The Lance Bass visit to space is apparently back on, with sponsorship from Radio Shack. Both Lunacorp and Mircorp apparently negotiated the deal (Lunacorp, a company that plans to place rovers on the Moon that can be teleoperated from earth, for a fee, had previously attained Radio Shack sponsorship for its concept).

The Lance Bass visit to space is apparently back on, with sponsorship from Radio Shack. Both Lunacorp and Mircorp apparently negotiated the deal (Lunacorp, a company that plans to place rovers on the Moon that can be teleoperated from earth, for a fee, had previously attained Radio Shack sponsorship for its concept).

We had another (cosmologically speaking) close call the other day; a piece of cosmic debris passed within half a million kilometers of the planet, a little farther than the distance to the Moon. It was previously uncatalogued, and approached us from the direction of the sun–our blind side.

If it had hit, it would have been at least as devastating as the Tonguska explosion in Siberia early last century, in which trees were leveled for miles around. Such a strike in a populated area could kill thousands, or millions.

Current estimates of the probability of such an event are one in ten million. I’ve previously discussed the desirability of at least doing a good sky survey to get a handle on the problem, but I’d like to talk again about a little different aspect of it.

Suppose that, after multiplying the probability times the potential damage, and getting some kind of expected value of avoidance, we do decide that this is a problem to which we should devote societal resources. Who should take care of the problem?

Many would reflexively say NASA, just because (unfortunately) NASA remains synonymous with space in many people’s minds (though I’m working daily and weekly to change that perception). But NASA is an agency set up for research, development, and science–not deflecting wayward space rocks.

Well, it’s a threat, so maybe we should put the Pentagon in charge. This actually makes sense, until you think about the problem a little more. If we were being attacked by ET, or Marvin the Martian or his Martian buddies, then sure, let’s send the Space Patrol up there to kick some scrawny Martian butt.

But this is a natural phenomenon, not a smite from heaven at the behest of some malign intelligence (at least as far as we know). It’s more like a forest fire, or a tsunami, or an earthquake, or a…flood.

A flood–yeah, that’s the ticket.

It’s basically just a problem of managing the whims of nature, and to the limited degree that we are capable of doing that, we have an agency in charge of such things. They build dams, and levees, and suchlike, and take preventive measures against future disastrous natural events. They’re called the Army Corps of Engineers (ACE).

In addition to the fact that it seems like a natural (so to speak) role for them, the other thing that I like about the idea of using the ACE is that they could take fresh approaches–they wouldn’t be bound by the institutional inertia of NASA and the Air Force Space Command in how they’d tackle the problem.

They’d have to take new approaches, because it would require different capabilities than any other space activity to date–moving minor planets. And the technology that allows us to divert asteroids to prevent them from pulverizing the neighborhood is the same technology that will allow us to utilize many of the abundant resources available in the solar system.

Finally, it would set up some competition in government space activities, which is sorely needed, and best of all, it might give them something else to do so they won’t have time to build any more of those dam…err…darn dams.

[Update at 7 PM PST]

Jay Manifold has a nice report direct from the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference with the latest thoughts of planetary researchers on the subject.

Yesterday’s Opinion Journal had a piece by Ralph Peters on how the fact that we are now seeing more casualties in Afghanistan is a “good” thing.

While at first reading, such a statement sounds appalling, I agree, in the relative sense of the word “good.” That the casualties have so far been low has possibly been an indicator that our war strategy has been insufficiently aggressive, and insufficiently…effective. Many of the Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters who have killed some of our troops, and who we are now destroying, escaped from Tora Bora last fall, when we relied on Afghan troops to corral them, rather than putting our own at risk. Tragically, but necessarily, some of our own are dying now so that future others, perhaps in the thousands, or millions, many of them women and children, will live.

Risk-averse strategies can fail in many spheres–not just military campaigns. In the training and fitness industry, there’s an old saying (crass though it may sound in the context of dedicated soldiers who will never come home to their families…) of “no pain, no gain.”

