There was an interesting discussion this afternoon at Council of Foreign Affairs with Lori Garver, John Logsdon, and Charles Miller. The Youtube is now available. Note that they touch on many of the themes in my upcoming paper, on how we have to stop trying to do Apollo again, that SLS is a jobs program, that propellant transfer is a game changer, the need for a competitive private sector, etc. Lori was quite harshly critical of NASA (and Congress).
16 thoughts on “The Future Of Space”
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Why is cooperation such a good thing? It seems the most expensive way to go?
Give me 3.5% of NASA’s budget and I’ll give you mars in a decade with cargo going today.
Ken, very few people here (perhaps no one) takes you seriously. Statements like this are why.
Show your work (though I doubt that will really improve things).
More specifically, Ken, you need to show how your plan will make a profit for investors, even before the first wave of colonists arrive.
My work is shown in my book, but after 50 pages I’ve kind of run out of steam. So I’ll make a blog post.
Still working on the book, but not sure if I’ll ever finish.
The point actually is how do you manage all the bits and pieces of the concept. There’s a wide gap between what is theoretically feasible if everybody does everything exactly right both technically and financially, and what is possible in the real world when dealing with real technical issues and real people. Anyone that is to be taken seriously needs a personal and visible track record of accomplishment in some field before getting investors, at a minimum. Without a track record of managing large projects successfully, grandiose plans are just dreams.
This is personal experience. My grand plans in my own construction field have largely been torpedoed by the reality of managing people with somewhat less drive than I have. I’m just now at the point I expected to be in about 1990. Finding, training, and motivating the right people is a massively difficult undertaking unless there are frequent and lucrative reasons for them to follow along. Mars is too distant a goal for a bootstrap operation as it requires entirely too many people to defer their own rewards for too many decades. It is only theoretically possible for an organization with a solid track record and financing. None exist for Mars at the moment.
You start with an outline. That’s enough for criticism.
The point of a book is to provide more detail, but you don’t need it if the outline itself is bad.
We have published numbers. That’s all I’m using. I don’t use the 2 crew per Dragon directly in my book, but some may recognize it from Zubrin.
Not taking me seriously says more about those than me.
the reality of managing people with somewhat less drive than I have
That’s Musk’s real secret. He’s doing what can’t seriously be done because somehow he’s infected his workforce. His legal problems with former employees being part of the pushback.
On rare occasions I’ve had a part in doing the impossible which part of the immunization against the smug.
As a working programmer I had other programmers actually hang on my shoulders while I worked then relate my accomplishments to others in amazement. Not some newbies but good working programmers them selves. I used to play a million lines of code like a ten line utility.
INTJ’s expect others to meet the standards they set for themselves. Easy now that I’m a hospital case 😉
As for the rest, of course I don’t have the track record. But nobody does until they do. Musk provides an example with every business he starts.
My examples are all within the framework of other people’s companies.
I’m not assuming a profit on the 3.5% (why should I have more burden than NASA itself.) However, in the book I show how NASA may get things started but become a minor player because there are profits, but that takes a book (not a blog post) to explain.
It seems that NASA already spending about 3.5% of NASA’s budget
on Mars. Let’s pick at date say from 1995 Nov to 2015 Nov.
So starting with global surveyor, as count it seems there as 12 mission programs in those 20 years:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration_of_Mars
With Curiosity being pretty expensive and the others were much cheaper. It seems somewhere around an average 600 to 700 million per year. And Moon including LRO has been about 100 million on average during same period. And generally the launch cost has been about 1/4 of those costs or less.
Or were launch cost to lower by 50% that would not have much effect upon total cost, unless a lower launch cost changed how the mission was done so overall cost were lower.
One could say not much was accomplished with these missions- it’s keeping people busy and providing the public with some pictures.
One could give the argument that one would need to spend more money in order to get significant results.
