While in general I think that the new space policy is a vast improvement over the previous one, it is marred by the disdain that the administration displays toward the moon as a useful goal. Paul Spudis (who else) defends the moon against the foolish arguments opposed to it. There may be good reasons not to go back to the moon, but I haven’t heard any, and “we’ve been there” certainly isn’t one. I know for sure that that I haven’t been there.
Paul also asks, why wait for heavy lift?
This new document indicates that work will proceed on development of a heavy lift launch vehicle, with a decision on what vehicle to build coming in 2015 (note well: not building a vehicle, but making a decision on what vehicle to build). How will our decision on heavy lift be more informed in five years than it is now?
If there’s anyone who doesn’t speak for this administration, it’s me, but my answer is: if we start doing the necessary tech demos for autonomous docking/mating, propellant storage and transfer, we may be informed enough to finally convince everyone except the die-hard Apollo cargo cultists and giant penis enviasts that we don’t need a heavy lift vehicle, at least any larger than natural growth versions of what currently exists.
In free markets it doesn’t matter whether the President or any other politician thinks some particular technology or destination is good or not — so long as they don’t actively get in the way. If you have to convert politicians into boosting your particular goal in order to fund that goal, you aren’t doing free enterprise, you are doing government contracting in pursuit of a government-led and centrally-planned goal.
Indeed, one of the great unintended benefits of the new plan is that it keeps the promoters of speculative government-specified “infrastructure” off the moon, which will allow real commerce to develop it in a natural manner focused on free market customers rather than scarce lunar resources being squandered pursuing centrally planned speculative monstrosities.
One more advantage of the 2015 decision is that the Shuttle derived group will be dispersed.
One more advantage of the 2015 decision is that the Shuttle derived group will be dispersed.
To be honest I think that is the biggest advantage. Rand may well be right that the battle against HLV has been won. But remember Glenn Close. We can’t sleep easily just yet.
Martin… you mean NASA is going to boil our bunny?
Heheh, I meant the scene at the end. You think she’s dead, but she’s not. Classical horror protagonist mistake.
I’ll try my hand at extending and revising the President’s remarks.
“We’ve been there. When we went there at the height of the cold war, it inspired our fellow Americans who saw that America can do whatever it sets as its goal, intimidated our adversaries who were not able to do the same, and created new technologies that have helped make the United States a technological and economic leader for the last 40 years. Doing the same again wouldn’t inspire us and our children with the dreams of what we might do next, and it wouldn’t tell other countries anything new about the economic and technological might of the United States. It might lead to new technologies and better ways of going to and working in space, but not if we’re trying to do it with *existing* technology. And existing technology, used in the same ways, isn’t enough to reach for the new goals that would expand the sort of role that the United States of America can have in space.”
Which is pretty much what I thought when Bush initially brought up the Return to the Moon idea. Along with “There’s no way that there’s political momentum enough to keep this going until 2010, much less 2020.”
If people want to walk on the Moon, I wish them the very best as they pay for the privilege of the experience. If I had the dough, I’d love to be one of them. I can’t see any reason for the government to pay to send folks there though.
Googaw,
[[[Indeed, one of the great unintended benefits of the new plan is that it keeps the promoters of speculative government-specified “infrastructure” off the moon, which will allow real commerce to develop it in a natural manner focused on free market customers rather than scarce lunar resources being squandered pursuing centrally planned speculative monstrosities.]]]
Yes, you won’t have all those government missions landing on the Moon getting in your way anymore. Oh, wait, the government, in fact no government, has landed a payload on the Moon in nearly forty years…. Gee, maybe there has been something else in the way of private lunar missions.
That is OK. I am sure private industry will find a new way to blame the government for the lack of commercial markets on the Moon.
Kirk Sorensen,
Now that HSF is commercialize the focus should shift to commercializing NASA robotic missions. There were proposals some years back by the same folks that pushed for commercializing HSF to replace NASA launch that also called for replacing NASA science missions with data purchase agreements with private firms.
Looks like a good time to push the idea since they seem to be on a roll. Instead of spending billions on missions like MSL NASA could just put out a fixed price list for the data sets their scientists want and wait for private space firms to provide them. Could create a great government market for commercial space and save billions of dollars on cost plus robotic missions 🙂
I know SpaceDev showed it could have accomplished the NEAR mission for 1/10 of what it cost NASA to do.
