Jeff Foust has a review of Greg Klerkx’ new book, Lost In Space (the title of this post is a subtitle of the book). I read it right after it came out a few weeks ago, and have been meaning to review it myself, but Jeff has mostly done it for me. He’s right in that there are some errors in the book that detract somewhat from its credibility. Here was a list that I made as I went through it.

He says that “…at their most basic, tethers are analogous to the wire that runs from a wall socket to a lamp.”

Errr, no. At their most basic, space tethers are a line that connects one object to another in orbit. He’s talking about a special category of space tethers–electrodynamic tethers, and an uninformed reader might believe that these are the only kinds of tethers that exist, and that their only use is for converting orbital energy to electrical energy and vice versa, when in fact that’s only one application.

He repeats the myth that “Even the paper plans for building the Saturns were gathered up and destroyed.” Not true. Well, perhaps it may be literally true–the plans exist on microfiche, but the implication is that they are beyond our reach. What really no longer exists is the tooling (at least not all of it), which was expensive to preserve and warehouse for a program that was considered part of the past. Should we choose, we could resurrect the Saturn program. It wouldn’t be wise, four decades on, but we have the plans, and there was no conspiracy to burn the bridge over the Rubicon to Shuttle, once across.

He says that “…two congressmen have flown, with little rationale other than their political status…” on the Shuttle. It’s wrong no matter how you define “congressman.” Two Senators (Garn and Glenn) have flown, and one congressman (now senator)–Bill Nelson. This is a particular perplexing error, because it should have been caught by an editor–later in the book, in discussing Senator Glenn’s flight, he writes, “To [Alan] Ladwig, this was Garn and Nelson all over again.”

In describing the Kistler K-1 vehicle (a project that recently got a new lease on life with a couple hundred million NASA contract to purchase flight data), he writes that it “would be a lot cheaper to use than the shuttle…because it will not be piloted and therefore will not have need of the extensive ‘human rating’ requirements that NASA employs for the shuttle.”

Here, he’s bought into (or at least is implictly endorsing) two myths of spacecraft design.

The first is that pilots add cost to vehicles (including space vehicles). There’s actually no evidence for this, at least in any vehicle other than space vehicles. There’s actually good reason to believe that piloted vehicles, properly designed, could be cheaper than unpiloted ones–a proposition that the X-Prize and commercial suborbital developers will test in the coming months and years.

The second is that the shuttle is human rated. In fact, it is not, and never has been, by the standards that NASA has established as human rated. For instance, it doesn’t have “zero-zero” abort capability (that is, the ability to abort from the pad all the way to orbit, the zeros corresponding to the velocity and altitude of the starting condition). I’ve discussed both of these aspects extensively in the past.

He states that Columbia wasn’t able to reach the ISS orbit. In fact, it was–but its payload would have been much less than that of the other orbiters, so it was designated mostly for non-ISS missions. It was in fact scheduled to go to the ISS had it not been destroyed a year ago.

On page 224, he expresses concern about sending nuclear waste into space that indicates a lack of understanding of the issues–he’s a little too prone to buy the scare mongering of some people about this. I do think that it might be financially feasible, and safe, to store nuclear waste in space, but this won’t happen until we develop much more reliable vehicles than are available at present. I discussed this a couple years ago in an early Fox News column.

Greg also has a higher opinion of Bob Park’s opinions than I do.

Overall, I agree with Jeff’s assessment of the book. It’s an interesting read, and will provide a lot of background in terms of NASA versus the private sector, but as Jeff says, it’s a little schizophrenic, in that he can’t quite decide whether the agency is an evil monolith, or a bunch of warring fiefdoms. Ultimately, while descriptive, it’s not very prescriptive, or well organized. It’s more a compendium of interesting stories than a coherent narrative, and it seems to peter out at the end, with no clear conclusion.

The world still awaits the book that lays out clearly the problems with our space policy, and viable recommendations to address them. This isn’t that book. Perhaps mine, if I ever get around to finishing it, will be.

