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Commercialization

The Meek Shall Inherit The Earth. The Rest of Us …

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
March 27, 2016
Filed under , , ,
The Meek Shall Inherit The Earth. The Rest of Us …

Neil deGrasse Tyson: ‘The delusion is thinking that SpaceX is going to lead the space frontier The Verge
Neil deGrasse Tyson to Elon Musk: SpaceX Is “Delusional” About Mars, Motley Fool
“In less than 10 years from now, SpaceX may or may not beat NASA in the race to Mars. Astrophysicist, Hayden Planetarium director, and host of the National Geographic Channel’s StarTalk Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson is placing his bet on “not.” “The delusion is thinking that SpaceX is going to lead the space frontier. That’s just not going to happen…” Tyson said in an interview with The Verge. Tyson laid out his arguments for why fans of a solo SpaceX trip to Mars suffer from a “delusion.”
Keith’s note: Once again Neil Tyson demonstrates that he has never run a multi-billion dollar business – nor has he ever been really, really, really rich. These non-trivial resources allow an individual to shift their own paradigms to suit their whims independent of usual norms. In Musk’s case – that whim is the exploration of Mars. Deal with it Neil.

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

117 responses to “The Meek Shall Inherit The Earth. The Rest of Us …”

  1. Jeff2Space says:
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    Ugh. The guy has real charisma, but I really wish he’d stick to astrophysics.

    • Todd Austin says:
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      Amen to that. NdT has a PhD from a decent mid-level astronomy department (UT Austin), so he’s solid there. But when he styles himself the Lord of All Knowledge he too often sounds like a darn fool if you have any idea yourself about the subject.

      Carl Sagan, he is not.

    • ThomasLMatula says:
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      I agree. His statements on Columbus shows he hasn’t a clue about the Age of Exploration or the Adventure Merchants who drove it. His knowledge of business, especially entrepreneurs, is equally lacking.

      Really, with folks with his lack of knowledge of history and business being on Presidential Commissions its no wonder NASA is in such bad shape and drifting aimlessly.

  2. Paul451 says:
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    “I’m not good at predicting the future”

    Guy should have ended the interview there.

    • TerryG says:
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      Tyson, famous for being famous, presents a flawed view of the SpaceX reach for Mars.

      Tyson’s first flaw is that he completely misreads Musk as some breed of venture capitalist. Musk is, instead, a social entrepreneur (Social entrepreneurship draws upon business techniques and private sector approaches to find solutions to social, cultural or environmental problems). SpaceX is not reaching for Mars to make a quick buck, so Tyson’s view about there being no return on investment, while true, is irrelevant as a goal.

      Tyson’s second flaw is stating that it’s too dangerous. To the extent this is true, it is true of any attempt to reach Mars, not just SpaceX’s attempt. To the extent this is not true, “too dangerous” will ultimately be decided by the volunteer crew. Is Tyson misguided enough to predict a shortage of volunteer explorers?

      In dealing with Astronomy and when pressed for detail, Tyson can always run for cover saying “more advanced research is needed”. This is not entirely true for Tyson’s view on SpaceX. Tyson only needs to do the basic research to find the facts do not support his conclusions.

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        I wonder who comes to mind, in your view, when you think of ‘social entrepreneur’?

        Are you thinking Henry the Navigator? or?

        • TerryG says:
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          At the risk of wondering off topic and sounding like I’ve been sipping the Musk Kool Aid…

          Musk’s electric car business, Tesla motors, with solar powered free re-charge points so you can drive coast-to-coast with a minimal carbon footprint (rollout pending), the so-called solarisation of mass transit, is both a business model and addresses increasingly urgent environmental priorities. Could we agree these are the actions of a ”social entrepreneur’ rather than a quick buck artist? There are other ways he could have spent his money.

