more authoritative since it doesn’t even see the light of day unless it’s already been approved. And there is no vague and half-baked statement of interest here; there is a clear, unambiguous reference to a step that’s been outlined many times in the past.

    Taken as a whole, including “a decade of context”, one can speculate quite freely about Chinese intent.

    No need to speculate. Beijing said she was going to do something. She did. This document outlines what she said she was going to do, what’s she’s done to achieve it, and where she’s going next. It’s that simple.

    But this thread wasn’t about a decade of context. It was about this white paper.

    To suggest that this discussion is about what can and can’t be inferred from a single document in isolation is blatantly pedantic. Especially since you go on to argue that the paper shows that Beijing is non-committal about a manned lunar mission.

    My point was that THIS WHITE PAPER presents a surprisingly brief and non-committal statement about the interest of China in landing people on the Moon, in view about such speculations.

    The paper is brief. You’ve not shown a single sentence that indicates that it is non-committal, especially in light of the fact that Chang’e has largely met all of its milestones to date on schedule.

  • DCSCA

    Doug Lassiter wrote @ January 8th, 2012 at 3:00 pm
    =yawn= You just may not comprehend their mind set very well. Their consensus has been expressed; intent reaffirmed– with a purposed, plausable deniability and specifics intentionally diffuse. It is quite American to make declarative statements with defninitive goals and timetables and frustrating to same when other cultures don’t operate that way (and not just in spaceflight)– particularly with the Far Eastern cultures and even the Soviets. For example, Americans expressed ‘surprise’ at Sputnik but the Russians telegraphed their intent to loft a satellite as early as 1956 but didn’t announce definitively they’d launch one on October 4, 1957 nor did they broadcast a definitive intent and deadline for their lunar landing program, which post-Apollo confirmed American deductions/conclusions on same and was revealed to be well along as suspected– but the Soviet government never overtly declared, ‘Da, we’re racing to the moon to get their first and to beat the USA.’ So it is with the PRC as well, who, similar to the Japanese management culture, and unlike the American managerial mind set, progress with decisions and direction through deliberative consensus.

    If you want to believe they have no intent to move for the moon in a methodical, progressive manner at a pace of their choosing in the 21st century and mark it as a symbol or progress for ‘their century,’ then you have to wonder why they’re wasting resources on HSF at all, and you’ll be one of those who’ll express ‘surprise’ when they make a play for Luna. Or, you’re just alarmed that any chatter in American/Western circles of the PRC eyeing the moon would deny dwindling resource intended for government space operations from commercial firms desperate to tap them for subsidies/seed funding for LEO operations in the Age of Austerity.

  • @DCDSA:

    You just may not comprehend their mind set very well.

    Trust me, you’re not exactly the go to guy for guessing at Beijing’s intentions.

    Their consensus has been expressed; intent reaffirmed– with a purposed, plausable deniability and specifics intentionally diffuse.

    Plausible deniability and diffuse specifics my butt. PRC has released these white papers annually going back to 2006. What we are revisiting today is nothing more than a progress report that, in part, details phase 2 of a publicly acknowledged program.

    It is quite American to make declarative statements with defninitive goals and timetables and frustrating to same when other cultures don’t operate that way (and not just in spaceflight)– particularly with the Far Eastern cultures and even the Soviets.

    Has nothing to do with culture, and everything to do with the fact that CNSA is a pretty crappy online archivist and Beijing doesn’t make a habit of publishing English language budgets, let alone duplicating said information across half a dozen agencies until all you have is an indecipherable mess.

    If you want to believe they have no intent to move for the moon in a methodical, progressive manner at a pace of their choosing in the 21st century…[blah, blah, blah]…

    Lassiter said no such thing.

    Or, you’re just alarmed that any chatter in American/Western circles of the PRC eyeing the moon would deny dwindling resource intended for government space operations from commercial firms desperate to tap them for subsidies/seed funding for LEO operations in the Age of Austerity.

    For national space, there is no age of austerity, save in your own mind.

  • Doug Lassiter

    Prez Cannady wrote @ January 8th, 2012 at 5:19 pm
    “The paper is brief. You’ve not shown a single sentence that indicates that it is non-committal, especially in light of the fact that Chang’e has largely met all of its milestones to date on schedule.”

    Oh, that’s how you’re playing the game. China is commital about putting humans on the Moon because their white paper never says explicitly that they’re non-commital. Now, they must be going to Pluto as well because, well, the white paper never said they weren’t.

    I’m not arguing that China isn’t aiming at the Moon, just that the white paper never makes that point convincingly. So we can all stop pointing at the whitepaper as evidence of that commitment. It’s not.

    DCSCA wrote @ January 8th, 2012 at 6:28 pm
    “=yawn= You just may not comprehend their mind set very well. Their consensus has been expressed; intent reaffirmed– with a purposed, plausable deniability and specifics intentionally diffuse.”

    No, I actually don’t comprehend their mind set very well. I’ll accept that some consensus about a lunar trip may have been expressed in other ways, but just not reinforced in the white paper. Ah, that lack of reinforcement was intended as plausible deniability? Now I see. The white paper was just intended to fool us about what their intentions really are. They’ve got their pedal to the metal, pushing hard at landing humans on the Moon, but they have to try to pull the wool over our eyes and make us think from this white paper that all they’re up to is thinking about conducting studies on the preliminary plan for a human lunar landing. Pretty sneaky.

    Yawns are contagious. You need to get some sleep.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Prez Cannady wrote @ January 8th, 2012 at 2:14 pm

    you wrote:

    “Your ignorance is astonishing.”

    yeah that is what people here said when I noted that Cx would fail and that the mission to Iraq was a boondoggle (or worse) because there would be no WMD…I was correct and they were wrong…and so are you

    Except you dont even note where “I” am wrong.

    Citing the sailing of an old Aircraft carrier with the capabilities of USS Lexington (CV-16) as a threat is goofy. There is a lot of rhetoric about a threat. Cal Thomas in his OP ed has a lot of it, all demonstrably wrong…a lot of people talk about a Chinese “carrier killer” but there is no real evidence of the existance of the missile, no test that have happen…people like you say “Wow the Iranians have submarines” and all of a sudden you make them into the Red Banner Fleet.

    If you want to toss some facts try that but just saying “ignorant” is a right wing debating tool that I’ll reply with by saying “you are cynical”.

    you wrote “Of course you do, but then your type usually any action taken in self-defense an act of stupidity.”

    there is no data to support that statement in terms of anything I have written here, on the net or any position papers I have offered. All the above statement shows is that reading and comprehension are at issue with you. The statement I wrote stands for itself…there is almost no one except the goof balls who planned and executed teh Lebanon raid that think it was a wise move..

    Not being able to separate a legitimate economic threat from a physical “threat” (ie fear of an attack) is a scare mongering tactic. Thomas does that in his op ed. there is no basis in fact for either the statements he makes or the conclusion he draws from them

    yet all one has to do is take a moderate surf of the right wing blogs and what Thomas is saying is being treated as actual fact.