Kirk,
I’m not a huge fan of a HSF program that is little more than flags and footprints stunts to watch on TV either…the problem is that one could easily make the same argument about unmanned science missions as well. Why should the government be paying so that people can have cool screensaver photos? Both manned and unmanned exploration do yield some small benefit to the rest of us, but probably nowhere near enough to justify a budget within an order of magnitude of what they’re getting.
Sure, from a science standpoint so far most unmanned missions have had a better return on investment than manned spaceflight. I think at least part of this has to do with the reality that the manned spaceflight infrastructure set up for Apollo became nothing more than a jobs program for Congress. It’s hard to separate out how much of the low yield of human exploration is fundamentally due to the higher complexity, and how much of it is due to entrenched bureaucracies who have zero incentives towards efficiency.
But regardless of which gets more science yield…how important is the science results we’re getting? Sure we understand our world and universe better, but how much of that has translated into tangible value to the rest of us, beyond edutainment?
~Jon
To some, funding orbiting telescopes, deep space probes etc. is just a jobs program for cosmologists and astrophysicists worldwide. To others, its fueling the fundamental science that yields improvements in applied sciences and ultimately technology. The bit for which ROI is very hard to calculate, predict or plan.
If the US Government is going to fund manned space exploration at all the Moon should be on, and very near or at the top of, the short list of destinations for those manned missions.
The “we’ve been there” is based in either ignorance or simply shows a lack of concern for space exploration altogether. We’ve had 12 humans briefly explore only six small areas of the Moon, all on the near side and all within a few degrees of the lunar equator, leaving the vast majority of the moon unexplored by humans. It is as if I were to say “I’ve been to the US Air and Space Museum and spent an entire 5 minutes inside, there is no need for me to go back”.
Cecil,
It is as if I were to say “I’ve been to the US Air and Space Museum and spent an entire 5 minutes inside, there is no need for me to go back”.
When trying to get a point across to my construction guys, I would phrase it more like, “So you got laid once and saw no reason to repeat it?” Sometimes you can use a sound bite to get a solid point across, but you have to make it personal and taylor it to the audience.
Tom, yes, there are other things in the way of lunar commerce, which is hardly a good reason to add another barrier or diversion by having economic fantasists jump the gun and build moon-roving white elephants that squander scarce lunar resources at taxpayer expense.
The fact of the matter is that for the average Joe, the 98% of the population who care about astronauts only on the rare occasions when the many more exciting parts of our civilization happen to bore them, the people whose tax money funds practically all of HSF, getting there first is a big deal, indeed the whole point of HSF. It’s a heavenly version of the Olympics that is confused in the popular imagination with real national security. Having our flag and the footprints of our team getting there before the other team is what it’s all about. Nobody but a tiny if noisy cult of sci-fi fans and central planner wannabes, many of whom also work for contractors trolling for government money, cares about the “infrastructure”, “stepping stone”, and “government will lead commerce” nonsense. And that’s very fortunate, given the ludicrously costly bridges to nowhere these “infrastructure” pushers have built before when they’ve gained control over the NASA budget.
(I’m copying over a comment on this I made over at Clark Lindsay’s RLV News)
Another possible interpretation is that Obama’s essentially told US private industry that the Moon has passed the stage of initial government exploration, and private/commercial settlement is the next item (and that private efforts wouldn’t have to worry about competing with the US government). This is particularly interesting in the context of Bigelow’s space.com interview a couple days ago about his plans for a lunar base, after his LEO stations have proven themselves. With government supporting commercial crew access, in-space restartable engines, LEO fuel depots, and Lagrangian fuel depots, private lunar settlement becomes much more feasible.
Googaw,
[[[Tom, yes, there are other things in the way of lunar commerce, which is hardly a good reason to add another barrier or diversion by having economic fantasists jump the gun and build moon-roving white elephants that squander scarce lunar resources at taxpayer expense.]]]
I see. Somehow NASA rovers make it more difficult to see private ones…
Somehow NASA rovers make it more difficult to see private ones…
No, the problems would be at least some of the following:
(1) NASA (or your government corporation) would squander scarce lunar resources — the water, strategic locations, etc. which leaves less or second best for real commerce.
