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International Space Station Future Uses

By Marc Boucher
NASA Watch
May 4, 2012
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International Space Station Symposium 2012 HighlightsInternational Space Station Symposium 2012 Highlights (Videos), SpaceRef
Leader and researchers of the partners in the International Space Station (ISS) gathered in Berlin this week for the ISS Symposium 2012 to celebrate the completion of the ISS and to discuss the future path and priorities for research on the ISS. The three-day symposium covered case-studies in fundamental and applied research and the actual or potential spin-offs for the benefit of humankind.

SpaceRef co-founder, entrepreneur, writer, podcaster, nature lover and deep thinker.

26 responses to “International Space Station Future Uses”

  1. kcowing says:
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    Of course there is no mention at NASA or CASIS about this.

  2. Nox Anonymous says:
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    I watched the ESA summary videos. Looked like a nice conference. But I think the public needs more details about how ISS experiments translate to the benefit of the average public around the world.

    If the engineers/scientists/principal investigators can’t do it well —
    Where are the PR people? Are they all too conservative world wide?

    Shout the spinoffs, practical results, economic gains, etc from the mountain tops!

    Otherwise no one will really hear it. And the overall funding will be as low at it is now.

    (Side Note: I really hope they can keep ISS ticking till at least 2025 or 2030. 2020 is too early)

    -Nox

    • DTARS says:
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      I think should slowly cheaply up grade and replace and keep it going forever. Maybe completely change the working model or sell it to someone like Bigelow.

      • Nox Anonymous says:
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        I sort of agree with you. I think they shouldn’t have ditched MIR. I think it would have been nice to dock MIR to ISS and have it be like a closet.

        Unfortunately I have seen/designed/and built parts of ISS experiments. They are all driven by interface requirements and black box interfaces.

        That is nice in concept – but a nearly proven engineering problem.

        You should engineer stuff with interfaces, but with a broader understanding of the larger system as a whole.
        White box approach is the way to go.

        Instead of soley conforming to requirements and interfaces (ICD’s) someone needs to step back at times and deal with the big picture.

        -Nox

        • kcowing says:
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          Looking back now I agree. Mir could have been used in another fashion. FGB is now, in essence, a closet and a connecting tunnel  Some refurb of Mir core module and some of the older attached labs would have been  needed – but it would have required nothing all that different than what cosmonauts had already done – and it would have been much more straightforward than what was done to bring Salyut 7 back. An MPLM is now used as a closet.  Many people do not recall that the Service Module now in orbit had a big “Mir 2” sign in front of it for years as it was being assembled.

          • Steve Whitfield says:
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            Good idea, but, correct me if I’m wrong, there would have had to have been a lot of inspection and probably rework to ensure there were no additional fire hazards on Mir.

            Steve

          • SkyKing_rocketmail says:
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            Service Module and FGB were essentially identical to the Mir Core Module and the attached Mir Labs. In fact their original use was to have been as elements of Mir 2. Also don’t forget the last module on Mir, Priroda, was a US outfitted lab with standard Shuttle/Spacehab locker and rack interfaces and with the prototypes of the US and CSA major ISS payloads already on board and in use. It was launched in 1996, paid for by NASA, and had been used for about 2 years when it was ditched. Very short sighted on NASA’s part.

          • Stuart J. Gray says:
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             One of the biggest problems with MIR was that it was contaminated with bio-hazards.
            They had found large blobs of water inside & behind equipment lockers that had some nasty things living inside them.

          • SkyKing_rocketmail says:
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             “MIR was contaminated with bio-hazards”

            Probably a lot easier and less expensive to do some serious cleaning than to throw away a multi-billion dollar asset and try to start from scratch. With Shuttle we had the kind of logistics support a serious cleaning would have required. Now ISS is not too far removed from the same level of logistics support that Mir had. I guess we never learn the lessons of our predecessors.

          • kcowing says:
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            With regard to the “biohazards” this is an urban myth or sorts. Can you provide documentation as to what these hazards were other than the flora and fauna that are found in all space stations?

