…to the moon. Thoughts from Dennis Wingo (who I’ll probably see in Anaheim this week — maybe even today).
This reminds me of Mike Griffin’s ridiculous comparison of Constellation to the Interstate Highway System (not to imply that Dennis’ analogy is in any way ridiculous).
[The moon] is the gateway to the rest of the solar system just as the International Space Station is the gateway to the Moon.
How is the ISS the gateway to anyplace? I’m not just talking orbital mechanics which I understand is an issue but beyond my knowledge. Is there any infrastructure that would use it as a staging point?
Ironically, the moon may be a similar gateway, as in not at all. I do think it has it’s value. We have certainly not done much more than scratch the surface… 24 footprints and a few tire tracks. It wouldn’t hurt to have regular experience with a fully reusable lander and low gravity operations. Learning to deal with environmental issues like really aggressive dust may prove useful. It might be nice to see the evolution of landers over time into better capable vehicles, perhaps even a mars lander itself.
But building a lander that could go from LEO to the lunar surface and back might disincentivize building a general purpose ship? Could it slow our expansion into the solar system?
Only one incentive has historically proven to work… ownership. Not just real estate but rocks in space as well. Sowell points out that the poor benefit the most from secure ownership rights even if it’s the rich that own the property. I may never own an asteroid, but the fact that others do increases the overall wealth. Backing ownership rights would make going back to the moon moot. Of course we’d go back if the property had value that ownership would give it.
Ken,
Why do folks keep thinking of space in terms of Earth? Space societies will have much more in common with the hunter and gather cultures of our past then the land ownership cultures of today.
The current legal environment under which a rock you pick up is yours is well suited to how resources will be developed in space.
Handicapping space societies with laws that were developed for an Earth based civilization and based on how ore deposits were formed on Earth isn’t going to advance space, but just retard it.
How is the ISS the gateway to anyplace? I’m not just talking orbital mechanics which I understand is an issue but beyond my knowledge. Is there any infrastructure that would use it as a staging point?
It would be perfect for an architecture using modified EELV upper stages as EDSs. Lagrange points are probably also more crucial as gateways than the moon in the short to medium term.
It’s not, but given its price tag folks should generously excuse the delusion.
None whatsoever. The ISS is no better a stepping stone than any other point of empty space along its orbit or tons of others. It’s just the only location we’ve paid $100 billion to occupy.
For all the crap that gets shoveled onto Constellation, we keep forgetting that almost every so-called space advocate out there is married to one stunningly wasteful idea or another–if not a whole bunch. That accounts for the rest of NASA’s budget.
If you’re going to spend money to redesign and refit ISS modules to mate with an EDS, why not just design and build purpose-built ones from scratch? Unless we’re only going to build as many vehicles as we have candidate modules, you’re going to run out of usable ISS eventually.
Gateways to what? Earth-sphere Lagrange points are the grand prize for the foreseeable future, but to enjoy them you’ve got to develop them first.
It is the gateway to the rest of the solar system just as the International Space Station
iswould be the gateway to the Moon if it was in the correct orbit and designed for that purpose.” FIFHIt is time to take that forward to the rest of the nation and pass a “Zero G Zero Tax” bill that will flip the switch of capitalism from fear to greed, and bring the funds needed to take the next steps.
Even better: eliminate darn near all taxes across the board and simplify the remainder. If you must keep income tax, simplify it so that 95% of taxpayers fill out a single page. Reduce the size of the IRS accordingly. That one step puts the US budget in the black.
Dennis seems a bit schizophrenic in this article.
On the one hand, he repeats the old lunacy: “The arguments for the economic development of space, beginning at the Moon, are there.” [Emphasis added.] On the other hand, he says “It is time to take that forward to the rest of the nation and pass a ‘Zero G Zero Tax’ bill,” which suggests that he does see some value in zero-gee destinations (which are a lot closer than the Moon).
Insisting that the economic development of space must begin with the Moon is like telling the Pilgrims that the economic development of North America should begin with Sutter’s Mill. The fact that there are mineral resources there does not change the fact that it is also really far away. If the Pilgrims had gotten that advice and followed it, they never would have made it to California. They would have died on the way.
Similarly, all of the schemes for building colonies on the Moon (or Mars or fill-in-your-favorite planet) have died before reaching their destination. That includes not just private schemes but government schemes as well.
