Moving On To New Things In Space

The public was bored with the Moon program right after Apollo 11 because it was an exploration program designed for an elite few instead of a settlement program designed to eventually allow all of us, or our descendants, to travel and maybe even live on the lunar surface.

It is part of our natural human instinct to settle new frontiers. That's why going to the Moon and eventually to Mars needs to be predominantly a human settlement program. We need to learn to live off the land in the New Frontier.

Marcel F. Williams

Not sure I follow.
The public is bored with going back to the moon, which we did 40 years ago, but not bored with going to low earth orbit, which is all we've been doing the 40 years since?

I think the problem is that simply going to space doesn't cut it anymore for most folks. Space construction and regular missions in orbit are essential to our development, but dull.

Constellation became a one trick pony because it needed moon landings to justify the costs of new rocket development. Its something the public could understand more easily than paying ten times the price a cosmonaut does just to shake hands with him on the ISS.
Without the moon and without the shuttle to pose in front of, what you have is a PR disaster.

The Augustine report didn't clarify how they plan to get out of this mess. Which is why people are still confused.

If Dr. Chiao is reflecting the true feelings of the committee then I think they missed out on some points.

(1) It is not simply that people are bored with the moon because we have done it before. If there had actually been a plan laid out for why we were going and what we were going to do once we got there, and as long as it was not just 'for science', then people might have been agreeable. We did Apollo once and people and the nation did not sustain it. It was too expensive. It was too dangerous and we nearly lost one crew out of 7. We had lots of science instruments going on the moon, and we turned them off. Sure we will do science if there are people there. That is not the reason we are going. People would like us to go if its something they or eventually their children can participate in. Tourism, colonies, resource utilization for lowering costs; an expanding economy. These are reasons to go. Expand commerce and industry into the solar system.

Sending a couple hero astronauts to rove the moon in search of rocks. Not so much. Not a critical need.

(2) When our former Administrator said 'on to the moon, Apollo on steroids', that was a turn off. That one statement demeaned everything many of us had worked our careers for.

(3) When the Administrator and Constellation started in with 'kill the Shuttle, kill ISS. These are mistakes. LEO is boring' And of course, we are not yet even done with ISS, so lets kill it and do something different.

Using that rationale, we'll work for the next 30 years to build the lunar capability and then 2 or 3 years once we get there the rallying cry will be kill the moon, it will waste our resources, the moon is boring, on to Mars now. What makes anyone think that will be any more supportable than the moon was in 1970 or now ? I hate to tell you but the headline in 1970 was "the moon is boring".

(4) More than that, between both ISS and Constellation, our managers started assigning people into jobs they were going to learn OJT when there were already organizations and people with careers worth of experience standing by watching; This was a process started in ISS about 15 years ago. ISS took over Engineering from the Engineers, Systems from the Systems Specialists, Architecture from the Space Architects, Science from the Scientists, Science Integration from the Science Integrators, Mission Management from the Mission Managers, Safety from the Safety specialists, Mission Operations from the Mission Controllers....Constellation was this way from the start. What this means is that the supporting space centers like JSC or MSFC are overhead and only the programs have the authority, responsibility, expertise....I've got it, lets move everyone except the guys who mow the lawn into the programs. There can be a propulsion group for Orion and a propulsion group for Ares and propulsion for Altair and propulsion for ISS....

"What we (Constellation) are going to do is going to be great and we are going to do it so much better, sooner, safer...." We heard this last about a week ago from our Program Manager Hanley - "what makes those commercial people think they could ever do this or do it safely"; excuse me - what makes him think he can do it? How many more billions and how many years will it take to get a design ? PDR is not CDR, which is where we should have been beyond by now on Orion. This early design work was the inexpensive part. Its when the manufacturing starts that the real expenses begin. Ares 1X was symptomatic of the cost, the time, and the lack of progress.

The attitude killed much of the following even inside the program.

(5) How are we going to make spaceflight reasonably accessible and affordable? The Apollo method is not it.