      • newpapyrus says:
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         Keeping a $3 billion dollar a year LEO program going for a NASA that’s supposed to be focusing on beyond LEO missions would be pretty darn expensive.

        Marcel F. Williams

        • Steve Whitfield says:
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          Marcel,
            The goal is not to keep the ISS going “for NASA,” but rather to keep it going for all of the people (it’s international) who want and need to use the ISS to learn what it can still teach us before moving on to BEO, which is a great deal more than many people want to admit. Down the road, it can always be a place of safety for LEO or incoming missions in trouble. And it needn’t cost $3B/year, or anywhere near that once we stop shipping wear-once clothing, specially-processed foods, and everything else that comes up from Earth at the current bloated costs. This is something that should have been worked on since the day that it was agreed to design and build a station, and my biggest complaint. We still haven’t learned how to “live” in space (just stay for a while in an overpriced, cramped hotel).
            I strongly believe that our goal (including you) should be to maintain the ISS and increase its capabilities by finding ways to wean it off of its current dependency on NASA money (and ideally the other IPs). The recent introduction of CASIS and the Car Wash scheme are potentially first steps in this direction (how well they work is a separate issue; but the idea is right).
            Overall, we should be planning and designing everything that we put into space to be expandable, upgradable, and usable for as long as possible, even planetary science items. And whenever reasonable, everything we put into space should planned and implemented as parts of one completely integrated system, even if only at the comm and telemetry level. Everything — and I mean everything — that we put into space should be planned, designed and treated as an integral part of a single permanent, growing infrastructure. Once you’ve built your fence, you don’t throw out the extra nails and a perfectly good hammer just because it’s now time to paint the fence. The hammer can be used again and again for an endless array of tasks, many of them not yet imagined, and the nails are likewise perfectly good assets for future needs (much like Space Shuttle ETs would have been).
            It’s long past time that we stopped letting money be the primary, and often only, decision maker in our space programs. It makes absolutely no difference to me who’s “in charge” of humanity’s space program at this point, because to the best of my knowledge, nobody at all has even the start of a comprehensive, integrated plan of the nature I’ve suggested, and we continue to throw away most of what we’ve done. That’s not progress; that’s nonsense.
            So, instead of suggesting that NASA kill an existing asset so that it’s operations cost can be spent on something you’d prefer, let’s all try concentrating on ideas for reducing those ops costs and transferring existing space assets, and their costs, to non-NASA parties with the interest and the ability to not only operate them, but to also take them further and learn how to actually make money from them.
            And as a side effect, we just might all get the future we want and need.
            Steve

          • newpapyrus says:
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            To be honest, I was against the ISS concept when Ronald Reagan first proposed it back in 1984 because I thought it would trap NASA at LEO. And 28 years later, NASA is still trapped at LEO with no end in site for the $3 billion a year ISS program– while NASA’s manned beyond LEO program struggles for appropriate funding.

            Ending the ISS program will not end manned R&D at LEO since private companies like Bigelow are ready to fill in that niche for both governments and private companies with their cheaper and larger  private space stations.

            NASA’s focus should be on establishing permanent outpost at the lunar poles for the production of water and to test the human ability to adapt to hypo gravity environments and to experiment with different levels of radiation shielding using lunar resources.

              NASA’s space station interest should focus on deploying rotating space stations and transhabs that produce artificial gravity in order to eliminate the deleterious effects of microgravity environments within  cis-lunar space and during long interplanetary journeys.

            Marcel F. Williams 

          • DTARS says:
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            That is why we at the Inner Solar System Railroad Inc. Keep trying to get this man to write our global plan.

            Clem was so ticked off when he learned there was no ET city or fuel depots. And he wants to know how tasty those little 1000 dollar meals are too.  

            Question

            Can wheat be grown in space in a practical way? I keep thinking how whole towns use to grow around the gristmill  by the dam. And wondering what the space city equivalent would be.

            The food/ Agriculture habitat is the center of the first space towns or moon or mars towns right???

            Grow food with just lights no windows seems a very hard problem. Same as growing plants on mars or moon with all the danger of freezing night temps should you have a power outage.

