OK, so I read this essay by Lou Friedman, and what’s obvious to me, and completely not so to him, is the reason that he and others have made so little headway in selling human space flight. It’s because they continue to use the wrong reason. He uses the word “exploration” a dozen times, by my count. Not once does he use the words “development,” “exploitation,” “colonization,” “settlement.” Once you agree that the purpose of human spaceflight is mere exploration as an end, and not as a means, you completely cede the rhetorical field to the robots, as he points out himself:
Unlike in the 1980s, the lack of new accomplishments in human exploration will be paralleled by the greater accomplishments in robotic exploration. And the danger is that the public will join those politicians who say, “Save money, let the robots do it.”
Hey, if all we’re doing is “exploring,” then count me in with the robots, at least if we’re going to insist on doing human exploration the way we did it in the sixties, and the way that many insist that we continue to do so, including Lou himself:
…we can’t even seem to develop the rockets to take us beyond what we achieved four decades ago.
Lou, if you want to see humans go beyond earth orbit for any purpose at all, including exploration, go write on the board five hundred times, “We don’t need new rockets.”
[Update a few minutes later]
One other amusing point:
Looking at the political history of US human space flight decisions, the only two positive ones were based on international (or more precisely, geopolitical) considerations. They were Kennedy’s decision to take on the Soviets in a race to the Moon, and Clinton’s decision to engage the Russians in the International Space Station. (The shuttle decision by Nixon resulted in a flight program, to be sure, but was a negative decision to ratchet back space objectives and not let NASA build a space station or go beyond Earth orbit). It is also worthwhile to note that neither of these Presidents was interested in space science or exploration.
While it’s true, he writes this as though there has ever been a president interested in space science or exploration. There never has been, and there likely (barring some weird political accident) never will be. The kinds of people interested in those things are unlikely to become president. The closest politician I can think of with that kind of interest, with the slightest chance of becoming president, is Newt Gingrich. And he’s not actually particularly interested in space science or exploration. What he’s interested in is…wait for it…space development.
Earth (or at least our presence on it) is vulnerable to quite a few possible disasters. Not so far mentioned are runaway greenhouse and a really big solar flare, for example. Or a REALLY big asteroid/comet – a lot of comets used to be Kuiper Belt objects and were thrown into the inner solar system by the gravity of a dark companion of the Sun – to quote one possibility.
Maybe we can survive an impact by something as big as the Dinosaur Killer. Maybe we could nudge the thing out of the way without major space presence. But what if the object is the size of Pluto?
Carl, you said several million Americans might want to leave Earth to attain greater political freedom, and I’m simply asking which specific freedoms could be attained off-Earth that couldn’t also be attained, in practice even if not strictly legally, in a settlement in Alaska. Generally, the things that millions of Americans all want but are illegal in the USA can be easily attained in small isolated towns when everyone is like-minded enough. And in the case where Alaska won’t suffice, why won’t it suffice to live on the frontier in Northern Canada, Central Australia, Northern Greenland (mostly autonomous from Denmark, mind you), Namibia, etc, or the high seas? I’m asking about specific freedoms or practices, for example”Have a polygamous heroin-using sword-bearing king to rule us all!” (To name something specific not actually wanted by Americans but which can be easily attained, in practice, in isolated towns. )
I think various outer-space locales will enticing for lots of locale-specific reasons (zero-g is fun, it is pretty on the slopes of Olympus Mons, etc) but life here on Earth would have to change drastically before freedom couldn’t be attained more easily here. And in the event that life on Earth did change drastically, I’d expect civil wars before independent space settlement.
Carl, you said several million Americans might want to leave Earth to attain greater political freedom, and I’m simply asking which specific freedoms could be attained off-Earth that couldn’t also be attained, in practice even if not strictly legally, in a settlement in Alaska.
I’d also like to know which freedoms are obtained by way of massive inefficient self-serving government bureaucracies.
Bob, I think you are being intentionally dense. There is nowhere left on this planet that is not claimed as sovereign by either a single entity or a group of them acting in concert. Namibia?? Good lord…
Read some Heinlein. Cat maybe. Or even one of his juvenile’s like Farmer or Tunnel.