It’s fitting that my first post on Transterrestrial Musings is on suborbital industry lobbying – it certainly won’t be my last on this topic.

The Suborbital Institute has announced that it will be holding an event on May 17-18 to lobby congress on issues affecting the nascent suborbital spaceflight industry. If you are in the DC area or are able to travel to the area please join us. I’ll be there, as will various folks from the alt.space crowd. The date is chosen so that people planning to attend the May COMSTAC meeting can just come a couple of days early. I’ve been involved with the SubOrbital Institute since the beginning, and it’s a good bunch of people. SubOrbital days are interesting and fun, though there’s no doubt that it’s real work. I’ll post more on the institute and its agenda in the coming weeks.

On the topic of suborbital spaceflight, X-Rocket has revamped their website and they have some very interesting news. They have a working operational demonstrator for their planned vehicle, and they have test flights. Congratulations to X-Rocket and Ed Wright (who is one of the founders of the SubOrbital Institute). Link via HobbySpace.

That’s enough for now. I’ll post a formal introduction when the current family crisis has passed. I probably won’t be able to post more than occasionally until then.

I’ve often said that Apollo wasn’t about space, and that was one of the reasons that those who hope to resurrect the “space program” on an Apollo model are doomed to failure. The implication, of course, is that space activities that “aren’t about space” are a bad thing. My old friend (old in the sense that I’ve known him a long time, not that either he or I are old…) Jim Muncy has a different opinion:

Space exploration is not merely about the wonders of science and technology, although it produces countless discoveries and innovations. It is not merely about stunning images and daring adventures, although it has those aplenty. And to the disbelief of so many space professionals and aficionados alike, it is not even really about outer space.

Rather, space exploration is about strengthening and spreading the very essence of freedom: the magic of going and doing what you want, where you want, when you want and why you want. It is about the endless and innately human quest for a better, wiser and richer life, not just for yourself today but for generations hence. Freedom is as much about the creation and pursuit of new dreams, horizons and challenges as it is about achieving them.

RTWT

[via Mark Whittington]

Many of those enthusiastic about the president’s new space policy want to redo Apollo.

I pointed this out when it was first announced, but I didn’t really describe all the implications of it.

There are many, but I want to focus here on those aspects of it that affect our choice in launch systems to achieve the president’s goals, whether existing, or new.

There is an assumption that we cannot move humans beyond earth orbit without a heavy-lift vehicle, like the Saturn that first took men to the moon three and a half decades ago (and the fact that this July 20th will be the thirty-fifth anniversary of the first lunar landing makes me feel quite ancient). This assumption is based on the fact that it’s how we did it the first time, and some have too little imagination to conceive that it could be done in any other way.

But that was then, and this is now.

What are the differences between then and now, in terms of our ability to fling humans beyond earth’s orbit, and on to other worlds?

First, of course, we know much more now than we did then, if for no other reason than we’ve done it. But more importantly, technology has advanced over the past third of a century since we first went to the moon, in a time period in which technology has been generally advancing at a dizzying pace, with a seeming continuous acceleration.

Computers are much smaller and faster, materials are stronger with the ability to take higher temperatures, our ability to design is much greater, and our ability to get designs from a computer screen to functional hardware is phenomenal, compared to our capabilities in the 1960s.

Consider also that our goal then was not to open up space in any sustainable way, but to simply beat the Russians to the moon.

Under those conditions, our choice to launch a lunar mission on a single large rocket probably made sense. It wasn’t cheap, but it was low risk, since we knew how to build big rockets (we only had to scale up what we already had), and we didn’t know how to assemble things in space.

But there seems to be an assumption on the part of many that large launch systems are an intrinsic requirement of manned space travel. Accordingly, they’ve skipped past the part of the trade studies that would determine whether or not this assumption is valid, and gone straight to debating the best way to get heavy lift.