        • DTARS says:
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          Marcel

          We agree again. ISS no ISS either why make it cheaper. As much as you like saving a buck I with you would get Off that sls titanic kick when provider Space can surely do it so much faster.

          • newpapyrus says:
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            The ISS is the product of multiple government space programs. So it was probably destined to be expensive.

            The SLS will enable NASA to deploy instant space stations with a single launch far larger and cheaper than the ISS.

            And if NASA is wise enough to make the SLS configurations as flexible as the Delta IV vehicles then this machine will revolutionize space travel.

            Marcel F. Williams 

          • Steve Whitfield says:
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            In reply to newpapyrus:
             
            The SLS will enable NASA to deploy instant space stations with a single launch far larger and cheaper than the ISS.

            Marcel,

            That is an interesting concept.  Can you elaborate a little bit on how you can launch a large space station with a single launch using SLS?  It’s not something that I can visualize.  If you really can “deploy instant space stations,” I think that would be a real game changer.  We’d still be stuck in LEO, but everybody could be all over LEO (a good thing in my mind), and that would make almost all of the existing “road maps” obsolete (another good thing).  Can you give us an idea of what you’re thinking, and what kind of instant space stations you envision?

            Thanks,

            Steve

          • Steve Whitfield says:
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            DTARS,
            Can wheat be grown in space in a practical way?
            I don’t see any reason why wheat would be more difficult to grow in space than anything else. Growing anything requires the correct nutrients and a delivery and replenishment system for those nutrients; that’s the hardest part. In zero-G I think wheat might be easier than many things because it essentially grows straight and firm, so you could conceivably anchor it by loose-weaving it to chicken wire, or something similar, the same way that vine-type plants are anchored in greenhouses. The real challenge is providing something that will work as soil. Lunar regolith plus nutrients is a common science fiction solution, but in reality almost nothing in the way of food will grow in that, and it is also a very expensive way to go. Growing soil on Earth is “alive.” It has microorganisms and insects (and other critters) living in it, and these are the mechanism for replenishing the nutrients and minerals that the plants ingest. They also aerate the soil, which is essential for most food plants. Whatever you use for soil in space will have to have an equivalent replenishment system or it will basically “die” after one growing “season.” This is another ideal-for-ISS science problem that still needs to be solved before we can go to town on space stations and lunar bases.
            Be aware that there’s no universal agreement with what I say about “soil” requirements. Some people argue that the regolith and nutrients method should work, but no one has ever proved it, as far as I know. They cite things like hydroponics as proof, but they ignore the need for adding tons of nutrients (from somewhere) on an ongoing basis (using some unnamed method). There are examples of growing food without good soil; for instance, several varieties of lettuce will grow in Styrofoam floating on water, but once again, that water is constantly being reloaded with artificially produced nutrients. Plus, lettuce growth doesn’t require soil aeration (partly because of the large leaf surface area). And lettuce (and similar leaf plants) don’t provide a balanced diet.
            Grow food with just lights no windows seems a very hard problem.
            A key requirement is light of the correct frequencies. There’s nothing special about sunlight except that it conveniently contains all light frequencies over the necessary range, so plants get the one(s) they need. There are many ways to handle to the lighting situation. The easiest (if you’re near enough to the Sun) is to use windows (or transparent ports and light pipes). Alternatively, you can use solar energy to generate electricity for light sources of the needed frequencies. What ever method you chose, you have to consider that heat dissipation and humidity are directly connected to it, so the size, shape, materials, etc. of the station’s growing area are factors. Also, with rotating stations it is, in theory, easier to control the heat dissipation and humidity, but it’s a trade off because you get some gravity and momentum back.
            The food / Agriculture habitat is the center of the first space towns or moon or mars towns right?
            I would certainly expect it to work out that way. It’s the same water monopoly concept that has affected human civilizations since Ug the cave man was around — you get population growth where the natural resources are. Knowing that things work out this way, it’s only sensible to plan it that way from the outset. It sounds to me like you’ve got this all figured out.
            I can see why you asked about wheat, but I’d be inclined to apply your ideas to a protein food source instead. There are many potential food sources that can be produced for living in space, both grown and artificial. But almost all of them are heavy on carbohydrates and seriously low on proteins and lipids (oils and fats). So, the guy who comes up with an economical, digestible (and hopefully palatable) protein/lipid foodstuff with which to provide a balanced diet is going to be mighty rich (unless our spacefaring descendants do away with the capitalist market economy). A majority of the proteins in an Earthly diet come from animals and dairy products, and I don’t foresee sharing a space station or lunar base with cows and pigs any time soon; it would make the environmental control requirements 50 times tougher.
            I think you’re looking at some very important issues here, DTARS. It’s all about how to “live” in space. Bear in mind that many of the factors in this subject are somewhat controversial, and they are untested and unproved either way.
            Steve