They died because they were too impatient to pursue the sort of incremental development that was involved in the settlement of North America (and every other place where mankind has successfully settled). The Moonies and Marsies rejected (and continue to reject) incremental steps like suborbital, then orbital as insufficiently exciting — “baby steps,” not “real” space exploration, “going around in circles,” etc. Instead, they supported a series of “giant leaps” that always fell short.
Ahh, the peanut gallery. No wonder space advocates are the most detested group of people in political advocacy.
Eat your young and your friends too.
No wonder private money (there is 1000x what Musk, Bigelow, and Bezos are doing) is sitting on the sidelines.
I wouldn’t say detested–telco, the bar, finance, and even some unions have it a lot rougher than space advocates–two thirds of which are largely getting what they want. You could say space advocacy is the most ignored interest hitting Uncle Sam up for money, but that’s largely because they already get $20 billion a year, do a piss poor job divvying it up, and bore the hell out of everybody on the sidelines in between releases of pretty photos of rocks tens of millions of miles away to gas light-years beyond.
About the only useful trait the constituency as a whole has evolved.
1000x? Maybe in the existing supply chains. I’d be surprised if there were 100x product-to-launch firms even remotely paying attention. And they’re not sitting on the sidelines, they’re looking at what $20 billion a year gets you, they haven’t seen anything worth risking their own pot, and they’re taking the up to $100 million subsidy Congress doles out to keep this industry relevant.
That is, a $100 million per launch subsidy…
Funny. My analogy is somewhat different. Insisting that we develop orbital space before heading to the moon is a little like telling the Pilgrims to settle the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Sure, there’s tons of fish and plenty of hydropower, but…
My analogy is somewhat different. Insisting that we develop orbital space before heading to the moon is a little like telling the Pilgrims to settle the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Sure, there’s tons of fish and plenty of hydropower, but…
Excellent analogy, Presley. Fishing boats were around for thousands of years before anyone dared to cross the Atlantic.
You don’t think the Mayflower was the first ship that was ever built, do you?
And satellites have been around for 50 years. Shall we wait a few millenia before see bother to go tap the tremendous bounty of wealth which–unlike the Americas from the western coasts of Europe and Africa–you can actually see with the naked eye?
Fishing boats were around for thousands of years before anyone dared to cross the Atlantic.
…and they generally never left sight of shore.
Yes, we can pick any point in space and develop it. Did Columbus and Magellan swim or did they have ships? Where are the ships? Not the boats for landing, the ships?
We could build them today from existing components. TODAY. I don’t see any plans to do so.
Handicapping space societies with laws
I agree with this point Thomas, but being able to legally defend title to the things claimed might be a good idea.
And satellites have been around for 50 years.
Satellites are not ships. They are more like buoys.
Shall we wait a few millenia before see bother to go tap the tremendous bounty of wealth which–unlike the Americas from the western coasts of Europe and Africa–you can actually see with the naked eye?
No, we don’t have to wait millennia. Stop being so literal minded. It might take decades, but we have already spent decades with little to show for it. If the United States had continued the development of x-vehicles like the X-15, X-20, etc., there would almost certainly be Americans on the Moon today.
Do you know the story of the tortoise and the hare? The hare (or should I say “herr”?) got off to a great start, but his approach was unsustainable.
Eat your young and your friends too.
For those who don’t know what Dennis is talking about, go look at the comments over at Space Politics sometime. Regularly you will see people:
* claiming that Elon Musk is a greedy bastard who is trying to steal money from the US government and his rockets are all crap.
* demanding the ISS be deorbited so their preferred program can be funded.
* Ares vs DIRECT vs commercial alternatives
This is all behavior of people who are “fighting over scraps”. It’s *the* problem with not only the space community but with science funding in general. Even back in the Apollo days people were willing to stand up and say it wasn’t worthwhile in the hope that they would get that funding for their own pet projects.
As Dennis has said, this really is the favor of princes, and for a while there we could claim our “New Space” community wasn’t like that, they didn’t want government money, they didn’t want to fight for scraps, they wanted to get private funding, and more private funding and more, and *grow* the market.. but that’s going away.
> Fishing boats were around for thousands of years before anyone dared to cross the Atlantic.
