“Imagine a defenseless rock, innocently tumbling its way through space, only to be snagged, bagged, and defiled – appropriated and exploited by arrogant, human interlopers. There ought to be a law!”
He is joking around but this is actually how some people think. Sure, it is fun to mock them but space cadets also need a way to convince these people of the value of humans being in space. You could always buy them off but appeasement never works in the long run.
Most ARM critics complain that SLS and Orion are part of the mission. They link asteroid retrieval to Shelby’s porkbarrel make work programs. But Spudis isn’t objecting to the SLS. In fact he seems to favor Senate Launch System as the best way to get to the moon. What he is objecting to is using the SLS for something other than the moon.
While I don’t like SLS and Orion, I would like to see the SEP asteroid retrieval vehicle built. This R&D could be helpful to entities like Planetary Resources or Deep Space Industries. Condemning the mission because it’s linked to SLS is throwing out the baby with the bath water. A small rock in our neighborhood would also make a good test bed for developing asteroid mining technology.
If they did approve SLS for Spudis style lunar development, it would be poetic justice if the anti-SLS folks torpedoed the project.
Yes, that is Paul’s complaint.
I love people who clearly have either not read or not understood what I’ve written for the last seven years explain to everybody what I do and do not favor.
If you will bother to look at my paper with Tony Lavoie about bootstrapping a lunar presence using robotic assets, you’ll see that our architecture is launch-vehicle agnostic. In fact, for purposes of estimating sizes, we put almost the entire lunar outpost on the Moon using an Atlas 551. What I have said is that if a heavy lift vehicle exists, it makes sense to use it to build up infrastructure on the Moon, as it would minimize the total number of launches needed. Thus, I am happy to incorporate SLS into a lunar return architecture, if it is operational. That applies to any heavy lift vehicle, including the mythical Falcon Heavy, if it ever appears.
As for using a SEP module to put a rock in lunar orbit for the benefit of New Space companies to experiment upon, like all else in the New Space world, you guys are happy to get government assets and services for provided free, but if we do it as part of a federal program, it’s “socialism.” Hilarious.
At this point SLS HLV is just as mythical as Falcon heavy. I would place my bets on SpaceX.
You’d be happy to incorporate cost plus senate pork into your architecture? Then your lunar propellent mines would lose tonnes of money.
Well, I think the simplest thing is to just look at the available launch options in terms of dollars per pound delivered to the moon, or thereabouts, or required equipment delivered, look at the project’s budget, and pick the most bang for the buck. If the SLS Is being underwritten by the taxpayer so that most of the costs don’t show up on your books, then that’s fine too as far as the moon project goes.
I think killing the SLS would be like killing Constellation. The same project will just reappear, because budgets need to get spent, but it will be delayed by ten more years – unless its capabilities have already been provided by something else as technology marches on.
I do think there is serious benefit to what we’ve suggested about launching meteors from Earth, or meteor analogs. If an asteroid can supply reaction mass, moving an asteroid becomes a whole lot easier. Testing how to do that in LEO by launching an asteroid “sample” with an attached fuel-processing/engine test article already attached, in an iterative development project, would be far superior to going all the way out to a real asteroid to see why the system won’t work [i]this time[/i]. I imagine that a lot of the early tests could be done for a few hundred pounds each.
ARM seems to be going out and getting an asteroid and [i]then[/i] studying it to see how to make reaction mass (and refine it into useful materials) so that we can learn how to get bigger asteroids. We can possibly skip that step.
The Keck Report imagines retrieving a rock from 250 to a thousand tonnes. That would take two to seven SLS HLVs (assuming 130 tonnes to LEO). The Keck retrieval vehicle would be launched on one Atlas V.
Personally I’d like to see more prospecting done before we retrieve a rock. The third generation Arkyds might identify some resource rich, retrievable rocks. Seeing that schedules typically slip, it’s possible that may already have been accomplished by the time we’re ready to launch the asteroid retriever.