          • newpapyrus says:
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            With a single launch, the Saturn V was able to launch the 77 tonne Skylab into orbit with a pressurized volume of 320 m3.

             With a single launch, the SLS will be able to launch payloads between 70 to 130 tonnes into orbit.

            The ISS has a pressurized volume of 837 m3, but required 32 launches.

             The Bigelow BA-2100 Olympus which could be deployed by the SLS with a single launch would have a pressurized volume of 2100 m3.

            Marcel F. Williams

          • Steve Whitfield says:
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            Replying to Marcel below:

            Marcel,

            With due respect, you’ve chosen the considerations that seem to support your idea, but completely overlooked the other considerations which invalidate it, and taken together it just doesn’t work out, as far as I can see.

            In short, there’s a lot more to consider than just mass (at launch) and pressurized volume (at completion). At minimum, you have to also consider the shape and actual dimensions of the payload at launch. The first obvious restriction is that it must actually fit into the payload fairing, and do so with a CG more or less at the center of mass.

            the Saturn V was able to launch the 77 tonne Skylab into orbit

            Skylab was a single-piece cylindrical item at launch and the solar panels were deployed afterward; easy to launch. The ISS is certainly not a cylinder, nor one piece.

            The ISS has a pressurized volume of 837 m3, but required 32 launches.

            The fact that it required 32 launches is not because of the final total volume or because of the mass at launch. Different parts were available at different times, not all at once, which is a factor of money more than anything else, and every one of those parts was experimental, and from many different countries. And the finished ISS is definitely not a cylinder; also neither its final assembled structure nor a disassembled-and-packaged payload could possibly have been launched from Earth by anything, under any conditions; it would have fallen apart in the first few seconds, probably not even surviving lockdown on the pad.

            The Bigelow BA-2100 Olympus which could be deployed by the SLS with a single launch

            The (proposed) BA-2100 mass is within the (proposed) lift capability of SLS, but SLS will not be the only LV capable of the job, but it will certainly be the most expensive option. I see this as another attempt to justify SLS after it has been spec’d, which is backwards.

            You had me hopeful for a minute Marcel, but not now. I didn’t type a single thing here that you don’t already know well, so I’m surprised that you wrote this post, what was the purpose? It’s almost as if somebody with less knowledge and experience than you have did a post using your name. But let’s agree to disagree on this item and move onto other things.

            You recently talked again about roaring space stations, an idea near to my heart. But we’re into a new set of problem with it. There is no way to launch one in its finished form; it will have to be “built” in space (probably from prefab modules), which is a whole new set of skills processes. The minimum diameter for a rotating station that can be of any benefit (or even just lived in and remain healthy) will have a diameter (assuming a torus) much larger than anything we’ve ever attempted before, and the same argument goes for the modules. A centrifuge is smaller, but you can’t live in one (or even stay in one for more than short periods). A tethered-two-body approach is smaller, but again, you can’t live in one.

            What are your thoughts (or anyone else out there) on designs and dimensions for rotating space stations, for specified purposes, and how you would propose launching and building/assembling them in LEO or elsewhere in space?

            Steve

    • npng says:
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      Nox, several possibilities:  (1) the PR people appear conservative because they are either unaware and uniformed or (2) have been burnt by excessive media hype and failed promises over the years and are reluctant to publish or (3) they can’t find benefit details because they aren’t there.

