Transterrestrial Musings

January 29, 2004
Oops, He Did It Again

I'm a little delinquent in responding to this, because Adam Keiper pointed it out to me last weekend, but it's been a busy week. Gregg Easterbrook is determined to waste my time having to correct him.

There's no reason right now to go back to the moon, other than as make-work for aerospace contractors. For 30 years, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (nasa) has sent no automated probes to the moon, because no one has proposed anything compelling for even robots to do there.

There are many reasons to go back to the moon. We (literally) barely scratched its surface thirty-plus years ago. There are abundant resources there to potentially establish settlements, to produce clean abundant power, to produce propellant, and for the narrow-minded people (like, apparently, Gregg) who think that the only reason to spend money on space is science, there remains a great deal of science to do there.

Gregg is simply wrong. Many people have proposed things for both people and robots to do. They may not have been compelling to NASA, or Gregg Easterbrook, but neither of those two entities have shown themselves to be reliable indicators as to what is, or should be, compelling to others.

Going from Earth's surface to orbit requires a lot of energy and is very expensive with existing technology. At the current space shuttle launch price of $20 million per ton, merely placing 1,000 tons of Mars-bound equipment into orbit would cost $20 billion--more than nasa's entire annual budget. And that's just the cost to launch the stuff. Design, construction, staffing, and support would all cost much more.

The problem with this is that Gregg remains mired in the belief that Shuttle is "existing technology," when in fact for the most part it is thirty-year-old technology. As I've pointed out before, Shuttle is an absurd benchmark for cost of launch in estimating costs of doing things in space in the twenty-first century.

These are reasons why, when Bush's father asked nasa in 1989 about sending people to Mars, the Agency estimated a total program cost of $400 billion for several missions. That inflates to $600 billion in today's money and sounds about right as an estimate

Yes, Gregg, there are reasons why the agency estimated that cost. Reason 1: they decided to use the program to justify everything that every center was doing. Reason 2: they didn't really want to do it, desiring to continue to focus on space station instead, and they in fact actively lobbied against it on the Hill, an act for which Dick Truly was later canned by George Herbert Walker Bush. Non-reason: it bears some resemblance to what such a program would have to cost.

In fact, it's absurd to worry about the cost of such a program right now, or to try to stretch absurd examples to attempt to estimate it, as Gregg mistakenly does, in this and other recent articles. We have no idea what it will cost, but that doesn't mean that it shouldn't be a goal of the nation. When it comes down to actual designs, and plans, and cost estimates, then will be the time to criticize it and decide whether it's worth the money at that point in time, or to wait until some better plan (or technology) comes along. But it's pointless to take potshots at it now, and to say that we shouldn't do it because the Gregg Easterbrooks of the world can't figure out how to do it cheaply.

One of the frustrating things about Easterbrook is that in any wrongheaded column, he always somehow finds a way to say things with which I agree:

...while a Mars visit would be an exhilarating moment for human history, planning for Mars before improving space technology is putting the cart ahead of the horse. Nasa's urgent priority should be finding a new system of placing pounds into orbit: If there were some less costly, safer way to reach space than either the space shuttle or current rockets, then grand visions might become affordable.

But it's still not quite clear if he's got it right, because I don't know what he means by "find." If he means develop a Shuttle replacement that somehow operates more cheaply, this would be another programmatic disaster, but if he means to simply put out basic requirements to the private sector and purchase services from whoever can meet them, then I am in a hundred percent agreement. But I've never seen anything in any of his writing to indicate that this is what he as in mind. He seems to remain in the mindset that NASA should do the thing, it's just that they're not doing the right one.

As long as he remains stuck in that stale, four-decade-old paradigm, he'll continue to write uninformed articles like this, in which he occasionally arrives at the right result, for entirely the wrong reason.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:51 PM

Keep It Up, Terry

I'm with Tim Carney.

McAuliffe in 2000 played a role in losing the presidency in a time of peace and prosperity. As DNC chairman in 2002 he defied history, losing the Senate and bleeding seats in the House during a midterm election. He's also handed five southern governorships to the GOP. Now he is trying to beat the Republicans in 2004 running on fiscal discipline and national security.

May Terry McAuliffe have a thousand-year reichgn.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:27 AM

January 28, 2004
A Haunting Past

Late January has developed a reputation as a grim and fatal period in NASA's history.

Thirty-seven years ago this Tuesday, on the 27th, Apollo astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chafee died horribly, of asphyxiation and rapid incineration in an Apollo capsule on the Saturn launch pad. Destined for the moon, they never got off the ground in the vehicle that was to take them there.

The event caused a massive overhaul of the Apollo program, but NASA recovered, and two and a half years later, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon and, per President Kennedy's audacious goal, returned safely to the earth.

Eighteen years ago today, on January 28th, 1986, the space shuttle orbiter Challenger was torn apart by aerodynamic forces as it separated from a collapsing fuel tank and its solid boosters. Just as their mission was beginning, seven astronauts fell to their deaths, from a great height, in what remained of the vehicle.

That accident resulted in two and a half, in fact almost three, years of delay until the shuttle flew again, as well as a supposed change in NASA management.

Apparently, there wasn't enough change, because now, in 2004, coming close on the heels of those two tragedies, NASA has another sad date to commemorate. This coming Sunday, February 1, will be the first anniversary of the loss of the orbiter Columbia with its seven gallant crew.

How long it will be before shuttles fly again is now anybody's guess. The goal is late this year which, if it occurs, will be shorter than the hiatus from Challenger, but there's also a good chance that it will stretch into 2005.

Is there any reason, physical or psychological, for this close clustering of fateful anniversaries?

Probably not.

Certainly the Apollo I fire had nothing to do with the season--it occurred in a controlled environment that was indifferent to the weather outside.

Challenger would arguably not have occurred in the summer, since it was caused by an O-ring below rated temperature, but there are many weeks that it gets cold in central Florida, not just January's end.

If the prevailing theory about Columbia is correct, the damage to its thermal protection system was caused by falling foam, not ice, and even if it was ice, this can happen any time of year due to the cryogenic temperatures of the external tank. It could have occurred regardless of the date--it was purely bad luck. Or perhaps a better description, to be more in line with the findings of the Gehman Commission, is a string of luck running out on a flawed mindset.

It's just coincidence, but engineers--even NASA engineers--are human, and in any future manned spaceflight activities this time of year, one suspects that they'll have their fingers crossed, even if hidden in their pockets, for many years to come.

But in light of such a history, just how risk averse, how devoted to crew safety, should NASA be? Were our past decades' achievements in space worth the cost, in lives and treasure?

To some, the answer is obvious. No expense, no course of action, should be spared to prevent the deaths of astronauts, even if that means they don't fly at all. They should not risk their lives on any mission "needlessly." This is the argument often used by opponents of manned spaceflight in general.

Of course, such a position makes no sense when even cursorily examined. If that philosophy were applied to other endeavors in life, we'd remain in the caves today, or perhaps even in the trees. No minerals would be mined, nor autos driven (did you really need to go to the store for that ice cream?), no bridges or skyscrapers would be built, because sometimes, in these activities, people die. Any activity resulting in human progress entails risk.

And who is to decide what "needlessly" means? Certainly, if you have no interest in putting people into space (as, for instance, is the case with many scientists), then any manned spaceflight is needless. "No, no," they say. "We just mean that we shouldn't be doing things in space that can be done better with robots."

But that of course begs the meaning of the word "better."

Why don't we mine coal exclusively with robots? Why didn't we develop robots in the 1930s to build the Golden Gate Bridge, an undertaking that cost dozens of lives? In some cases we do, of course, but not to achieve a risk-free state (which isn't possible) so much as to save costs through increased productivity. But that's not the argument that people who say we shouldn't "risk lives" for "needless activities" seem to be making.

Let's take a concrete, and topical example. NASA has effectively decided to deorbit the Hubble Space Telescope, an instrument that has opened up vast new vistas of the universe. Some have decried this decision as the first casualty of the president's new space initiative.

Of course, it's not that simple. Hubble was designed to use only the shuttle for servicing, but the shuttle is now focused on the ISS. We will have limited shuttle flights available, even after we return to flight, and we have international commitments to the latter, but not the former.

But the real issue is that, as a result of last year's tragedy, we have made a policy decision to never again send an orbiter into the wilderness--to an orbit from which the vehicle cannot be easily inspected and the crew easily rescued. This means effectively that all future shuttle flights must go to ISS, and barring some alternative means of saving it, Hubble will come down.

That's not the decision I would have made, if the only choices are using a Shuttle or letting Hubble die. Yes, Shuttle missions are expensive, but we're flying them anyway--we might as well do something that's of clear value with them. Yes, astronauts' lives will be at risk, but that's their decision to make, not pundits and scientists. Yes, another orbiter will be at risk, but we've already decided to phase out the program, and it actually could limp along on two through ISS completion, if necessary.