Of course, there’s another motivation on the part of many engaged in such debates–a large launch system means a large development contract that provides continued employment for many who may fear losing their jobs when the space shuttle is phased out.

There is a huge constituency for the Shuttle program–in Florida where they are processed and launched, in Utah where the Solid Rocket Boosters are manufactured, in Louisiana where the external tanks are built, and other places. The president’s announcement that we will no longer fly the shuttle after the end of this decade had to have cast a pall over many people in those places, because even if the new initiative blossoms, there’s no guarantee that it will benefit the communities that are currently supported by shuttle-based jobs.

So it’s not surprising that some are talking about building a new heavy-lift launch system that uses shuttle components. If they can’t keep the orbiters, there are certainly many parts of NASA and its contractors that will work very hard to maintain the rest of the (costly) shuttle infrastructure. Concepts for shuttle-based launchers have been around as long as the shuttle itself, and many will claim that this is the fastest and cheapest route to the capability that they insist we need.

But do we?

Most people are unaware that other options were considered for Apollo, including earth orbit assembly, but as I wrote above, this mode was ultimately rejected as being too risky in terms of the primary goal–beating the Russians to the moon.

But as the president said last month, this isn’t a race–it’s a journey, and we need to come up with modes of operation that recognize that, and make the journey an economically sustainable one. A heavy-lift vehicle, even a shuttle-derived one, will cost a lot to develop, and unless it flies enough, it will be difficult to amortize those development costs. Smaller vehicles, flown more often, will be more likely to reduce launch costs in the near term.

The objection, of course, is that orbital assembly carries its own risks. What few realize is that this is because NASA hasn’t really devoted the effort necessary to reducing them (particularly in developing space suits that don’t tire out the astronauts).

The current soft suit resists motion because bending a joint changes the volume of the air inside it, providing a force that wants to restore it to its original position. Think of a rubber glove, limp until inflated, but difficult to bend the fingers once under pressure.

In fact, the glove is the biggest problem in designing the high-pressure space suits necessary to avoid the bends (the same problem a diver has when she surfaces too quickly) when an astronaut goes out into the vacuum of space. Larger joints like shoulders and knees have special designs that are zero-volume change, but no one has yet miniaturized such a design to finger joints.

Because this is a critical technology, and one that has great leverage in influencing launch system trades, I would propose the following:

Build a vacuum glove box with a task box inside (perhaps an automobile engine that has to be dissassembled and reassembled). Put up a purse of a million dollars to the first person who can achieve the task working through gloves under a pressure differential of half an atmosphere, without a break.

Unlike many space activities, it’s a project that can be literally done in someone’s garage, and it may spur a great amount of innovation for very low cost. Accordingly, it would make an excellent candidate for the Office of Exploration’s new prize fund, and I hope they’ll strongly consider it. At very low cost to the taxpayers, one or more successful concepts could lay to rest myths about the intrinsic difficulty of working in space, opening up the options for how we will get to the planets beyond redoing Apollo, perhaps saving billions in dollars, and constituting a major step toward becoming a truly spacefaring nation.

In comments on this post, Chuck Divine has a review of last night’s space policy debate in DC.

Muncy was superb. His top ten myths of the Bush space plan were excellent. Myth #1? The plan is about NASA. No, it’s not. The plan is about us (humans). Muncy eloquently put forward the observation that space was about all kinds of human endeavors.

Former astronaut Searfoss was the big surprise. He was critical of NASA, supportive of private space endeavors. He observed he lost six friends when Columbia burned up. I was very favorably impressed.

Hudgins and Park were very predictable. To be honest, I could have done a better job at presenting cases for their positions (even though I have some disagreements with both) than they did. Debate training from high school and college (at least what I got decades ago) does give me a bit of an advantage, though.

Rick Searfoss wouldn’t have been a surprise to me. He’s a ‘stro who gets it, and is on XCOR‘s board of directors.