    We have had quite enough of that really we have. Saddam was going to kill us with balsa wood planes launched from tankers…now its the Chinese are going to attack us from the Moon…wow dont you guys get tired of this?

    RGO

    PS you wrote “2008. South Ossetia” wow now you are dragging up Putin’s Russia as something we imitated…so much for being an exceptional nation. RGO

  • Robert G. Oler

    Prez Cannady wrote @ January 8th, 2012 at 2:54 pm

    after a quote of mine you noted:”

    Why not? Isn’t this the argument for off-the-shelf commercial anyway? That NASA can do more with the same dollars being spent right now? Hell, you make that point yourself…”

    and also

    “If your objection is building lifters out of what amounts to a multi-state slush fund, then note that NASA clearly demonstrated the capability to field such a vehicle, launch it, and do Great Things(tm) for thirty years.”

    not really no. NASA has tried since the mid 80’s to build an uncrewed version of the space shuttle…with Cx it has spent somewhere near 25 billion dollars on the effort and has no hardware to show for it. The current NASA did not run the acquisition program for teh shuttle system…almost all of those folks are gone. The people there now are for the most part well as we use to say “2 percenters” compared with what was. They could not manage getting everyone together to do anything near cost and on time. See Orion

    Robert G. Oler

  • Rick Boozer:
    “Agreed, I am truly being serious when I say that it probably is perfectly affordable (even within typical NASA budgets) and maybe even worthwhile. That is, as long as SLS gets axed. Absent that common sense fix, the affordability and sustainability in the long-term for a permanent American crew on the Moon is an impractical fantasy.”

    NASA is only spending less than $4 billion a year on the MPCV/SLS program in 2012 and 2013.

    Once the MPCV/SLS has been developed and is is fully operational, NASA estimates that cost per launch will be less than $500 million if there are at least 6 flights per year. So placing payloads into orbit should be dramatically cheaper than the Space Shuttle.

    Total development cost for a lunar landing vehicle have been estimated to cost about $12 billion (less than $2 billion a year for a seven year development of the vehicle). But I think a single stage lunar vehicle instead of a two stage vehicle should be much cheaper to develop.

    Once the expendable RS-25 engines are in production then the launch configurations for the SLS should be much more variable and cheaper than currently presented concepts with some launch configurations that probably won’t even require any side-mounted boosters at all to send astronauts beyond LEO. Using lunar resources should probably reduce the operating cost of lunar shuttles.

    But after the $3 billion a year ISS program is hopefully finally ended in 2020, over $8 billion a year of manned spaceflight related money should be plenty to run an SLS based lunar base program. And if the Federal government finally adds the extra $3 billion a year recommended by the Augustine Commission then NASA can start investing in the additional transportation infrastructure needed to establish a permanent human presence in Mars orbit and on the Martian surface.

  • @ Earth to Planet Marcel
    “Once the MPCV/SLS has been developed and is is fully operational, NASA estimates that cost per launch will be less than $500 million if there are at least 6 flights per year. So placing payloads into orbit should be dramatically cheaper than the Space Shuttle.

    You think they are going to launch SLS six times per year? Really? Get real. The only figures I have read state at most it may be realistic to expect 2-3 times per year at a cost of at least $1 billion per flight. Also, remember the cost of developing SLS is probably going to explode well beyond its budget in the next few years according to the independent Booz-Allen report.

    “But after the $3 billion a year ISS program is hopefully finally ended in 2020, over $8 billion a year of manned spaceflight related money should be plenty to run an SLS based lunar base program. And if the Federal government finally adds the extra $3 billion a year recommended by the Augustine Commission then NASA can start investing in the additional transportation infrastructure needed to establish a permanent human presence in Mars orbit and on the Martian surface.”

    Let’s assume it is decided to change our focus back to the Moon and also even a permanent base with the goal of utilizing in situ lunar resources. Why wait until after 2020 to start developing the transportation infrastructure needed for economically practical travel to both the moon and Mars? If we use an architecture other than SLS, we can afford to go back to the Moon for cheaper and sooner than SLS (according to NASA’s own studies: http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1577 ), thus saving enough to start developing the infrastructure before 2020. Why waste so much time and money going the SLS route when we could begin developing everything needed to do the job at the same time starting NOW?

  • Robert G. Oler

    Marcel F. Williams wrote @ January 9th, 2012 at 1:48 am

    Once the MPCV/SLS has been developed and is is fully operational, NASA estimates that cost per launch will be less than $500 million if there are at least 6 flights per year. So placing payloads into orbit should be dramatically cheaper than the Space Shuttle. >>

    LOL where is that number written? There is not a chance that is accurate RGO

  • Coastal Ron

    Marcel F. Williams wrote @ January 9th, 2012 at 1:48 am

    Once the MPCV/SLS has been developed and is is fully operational, NASA estimates that cost per launch will be less than $500 million if there are at least 6 flights per year.

    What is the source of the $500M/launch estimate? Please provide a link.

    Setting that aside, where will NASA get the money for six SLS launches per year?

    If we assume that the SLS, which can put 130mt into LEO, can get 52mt to GTO (% Saturn V could do), that would equal 312mt of payload getting built and launched every year. That’s 687,000 lbs, or about 70% the mass of the ISS being sent to GTO every year. Every year!

    I have no doubt that the U.S. and our space partners can ramp up to produce that much hardware per year, but who is going to pay for it? And once you get it there, who is going to pay to operate it? We spend $3B/year supporting the ISS, so that would be like adding $3B/year to NASA’s budget to use what we’ve put up.

    So $3B/year for SLS launches (non-recurring), and $3B/year added to NASA’s sustaining operations (recurring costs for every payload) – and we haven’t even started talking about how much it will cost to build each payload, which could be $1B each or more. Where is this money coming from? Is Congress going to support increasing NASA’s budget by $3B per year, every year going forward?

    Don’t you listen to what the Republicans in Congress are talking about? They don’t want to increase government spending, they want to decrease it. Why are they going to support yearly increases in NASA’s budget when they haven’t so far?

  • William Mellberg

    Doug Lassiter wrote:

    “I’m not arguing that China isn’t aiming at the Moon, just that the white paper never makes that point convincingly. So we can all stop pointing at the whitepaper as evidence of that commitment. It’s not.”

    And what about the new Wenchang spaceport being built on Hainan Island for the Long March 5? The site is well-placed for launching lunar missions.

    When the first photos appeared on the Internet of the Vertical Assembly Building at the Jiuquan spaceport, there were those who said the pictures were faked. But they were very real. And so is China’s interest in lunar exploration.