      There was a presentation several years ago at a NSMMS Conference that summarized an ISS program that generated billions of dollars in results for only a few million dollars in cost.  You would think the press and Congress would find an ISS use like that to be worthy of headlines, but either the press missed it or it wasn’t worthy of interest. 

      • npng says:
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        “And now for a word from our sponsor”…. I mentioned an ISS existing utilization program that cost millions, yet produced billions in value, yielding a stunning ROI, yet just like most everyone else, no one here even asked WTF the program was.  It seems that most everyone is more interested in or is just fixated on what umpty billion dollar space program they’d like to influence or run or drive in to being if they had their fantasy-wish of controlling all of the government’s money.  When a valuable outcome actually-does-occur from ISS use, they ignore it.  No wonder this country has economic problems. …. “And now we return to our regular scheduled ~~~ if I controlled NASA, all space, and all the money in the World ~~~ programming.”

  3. Steve Whitfield says:
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    Given that this was a “future” uses conference, there wouldn’t be much in the way of spin-offs to report on.  I watched some of the videos and found it awfully dry for general consumption (my opinion), so I think it would have made a one-line news byte at most.  I’m not really surprised that it wasn’t in the news anywhere.  Too bad though.  People can’t possibly get interested in things they don’t hear about.

    Steve

    • DTARS says:
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      Steve just read where you said to bad, people can’t get interested in what they don’t hear.

      That’s my point on a railroad plan.

      And 

      Turning NASA back into NACA for space liners. 

      Who even knows what Naca was????

      What does Joe Q know most about NASA?????

      That it cost tons of money for questionable return!

      Why is it hard to convince Joe Q Public that we can go to the moon?

      Joe Q must be very ignorant.

      Joe Q knows nothing about how to get into Space.

      What does Joe Q know? 

      Joe Q watched the moon program very expensive very rewarding, a hard expensive climb to the mountain top. Then we got there, planted the flag, hit a few golf balls, saw a dusty airless desert, looked back at our beautiful blue sphere. Now what?

      Joe Q watched the sky lab and Mir round and round doing science to study the effects of weightless. Very important science for our future in space.

      What next?

      Joe Q watched the shuttle x plane program. The promise of much cheaper space flights. The promise of a few flights a month. Did the price ever go down? Noo!
       Joe Q was told space flight is very hard very expensive next to impossible. 
      Joe Q watched the shuttle disasters, the shuttles fixes. 

      Joe Q heard about replacements to the shuttle. Yup they heard NASA was working on it. this is very expensive.

      And let’s not forget ISS, one of if not the most expensive building projects ever attempted by man.  Back in the Reagon years it went by another name billions and billions of planning years and years and nothing to show for it. If he happened to catch a nova special Joe Q may have learned lots of that doe went to Russia to stop starving scientists from selling nukes. Anyway what was the reason to build ISS again? oh yeah, to have a place for that expensive shuttle x plane to go.

      Well we built ISS to do wonderful science. It cost billions per shuttle flight. Space flight is very expensive you know.

      Just when we got ISS built to do all kinds of great science up there. We canceled the expensive dangerous shuttle Finally!

      So it’s a new day, time for a clean sheet a new start. Some pc guy shows Joe Q that rockets can be built much cheaper than we have been told.

      So what’s the new line from our famous space program.

      Orion SlS 
      Send us billions we are working on it! Space flight is  very expensive you know next to impossible! Hey you want to go to the moon?

      Maybe Joe Q isn’t as ignorent 
       as you’ll think.

      It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see when you are getting ripped off!

      So why did I write this? Well Marcel said we need to go to the people and show them how cheap and what a great deal a moon program would be. We have to sell our owner on wanting to do build the project.
      How do we do that?
      Well we need to do two things first, we need to take the owner a logical affordable plan and explain  the plan to him.
      Also we need to demonstrate to our owner that we the builder have the tools to perform (demonstrate cheaper affordable transportation to Leo)

      NASA has done neither  of these two things.

      NASA has only continued the the myth that Space flight is very hard and very expensive because it is in their interest.

      Show me the beef NASA all I see is pork!