In any event, it's not really that risky. We went seventeen years without a loss of an orbiter. The probability that we'll lose another in the next two or three years is pretty low. We're may be playing Russian Roulette, but that's a misleading analogy for a gun with a hundred empty chambers and a short game.

On the other hand, the decision may prove a blessing in disguise, because there may in fact be other options to save Hubble, if NASA can expand their thinking and contemplate alternative and innovative approaches. This may be a golden opportunity to see if some new, non-government players can start to undertake risky but worthwhile ventures, free of the fear of Congressional inquisitions, and undaunted by deadly anniversaries.

[Update at 4 PM PST]

As some probably guessed, this is today's Fox column.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:51 AM

Eighteen Years Ago

The Challenger was lost, with all aboard.

Hard to believe that it was that long ago. I'll have some more thoughts up on this a little later, but here are my recollections of the event from a couple years ago. When it was only sixteen years ago, that was only a year more than fifteen, which doesn't seem so long. Now that it's eighteen, it's almost twenty, and in some ways makes me feel old.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:56 AM

Don't You Just Hate It?

...when your whale explodes?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:43 AM

January 27, 2004
Whetting, Not Satisfying?

Clark Lindsey, who's covering space stuff much better than I could hope to right now, given my schedule, has some thoughts about the effect of seeing Mars on the public:

The article speculates that this sort of remote sensing of Mars via the internet will satisfy the public's interest in the planet. I think it will have quite the opposite effect. The landers' imagery transforms Mars from an abstraction into a real place and will entice and inspire many either to want to go there themselves or at least to want to see living, breathing, thinking representatives of the human race go there and report back their impressions and experiences in person.

No daily permalinks yet, so scroll down to January 27th. There are other good links and info there as well. And listen to Clark on The Space Show tonight. There will be a live stream available here.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:42 AM

Thirty Seven Years Ago Today

Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chafee died horribly, from asphyxiation and incineration, in a test of the Apollo capsule. It caused a massive overhaul of the Apollo program, but less than two years later, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:36 AM

Back On The Air

Some of you may have noticed that my site was having problems for the past few days. They're fixed for now, but all comments and trackbacks since last Wednesday or so are lost. They're not irretrievably gone, but they're no longer in the data base. This evening, I'll point to old versions of the posts, with comments, so if anyone wants to reenter them into the data base, they can. I don't have the time to do so.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:05 AM

January 25, 2004
The Spirit Was Willing, But The Flash Was Weak

It was a flash memory problem.

Don't blame me for the bad pun--someone over at sci.space.policy came up with it.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:42 PM

January 23, 2004
For The Record

The San Diego Union-Tribune has set the record straight on my and Fox News' supposed journalistic fraud and forgery.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:07 PM

How Much Will It Cost?

Clark Lindsey has some useful thoughts on all of the silly commentary about the cost of the president's new space initiative. (If you're reading this in the future, scroll down to the January 23rd entry)

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:53 PM

That Didn't Take Long

Boeing is already showing artists' conceptions of their space exploration hardware.

[Via Clark Lindsey]

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:19 AM

Boomers Mourn

Captain Kangaroo has died.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:17 AM

January 22, 2004
Mars, Inc.

Max Boot (who is apparently going to be a weekly columnist at the Daily Puppy Trainer--it's nice to see them looking for a little diversity on their editorial page, and some viewpoints to the right of Bob Scheer) says that we should encourage private Mars expeditions.

[via emailer Robb Kestner]

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:38 PM

January 21, 2004
How He'd Do It

Jay Manifold has a plan to execute the president's space vision. I agree with him that anything on the timescale of decades is likely to be superceded by technology.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:18 PM

An End To Mad How Disease?

I think that historians will judge Dean's out-of-control speech in Iowa as the 2003 equivalent of Ed Muskie's tears. Too bad he couldn't have waited for his meltdown until after he got the nomination.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:47 PM

January 20, 2004
The Wrong Kind Of Partisan

It was a little surprising, given his speech last week, that the president didn't mention space in the State of the Union address on Tuesday.

Then again, perhaps it wasn't. After all, John Kennedy, the last president to make successful a grand goal for space activities, didn't make his space speeches part of the State of the Union address--they were separate addresses.

I pointed out last week that there was little different in this plan from the plans of previous administrations. I was not quite correct.

From a political standpoint, there is a big difference, and a similarity with Kennedy's call for the nation to land men on the moon within a decade. This was an event that occurred years after his death, and, in fact, after his second term of office would have ended, had it been allowed to begin.

In that case, and the present one (and unlike the announcements of the Nixon and first Bush administrations) the president and the Congress were the same party.

As it was in the early sixties, with a young, charismatic Democrat president and a solidly Democrat Congress, it's hard to imagine that a Republican Congress, with a Republican president at the top of his game, will deny the call for a new space initiative. Assuming that President Bush is reelected this fall, we will be five years into the new program by the time he leaves office in 2009, and while it won't be impossible, it will be difficult to pull the program out of the new groove that the second President Bush has carved for it, which does mean, among other things the end of the shuttle program (a good thing).

All of which points out, once again, what's wrong with space policy.

I pointed out over a year ago, after the last election, that space is a non-partisan issue, and that's not necessarily a good thing.

When I say it's a non-partisan issue, I mean that the arguments about it rarely fall along traditional left/right or liberal/conservative lines. Ignoring the fact that such dichotomies are simplistic, the actual arguments are rarely that clean cut.

Modern liberals can object to the program for legitimate "liberal" reasons. It takes resources away from the poor and helpless, we shouldn't be pouring money into the vacuum of space when there are so many unmet needs on earth, we are exploiting yet another new environment when we haven't proved our ability to manage this one, blah blah blah.

Similarly, so-called conservatives have their own complaints. It's not a legitimate function of government, there's no obvious benefit, free enterprise will lead the way, etc. For an example of the latter, look to John Derbyshire's recent essay at National Review on line.

I don't agree with either position, and could put up strong arguments against them, but that's beside the point of this particular column, which is that the real problem is that space policy is politicized, but not because of any intrinsic merits or demerits of the proposal itself.

It's the fact that it's so seemingly apolitical that allows all policy participants to view it solely through the lense of who supports it, or doesn't. The party lines on this issue seem to be...non-existent. The political divide is about who proposes it, not any intrinsic features of the policy itself.

As an example, much of the discussion in the blogosphere has been filtered through the prism of various commenters' general opinion of the Bush administration. Many people seem to be opposing it purely because it's being proposed by the "smirking chimp." For example, see the comments section at this post by Kevin Drum. Or from Matthew Yglesias. Or Chad Orzel (scroll up for a couple more related posts on the same subject). The sense one gets from much of the commentary is that they'd favor the proposal if it were coming from a President Gore, or President Dean, but if Bush is proposing it, there's obviously something evil and cynical about it.

Orzel, in fact, is quite explicit about this:

I should note right up front that, like most people who have commented on this, I doubt that the Bush plan will turn out to be a Good Thing in the end. Not so much because I think it's inherently a bad idea as because it's being put forth by the Bush team.

There may be some people who are in favor of it for the same reason, but I suspect that they are far fewer. There are people who like George Bush, and support things because he supports them, but the ranks of those who mindlessly oppose things because of his support are almost certainly much larger.

It would be nice if the policy could be discussed on its merits or lack thereof, but I suspect that that's a forlorn hope in a Red/Blue America.

That's sad, because there are actually useful ideological divides on this issue that go beyond whether or not you believe bumper-sticker wisdom like "Bush lied, people died." It's possible to be both for the human expansion of space, and against additional funding for NASA. Similarly, it's possible to be utterly indifferent to such a goal, and still favor NASA budget increases, if your congressional district would benefit from same.

Until we can get past personalities, and into serious discussion about the merits (or lack thereof) of space policy proposals, it's likely that we'll continue to be largely confined to the planet on which we evolved, regardless of how many high-toned speeches the president makes.

The basis of discussion should not be whether or not we want to send humans to other planets to stay, but what is the best policy to accomplish that, but I've seen little sign that the decision makers can break out of the stale binary thinking of the past. Merits remain irrelevant, and even after the most visionary space speech from an American president in years, politics continues to triumph.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:34 PM

January 19, 2004
The Best Coverage

The Birdman from Iowa has the inside track on Iowa caucus reporting. He's got live coverage (too much to permalink--if you don't read this post until sometime in the future, go to the January 19, 2004 archives).

