Category Archives: Economics

How To Explore

Alan Wilhite, Doug Stanley, Dale Arney and Chris Jones have put together an extremely politically incorrect technical presentation, in that it explains how one does serious space exploration and even development without using the Senate Launch System. They baselined Falcon 9 and its heavy version for the launch systems. I haven’t looked at it in detail, but as Jon Goff and Clark Lindsey have noted, it is a much more affordable concept than the SLS route. They appear to be assuming that the Merlin 2 won’t be developed, but if it were, I would imagine a significant decrease in recurring costs, particularly for the heavy. I’m curious to know how much cooperation they got from SpaceX for this work.

I’ll be looking it over and figuring out how to repurpose it to wage some political battles, but for now I’d just note chart 6, and the dominance of the costs for heavy lift in the HEFT studies. There are a lot of things that we could buy for that $2.5B per year that would have a lot more value.

One other point (as Jon also mentioned) — I’ve known Alan Wilhite and Doug Stanley for decades, having done a lot of work with them at Langley in the early nineties, and they’re both good guys, but Doug was in charge of the controversial ESAS activity that gave us Constellation (he had left Langley and gone to work at OSC, where he was working fairly closely with Mike Griffin). Whatever one wants to think about that effort, I would say that this one redeems him considerably. It also (as Jon notes) makes a very powerful statement about the earlier results and the need for heavy lift. Also, Doug was on record of opposing a lunar return, wanting to get on to Mars. I’m thinking that the de-emphasis on the moon in the new “Flexible Path” approach has freed him up somewhat (not to mention that he no longer has to please his former boss).

[Update a few minutes later]

I would add that there some very clueless comments at the NASA Watch post. Those commenting either didn’t actually read, or didn’t understand the briefing, if they still believe that HLV is more cost effective.

[Update a while later]

OK, I’m glancing through the briefing, and they don’t seem to be considering the fact that dry launching the in-space hardware will reduce its structural weight somewhat. Doing so will make the concept even better.

Also, Chart 31 is interesting — note the note: “These NAFCOM costs are a factor of 3 to 6 higher than actual costs for ISS Cygnus and Dragon DDT&E.”

NAFCOM is the NASA Air-Force Cost Model. I’ve been wanting to write a piece for a while now with the title, “The Cost Models Are Broken.” We’ve sort of known it since DC-X and the X-Prize, but SpaceX has really completely shattered them. This is actually good news, since parametric costing has been locking us into high costs on cost-plus contracts for decades.

More later as I continue to peruse.

[Update a while later]

Here’s the summary of the issues and benefits:

Issues

  • Authorization Act language
  • Requires longer storage of cryo propellants than alternatives and addition of zero-g transfer technologies
  • Multiple launches statistically will result in more launch failures, but most launches are to the depot and not on critical mission path
  • NASA loses some control/oversight
  • Added complexity of depot

Benefits

  • Tens of billions of dollars of cost savings and lower up-front costs to fit within budget profile (no HLLV-based options fit within budget)
  • Launch every 2 or 3 months rather than 1 every 18 months with HLLV
  • – Provides experienced and focused workforce to improve safety
  • – Operational learning for reduced costs and higher launch reliability.
  • Allows multiple competitors for propellant delivery
  • – Competition drives down costs
  • – Alternatives available if critical launch failure occurs
  • – Low-risk, hands-off way for international partners to contribute
  • Reduced critical path mission complexity (AR&Ds, events, number of unique elements)
  • Provides additional mission flexibility by altering propellant load
  • Commonality with commercial crew/COTS vehicles will allow sharing of fixed costs between programs and “right-sized” vehicle for ISS
  • Stimulate US commercial launch industry

They forgot the biggest issue — it doesn’t preserve the Shuttle Industrial Complex, particularly in Utah. Though they may be subtly alluding to that with their semi-cryptic “Authorization Language” bullet. As for the benefits, it’s almost like they read my essay.

The Senate Launch System

I’ve added a new page to the “Issues” section of the Competitive Space Task Force web site.

[Update a while later]

The Space Frontier Foundation has just issued a press release calling for people to hit the Hill:

Please remind your Representative & Senators they are not rocket scientists!
Let NASA compete all the best ideas for a Space Launch System…
Don’t mandate an unaffordable/unsustainable “Senate Launch System”!

Six months into Fiscal Year 2011 the U.S. Congress is still trying to write a budget for a year that’s half over. Down in the weeds of the final “continuing resolution” (CR) will be NASA’s budget for human space exploration. The House-passed CR provides flexibility for NASA to choose the most affordable and sustainable approach. The Senate’s draft CR, which didn’t even pass the Senate, told NASA to build a 130-ton heavy-lift launch vehicle right away… using current contractors and 1970s era technology.

Everyone reading this alert wants NASA to start exploring again. But there are a lot of options for exploration transportation that don’t require paying the huge fixed costs of the Shuttle or Constellation forever. Heavy-lift capabilities can be developed incrementally over time, as we can afford them and are ready to use them.

Our space program needs an open and fair competition among not just different contractors but different and even multiple approaches to see which are the most affordable, most flexible, and most sustainable to develop and operate.

Instead, some in Congress want to make NASA build their favorite rocket, without competition, even though NASA has already told them it can’t be done for the resources available on anything like the timetable Congress wants. It’s time to stop the Congress from mandating the Senate Launch System, and let NASA compete ideas for one (or more) Space Launch System(s).

We can’t afford to repeat the mistakes of Constellation, and just rubber-stamp a pre-selected design for a rocket.

