I know, you’ve all given up, and just assumed that the piece in The New Atlantis was just another drug-addled Simberg fantasy of grandeur. That when I kept saying it would be Real Soon Now, that it was just vaporware. Well, Now has finally arrived.
As I wrote in an early draft, if extraterrestrial aliens had contacted the White House after the last lunar landing in 1972, and told the president that humans wouldn’t be allowed to move into space beyond earth orbit, and to pass the message on to his successors, but that the public was not to know this, it’s hard to imagine how policy actions would have been much different. Let’s Hope that this can finally Change with the new administration. That (unlike most of the rest of the agenda) would be Hope and Change that I could believe in.
[Late Friday update]
I want to thank everyone for the kudos, but I can’t accept it (did you know that kudos is not plural?) without acknowledging that this was a collaboration. Adam Keiper, the first and only (to date) editor of The New Atlantis, encouraged me to write this piece and, more importantly, played a key role in making it what it was. While we lost some things in editing (that I’ll rectify in a later Director’s Cut, and perhaps expand into a book), he focused it and almost certainly helped make it more influential in getting more to read it now, when we are at such a critical cusp of policy decisions.
But beyond that, he really helped write it. I was tired when I finished, and had a weak ending. The final paragraph, one of the best in it, if not the best (and it may be), is his.
And I’m grateful for the opportunity that he provided to get this message out, not just with The Path Not Taken five years ago (was it really that long?) but this and other pieces. The links in it are his, which indicates to me that he’s been following this topic closely. The most amazing thing is that this collaboration is a result of a snarky criticism by me of his own space-policy punditry, over half a decade ago. Rather than taking umbrage, he opened his mind to new possibilities, and the result is this (so far at least) collaborative magnum opus.
[Bumped]
Nice article.
Heheh, I notice the word ‘moon’ is capitalised in the article.
Awesome analogy with the Conestoga wagon size for the Big Rocket crowd.
Articles like this may prove to make us a spacefaring species. Definitely worth the wait.
My favorite line…
…lots of people wandering around and peering over the next rill in search of adventure or profit.
Heheh, I notice the word ‘moon’ is capitalised in the article.
Yes, Paul will piddle his pants with delight. 😉
Rand, thank you for your article. I have been reading your blog for many years now, yet often when you comment on the specifics of Constellation or Aries, I get a little lost because of a lack of reference to the bigger picture. Your thoughtful and extended review of where we’ve been and where we’re going (and where we should be going) helped, for me, to put everything in context and clear up most of my confusion.
Nicely done sir. Please keep up the excellent work, blogging and all.
A very complete article and I agree with your ideas as presented in the article. However, reusable launch equipment is still THE BIG PROBLEM (they like to burn up on the way back). Given current technology I feel that SpaceX’s methodology, as I see it (build a lot and work the learning curve for cost reduction), is our best near term strategy for us to become a “space faring race.” As for the future, we must also develop “cost effective, reliable and reusable” launcher technology. This is critical for lowering the marginal costs of delivering anything to any destination in space.
Rand,
I’m going to try to get as many people as I can to read your article. There are still far too many space enthusiasts out there who think that mass fraction is the only thing that determines the cost of space flight. I even know some who say they are for private companies such as SpaceX, but who still believe such companies need NASA as a boss rather than a partner.
I cannot imagine how anyone could write a more cogent article that encompasses pretty much all of the relevant issues relating to making spaceflight cheaper and more affordable. I could not be any more sincere in extending kudos for your effort.
Getting enough of the right people to pay attention to the contents of your article is another story. (sigh)
Just damn, Rand! Very complete and thorough. My favorite line is
“To put it another way, it isn’t NASA’s job to put humans on Mars; it’s NASA’s job to make it possible for the National Geographic Society, or an offshoot of the Latter-Day Saints, or an adventure tourism company, to put humans on Mars.”