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:28 PM

Off The Road Again

I'm in California, back from Florida, where I didn't get eaten by an alligator, though I may post a pic or two of some, if I get time later. I read Greg Klerkx' new book on the plane, and will post a review, time permitting, but I've got a lot of work piled up.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:14 PM

January 17, 2004
Farewell To Space Station Myths

There's a second installment up of Keith Cowing and Frank Sietzen's history of the decision to reformulate national space policy. It has additional detail on the plan, and indicates that the planned gap between Shuttle end and CEV operations is three years, not four (earliest lunar flight possibly in 2013), to be filled with Russian capability.

Here's the part that I found interesting, and hasn't been discussed much.

With a new focus on human exploration, the ISS will now be focused specifically on human physiology and factors needed to flight certify humans for long-duration space travel. Any research failing to contribute to this focus will be dropped from NASA's space station research plan.
So-called microgravity science investigations into metallurgical and materials sciences will be dropped, as will overtly commercial and fundamental life science research that does not have a human life science linkage.

Other nations will likely continue their own research plans using their resource allocations on the ISS -- but the U.S. portion will have a human exploration focus first and foremost. And even that will probably end by the middle of the next decade, with the station possibly taken over by the international partners, or perhaps a commercial concern.

The station has always had incompatible requirements (an inevitable result of the decision to have a single station) and this is one of them. Life sciences cause disturbances that interfere with good-quality microgravity, necessary for the materials research. This decision doesn't make that problem go away--it just makes it the Europeans' and Japanese' problem. We'll do our treadmill work and exercise, while they get exercised over the poor quality of their lab environment, until we pull out and hand it over to them.

But at least we're starting to develop a sane policy toward station. Despite all the hype over the years, microgravity research has never panned out in accordance with the hoopla and promises. Perhaps there is still some potential there, but it will await a dedicated station that's affordable to access on a timely basis. ISS never was that, and perhaps never will be.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:58 AM

Let My People Go

Greg Klerkx, who I met at the EZ-Rocket rollout a couple years ago, has a piece in the NYT that resonates with my Fox column this week: The Citizen Astronaut.

Greg also has an interesting-looking book out, that I'll have to read before finishing mine, so as to avoid redundancy.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:39 AM

January 16, 2004
Nonsense From Easterbrook

You know, correcting Gregg Easterbrook's malanalysis of space issues could be a full-time job in itself. It's dismaying that people who should be intelligent enough to otherwise know better glom onto them in order to validate their own unknowledgable preconceptions on the subject. And by the way, it's no insult to be called unknowledgable on these issues. Few people are, even many in the space industry. To become so requires a huge investment in time and study that few have the time for.

I find it particularly frustrating, because there is so much to legitimately criticize in the recent proposal, NASA, and space policy in general, but the opportunities to do so are drowned out by better known, but far less knowledgable people who rest on their laurels from a few lucky shots against the shuttle a quarter of a century ago.

I don't really have time, but since he gets entirely too much credibility in the blogosphere and elsewhere, I'll take apart his latest bit of misinformation.

Just the cost numbers for the Crew Exploration Vehicle alone--forget all the probes, colonies, and other stuff--make Bush's announcement yesterday an all-time monument to budgetary low-balling. He declared that for the next five years, $12 billion will be devoted to the Moon-Mars initiative. That, the president said, is enough to fund new the Moon probes and development of the ill-named Crew Exploration Vehicle. This figure is utterly ridiculous, a mere fraction of what will be entailed in anything beyond some "paper spacecraft"--engineers' lingo for studies and Power Point presentations of hardware that never gets built. Boeing expects to spend around $7.5 billion merely to develop the new 7E7 jetliner, which will stay within the atmosphere and use very well-understood engineering. The development cost of the Crew Exploration Vehicle will be several times greater

This paragraph is chock full of nonsense. He's doing something worse than comparing apples to oranges--he's comparing space capsules to commercial airliners. There is no way to infer the costs of one from the other--they are totally irrelevant to each other. One carries hundreds of people, has to fly thousands of times, provides its own propulsion, has to meet all requirements of FAA certification. The other is simply a can that carries four people or so, with basic subsystems like a reaction-control system, avionics, life support, with thermal protection and a recovery system if it's going to do an entry. And in fact, it's also "well-understood engineering," and has been since 1968 or so. It may be expensive, but there's no way to tell by looking at airliners.

The best way to tell is to do a parametric cost analysis on it. It's basically an upgraded Apollo capsule (and perhaps service module for modest propulsion and additional consumables). We know how much that cost the first time, and it should be easier now, particularly considering the technology advances over the past four decades (e.g., computer microization). If NASA can't develop that vehicle in a few years for a few billion, it should be disbanded.

The timetable is also a low-ball. Bush declared that the Crew Exploration Vehicle would be tested in 2008, just four years from now. There's no way on Earth, as it were, this could happen without a cost-no-object crash program to rival Apollo. The Air Force's new F22 fighter has been in development for 13 years; an entire new spaceship can be developed in four years?

I didn't hear Bush say that. 2008 was the first robotic probes of the moon in anticipation of a manned return seven years later.

If we could develop such a thing in four years the first time on an Apollo budget, why couldn't we affordably do it again in ten years (first flight is supposed to be 2014) on a less urgent basis?

[Update]

Commenter Duncan Young says that Gregg is right on this point, but that doesn't make him right that it can't be done. As I said, it's perfectly feasible to develop and test a capsule, and associated service module, in four years, particularly since we already know how to do it, and have done it before. Apollo was a crash program, but the capsule itself wasn't really a long pole. As an aside, this is probably the only major development that will have to occur during Bush's term of office.

[/Update]

It may be that we can't, but Gregg certainly offers no coherent reasons why we can't, except with another absurd comparison--to a multi-mission fighter that's gotten into a lot of political problems with interservice rivalries, and which again, fly hundreds of sorties and have to be maintainable by high-school grads.

And I don't know what Gregg means by "spaceship," unless it's a way of intimidating his readership into thinking that he's one of them there "rocket scientists," and knows what he's talking about. If he means a "ship" that flies in space, there's nothing inherently expensive or difficult about that.

It's just a capsule. It's not a launcher.

But if, as Bush declared, it will be capable both of flying back and forth to the space station and of flying to the Moon, we're talking quite a machine.

You mean, like the Apollo capsule, which was capable of both flying back and forth to the moon, and to Skylab (and to meet a Soyuz)?

Quite a machine. How ever will we do it?

Alternatively, a smarter approach might be to construct one spaceship that always stays in space, looping back and forth between Earth and Moon; people, supplies, and fuel would be launched to meet the ship in Earth-orbit, but the ship itself would never come down. (This was a Werner von Braun idea.) That would mean design, engineering, and construction of a type of flying machine that has never existed before. Development of the space shuttle cost between $50 billion and $100 billion in current dollars, depending on whose estimate you believe. The idea that something more challenging, the first-ever true spaceship, can be developed for $12 billion is bunkum.

I hesitate to call ideas loopy, but this one is literally. He says that it would be smarter, then he says it would "mean design, engineering, and construction of a type of flying machine that has never existed before." He's criticizing a plan that doesn't require that as being unaffordable and requiring decades, and then proposing one that's undefined and has never been done before as somehow "smarter." On what planet?

Again, this is not a Shuttle. This is not an airliner. It's not a fighter jet.

It's a supersized Apollo capsule. We have an existence proof that we know how to build them. It will be easier now than it was forty years ago, honest. If we need a separate lander to get down to the lunar surface, we know how to build those, too. It's even possible to develop things in parallel, though I suspect that only the capsule will be required for the 2008 date, so they have something to replace the Shuttle capability for crew transfer in 2010.

And what's going to put this Crew Exploration Vehicle into orbit? No rocket that exists in the world today is capable of lifting the Apollo capsule and Moon lander of the late 1960s. Unless the Moon-bound twenty-first-century Crew Exploration Vehicle is going to be significantly smaller than the Apollo of a generation ago--carrying just one person and no supplies--a new, very large rocket will be required.

No, Gregg, we have acquired no experience with docking vehicles, or orbital mating over the past four decades. It's inconceivable that we could launch a capsule on one flight of a Delta or Atlas, and a service module on another flight, and hook them up in LEO. We have to redevelop Saturn.

And of course, even if one is truly unknowledgable enough to believe that, we could develop a Shuttle-derived launch vehicle with Saturn-like capability in about four years for a billion or three (though that's a separate budget than the one for the Crew Exploration Vehicle). We've known how to do that since the eighties. We haven't done it because there's been no need, not because it can't be done, or because it's unaffordable.

We shouldn't expect George W. Bush himself to know that $12 billion is not enough to develop a spaceship. We should expect the people around Bush, and at the top of NASA, to know this. And apparently they are either astonishingly ill-informed and naïve, or are handing out phony numbers for political purposes, to get the foot in the door for far larger sums later.