    Harrison Schmitt addresses several of these issues in the latest essay on his blog:

    http://americasuncommonsense.com/blog/2012/01/06/49-space-policy-and-the-constitution-6/

    BTW, as Ernst Stuhlinger noted in his biography of Wernher von Braun, the Soviets talked quite freely about their intentions to launch artificial Earth satellites at a 1955 conference in Copenhagen. Many people discounted the notion that the “backward Russians” would (or could) launch a satellite. They certainly didn’t believe the Soviet Union would be the first country to put an artificial satellite into Earth orbit … that is, until October 4, 1957.

    I detect a similar attitude when I read some of the comments here about China’s intentions and abilities today. But I wonder what the reaction will be if we see taikonauts on the Moon tomorrow? (“Tomorrow” being some time in the next decade, as the Chinese white paper suggests.)

  • Robert G. Oler

    “In a nutshell, the advantages — not least for the U.S. economy and permanent leadership in space — are almost incalculable if we begin from this first step,” Aldrin concludes.>>

    Buzz is stating things which are not fact…or at least if they are he needs to point it out RGO

  • @Coastal Ron:

    Don’t you listen to what the Republicans in Congress are talking about? They don’t want to increase government spending, they want to decrease it. Why are they going to support yearly increases in NASA’s budget when they haven’t so far?

    Why would they have to increase NASA’s budget?

  • Vladislaw

    “NASA is only spending less than $4 billion a year on the MPCV/SLS program in 2012 and 2013.

    Once the MPCV/SLS has been developed and is is fully operational, NASA estimates that cost per launch will be less than $500 million if there are at least 6 flights per year. So placing payloads into orbit should be dramatically cheaper than the Space Shuttle.”

    Gosh … ONLY 4 bllion, per YEAR? Space X said they could build a heavy lift for 2.5 billion. So only 4 billion per year for years is somehow a freakin’ bargin?

    Only six flights per year? In the 30 years of the shuttle, 65% of the launches never happened on schedule and they only acheived 6 flights in a year how many times? You are in the wrong line of work, you should be doing a stand up NASA comedy routine. “How many NASA managers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?” None, they are still 12 years away from the priliminary design review.

    One screw up of the SLS, one blown up rocket and once again the entire NATION’s space program will be put on hold for years. Oh wait, President Obama actually had the foresight and started funding commercial crew so the Nation will not be held hostage again when another pork train fails.

  • DCSCA

    Doug Lassiter wrote @ January 8th, 2012 at 9:09 pm

    It’s not an effort at fooling anyone but a different approach to decision-making and expressions of intent. And the WP is just one of several indices over recent years. and your Western hunger for a crisp, definitive where, when and how isn’t going to be satisfied. “Ah, that lack of reinforcement was intended as plausible deniability? Now I see.” Perhaps you do, perhaps you don’t… but for Western observers hungry for clear definitions of intent, it’s a frustration and a reinforcement of their own pacing. They are not gonig to produce a timetable and lines of intent to satisfy Western observers– or your demands for same. It’s an approach that has frustrated Western business and political interactions beyond the scope of space projects in other lines of commerce — particularly the Western cultures with quarterly driven business mind sets and annual reports, etc., and that cultural inconvenience, honed over centuries, isn’t going to change for the convenience of Western prognosticators.

  • DCSCA

    @Doug Lassiter wrote @ January 8th, 2012 at 9:09 pm

    A postscript. Recall an old historical tale about Japanese students and their instructor visiting NYC just before the start of WW2. They were shown the Statue of Liberty standing in NY Harbor and told it was the tallest statue in the world. Much taller than the Great Buddha in Japan, (which is roughly 44 ft., tall) noted the students. But you forget, said the instructor, the Great Buddha is sitting on its legs and until it stands up, you don’t know how tall it truly is. Different cultures cultivate different perspectives. Bear in mind, the Russian culture incorporated spaceflight into their national character, have celebrated in publicly across their land in parade and monuments and have maintained a human presence in space pretty consistently since Gagarin flew nearly 51 years ago through some convulsive political and economic change. Americans are much more quicksodic and reactive, not proactive, in their space operations and prone to ‘fits and starts.’ It’s just a difference in culture, both business and social, and a different approach to problem-solving.

  • pathfinder_01

    Weak evidence William. The Russian lunar program was not planning to move their launch site to a better location and cape Canaveral air force base is in a good location for lunar flight, but has been around longer than the US planned to go to the moon(in fact it opened under the Truman administration). It would be like stating that if the navy were to build a base in Detroit we intend to invade Canada! It could be that they want to build there to be as close as practical to the equator while still being within China.

    As for the soviets, the US planned to launch the world’s first satelight as part of the international geophysical year. The soviets simply upstaged us.

  • DCSCA

    @Prez Cannady wrote @ January 8th, 2012 at 8:41 pm

    =yawn= Of course it’s cultural, consensus driven and you’re just tilting at windmills expressing a dismissiveness of same. Your hunger for “where, when and how” timetables with definitives is decidely Western and never going to be satisfied by anything released or expressed by the PRC space community. It’s both a strength- and failing- in the Western mind set when interacting w/other cultures. That hard-headedness ususally ally ends up learning the hard way.

    “For national space, there is no age of austerity, save in your own mind.”

    Of course there is. And it will widen and deepen as the Age of Austerity progresses into the century.

    @William Mellberg wrote @ January 9th, 2012 at 1:49 pm

    “BTW, as Ernst Stuhlinger noted in his biography of Wernher von Braun, the Soviets talked quite freely about their intentions to launch artificial Earth satellites at a 1955 conference in Copenhagen.”

    Correct. Reaffirms my earlier postings. They just don’t get it– or won’t see it– until they see the PRC launches out on an expedition to Luna..

  • Robert G. Oler

    Prez Cannady wrote @ January 9th, 2012 at 3:55 pm

    @Coastal Ron:

    Don’t you listen to what the Republicans in Congress are talking about? They don’t want to increase government spending, they want to decrease it. Why are they going to support yearly increases in NASA’s budget when they haven’t so far?

    Why would they have to increase NASA’s budget?>>

    they would have to do something vastly different…and more difficult. Reprogram how it is spent and delete infrastructure at NASA that spends money even when nothing flies.

    As Newt said (to paraphrase) a lot of people at NASA sit around thinking about space RGO

  • E.P. Grondine

    (I’m trying out a new spelling and grammar checker on this post. I wonder how it will react to #@(<. (It did not catch that, but is working for other typos.))

    What constantly goes on in the US is debate between manned Moon enthusiasts and manned Mars enthusiasts.

    The question for manned space is "Why?', and while few here in the US are bright enough to see THE answer, I doubt if China's leadership and scientific leadership are so stupid as to be stumped in finding it.

    You need to remember that Chinese traditions relate that China's first Emperor was killed by impact, and it is likely that China's trading fleet was destroyed by impact mega-tsunami in around 1434 CE.

    My several year old comments on China's lunar goals may be found at nasaspaceflight and fpspace.

    (PS – It's cold as hell in Rochester this time of year, and I hope a few people I have met end up with doors shut in their faces and frozen bums.)