I posted a link to the article on Senator Shelby’s facebook page. 😉
I’m going to offer a somewhat contrarian response (no surprise there, right.) Rand’s article seems to me to be something akin to a Barack Obama speech. It sounds very good until one does some analysis. I found the historical analogies faulty, the criticisms somewhat ill founded or overly broad, and the proposals vague, unworkable, or both. It offered all of the clichés one hears from contemporary space activism, but without a lot of coherent substance.
Wonderful article. I’ll try and see if I can slashdot it (I slashdotted the Augustine Committee’s beyond-LEO doc earlier today ;).
Whew. I read the whole thing. A little too much to grasp in one gulp but thanks for taking the time to do it. It’s quite a history lesson.
I knew that the lunar dust (regolith) was a source of oxygen before I read this article, but only just. Last weekend I happened to catch a NatGeo show about Constellation in which they depicted settlements at the south pole of the moon, with automated dust-processing robots providing the colonists with oxygen. They went on to describe the potential for harvesting ice, minerals, and even of using the lunar surface itself as a vast collector of solar energy, potentially for beaming back to earth. Pretty heady stuff. (And beautifully rendered in HD.)
But the stunning thing (to me) is that I never knew that before. I’ve followed spacefilght on an doff my whole life and somehow I never heard that before. It’s almost like evidence of one of your main points, that space travel hasn’t been treated seriously enough. If it had, such a thing would certianly be common knowlege.
For me, learning that there was oxygen on the moon, and possibly water, was huge. If a moon colony could actually be sustainable, could actually be a source of minerals and energy for earth, that changes everything. We could say goodbye to the vague and dreamy editorials about space being our destiny from otherwise sagacious folks like Krauthammer, and go there for a real reason.
Your arguments for a refueling infrastructure seem to follow similarly, practical lines. It may well be a necessary intermediate step. I don’t know enough to agree or disagree, but you make a good case.
Other than that, Mark, how did you like the article?
At least a line or two of discussion per point would have been helpful. Which historical analogies were faulty, and in what way? What’s an example of a faulty criticism, and how was it faulty? What recommendation was unworkable, and why? Otherwise you could have just said “Mark say, thumbs down.” Which is not very interesting.
Jim, the comments section of a blog is not exactly the ideal venue for a comprehensive critique, just as it is no for people praising the article to lay out their reasons why they are doing so. But one can find the start of my objection here:
http://curmudgeons.blogspot.com/2009_07_01_archive.html#8689512615532319293#8689512615532319293
Scroll down as necessary.
Mark,
When I first started participating in this industry way back when I read your stuff and found it interesting and useful. Then I learned a few basics about economics and aerospace engineering and that changed…
Rand,
The article is a great read and worth waiting for. The only critique I had was wanting footnotes in a couple of places to go more in depth, you whetted my appetite in the history lesson for more.
Mark W: YGBSM! You critique an obviously well researched article with vague generalizations? If you indeed did some “analysis” at least provide specific examples. I suspect you are really just fishing for one of our host’s famous retorts, because no one can be so dense as to find the proposals “vague.” What’s vague about “fully fund COTS D” or “don’t develop a new launcher”? It may be your opinion that they are “unworkable” but neither of those seem to fit any definition of unworkable I can come up with.
Rand, thanks again. Here’s hoping it is read by folks who can affect some change.
Why does it not surprise me that the ultimate True Believer in the Status Quo, Mark Whittington, did not like the article.
“I found the historical analogies faulty, the criticisms somewhat ill founded or overly broad, and the proposals vague, unworkable, or both.”
Talk about overly vague and general criticisms with no specifics! His pot appears to have much more carbon residue than that of the one he criticises. Sorry, NASA high priest Mark, no converts among us heathens!
“Then I learned a few basics about economics and aerospace engineering and that changed…”
Tell me more, Mike.