          A stack of zillionaires from Warren Buffet to Bill Gates give away their dollars in acts of philanthropy. But Musk has more of an engineer’s approach to spending his fortune, hence his attraction to making Humans a multi-planet species. There’s very little financial payback, but the contribution to Humanity is difficult to overstate. This is Social Entrepreneurialism. This is what Tyson just doesn’t get.

          Until Tyson identifies Social Entrepreneurialism as a factor in the SpaceX reach for Mars, if Tyson thinks he has a complete understanding of the SpaceX approach, then Tyson may be the one who is delusional.

          Still looking into “Henry the Navigator” but thanks for the thought Mr Spencer 🙂

          • Michael Spencer says:
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            I’m a member of the Musk Love Club. Mrs. Spencer took delivery of a Tesla sedan last week and I must say that it’s a hell of a car.

            It’s quick. That goes without saying.

            But it’s about as close to self-driving as a driver can be nowadays. Stays in lane, slows down and speeds up with traffic, passes with minimal driver input. In fact it kept telling Suzie to put her hand back on the wheel! (This was on i75 across the Everglades, but still).

            And I take your points about how Mr. Musk spends his money.

  3. Daniel Woodard says:
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    To be fair he did not say spacex would fail as a company, in fact he recognized the success of its commercial cargo operations. He only said Spacex would be unlikely to find sufficient private capital to fund human colonization of Mars.

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      He could be right about that. Touches on a favorite question: why are we going to Mars? If for research then we are in for a long wait. Commercial opportunity? More in the asteroids I’d think.

      Mr. Musk has said he’d reveal more of his plans in September (don’t recall which conference).

      A recent SF book posits a group of multibillionaires financing a trip to Mars (and establishing a colony as I recall). Ben Bova.

      • Daniel Woodard says:
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        As with LEO and the Moon, it all depends on cost. I don’t see even very wealthy people spending that much without a more substantial return. Colonization by artificial intelligences might be much more practical.

        • Todd Austin says:
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          Larry Page, co-founder and CEO of Google/Alphabet, stated that he’d leave his fortune to Musk after his death. Musk may end up having more access to cash than you think.

          • John_K_Strickland says:
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            I agree that the question of how SpaceX can successfully fund Mars colonization is more important than Tyson’s views on the subject. Yes, Musk does tend to take longer than he says at first, but he does tend to deliver eventually. His company is still “ramping up” and sooner or later his production capacity will catch up with his launch manifest. Also, the potential for significant reductions in launch costs created by the Falcon first stage recovery mean that Musk has the potential to become much more wealthy than he is now. SpaceX stock is not being sold so that Musk can retain control of the company.

            It is absolutely true that most companies cannot support science and exploration on the same level that the government can (Bell Labs being one of the exceptions). it is possible that as SpaceX advances, NASA may be forced by an eventual and inevitable political tipping point to cooperate with SpaceX and the other Newspace companies. However, the Capital Hill critic’s quotes for half-Trillion dollar Mars programs are using NASA HQ’s own numbers based on its antiquated concepts which insist on missions with expendable rockets, expendable spacecraft, and no in-space infrastructure. Various studies show that reusable vehicles and modern space transport and logistics methods can reduce the cost of any kind of Mars mission by about a factor of 10 per tonnage delivered.

            To jump from a Mars base supported by missions every 2 years to a permanent Mars colony is a significant advance, but the existence of a base would pave the way for a settlement by allowing the testing of the kinds of equipment needed to build a colony from local Mars materials. It is reasonable to assume that if building and supporting a base takes 5 cargo vehicles for every crew vehicle, building a colony which is intended to grow would initially take about 50 cargo flights for every early passenger flight. The main question is: can the passenger flight income support the needed cargo flights before they begin.

            At some point the ratio of cargo flights could fall as Mars based industry is perfected and begins production of habitats. Thus the main requirement is financial endurance. Musk has shown so far that he does have that quality.

          • Michael Spencer says:
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            Yes, it’s a big jump, but without the supposition that the Mars effort isn’t simply to go there but to build there we wind up with more bootprints.