Even if the rock retrieved isn’t resource rich, a 250 to 1000 tonne rock would be a good test bed for some mining tech development. For any asteroid mining we would need to dig, drill, haul ore from one location to another, etc. Learning how to do this in microgravity would be a process of trial and error. If our test bed had launch windows 10 years apart and 6 month trip times, this trial and error process could take centuries.
And when (or if) we get these skills under our belt and can establish mines on heliocentric rocks, we’d still need to get the commodity back to earth’s neighborhood. Robust SEP (such as the Keck study calls for) would be an enabling technology for transporting mined material.
Heck, a robust SEP vehicle would be a great tool for hauling infra structure to lunar orbit. Moon enthusiasts should be endorsing this.
I would vote for developing the SEP vehicle and ditching SLS and Orion.
Not enough opportunities for graft in that.
Spudis,
” it makes sense to use it to build up infrastructure on the Moon, as it would minimize the total number of launches needed. ”
Prioritizing launch rate reduction is a false optimization. The actual goal here is to reduce the costs. There is no guaranteed correlation to reduced costs through reduced launches as you assume. If the HLV is more costly than many smaller launches then it is a false economy. It would be like saying a SSTO must be cheaper than a TSTO because less stages is simpler. There are factors beyond a shallow isolation of focus on stage count or launch count that impact things.
like all else in the New Space world, you guys are happy to get government assets and services for provided free
Mischaracterization. I personally do not like to see taxpayer money wasted. Once wasted however, it would be stupid not to get what value you can out of it (assuming getting value out is possible.)
Put another way, government should spend as if it were not other peoples money.
The problem with SLS and Orion, is that even when fully operational they make no sense to use on any mission in light of considerably better options.
That mythical vehicle is already flying since the cores are the same. They had to fly the ‘not an Orion’ on D4H because SLS really is just mythical.
They flew a ‘not a Dragon’ on the first F9, but never claimed it was the real deal or a step to mars (even though more so than the Orion ever will be.)
“Imagine a defenseless rock, innocently tumbling its way through space, only to be snagged, bagged, and defiled – appropriated and exploited by arrogant, human interlopers. There ought to be a law!”
He is joking around but this is actually how some people think. Sure, it is fun to mock them but space cadets also need a way to convince these people of the value of humans being in space. You could always buy them off but appeasement never works in the long run.
Most ARM critics complain that SLS and Orion are part of the mission. They link asteroid retrieval to Shelby’s porkbarrel make work programs. But Spudis isn’t objecting to the SLS. In fact he seems to favor Senate Launch System as the best way to get to the moon. What he is objecting to is using the SLS for something other than the moon.
While I don’t like SLS and Orion, I would like to see the SEP asteroid retrieval vehicle built. This R&D could be helpful to entities like Planetary Resources or Deep Space Industries. Condemning the mission because it’s linked to SLS is throwing out the baby with the bath water. A small rock in our neighborhood would also make a good test bed for developing asteroid mining technology.
If they did approve SLS for Spudis style lunar development, it would be poetic justice if the anti-SLS folks torpedoed the project.
Yes, that is Paul’s complaint.
I love people who clearly have either not read or not understood what I’ve written for the last seven years explain to everybody what I do and do not favor.
If you will bother to look at my paper with Tony Lavoie about bootstrapping a lunar presence using robotic assets, you’ll see that our architecture is launch-vehicle agnostic. In fact, for purposes of estimating sizes, we put almost the entire lunar outpost on the Moon using an Atlas 551. What I have said is that if a heavy lift vehicle exists, it makes sense to use it to build up infrastructure on the Moon, as it would minimize the total number of launches needed. Thus, I am happy to incorporate SLS into a lunar return architecture, if it is operational. That applies to any heavy lift vehicle, including the mythical Falcon Heavy, if it ever appears.
As for using a SEP module to put a rock in lunar orbit for the benefit of New Space companies to experiment upon, like all else in the New Space world, you guys are happy to get government assets and services for provided free, but if we do it as part of a federal program, it’s “socialism.” Hilarious.