Significant results with the Moon would determining if and where there was minable water. Though finding something like a lava tube could also be significant.
Anyhow I wonder if going to spend as much on Mars in next 20 years as past 20 years. It seems to me that finding site for making a Mars base might be related to future robotic missions. Another possibility is exploring Mars moons.
But I think the radiation is going to be a problem with Manned Mars and trouble with potential manned Mars will effect future money spent on robotic missions. It seems that SLS will cause more focus on the moon and to Manned Mars, one has to get crew there quickly [less than 3 months] and going to need depots in space.
NASA already spending
That’s my point. It’s NOT a funding issue.
–That’s my point. It’s NOT a funding issue.–
It is funding issue for NASA, it’s not funding issue for US government. The US government is funding a job program, US government not funding exploration of space.
But perhaps US government would fund exploration of space- if it had the opportunity to do so.
Exploration is searching for usable resources in space.
What could be usable and what is usable resources in space?
Earth’s orbit is usable resource in space, and is being used as high ground for communication and monitoring the Earth’s surface.
And Earth’s high ground of it’s orbits involves a global 200 billion dollar industry.
So is Earth’s orbit the only viable resource in Space?
Let’s say I don’t care if answer is yes or no, but rather the point is to answer the question on way or the other.
It seems to me that Earth orbit could be the only viable resource, or remain the most significant resource in space which will used in the next 50 years.
But this seems this way to me because we are failing to explore space with goal of finding other viable resource which could be used. And also the high ground aspect of Earth orbit could be potentially, Huuge!
NASA exploration space has been aimless and more about being first to do something, rather than find something. NASA idea of exploration is warped by associating such thing as the private effort stunt of being first to south pole of Antarctica, as important exploration. NASA is stuck in glory days of the Apollo stunt of going to the Moon, and NASA needs to be an adult rather remaining a foolish child.
So rather than exploring the Moon, NASA has stupid ideas about lunar bases on the Moon. Rather than explore Mars, NASA wants to send a crew to Mars. And rather than making a depot in LEO, NASA built ISS.
And rather than lower the costs getting into Space, NASA built the Shuttle, and now building SLS.
This is because NASA is job program rather than agency exploring space.
NASA could be job program and explore space, but it’s highest priority is a job program, and therefore fails in terms of exploring space.
The US military is a big job program- and actually makes some leaders- but it’s first priority is national security.
But most government dept and agencies are failures become they are mostly a job program. Energy dept isn’t about Energy. Dept of Education is not about Education. Etc.
But like the Military, NASA could be doing something important.
Pointing out the hypocrisy of govt. doesn’t change the funding issue.
Govt. is interested in what it can tax. So leave govt. out.
$625m per year is doable by about 5000 companies and the return is trillions.
Also, saying we can’t do something because this is the current way we do things is a fallacy. Not that it’s easy.
If Trump eliminates any govt. depts. I will be impressed.
I doubt that will really improve things
Did that post improve anything? If not, I will cease.
BTW, if $1.365 billion every 26 months means I’m not taken seriously, then nobody can jump that hurdle.
A FH w/payload is only $200m. It can send 13 ton to mars orbit.
A dragon lander is 5 ton.
Criticizing details is helpful. Character assassination is not. It doesn’t demean me.
Mars is too distant a goal for a bootstrap operation
I’ve looked at bootstrapping it and find that doable as well for less than $300m. Basically, SpaceX is a version of that. The way to keep a workforce interested over decades is to have worthwhile minor goals.
My bootstrap Idea was a refuelable ship in orbit. Costing about $200m based on published numbers. That starts as an orbital destination like Bigelow’s alpha station, but only 240 m^2 rather than 660. From there you work your way to more ships. Lunar excursions then finally mars.
I’d rather bypass all of that which 3.5% of NASA’s budget could accomplish. Of course nobody would give that to me, but by making my ideas known someone that does have the right credentials could run with it. I care about humanity, not taking credit.