…and they generally never left sight of shore.
Is there some particular reason why you’re repeating what I just said?
Yes, we can pick any point in space and develop it. Did Columbus and Magellan swim or did they have ships? Where are the ships? Not the boats for landing, the ships?
If you want to talk about historical analogies, it’s a good idea to study history. Columbus used *tiny* ships. They were smaller than the fishing boats you see on shows like “Deadliest Catch.” (Spain had larger ships but no one was going to trust them to a crackpot like Columbus.)
We could build them today from existing components. TODAY. I don’t see any plans to do so.
You haven’t looked in the right places, then. Space Adventures is offering a lunar circumnavigation for ~$100 million — a real bargain compared to Constellation.
Space Adventures hasn’t found any takers because it’s too expensive. If they could get the cost down to ~$20 million (the current cost of a trip to ISS), they would certainly find customers but at the current price point no one’s breaking down the door.
Until the cost of space transportation is reduced, settlements or bases on other worlds will be nothing daydreams. NASA can barely afford to maintain ISS in low Earth orbit. How could anyone possibly afford to maintain a station on the Moon/Mars/Alpha Centauri VII where the transportation costs are even higher?
Sure, Spudis and Zubrin will say that in-situ resources make transportation costs irrelevant but ISRU is not a magic bullet. No one is going to land on the Moon or Mars and create a complete industrial infrastructure, capable of producing everything from vitamins to microprocessors, overnight. It will take a very long time to reach that level of self-sufficiency, and in the meantime, everything that can’t be produced locally will have to be imported from Earth. So, transportation costs are critical.
Just a minor point on the fishing vessels in the Atlantic before the Mayflower landed in what became Massachusetts. English and other European fishing trawlers had been sailing in the western Atlantic for a number of years before John Cabot discovered parts of North America in 1497. And the Mayflower didn’t set sail for well over a century after that. The point is that sailors were at least somewhat familiar with the region long beforehand; the Mayflower didn’t sail into a void.
As to the implications for the space programs, there has to be a financial incentive for commercialization. Getting the mass to orbit cost down, however it is done, is the biggest hurdle, IMHO. When we are working with costs in the hundreds of dollars/pound to orbit, as opposed to thousands or millions, I think that things will really start opening up. This may mean looking beyond the current methods of using multi stage vehicles to reach orbit, but that topic is a swamp filled with nasties best avoided for now.
So, transportation costs are critical.
More precisely, getting fuel cost to orbit is critical. The vehicle can be a one time cost and the most gold plated versions will be just a few percent of total transportation costs. You need enough fuel to provide the delta V for your missions. Let’s suppose you can get the fuel cost down to $2b ($15b would be the ceiling but I’m sure it’s not that high) of fuel to orbit per ship per mission. We send two ships every two years with a round trip crew of two and six colonists one way to the settlement. Twelve colonists every two years.
No one is going to land on the Moon or Mars and create a complete industrial infrastructure, capable of producing everything from vitamins to microprocessors, overnight.
Which they certainly don’t need to do. What annual amount can we commit to creating a permanent, growing settlement?
4 kg (air, water, food) x 8 ppl x 1000 days = 32k kg. I’m not sure about volume, but that’s four F9 launches for $200m.
What is infrastructure? Knowledgeable labor and access to materials and tools. Twelve people every two years will add expertise with every arrival. They will have experienced people waiting for them to get them over the rough spots. Will it take time? Of course, the only thing stopping us from starting now is will. Not one other thing.
32k kg. I’m not sure about volume, but that’s four F9 launches for $200m.
Maybe if your settlement is in LEO. Otherwise multiply that by 5 and add in the cost of developing a cislunar transportation system.
Nope, sorry Trent, that’s already factored in. The presumption is you have a ship waiting in LEO with 7.15 km/s of delta V waiting for 32k kg of supplies to be transported to it. 2000 cu. m. of volume gives you a nice ride to mars. Click my name for more details. At mars a nice ssto lander using martian fuel waits to provide a similar service (at much less cost) that dragon provides for earth to LEO.
Space societies will have much more in common with the hunter and gather cultures of our past then the land ownership cultures of today.
I don’t know, hunting is pre-industrial and I’m pretty sure farming and industry result in a greater economy than gathering.