Paul, here’s an example of a place that currently has an awful lot of left-over government-built unused infrastructure for its tiny population. It isn’t nearly as isolated or as unpopulated as the places I was thinking of, but it might be an interesting place to live (and yet freedom-seeking people don’t move there….) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galena,_Alaska
Note the nuclear power plant proposal.
If a group of freedom-seeking people wanted to move to Galena, do you think they would be allowed to opt out of Obamacare?
I’m sure we don’t agree on what it means to “opt-out of Obamacare”, but lets leave that for another thread. If you and your family and your neighbors are not going to file a complaint against a doctor who practices medicine however you all like, I think you’ll see no government interference. You’d probably need a report of a human rights violation before outsiders would get involved. You might need to be clever (and maybe criminal) about taxes. Galena might be too populated if you want to be really weird, so start a new town.
If you and your family and your neighbors are not going to file a complaint against a doctor who practices medicine however you all like, I think you’ll see no government interference.
To be polite, you’re delusional. There’s this thing called precedent. If you’re group of “freedom-seeking people” establish their own collective and are allowed to operate outside of laws that others within the sovereign state of Alaska (and others within the sovereign property of the USofA) are required to obey, legal chaos would ensue. This would be foreseen by the powers that be within said state of Alaska (and within said USofA) and, in short, would not be permitted.
Curt, you know what, you’re right, and I take back what I said. The Branch Davidian tragedy at Waco proves your point, at least to the extent that the Branch Davidians were attacked for gun charges and not child abuse charges. Ok? I do think that the lack of further such incidents is telling — America is still a pretty free country.
Lets stick to space colonies: I think there enough free countries on Earth that people won’t leave it for political reasons until it is much cheaper to start a space colony than fight a civil war or, better yet, (MUCH better yet), simply agitate peacefully for political reform. You *can* increase your personal freedom by moving to somewhere remote on Earth, and people generally don’t do it — they change conditions at home instead.
I do think space colonization will happen, but I think an economic rationale is a much better one, and for me, tourism is the easiest sell.
You *can* increase your personal freedom by moving to somewhere remote on Earth
Less true than in the past, and less true in the future than now. Frog, boiling water.
I do think space colonization will happen, but I think an economic rationale is a much better one, and for me, tourism is the easiest sell.
I agree. I’ve just finished re-reading Heinlein’s Cat. I hadn’t remembered that Campbell moved from Golden Rule to Hong Kong Luna to Luna City not because he was being chased, but because at each place he found the lack of freedom to have become intolerable (the chase part was not clear to him at the time). I’m probably somewhat colored by that right now.
Just a brief note about early American settlement. The Pilgrims were the first English group to settle in Massachusetts. They were followed by the Puritans. The Puritans who stayed at home created England’s only totalitarian state from 1649 to 1660. The English Puritans even outlawed theater. In the colony of Massachusetts there were various prosecutions of people who disagreed with the Puritan regime. Think Salem Witch Trials.
We did wind up with a society more free than not, but that was the result of people standing up for freedom here. Similar things happened in the UK.
Space settlement can help promote freedom. There is interesting evidence that free, democratic societies are better at problem solving — among other things – than oppressive tyrannies. I suspect the long term consequences of space development will be more freedom for more humans. Still, though, we have a long way to go.
Living in space is the antithesis of personal freedom. You will have very little freedom of movement because death is waiting for you in every direction. You will have almost no privacy or personal freedom because your life will be critically dependent on getting the right supplies to keep you alive from earth. Even if you had some fantasy O’Neill style colony they’d probably be monitoring every time you took a leak so that the recycling systems could operate at optimum efficiency.
No, living in space is no solution for someone looking for personal freedom. With the money it would take you to move to space you could buy your own island somewhere and have a lot more freedom.
General thoughts on this topic:
1) We don’t know for sure if humans can live and reproduce in fractional gravity. I suspect that they can, but the only way to find out is to go there and try.
2) The only near-future economic benefit to human space travel is tourism. People really want to actually go places, and they’ll pay for bragging rights if nothing else.
3) Given point 2, eventually Lunar / asteroid mining will be profitable. Those Chilean miners weren’t half a mile down because they got bored. They were that deep because the easier-to-get gold had already been gotten. Also, mines are an enviromentalist’s nightmare. Changing standards and NIMBYism will drive mining farther away from people.