(2) Following the lead of popular traditional ideas, as the Soviet Union and NASA have done with space “infrastructure” many times already, it would preposterously misscale and otherwise misdesign its architecture, misleading those considering real commerce in the area about what is appropriate cost and scale. Current lunar plans are typically three orders of magnitude or more too large and too costly for real markets. It will be hogging the headlines with Wonders Beyond the World and grand astronaut heroics at taxpayer expense while real commerce would be fielding small robots. So much divergence between economic reality and the dominant paradigm could scare investors away from the properly scaled projects.
(3) It will have political clout to shut down any business project that makes it look bad or competes with it.
(4) Laws might be passed, a la the Shuttle era, forcing real commerce to cooperate with this monstrosity: to use its communications links, or its fuel depots, or its choices of propellants or orbits, etc., when real commerce needs different solutions. There is a vast design space in the choice of propellants, orbits, etc. etc. and the odds of anybody, public or private, getting it right the first time are minuscule, though the odds for a company that a real market makes economically accountable are much higher than for an economically unaccountable government entity.
(5) If regulators cooperate with the government entity, it creates a conflict of interest between that combination and their contractors against the real commerce entities being regulated.
(6) Such a large taxpayer-funded entity could potentially create many other political risks along similar lines.
It is just much better for everybody, astronaut fan and real commerce alike, if NASA confines itself to exploration, whether real exploration for science or prospecting or the the old flag-n-footprints races to new destinations, and lets real commerce develop any real businesses and real infrastructure on the moon on its own good time. The astronauts and their fans benefit because they get to go new places instead of the boring old ones, and in the long run because real commerce is far more likely than a central planning bureau to turn lunar resources into the propellant, shielding, etc. they very much need for deep space voyages. Real commerce will benefit from greatly lowered costs from getting from LEO to GEO. The only people who will lose in this scenario are the lunar base planner wannabes who will have to go buy themselves the latest version of SimLunarWonder and leave us real people in the real world alone.
“Doing the same again wouldn’t inspire us and our children with the dreams of what we might do next, and it wouldn’t tell other countries anything new about the economic and technological might of the United States.”
So we’re doomed to be defined only by our ability to reach whatever is currently the ‘next’ planet…?
I don’t see a lot of Scandinavian historical and cultural influence in the New World, It was all those nations that came ‘second,’ but made it stick, that mattered…
“We’ve had 12 humans briefly explore only six small areas of the Moon, all on the near side and all within a few degrees of the lunar equator, leaving the vast majority of the moon unexplored by humans.”
And the unmanned probe people have never bought into this, either. They’ve never been afraid to go to objects that have been previously visited, looking in new places on them, with new or better technologies. They know we’re never really ‘finished’ anywhere.
There’s no reason HSF should not follow the same logic…
Here’s the real reason that the new plan is to “boldly go where no man has gone before”:
http://www.space.com/news/leonard-nimoy-barack-obama-100416.html
They see the death of NASA’s heavy lift as a feature, not a bug. But for fundamentally different reasons.
This is what leads to the disdain for the Moon, it’s “You must be absolutely joking, we’re just rearranging things to show you how exactly a jobs program should be run.”
Siiiiiiiiiiiigggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhh.. Obama went off speech so now we’re back to square one.
The new plan is not to ignore the Moon.. The new plan is not to go land on Mars and forget about the Moon.
Let me have a go: Paul’s plan is to go nowhere until we’re ready to go to the Moon. Robotic precursors? Sure, let’s do those. But human missions? Nope. We stay in LEO (or cancel ISS too) until there’s a heavy lift vehicle ready and then we go straight to the Moon.
Doesn’t feel good does it?
Stop slinging arrows and think.
Why wait for heavy lift?
That phrase is actually ambiguous. Why wait for heavy lift indeed? Why should exploration have to wait for heavy lift when it doesn’t need it? Let’s go and explore before we have heavy lift, if ever.
That is OK. I am sure private industry will find a new way to blame the government for the lack of commercial markets on the Moon.
It works the other way for the short-term, too: if commercial space fumbles the ball in the next couple of years, or in a second Obama term, he can then claim that he gave commercial space a chance, it didn’t work, and now he has to retrench HSF again.