Land ownership is a path to wealth not just for the landowner. I believe in cowboys myself and with the amount of material and distances there will be a lot of wild west out there. But industry even if scattered is generally fixed to the location of resources (hopping from resource to resource is just a variation.) Industry requires some predictability of sources and costs. Most hunters are going to have to make regular visits with the farmers which is where the wealth will be centered.
I imagine the Constellation folks feel that about now. Seems to me that if we’re going to look into what kind of steward NASA is with the taxpayers’ money, we needn’t limit our focus to simply the most convenient punching bags.
I wouldn’t say regularly.
* claiming that Elon Musk is a greedy bastard who is trying to steal money from the US government and his rockets are all crap.
C’mon. Privatizing space just isn’t divisive in circles that matter. It never has been. The FY2011 brouhaha has almost next to nothing to do with commercial crew and cargo. It is first and foremost about whether or not the country is going to chuck VSE and the Shuttle supply chain.
Worthiness of the next program aside, deorbiting the ISS is just a good idea period.
Close. The main show is about whether or not Ares is a big sinkhole. To the extent DIRECT, EELV-derived vehicles, or new commercial alternatives matter depends on who’s making the argument for or against Ares. And the only reason we’re having this debate is for some reason space advocates treat the non-Constellation part of NASA’s budget as somehow sacrosanct.
Is that actually true? Was public funding for Big Science comparatively tighter in the 1960s than today? I don’t know for sure, but my impression is that wasn’t the case.
Discovery of such incentives should be read as the key, unifying metric towards gauging NASA’s fulfillment of the principles laid down in her charter. Unfortunately, there is no way you can reasonably argue that even a significant fraction of NASA’s current activity in anyway promotes the general welfare.
Charts say you can get 299Isp from methane. Does anyone know an existing engine that does that? Can a Merlin possibly be converted?
The main show is about whether or not Ares is a big sinkhole.
Playing devil’s advocate, if fuel cost to LEO is the issue (which I believe is so) might heavy lift mitigate that? Perhaps FXX rather than Ares? Ares looks hopeless regarding cost.
Care to elaborate on your claim that deorbiting the ISS is a good idea, Presley?
Frees up $2-3 billion a year.
Solid rocket fuel is almost certainly cheaper than an equivalent mass of liquefied gas; liquefaction and cryostorage alone guarantees at least that much. On the other hand, somewhere north of where an SRB weighs as much as an unfueled liquid fuel rocket designed for the same payload, the math flips. Unless you’re building your solid rocket motors right on the launch pad, you’re taking on the cost of transporting a fully fueled vehicle to the site.
Ken Anthony,
[[[Space societies will have much more in common with the hunter and gather cultures of our past then the land ownership cultures of today.
I don’t know, hunting is pre-industrial and I’m pretty sure farming and industry result in a greater economy than gathering.
Land ownership is a path to wealth not just for the landowner. I believe in cowboys myself and with the amount of material and distances there will be a lot of wild west out there. But industry even if scattered is generally fixed to the location of resources (hopping from resource to resource is just a variation.) Industry requires some predictability of sources and costs. Most hunters are going to have to make regular visits with the farmers which is where the wealth will be centered.]]]
You are still thinking in terms of 20th Century concepts of economics. And 20th Century based concepts on the importance of land.
Hunter-gathers were nomadic because the resource base they drew on was mobile and seasonal. Human only settled down when agriculture forced them to be immobile, to protect their crops.
What is important to recognize is that the resources of space, especially comets and asteroids, are also mobile. So future space societies will need to be mobile to use those resources effectively by basically “following” (matching orbits) them in mobile space settlements that will include all the processing facilities need to turn comets and asteroids into the resources they need or products to sell. This will require humanity to return to the Nomadic existence of hunter-gathers, but in a vastly higher level of technology.
The idea that land equals wealth is really a legacy of an agricultural based society. When you are able to produce food without land, a technology that is rapidly emerging today with hydroponics and the production of meat from tissue culture, land becomes irrelevant. The same is true when mineral resources are widely distributed as in space. But you don’t even need to move to space to see the transition. Even in today’s world where we are still linked to land based agriculture the real wealth of nations is in technology and knowledge, not land. This trend will continue into future as knowledge and technology make “fixed” resources irrelevant.