            And obviously to build there it’s more than just the money.

      • ThomasLMatula says:
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        Yes, Mars Inc. its called. It’s a good read as are all Ben Bova’s books in the Grand Tour Series.

    • Jeff2Space says:
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      I’m left wondering just how much of the launch market SpaceX can capture with Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy (to be test flown later this year). If they can up their flight rate of Falcon 9 and if they become reasonably successful at recovering and reflying first stages, they stand to make quite a bit of money which can be funneled right back into R&D in support of Musk’s vision of landing a person on Mars.

      But there are a few “ifs” which are currently unanswered.

      • Tannia Ling says:
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        They are not just “a few if’s” They are fundamental. SpaceX has had satellites waiting for months to launch. They have been promising an increase in flight rate for years while their backlog just increases. Falcon Heavy is now four years late. At this point, I expect they will not be capturing much more market share, and in fact they will probably start to loose market share as disgruntled customers exercise the option to launch on other more reliable vehicles

        • Jeff2Space says:
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          Agreed, but there are signs that production is ramping up, new building(s) going up at their testing facility, and new launch facilities being worked on. Delays like this are not uncommon in the industry, especially for a relatively young company. The transition from development to operational flights is often long and difficult.

          • duheagle says:
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            I’ll second that. Among the notable recent additions to SpaceX’s infrastructure is a new multi-story parking garage that covers half a city block and is right across Crenshaw Blvd. from their Hawthorne headquarters and Falcon/Dragon production plant. The concrete never sets on the SpaceX empire.

          • Tannia Ling says:
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            I couldn’t agree with you more. But SpaceX now has to finish that transition and start delivering.
            And, to bring the thread back to the article’s subject: the transition from operational flights to exploration flights will be even longer and more difficult. Furthermore the transition from exploration flights to colonization flights, in my opinion, will be impossible in this century.

          • duheagle says:
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            This century still has 84 years left in it. SpaceX is about 14 years old. Are you seriously of the opinion that an enterprise which has accomplished what SpaceX has accomplished in 14 years can’t get to Mars on its own dime in less than an additional six times its current corporate age? Personally, I think they can probably do it in as little as one additional 14 year increment.

            Lest I be thought a complete acolyte in the Cult of Musk, I wish to note here that I also share your judgement that Mars is quite likely to be harder to make into a paying proposition than Mr. Musk seems to expect. His only likely near-term rival for private sector space dominance, Jeff Bezos of Blue Origin, seems much more partial to habitats in free space as the likely future of significant human extra-terrestrial presence. On this matter, I’m a Bezosian, not a Muskite.

          • Tannia Ling says:
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            Note that I didn’t say that SpaceX wouldn’t get to Mars in this century, just that there would be no Martian colonies in this century (colony loosely defined as a permanent habitat with the goal to grow in size and ultimately be self sustaining). I am with you in thinking that if there is to be a self-sustaining, permanent precense in space it is likely to be in order 1)
            asteroids 2) moon, 3) mars. I that sense I like you am a “Bezosian” although I believe O’Neill was really the pioneer of this path.
            SpaceX has indeed accomplished a lot, not least of which was shake the entire industry out of complacency. However, their main breakthrough so far has been manufacturing, not technical. The Falcon 9 is fundamentally not very different from every other rocket around. And until we figure out a way around the rocket equation, it can’t be very different. The one potential huge technical breakthrough SpaceX has is reusability. I say “potential” because until they have shown three or four times that they can economically reuse a stage the exercise is academic. By the way, that is not to detract from the challenge of landing the booster stage – that is an incredibly impressive feat that nobody had done before; I’m just not convinced yet that it will make business sense in the long term.
            Musks genius with SpaceX lies in the fact that he has allowed a lot of smart people to come together to try new things largely unencumbered by “experience” that says it can’t be done. This, of course, is immensely helped by being self-funded as well as having the marketing savvy to create a Jobs-like cult of personality.
            In the next two years SpaceX will face some serious conflicting pulls:
            1) Need to increase flight rate by a factor of 2 or even 3
            2) A way to sustain a manufacturing operation focused on safety and reliability without loosing its innovative edge
            3) Some subset of investors that will demand some shorter term returns
            4) a way to keep an overworked workforce engaged and focused even as many of the operations become more routine and mundane
            5) Make some amount of cash that can be redirected to the grand vision of Mars
            If Musk can successfully thread that needle, he truly will go down as one of the greatest businesspeople in history.