And any competent financial analyst can describe the indisputable and inevitable relationship between risk and reward. That’s why junk bonds pay a much higher interest rate than the debt of blue-chip stocks, or why startup firms offer a potentially much larger rate of return–with the corresponding chance that the entire investment may evaporate.

The same principle applies to research and development. Over the years, particularly since the Challenger disaster, NASA has become risk averse to the point of impotence. They will spend billions of taxpayer dollars in analysis, to avoid an outright and telegenic failure, even if the goal of the program itself is not achieved.

As an example, consider the X-34 program. It was supposed to produce a vehicle that would demonstrate the ability to fly hypersonically, reliably, as a major step on the way to affordable space access. (Unfortunately, NASA insisted that the contractor use an engine developed by NASA, which they later said was never intended to be a usable engine).

After the vehicle was mostly developed (minus the engine that the vehicle had been designed for, per NASA specifications), and NASA had a failure in a Mars mission, the agency decided that X-34 lacked sufficient redundancy and safety to fly. When they got an estimate of how much it would cost to add these (unnecessary) modifications to add the required redundancy, NASA decided instead to cancel the program.

Result? The vehicle never flew.

And the data obtained from it?

Zero.

All because NASA was unwilling to risk a failure of an experimental vehicle (the purpose of which is to determine whether or not a particular technology is viable or worth pursuing further).

If you want to know why only governments can afford spaceflight, seek no further than the outcome of this program…

As regular readers will recall, someone was posting to the Cheap Access To Space (CATS) BBS looking for his lost felines.

It turns out he’s even more clueless than we thought.

According to his website (sorry, no link–this is second-hand info), he’s trying to set up a no-kill, no-confinement shelter for cats. No confinement. For cats. And he wonders why they keep going missing…

Also, he’s upset because the Humane Society keeps taking his cats away. Apparently, he’s decided to run for governor of “Minnessoeda” to solve the problem.

Well, if Jesse Ventura can win…

Bryan Preston has some heartburn over some of my space commentary (I’m not sure exactly which, because he doesn’t provide any specific links).

I guess my problem with Simberg is that he focuses exclusively on the manned space flight program, and just ignores everything else that NASA does.

That’s because I don’t have that much of a problem with the other things that NASA does (though I think that the aeronautics program has a lot of problems as well). What JPL does is great, for the most part, though they could do it even better if launch were lower cost and more available. Hubble is one of the many things that NASA has done that is worthwhile, even with the initial cockup.

But my point is that there is more to space than science, and 1) NASA is unwilling to recognize it, and doesn’t do those non-science things very well, yet it receives exhorbitant funding for them and 2) NASA pretends that the manned space program in particular is about science, when it is certainly not–it is about jobs and national prestige.

The manned flight program is usually the most visible part of NASA, but the science mission is arguably the most important– that’s where most of the real ground-breaking research is taking place. And with programs like Hubble that require in-orbit servicing, you can’t have one without the other at this stage. NASA will evolve into whatever the American taxpayer wants and needs it to be, but calling it “socialistic” and calling for its defunding is just hyperbole without thoughtfulness.

When I (accurately) call NASA that, I am primarily talking about the manned spaceflight portion.

Sorry to burden my gentle readers with Yet Another Space Policy Post, but over at Spaceref, Keith Cowing has a description of NASA’s new criteria for public space travelers, at least those planning to travel to the International Space Station. I find it quite troubling, and hope that my readers will as well.

“ISS crewmembers shall refrain from any use of the position of ISS crewmember that is motivated, or has the appearance of being motivated, by private gain, including financial gain, for himself or herself or other persons or entities. Performance of ISS duties shall not be considered to be motivated by private gain. Furthermore, no ISS crewmember shall use the position of ISS crewmember in any way to coerce, or give the appearance of coercing, another person to provide any financial benefit to himself or herself or other persons or entities.”