You are in the computer industry. Consider how the Internet has basically made it irrelevant where knowledge workers are based. I used to live in California. When the tax burden there became too heavy I just gave myself a pay raise by moving to Nevada. The money I am saving on not paying taxes to California more then covers my housing payment. My goal is someday to live on a vessel like the World which constantly travels the ocean.
http://www.aboardtheworld.com/
The World is a primitive taste of what the economy of the future, especially the deep space economy, will be like, built on small self-governing nomadic settlements.
The role of the Moon in this process will be to enable the transition, being close enough to Earth to leverage its manufacturing, while using its low gravity and vacuum to develop the techniques that will be needed to make use of the resources of deep space. The fact that the Moon’s surface appears to be littered with the debris of asteroids and comets (as per Dennis Wingo) is a huge plus as you will be able to test your processes on them before be dependent on the processes to work.
Why bother with developing your habitats to trail the inconvenient orbits of resource veins? You’re in freefall, you’ve enough physics to predict changes in orbits, and you’ve got nukes. Space offers man the opportunity to place desirable “land” almost wherever he wants, and until man changes he wants to be somewhere near 1300 W/m^2 of incident sunlight.
I don’t see the fundamental notions of deeded property and rents changing any time soon.
More precisely, getting fuel cost to orbit is critical. The vehicle can be a one time cost and the most gold plated versions will be just a few percent of total transportation costs.
That is a common fallacy. You can’t just look at direct transportation costs. The need to minimize weight and package everything for ELVs drives up the design and fabrication costs of space hardware enormously. That’s been shown by multiple studies going back decades. Compare the cost of space hardware with aviation or submarine hardware, some of which has to operate in even more extreme environments. Look at the Apollo lunar module and how much engineering effort went into squeezing out the last ounce of weight. How many man-hours could they have saved if transportation to LEO were cheap and routine?
You need enough fuel to provide the delta V for your missions. Let’s suppose you can get the fuel cost down to $2b ($15b would be the ceiling but I’m sure it’s not that high) of fuel to orbit per ship per mission. We send two ships every two years with a round trip crew of two and six colonists one way to the settlement. Twelve colonists every two years.
What are those 12 colonists going to be doing that’s worth billions of dollars? Most lunar colony schemes talk about mining Helium-3 or platinum group metals or some such. Or operating some sort of observatory or scientific lab. Either one will require a lot of startup equipment, which you haven’t budgeted for. Are the colonists just going to be sitting around?
What about resupply? Do you expect the colonists will grow their own food and produce everything they need from day one? What happens if they run out of something, or something breaks.
Who’s going to maintain your ships, and where are they going to do it? On the Moon? In LEO? Don’t you think that might require some infrastructure — a dedicated space station module, at least? How many people are you going to need to do the maintenance? No one has ever maintained a reusable lunar lander on Earth, let alone in space. Masten and Armadillo have maintained prototypes with a handful of people, but those prototypes are rather small and do not incorporate all of the life support and crew systems that will be need for a crewed vehicle. Realistically, you’re talking about an operational vehicle that will be similar in complexity to a jet fighter. If you look at the maintenance section of a fighter squadron, you’ll find quite a few specialists (avionics, life support, propuslion, hydraulics, etc.). It’s going to take a lot more than fuel to keep your ships operational.
> No one is going to land on the Moon or Mars and create a complete industrial infrastructure, capable of producing everything from vitamins to microprocessors, overnight.
Which they certainly don’t need to do.
Say what? You might be able to do without microprocessors (although I don’t think your colony would be very useful without them). You certainly can’t get by without vitamins.
What annual amount can we commit to creating a permanent, growing settlement?
What is infrastructure? Knowledgeable labor and access to materials and tools.
Yes, and where will all those materials and tools — those that can’t be made on the Moon — come from? You haven’t even budgeted for modules for the colonists to live in while they’re digging caves or whatever you envision for permanent quarters. You seem to be assuming that colonists will show up with a small suitcase containing some magic machine that can produce everything they need. That ain’t gonna happen. The logistical requirements are going to be a lot larger than that.
Presley Cannady,
[[[Why bother with developing your habitats to trail the inconvenient orbits of resource veins?]]]