” I suspect you are really just fishing for one of our host’s famous retorts,”
Steve, actually I need to put this canard, which was started by Rand, to rest. I find Rand’s “retorts” to be hostile, angry, and bitter in both tone and substance. So I don’t “fish” for them as, like most people, don’t enjoy abuse. I do finda lot of Rand’s opinions on space policy to be contrary to what can be considered reasonable and I’ll continue to point that out when the occassion merits.
I did my doctoral dissertation on lunar transfer vehicles and developed a concept that followed the rule of no new launch vehicles. It can be done with no modifications to today’s launch fleet (except a possible modification to the shroud of the Delta IV or Atlas V), but it required using a shuttle launch and approximately 14 Delta IV/Atlas V Heavy launches for a two-person crew rotation with a reusable lunar lander refueled in lunar orbit. (Includes launches for all of the associated tankers for refueling at L1 and lunar orbit.) EELVs are too underpowered for human lunar transit. There are a few cargo applications you can use them for, but a Saturn class vehicle is necessary for any singificant space operation. Whether it’s a Saturn V, a Direct, a Shuttle-C, a super cluster of EELV-derived hardware, etc. is a point worth debating, but EELVs as they exist today are pickup trucks trying to do the job of an 18-wheeler when you try to go to the Moon on them.
Everyone is ignoring the real problem, though. It doesn’t cost too much to do space. We spend a tiny fraction of our budget on space. The problem is we do not have a compelling reason for space. We are not using space to fundamentally alter and improve life for the American citizen. Until that changes, there will never be enough support for space, no matter what rockets we use, no matter how our space programs are structured, no matter where they go.
“I do finda lot of Rand’s opinions on space policy to be contrary to what can be considered reasonable and I’ll continue to point that out when the occassion merits.”
You haven’t pointed out anything. Not one specific criticism. All you are saying is that you disagree. Not useful at all to anyone.
“Why does it not surprise me that the ultimate True Believer in the Status Quo, Mark Whittington, did not like the article.”
Rick, let me put to rest another canard. I’m hardly a “true believer” in anything, not to mention the status quo. In fact, I made myself very unpopular with certain people with my criticisms of the space station and other aspects of NASA policy in the 1990s.
But I cannot pretend that things have made a marked improvement since then. Mind, the “staus quo”, whatever one thinks that is, is not ideal. But neither is it a complete SNAFU that so many people on the Internet pretend that it is.
You might also want to read the following before you accuse me of wanting the “status quo.” Even Rand thought it reasonable.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/159434/toward_the_third_space_age.html?cat=37
It is a mark, by the way, of a “true believer” to react to contrary opinions not by disagreeing with the ideas, but attacking the person offering them.
Notwithstanding our many prior disagreements, I would grade this article as an “A” — well done indeed.
I would however point to this paragraph as the crux of the issue:
The only reliable way to lower marginal costs is to pursue full reusability—that is, to make the entire spacecraft, including the launch vehicle, reusable. To return to our analogy, the restaurant is the vehicle fleet, facilities, and staff to service it. The food is the propellant. The first flight is hugely expensive. After that, costs will drop rapidly. The ultimate floor on the marginal cost of any form of transportation is the cost of the energy required to get from one point to the other. Getting to orbit is not that different, energetically, from flying across the Pacific, and there’s no reason that we shouldn’t be able to lower the marginal cost of getting to orbit to within an order of magnitude of the marginal cost of air transport, given sufficient demand.
Given sufficient demand . . .
The demand side of the equation needs considerable attention IMHO and some New Space folk appear to have a “Field of Dreams” approach — build it and they will come.
But unless they come first, the demand won’t be there to drastically lower costs.
NASA buying fuel for a LEO propellant depot can serve as a starter motor but unless there is unrelated private sector demand to run the engine thereafter, it won’t matter.
Can’t drive a car down the street using only the starter motor.
= = =
Perhaps NASA needs a genuine competitor and that means non-NASA destinations “out there” either privately owned space stations, lunar facilities or what have you and/or non US flagged facilities.
NASA as the sole funding source also creates a brittle mono-culture.