As Keith points out, this could have a potentially chilling effect on any commercial activities aboard the station. Can’t have any of that free enterprise stuff up there…

Also, there are some criteria that might be usable for arbitrarily keeping people off the station:

The following list defines some of the factors that would be considered as a basis for disqualification: (a) delinquency or misconduct in prior employment/military service; (b) criminal, dishonest, infamous, or notoriously disgraceful conduct; (c) intentional false statement or fraud in examination or appointment; (d) habitual use of intoxicating beverages to excess; (e) abuse of narcotics, drugs, or other controlled substances;(f) membership or sponsorship in organizations which adversely affect the confidence of the public in the integrity of, or reflecting unfavorably in a public forum on, any ISS Partner, Partner State or Cooperating Agency.”

Well, (b) would certainly exclude Bill Clinton and Ted Kennedy, (c) would get Mr. Clinton again, and (d) would exclude Kennedy and a goodly proportion of the Congress.

But as Keith also points out, (f) is the most disturbing. It would, as he says, potentially preclude his being allowed to go. And perhaps me…

Sorry to burden my gentle readers with Yet Another Space Policy Post, but over at Spaceref, Keith Cowing has a description of NASA’s new criteria for public space travelers, at least those planning to travel to the International Space Station. I find it quite troubling, and hope that my readers will as well.

“ISS crewmembers shall refrain from any use of the position of ISS crewmember that is motivated, or has the appearance of being motivated, by private gain, including financial gain, for himself or herself or other persons or entities. Performance of ISS duties shall not be considered to be motivated by private gain. Furthermore, no ISS crewmember shall use the position of ISS crewmember in any way to coerce, or give the appearance of coercing, another person to provide any financial benefit to himself or herself or other persons or entities.”

As Keith points out, this could have a potentially chilling effect on any commercial activities aboard the station. Can’t have any of that free enterprise stuff up there…

Also, there are some criteria that might be usable for arbitrarily keeping people off the station:

The following list defines some of the factors that would be considered as a basis for disqualification: (a) delinquency or misconduct in prior employment/military service; (b) criminal, dishonest, infamous, or notoriously disgraceful conduct; (c) intentional false statement or fraud in examination or appointment; (d) habitual use of intoxicating beverages to excess; (e) abuse of narcotics, drugs, or other controlled substances;(f) membership or sponsorship in organizations which adversely affect the confidence of the public in the integrity of, or reflecting unfavorably in a public forum on, any ISS Partner, Partner State or Cooperating Agency.”

Well, (b) would certainly exclude Bill Clinton and Ted Kennedy, (c) would get Mr. Clinton again, and (d) would exclude Kennedy and a goodly proportion of the Congress.

But as Keith also points out, (f) is the most disturbing. It would, as he says, potentially preclude his being allowed to go. And perhaps me…

Sorry to burden my gentle readers with Yet Another Space Policy Post, but over at Spaceref, Keith Cowing has a description of NASA’s new criteria for public space travelers, at least those planning to travel to the International Space Station. I find it quite troubling, and hope that my readers will as well.

“ISS crewmembers shall refrain from any use of the position of ISS crewmember that is motivated, or has the appearance of being motivated, by private gain, including financial gain, for himself or herself or other persons or entities. Performance of ISS duties shall not be considered to be motivated by private gain. Furthermore, no ISS crewmember shall use the position of ISS crewmember in any way to coerce, or give the appearance of coercing, another person to provide any financial benefit to himself or herself or other persons or entities.”