If his plan works, he’s a big hero, if it doesn’t, he can blame Elon Musk, and he gets the added bonus of instituting more “Change”.
This is what leads to the disdain for the Moon, it’s “You must be absolutely joking, we’re just rearranging things to show you how exactly a jobs program should be run.”
Indeed.
I keep coming back to the question of why, considering Obama’s record in nearly every other aspect of American society, NewSpace has bought so fully into the notion that somehow Obama is gung-ho for capitalism to go to work in HSF.
IMO the first step should be the establishment of propellant depots and ISRU for refueling said propellant depots. These could then be used to establish a more developed near-Earth presence.
The goals for this near-Earth presence could be varied: satellite boost, reboost, maintenance are some of them.
Other goals could include defense purposes such as: space denial, orbital bombardment, or orbital troop insertion.
Space denial could be achieved with satellite drone fleets controlled from bases on Earth or orbit. This is the first stage of the weaponization of space akin to placing guns on spotter planes during WWI.
I could see a scenario develop where nuclear weapons are banned, much like chemical weapons were banned during WWII. The replacement for hitting strategic targets would be orbital bombardment. This would be “cleaner” because of the lack of fission products. This would develop as satellites grow larger and more capable akin to bombers during WWI/WWII.
In orbital troop insertion you would keep a small battalion of troops permanently stationed in space. These troops would be used in a similar fashion paratroopers are used today. The advantage would be faster insertion times. Quick insertions behind enemy lines would be used to disrupt the enemy as a prelude to a larger invasion. They could even be used as a main force for small isolated targets (think Crete during WWII).
The reasons for war could be many and varied but I suspect it would be fought over strategic resources much like WWII. We are already witnessing such wars today. If there is a pressure from nations to put these resources away from the open market, via sanctions, embargoes, or whatever, the only way to get these resources would be the use of force. This could happen in a generation unless there is investment in alternate sources or technologies that use different more common resources to do the same thing.
At the moment prospects of a large war are kept out by global trade and massive US defense capabilities. However these massive US defense capabilities will be economically unsustainable in the long term, as they have been for any empire previous to it. In the end there are only so many Americans vs the rest of the world. As the rest of the world develops the US needs increasingly more resources to compete militarily. The sooner US leadership realizes it and scales back defense expenditures, disengaging from having a permanent presence in far away places in an orderly fashion, in order to focus remaining moneys on leading edge technologies, the better for the US.
A truly free market approach to space would let the private companies raise their own money for private efforts.
One of the verdicts the free market can deliver is that something isn’t worth doing. If you are using government money to prevent that verdict from being reached, you aren’t really a free marketer.
I agree with Trent’s comment that Obama went “off-speech.”
Buzz Aldrin flew down to Florida with the President, and Buzz says “we’ve already been to the moon” in nearly every interview, every appearance, etc.
I think the President was simply echoing Buzz, as the next words out of Obama’s mouth referred to the fact that Buzz has been there.
I think we can all agree that Buzz doesn’t mean “never go back”, although which of the particular nuanced space policies discussed here Buzz does mean might vary, as Buzz tends to advocate a variety of scenarios involving international, national and private space efforts (all of which are variations on the theme that humans should explore and ultimately settle the entire solar system, including the moon.)
A truly free market approach to space would let the private companies raise their own money for private efforts.
One of the verdicts the free market can deliver is that something isn’t worth doing. If you are using government money to prevent that verdict from being reached, you aren’t really a free marketer.
Well said.
BTW, the essential nature of HSF’s political support as support for a high-tech Olympics that is confused with national security is one of the reasons Bigelow’s business plan isn’t going to work. A foreign country trying to make its citizens proud by painting their flag on one of Bigelow’s modules makes no more sense than a country hiring foreign athletes for its Olympic team.
Obama’s “we’ve been there” bothers me as a fan of lunar science. But what is so controversial or unexpected about it? Almost all readers of this blog have been readers and posters on other space web sites. “Mars first” boosters have been a vocal and credible part of the space debate for years. I don’t agree with Obama dismissing the moon, but I like that he actually has a strong opinion on it.
“makes no more sense than a country hiring foreign athletes for its Olympic team.”