= = =
Nonetheless, I stand by my grade of “A” and this article articulates the stuff you and I have been arguing about better than anything else I have read on the topic.
More rumours from NSF.com concerning the meltdown in progress at MSFC: they are now apparently considering some form of propellant transfer. If even the sworn enemies of propellant depots are at least considering propellant transfer, maybe the future for depots isn’t as bleak as I thought it was.
Two of the main pretexts for not using EELVs (needing EOR and avoiding propellant transfer) are now apparently being reconsidered by people inside the Constellation and Space Shuttle programs. And still they keep pushing SDLVs.
NASA buying fuel for a LEO propellant depot can serve as a starter motor but unless there is unrelated private sector demand to run the engine thereafter, it won’t matter.
What do you mean by thereafter? Are you anticipating NASA will get bored of spaceflight beyond LEO and will no longer need propellant? Or maybe they will go ISRU on us and only buy relatively small quantities of hydrogen in LEO?
NASA could starting buying $3B to $4B a year in launch services relatively soon and continue doing that for more than a decade. Don’t you think that very large demand will lead to the development of RLVs, lower cost to orbit which will then lead to additional commercial demand?
I found your article quite interesting and (not surprisingly) well-argued. I do think, however that one possible addition might have been useful, to wit…Property Rights.
Until and unless potential private space development can be given some reasonable expectation that its efforts will not be destroyed by the government (i.e. lunar or asteroid miners finding their stakes appropriated by the government, or given away to some UN agency as part of the ‘common heritage of all of mankind’), the propensity to invest in the development of space will be somewhat limited. In a similar sense (and to be fair, you allude to this in your article) as long as NASA, with the virtually unlimited resources of the US government behind it, insists on acting as a competitor (and often as a regulator as well), it is difficult to see why anyone would choose to play.
For the United States to become a spacefaring nation, it must explicitly embrace the notion of spacefaring as a national, not a state, endeavor. Certainly the government an play some role (navies patrol the seas, for instance, and most early exploration was underwritten or at least enabled in one way or another by governments), but ultimately there must be some realization that the government cannot command the development of space, rather it can only encourage it.
To extend on Matijn’s comment, once NASA is routinely using propellant depots, the very conservative comsat market would be able to consider using prop transfer as well- which would allow MUCH larger, more powerful comsats (= more profit). That market would then become an anchor tenant as well.
Rand – having argued with you on other issues, I have to say that I found your article well-written, informative and entertaining. If / when humans become a space-faring species, the concepts outlined in your article will be how it gets done.
Rand,
Kudos on the article. It is an excellent history.
I have two criticisms regarding the view toward the future. First, and more importantly, I wish that more than one paragraph had been spent on what it would mean to be a spacefaring civilization, and in particular, what you imagine people will be doing in space. The article won’t be very persuasive to those who are willing to contemplate either killing the US manned space program or allowing the status quo to continue. I’ll elaborate below, but I won’t say anything you haven’t heard before. My other criticism is that I’m still concerned that the propellent depot scheme advocated by you and Jon Goff and others locks us into using conventional chemical propulsion for in-space vehicles. You want lots of tankers to come up from Earth to get the launch costs down, but if the best way travel past Earth orbit is found (by the market) to not use chemical propulsion, the whole system falls apart. Perhaps the market locks the infrastructure in place until we can get to Earth orbit without using conventional chemical propulsion (eg laser launch or space elevators), but it is a shame to lock-in one particular solution. Granted it is an even bigger shame to not go at all or allow the status quo to continue while we only dream of laser launch, space elevators, solar sails, etc. Then again, it is only a shame if there was a good reason to build a space infrastructure in the first place (see first criticism).
Your article only suggested four activities that we might do in space: a) deflect Earth impactors, b) mine asteroids and comets and the moon , c) tourism, and d) exploring the unknown, perhaps in the hopes of finding economic opportunities.
No one should argue with asteroid deflection, but that doesn’t require a whole infrastructure.