  • Unfortunately, Mr. Cal Thomas of whom I have great respect for is incorrect. Clearly he is taking information supplied to him by elected members of congress who are more concerned with their crony capitalism and less concerned about a space program.

    Its a new year, we have a lot to be thankful for. Luckily for us, we have $409 million in IDF. Small victories.

    For Everett, Isaac, and Gary, we wish you all a prosperous new year.

    Respectfully,
    Andrew Gasser
    Tea Party in Space

  • @Vladislaw:

    One screw up of the SLS, one blown up rocket and once again the entire NATION’s space program will be put on hold for years.

    That hasn’t been true for a decade now.

    Oh wait, President Obama actually had the foresight and started funding commercial crew so the Nation will not be held hostage again when another pork train fails.

    Obama wasn’t President in 2006.

  • @Oler:

    they would have to do something vastly different…and more difficult. Reprogram how it is spent and delete infrastructure at NASA that spends money even when nothing flies.

    How is that more difficult? They were all for it at the tail end of Constellation.

  • @Grondine:

    You need to remember that Chinese traditions relate that China’s first Emperor was killed by impact, and it is likely that China’s trading fleet was destroyed by impact mega-tsunami in around 1434 CE.

    It is not unlikely that you’ve given more thought to the First Emperor and 15th century weather in a single comment than the Chinese Politburo has in a single year.

  • @DCSCA:

    Of course it’s cultural, consensus driven and you’re just tilting at windmills expressing a dismissiveness of same.

    I’m expressing “dismissiveness” towards your recently acquired expertise in PRC government affairs.

    Your hunger for “where, when and how” timetables with definitives is decidely Western and never going to be satisfied by anything released or expressed by the PRC space community.

    You know what they call this? It’s called a five-year plan. Trust me, DCSCA, the Chinese can work a calendar with the best of’em.

    Of course there is. And it will widen and deepen as the Age of Austerity progresses into the century.

    Okay, Ezekiel.

  • Coastal Ron

    Prez Cannady wrote @ January 9th, 2012 at 3:55 pm

    Why would they have to increase NASA’s budget?

    Marcel assumes that NASA would be launching six SLS flights per year, and obviously NASA would only be using the SLS due to the size of the payloads.

    Let’s say that the six flights per year goes on for five years. Marcel figures that the ISS will be ended, so it’s $3B/year support budget will cover the $500M/flight ($3B/year) that he thinks the SLS will cost (I think that’s way too low, but we’ll use it for now).

    Where will the money come for the thirty SLS-sized payloads? And not just the money to build the payloads, whatever they are, but also to operate the missions they are supporting. Remember we spend $3B supporting the 990,000 lb ISS, and Marcel is proposing putting enough mass to replicate a number of them.

    I’ve provided some of my assumptions in my original post, what are yours? Why do you think that vastly increasing the amount of mass that NASA sends to space each year will not affect NASA’s budget? And since this started with Marcel’s assumptions, let’s stick to them for now.

  • amightywind

    Clearly he is taking information supplied to him by elected members of congress who are more concerned with their crony capitalism and less concerned about a space program.

    Really? Elon Musk heads a rogues gallery of Obama’s crony contributers who have looted the treasury of billions in the name of well demonstrated scams of nerdspace and green energy. Jeff Bezos is a close second. We’re in Obama year 4 and they have nothing to show. The space program is dead under the current administration. Thank goodness the resolve of the GOP in congress to save NASA is stiffening? What party does your organization support?

  • DCSCA

    pathfinder_01 wrote @ January 9th, 2012 at 7:38 pm

    As for the soviets, the US planned to launch the world’s first satelight as part of the international geophysical year. The soviets simply upstaged us.

    Inaccurate. You best review the Eisenhower Administration’s recently declassified papers on their concerns regarding the legalities of overflight rights and the then pending secret plans for a then fledgling new project called Corona- the first U.S. spy satellites planned to replace the more risky U-2 overflights. In fact, the Eisnehower Administration was relieved that by orbiting Sputnik, the Soviets had nullified any concerns they had for the legalities raised by overflight rights. To the public, it appeared otherwise. But Soviet plans for a satellite in the IGY were known and, as WM noted in an earlier posting, they’d telegtaphed their intent to loft a satellite a few years before Sputnik was launched.

  • vulture4

    >>And what about the new Wenchang spaceport being built on Hainan Island for the Long March 5? The site is well-placed for launching lunar missions.

    Hainan has several advantages. The larger boosters can be shipped more easily by barge than by rail to the inland launch sites, the coastal location avoids launching over or near heavily populated areas, and the low lattitude increases payloads for low-inclination and geosynchronous launches.

    @Prez Cannady
    >>nowadays they aren’t even Communists themselves.
    >That’d be news to Beijing, or even Lenin himself.
    No one in China today follows or even remembers Lenin, let alone the NEP. Their ideology derives not from Marx, Lenin, or Mao, but from the real founder of modern China, Deng Xiao-ping, who famously said “It is glorious to be rich.” They are as capitalist as we are. Although China and the US are economic rivals, they also see us as a vital trading partner and a historical ally. They forget the Korean War but remember the Flying Tigers. The entire Communist era is just one short episode in a long history.

    >>We can get to the moon first and be losing ground economically every step of the way.
    >Not in the way you describe.
    If the US lands on the moon again in 2025 and China has an additional $200B in US debt, which country is in the stronger position? The US would be paying China $6-8B/yr in interest alone.

  • Doug Lassiter

    William Mellberg wrote @ January 9th, 2012 at 1:49 pm
    “And what about the new Wenchang spaceport being built on Hainan Island for the Long March 5? The site is well-placed for launching lunar missions.”

    You bet. Sure is. It’s good for a lot of stuff. But you know, that spaceport was not referred to in the white paper that everyone is pointing to as being evidence for China’s lunar intentions. Hello … hello …

    If I missed it in the white paper, where it is connected with the Moon, please point it out.

    DCSCA wrote @ January 9th, 2012 at 6:56 pm
    “It’s not an effort at fooling anyone but a different approach to decision-making and expressions of intent.”

    and

    “A postscript.”

    Lecture unnecessary. I gather you did not pick up on my sarcasm.

    I’m delighted to believe that the Chinese are aimed squarely at human lunar landings. I’m just saying that the much vaunted white paper doesn’t make that strong case explicitly. (Nor does it say that they’re going to put humans on Pluto. So you never know … but, but, there is a new Chinese factory making thick fur coats. Hmmm.)

  • OK, I’m going to weigh in with my view on the Chinese question. First, I’ll state that I fervently want the U.S. to be the Number One spacefaring nation in the world, both in LEO and in travel to deep space destinations such as the Moon, asteroids, Mars, etc. And personally, I don’t give a rip whether the first deep space goal we set is the Moon or an asteroid, as long as we go about it in a sufficiently economical manner so that such efforts are more likely to survive the budgetary whims of Congress Critters and Presidents.