4) The big problem with undersea colonies is that it is much easier to keep a small pressure in than a big pressure out. There are other issues, including the fact that undersea communication is difficult at best.
5) I doubt an asteroid impact would wipe out humanity. It would kill billions and otherwise ruin your day. A sufficiently capable spacefaring civilization should be able to prevent an asteroid impact.
6) Freedom is a motivator for people to leave Earth. They still need to eat, however. Economic development has to come first.
Kirk, I think you’re basically right, but don’t overlook the psychology of ownership and esprit d’corps. I happily do things for my own business that I would never want to if I was working for somone else, and in recreation, I happily “take one for the team” sometimes. Read gripes from astronauts, and you’ll still see team spirit overcoming a sense of limited freedom ( I once had a wonderful conversation with one of the Skylab 4 astronauts about the infamous “strike” – he was very gracious when I stuck my foot in my mouth regarding the whole subject!)
I think the main reason there are no undersea colonies is that it is too easy to have above sea oil rigs, and on-shore hotels that offer scuba lessons. And about disaster shelters: I guess underground shelters are easier, and these have been built, to a limited extent.
Chris, I will challenge anyone to describe a physical commodity that can be returned to Earth from space less expensively than it can be obtained here. On this thread there has been a lot of hand-waving about how lunar mining is inevitable but I don’t see it that way at all. The only value for space resources is for OTHER space activities–the self-licking ice cream cone.
Tell me about some material from space that’s worth real money here. And no novelty crap like “ooh, get your own moon rock!” Real material streams, please.
Kirk – at the moment, there are no physical commodities that can be brought from space cheaper then getting it from Earth. Nor will there be any such commodities for some time – transportation costs are way too high.
As transportation costs fall and costs of mining (environmental compliance and difficulty of extraction) rise, that equation may change.
Kirk, do you dismiss the notion a lunar hotel and science station? If not, do you dismiss the notion of ISRU to support it?
And you do you dismiss the classic idea of building space-based power generators for terrestrial clients? If not, do you dismiss the idea of using either asteroid or lunar resources to suppor them?
I dismiss the notion that such a place would ever be able to operate economically. If it is built, there would be some government or private benefactor who would have to sustain a severe loss of wealth to keep it in operation. Typically that doesn’t last very long. That’s why I think the ISS will be on the bottom of the ocean before the end of this decade.
Oh I THOROUGHLY dismiss the notion of space-based solar power. Now you’re talking about something I actually know a bit about. I will say without hesitation that SBSP will NEVER be economically feasible. Not now, not in the next 100 years.
I dismiss the notion that such a place would ever be able to operate economically.
Even with true RLVs?
Thanks. I hope you get arguments from other people here who also know a lot about the subject.
Note I didn’t say “solar power”, just power generation. Just for an amusing gee-whiz idea, here’s a scheme for collecting naturally-occurring antimatter: http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=1567
What about George Bush Sr?
Well, ignoring the fact that he’s not a senior, and that W is not a junior, why do you think he’s an exception to the rule? What did he ever do to indicate interest in space science and exploration, other than make a speech that he didn’t follow through on, at the behest of VP Quayle.
Was Quayle the driving force behind SEI?
Yes. He was also the driving force (at least in terms of government support) for DC-X.
Hmm, this makes me reevaluate my opinion of him.
He was strongly influenced by General Graham, Jerry Pournelle and Newt Gingrich.
Chris, I will challenge anyone to describe a physical commodity that can be returned to Earth from space less expensively than it can be obtained here. On this thread there has been a lot of hand-waving about how lunar mining is inevitable but I don’t see it that way at all. The only value for space resources is for OTHER space activities–the self-licking ice cream cone.
I gave you an example above, extracting platinum group metals from the lunar surface using a fully automated infrastructure. You’ve been hand-waving in this whole thread so I get to do it too.
Tell me about some material from space that’s worth real money here. And no novelty crap like “ooh, get your own moon rock!” Real material streams, please.
Gold. It’s $1,000 per troy ounce on Earth.
Oh I THOROUGHLY dismiss the notion of space-based solar power. Now you’re talking about something I actually know a bit about. I will say without hesitation that SBSP will NEVER be economically feasible. Not now, not in the next 100 years.
We already have niche markets where SBSP would make sense such as remote temporary military bases and power for disaster relief infrastructure.