(6) Before anything else, we need affordable and routine access to LEO. It needs to be done like an airliner. Airliners do not use a whole lot more energy in going cross country than they would need to use to go into orbit. I think Steidle was going in the right direction. NASA People did not like it because he was trying to do it with commercial launchers. The OSP with the commercial launcher could have been much more affordable. It could have been done much sooner. It is needed now.

(7) Commercial launchers are costing USAF $100 million ea. Thats a lot more reasonable than billion dollar Ares 1 launches. Why, when the NASA of the last two decades gets involved, do prices become unreasonably higher, not more affordable? NASA needs to figure out what it is doing wrong. I think it goes back to #4.

(8) Sure, we'd like to get out of LEO. How are we going to do that? Throw away the spacecraft every mission? (Apollo)

Between the series of Russian Salyuts and Mir, and our Skylab, Spacelab, Spacehab, and ISS, we've spent the last 40 years learning how to design and fly long duration. Long duration people and long duration spacecraft. These are real spaceships; they exist today; they are not thrown away. We've designed them for modularity, maintainability, reusability, upgradeability. Mir lasted 15 years and likely ISS will go twice as long.

Now, you'd like to throw all of that knowledge and those systems and those capabilities and those experts away and we can try to re-learn those lessons in about 35 years once we are back on the moon, once we are ready for them?

(9) We need heavy lift. We have a pretty good heavy lift capability today with Shuttle. Its not quite as big as some other possibilities. But we have a lot of expertise and machinery in place to build and support this system. Sure, it is too expensive to continue to maintain the Orbiter. The reasonably inexpensive parts were the ET and SRBs. We've gotten pretty good at building and maintaining them. Those could be the core of the next heavy lifter.

Lets throw all of that away because we want to build really big. First we were going to go with SRB and ET-based but then we decided bigger is better (expense, not a problem), so lets throw away all of those facilities and that tooling and those people. We can get back to building an Ares 5 which, after all looks sort of like an ET (so maybe people won't notice its larger diameter, requires totally different tooling). We'll see if we can get that expertise back on the job in 5 (or maybe 10) years once we are ready to start on Ares 5. "Better yet, we are Constellation; we will invent our own experts who will after all do it better".

(10) How about doing a little R&D to build some advanced propulsion capability - something like VASIMR, which by the way, NASA is not doing, and adapt the systems we've been flying with on ISS and Mir, which, BTW, were developed by a lot of really experienced people, to do something like higher earth orbits and lunar or planetary trajectories. These are not meant to be the end; it is a logical evolution from where we are today to a next step. And BTW, we might develop the capability to save the earth from incoming asteroids (that sounds too spacey or scary and so NASA does not like to talk about that mission), or we might be able to explore for resources like water or metals at places that are even easier to get to and from than the moon.

(11) You want government funding and Congressional support and popular support? You'd best have a logically laid out plan. It doesn't need to be super-detailed, but it does require logic and a reasonable path into the future. We are not talking about the next ten years. This is a fifty year program. It requires continuity of people and expertise and systems. And by the way, it is all of human space flight so maybe it ought to be shared with commerce and industry and across NASA and other agencies and other nations.

Constellation claimed it all as theirs.

There had better be something in it for the people who are paying for it. It doesn't have to be tomorrow, but they need to know that if not they, then their children, will be better off for having supported this.

The Constellation plan was (1) Apollo on steroids (2) Ares rockets (3) Moon (4) Roving science. Sorry - not the right answer.

(12) Assuming you can do this groundwork, you'd best explain what you are doing and why in terms that most people will understand, accept and support. Its going to take more than pretty animations of rockets.

So, I think the plan that ought to be followed is pretty logical.
Part 1
(1) Make max use of what we have in Shuttle today to develop heavy lift
(2) Make max use of what we have today in ISS to develop systems that can take you to the moon and planets
(3) Develop soon, a LEO transporter that can carry people safely to LEO
Part 2
(4) Develop a maintainable spacecraft that uses advanced propulsion to go beyond LEO; as the capability gets developed further, you can go further.
(5) Design the systems to take extraterrestrial materials and produce water, oxygen, and hydrogen
Part 3
(6) Decide where its easiest to obtain the extraterrestrial resources needed to go further

That is when we will need to decide if we should go back to the moon and need to develop the vehicle to land people or hardware there.

