Participants: Mark Schlather, Gary Oleson of Northrop Grumman, Barbara Thompson of NASA Goddard, Tom Matula MBA Professor, Henry Vanderbilt of the Space Access Society, Ed Hudgins of Objectivist Center.

Schlather: “Ask not what your country can do for you, because you’re not likely to be pleased with the answer.”

Sense of excitement, amusement and horror at recent events. Lot of activity after a long period of stagnation, resulting from the Columbia disaster. “Focus on space program went away with Cold War, shifting to government stovepipes and a jobs program, due to a failure to present unifying vision. Horror comes from fact that discussion is focused on destination, rather than purpose. Like saying that we fought the second world war not to free earth from history, but to get to Guam. “Because it is there” is insufficient rationale. Purpose in space is not to do “world-class science.” Agenda should drive science, not the other way around.

Purpose is to become spacefaring civilization, to be multi-planet species, seek resources, etc. Recent civil space program has been dismal from this regard, particularly when it comes to buying commercial services. Much lip service, no action. New administrator has been encouraging. Noted that Washington Post has rejected these arguments of purpose, even after Griffin stated them in an interview, so we need to do a better job of arguing them. New architecture makes little sense. “Thought of the giant leap of going from a three-man Apollo capsule to a four-man Apollo capsule in just a half a century” makes his heart leap with excitement (note: sarcasm).

Thinks that recent private events may be superceding NASA plans. Making a pitch for “March Storm” lobbying event next spring, will be an important year for influencing the direction of the program.

Gary Oleson: Talking about frequent and affordable access (both for military and civilian needs). Over time becoming three times, fifty times and a hundred times less expensive (latter in twenty-five years). Launch primary limiting factor to space operations, progress has been slow relative to market-driven technologies, such as IT, and no one in government seems to know what to do about it.

Government programs have problems reducing costs. Aversion to short-term risk turns into long-term risk (Shuttle example). Government agencies are mission oriented, and have difficulty breaking out due to institutional inertia. Asks if government should create markets, or nourish them? Government needs to go beyond existing missions to help commercial markets, because it doesn’t do enough to provide necessary high-volume production. SpaceShipOne, regardless of what one thinks it accomplished, was done much cheaper than NASA could have done it, according to standard cost models (24 million versus almost a billion dollars).

Recommendations that government coordinate internal demand, invest in technologies, involve space entrepreneurs and look for short and mid-term payoffs. Need to create interagency fora to coordniate missions and tech investments, and encourage/coordinate potential users in defense and intelligence community. Notes that civil agencies (NOAA, NASA?) will also benefit.

Should provide clearinghouse of ideas to support emerging space industries, and suggests a new version of NACA (not a new idea, but perhaps support can be gained for it now). Notes that first decade of NACA resulted in explosive growth of commercial aviation in the late twenties, by breaking the Wright-Curtiss intellectual property logjam. Like NACA, new advisory committee would counsel the federal government on space issues, and do generic cutting-edge research. Greatest impact of NACA was early, when budget was lowest. The coordination function was at least as important as IR&D.

Proposes unpaid committee of government and private, with small HQ staff. Supports commercial and government applications. Must be inclusive and insulated from politics. Government must do it, because only that way will it be taken seriously by both government and private sectors. Must be in a position to propose funding, and be independent of existing US government missions. Would have great payoff in terms of reduced costs, increased capabilities and American dominance of future space industries.

Question from audience: should we go out and start this now, rather than waiting for government to do it? Answer: yes, doing that will force government to act.

What is relationship with NASA? A: NASA will be a client of it, but is too busy with its own problems and has too many conflicts of interest to do it itself.

Phil Chapman suggests that it be called the National Advisory Committee on Astronautics (retaining NACA acronym).

Question about prizes: NACA didn’t do so (there were ample prizes from other sources), but the new one might.

Q: How would it coordinate with other agencies such as the California Space Authority?

A: Use the clearinghouse of ideas to determine which are best, and be able to point to state examples.

Henry Vanderbilt:

Taking question literally. We should do things collectively where the profit is too diffuse to do privately: national defense, space telescopes, cutting-edge space exploration, etc. Problems arise when bureaucracies arise to do these things. As they mature, get larger, higher percentage of resources go to structure, get set in their ways with difficulty getting them to do innovative things. NACA was successful early (as was NASA) in their early days, and much less so later. As example, AST at FAA is more innovative than aviation side of the agency, because it’s newer.