To justify an infrastructure, mining should involve digging up something of value other than the means to propogate the infrastructure itself (as digging up oxygen and maybe water would). There is widespread skepticism that there will ever be any need to bring matter (including He3 & paladium) back to Earth for industrial purposes. So, that leaves beaming power back to earth (via the facilities built using extraterrestrial mining), and again, there is widespread skepticism that this will be cost effective compared to generating electrcity on Earth.
Can the entire infrastructure be justified for tourism? I don’t know.
If not, we’re left arguing that a space-based infrastructure should be built primarily to support exploration either because we just like exploration or because the exploration by lots of people in parallel will lead to someone figuring out to go forward with economic developement. I understand your argument is that if we’re going to have a NASA, lets have a NASA that can support that very hope, but I’m concerned that the whole argument rests on hope. After all, people can hope for all sorts of competing dreams.
I am humble: What did I miss & what am I wrong about?
My blushes, but I had forgotten the difficulties of embedding urls in the comments here. So,
Jim, the comments section of a blog is not exactly the ideal venue for a comprehensive critique, just as it is no for people praising the article to lay out their reasons why they are doing so. But one can find the start of my objection at Curmudgeons Corner. Scroll down as necessary.
“Why does it not surprise me that the ultimate True Believer in the Status Quo, Mark Whittington, did not like the article.”
Rick, let me put to rest another canard. I’m hardly a “true believer” in anything, not to mention the status quo. In fact, I made myself very unpopular with certain people with my criticisms of the space station and other aspects of NASA policy in the 1990s.
But I cannot pretend that things have made a marked improvement since then. Mind, the “staus quo”, whatever one thinks that is, is not ideal. But neither is it a complete SNAFU that so many people on the Internet pretend that it is.
You might also want to read the following before you accuse me of wanting the “status quo.” Even Rand thought it reasonable. Google “The Third Space Age.”
Sorry, that should read “But I cannot pretend that things have not made a marked improvement since then.
That’s fine Mark, you just go on being the cranky old man over on Nasa Blvd. who keeps yelling at the “Damn kids running through my yard”.
Well, I second Scott’s comments about space property rights, but that’s one of the large number of things that coul;d have usefully been discussed, but were beyond the scope of the article. It’s a question of how far back you want to step when looking at the problem. right now the space community spends a huge amount of time arguing the merits of specific technology choices — Ares or something else, Direct, SDLV, or whatever. Rand has done a service by trying to get people to step back a bit further and look at whole architectures, and beyond that rethink the whole idea of exactly why space is important and what we want to see happen there. Beyond what Rand has addressed are other sets of issues. I’m particularly interested in the question of what structures, incentives, and organizations we create or rearrange to handle America’s activities in space (as a nation, not as a giovernment or a “space program”). Rand barely touched on that, but that was inherent in the scope of what he set out to do. Maybe Adam can commission another article on that sometime. Ditto the space property rights issue. That’s yet another level of analysis that needs more work, beyond the scope of this article.
Lots of work to do, people.
On property rights, I believe someone will need to follow the advice given by Rousseau . . .
Go land on the Moon, build a fence and say “This is mine!”
Then look around and ask “Anyone got a problem with that?”
Of course, having battalions of lawyers pre-positioned in the capitals of the various spacefaring nations and having a strategy to get the major spacefaring nations to support your claim is also mission critical.
Recall that in Heinlein’s novel “Harsh Mistress” the turning point came when an obscure nation choose to recognize the lunar settlers.
= = =
If the US takes the lead in seeking to create space property rights the rest of the world will gang up against us.
Therefore the initiative needs to come from somewhere else.
There are two ways to establish a property rights regime on the Moon. Either one comes to an international agreement that defines them, along with a mechanism for defending them. Or a country (hopefully the United States) claims the Moon as soverign territory. Both approaches have obvious advantages and disadvantages.
Mark,
In the interest of fairness and objectivity, I will read “The Third Space Age”, but it still doen’t change the fact that you haven’t stated any specific criticisms on the current topic at hand.