And we should expect a pontificating journalist, masquerading as a space expert, to know that a Crew Exploration Vehicle is not a "spaceship" in the sense that it will go from earth to moon unaided, and that he wouldn't throw out phony numbers and strawman arguments for...well, I can't figure out what his purposes are, other than to see himself write.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:21 AM

January 15, 2004
Vision In The Balance

Guess who said this today:

"Instead of spending enormous sums of money on an unimaginative and retread effort to make a tiny portion of the moon habitable for a handful of people, we should focus instead on a massive effort to ensure that the Earth is habitable for future generations."

Yup, it was the guy who was in charge of space policy for much of the 1990s.

And here's a quote from Clinton's former science advisor:

I'm sad about the focus on human space flight when we're doing so well with robotics which extend human presence. This refocus on human flight is something that worries me greatly.

Actually, to be fair, it's what I'd expect a science advisor to say, since manned spaceflight, including the president's new proposal, has little to do with science per se. What's frustrating is the ongoing implicit assumption that science is the reason we have a civil space program, an assumption which few ever question, which is why we continue to have these arguments and cognitive dissonance.

Anyway, I'm very happy that neither of them is in a policy-making position any more.

[via Keith Cowing]

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:35 PM

He Probably Needed It For His Next Job

A West Virginia bank robber was arrested after returning to the scene of the crime to retrieve his forgotten note.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:30 PM

The First Draft

Iowahawk has miraculously come up with the original submission of Perrin's Lileks hit piece before his editor went over it.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:56 PM

Crank Email Du Jour

In response to today's Fox News column (it's a reprise of this post from last night, with a new title), I got a couple emails from a Richard Lasher, who, judging by his email address, works for the government of the state of ten thousand lakes. Unfortunately, he's no Lileks:

I do not support ANY form of HUMAN space initiative. There is nothing we can "discover" that is worth just 1 human life! We should require a 500 year moratorium on space initiatives. The funds, resources, and energy should be devoted to solving REAL problems, here on Earth! If, after the 500 years, we are not extinct, do not live in caves, or only have pre-industrial age technology, then we should ask, "Are there any problems on Earth yet to solve?", and finding NONE, then consider space exploration.
Don't we have enough problems to solve? Drugs, Terrorists, HIV, SARS, children (American and worldwide) going to bed sick and hungry, an army (700,000 - 1 Million) of illegal aliens entering the U.S. every year, worldwide social issues of poverty, genocide, labor laws, environmental, and human rights issues need to be solved BEFORE "The World" should spend money on space exploration! To do otherwise is OBSCENE". What's the hurry? Our Sun won't destroy the Earth for several Billion years. Perhaps, if we survive for another million years we will have learned compassion (greed will no longer be a "GOD") and how to use the resources of the Earth to the benefit of ALL mankind, not just the rich, not just the multi-national corporations, not the warlords supported by drug money, or corrupt governments.

A few minutes later, thinking that the first one hadn't gone through, he sent another gem (he's apparently not familiar with the concept of a "sent" folder that allows one to resend emails). To wit (or in this case, lackwit):

I hope you got the text from my previous e-mail... It was really "good stuff" ;-}
My system prematurely sent the e-mail.

In Short. Stop human space initiatives, and focus on the real problems that we have here on Earth for the next 500 years and then see if space exploration should be a priority. What can we learn from human space travel that is worth just 1 human life? We can't go far enough to escape the Sun's destruction of the Earth is several billion years.

Who cares if the Earth is 13.57678765533445809987654345 Billion or Trillion years old? What can you do with than information? Who cares if the Universe was created by a "Big Bang" or a "Big Implosion", or the result of some "String thing"? What can you do with that information? Nothing! Who cares if Mars ever had water or Microbes? There is no surface water there now! Do we plan to import subterranean water from Mars, if there is any? NO!!!! So What, if there are live microbes on Mars? Who is to say that WE did not put them there by crashing into Mars on previous landing attempts? If there are microbe fossils, WHO CARES? That would say, "We are not alone in the Universe", if you equate human life to that of a microbe. It might be the same microbe that "got life started" on Earth, and even IF you could prove it, WHO CARES?

Space exploration is a shiny trinket, but we need to solve the tough problems here on Earth first!

"God help us" if we find anything of value on the Moon! We could have WW3 over that future resource!

It's a treasure trove of idiocy, complete with cranky idiosynchratic capitalization and lots of exclamation marks!! So we know it's really important, and must be true!!!!

It's not really worth fisking, and I'm busy today, but I thought I'd throw out some chum to the sharks in the comments section. I may get around to addressing it later if the mood strikes and I find some time.

[Update]

Here's another one, though not quite as bad, in an email with the subject "mars fantasy":

Every one is so positive about this new space program that was proposed by our president.
Balderdash! Are these people crazy? The war on terror is till continuing and will continue through our lifetime. Along with a huge national debt which is wrongly considered by neo-conservatives to be inconsequential. One accident in several years and we change everything around. Did anyone not think the space program to be dangerous? Loss of life was to be expected and will still happen in the new program.

The Mars mission had been proposed by Lyndon Larouche many years ago. It was to cost in the neighborhood of one trillion dollars. At the time his idea was ignored and he was considered to be a nut case. Isn't he now in jail?

The present approach is correct. The space shuttle is needed to put satellites in orbit, take them from orbit, and perform repairs. As well as for the construction of a space station; which will be necessary sooner or later. A prime example of the need for the space shuttle is the Hubble telescope which was a Major Triumph of the space program. Sadly I just learned that it has been admitted by these people that elimination of the space shuttle would mean that there would not be any more missions to the space telescope. And probably the enhanced space telescope would be canceled also. The news said that the telescope would degrade gradually and that this was very unfortunate. I call this ignorant; big time. Telescopes above the Earth's atmosphere are a part of the effort to explore space.

I have just read a book on the history of astronomy that was published in 1957. In that book it was mentioned that Dr. Werner Von Braun had a plan for going to the moon and Mars. It consisted of a space station at 1,000 miles above the Earth that would be used for the refueling, repair and construction of vehicles for traveling to the planets. He is said to consider that travel to the planets would be a simple task once the space station was in operation. Do we have anyone of the stature of Dr. Von Braun today or is every government agency staffed by party hacks that have not been educated in technical matters. Not to mention the numerous commissions.

I am ashamed of what the present administration has done. Are there no serious dissenters?

Gotta like a guy who uses the word "balderdash."

Even ignoring the mistaken notion that we can't walk and chew gum, or kill terrorists and explore the solar system at the same time, among the many other problems with this is, of course, the "poisoning the well" fallacy. Just because some reprehensible person advocates a position doesn't discredit the position. Hitler was militantly anti-smoking. I wonder if Michael thinks that therefore we should be even more firmly in favor of it?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:55 PM

Setting The Record Straight

This is pretty funny. Or it would be if it wasn't so pathetic.

Some reading-challenged columnist at the San Diego Union Tribune has accused me and Fox News of a "forgery" in the satire that I did last summer on post-war Iraq/Europe.

Thanks to my Internet friends, I can now identify the source of the bogus 1945 Reuters news dispatch I wrote about Monday. That forgery likely served as the basis for White House and Pentagon comparisons of Iraqi resistance to German resistance in 1945, part of its sorry attempts to compare Iraq to World War II.
The source for the bogus news (one should have known) is Fox News.

A Fox contributor named Rand Simberg, described as "consultant in space commercialization, space tourism and Internet security" made up the Reuters dispatch for Fox on July 30 (posting it on his own Web site two days later). This was only a week before the first Bush references were made to German "werewolves" in one of several inept comparisons to World War II.

OK, so much for his fevered fantasies. Here's reality.

Weary of all the handwringing and historical ignorance of the handwringers about how Iraq hadn't been converted to Iowa only three months after the end of major combat operations, I wrote the piece and published it on my blog on July 28, as anyone can see who goes to read it. I didn't write it "for Fox News."

To indicate clearly that it was satire, I attributed it, as usual, to the mythical WW II news agency, "Routers," and I incorporated my own 2003 copyright at the bottom. Subsequently, it was picked up by emailers, the copyright was stripped, "Routers" was misspelled to correspond to a more familiar (and actual) wire service, and it quickly found its way across cyberspace. These fake versions were debunked by Snopes a month later.

Anyway, two days after I wrote and published it (not before), I decided to submit it to Fox as my weekly column, and they decided to run it, with a new title, on July 30, as can be seen here. They also made it very clear that it was fictional satire, by using an introduction, and attributing it to me. So again it was neither a "forgery" or "bogus news."

Next, he writes:

Rice claimed German werewolves "engaged in sabotage and attacked both coalition forces" and cooperating Germans, "much like today's Baathist and Fedayeen remnants."
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld embellished the story still further. Werewolves, he said, "plotted sabotage of factories, power plants, rail lines. They blew up police stations and government buildings. Does this sound familiar," he asked?