Proposes that agencies be wiped out every ten years, not allowing anyone to be rehired for a couple years (a “modest proposal”). Argues that disruption resulting wouldn’t be as bad as current situation, in which things often never get done at all.

NASA has learned to specialize in launching a handful of people per year with billions of dollars and thousands of people, and have no real incentive to change. Response to VSE continues that broad outline, which they’re comfortable with. May not be competent to do anything else (if they’re even competent to do that). Bureaucracy’s primary urge after it matures is preserving itself, and we see this in both NASA and DoD space (though the latter isn’t quite as bad). Holding this jaundiced view will make dealing with them better, so you don’t have unrealistic expectations. Don’t surprise them with a new spaceship–give them advance warning, and try to point out how much what you want to do is like what they’re used to, rather than forcing them into radical changes of their system. Thinks we’re in for interesting times.

Randall Clague of XCOR points out that while not surprising them is good advice, don’t expect them to not surprise you. Henry notes that sometimes when doing something different with a bureaucracy, you may inadvertently invoke some ancient feature that no one previously knew existed.

NASA’s response to disaster: shutting down, analyzing, having commissions, then going back to business as usual.

Advice from Dennis Wingo–to the extent you can avoid government, you’re better off, because they’re an unreliable. Th ink of yourself as a bicycle and them as a semi truck with the potential for collision. They may not notice you, but you’ll find it a life-changing experience.

Barbara Thompson:

Not speaking for NASA (she works at Goddard). In her opinion, it is not the responsibility of the government to make companies viable, but it is perhaps to make an industry viable. She thinks that the government has done a good job in laying a foundation for the industry in the area of space weather forecasting, but it needs more input from industry to move forward. She wants her talk to get us to think about space weather and when the next space weather conference is, because we are going to be flying more human flesh into space in the next few years as the government has in the past four decades, and we need to understand this issue to have a successful industry. There is advantage to us as a company and industry in participating in the continuing development of this area.

Talking generically about elements of risk. Hates phrase “failure is not an option.” Failure must be an option. If we are successful, we will kill people, because even cars kill people. Even though little time is spent in the low-radiation environment of suborbital flight, we need to be aware, because someone in the future who develops a brain tumor will blame us, and sue us. Have to balance probability of risk, versus effect, versus cost of mitigating it. Cost of understanding and mitigating space weather risk is fortunately very low.

Need combination of models, forecasts, and robust flight components. Key components are prediction, reaction (postponing activities), and mitigation with shielding and monitoring. She notes that in her discussion with industry, we seem to be on top of the problem. Space weather research is a fundamental role of the government, at least for now. Space weather development will occur in the same manner as terrestrial weather, in concert with the needs of the travel industry. Space travel without space weather may ultimately be more dangerous than air travel without atmospheric weather, because airplanes can land.

Hiding from: Solar eruptions/flares, magnetic disturbances, magnetospheric and interplanetary shocks, energetic particles, “killer” electrons, increases in solar irradiant flux, electric current systems, changes in ionospheric structure, global voltage “generators.” affects human health, and electonics/communications systems. Short anwer: nearly everything “interesting” in the space environment is a potential hazard. But also makes for beautiful views.

Current NASA goal for radiation exposure is “As Low As Reasonably Achievable” (ALARA). Recognizes that it’s not a good commercial specification, from a risk/return ratio standpoint, and probably not economically. Need more data to refine it. This industry can provide data from its passengers and flight experience. Short-term effects and long-term effects (latter being cancer).

Astronaut exposure affected by structure, altitude, attitude, inclination, time duration. NASA launching a “space weather desk.” JSC deals with astronaut safety. She has been evangelizing this industry to others at NASA, and will continue to do so, but we need to start participating with them and with NOAA. Notes that National Weather Service has expanded into space weather. Has estalbished “Space Weather Week,” with opportunities to attend “morning briefings, and most attendees say that conference meets their needs. Comes right after Space Access Society meeting. Wants Space Frontier Foundation and Space Access Society to coordinate to discuss mutual needs of space weather community and emerging space transportation industry. She expects us to get to orbit much sooner than many do, and we need to start planning now, so that we will have a good handle on the weather issues as we start spending hours and days in space, rather than minutes. It will be required to make safe the long-distance travel in space.