I’m still too busy to write much, and it’s not going to get much better until the end of the month–it will be a challenge even to do my Fox columns this week and next–but in the meantime, go read this little history of presidential space initiatives by Dwayne Day, over at The Space Review.

For those who aren’t familiar with past attempts to set a new direction for NASA, it provides a lot of good guidance, and potential food for thought as to how to avoid the mistakes of that past. It also debunks the nonsense that anything that NASA does beyond LEO automatically costs four hundred billion dollars (which of course, because NASA is doing it, is automatically inflated to a trillion dollars by clueless commentators).

And by the way, congratulations to Jeff Foust on the one-year anniversary of The Space Review. It should be one of your weekly must-read links if you’re interested in space policy and technology.

[Update on Wednesday]

Clark Lindsey has an email from someone at NASA who says that the SEI cost estimate was even more inflated than Dwayne says (scroll down a little).

…the internal NASA JSC number was $100 Billion — this number was doubled by the comptroller at JSC and then doubled again by the Comptroller at NASA Headquarters.

It wouldn’t surprise me at all.

[Update at 8:45 AM PST]

Dwayne responds in comments.

Too busy to blog (I’m working overtime, have a sick furnace and a sick cat), but fortunately, Henry Vanderbilt over at the Space Access Society is picking up the slack. He’s very upbeat, and has an update on X-Prize progress, a smart analysis of the president’s space initiative, and the new House legislation on launch regulation, a subject that I still haven’t had much time to analyze.

As part of his new space policy analysis, he also has a powerful argument against the “Bush space policy hoax” folks.

…we think this new plan is very unlikely to be
what many are claiming, mere election-year feelgood puffery. Were
it so, the Administration would be making promises left and right,
jobs for everyone and a contract in every district, and not worrying
overmuch whether the Congress would fund it all once the election’s
over. Instead, the White House and NASA HQ have been notably
reticent about reassuring the established NASA manned space Centers
and contractors that they’ll all have major roles in the new
initiative. Refusing to promise job security is a poor way to win
votes. It is, however, a good way to keep options open to implement
the sort of major restructuring NASA will need to meet the new
program’s ambitious goals within relatively modest budget increases.

It’s long, but read the whole thing.

[Update on Tuesday morning]

There was one specific other item of note from Henry’s report that I would have mentioned last night if I hadn’t had the cat and furnace problems. Pioneer Rocketplane apparently has funding to build their suborbital vehicle, thanks to tax credits from the state of Oklahoma. Mitchell Burnside Clapp, founder and president, told me about this over a year ago, but it’s public information now.

I think that 2004 will continue to be a very interesting year for the new emerging space transport industry.

With regard to Josh Marshall’s uninformed hit piece, Keith Cowing makes a good point:

I call this hit and run policy analysis. Here is how it works: the practitioner makes some wildly unsubstantiated comments based on a few microseconds of analysis – usually on a topic about which they know nothing. They then throw in some wild cost estimates to scare folks, link a series of unrelated items together to suggest a trend (or usually a conspiracy), and then end the piece with a global pronouncement. Since the practitioner is a popular commentator and talking head on TV, most people just take him at his word. The net result: a complex issue is left lying by the side of the road in people’s minds without ever having a chance to explain itself. The fact that this flimsy analysis appears in a publication that touts itself as being “for and about the U.S. Congress” ought to have a few people at NASA’s Office of Legislative Affairs concerned.

At the risk of violating Instapundit’s trademark, indeed…

[Update on Tuesday morning]

Welcome to any first-time readers from Instapundit. I apologize for the little foofaraw in the comments section–it’s actually quite unusual.

Keith, thank you for the kind and helpful comments on the cat. I’ll continue to visit NASA Watch, and to encourage my readers to do the same, for whatever it’s worth, because I think that it is a valuable website, but judging from several comments, I do think that you’re machine gunning yourself in the foot here.

It would be nice to end this pointless (albeit mild) flamefest and actually have a few comments on the substance of the post.