As Keith points out, this could have a potentially chilling effect on any commercial activities aboard the station. Can’t have any of that free enterprise stuff up there…

Also, there are some criteria that might be usable for arbitrarily keeping people off the station:

The following list defines some of the factors that would be considered as a basis for disqualification: (a) delinquency or misconduct in prior employment/military service; (b) criminal, dishonest, infamous, or notoriously disgraceful conduct; (c) intentional false statement or fraud in examination or appointment; (d) habitual use of intoxicating beverages to excess; (e) abuse of narcotics, drugs, or other controlled substances;(f) membership or sponsorship in organizations which adversely affect the confidence of the public in the integrity of, or reflecting unfavorably in a public forum on, any ISS Partner, Partner State or Cooperating Agency.”

Well, (b) would certainly exclude Bill Clinton and Ted Kennedy, (c) would get Mr. Clinton again, and (d) would exclude Kennedy and a goodly proportion of the Congress.

But as Keith also points out, (f) is the most disturbing. It would, as he says, potentially preclude his being allowed to go. And perhaps me…

WARNING: THIS IS AN EXTENSIVE POST ON SPACE POLICY. THOSE WHO HAVE NO INTEREST IN THIS SUBJECT SHOULD SCROLL DOWN TO MY NUMEROUS NON-SPACE POSTINGS, OR GO TO ANOTHER WEBLOG. IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY I PUT UP SUCH POSTS, GO HERE.

A reader, who will remain nameless to protect the guilty (unless (s)he tells me that (s)he wants me to expose him or her) writes, presumably in response to some of my recent space policy postings:

I’d like to put my two cents in on how to get moving forward in space. This is probably too long and boring for a comment, but feel free to use it as you wish.

Well, it’s not boring at all, at least to me, and I wish to use it as a typical example of exactly what’s wrong with our thinking about space policy. And to show that, despite the fact that it was emailed to me, the author hasn’t really read what I’ve been writing, or else (equally likely) I’ve been abysmally unsuccessful in making my points. Gee, I’ll bet he/she’s glad that they offered it to me now…

(Also, I hope that this doesn’t discourage anyone from emailing me in future. I actually thank the writer–it’s a good letter in the Limbaughian sense, in that it provides an opportunity to make the host look good…)

I believe that NASA has three legitimate functions:
a. Provide infrastructure for low cost access to low earth orbit
b. Perform research and development of space technologies (propulsion, navigation, life support, reentry, etc.)
c. Utilize space technologies for pure science (planetary exploration, satellite observatories, biomedical research, etc.)

Well, legitimate meaning “legal,” NASA’s legitimate functions are described in its (somewhat vague) charter. It doesn’t include the first item here (even assuming that we could agree on what “infrastructure” means). It could be construed to include the second. It certainly includes the third.

If you mean “legitimate” in some esoteric Constitutional sense, it’s arguable whether the existence of NASA itself is legitimate (a characteristic that it shares with many federal agencies).

Of these three functions, low cost access to low earth orbit is the most important at this time and should receive at least 80% of funding. It’s reasonable and probably unavoidable that the government will have to finance these activities. They are too expensive and too long term for most investors.

While I agree that low-cost access to LEO is important if we want to make any national progress in space, the assumption that NASA can or should make this happen, or that 80% of its funding should go toward that goal are highly questionable.

As to the second statement (like almost all the contents of the email), this is conventional wisdom, and it is utterly wrong. There is nothing intrinsically expensive about space stuff, except in the way that we’ve chosen to do it for forty years. And even if it were, private investments of many billions of dollars are made every year—just ask Intel, or GM. As to its being long-term return, this is not a barrier either. Weyerhauser plants trees that won’t provide timber for many years, even decades. Oil companies fund and build pipelines that may be half a decade or more from delivering oil.

No, the only thing keeping necessary private investment out of space right now is perception of the risk, in terms of technical risk, market risk, and most importantly, regulatory risk.

