Very little in this essay is new to people who have been following the arguments in space policy circles for years, but it’s useful to pull it all together into one place, and bring it up to date. I and many others have long advocated that we need to resurrect NACA (which was absorbed into NASA half a century ago) and start developing technology that can support private industry, as we did for aviation. With the new private space passenger vehicles now starting to be developed, the time is ripe for it, and Jeff Foust and Charles Miller have made a very powerful case. This should be must reading for both presidential campaigns.
[Update mid morning]
This piece I wrote a few years ago on the centennial of flight seems pertinent.
[Mid-afternoon update]
Ditto. Miller & Foust have done us all a service with a solid argument for the NACA approach.
I have a quibble with this:
>> Everybody agrees that achieving CRATS is critical for the nation.
But, I am less persuaded that the political entity known as the “United States of America” particularly needs CRATS except to the extent that the US cannot permit other nations to achieve CRATS unless the US also has CRATS.
Even without other nations having CRATS, they are a threat to our space assets, and the only way to be able to protect/replace them is with CRATS.
Even without other nations having CRATS, they are a threat to our space assets, and the only way to be able to protect/replace them is with CRATS.
If this is true, why isn’t Robert Gates clamoring for CRATS?
Also, if this is true why wouldn’t our national security interests would demand that any CRATS technology created by this new NACA remain classified?
By definition, a CRATS RLV will need to be inexpensive to manufacture (otherwise capital costs will erode those low costs) and therefore unless based upon a clever technology that can be kept secret, CRATS simply will proliferate once invented.
But once CRATS proliferates then our space assets will no longer be safe.
If this is true, why isn’t Robert Gates clamoring for CRATS?
Because he doesn’t realize that it’s true.
Also, if this is true why wouldn’t our national security interests would demand that any CRATS technology created by this new NACA remain classified?
Because what’s important is for us to have CRATS, not for us to deny it to others (even if that were possible).
But once CRATS proliferates then our space assets will no longer be safe.
Do you have some basis for this strange belief?
They’re not safe now, as China proved last year.
How very Socratic. Lets admit that we are the best for creating CRATS by admitting that we know nothing about CRATS. I certainly think that going into things with this mindset would laying a foundation of open thinking towards new ideas and markets. However, existing aerospace business may not necessarily like being told that they are wrong and challenged at every turn. This would spell trouble for making friends politically.
Also, I like the idea of forming an agency specifically with the mission statement of creating a CRATS infrastructure. However, to equivocate upon the role of NACA and somewhat warp the mission goals of that organization to somehow apply to cheap access to space could become confusing and misleading. To take that organization as a mold of things to come? Yea sure. However, if we are saying it is time to start fresh with new thinking them why dredge up and old organization. To many that would be taken as a sign of sliding backwards instead of progressing forwards.
Returning to the NACA model seems like a good idea. NACA did fundamental research on things like drag reduction (e.g. the NACA cowl design for radial engines), airfoils, and quite likely improved structural design. They didn’t try to build and operate an airline.
Applied to lowering launch costs, a modern version of NACA would do R&D on things like developing ligher materials, heat shielding, lower cost and/or higher efficiency engine design such as the aerospike concept, etc. The results from this R&D would be made available to American industry to give us a competitive advantage.
…existing aerospace business may not necessarily like being told that they are wrong and challenged at every turn.
This would not be “telling them that they’re wrong;” their behavior has been economically and politically rational, given four decades’ preference by NASA, Congress and (truth be told) most space fans for the Big Project/Big Mission.
If NACA-style incremental progress towards CRATS led BoLockMart to design a better vehicle, fine with me. I have no ideological/religious conviction that NewSpace must make the breakthroughs that big aerospace has not so far had much incentive to make.