Hudgins: Problem with space sector is too much government and too much bureaucracy, resulting in stunted sector, like an underdeveloped country. Must recognize that government will continue to be involved, but private sector must lead the way. Future in a private space hotel put up by Bigelow. We see the future in government procuring commercial services. Notes C0ngressman Walker’s proposal to provide tax moratorium on lunar base revenues.

No reason to think that the NASA that built the ISS will be able to build a lunar base in an economically responsible manner.

Wants to talk about the nature of government, rather than the role of government. Talking about the moral foundation of government that will provide the moral nature of a future space society. Moral basis for most of us here is Jeffersonian, with autonomy of the individual and codes of values for freedom to act, but also building a society in which we can interact to create wealth. The purpose of government is to protect life, liberty and property of individuals and that actions should be based on mutual consent (basically a libertarian view). Assumption is that US and other governments will be involved in space activities. Suggests a different direction that will be of future benefit. Private actors whould think about how to form consortia to get into space (e.g., Bigelow gets a hotel up, private providers populate it, bases are established on other worlds), using compacts of how to govern themselves. Early US provides a model (e.g., Mayflower, Jamestown compacts). Jamestown was bad, with access to common provisions, but no accountability or individual responsibility. Over half the people died until John Smith changed the compact, requiring people who ate to work, after which it did better.

Shared resources in space (air, water, etc.), but need to allow people to opt out of the compact. Must provide incentive for individuals to be creative (e.g., if an individual can come up with a way to produce oxygen, they should be able to opt out and provide it to others.) Law will emerge from mutual assistance agreements (citing Hayek). Suggests that as we get into space, we think of having sovereign off-world governments, with autonomy. It will be desirable to have earth governments recognize consortia and off-planet governments, with the ability for individuals to be citizens of them. Set up agreements similar to those that allow overseas bases with earthly sovereignty. Also uses Channel Islands as models.

Future is humans creating spacefaring civilization with government structures that unleash creativity, and new manifestation of governments off planet.

Question: Wouldn’t current American notion of private property rights be good model to start.

Answer: Yes, and longer treatment discusses transition issues. Talks about recent examples in Eastern Europe. Need to avoid tentacles of government that will strangle us if we allow it to continue to adversely affect space development. Also notes that he didn’t discuss military issues, which is a different speech.

Tom Matula:

Proposing a Near-Earth Asteroid bounty program. Discussing standard asteroid threat issues. Two goals that stand out in public opinion of national space goal: energy from space, and planetary defense (he notes that there’s large support for space tourism, but not as a government goal–they think that should be up to private industry).

Discussing NEA data needs: composition, rotational characteristics, size, shape, orbital parameters. Best determined by spacecraft. Old west used bounty program for predators. Similar program would be useful for data gathering from NEOs. Federal NEA bounty program better than data purchase, and would stimulate the new space industry by creating a stable market for private space exploration missions. Would generate new technology for low cost, and create NEO data base.

Suggested NEA bounty price list:
$5M for chemical composition, or rotation, size and shape, larger prices for other data (sorrry, charts moving too fast to capture it all). Payment must be automatic, and per asteroid, not per mission (allowing moving from one target to another an a mission). Only one bounty per asteroid. Companies can reserve asteroid for some period of time to avoid races to individual objects. JPL would administer program. NEA would be withdrawn from program only if NASA was fully funded for a mission within 36 months. NASA can launch asteroids that are reserved, but company still gets paid (meaning that NASA would have little incentive to do so). Money would have to be escrowed by Congress once asteroid is reserved. Thinks that program would accelerate both knowledge of NEOs and technologies to gather data on them. Will also accelerate utilization of resources. Fixed price allows high profits with good technologies.

Question about how to prevent data fraud. Answer is to do quality control. Joe Carroll suggests a fee to reserve, with a right of transfer. Question from Phil Chapman (which I would have asked) if reservation is equivalent to a mining claim for some period of time. Answer is that this gets into international treaty issues, but Phil thinks these can be circumented (as do I, since the Outer Space Treaty doesn’t prohibit property rights per se, just sovereignty claims).

Breaking for lunch now. After lunch will be sessions on regulatory issues, including ITAR and launch regulations.