More on property rights . . .
Short term, there aren’t any markets in tangible property really worth fighting over.
He3? Nah.
Thorium reactors are a cheaper solution than commercial fusion and if Polywell works all space based energy schemes collapse anyways.
PGM? I like the PGM business market however the global annual market in PGM is ~$10 billion — not sufficient to jump start a cis-luarn economy.
Lunar LOX ISRU? Sure, but folks do not need to own lunar land to do lunar LOX ISRU — mine the LOX then pick up shop and move on.
Fish caught offshore can be sold even without a claim of “owning the oceans” and short term there is far far FAR more lunar LOX than anyone can possibly harvest. If one country is mining LOX, set up shop 100 kilometers away, no big deal.
Lunar cold traps present a scarcity issue however I suspect that the Terran consequences of two nations fighting over lunar water will far exceed the benefit thereof.
Property rights will emerge once commerce begins.
Rick, it’s on my blog, as I mentioned, and is a little too extensive to reproduce here.
@Bill: Having just re-read Moon is a Harsh mistress last weekend I have to correct you – the obscure nation (Chad)’s influence was mostly to provide (bogus) earth-based citizenship for two lunar diplomats who otherwise would be illegal aliens. The real turning point was China choosing to recognise Luna as a nation after being bombarded for several days.
You can draw a very different conclusion from that than the one you draw.
But the various points about property rights are important…
Imagine if discoverers of various asteroids were assigned a (small, say 1-10%) property right to their discoveries, one that expired after a term similar to copyright (70 years) or the typical third world lease (99 years) It might provide a little more impetus to actually reach out to take advantage of that, or derivatives market could arise, trading in shares, that could fund a mission or missions out there….
(I am still reading Rand’s article, my only complaint so far is that it spends too much time on history and not enough on the future, but more whenever I finish – and I realize I’m not the target audience)
I’m also curious: how much do the suggestions in the New Atlantis article help with unmanned space exploration, as it is currently practiced?
I assume that the suggestion of making all NASA centers FFRDCs would greatly help. (Although, I don’t know enough about the specifics to know whether it would have helped whatever ails the Mars Science Laboratory project.)
What about depots? My guess is that depots would make it more affordable to avoid time-consuming gravity assists via Venus and Earth when considering missions to the outer solar system, but I’m ignorant.
Would depots make direct flights to Mars, the Moon, and Venus any cheaper, even if the probes were only massed as much, at most, as they do now?
@ Dave Taht
Fair enough. Based on your comments I’d refine mine to suggest that geo-political balance is what will matter.
Would be moon miners may need to do global diplomacy and find a way to scratch backs in Moscow, Beijing, Brussels and Washington and perhaps New Delhi and Tokyo.
A global treaty snarled in regulation would be the worst solution imaginable, IMHO, and therefore I fear that seeking to re-write the Outer Space Treaty could do more harm than good,
Therefore, I currently like the concept of some billionaire flagging the operation in a small neutral (Singapore, Isle of Man) and seek to win allies in those various capitals and thereafter establish a balance of power between the major space faring nations to preclude interference with the operation.
Just got back from Whittington’s blog. His “specific” reasons are so full of non sequiturs and circular logic (that is illogic) as to almost be laughable. For instance:
“Aside from the fact that we abandoned the race with the Soviets by curtailing Apollo from almost the moment Apollo 11 returned, Rand seems to forget that the opening of the American frontier, from Columbus on, was informed by national rivalries. Rand should learn a little history before he undertakes to cite it.”
Neglecting the fact that Rand already covered in the article the reason why the assertion Mark makes about the curtailing of Apollo is incorrect, he is selectively editing his history. Only in the first centuries of colonization was settlement driven by national rivalries. After the Louisiana Purchase, American westward movement was primarily driven by industries and families seeking economic betterment.