It seems to me that there are at least three approaches to reaching low earth orbit that NASA should examine:

And when you say “approaches,” you mean, of course, technical approaches. You believe that the dominant risk is technical, and that if we can just come up with the “right” kind of technical solution, and have NASA build it, we can reduce costs. OK, I’ll play along.

a. Conventional rockets optimized for low cost, not man rated. This would include the Shuttle Derived Heavy Lift Vehicle and could also include advanced designs that rely only on chemical rocket engines (e.g. aerospike and X-33 type engines). These can provide a short term solution that should be able to reduce the cost to orbit by a factor of 10 and that can be fielded in 5 to 10 years (the Shuttle Derived system could probably fly in 2 to 3 years).

There’s little reason to think that this approach would reduce costs by that much, unless the market increases dramatically. And if the market increases dramatically, even existing rockets (certainly Russian and Chinese ones, but probably EELV) will do it. But if it only reduced costs by a factor of ten, it wouldn’t be worth the investment, because it almost certainly wouldn’t expand the market much–it’s relatively inelastic in that range.

b. Systems that use aerodynamic lift and are man rated.

I’m going to stop right here and make the point that there’s not really any such thing as “man rated.” It’s an oxymoron when talking about reusable launch systems (which I assume that you are). “Man rating” is a concept that NASA came up with in the 1960s to describe how materials, quality control and design would be modified to allow us to have some vague comfort level in putting a human on top of munitions (i.e., ICBM’s). It was deemed necessary to take measures to get the missile as reliable as possible, since the payload was very valuable–even priceless.

For reusable launch systems (I prefer the apellation “space transports”) it’s a meaningless concept. The vehicles themselves will be of such high value that adding people in the mix will make no difference in designed reliability. There’s no such thing as a “man-rated” airplane, and similarly there will be no such creature as a man-rated space transport.

This would include revisiting failed approaches such as NASP and X-33 and scaling up systems like Pegasus. More likely, this approach could yield a solution similar to the original, fully reusable shuttle concept. These systems would deliver modest payloads, be fully reusable, and have rapid turnaround. Target should be at least one flight per month per vehicle, preferably more frequent.

ONE FLIGHT PER MONTH?!

ONE FLIGHT PER MONTH (he repeated in stunned disbelief)??!!

If we are only going to get one flight per month, any moneys expended on a new system may as well be flushed down the toilet, or, equivalently, spent on some other new government program.

Any launch system that doesn’t fly multiple times per week is not worth building–it will not reduce costs significantly below what we are currently paying.

The long pole for this system is reusable rocket engines.

Actually, that is not the long pole, at least if you study Shuttle turnaround timelines. But those are probably not relevant to a modern space transport.

Hopefully we’ve learned enough from the Shuttle to design reliable, reusable engines.

I don’t know about that. We’ve probably learned quite a bit about how not to design them. What we’ve primarily learned from the Shuttle (or at least what we should have learned) is that NASA should never, EVER again be put in charge of developing an operational space transport.

The aero-lift system should reduce the cost of delivering astronauts to orbit by 10 to 100 fold and could probably be fielded in 10 to 20 years.

There is no reason to suppose that aero-lift will help the problem (nor that it won’t) and all of the numbers provided here are purely guess work, and certainly not adequate to use as a basis for policy decisions.

c. Limited skyhook system. I read an article at least 20 years ago in AIAA Journal (sorry I don’t have the citation) that proposed a low orbit space station with a long cable and winch. At the end of the winch is a docking module. Vehicles would launch from Earth in a suborbital elipse and rendevous at the apex of their trajectory with the docking module. Once docked, the vehicle would be simply winched up to the space station. This process would lower the orbit of the space
station slightly, but either rail gun or ion thrusters could return the station to its desired orbit. Winching satellites away from Earth could easily provide the force to insert the vehicles into transfer orbits to geosynchronous orbit, the moon, or beyond. The beauty of this system is that it opens space to a wide array of commercial vehicles that are feasible today and that it reduces costs by many orders of magnitude. This is a long term project that will probably take more than 25 years, but also offers the best alternative for low cost access to space.