Space is boring.

Doing this "to excite people" is the very definition of "PR stunt".

If that's why we're doing this, its time to dump the manned spaceflight program.

If there are some resources we're utilizing or something worth doing, great, but doing this because its cool is a horrible, horrible waste of money when fed is in an epic hole.

Besides, there are plenty of people with money - Bigelow, Musk, etc. - who are plenty excited themselves and are taking matters into their own hands.

The Flexible Path is fine as long as you follow it in a logical route. You don't start a journey at the end or middle of the road, but at the beginning. Any approach that does not first put boots, for extended periods, on the moon will not show us how to put them anywhere else. Decades before Columbus "discovered" America, the Chinese had sailed the world. They gave it up due to lack of foresight. They had it all but lost it. Columbus merely opened up the new world. Is the US going to merely show that it is possible to put humans on the moon, then elsewhere, or is it going to truly open up new frontiers and reap the benefits. The NEO's and L points are great places and worthy of exploration, but how do we sell those places when we can almost literally reach out and touch the moon ? Its ours to lose.

The moon someday will be a great place to have a colony. But the resources we need to begin to travel the solar system are water, oxygen and hydrogen and we know we can get those from asteroids and comets. Their gravities are such that we can simply pull up alongside and use a vacuum pump to suck out the materials we need. The moon might have water locked up somewhere, but so far we don't have proof of water, and even if there is water, we think it will be in small quantities mixed within the soil. It could be very difficult to harvest.

Before the Chinese sailed the world, they learned to sail. They built multi-masted sailing ships that sailed the Chinese rivers. Later they built much larger Treasure Ships for exploring the Western World, long before before Columbus.

We need to learn to traverse cislunar space and the inner solar system and do it without throwing away our ships on every mission.

You can develop a ship for traversing the inner solar system using systems based on ISS and advanced propulsion already in development. These are within easy, relatively economical reach today. The expertise in these systems is already resident in ISS and Ad Astra. ISS is analogous to the Chinese river junks that stayed close to home. Now it is time to build the Treasure Ships for exploring the inner solar system.

The Treasure Ships can be used for comet and asteroid rendezvous. The next step is harvesting their resources.

Sure the moon is a shorter distance. But it has a significant gravity field and you will need to develop the vehicles to get you down to its surface and back off of it. And before that you will need the vehicle to launch and refuel the lander assuming you are not continuously throwing those away. And you will need the fuel and oxidizer to power the lander.

It could be much more economical to gather and carry the fuel from asteroids and comets than to try and find it on the moon first (if it even exists there).

We are already living in space for extended periods today. We call it ISS. Its been in development for 25 years. It is showing us how to live in space for extended periods. We can apply those lessons to travels to the asteroids, comets and planets.

With all due respect to Leroy Chiao, and perhaps somewhat less to Gizmodo, nowhere in this article are we told what the title promises. If Chiao knows how to make us fall back in love with space, he sure hasn't told us here.

He's got it right about why we're not in love with space. The lunar return with Apollo on steroids was an abysmally marketed plan.

But we were never really in love with space. That's a false presumption that we were. We were in love with the idea of beating the USSR. We were in love with the idea of proving ourselves strong and capable. Now, because we are no longer in love with these things, we try to make ourselves in love with the exasperating concept of exploration. We really don't know what that is, except it seems to have something to do with flags, footprints, and putting human beings on top of rockets. Somehow, that translates into pride and accomplishment that is valuable to our country.

The references to Columbus are bogus. If his investors had Earth resources satellites, they wouldn't have given him a dime.

It is not clear from reading the Augustine report, and other interpretations, whether the Flexible Path includes a stop on the lunar surface, and if it does, when that would occur, Any journey begins at the beginning of its path, not at the middle or the end. If boots on the moon do not happen early, the Flexible Option gives us little hope of learning how to put boots on other worlds. Flexible Path is supportable if done in a logical progression. NEO's, L's, and Mars are great waypoints and goals, but a logical progression is needed otherwise, Flexible path fails and is not supportable. Note that the implementation of Flexible Path described here is goal driven, not destination driven.