I dismiss the notion that such a place would ever be able to operate economically. If it is built, there would be some government or private benefactor who would have to sustain a severe loss of wealth to keep it in operation. Typically that doesn’t last very long. That’s why I think the ISS will be on the bottom of the ocean before the end of this decade.
The ISS is based on a cynically proven business model. It turns public funds into private profit. They’ll splash it only when public funds for the development and construction of an ISS successor are available.
Bigelow, Musk and many others would beg to differ. Compelling is in the eye of the beholder and some behold the numbers better than others. 🙂
Bigelow, Musk and many others may beg to differ but they do so from the surface of the earth – just like like some who behold the numbers better than others. 🙂
By my figuring a billion dollars spent in exactly the right place would probably be sufficient to make this happen.
Bigelow, Musk and many others apparently do not agree with you on how best to spend a billion dollars. Perhaps their enthusiasms don’t match yours quite as closely as you assume.
Karl, I’ve looked at the platinum-group-metals return scenario. It is not viable at today’s prices, and greater supply would undermine those prices. It is not an answer.
We already have niche markets where SBSP would make sense such as remote temporary military bases and power for disaster relief infrastructure.
No and no. 10-km rectennas are not portable or field-deployable.
Gold. It’s $1,000 per troy ounce on Earth.
And that would not even come close to covering transportation expenses. Assuming you had a stack of gold bricks on the lunar surface. Which you don’t–the Moon is just as poor an average ore as a random place on the surface of the earth. Generally even poorer given that there is no hydrology on the moon to concentrate hydro-mobile compounds.
Karl, I’ve looked at the platinum-group-metals return scenario. It is not viable at today’s prices, and greater supply would undermine those prices. It is not an answer.
Today, it’s not viable. 50 years or a century from now, that may well have changed.
And that would not even come close to covering transportation expenses. Assuming you had a stack of gold bricks on the lunar surface. Which you don’t–the Moon is just as poor an average ore as a random place on the surface of the earth. Generally even poorer given that there is no hydrology on the moon to concentrate hydro-mobile compounds.
That assume transportation requires substantial Earth resources. If all it requires is some code monkey to send a few computer instructions, then a lot of things become practical to send to Earth.
Also some of the biggest deposits of PGMs (and gold) on Earth are volcanic and/or asteroid impacts with no hydrothermal contribution. Both processes operated on the Moon as well. For example, the Moon has several mares larger than the Siberian Traps (the largest known episode of volcanism on Earth). The latter lead to the Norilsk-Talnakh copper-nickel-palladium deposits.
The Bushveld Igneous Complex is another example. It is the largest source for many PGMs in the world (containing 90% by mass of the proper PGMs). Both examples are suspected of being the consequences of asteroid impacts though as far as I know, nothing has been proven.
It’s reasonable to suspect that the same processes operate on the Moon as well, given the similar geology, presence of asteroid impacts dating back up to 4 billion years, and similar scale volcanism.
“By my figuring a billion dollars spent in exactly the right place would probably be sufficient to make this happen.”
Bigelow, Musk and many others apparently do not agree with you on how best to spend a billion dollars. Perhaps their enthusiasms don’t match yours quite as closely as you assume.
Yes I think the 1-2 person RLV approach would be a much cheaper way of developing space than those approaches currently being pursued by Musk and Bigelow. However it is difficult to refute that they (and many others) are investing in space development because they do see a substantial long term economic return in doing so. Their actions do not seem frivolous to me, they seem very intent and settlement seems their ultimate goal.
Space settlement does not suffer for a lack of economic potential/return, it does suffer for a lack of short term economic potential/return. Normal commercial R&D investment time frames rarely exceed ten years, but infrastructural projects, even home mortgages, can have investment time frames of many decades. Space settlement currently has a very high entry barrier, but that does not change the value of the long term economics. Basic blue sky scientific research also has very long term economics, yet we fund it for economic reasons. It was also not uncommon for colonies of old to take a hundred years to reach profitability – this did not necessarily mean that they were not worth the investment.
That assume transportation requires substantial Earth resources.
Yes, I make that assumption because transportation DOES require substantial Earth resources. In fact, it requires ALL earth resources. And it will for a very
very
very
very long time.