Only in Rice's and Rumsfeld's minds. The total number of post-conflict U.S. combat casualties in Germany was zero. In Iraq, that number is, so far, 357. Some comparison.

Well, neither Rice nor Rumsfeld claimed that there were U.S. casualties (though in fact the number was not zero--I think it was seven deaths, and there were many Russian ones in their zone), so this is a non-sequitur. The point was not a quantitative one about casualties, but about the fact that there was indeed a post-war resistance, however ineffective. (I should add that I suspect that part of the relative effectiveness has to do with the technologies available then and now, and the vast stores of weaponry available in post-war Iraq, relative to a post-war Germany that had been totally drained by a long war.)

Now, it is apparently true that, as a result of it being retransmitted as an authentic document, some in the administration were fooled, and it seems to have ultimately found its way past the firewalls even into the five-sided building itself. When I talked to the Pentagon correspondent for the Dallas Morning News about it last fall, he told me that he had attended a dinner at which someone sitting next to Rumsfeld told the SecDef something to the effect that "...and did you know that Truman was almost impeached over the situation in post-war Germany?"

Frankly, I doubt if all of the quotes this guy has in his article can be attributed to this piece, in either its original or plagiarized form. There was plenty of discussion of the Werwolf at the Command Post and other sites before I wrote my piece (and in fact, such discussions were what partially inspired the piece). We know that CNN and Fox were monitoring that site, and it wouldn't be at all surprising if the White House and Security Council were as well. There's no reason to think that my piece was the only, or even the first time that they had heard of the situation in the ex-Third Reich.

Anyway, I just thought I'd set the record straight, and I might suggest that the editors at the SD UT give their columnist a remedial lesson in vocabulary, date order, and perhaps a little refresher legal course in libel, lest he accuse any other innocent people of "forgeries" and "bogus news."

[Thanks to emailer Robert McClimon for the tip]

[Update at 4:24 PM PST]

I should also note that this is old-school hackery. He didn't bother to provide links to any of this (as I did). If he had, anyone who chose to follow them would have been able to figure out the reality, even if he couldn't.

I suspect that this is partly because it was a dead-tree column transferred to the web, but I also suspect that even if he was a cybercolumnist, we wouldn't have seen the links, because then his readership would have easily realized how foolish he was. I wonder how much longer these so-called journalists are going to be able to (or at least think they're going to be able to) get away with this kind of scurrilous nonsense?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:14 AM

False Implication

Logic alert in Kathy Sawyer's WaPo piece this morning on the new space initiative.

There are also serious unknowns about how, physically, the mandate will be carried out. There is no mention of money for a big rocket that could replace the shuttle's heavy cargo-carrying capacity. One congressional space expert speculated that the development of such a vehicle might be taken out of NASA hands and given to the military or done in partnership with the commercial sector -- a course that has led to multiple costly failures in the past with such experimental projects as the National Aerospace Plane and the X-33.

The implication is (I assume) that this isn't a good approach, because it's failed in the past.

Two problems.

First is a logical one--the implied conclusion doesn't follow from the premises. That is, even if this approach was followed in the past, and failed, one cannot conclude that all such approaches will fail. In order to determine that, we have to evaluate all of the factors that made it fail--we can't simply assume that it was the approach itself that was flawed.

The second is that the premise itself is false. Neither NASP, nor X-33 used the approach described above. NASP wasn't "taken out of NASA hands and handed over to the military"--it was a joint program between NASA and the Air Force. And X-33 wasn't done "in partnership with the commercial sector," because Lockheed Martin is not part of the commercial sector--it's a government contractor. Lockmart hasn't done anything commercial since the L-1011 fiasco, and their "business plan" for the Venture Star, the vehicle that was supposed to follow on from the X-33, was a joke, and a bad one, because it ended up costing the taxpayers a billion dollars.

NASP failed because it was a con job, a technical chimera initially foisted on DARPA by someone who was at best naive, and at worst a charlatan.

From neither case can we conclude that the concepts of either the military developing space vehicles, or commercial partnerships with the government, are in any way inherently flawed.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:30 AM

January 14, 2004
Strategery?

Laughing Wolf thinks that there may be a method to Dubya's madness in not mentioning private enterprise in tonight's speech (beyond the fact that he gave the speech at NASA HQ). Here's hoping he's right, but even if it isn't the president's intent, it may be the effect, which is just as good if it works out.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:07 PM

'...Headed Into The Cosmos"

The new space policy expected since the loss of Columbia almost a year ago was finally announced by President Bush today.

In his speech, the president correctly pointed out that in over three decades since astronaut Eugene Cernan was the last one to kick up lunar regolith, no American, or indeed human, has been farther from the earth's surface than four hundred miles or so. In response to this tragic statistic, in stirring words, the president pronounced that "humans are headed into the cosmos." After years of watching science fiction movies, like 2001, and television shows like Star Trek, it's a message that we have grown to absorb culturally for decades, but now, for perhaps the first time, it's formal federal policy.

Whether or not it will actually result in achieving the goals that Mr. Bush laid out remains, of course, to be seen. Only the most minimal one, of starting preparatory robotic exploration of the moon in 2008, will occur within his term of office, and that only if he wins reelection this year. The rest of the objectives--completing the station and phasing out the space shuttle in 2010, manned visit to the moon in 2015, lunar base in 2020--will all occur, if at all, after he has left office.

The speech was broad brush, with details and specific architectures to be left for later, which is appropriate. Some of the few details that were revealed are a little troubling.

It's apparently the end of the Orbital Space Plane project, which is a good thing--it will probably transform itself into the new Crew Exploration Vehicle, which is apparently intended to become a modern version of the old Apollo capsule. But if I heard the speech correctly, that vehicle isn't to be ready for a decade, in 2014, while the Shuttle is scheduled to be taken out of service upon planned station completion in 2010. This implies that there will be a four-year gap during which we have no ability to get people into space, at least on a government-funded American vehicle. I suspect that this, and other issues, will be fleshed out over the next few days.

It should be noted that on that schedule, it will take us over a decade to get back to the moon, whereas we did it much faster the last time, when we knew much less about how to do it. Of course, the last time, funding was no object--a circumstance that no longer holds. It should also be noted that if the station is completed in 2010, it will be over a quarter of a century after the program was initiated--results from the new initiatives will have to be more timely to keep to the stated schedule.

Many have pointed out that the goals are not new--they're the same ones that Vice-President Spiro Agnew presented as a follow-on to Apollo during the Nixon administration, and that the president's father laid out on the Washington Mall on July 20, 1989. In both cases, they fell flat, and were eviscerated by the press and the Congress. Indeed, in the latter case, NASA itself played a role in subverting them by coming up with an outrageous cost estimate of half a trillion dollars, thus removing this potential distraction from its desired focus on the space station.

The challenge of the administration will be to prevent this initiative from similarly faltering, at least during its term. From this standpoint, the proposed schedule and funding profile is convenient, because the majority of new expenditures for this will occur, like the milestones, after the president is out of office. Most of the initial funding will come from a reallocation of already planned NASA resources, with very few new funds to be requested.

The other strategy will be to have an independent commission come up with the implementation approaches that were absent from the speech, and the president announced he was doing exactly that, to be headed by Pete Aldridge, a veteran aerospace executive. It's not a choice that I find particularly inspiring--I'm afraid that Mr. Aldridge is too deeply steeped in space industry business-as-usual, but there will be others on the commission, and I hope that there is an outreach program to seek fresh ideas and approaches.

While I'm glad that the president has stated a national goal of finally getting humans beyond earth orbit, I'm disappointed that those humans are apparently to continue to be NASA employees, who the rest of us watch, voyeuristically, on television. NASA was not just given the lead--it was apparently given sole responsibility. There was no mention of private enterprise, or of any activities in space beyond "exploration" and "science." It was encouraging to hear a president talk about the utilization of extraterrestrial resources, but only in the context of how to get to the next milestone.

This is the part of the policy that should be most vigorously debated in the coming months--not whether or not humans, and American humans, are heading into the cosmos, but how we get humans doing that who aren't only civil servants, and whether or not there are roles for other agencies, and sectors of society. Given NASA's track record, and in the interests of competition, the administration should in fact consider setting up a separate organization to manage this initiative, and put out portions of it to bid, whether from NASA, DARPA, other agencies, or the private sector.

Most of all, I hope that the administration can break out of the apparent NASA-centric mindset demonstrated in the president's speech today, and come up with a broader vision, rather than a destination, and help create a space program for, as Apple Computer used to say, the "rest of us."

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:16 PM

Real-Time Speech Blog

Starts with obligatory paen to the dedicated people at NASA. Some of it is nonsense, of course--"bold," and "risk takers" hasn't described NASA personnel for many years, but it's obligatory nonetheless.