    And in the last sentence of the above paragraph lies the crux of the matter. If you are truly concerned about China gaining ascendency in space over America, you will want America to implement its deep space policy in the most economical manner in order that it can be sustainable in the long run. Since SLS would give the least return per dollar on America’s deep space investment compared to other methods and also would get us to whatever goal we choose less soon ( http://images.spaceref.com/news/2011/21jul2011.pdf ), to tout SLS and simultaneously claim concern for Chinese space dominance is a dichotomy and paradox of the first order. Especially, when China has expressed that U.S. drops in the cost of space access are a primary concern to them ( http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_channel.jsp?channel=space&id=news/asd/2011/04/15/11.xml&headline=China%20Great%20Wall%20Confounded%20By%20SpaceX%20Prices ), it is evident that they consider us gaining the cost upper hand to be a threat to their space dominance.

    It is time for everyone who claims to care about U.S. space primacy to get their heads screwed on straight. Let’s get the job done in the most practical way with the earliest possible results, instead of just giving lip service to the issue with a project of maximum costs primarily produced to create jobs for certain politicians’ constituencies, the latter of which ignores what is best for the nation as a whole in the long run.

  • E.P. Grondine

    Good morning PC –

    The first finds in China of dragon figurines occur right after the Holocene Start Impacts. China has already announced that after the lunar series of probes, their next probe will be to an asteroid or comet. Their contribution to Phobos-Grunt was a probe to investigate Mar’s moon Phobos, thought to be a captured comet fraagment or asteroid.

    China’s space propgram is based on usefulness, not fantasies.

    .

  • Robert G. Oler

    Prez Cannady wrote @ January 9th, 2012 at 8:25 pm

    @Oler:

    they would have to do something vastly different…and more difficult. Reprogram how it is spent and delete infrastructure at NASA that spends money even when nothing flies.

    “How is that more difficult? They were all for it at the tail end of Constellation.”

    I dont know who you are or where you live or what your experience first hand with the boys and girls who constituted “leadership” (almost laughable description) at NASA particularly JSC and MSF but they can mouth the words change, they can actually talk about them but they never ever take affect.

    If people had not died I would simply break out laughing (and in fact sometimes in mirth moments I do nevertheless) but the notion that “we slipped back into bad habits” after challenger and that caused columbia is a joke…the bad habits never left.

    The agency as it is currently set up with its current leadership and promotion path is incapable of change…it simply knows no other way…and thats a function not only of internal sloth but the contractor pressures etc.

    if one goes to US government safety courses and other org courses, NASA and the Russian Submarine fleet are the poster children for ‘how not to do it’…and fixing that is going to take severe hatching and firing by someone who has that authority and is willing to not be loved.

    The US military had this problem (well it has it occasionally and might have it now) where every problem is looking for a hammer solution. In 1937 or so several officers who are “names” now but were rebels then were in some danger of being dumped from the Army and Navy …and FDR would look in his little red book and if he found their name would say “no”…this happened to people like LeMay, Patton, even Spruance…asked why FDR would say “someday I might need them to shake things up”…and when Pearl Harbor gave him the horsepower to do it slowly but surely the folks all throughout the seating table changed.

    NASA needs a reorg in people badly…until then fixes such as you urge are impossible.

    RGO

  • But I wonder what the reaction will be if we see taikonauts on the Moon tomorrow? (“Tomorrow” being some time in the next decade, as the Chinese white paper suggests.)

    The Chinese white paper “suggests” no such thing. It doesn’t specify any particular time frame for a lunar landing, and only proposes to “conduct studies on a preliminary plan” for doing so in the next five years. No schedule can be sensibly inferred from something so vague.

  • @Coastal Ron:

    Marcel assumes that NASA would be launching six SLS flights per year, and obviously NASA would only be using the SLS due to the size of the payloads.

    Let’s say that the six flights per year goes on for five years. Marcel figures that the ISS will be ended, so it’s $3B/year support budget will cover the $500M/flight ($3B/year) that he thinks the SLS will cost (I think that’s way too low, but we’ll use it for now).

    In other words, anything greater than 22.5 tons for the immediate future. So total mass lifted over 5 years is anywhere between 690 and 2100 tons.

    Where will the money come for the thirty SLS-sized payloads?

    Depends on what you’re lifting. If you’re lifting 6 ton money pits like JWST, then you better invest in some magic beans. If your lifting $400/kg propellant, then you’re talking less than $1 billion over five years. SMD can swallow that easily.

    And if the goal is 2100 tons of propellant in space, turns out that Falcon 9 as advertised would lift it from $11 billion over the course of 210 flights in five years (42 flights a year), compared to $15 billion for 30 flights from SLS.

    And not just the money to build the payloads, whatever they are, but also to operate the missions they are supporting.

    You assume each payload has a recurring operational cost. If you’re setting up, say, a kerosene reserve for an on orbit refueling networking, then where’s the incremental cost in that?

    ’ve provided some of my assumptions in my original post…

    You missed one key one, namely the nature of the payload. I think everyone here accepts that in the early days of a genuine effort to develop the Earth sphere, propellant lift would consume the bulk of the annual mass budget.

  • @vulture4:

    No one in China today follows or even remembers Lenin, let alone the NEP.

    In the past year, a search of Lenin (列宁) restricted to Chicom sources (site:gov.cn) yield 212,000 results. Compare this to 467 from American government websites in the same time frame.

    Their ideology derives not from Marx, Lenin, or Mao, but from the real founder of modern China, Deng Xiao-ping.

    Seeing as neither descendent philosopher claimed to contradict the former, I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make. You’re magnifying a difference of opinion on the role of collectivism in the economy into an iconic clash, a remarkable achievement considering that collectivism remains strong and encompasses the lives of the vast majority of the PRC peasantry.

    …who famously said “It is glorious to be rich.”

    Urban myth.

    They are as capitalist as we are.

    Is that so? Does enterprise in America operate at the whim of a government technocrat? Is the private property of Americans subsumed arbitrarily by government officials? Are contracts voidable and torts dismissed based on little more than political patronage?

    Although China and the US are economic rivals, they also see us as a vital trading partner and a historical ally.

    The US and China have traded since the country was ruled by Manchus and warlords in fief to one another. The fact that two countries trade has nothing to do with whether or not they have common economic systems.

  • We responded to Mr. Thomas: http://j.mp/ze1xPU

    Respectfully,
    Andrew Gasser
    TEA Party in Space

  • vulture4

    Prez Cannady: “Does enterprise in America operate at the whim of a government technocrat?”
    Vulture4: If you’ve been associated with the space program, do you even have to ask?

    As to China, its people tend to be concerned a more with stability and economic growth than with human rights or democratic institutions. It has its own interests, and as with most countries, sometimes these conflict with the interests of the US. But if you think there’s a shred of ideological Communism there these days I’m not sure if you have had any contact with real people from the real China.

  • @vulture4:

    If you’ve been associated with the space program, do you even have to ask?