If all it requires is some code monkey to send a few computer instructions, then a lot of things become practical to send to Earth.
Yes, that would be cheaper, but unfortunately that is not the world we currently inhabit. I can’t push a few buttons and make resources move from the Moon to the Earth and neither can you. And neither will you.
I think there enough free countries on Earth that people won’t leave it for political reasons until it is much cheaper to start a space colony than fight a civil war or, better yet, (MUCH better yet), simply agitate peacefully for political reform.
I quite agree. That’s why I said it was a long term effect, but, also, inevitable. It took hundreds of years for it to make a difference in settling the New World.
You *can* increase your personal freedom by moving to somewhere remote on Earth, and people generally don’t do it — they change conditions at home instead.
No. Here you go wrong, because you falsely assume that liberty-loving people are ever in the clear majority. They aren’t. People in general quite like being cogs in a shiny powerful machine. They are natural statists, and they like being told what to do, so long as they are also protected. Only a minority of people is ever sufficiently passionate about his or her liberty and opportunity that they can’t stand the suffocation of the Mother Church/State/Whatever. So in the end, there is no realistic alternative to moving away. You will never have the numbers to “change things at home,” and you cannot isolate yourself from the majority, because the majority insists on sovereignty over you, that being the definition of the statist solution.
So all you can do is leave, and that is exactly what people have done for millenia. Read your history! Why did Romans go to the frontiers, why did Europeans colonize the Americas, why did proto-Amerindians flee across the Bering bridge to North America 50,000 years ago? Never to get rich, always to live free. Whatever the plausibility of your theory, I think the empirical historical facts trump it.
However it is difficult to refute that they (and many others) are investing in space development because they do see a substantial long term economic return in doing so. Their actions do not seem frivolous to me, they seem very intent and settlement seems their ultimate goal.
Sure. But that’s an argument from authority. You wouldn’t accept the argument that since, say, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are not investing in space development that there is no evidence of long term economic return, would you? Or if Bigelow, Musk, and Bezos pulled out of space development your opinion would change, would it? And if your convictions aren’t tied to those of Bigelow, Musk, Bezos, et al why should anyone else’s be?
Space settlement does not suffer for a lack of economic potential/return,
I’m sorry but again this is personal conviction, not fact. That’s not to say that you are wrong but your personal convictions are not persuasive arguments.
it does suffer for a lack of short term economic potential/return.
Indeed.
…why did proto-Amerindians flee across the Bering bridge to North America 50,000 years ago? Never to get rich, always to live free.
It’s amazing that you can deduce the motives of preliterate people after tens of thousands of years.
“Space settlement does not suffer for a lack of economic potential/return,”
I’m sorry but again this is personal conviction, not fact. That’s not to say that you are wrong but your personal convictions are not persuasive arguments.
As previously stated, my argument for this is that the resources of the solar system far exceed that of the Earth alone and that the solar system is presumably capable of supporting many orders of magnitude more people than the Earth is. GDP will likely correlate somewhat accordingly and therefore the economic potential of the solar system far exceeds that of Earth. Hence the economic return/potential of the solar system far exceeds that of Earth.
I, for myself, find this argument persuasive and many other arguments quite unpersuasive. I get the impression that many others are likewise persuaded, as indicated by the likes of Musk and Bigelow spending lots of their own money on space development – perhaps proof in more than words of their convictions (not an argument from authority).
What you are or are not persuaded by is of course your prerogative, and I expect many share your view, but it also seems to me that many do not, and that it may be worthwhile finding out why they do not.
You need something that will make money returned here, and that’s a null set.
Kirk, as I pointed out before you made this comment, you are wrong. The only thing that must be returned to earth for people to make money on earth is data. A company operating completely in space with no earth resources can earn a profit even if every other company existing is losing money. A settlement, with winners and losers, can overall be a winner and independent (by any reasonable assessment.)
Currently the world [Kirk] sees space as an expense, not as the source of most all future economic prosperity.
Pete is absolutely right that the wealth is out there. Once you envision a settled solar system (with more personal freedom than Kirk seems able to imagine) it becomes obvious.
I disagree with Pete in that I see mars as a good starting place for a settlement that can grow on indigenous resources and become a trading partner with other settlements.
If you settle, then exploration will follow, for humans explore their surroundings. The converse is not necessarily true.