Now he's using the Lewis and Clark analogy. Not too bad Going through the litany of benefits from space exploration, including weather, GPS, communications, imaging processing, etc.

Hyping Shuttle and station, talking about space telescopes and probes, and finding water on other planets, and current searches for life beyond earth with robots. Pointing out that we haven't been further than four hundred miles from earth in thirty years.

"expand a human presence across our solar system."

Finish space station by 2010, and use it to focus on long-term effects of space on humans. Return Shuttle to flight ASAP. It will be used to complete ISS assembly, and then retired in 2010.

Develop new spacecraft, CEV--first mission by 2014. That means a gap of four years when we don't have a government vehicle for manned spaceflight.

Return to the moon by 2020, with initial robotic missions in 2008. Now he's saying 2015 for manned mission, so maybe the 2020 date is for a lunar base.

Talking about moon as base for deep space missions, including lunar resources for propellants. It will be used as a learning experience for Mars missions. We need to send people to really explore the planets.

"Human beings are headed into the cosmos."

"...a great and unifying mission for NASA..."

Commission of private and public-sector experts to figure out how to implement it. Pete Aldridge to head it. Lousy choice--we need someone who's less steeped in government programs.

"We choose to explore space..."

[Speech over]

OK, no big surprises, other than fleshing out dates. Nice speech, but it really is picking up where Apollo left off in terms of goals. In fact, it's exactly the same goals laid out by Spiro Agnew during the Nixon administration, which was promptly shot down in the press and Congress. It's also the same goals that his father laid out on July 20, 1989. It's not at all clear to me what's going to be different this time.

Listening to it, NASA was clearly given not only the lead, but the sole responsibility for this--there was no mention of private activities in space, or how they might play a role, if for nothing else, getting stuff into LEO. My disappointment of last week is confirmed--there's little hint of new thinking in the administration how to approach space policy.

However, for as long as it lasts, it is nice to have as national policy that "humans beings are headed into the cosmos." It may at least provide a rudder for activities across the federal government, not just at NASA, but at the FAA and other places. I continue to believe that ultimately this program will not get humans into the cosmos, at least not in any large way. If the schedule laid out by the president holds, I won't be at all surprised to see the first NASA expedition to the moon in 2015 greeted by the concierge at the Club Med Luna.

[one more point]

Jay Manifold has already laid out a "triple-constraint" program summary.

[Update]

I've gathered some more-coherent thoughts in the next post.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:26 PM

Mass Production

John Weidner is channelling me.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:46 AM

A "Libertarian Spacehound"?

Stanley Kurtz has responded to my response to his column.

I want to clarify. This happens often, and it's forgivable in his case, because he's probably read very little of my writing and is working from a small sample, but I don't advocate a "libertarian" approach to space, if by that one means no government funding or involvement. (Other people have less of an excuse for continual oversimplification and misstatement of my positions.)

I would consider such an approach preferable to the current one, but certainly not optimal in terms of opening that frontier. History indicates that governments working intelligently (and often unintelligently) with private interests have always opened new frontiers, and space will be no different in that regard. My position is that the balance of our current approach, which is more socialistic and state-enterprise than even the Soviet Union was (they had more competition among their design bureaus than we do among our overconsolidated aerospace contractors) has to be amended, not that government has no role.

I'm simultaneously thrilled to see so much public discussion of space issues, and (again, not to single out Stanley, or even include him in this group) so much ignorance of the fundamentals, and repetition of flawed and failed arguments about it, which is why I'll continue to blog on the subject as events develop and I have time.

But once more, the issue isn't space activities versus none, or NASA versus private industry or no one, or robots versus people, or moon versus Mars--we have to frame this discussion in terms of what we're trying to accomplish, and that goes beyond "science," "exploration," and "missions." Until we've done so (and hopefully reached some sort of national consensus on that--something that hasn't occurred since the early sixties), the prospects for useful discussion, or fruitful policy output, remain bleak.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:26 AM

It's Called "Satire"

As a sometime-satirist, I know the feeling, Dennis.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:11 AM

January 13, 2004
A New Player

I've known this was in the works for a while (well over a year, in fact), but it looks like Pioneer Rocketplane is finally getting into the space tourism business. In Oklahoma.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:52 PM

That Would Be New

The administration says that the new space initiative won't cost that much. They at least seem to have the talking points down:

Treasury Secretary John Snow told an ABC News program Sunday said that any new space initiative would be undertaken "within a framework of fiscal responsibility." In a separate interview Sunday on CNN, Commerce Secretary Don Evans said that any program would be "within a responsible fiscal budget."

Gee, that would make it unique among all federal programs with this administration.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:45 PM

Mission Worth It?

Stanley Kurtz has been thinking about space recently, as evidenced by a Corner post he put up last week mentioning the sadly misinformed Anne Applebaum column in the WaPo. There, he wrote:

In any case, Applebaum?s attack on manned space exploration is worth reading. I?d like to see a serious rebuttal. In the end, though, these questions have more to do with what inspires you. That?s not a matter easily settled by argument.

After that post, I emailed him with a link to my critique of her piece, in response to his wish. He didn't respond directly, but he did cite me and my post in this column that ran yesterday.

He is right, in that it depends on what inspires you, but that's clearly not all that it depends on, because even many people who are inspired by space (e.g., yours truly) are not inspired by the government's approach to it. Similarly, people who aren't inspired support the government space program for reasons pragmatic and prosaic.

One of my pet peeves shows up in both his and Applebaum's piece's titles--the word "mission." The use of such a word betrays a narrow mindset of space as science, space as exploration, space as a government program.

While his essay is thoughtful, it misses the point, because space policy discussion can't be simply divided into "space lovers" and "space haters," any more than general policy discussion can be usefully dichotomized as an argument between "right" and "left." Though many simpletons in the media (though I'm not including Mr. Kurtz in that category) would like to make it so, policy is simply not that simple.

A "space lover" can love space and love NASA, or love space and be very skeptical of NASA and its ability to achieve the space lover's goals. A "space hater" can be opposed to NASA because it's a perceived waste of money, or because it's perceived to be part of the evil military-industrial complex, or they can be opposed to space, period, regardless of whether or not it's NASA, because the very notion of people leaving the earth and polluting the rest of the universe is heresy. There are going to be different arguments, and different policy solutions to deal with each of these viewpoints, and it's not particularly useful, or even insightful, to divide them between lovers and haters.

Here is what I think is the nut of his concern:

Space lovers rest an awful lot on visionary inspiration. What the space program lacks, say the lovers, is vision. The shuttle is a useless link in a nonexistent chain of vehicles and settlements that is supposed to point us to the moon and Mars. Like the shuttle, the space station lacks any real purpose, and is consequently plagued by cost overruns, delays, and technological promises that don't pan out. Set a bold goal for the space program, we're assured, and the purpose and efficiency of the original NASA will return.
The administration has bought this argument. And up to a point, I think it's correct. The shuttle and the space station have no clear purpose. A difficult, inspiring goal will attract new blood and reduce bureaucratic inefficiencies. Still, I wonder if "the vision thing" fully explains NASA's post-Apollo blues.

It doesn't. I do in fact think that we are lacking vision, and that coming up with one with broad appeal is a necessary and sufficient condition to coming up with sensible policy to carry it out. But, as I've written before, and will again (probably tomorrow, depending on what the president says) a destination is not a vision.

I don't expect people to be inspired by the thought of government employees going off to the moon and Mars. I would expect them to be inspired by a vision of a new frontier in which they can participate, first as tourists, and then, if they wish, as settlers. The New World analogy may not be appropriate, but we won't find out until we seriously attempt it, and the arguments put up against it are weak, and often disingenuous.

Clean energy from space, moving mining and industry off planet where it won't pollute, herding errant asteroids that may have our number, providing a new venue for the further development of the vital experiments of freedom and self government--all of these are aspects of a vision that could appeal to a broad swath of humanity. Yes, it may turn out that these don't pan out, but no one can say with any credibility now that they cannot. As Rick Tumlinson writes, the "why" is critical to any new space policy, particularly in determining the "how" (including "who"--NASA or some other government agency or agencies, or private industry or some optimum blend of these), and I've heard lots of "where" and "how" discussed, but no "why."

But my sense is that the "vision" offered by the president tomorrow won't include any of these things, because there's probably a perception that they'll sound too pie in the sky. That's too bad, because absent that, I see little different in what I've read so far from the policy announced by the president's father fourteen years ago, and we know what happened to that.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:24 AM

Continuing Mythology

Wretchard over at Belmont Club thinks that propulsion is the problem. Simply put, it's not, for reasons that I've stated repeatedly. It's a problem of scale, not technology, but as long as people maintain false consciousness like this, we'll have a great deal of difficulty getting people to think about space in a different way.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:26 AM

Confusion Of Concepts

While I've been focusing on space policy, much of the talk in The Corner has been about immigration. Jonathan Adler has a post with which I'm sympathetic.