They don’t “hire them” necessarily, but there’s an amazing amount of shuffling in a large slice of the team sports. IIRC even on of the snowboarders told Canada to get stuffed and competed for Australia – the whole ‘citizen of the world’ meme.
A foreign country trying to make its citizens proud by painting their flag on one of Bigelow’s modules makes no more sense than a country hiring foreign athletes for its Olympic team.
Perhaps, and time will tell, but Bigelow is talking to prospective customers and you and I aren’t, as far as I can tell. ESA for one has shown interest in working with Bigelow.
A foreign country trying to make its citizens proud by painting their flag on one of Bigelow’s modules makes no more sense than a country hiring foreign athletes for its Olympic team.
It makes about as much sense as using beautiful women to sell beer on TV, which means:
“Yes, it makes no sense whatsoever but would probably work anyway.”
Alex:
Obama’s “we’ve been there” bothers me as a fan of lunar science. But what is so controversial or unexpected about it? Almost all readers of this blog have been readers and posters on other space web sites. “Mars first” boosters have been a vocal and credible part of the space debate for years. I don’t agree with Obama dismissing the moon, but I like that he actually has a strong opinion on it.
Elon Musk may have had influence, here.
IMO the first step should be the establishment of propellant depots and ISRU for refueling said propellant depots.
Oh, no, not the first step. Building bridges and canals are never the first steps.
But if your heart is set on depots, etc don’t let me talk you out of it. Go ahead and build them.
But if your heart is set on depots, etc don’t let me talk you out of it. Go ahead and build them.
With your own money.
I assume that Jon Goff was talking about science missions to deep space more than the operational missions that have proven their worth such as the weather satellites, Landsat, GPS, etc.
One of the problems I have in discussions about this is that this program will be much easier to shut down in the future than the NASA-booster-industrial-complext that’s been dealt a serious blow. So some of the options going on are that there IS a plan to shut down human spaceflight, OR Obama believes that more government isn’t the answer in this and only this case. Which is more likely?
A government owned space transportation system make no more sense than a government owned airline. I think it silly for the government to continue in the space business. It should be left to private entrepreneurs to develop.
I also think it nonsensical for anyone who does not believe in the possibility of large scale human settlement of space to support any kind of manned space program at all. If the purpose of space programs is not to pave the way to opening up the high frontier to human settlement, then there is no sensible purpose at all.
It seems to me that many space “advocates” fail to understand this.
Excellent observation Tom, I’ve wondered the same.
Some folks just seem so eager to jump on the Obamaspace bandwagon because he seems to be saying what they want to hear.
With the emphasis on seems to be.
@Jim Davis:
But if your heart is set on depots, etc don’t let me talk you out of it.
In the interest of checking whether you two are disagreeing or just miscommunicating: why do you think Godzilla wants depots?
Starless,
[[[It works the other way for the short-term, too: if commercial space fumbles the ball in the next couple of years, or in a second Obama term, he can then claim that he gave commercial space a chance, it didn’t work, and now he has to retrench HSF again.
If his plan works, he’s a big hero, if it doesn’t, he can blame Elon Musk, and he gets the added bonus of instituting more “Change”.]]]
Why would he retrench HSF? If no one is screaming about astronauts riding on foreign vehicles just leave it that way and use the money saved for education or something he is more interested? I seem to recall that was his original promise on space 🙂
googaw,
Wow! I havn’t seen so much paranoid since I listened to Art Bell one night while driving home.
Evidence is mounting that water is not all that scarce at the poles. But if it is I would rather have the U.S. government “hogging” it then the Chinese.
The old “the government will close me down” routine is funny when New Spacers have been tiring to do the opposite for decades, pushing to close down NASA zero-G aircraft just so they would be forced to buy the services from New Space firms… And have apparently succeed in the case of HSF. Seems like the government should be scared of you doing a cut rate lunar mission then demanding the government paid you to do theirs since you are able to do it “better”. But I guess since that is how New Spacers think, that space is just too small for both a government program and a private one, you fear the government doing the same thing New Spacers have been trying to do to the government.