    Really? When was the last time some senior midlevel flunkie at MSFC confiscated a Boeing plant?

    As to China, its people tend to be concerned a more with stability and economic growth than with human rights or democratic institutions.

    You really should be careful about drawing generalizations from your privileged sample.

    It has its own interests, and as with most countries, sometimes these conflict with the interests of the US. But if you think there’s a shred of ideological Communism there these days I’m not sure if you have had any contact with real people from the real China.

    I’m positive you’ve had very little contact with real people from the real China, but I don’t need to get into a worldliness pissing contest to demonstrate that fact. There’s a reason China scores in the lower half of the quality of life index.

  • DCSCA

    @Doug Lassiter wrote @ January 10th, 2012 at 3:46 am

    In fact, your sarcasm was duly noted and ignored. Lecture- no. Observations, yes. Your mind set, not uncommon in Western curcles, is hard-wired and never going to be swayed nor axknowledge what is happening until they launch out on their expedition. Which is why Western space policies remain reactive, not proactive, and its own worst enemy.

    @Rand Simberg wrote @ January 10th, 2012 at 11:00 am

    “[The recent Chinese white paper] doesn’t specify any particular time frame for a lunar landing…”

    And they never will. The craving by Western observers for specifics on Far Eastern space activities, desperate for data for their own prognostications and policy planning will always result in frustration. They simply will never provide a ‘when, where and how’ time table for your convenience. The Soviets never did either but as history confirms they had a lunar landing program in work. No, the folks squawking most are commercial HSF space advocates who see any rising competition from the PRC as a threat to their efforts to tap dwindling government resources as ‘seed money’ to subsidize their flagging LEO commercial HSF projects, which private capital sources continue to keep at arms length.

  • DCSCA

    @ Rand Simberg wrote @ January 10th, 2012 at 1:35 pm
    “Either way, no taikonauts are going to be making footprints on the moon any time soon.” ROFLMAO ‘Soon’ is a relative meaure of time to the Chinese. Whistling past the graveyard, Simberg is.

  • DCSCA

    “No schedule can be sensibly inferred from something so vague.”

    Which is the classic, reactive, Western mind set at work craving ‘where, when, how’ time tables for your own planning. It’s reactive thinking. And they play with it.

  • DCSCA

    SpaceMan wrote @ January 6th, 2012 at 12:54 pm
    “Get a grip people, history isn’t written in a couple of months or years”

    No, but its course can change in a day- like 12/7/41 or 10/4/57… or 7/20/69… or 9/11/01.

  • Coastal Ron

    DCSCA wrote @ January 10th, 2012 at 3:51 pm

    No, the folks squawking most are commercial HSF space advocates who see any rising competition from the PRC as a threat to their efforts…

    Truly delusional. Those of us that advocate for COTS and CCDev don’t have to worry about the U.S. Government buying cargo & crew services for the ISS from China – it won’t happen.

  • DCSCA

    @Coastal Ron wrote @ January 10th, 2012 at 4:37 pm

    When pigs get stuck, they squeal, especially in the Age of Austerity.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Andrew Gasser wrote @ January 10th, 2012 at 12:56 pm

    Rand Simberg wrote @ January 10th, 2012 at 1:35 pm

    both of you “OK” efforts I enjoyed reading them…they wont change anything Cal is writing for the likes of Mark Whittington and Wind who have embraced his musings 100 Percent. Facts dont matter. RGO

  • William Mellberg

    Rand Simberg wrote:

    “The Chinese white paper “suggests” no such thing. It doesn’t specify any particular time frame for a lunar landing, and only proposes to “conduct studies on a preliminary plan” for doing so in the next five years. No schedule can be sensibly inferred from something so vague.”

    As was the case with statements issued by the Soviet Union half a century ago, you often have to read between the lines of papers issued by the Chinese government (or any other totalitarian regime). For instance, following the Apollo 11 lunar landing in July 1969, Soviet officials claimed they hadn’t lost the “Moon Race” because they had never been in it. Their focus, so they claimed, was on orbital stations (which was true in that they had been working on the Almaz spy stations which later formed the foundation for the Salyut and Mir series). Yet, in The Soviet Encyclopedia of Space Flight edited by “G.V. Petrovich” (Valentin Petrovich Glushko’s pseudonym) and produced by Mir Publishers in 1969, one could find this interesting statement under the ‘Zond’ entry:

    “Zond-4, Zond-5 and Zond-6 automatic interplanetary stations were launched for flight testing and further development of an automatic version of a manned lunar spaceship.”

    That was, in fact, the very last entry in the book. And it certainly caught my attention when I read my copy in early 1970. “… flight testing and further development of an automatic version of a manned lunar spaceship.”

    The accompanying illustrations made it clear that Zond-6 was based on the Soyuz design. Yet, the Soviet government at the time denied that the USSR had been planning manned lunar missions — even though Soviet cosmonauts and academicians had made numerous references throughout the mid-1960s to sending men to the Moon. The mainstream media in the West parroted the official Soviet line, despite evidence to the contrary such as the Zond entry in the aforementioned encyclopedia.

    Of course, twenty years later, under Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of “glasnost” (openness), the world learned what CIA officials and Soviet space analysts already knew. The USSR had, indeed, been planning to send men to the Moon … and failed. Radio Moscow’s veteran science correspondent Boris Belitzky provided me with quite a few details of that failed effort in support of the book I was working on at the time about the exploration of the Moon. (Belitzky and I also discussed co-writing a more in-depth account of the Soviet lunar program, but his death in 2003 ended that idea.)

    In the current case, the Chinese government has not only stated its official interest in the Moon (including manned missions), but it has also begun work on the Wenchang spaceport and the Long March 5 launch vehicle — both well-suited to deep space exploration. No. They haven’t announced a specific timetable. I wouldn’t expect them to. But no one should be surprised if the next humans to set foot on the Moon are Chinese. Nor should anyone be surprised if their arrival coincides with the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 (or, perhaps, Apollo 17).

    While some might write it off as a stunt, the geopolitical implications of a Chinese base on the Moon — no matter how modest — would be enormous.

    Is America going to lead … or follow?

    The Obama Administration seems content to follow. And if Mitt Romney’s recent debate remark is any indication of his attitude toward space exploration, it seems his attitude would be no different were he to move into the White House a year from now.

    I wonder what Jon Huntsman thinks about China and the Moon? If he were President at the time of a Chinese manned lunar landing, at least he could talk to the taikonauts in Mandarin.

  • pathfinder_01

    William, Why is the long march 5 well suited for exploration? I mean it is a 25 ton to LEO rocket in the same catagory as Delta IV heavy. If a 25 ton to LEO rocket is needed for exploration we seem that have that one covered.

  • pathfinder_01

    Anyway China will progress into space at it’s own pace. They are not in a race with us and if we know what is good for our budget we shouldn’t try to race them.