Simple, economics. It will be far easier to move the habitats, which are designed for it, then to move the asteroids and comets into orbits to some Cislunar factory.
Look at whaling. The Japanese don’t herd the whales to Japan, they send the factory ships to process them where they catch them. Same economic principle.
So long as your habitats are small and remain that way, certainly. Eventually that will cease to be the case, and ultimately for trade to flourish you need to return something to the Earth sphere.
Setting aside mineral resources and volatiles have nothing in common with perishables, commercial fishers still have to haul catch back to shore. Ultimately, there’s no reason why you can’t process asteroids and comets to some extent while capturing them, and as man spreads into the solar system he will establish permanent homes well outside of the Earth sphere. But I still don’t see how standing up colonies in disparate, unideal orbits competes with cost of flinging rocks back at Earth.
What are those 12 colonists going to be doing that’s worth billions of dollars?
One word answer: grow. You know, I’ve got this chess board. All I want for it is one grain of rice on the first square, two on the second, four on the third…
Growth is the most powerful force in the universe. Don’t be a fish asking, “what’s water?”
What about resupply?
We’re starting our first new world of humanity. It will take a certain amount of commitment (which is not a debate for today.)
Do you expect the colonists will grow their own food and produce everything they need from day one?
Yes. Just like I expect you to do today what you need for tomorrow.
What happens if they run out of something…
You make sure you do not run out of anything essential. Essential means essential, not a laundry list of items you think means failure. People need essentials no matter where they live (4 kg per person per day.) Otherwise they do without, like everybody else in the universe, until they don’t.
…or something breaks.
They fix it. If they can’t, they grow until they can. Even if it takes hundreds of years.
They will very quickly (before the second fleet arrives) begin producing that essential 4 kg per day per person locally.
The marginal cost of extra colonists will be within reach of thousands of people that will choose to join the dozen or more every two years. They will be welcomed.
Care to elaborate on your claim that deorbiting the ISS is a good idea, Presley?
Frees up $2-3 billion a year.
Do you even understand what the “eating your young” euphemism is about? Hint: the ISS is your young, and you’re hungry for it’s budget.
You’re going to need a hell of a lot more than 12 colonists, and you’re going to need immigration until and probably well after the time the settlement is able to rear children. More importantly, you’re still dependent on finished manufacturing–especially where it concerns life support.
Indeed it is, but it can also be bottlenecked by obvious dependencies you can’t realize locally.
There’s commitment, and then there’s suicide.
To repeat myself, “[eating your young is a]bout the only useful trait the constituency as a whole has evolved.”
But stepping past the analogy, who cares about the ISS? Especially if you’re all gung ho about inflatables and other cheap habitat archs? If Constellation is a $20 billion waste, I’d love to know how the return we’ve gotten from the ISS compares to the $100 billion sunk into it, or the $15 billion we still plan to drop down the hole.
This is why it’s so hard to take the Flexible Path crowd seriously. For all the talk about how we need to get serious about launchers and their costs, everybody throws hissy fit the moment somebody asks whether a particular payload is worth the cost–reduced or not. Hell, that’s the driving principle behind FP–let’s focus on reducing the cost of space access so that we can punt even more responsibility when it comes to prioritizing destinations and missions. And why not? With Congress rubber stamping $15-20 billion a year simply to make a showing in space, who cares how it’s spent?
That said, I’d like to deorbit ISS. But I’m not going to get it; ISS exists to justify the Shuttle supply chain. But I’m pretty sure I could get $3 billion out of the Science slice of the budget for pushing along commercial crew and cargo and cheaper orbital destinations that actually have a chance of recouping their costs. Then and only then would I turn my attention to killing the rest of the waste in NASA’s budget.
Presley Cannady,
[[[But I still don’t see how standing up colonies in disparate, unideal orbits competes with cost of flinging rocks back at Earth.]]]
You are probably still thinking in terms of the O’Neill Settlements. I view those as dinosaurs. Completely impractical from both the perspective of economics and engineering.
Issac Asimov’s model of smaller mobile settlements is much more practical and functional.
Asimov, Issac, Spomelife: The Universe and the Future, (ar) Atmosphere in Space Cabins and Closed Environments, ed. Karl Kammermeyer, Meredith 1966; originally presented as a paper to the American Chemical Society on September 13, 1965.