No more sole-source, non-competitive procurements for cost-plus contracts!

Every pro-space American should call their Senators and Representative, and tell them that they must encourage NASA to compete the Space Launch System’s design and contracts! This means you!!!

What we‘re asking you to do: Call the congressional switchboard (202-224-3121) – when you talk to them, tell them who your Senators and Representative are (or where you live), and they’ll connect you to the appropriate office. Alternatively, look them up, then call or fax their Washington, D.C. office.

How to communicate: Be polite and respectful, but don’t lose your passion. It’s important to avoid swearing or insulting words, but at the same time it’s also important to let the staffer know that this issue is important to you.

What to say: Congress should stop telling NASA what kind of rocket to build, and instead advocate the tried and true American approach of competition. NASA should be encouraged to compete not just the contractors but the best, most affordable ideas for exploration transportation. Anything less will be unaffordable, unsustainable, and un-American.

Thanks for your help!
Bob Werb, Chairman of the Board, Space Frontier Foundation

Well, what are you waiting for…?

[Update a while later]

Here’s the release at the SFF site, if you want to comment there.

Social Security

…and the Democrats’ irresponsibility:

So, if we’re to believe Team Obama, the 2011 version of Jack Lew, and Harry Reid — who doesn’t see a need to deal with Social Security for 20 years — a government whose nonpublic debt is projected to be within a whisker of what many experts believe is the code-red level of 90% of GDP in 10 years is automatically going to be able to continue to fund Social Security’s cash deficits for the next 26 years. Horse manure.

These people know the truth, and they’re deliberately dodging it. They’re cynically hoping to ride a wave of ginned-up opposition to any and all entitlement reform in hopes of getting across the finish line in the 2012 elections. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a more cynical strategy on a problem so important in my lifetime.

I hope they fail.

Me, too. But it’s who they are. It’s what they do.

Beyond The Welfare State

Yuval Levin says that the nation needs a new vision, and we don’t have a lot of time to come up with it.

[Update a few minutes later]

This explains the plight of the blacks (and to a lesser extent, some other minorities):

Human societies do not work by obeying orderly commands from central managers, however well meaning; they work through the erratic interplay of individual and, even more, of familial and communal decisions answering locally felt desires and needs. Designed to offer professional expert management, our bureaucratic institutions assume a society defined by its material needs and living more or less in stasis, and so they are often at a loss to contend with a people in constant motion and possessed of a seemingly infinite imagination for cultural and commercial innovation. The result is gross inefficiency — precisely the opposite of what the administrative state is intended to yield.

In our everyday experience, the bureaucratic state presents itself not as a benevolent provider and protector but as a corpulent behemoth — flabby, slow, and expressionless, unmoved by our concerns, demanding compliance with arcane and seemingly meaningless rules as it breathes musty air in our faces and sends us to the back of the line. Largely free of competition, most administrative agencies do not have to answer directly to public preferences, and so have developed in ways that make their own operations easier (or their own employees more contented) but that grow increasingly distant from the way we live.

Unresponsive ineptitude is not merely an annoyance. The sluggishness of the welfare state drains it of its moral force. The crushing weight of bureaucracy permits neither efficiency nor idealism. It thus robs us of a good part of the energy of democratic capitalism and encourages a corrosive cynicism that cannot help but undermine the moral aims of the social-democratic vision.

Worse yet, because the institutions of the welfare state are intended to be partial substitutes for traditional familial, social, religious, and cultural mediating institutions, their growth weakens the very structures that might balance our society’s restless quest for prosperity and novelty and might replenish our supply of idealism.

This is the second major failing of this vision of society — a kind of spiritual failing. Under the rules of the modern welfare state, we give up a portion of the capacity to provide for ourselves and in return are freed from a portion of the obligation to discipline ourselves. Increasing economic collectivism enables increasing moral individualism, both of which leave us with less responsibility, and therefore with less grounded and meaningful lives.

Moreover, because all citizens — not only the poor — become recipients of benefits, people in the middle class come to approach their government as claimants, not as self-governing citizens, and to approach the social safety net not as a great majority of givers eager to make sure that a small minority of recipients are spared from devastating poverty but as a mass of dependents demanding what they are owed. It is hard to imagine an ethic better suited to undermining the moral basis of a free society.

Meanwhile, because public programs can never truly take the place of traditional mediating institutions, the people who most depend upon the welfare state are relegated to a moral vacuum. Rather than strengthening social bonds, the rise of the welfare state has precipitated the collapse of family and community, especially among the poor.

Go to Detroit or my home town of Flint, Michigan, to see it in all its inglory.

Location, Location

There’s a good article at The Space Review today on the pros and cons of L-1 versus L-2 as a stepping stone for operations on the moon and points far beyond cis-lunar space. I tend to favor L-1 myself, for the travel-time reasons, but there are good arguments to be made both ways. Eventually, I would expect the market to sort it out, and there will probably be facilities at both locations.

Earth Hour In London

A first-hand report on the Marching Morons, from Mark Steyn:

The money-no-object Metropolitan Police had helicopters whirring non-stop over Central London during today’s mass hallucination (they’re still overhead as I write), but, as usual, not a lot of competent policing on the ground. As is their wont, they did little to prevent property damage – or the general intimidation of visitors to the capital by so-called “anarchists” (an odd term for pro-government welfare-funded thugs).

An odd term indeed.

[Late Sunday evening update]

More thoughts on the oxymoron of leftist “anarchists.”