    The problem isn’t ability to get to the moon. It is ability for a lunar flight to return a profit. Until that problem is solved the moon will be as fought over and developed as anartica.

  • DCSCA

    William Mellberg wrote @ January 10th, 2012 at 10:25 pm

    Yep. Well said. Reaffirms my earling postings on same.

  • @Willem Mellberg; Your assesment of the overall, big-picture situation is correct. America, under Obama, has basically ceded the Moon to China. The President callously finished off with Project Constellation, and replaced it with a fantasy-world of commercial firms picking up the large ball, and eliminating the government from the picture of any future manned spaceflights. But Flexible Path—-which insists that we never send astronauts to the Moon ever again, & Commercial Space—-which calls on our nation to soley rely on a cadre of for-profit entrepreneur companies, for all future manned space access; shall be exposed as complete frauds in the intervening next few years! The Obamaspace believers are frequently seen arguing that China has no designs on the Moon, hence, trying to “justify” an America that ignores of the Moon for the next two decades. But just think about that attitude for a moment: Since China does not appear to be interested in manned flights to Luna, then neither should we! Let’s just play it safe and remain in LEO for even more decades, since China won’t be doing nothing else but LEO either! So, instead of the United States taking the firm lead in manned deep space exploits, we as a nation are merely going to wait patiently until some remote someday, when another nation decides that LEO space stations have become way too boring! The gloomy thing about all this is: Without America doing something in deep space, the rest of the world might just feel inclined to copy our national lethargy. If America sinks into low-earth-orbit-only mediocrity, for the next twenty years, the rest of the world will likely follow, with nothing else but that.

  • William Mellberg

    pathfinder_01 wrote:

    “It is ability for a lunar flight to return a profit. Until that problem is solved the moon will be as fought over and developed as anartica.”

    You mean, Antarctica.

    Lunar exploration is still in the Lewis & Clark stage. It isn’t going to return a profit anytime soon. (Nor is President Obama’s ill-conceived plan to send humans to an undetermined asteroid.) That is why government must lead the way. If government exploration programs prove the value and practicality of extracting lunar resources, the private sector will follow. Meanwhile, a lunar outpost (on the rim of Shackleton Crater, for instance) would, indeed, be much like the research stations at Antarctica. And given the Moon’s potential role in the future exploration and settlement of the Solar System, it is the natural place to begin. Which is why we HAD our sights set on Luna, and why the Chinese HAVE their sights set on Luna.

  • @Mellberg:

    As was the case with statements issued by the Soviet Union half a century ago, you often have to read between the lines of papers issued by the Chinese government (or any other totalitarian regime).

    No, you really don’t. Beijing’s been pretty public about its intentions to pursue manned missions to the Moon, a point recently affirmed by lunar program’s commanding academician Ye Peijian.

    Now mind you, the manned lunar mission is an aspiration of Beijing’s take on VSE. Doesn’t mean they’ll actually do it. VSE remains law, Obama’s managed to kill any substantive progress towards lunar return for almost four years. China’s space technocracy is still debating the appropriate timeframe (close to 2020, 2025, or after 2030). And Beijing has been clear that it would approach lunar exploration and development in directions highlighted by their current robotic precursor effort. However, there is no ambiguity regarding China’s intentions regarding the Moon. And unless they screw the pooch in the “down” and “return” steps of the current phase, they will proceed to the next logical phase.

  • William Mellberg

    pathfinder_01 wrote:

    ” pathfinder_01 wrote @ January 11th, 2012 at 12:04 am
    William, Why is the long march 5 well suited for exploration?”

    Long March 5 is well-suited to the precursor robotic explorers which China will be sending to the Moon throughout the rest of this decade: rovers, sample return missions, etc.

  • William Mellberg

    Prez Cannady wrote:

    “Beijing’s been pretty public about its intentions to pursue manned missions to the Moon …”

    Agreed. But some people like to keep their heads buried in the sand with regard to China’s space ambitions. They routinely dismiss such statements because those statements don’t fit the ObamaSpace template (i.e., forget the Moon). It is reminiscent of the people who dismissed Soviet statements in the pre-Sputnik years.

  • Coastal Ron

    Prez Cannady wrote @ January 11th, 2012 at 8:55 am

    VSE remains law

    So when January 1st 2021 rolls around, you’re saying someone will be charged, under some statute, with not getting us to the Moon?

  • @Chris Castro
    <i@Willem Mellberg; Your assesment of the overall, big-picture situation is correct. America, under Obama, has basically ceded the Moon to China. The President callously finished off with Project Constellation, and replaced it with a fantasy-world of commercial firms picking up the large ball, and eliminating the government from the picture of any future manned spaceflights.."

    Read my comment in this thread of January 10th, 2012 at 8:59 am. As I stated there “to tout SLS and simultaneously claim concern for Chinese space dominance is a dichotomy and paradox of the first order.” I give the various concrete reasons why this statement is true with reference links. Thus, it is you and other SLS supporters like you that also claim concern about the Chinese who are living in a “fantasy world”. If you truly cared about the Chinese dominating space, you would not be for SLS because it sets back our progress for years compared to other methods. Just because you want to believe something is true does not make it so.

    The very fact that you say the current strategy is for “eliminating the government from the picture of any future manned spaceflights.” is a false statement for reasons that have been stated to you repeatedly even since the new space policy was enacted.

    Also, as I have already pointed out to you in my comment of January 8th, 2012 at 1:56 pm, the idea behind your statement, “But Flexible Path—-which insists that we never send astronauts to the Moon ever again” is false. I gave you the benefit of the doubt and assumed when you made a similar comment in an earlier post that it came from simple ignorance, but now that I have explained why it is not so, I have no other choice than to call that statement a lie.

  • Robert G. Oler

    William Mellberg wrote @ January 10th, 2012 at 10:25 pm

    Is America going to lead … or follow?..

    this is the old canard…wow if we dont do this or that then the rest of the world will see us as followers not leaders…the problem is that this generally ends up being the only reason cited for doing “this or that”…leadership.

    sorry that is not my definition of leadership RGO

  • @Coastal Ron:

    So when January 1st 2021 rolls around, you’re saying someone will be charged, under some statute, with not getting us to the Moon?

    Thank you. Already made that point.

  • vulture4

    Prez Cannady: I’m positive you’ve had very little contact with real people from the real China, but I don’t need to get into a worldliness pissing contest to demonstrate that fact. There’s a reason China scores in the lower half of the quality of life index.

    V4: The quality of life scale you refer to ranks Italy, Iceland and Ireland above the US. It is obviously several years out of date.

    It is hard to see how you can be so positive about what I do and who I work with. I’m more concerned with the US not getting into a pissing contest with China. Those of us who remember the cold war would not look forward to another one. This seems like a particularly pointless way of wasting what is left of our national wealth for the next generation.Maybe we should consider using space as a catalyst for developing understanding, trust and collaboration among the world’s major powers instead.