While I generally favor substantial relaxation of restrictions on those immigrating to the U.S. to work or study, I do not favor relaxing citizenship requirements. To the contrary, I would probably favor increasing the requirements for citizenship, as well as for receiving whatever forms of public assistance are provided by the government.

I would go even further. I think that someone willing to walk barefoot through the desert and risk death by hyperthermia and dehydration is likelier to appreciate this country, and is a better candidate for citizenship than someone who was fortunate enough to happen to be born here, or have parents who are citizens, and thereby thinks that the world, or at least nation, owes him a living.

I in fact think that citizenship should be much harder to get, but we have to separate the concept of citizenship from a right to work. Citizenship should be about voting, and having a say in the running of the country, and I'd cheerfully disenfranchise those of able body and mind who are drains on the public wealth, rather than contributors.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:50 AM

A Cowboy Space Program?

Glenn thinks that it has a lot to recommend it.

Could our "cowboy" President get behind a Wild West approach to space settlement? He'd be accused of unilateralism, disrespect for other nations, and, of course, of taking a "cowboy approach" to outer space that's sure to infuriate other nations who want to be players but who can't compete along those lines -- like, say, the French. Hmm. When you look at it that way, there doesn't seem to be much doubt about what he'll do. Does there?

Sadly, there does.

I wish that George W. Bush were half the unilateralist cowboy that many of his lunatic detractors think he is, but I certainly see no signs of it in the space policy as stated so far. In fact, the administration is keeping the program international for now, and using feel-good kumbaya tranzi-talk to describe it.

As the UPI article explains, this is, of course, simply a cover to continue using Russian hardware to keep the ISS alive for now, while not explicitly violating the Iran Non-Proliferation Act, but it may get a few of the goo goos (like the late Carl Sagan) on board who would otherwise oppose a new manned exploration program.

But this brings up an issue that has troubled me, but not surprised me, as I read through the blogs on the subject. Much of the discussion in the blogosphere has been filtered through the prism of various commenters' general opinion of the Bush administration. Many people seem to be opposing it purely because it's being proposed by the smirking chimp. For example, see the comments section at this dumb post by Kevin Drum. Or from Matthew Yglesias. Or Chad Orzel (scroll up for a couple more related posts on the same subject). The sense one gets from much of the commentary is that they'd favor the proposal if it were coming from a President Gore, or President Dean, but if Bush is proposing it, there's obviously something evil and cynical about it.

Orzel, in fact, is quite explicit about this:

I should note right up front that, like most people who have commented on this, I doubt that the Bush plan will turn out to be a Good Thing in the end. Not so much because I think it's inherently a bad idea as because it's being put forth by the Bush team.

There may be some people who are in favor of it for the same reason, but I suspect that they are far fewer.

It would be nice if the policy could be discussed on its merits or lack thereof, but I suspect that that's a forlorn hope in a Red/Blue America.

[Update]

Sorry, you're probably asking, why was Calpundit's post dumb?

Quote:

We've been to the moon and there's nothing there.

Point one. We've been to the moon? Maybe Kevin's been to the moon, but last time I saw him, he wasn't wearing a tee shirt. I know I haven't.

Point two. The couple dozen people who did go to the moon (over three decades ago now) explored, over the course of a few days, an area of a few square kilometers on a planetary surface with the area of a major earth continent. Saying that we went to the moon and found nothing there, is like saying that Leif Ericson went to America and found nothing there.

Point three. We didn't find "nothing" there. Ask someone who's actually technically conversant with the subject, like John Lewis, what we found there.

There are vast resources to be exploited, in terms of silicon, aluminum, sunlight, oxygen, and maybe even fusion fuel if we ever figure out the cycle. It's reasonable to argue that these may not ever become economically viable (though I think that would be a pretty risky statement, given the history of technology development), but to say that there's nothing there is thoughtlessness on the same scale as those who mocked and derided "Seward's Folly."

Oh, and while there aren't any comments here, I'll also also respond briefly to Mark Kleiman, amidst a post full of false suppositions and misapprehensions.

Don't you find it astonishing how people who say they're concerned about government spending don't object to wars, occupations, and huge engineering boondoggles? Some time I'd like to hear one of the libertarian space-hounds explain to me slowly why space exploration should be funded by coercive taxation rather than private enterprise plus voluntary contributions. It's not that I don't know the answer to that question, but I don't see how that answer is consistent with hostility to government in general.

I don't know if I'm a "libertarian spacehound" (whatever that is), but I suspect that this is aimed at people like me.

Reality check: Few libertarians will support this initiative. Most agree that it should be done voluntarily. I wouldn't weep if NASA was totally defunded.

But the other reality is that the space program, as is the case with most other programs, has powerful constituencies and rent seekers, and it's going to continue to be funded, so all I can do is try to influence policy in a way as to maximize my desired goals from that expenditure. It's a continual uphill battle, and I don't actually expend that much energy toward it, because I consider it relatively futile. I'd rather focus on non-governmental approaches, and I do.

[Update at 9:38 AM PST]

Heyyyy, it's no longer anecdotal from blogs. Public opinion shows the same trend.

It made a difference who was said to be behind the plan. When half the poll sample was asked about a "Bush administration" plan to expand space exploration instead of the "United States" plan, opposition increased.
Just over half of Democrats' opposed the plan by "the United States." Once it was identified as a "Bush administration" plan, Democrats opposed it by a 2-to-1 margin.

And if it had been a "Clinton or Gore administration plan," there'd have likely been a lot more kvetching from conservatives. For something as non-partisan as the space program, this is very frustrating.

There's a lot more of interest in this article, but I'll save it for another post.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:28 AM

OSP, RIP?

Here's an article at Aviation Week with more detail on what the administration plans for a NASA program restructuring (though I've heard via some of my own beltway sources that the architecture actually isn't that well defined yet, and won't be immediately--Wednesday's speech will be more broad-brush).

One bit that I found of interest (and one which some people, who fantasize that this has anything to do with concerns about Chinese competition, should note):

"You have the accident to thank for this," said one source of the new presidential policy, which Bush signed last month after an interagency review of space policy triggered by the report of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB). The review and Bush's decision have been closely held, and those who described it spoke only on condition of anonymity.

However, if this is all correct, then I'm a little less concerned.

OSP dead? RIP, and good riddance.

If it takes them ten years to develop the CEV, that's plenty of time to get private activities going in LEO, making it ultimately pointless, or perhaps useable as a space-only vehicle, if the design isn't too insane. The main thing is that it will keep NASA busy with something new that won't be competing with the private sector.

I've pretty much given up any hope of getting sensible policy out of the administration (or for that matter, any administration), at least with respect to NASA, but that's all right. I'm more concerned that they do no harm, and this policy shows some promise of not doing too much damage to our prospects for opening up space. It will only be hard on the taxpayers, but that's nothing new, and in the context of the total federal budget hurricane, it's spitting in the wind.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:57 AM

What They Said

Any presidential vision ought, then, to include a way of eventually wrestling space activities out of the agency?s clutches and into the hands of the private sector.

From The Economist.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:40 AM

January 12, 2004
It's Funny Because It's True

It's not always a good plan or one with serious intent, mind you, but there's always a plan. Good ol' evolutionary psychology.

[via Andrew Lloyd]

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:19 PM

The Foust Collective Grows

Jeff Foust has started up yet another blog--on space politics. He also has some good stuff over at The Space Review today: a roundup of space policy positions of the Democrat candidates for president, and some suggestions for the president from Rick Tumlinson, with very little of which I disagree.

Any discussion of a permanent return to the Moon (RTM) must be centered on two overriding questions: ?why?? and ?how?? The answers to each of those questions are interrelated. If we go for the wrong reasons we will fail. If we go for the right reasons and do it the wrong way, we will fail. And if we don?t go at all, then we will have failed in a way that will send ripples down through the ages....
...NASA must shed operational activities such as LEO transport and running the space station. The Orbital Space Plane should be canceled?now. Prizes, multiple source contracts, investment and tax incentives must be put in place to encourage the new ?Alt.Space? firms to take over human transport to space, and drive the traditional aerospace giants to modernize or get out of the field. The space station should be mothballed, handed to our partners, or be taken over by a quasi-commercial Space Station Authority as a destination for commercial and university users. ISS and other NASA pet projects must not be grafted onto a moon project simply because they exist. If they really support it they are in, if not, they are out.

RTWT

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:06 PM

More Cautionary Words

I'm apparently in good company in my concerns about the administration's new space policy.