      I think I need a different builder to build my project. One that shows me he can perform.

      That new builder should be the reinvented NASA that manages provider space like the relationship NASA has with Spacex now. 

      Is it possible????? It IS! Will we do it? Noo!

      Or do I get to be just a few of the real Joe Qs that gets to partly understand the great potential yet watch the sad way Our space program performs as we sit and watch perhaps others like china lead the way and perhaps  own the inner solar system should they possibly succeed, Bigelow suggests.

      Joe Q

      Lol don’t like learning all this. lol its depressing! Lol

      Thank our lucky stars for Elon. Go get em son! Lol

      Lol Senator Nelson lol “It’s a MARS ROCKET” that will never fly lololol

      • Steve Whitfield says:
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        DTARS, this started out as a response to your post and at some point somehow morphed into a plea for ideas from all of our NASA Watch friends (I hope Keith doesn’t object to this sort of thing).

        What does Joe Q know?

        George,

        I read through your post a couple of times, then I started putting down my thoughts on each issue that you’ve addressed. After I’d typed half a page I stopped, because I’d suddenly realized that the responses that I was giving (for better or for worse) were all boiling down to more or less the same idea, so I could more clearly express what I was thinking in response to your post by giving a single, somewhat universal response to it.

        You’ve asked the question, “What does Joe Q know?,” which, of course, can be interpreted in more than one way. There is an awful lot that Joe Q doesn’t know, but I get the feeling that, within the context of your post, you mean that Joe Q knows more than we often give him credit for, and we shouldn’t be too quick to judge him by those things that he (for whatever reason) doesn’t know. This is a very wise and worthwhile thought, and I thank you for it; and I totally agree.

        So, given that interpretation, I chose to ask a slightly different, but perhaps more germane question, “What does Joe Q need?” In other words, what can society and its government provide for Joe and his family that is clearly beneficial or even necessary? That, after all, is their function. It’s why people live in cities, towns and villages, and why (jokes aside) they pay their taxes every year. It’s because being part of society and paying taxes is what makes it possible for Joe and his family to live healthy, happy lives. And Joe understands this, and clearly sees how it benefits him. Despite all the grumbling about taxes, Joe and his friends and neighbors would never propose to eliminate hospitals because they costs so much. No politician on the campaign trail would be so stupid as to propose cutting the budget for fire departments across the country by 38% in order to reduce government spending and reduce the debt. The ways in which these things benefit Joe and everyone he knows are perfectly obvious to him; he understands their value to him and his family. And although he may grumble about the magnitude of the expense, he would never forego paying it if it meant he would no longer have those benefits.

        The benefits of hospitals, fire departments and similar things are obvious to Joe and the rest of the public because they understand what they’re getting for their money and what these benefits will do for them should they ever need them, past, present or future. Many of these benefits could literally mean the difference between life and death on any given day.

        But not all benefits are so obvious to their recipients. For most people, the space program is at the exact opposite end of the spectrum. They don’t see it as providing any benefits at all for themselves or the rest of society; it’s just an expensive, extravagant hobby for a small number of spoiled enthusiasts. And it’s very, very expensive, or so they’ve been told. Most of the people in American society today know very little about the space program, NASA or otherwise (as indicated by endless public polls over the years). When major space events occur, like the landing of the last Shuttle, they may see a 30-second spot, one night, on the eleven o’clock TV news. From that they’ll learn (in passing) about an event, but none of the reasons, gains and losses, or consequences attached to the event. The only thing they’ll get other than that is, perhaps, the TV network’s opinion as to whether this event was a good thing or a bad thing. And that’s it; the sum total of what any non-space-fan citizen is likely to learn (if he even remembers it at all three days later). I’ve seen a lot of people use the word “apathy” to describe the general American attitude towards the space program (I’ve probably done so myself in the past). I disagree. To me, the word apathy implies that you know what it is that you don’t care about. I believe that Joe Q and his friends typically don’t know enough about the space program to fit that definition. Legislation has been in place all along that prevents NASA from advertising or promoting itself or its programs in public media or venues (yet military and civilian weapon manufacturers can). This says to me that there are only two ways that Joe Q et al can be “introduced” to space to the extent that they might develop an interest — either they get hooked on Science Fiction (and can read) and it develops from there; or a friend or family member turns them on to it, either directly or through fiction.