At this point SLS HLV is just as mythical as Falcon heavy. I would place my bets on SpaceX.
You’d be happy to incorporate cost plus senate pork into your architecture? Then your lunar propellent mines would lose tonnes of money.
Well, I think the simplest thing is to just look at the available launch options in terms of dollars per pound delivered to the moon, or thereabouts, or required equipment delivered, look at the project’s budget, and pick the most bang for the buck. If the SLS Is being underwritten by the taxpayer so that most of the costs don’t show up on your books, then that’s fine too as far as the moon project goes.
I think killing the SLS would be like killing Constellation. The same project will just reappear, because budgets need to get spent, but it will be delayed by ten more years – unless its capabilities have already been provided by something else as technology marches on.
I do think there is serious benefit to what we’ve suggested about launching meteors from Earth, or meteor analogs. If an asteroid can supply reaction mass, moving an asteroid becomes a whole lot easier. Testing how to do that in LEO by launching an asteroid “sample” with an attached fuel-processing/engine test article already attached, in an iterative development project, would be far superior to going all the way out to a real asteroid to see why the system won’t work [i]this time[/i]. I imagine that a lot of the early tests could be done for a few hundred pounds each.
ARM seems to be going out and getting an asteroid and [i]then[/i] studying it to see how to make reaction mass (and refine it into useful materials) so that we can learn how to get bigger asteroids. We can possibly skip that step.
The Keck Report imagines retrieving a rock from 250 to a thousand tonnes. That would take two to seven SLS HLVs (assuming 130 tonnes to LEO). The Keck retrieval vehicle would be launched on one Atlas V.
Personally I’d like to see more prospecting done before we retrieve a rock. The third generation Arkyds might identify some resource rich, retrievable rocks. Seeing that schedules typically slip, it’s possible that may already have been accomplished by the time we’re ready to launch the asteroid retriever.
Even if the rock retrieved isn’t resource rich, a 250 to 1000 tonne rock would be a good test bed for some mining tech development. For any asteroid mining we would need to dig, drill, haul ore from one location to another, etc. Learning how to do this in microgravity would be a process of trial and error. If our test bed had launch windows 10 years apart and 6 month trip times, this trial and error process could take centuries.
And when (or if) we get these skills under our belt and can establish mines on heliocentric rocks, we’d still need to get the commodity back to earth’s neighborhood. Robust SEP (such as the Keck study calls for) would be an enabling technology for transporting mined material.
Heck, a robust SEP vehicle would be a great tool for hauling infra structure to lunar orbit. Moon enthusiasts should be endorsing this.
I would vote for developing the SEP vehicle and ditching SLS and Orion.
Not enough opportunities for graft in that.
Spudis,
” it makes sense to use it to build up infrastructure on the Moon, as it would minimize the total number of launches needed. ”
Prioritizing launch rate reduction is a false optimization. The actual goal here is to reduce the costs. There is no guaranteed correlation to reduced costs through reduced launches as you assume. If the HLV is more costly than many smaller launches then it is a false economy. It would be like saying a SSTO must be cheaper than a TSTO because less stages is simpler. There are factors beyond a shallow isolation of focus on stage count or launch count that impact things.
like all else in the New Space world, you guys are happy to get government assets and services for provided free
Mischaracterization. I personally do not like to see taxpayer money wasted. Once wasted however, it would be stupid not to get what value you can out of it (assuming getting value out is possible.)
Put another way, government should spend as if it were not other peoples money.
The problem with SLS and Orion, is that even when fully operational they make no sense to use on any mission in light of considerably better options.
That mythical vehicle is already flying since the cores are the same. They had to fly the ‘not an Orion’ on D4H because SLS really is just mythical.
They flew a ‘not a Dragon’ on the first F9, but never claimed it was the real deal or a step to mars (even though more so than the Orion ever will be.)