You know, sometimes I wonder how much progress we would have made in space if the New Space movement never emerged. For example, if instead of experimenting with “commercial” RLVs like the VentureStar NASA had simply just funded a Shuttle replacement in the early 1990’s. It would probably be flying now since their would have been no New Spacers lobbying against it. There are no technical show stoppers to a TSTO and haven’t been since the 1970’s. All that is needed is a multi-year funding commitment to build it.
But it won’t happen if you wait for private industry to do it because the business model is just not there for it. If it was I am sure all the commercial crew folks would be offering it instead of 1960’s era capsules on ELVs…
Which is also true for lunar missions. NASA has never been in the way of private companies going to the Moon. Its just the business model doesn’t work out yet. That is why the Lunar X Prize is going to be a failure.
Martijn, Jim’s disagreeing that depots and ISRU should be first. They may or may not be – as I see it, it should be NASA’s job to take space technology from TRL 2,3,4 up to TRL 7,8,9 and that implies multiple concurrent efforts.
Right now NASA is “too big to fail”. The obvious solution, and the one most readily available, is to divide it up into smaller units that can fail. Have them compete against each other and private companies for projects and funding. Then maybe the centers will start figuring out why JPL gets so much bang for the buck.
Propellant depots require the development of a number of different TRL 1-4 technologies. It is essential that at least one technology – the “common gas nozzle” – not be developed by NASA due to ITAR, otherwise the market will be strangled in the cradle.
In the interest of checking whether you two are disagreeing or just miscommunicating: why do you think Godzilla wants depots?
If I read the gentleman (I’m guessing he’s a ‘he’) correctly he seems to think that depots, ISRU, etc will enable high traffic levels beyond LEO.
I think this is precisely backwards. High traffic levels beyond LEO will enable depots, ISRU, etc.
Ed, I’d say that depends on why you want depots. If it is because you think NASA won’t get an HLV and you want them to do exploration anyway, then depots are one way to go and you may have to do them first. If it is because you want to enable lunar tourism, then that can wait. If you want to do depots to channel exploration launches through the market in the hopes of opening up space, then they pretty much have to come first.
If there isn’t going to be exploration, then none of it matters very much.
That is why the Lunar X Prize is going to be a failure.
“Radio has no future.” – Lord Kelvin, 1897.
“That the automobile has practically reached the limit of its development is suggested by the fact that during the past year no improvements of a radical nature have been introduced.” – Scientific American, Jan. 2, 1909.
“There is not the slightest indication that [nuclear energy] will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will. ” – Albert Einstein, 1932.
“I confess that in 1901 I said to my brother Orville that man would not fly for fifty years. Two years later we ourselves made flights. This demonstration of my impotence as a prophet gave me such a shock that ever since I have distrusted myself and avoided all predictions. ” – Wilbur Wright, Nov 5, 1908
@Jim:
Ah, that’s illuminating. While I agree high traffic beyond LEO will enable depots the trouble is that that is going to take ages. I’m not convinced depots will lead to high traffic beyond LEO soon, but I am optimistic they would lead to high (tourist) traffic into LEO by reducing launch costs by an order of magnitude over a period of ten to twenty years. And since we’re all mortal I’d like to see that happen as soon as possible, so there is a chance LEO at least will be opened up before I die.
I’m totally OK with it if that doesn’t happen since society doesn’t owe me this pleasure. But if there’s going to be exploration anyway, then I don’t want this opportunity to be squandered.
The need for fuel depots is just logistics. The supply lines are overextended.
Radio has no future.
Heheh, that one may actually be true.
The need for fuel depots is just logistics.
To the degree depots are just logistics, they are not urgent. I believe that the strongest argument for depots (much less than full depots actually) is that it can make the launch volume required for exploration available to multiple freely competing launchers. The theory is that this would make the sort of R&D that would lead to RLVs and thus much reduced launch costs profitable. According to that theory depots and exploration are what stands between us and a spacefaring civilisation in our lifetime. If true I’d say that’s pretty damn urgent as far as spaceflight goes.
Hit submit before I should’ve. That would be all supply lines into space, even the ISS. Combine it with on-orbit assembly in LEO and we get a much bigger bang for the buck on all beyond-LEO missions, robotic or otherwise. Or combine depots with a “space tug” and they would have immediate utility as a source of propellant to keep the ISS and other valuable assets in orbit.