        So, what I’m saying is that it’s a very big step from Joe Q (on average) to people like you and I who love this stuff, read about it daily and still can’t get enough, and know, deep inside, that it really matters. It’s neither money wasted, nor an extravagant hobby for the elite. It’s how we get the human race from its precarious current condition to a much more stable and healthy future for all, but we, the missionaries, are still too few, and the natives are not taking us seriously.

        As silly as it may sound, YouTube may be the best thing to have to happened to NASA and civilian space both in a long, long time. There doesn’t seem to be any other mechanism in place to educate or even catch the eye of the non-believers (and even if there were, we certainly don’t have a universal, common message to spread). The annual NASA Spin-Off Report is certainly not the mechanism that will sell space. Even the converted find fault with it every year. NASA PAO is no help (a nod and a wink to Keith), since they couldn’t interest a drowning man in a free boat, even if you told them how (with diagrams). It seems that short of persistent one-on-one salesmanship from those in the know, there’s currently no way to give Joe Q enough information to make an informed decision about a national space program.

        Therefore we, the true believers, must develop the medium as well as the message, and then put just enough sugar in the medicine to get Joe to not only swallow it, but share it with his friends and tell them where to get their own supply.

        Well, once again I’ve said far more than necessary, so it’s about time to pack it in for now (I see Carol Burnett tugging on her earlobe), and I hope we can pick up on this topic again, because we’re still right back to where we started — people can’t get interested in anything that they don’t know about. So, until we meet again, let’s be thinking about the two things that we need in order to move forward:

        1. A common message that we wish to convey to those who are not yet space advocates.

        2. One or more possible ways to convey the message to those who are not yet space advocates.

        To decide on our message, we must first agree on our goals, and that absolutely must happen on two levels. The first level defines our social goals — “What does Joe Q need?” — because this answers the “why” questions; why are we going to space. Until the social goals are agreed on and commonly understood, any talk of specific missions and/or hardware is completely meaningless, a simple game of boys and their toys. First we must answer the “why,” or we’re going to accomplish nothing and we certainly won’t be able to convince anybody else.

        Once we’ve properly nailed down our social goals, then we can look at the second level of goals, the programs and hardware concepts that will permit us to achieve our social goals. Any second level goal that doesn’t tie directly back to a social goal is purposeless and doesn’t belong in our plans. Many people should remember that Mars Reference Mission which NASA did that had a price tag of $450 billion; not because it would really cost that, but because every man and his dog insisted that his own pet project or coveted piece of hardware was necessary to the program when in fact a large percentage of these things were not necessary at all, but people were seeing a huge fund of money for pillaging and showed a complete inability to maturely plan a program.

        Delivering the message has been a tripping point all along. We need ideas for spreading the word far and wide in one or more ways that won’t let it get garbled or “modified,” and that can be done without requiring a ton of money from somewhere. In fact, in today’s “people’s media” age (I just made that up) we should be able to find ways to do it for free or very close to it. It’s going to require creative thinking and a willingness for people to devote a little personal time passing the message on. If we make it easy to receive and understand, then it should be easy to pass along to others. If we’re careful (and considerate of other people) perhaps we can invent “good internet graffiti” as a space programs promotion tool. I’m sure we’ve got plenty of techies out there in space land who can find a cheap or free way to spread the word legally (no spam!) (and please, no 140 character limit and no thumb-typed further massacring of the English language).

        I welcome all serious ideas for developing a means to space-ify the masses in ways that they won’t object to. I welcome all serious ideas for the social goals for a civilian space program (with or without NASA/government, new space, old space, and/or whoever). Some of you people out there, a lot smarter than I am, probably already know methods and have great ideas that we can use that I would never think of. Please share your talents to help us figure out how to spread the space advocacy word.

        And remember, at the base of it all is the question, “What does Joe Q need?

        Thanks,

        Steve