It isn’t Luna herself that makes further travel easier. Put a station in the Earth-Moon L1 spot and you’re half-way to nearly anywhere we’d like to go. Stuff to sell to earthbound businesses? Dunno for sure, but access to fuel, LOX, consumables for life support from Luna gives a reason for the Chinese, Japanese and Indians to pay us. Cheaper to fire that stuff back to NEO or LEO than to bring it up from home dirt and that makes a way for Lunatics to make money to buy pretty stuff for their ladies, new computer games for their kids, and like that.
The Atlas V-Centaur has the lift to take 20 long tons into LEO. The base booster and upper stage are proven. That’ll give you your start with cargo. Needs a bit more for manned flight, but I’d bet they’d come up with a man-rated lower and upper stage if someone came up with a skip-reentry vehicle to carry folks up. Don’t need to return money to here – Earth – only need to return it to Luna and the lunatics who settle it and produce the consumables and some aluminium-magnesium alloys for stations and ships. Combine methane digesters and chemical engineering, pebble-bed reactors running on thorium – bet you there’s thorium in more than one of those craters – find some folks who want to live healthy and active to around 120 years, and get more folks to pitch in the seed money. Yep.
Finally someone has said it. Exploration isn’t what we should do, its colonization.
pebble-bed reactors running on thorium – bet you there’s thorium in more than one of those craters
Mining thorium in space makes no sense at all, even for use in space.
There is OLY ONE reasonable quest for space and that is tourism and real estate. That is how our own frontier was explored AND settled…all we need is the streetcar and rail into space…and wherever else…
@Karl – Thanks for pointing out the “data return” as product. I’m surprised that the IT sector doesn’t push harder for operating in space. The machines to make their truly weightless output are relatively light, with a heavy electrical demand – I’d think this would be win-win for putting it in space. As far as physical products go, I don’t think you’d ever want to return them to Earth, or at least not in bulk. On orbit, any orbit, those materials have a given velocity. Changing that will cost something, with the end result being that you’ll want to minimize the delta-V needed to use whatever you’re digging up. That’s why the “million ton gold asteroid” market-distortion fallacy falls apart on further inspection – the asteroid may not be worth its weight in gold, but as mass on station, it represents something you wouldn’t need to add delta-V to for it to be useful. The value of the delta-V saved is intrinsic to that material.
@Bob-1 – Fully agreed on the marine development, but it’s not mutually exclusive with space development. Indeed, a number of their problems and motivations are fairly similar.
@Rand – Are there any links or ISBNs to Gingrich’s writings on space development? I’d be quite interested in seeing what he had (and hopefully still has) to say on the topic, from a policy perspective.
As previously stated, my argument for this is that the resources of the solar system far exceed that of the Earth alone and that the solar system is presumably capable of supporting many orders of magnitude more people than the Earth is.
Pete, they are not resources until a way has been found to profitably acquire them. Until such time they are no more a resource than gold and uranium dissolved in seawater or iron in the earth’s core.
What you are or are not persuaded by is of course your prerogative, and I expect many share your view, but it also seems to me that many do not, and that it may be worthwhile finding out why they do not.
I think the strong emotional appeal of the subject tends to cloud judgment.
I should perhaps note that the vast majority of human migrations in the past while economically motivated did so without a business model for selling products back to the place that they came from. Human history has consisted of one desperate migration after another, most but fortunately not all ending in death. It would be highly presumptuous to assume that survival model no longer necessary.
When we are considering long term investments (on the order of decades) the intended benefactors are our genes in the future, so to speak. Those genes do not have to at that time be on Earth. Investing in space is about investing in the future for a return in that future – not in the present.
I expect this common fallacy has a name. Product development is about developing for the market that will be, not the market that is. A few generations hence, that market will likely be in space, not on Earth, and that is the market that space development should probably be aimed at.
Why are you all stuck on talking about resources at the bottom of gravity wells?
Moon, Mars – these have the same mass/energy issues as lift to LEO, with less infrastructure. The way to go is asteroid resources. Mass for shielding, metals, volatiles. Raw sunlight for energy. Rotating structures to overcome microgravity health issues. That should be the target for initial exploitation – the easiest path, the biggest ROE.
Oops. Meant to say ROI.