  • @Vulture4:

    The quality of life scale you refer to ranks Italy, Iceland and Ireland above the US. It is obviously several years out of date.

    Six years. It’s up to date enough. And what’s so odd about Iceland, Ireland, and Italy ranking higher than the US?

    It is hard to see how you can be so positive about what I do and who I work with.

    The same way I can be positive that someone who can’t name the American capital is probably not a professor of American history.

    I’m more concerned with the US not getting into a pissing contest with China. Those of us who remember the cold war would not look forward to another one.

    Don’t see how lying down on the train tracks waiting to get run over leads to a better outcome.

    This seems like a particularly pointless way of wasting what is left of our national wealth for the next generation.

    Trust me, there are countless worse ways to spend money than a Moonshot.

    Maybe we should consider using space as a catalyst for developing understanding, trust and collaboration among the world’s major powers instead.

    This last statement is so saccharine as to be virtually meaningless.

  • Coastal Ron

    Prez Cannady wrote @ January 11th, 2012 at 12:59 pm

    Thank you. Already made that point.

    No you didn’t.

    The VSE was an aspirational document – like the many declarations that Congress makes about Post Office names and such. There are no criminal codes that apply to missing the 2020 date for returning to the Moon.

    If there were, the prime person to prosecute would be Michael Griffin since he screwed up the Constellation program so much that Congress agreed to cancel it.

  • @Coastal Ron:

    No you didn’t.

    Yes, I did: ” VSE remains law, Obama’s managed to kill any substantive progress towards lunar return for almost four years. “

  • DCSCA

    pathfinder_01 wrote @ January 11th, 2012 at 12:08 am
    “Anyway China will progress into space at it’s own pace. They are not in a race with us and if we know what is good for our budget we shouldn’t try to race them.”

    Ah, but you see, Americans crave a race- and not just in space operations. Those competitive juices are about the only thing that motivates Americans to get off their tails and do anything anymore. It’s the American mind set– the world’s a football game or a NASCAR race. And it’s a surprise to folks who have spent their lives stateside to discover the world does not revolve around America. The United States needs a competion to react against because it is not proactive in space matters. Never has been and has always let events dictate how they react to shape space policy. Because hal a century after Shepard flew, America has no definitive long term rationale for its space program. Other lands do. And with fresh generations born after the Cold War ended, who see the space race as little more than a curious battle in it and WW2 as ancient history, they have simply moved on and are shaping their national policies for themselves. Old adversaries with younger populations and fresh ideas are just shrugging their shoulders at America and pressing on into the promise of the 21st century from a world dominated by the good ol’USA. As nations like the USA did with Britain 100 years ago. America is being passed by… and will wake up one day, as Britain did, and discover it has been left behind.

  • Coastal Ron

    Prez Cannady wrote @ January 11th, 2012 at 3:59 pm

    VSE remains law, Obama’s managed to kill any substantive progress towards lunar return for almost four years.

    What law? Can you point to the legal code for it?

    Regarding Constellation, Griffin gets credit for mismanaging that thing so badly that the peoples representatives (i.e. Congress) agreed to kill it.

    If there were an enforceable law regarding the VSE, which there isn’t, then Griffin should be the first one prosecuted.

  • @Coastal Ron:

    What law? Can you point to the legal code for it?

    Public Law No. 109-155.

  • Coastal Ron

    Prez Cannady wrote @ January 12th, 2012 at 12:26 am

    Public Law No. 109-155.

    Did you read it? It says:

    (2) MILESTONES.—The Administrator shall manage human space flight programs to strive to achieve the following milestones (in conformity with section 503)—

    (A) Returning Americans to the Moon no later than 2020.

    They strived, so therefore they met the requirements of the law. Guess no one is going to jail.

    Would have been nice to put Michael Griffin on the stand though to find out why he was so incompetent managing the Constellation program…

  • vulture4

    “VSE remains law, Obama’s managed to kill any substantive progress towards lunar return for almost four years.“

    Bush managed to kill all US human launch for a much greater period with no complaints from Republicans. Bush failed to fund Constellation or even discuss its real cost, even when the GOP had both houses of Congress. Romney laughs at the very idea of moon colonies and plans to radically slash government spending.

  • Vladislaw

    http://www.space.com/9305-president-obama-signs-vision-space-exploration-law.html

    “President Obama signed a major NASA act today (Oct. 11) that turns his vision for U.S. space exploration of asteroids and Mars into law.

    The signing makes official a NASA authorization act that scraps the space agency’s previous moon-oriented goal and paves the way for a manned mission to an asteroid by 2025. A manned mission to Mars is envisioned for some time in the 2030s. “

    It is my understanding when a new President issues their national space policy it over rides the previous national space policy?

    I don’t think space policy “laws” carry a whole lot of weight. NASA is MANDATED, by law, to utilize to the maximum extent possible all commercial services. They are also supposed to actively look and try and create commercial providers. This has been an official law for NASA since 1984 and congress has routinely ignored it for three and half decades and have keep the pork train fully funded that whole time.

  • @Coastal Ron:

    They strived, so therefore they met the requirements of the law. Guess no one is going to jail.

    Precisely what point are you trying to make?

  • @vulture4:

    Bush managed to kill all US human launch for a much greater period with no complaints from Republicans.

    So you don’t think we’ll have commercial crew by 2013? It’s been a while since grade school, but I think 4 is bigger than 2.

    Bush failed to fund Constellation or even discuss its real cost, even when the GOP had both houses of Congress.

    Is that a bad thing?

    Romney laughs at the very idea of moon colonies and plans to radically slash government spending.

    So let me get this straight. Beijing, despite her decade long statements of intent and success in meeting every milestone along the way, isn’t committed to putting men on the Moon, but Romney–whose laid out no specific plan to cut outlays–will “radically slash government spending.”

  • vulture4

    PC: “You’re magnifying a difference of opinion on the role of collectivism in the economy into an iconic clash, a remarkable achievement considering that collectivism remains strong and encompasses the lives of the vast majority of the PRC peasantry.”

    V4: You mean the peasantry that engaged in over 80,000 protests over the sale of their land to developers with inadequate compensation? Seriously, spend some time there. China is a complex country and for us to commit the majority of the NASA budget to a symbolic attempt to re-enact project Apollo because of a simplistic perception of China as another USSR would be a terrible mistake. We won’t get the money back.

  • E.P. Grondine

    Its strange that none of ou quote the George Brown Jr amendment, which is also law.

    WM – good eyes, Bill, but I think Charlie “Pat” Vick spotting the N1 launch tower was the first public break.

    pathfinder – My current guess is that China will go for fly-back re-usability to lower launch costs, and a modular architecture.

  • pathfinder_01

    I agree. I think that until the costs to LEO get lower lunar flight just wont advance much. I mean if you need something like SLS to launch a crew and something about the size of a Delta IV heavy(or larger) for resupply you won’t be able to do much at current cost. FH if it meets it cost goals and is reliable might make lunar missions more attractive.

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