Reprinted in
Asimov, Issac, “There’s No Place Like Spome” Skylife, ed. Gregory Benford & George Zebrowski, Harcourt 2000
In terms of ship goods to Earth. Once you are set up a tether system or catapult system will work nicely to start the output on its way. And a lot more practical then using nukes on bodies whose structural geology varies as much as it does.
What are those 12 colonists going to be doing that’s worth billions of dollars? One word answer: grow. You know, I’ve got this chess board. All I want for it is one grain of rice on the first square, two on the second, four on the third…
Yes, but what are you offering in return? What do the taxpayers (who have to finance this) get in exchange for all that rice? Or do you assume the 12 colonists will all be billionaires who pay their own way?
What about resupply?
We’re starting our first new world of humanity. It will take a certain amount of commitment (which is not a debate for today.)
It will take cold, hard math (including financial math). Handwaving about a new world simply isn’t good enough.
Do you expect the colonists will grow their own food and produce everything they need from day one?
Yes. Just like I expect you to do today what you need for tomorrow.
Then you don’t understand the what it takes to produce everything needed to maintain a technological society. There’s no way you’re going to stuff that into two rockets.
Look at the NSF base at the South Pole. Building that took hundreds of C-130 flights, and that’s not even a self-sufficient colony (or even a mining camp, like Dennis wants to see). And before you mention ISRU, in-situ oxygen and water ice are a lot easier to come by at the Southin Antarctica than they’ll ever be on the Moon.
What happens if they run out of something…
You make sure you do not run out of anything essential.
That simple? How do you “make sure” that your crops don’t fail, when you’re trying to grow plants in a place where no one has ever tried to grow them before? What happens if (when) there’s an accident and equipment is destroyed? Are you going to repeal Murphy’s Law?
…or something breaks.
They fix it. If they can’t, they grow until they can. Even if it takes hundreds of years.
I don’t think colonists can hold their breathe for hundreds of years if an oxygen generator breaks.
The marginal cost of extra colonists will be within reach of thousands of people that will choose to join the dozen or more every two years. They will be welcomed.
That is clearly not true. Space Adventures can’t even find a customer who’ll pay $100 million to circumnavigate the Moon. Expecting that you’ll find thousands of billionaires willing to give up a large fraction of their fortunes and their lives on Earth in order to colonize the Moon is not realistic.
The Moon will be colonized, in the not-too-distant future, but that will require major reductions in the cost (and improvements in the reliability) of space transportation. The good news is, such improvements are within our technological grasp.
Unfortunately, the Moonie Church seems to have adopted, as a matter of dogma, the notion that Cheap Access To Space is somehow “holding us back.” Nothing could be further from the truth. And so, the Moonies become their own worst enemy.
Hell, that’s the driving principle behind FP–let’s focus on reducing the cost of space access so that we can punt even more responsibility when it comes to prioritizing destinations and missions.
Why do you believe that’s a bad idea, Presley? Isn’t that what the NACA did with aviation — focus on reducing cost and improving safety, speed, etc.? There was no “prioritizing” of trips to Hawaii or Tahiti.
As a result, the private sector was able to create destinations like Las Vegas, in places no one would have expected, the NSF was able to build an astronomical university at the South Pole, and the Air Force was able to fly hundreds of thousands of missions.
It isn’t obvious to me that that “punting” the responsibility was the wrong approach.
If your definition of economic and engineering “practicality” boils down to maintaining these least expensive, yet still survivable, quality of life, you might could consider houses to be impractical luxuries given the ubiquity of cardboard boxes.
If that’s the case, why aren’t we all content to live on oil rigs? Settlement requires a standard of living more adequate than that you’d provide to temporary or rotational inhabitants. It doesn’t have to be ostentatious, but it most certainly provide its inhabitants with more modality in life than you’d find cooped up in a small apartment building. We aren’t going to space to live in more Spartan conditions than even our settler ancestors.
Depends on the size of the rock you intend to fling back. To build livable settlements, you’re going to need big ones. The geology of the rock matters insofar as how you arrange your pusher plates, and the more massive the rock the less you even have to worry about it.
What makes you think I ever said cost reduction is a bad idea, Edward? There isn’t anyone in the game who would argue otherwise, including FP’s critics.