I received an email from an astronomer pointing out an article in today’s Gray Lady that says a Hubble mission might be as safe, or safer, than an ISS mission. I’ve omitted the emailer’s name in case there’s any political sensitivity.

While I don’t subscribe to Josh Marshall’s hoax theory about NASA’s new focus, I do believe that the NASA hierarchy has been less than truthful concerning changes to its mission goals. When Sen. Barbara Mikulski called Sean O’Keefe concerning the cancellation of shuttle missions to Hubble, he told her that the decision was a combination of money and safety concerns. Once he heard from her that money might not be a problem, his message changed to that of safety alone. Indeed, Jon Grunsfeld’s first comments about the mission cancellation also mentioned money, but safety has now become the overriding arguement, as it is harder to dispute from the outside.

As an astronomer, I’m concerned about the future of basic astronomical research under the new NASA. NASA has quietly put off for at least a year, perhaps more, funding for its MIDEX and SPEX smaller space astronomical instrument missions and cut back funding for approved programs, and O’Keefe’s press conference about the budget was not friendly to basic science (unless you are studying the science of weightlessness on the human body) or space astronomy. Now, this is NASA’s perogative — as my husband says, none of the “A”s in NASA stand for “astronomy” — but I can’t help but think that the broader public might not be concerned about the decline of the one science everyone seems to find compelling and approachable. And it was Bush’s father who made a similar announcement about big goals for the US space program, which then petered out into nothing. It doesn’t take political animus to fear that current path could lead to little progress.

Anyway, I emailed you because I haven’t seen much sign that, outside of those of us who are directly affected, people have appreciated how much the new NASA focus is pulling money away from space science instrumentation and research. I’d like to see some discussion on this issue.

Well, I’m on record as believing that we ought to go ahead with the flight, and safety shouldn’t even be an issue, but that’s not politically correct these days. But I do believe that’s the primary driver for the decision, and don’t think that O’Keefe is being in any way disingenuous–at least I have no reason right now to think so. Risk assessments are always judgement calls, and while one engineer’s analysis may be perfectly valid, it’s always possible to find others who disagree, and NASA is erring on the side of caution right now, in response to the Gehman Commission and a reaction (and probably overreaction) to what happened a year ago.

However, I think that it’s a little too early to tell whether or not the new initiative will be good, or bad, for space science and astronomy in general. People are inferring from the fact that the Hubble decision was announced after the president’s speech that it was somehow a result of it. It wasn’t. They were both a result of the same root cause–last year’s loss of Columbia.

Actually, history indicates that we have the most vibrant space science program when we have a vibrant manned program as well (though it’s not clear whether that will be the case for deep-space astronomy). For example, as far as I know, Webb remains on track.

But what fans of space telescopes should really be doing is cheering on people working to reduce costs (i.e., not NASA), because that’s going to make it affordable for universities to put up their own suites of multi-mirror space telescopes. And if we really do set up a lunar base, farside will make a great place for a radiotelescope, blocked from the noisy earth.

Josh Marshall subscribes to the “hoax” theory of the new space policy. Jeff Foust and his commenters show him (as is often the case) to be full of it. As commenter “Brad” says:

The Marshall piece is not a serious analysis of the merits, or lack, of the new Bush space policy. The complete omission in Marshall’s story of the fact of the Columbia disaster and the floundering of NASA is telling. If Bush had done nothing at all in response, or made a Clintonian style non-decision to muddle through, that would itself warrant criticism. But instead Marshall attacks the president for having the balls to make a real choice…

…I have no illusions that Bush is some kind of space exploration enthusiast, even though he does have a background in military aviation. But I do think the Bush style of blunt decision making is what is responsible for finally cutting though the thirty years worth of bureaucratic B.S. surrounding space policy.

I am worried though that the political venom level is so high now that if Bush is defeated, his replacement will kill manned space exploration just because Bush was in favor of it. The Marshall piece is just another example of the venom.

Yes. I made this point as well a couple weeks ago.