What I can't understand is statement by Dr. Chaio that "The Space Shuttle has been a magnificent, beautiful flying machine, but it is more fragile than we thought, and it is too expensive to operate." It's the too expensive to operate that I find fault with.

The cheapest COTS bidder to win was SpaceX with an award of 1.6 Billion dollars to launch 44,000 lbs over 12 flights. That is a cost of 133,333,333 per flight or 36,363.64 per pound.
The FY09 NASA Space Shuttle Operations budget was 2.9871 Billion. NASA launched 4 Shuttle flights so the rough per flight cost is 745,425,000 dollars. Now lets examine the STS-128 resupply mission. Subtract out the cost of launching 7 astronauts using the cost of the only alternative, the Soyuz at 50,000,000 per astronaut or 350,000,000 dollars and you are left with 395,425,000 dollars for the cost of cargo. The MPLM delivered 15,200 lbs and the Ammonia Tank Assembly was listed at 1,880 lbs (have to ignore middeck and water and O2 consumables transferred because I can't find the info on them).
So it cost 395,425,000 dollars to fly 17,000 lbs of supplies or 23,260.29 dollars per bound.

Okay that's COTS 36,363.64/lb vs 23,260.29 for Shuttle. Even without a Phd. I can see that is 13,103/lb cheaper to deliver supplies with the Shuttle. Granted these are estimates that are equivalent to back of the envelop/napkin calculations but if that type of calculations are good enough for Mike Griffin they are good enough for me.

This is not meant to say that we don't need COTS cargo and in fact I believe that the US should proceed with COTS crew as well. As has been shown with the 2 Shuttle failures we need alternative access to space. What would have happened if the Soyuz continued to have re-entry problems?

I just get tired of people maligning the Shuttle and not giving the proper facts. The Shuttle is very good at what it does and is proving that it is cost effective vs the alternatives. It may not be as cheap as we were promised or would like but so far, no one has come up with anything cheaper. And Soyuz has had 2 loss of crew events as had the Shuttle without flying as many flights or crew so until it or an alternative crew transport exceeds the flight count of the Shuttle the jury is out on safety.

I was going to join the discourse, but it is all rather meaningless. Everyone has their vested interests. Until and unless the current political powers that be enunciate a policy, all of this is just filling up disk space.

We have a population who can tell you all about Reality TV, and next to nothing about the last man to walk on the moon, or the Shuttle that launches later this month. Until and unless this changes, we better all go out for a short beer, 'cause the truth of it is that we are not going anyplace fast. We helped make this mess, and until and unless we help to clean it up (which none of this does) we're like Al Shepard on May 5, 1961. We can have all the warm feelings we want, or don't want, and hardly anyone will take historical notice.

All the ants are squabbling over cake crumbs, and in the kitchen, no one is sure we have eggs, milk, flour,or even a stove that's anyplace near warm yet.

Roci

(Who remembers both Shepard's launch day, and Gene Cernan's too)

Dr. Chiao's points are good, especially regarding the report. Why people don't care about space is well-trod territory.

If you looked back to the Age of Sail (starting w/ China) you would find that most people didn't care one wit about Ships, Sail or the Sea. The only nautical thing the average land-lubber cared about would be spice from India or maybe dried fish (still often riverine). These products were the equivalent of GPS and sat-TV signals now, merely the hint of what was possible. The seas were foreign, dangerous, unknown - just like space.

For people to really care about space requires space to be relevant. Apollo-on-steroids, single-vendor-single-customer rockets and a (very useful) Ivory Tower in LEO do not create that relevance. Space Tourism, resource extraction, colonies and most of all beamed power are relevant.

There will be five Shuttle flights by the end of 2009, and there have been as many as eight in 12 months.

Actually, from November of 84 through November 1985, their were ten launches in 12 months. And several more adjacent to either end of that term. Though there were a couple delays, basically it was flying once a month with some time off for the holidays.