Sorted by most recent:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/science/experiments/Expedition.html
The problem here isn’t that the ISS is worthless, the problem is that the ISS isn’t *what you want*, so you’re happy to disregard it as worthless because it suits you.
You’re not *interested* in payback, you’re interested in fulfilling your dreams on the taxpayer’s dime, and it just doesn’t happen to include anything to do with LEO. Essentially, it’s all about you, screw those scientists who are doing research on the ISS, crash it into the ocean and do something you want instead. Well, guess what, when it’s your turn they’re gunna say the same thing! We’re all in this together and you’re pissing in the pool.
That’s precisely the problem. ISS cost $100 billion over a decade and a half, and yet there isn’t a cent of quantifiable return for the effort.
Yada, yada…let’s just rephrase this. “The problem is that Constellation isn’t *what you want*, so you’re happy to disregard it as worthless because it suits you.”
Get it now?
About the only thing I am interested in is payback. The only reason I’m interested in space at all is because of the promise of a higher quality of life. Exactly what is your interest here? Because for all this recent talk about Saganites, O’Neillians and Von Braunians, all I’m seeing is a lot of different tribes with absolutely zero interest in having their own federally funded pets held to account by the taxpayers.
Seriously, this line you’re taking is about as disingenuous as Stephen Hawking’s “economic” doomsaying defense of billions for Big Science.
My turn? Exactly what do I have to put on the chopping block? My argument is that NASA’s core business in space is its commercial development or none at all. I don’t particularly care how it gets done, only that it does. And I’m as willing to forgo floating funds to the government or tenured scientist as you are to axing rocketry jobs in Utah. So come on, Trent. How strong is your resolution in favor of commercialization? If you believe so strongly that private industry can do the job, but you can’t get votes to wean America off its Marshall addiction, what are you willing to sacrifice in order to move forward?
Except for the Constellation folks, right? And that, folks, is the measure of seriousness in space advocacy today.
wow, you’re really clueless.
Are you completely unaware that I have been telling the DIRECT people and others to quit it with the dissent since the start of Griffin’s term? Have you not heard me rant that if they had all just got behind Constellation then NASA would have both a government crew carrier and a commercial crew carrier now?
The fact is, NASA has spent that last 8 month since the 2011 budget rollout spinning it’s wheels, and before that it was barely getting traction, why? Because the politicians see the engineering in-fighting and it’s soooo easy to just divide and conquer.
Presley, Edward,
There’s nothing wrong with your reasoning ability. The problem is your perception. You can look at a fabulous treasure and see nothing of value. Nothing I say is going to change that.
Your argument is twofold. It can’t be done. You can’t make any money doing it. You’re flat wrong with regard to the first. Regarding the second, until it’s done there’s really no way to argue it. Try to remember this discussion a hundred years from now. You’ll both owe me a beer. Brewed on mars of course.
About you? Probably.
Honestly, no. I hadn’t even heard of you until a couple of months ago. However, I can’t let this slide. What the hell does sniping from DIRECT or anyone else have to do with the current state of either Project Constellation or private sector spacelift? The peanut gallery hasn’t exactly taken to storming ULA or SpaceX’s facilities or bombing Marshall, and I don’t recall reading about a cabal of naysayers with the power to hold up either the government or commercial R&D shops.
Spinning its wheels? It’s the friggin’ budget cycle. You don’t just submit a request one day and have it authorized and appropriated within the week. NASA’s nominally in FY2010 until September 30, and even then Congress acts as if the schedule is more of a rule of thumb than a legal fact. Do you seriously believe any of the stakeholders, private or government, got into this game without knowing they’d be playing with Congress?
All of this is besides the point. Constellation may die, but she’s going to die slow. Commercial crew and cargo may come, but without an infusion of public money she’s going to come later rather than sooner. If you believe that…
1. our ultimate interest in space is economic,
2. commercial crew and cargo is a necessary prerequisite to realizing that interest, and
3. it’s better to get it done sooner rather than later…
…then what are you willing to give up in order to move forward?
I don’t know what this fabulous treasure is that I’m supposedly looking at, but if you mean the ISS then I welcome any evidence whatsoever of its net profitability–either now or in the foreseeable future.
Before we go any further, I’d really like to know what “it” is.