Skyhooks are neat. Sometime, in the future, when it’s clear that there is adequate market for millions of pounds up and down, and the technology matures, someone will put forth the money and build one.

But for the purposes of this discussion, skyhooks are also irrelevant.

As is any discussion about: whether the vehicle has wings or not; uses scramjets or rockets; uses hydrogen or kerosene or propane or methane for fuel, uses vertical or horizontal takeoff or landing; has one, two or twenty stages; breathes air or pixie dust, hypersonically, or otherwise, etc. These are all theological issues, and they will not be resolved by posts on the web, or emailed opinions, or even extensive analyses by government contractors.

There are many ways to lower the cost of launch, but none of them will succeed unless they are funded, and funded in such a way that the goal of reducing launch costs is important (as opposed to the goal of simply feeding funding to NASA and its contractors). No one knows for sure what the launch system should look like.

That is a question that will only be resolved by the marketplace–a marketplace that, to first order, does not currently exist. If the federal government wants to make a contribution to space transportation, it will remove the barriers to space commerce, which are mentioned above. The market is uncertain, and the regulatory environment is frightening. In addition, we have been inured, for over forty years, to the bizarre notion that space transportation is unbelievably expensive, and something that is only in the realm of government, so investors will enter only at extreme peril. In the face of this reality, figuring what the launch vehicle should look like is like figuring out where the deck chairs should be located on the Titanic.

NASA’s legitimate objective should be to develop the technologies to make space flight routine and inexpensive. In effect, I’d like to see NASA act like the government agencies that built and maintained canals and locks to facilitate trade.

The history of government subsidization of particular modes of transportation is not as beneficent as your historical analogy implies. Whenever the government sticks its nose into the transportation business, some other transportation business suffers. Canals were nice, but it isn’t clear that they were the best way to move freight and people in the late 18th century. Government-subsidized railroads opened up the west, but they drove the canals out of business, perhaps before their time. The federal highway system destroyed much of the cargo, and most of the passenger rail system, perhaps at the cost of economic and energy efficiency. Bob Poole, founder of the Reason Foundation, has published numerous articles and papers on this subject.

To the degree that the government should play a role here (and it’s not at all clear that NASA should even continue to exist, let alone develop launch systems), it will be to clarify the regulatory situation, and to help provide a market for space transportation. A real market, not a few people to space station a few times a year. The precedent for this is the airmail subsidy in the 1930s that helped develop the modern aviation industry. Hang a big enough carrot out there, and let the providers figure out what the vehicle should look like.

Why should the government do such a thing? Because it’s in our national security interest to do so. We just won a major phase of the war against terrorism because we had assets in space. Without them, we would have been unable to deliver ordinance precisely. The enemy would have escaped much of the devastation (or it would have cost us much more, in money and lives to provide it) and many more civilians would have been killed, and their property destroyed. Had the enemy had the capacity to eliminate our space-based assets, he surely would have done so.

We dominate space, in the sense that no other country has as much power as we do there, but we do not control it. Had someone launched a missile to take out our satellites, there’s nothing we could have done to prevent it. Nor could we have replaced it quickly. A robust space transportation infrastructure would solve this problem, but the most efficient way to accomplish this is through the private sector, satisfying market needs. The space policy challenge is not in figuring out what a vehicle should look like, or coming up with technologies to build it, but in putting in place the proper institutional incentives to develop such an industry and infrastructure, to make us a truly space-faring nation.

As the Space Frontier Society says, “space is a place, not a program.” We need to think about it in exactly the same way that we think about land, sea and air. We don’t have a national Truck program. We don’t have a national Ship program. We don’t have a national Airplane program. It is just as nonsensical to have a national Launch Vehicle program.

I hope that everyone who has persevered to the end of this post will now understand that I am interested, even eager, to receive input as to how to solve this fundamental policy problem. I also hope that they understand that any comments, or emails, with ideas about what the next “national launch vehicle” should look like will be deleted with extreme prejudice.