I would have to write an article myself to cover all of his faulty assumptions and conclusions. I don’t have the time to go into the rest of them. But I gave up on the article after the third or fourth statement that was a miscomprehension of the facts.
Heh!
I forgot my main point.
Under current law there is absolutely no impediment to private business earning revenue from intangible sources — tourism, media deals, sponsorships and advertising and so forth.
Under current law, profit generated by such activities is entirely legal and permissible and since there are few if any markets for tangible space resources, why not start there?
“After the Louisiana Purchase, American westward movement was primarily driven by industries and families seeking economic betterment.”
Just a minor point, Rick, but you may have forgotten the American Mexican War and the little dust up with Britain over the Oregon Territory.
Mark, I said primarily not totally.
Short term, there aren’t any markets in tangible property really worth fighting over.
Which may only be because nobody now sees a way to fight effectively over a claim. But there may be a way.
Except for satellites in orbit, nobody owns space property. How do we boot strap that? Starting with the moon we have 37.9 million square kilometers that we could trade on an open market which means determining what it is really worth to people. All we have to do is determine a way to allocate that real estate to start the trading. This can’t be done by auction because nobody currently has a right to that money but it could be done by lottery.
It doesn’t matter at first if any government recognizes the property rights, because the millions of property right owners themselves could then assert a pretty strong claim once they’ve been buying and selling these rights for a while.
Now suppose someone outside this market lands on the moon and puts up a fence saying everything within is mine? The sensible thing for this person to do is also buy up that same land on that market which they could probably do at a steal which would support their claim to title of the property.
But if they don’t the issue gets decided in the courts belatedly as is usually the case. Those market speculators may then find their claim either worth more or less depending on the outcome in the courts.
Or perhaps it could be done by auction. Payment could be made to each country by percentage of land mass here on Earth. Or if we really want to get the smaller countries supportive then equal shares to all.
The solar system represents a lot of wealth in real estate alone, we just need to figure a way to get a market started in trading in it. I think we should just do and ask forgiveness later.
you may have forgotten the American Mexican War and the little dust up with Britain over the Oregon Territory.
Disputes over claims are unavoidable. That doesn’t mean we sit and make no claims.
Great article, I have forwarded it to many colleagues. I am wondering, whether private industry should be guided like is being done in the COTS programme now or should be given a free and open way forward without any government involvement. At least you have only one space agency to worry about, in Europe we have to work with a space agency with as many captains as there are member states….
The only critique I had was wanting footnotes in a couple of places to go more in depth, you whetted my appetite in the history lesson for more.
My original piece was well footnoted (and more fun to read — TNA, as a policy journal, has a little more sober style). I’ll publish it as a “director’s cut” after a decent interval (probably early fall).
Bob,
To justify an infrastructure, mining should involve digging up something of value other than the means to propogate the infrastructure itself (as digging up oxygen and maybe water would). There is widespread skepticism that there will ever be any need to bring matter (including He3 & paladium) back to Earth for industrial purposes.
Problem: Cost of raw materials on Earth lower than the cost of getting them from space.
Solution #1: Wait until supply depletes and price sufficiently rises. (Arguably, at that point it’d be too late to start exploring space)
Solution #2: Increase value of the materials, that is, make stuff.
Microgravity holds a promise for better or novel materials which are impossible to make on earth. In the beginning you need to figure something with very high price/mass ratio. Maybe better substrates for the chip industry (I believe someone from SpaceHab spoke about this at some conference), maybe something else.
At that point the question becomes how to get the materials to the manufacturing facility – either from the deep gravity well of earth or much “closer” Moon or NEOs.
Sadly, despite the ISS being created for the purpose of searching for such potential applications, it became another victim of ESAS.
I had forgotten the difficulties of embedding urls in the comments here.
Then you have “forgotten” something that no one else even knew. There is no difficulty in “embedding urls” in this comments section, at least to anyone who knows a little basic HTML (which any blogger should). It is like most comments sections in that regard (when they allow links at all).
<a href=”URL”>words that point to link</a>