...a sustained human presence on the moon, advocates say, is best achieved by harnessing the full creativity of the commercial sector.
"It is my hope that this new vision does have an ample opportunity for the commercial sector," said Courtney Stadd, NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe's former chief of staff who left the space agency for private industry in late 2003. "If it is limited to just a few astronauts exploring the moon and Mars, as we learned after Apollo 17, it will not grab and sustain public attention."

David Gump, president of Fairfax, Va.-based LunaCorp and author of the 1990 book, "Space Enterprise: Beyond NASA," agreed.

"It's up to the administration on which path it takes into the forest," Gump said. "If it welcomes private participation, life is good."

We'll find out Wednesday, if Keith is right. Or perhaps not. Even if the president makes a formal address, it would still be possible to do so without getting into the implementation details (though I would argue that this is an argument of philosophy and purpose, as much as implementation, and certainly should be specifically addressed in such a policy announcement).

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:35 AM

Back On The Air

I'm blogging from the heart of hanging chad country, in Lauderdale by the Sea. I flew out here Friday, but didn't have internet access until today. I'm sitting by the pool of the Shore Haven Inn, a block from the beach, on a wireless connection. The hotel even provides wireless access cards for laptops for guests (like me) who haven't yet brought their machines up to date.

I see that there's a lot of buzz in the blogosphere about the upcoming space policy announcement, and the comments section has been lively in my last post. I'll be commenting on well, not all, but some of this after I get my bearings.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:01 AM

January 08, 2004
To The Moon, Alice

Frank Sietzen and Keith Cowing are claiming an exclusive on the administration's new space policy, to be announced next week. Apparently they were waiting to see whether the Mars mission was going to be successful. [update: Keith writes in comments that the timing wasn't related to the Mars landing, but doesn't explain what did drive it.]

The visionary new space plan would be the most ambitious project entrusted to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration since the Apollo moon landings of three decades ago.

Unfortunately, there's no evidence that NASA has been, or can be, reformed sufficiently to entrust it with such a project. I'm not sure what a "CEV" is--they don't explain that--but I'm inferring that it's perhaps a "Crew Excursion Vehicle," which the Orbital Space Plane program will be morphed into. That would explain why the OSP Request For Proposal has been delayed. NASA probably knew that this was coming, and that the requirements just changed, probably necessitating a do over of the recently completed Systems Design Review.

Anyway, if true, I'm disappointed. I was hoping for a vision, rather than a destination, and one that included the American people. This is just picking up where Apollo left off, and that was a very expensive way to go. It seems to continue the philosophy that, as Trix are for kids, space is for NASA astronauts, who the rest of us get to watch on teevee. It also implies that reusable launchers don't make sense, or can't be done, which doesn't help investment prospects for them privately.

If they were going to return to the sixties, it would have been much better if they'd picked up instead where the X-15 left off.

Fortunately, the private sector is doing that, and ultimately, I suspect that NASA isn't going to be very relevant to the opening of space, regardless of this. If nothing else, assuming that it gets approval, such a program might keep them busy enough to at least not get in the way.

[Update at 8:15 PM PST]

Someone over at sci.space.policy points out this worrisome little bit:

Sources said Bush will direct NASA to scale back or scrap all existing programs that do not support the new effort.

Does that mean no more (among other things) robotic exploration of the outer planets?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:16 PM

Is Mars Ours?

David Grinspoon asks the question.

[Update in the afternoon]

I had a related article about Martian game preserves at Fox News last summer.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:58 AM

Zubrin Festival

Here's that interview with Bob Zubrin that Linda Seebach told me about yesterday.

And speaking of Dr. Zubrin, he sent me a review copy of his new science fiction novel, The Holy Land, a few weeks ago that I read and enjoyed at the time, but didn't get around to formally reviewing. I was reminded of this by a review of it at NRO yesterday by Adam Keiper.

I have to confess that I was surprised by it, because I'd previously had no idea that Bob wrote fiction. If this is his first attempt, it makes it all the more impressive.

Everyone calls it a satire, but it's not really, or it's more than that. Monty Python's The Life Of Brian was a satire of the modern Middle East (among other things), but this book is allegory, which has a long tradition of being a pointed way of illuminating issues to which we may be too close to have the proper perspective.

I found the parallels striking (though I naturally would, because I shared Bob's apparent views on the Middle East situation prior to reading it--I'd be interested in reading a review by someone whose mind was changed by the book to see how truly effective they are), but I don't really have anything to say about the nature or quality of the satiric parallels that Mr. Keiper didn't already--you should go read his review. I'd like instead to point out something that I've seen no other reviewer do.

While the political points are sharp, one can completely ignore them and still enjoy the book, because it actually is a good story in itself. It's yet another retelling of Romeo and Juliet (though it's hardly love at first sight), except it has a happy ending.

Let us hope that the tragic situation that it spoofs ultimately does as well, as unlikely as that may sometimes seem, given the ancient hatreds and irrationalities that still seem to prevail there.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:51 AM

January 07, 2004
Mission To Nowhere?

Speaking of blindered and dyspectic views on space, the usually-smart Anne Applebaum disappoints with this WaPo editorial.

Mars, as a certain pop star once put it, isn't the kind of place where you'd want to raise your kids. Nor is it the kind of place anybody is ever going to visit, as some of the NASA scientists know perfectly well. Even leaving aside the cold, the lack of atmosphere and the absence of water, there's the deadly radiation. If the average person on Earth absorbs about 350 millirems of radiation every year, an astronaut traveling to Mars would absorb about 130,000 millirems of a particularly virulent form of radiation that would probably destroy every cell in his body. "Space is not 'Star Trek,' " said one NASA scientist, "but the public certainly doesn't understand that..."
...Too often, rational descriptions of the inhuman, even anti-human living conditions in space give way to public hints that more manned space travel is just around the corner, that a manned Mars mission is next, that there is some grand philosophical reason to keep sending human beings away from the only planet where human life is possible....

Right, and the Arctic isn't the kind of place where you'd want to raise your kids. Nor is it the kind of place anybody is ever going to visit. Even leaving aside the cold, and sparseness of plants, there are the deadly polar bears. If the average person in temperate climates has to contend with wolves, an Arcticnaut traveling to that hostile clime would risk storms that might drown him in the frigid waters, or expose him to sharks.

No, space is not Star Trek, Anne, but it is an environment that is conquerable, and people exist who wish to conquer it. It's only a matter of technology levels. African bushmen wouldn't survive high latitudes, but the Inuit figured it out. Radiation can be shielded against. It's very costly to do so now, given the high launch costs, but that's a problem that's solveable.

Earth may today be the only planet where human life is possible, but before we developed the right clothing and weapons, tropical climates were the only region of earth where human life was possible. This is not a persuasive argument for confining ourselves to a single planet, any more than it would have been to do so to a single continent.

Crowded out of the news this week was the small fact that the troubled international space station, which is itself accessible only by the troubled space shuttle, has sprung a leak.

Meaning what? That it's therefore impossible to send people into space? There are two errors here. First, she makes the mistake that many do in believing that it can't be done any better or cheaper than NASA does it. But even if the station springs the occasional leak, so what? So did whaling ships. It didn't stop them from whaling--they had pumps and repair techniques. Space vehicles will be the same.

It's interesting in the way that the exploration of the bottom of the Pacific Ocean is interesting, or important in the way that the study of obscure dead languages is important. Like space exploration, these are inspiring human pursuits. Like space exploration, they nevertheless have very few practical applications.
But space exploration isn't treated the way other purely academic pursuits are treated. For one, the scientists doing it have perverse incentives. Their most dangerous missions -- the ones involving human beings -- produce the fewest research results, yet receive the most attention, applause and funding. Their most productive missions -- the ones involving robots -- inspire interest largely because the public illogically believes they will lead to more manned space travel.

This is simply untrue. Manned missions return much more science than robotic missions, at least when it comes to planetary exploration. We got much more science from Apollo than from all of the other lunar probes combined. The problem is that it costs a lot more money to send people (at least the way we've done it to date), not that they return less science.

And of course, she falls into the other trap of assuming that the only reason to send people or robots into space is for science, ignoring the potential for new resources, planet protection, and most importantly, new environments for the expansion of human freedom.

I can agree that it may not be a worthwhile expenditure of taxpayer funds to send people to other planets right now, or into space at all, but the notion that it has no value to anyone is utter nonsense. We will explore and settle space, because there are many people who wish to do so, and the means to do so are growing rapidly as technology advances and wealth increases. The issue is not if, but how and how soon, and with whose money.

[Update]

Mark Whittington has fisked this piece as well.

[Another update]

Linda Seebach (editorial writer for the Rocky Mountain News) points out via email that the Applebaum piece is an opinion column, not a WaPo editorial. She's correct, of course.

She also says that she'll have an interview with Bob Zubrin up tomorrow--I'll post a link when it happens.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:18 AM