          • duheagle says:
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            Okay, I pretty much agree.

            I think Musk’s “millions on Mars” notion is misguided in some fundamental ways. As a place for lots of humans to live, Mars just has too many intractable problems, all of which can be neatly side-stepped by concentrating instead on rotating free space habitats constructed from asteroid-derived materials. Mars may well have an essential role to play in humanity’s expansion into the Solar System, but I don’t think it will involve mass habitation.

            What it may well involve is reaction mass. I think noble gas-based electric propulsion will come to dominate the future spaceways, but I don’t think the current use of Xenon will last. Argon is hugely more common in Earth’s atmosphere and is already available far more cheaply as an industrial gas. Mars has an even higher atmospheric fraction of Argon than Earth does and a shallower gravity well to haul it out of. I can see a future Mars dotted with mostly robot-tended extraction plants that take Argon out of the Martian atmosphere and also generate the LOX-Methane propellant needed to efficiently loft it into space using Martian water and atmospheric CO2 as feedstock. This future Argon economy can be initiated with terrestrial sourcing, but I see it mostly migrating to Mars sourcing over time.

            Also, the initial large rotating free space habitats will likely be built of materials gotten from asteroids whose orbits lie either entirely or partly (Earth-grazers) inside the Solar System’s “Goldilocks Zone” centered on Earth’s orbit. So the habs would be located there as well. There’s no initial need to go clear out to The Belt while there are closer fish to catch. Gobbling up all the asteroids that transit the Inner Solar System first also has the side benefit of eliminating nearly all the likely future threats of significant asteroidal collisions with Earth.

            As a last item, I’ll just note that I’m apparently much less skeptical of SpaceX’s likely ability to accomplish the things they say they intend – excepting solely the mass Mars colonization thing. Elon will achieve routine reusability and even build the BFR and MCT. I don’t think either of the latter craft are likely to see much use actually hauling regular civilians to Mars, but both will find abundant other uses in the enabling of free space colonization as I foresee it developing.

            I think events of the next 24 months – possibly less – will pretty definitively indicate which of our respective evaluations of SpaceX’s efforts and future is the more correct.

            Fun times ahead!

        • Chris Winter says:
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          The next question is, “What are those other more reliable vehicles?” The Russians have reliable vehicles, but it appears Musk undercuts them on cost. Delays might be a temporary setback for SpaceX, but Musk’s record shows he is likely to overcome them and get the flight rate up.

          Also, SpaceX is still a startup. Its performance should be compared to NASA’s in its early years.

          • Tannia Ling says:
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            Atlas V and Ariane V launch on an extremely reliable schedule. The question is how long are commercial telecom operators willing to wait to be launched. The 20% (tops) or so savings for Falcon 9 is useless if you cannot start generating revenue for 6 months while you wait for a launch. ViaSat changed from Falcon to Ariane back in February. How long before other operators start switching?

          • duheagle says:
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            The savings using SpaceX ($62 million) to launch a GEO comsat are a lot more than 20% if your reference platform is either Ariane 5 ($150 million) or Atlas V ($160 – $175 million). The ILS Proton can probably compete fairly well on price with the Falcon 9 now that the Russian ruble’s value has taken a nose-dive, but the Proton’s recent failure history is certain to make insurance premiums significantly higher.

            Ariane 5 can also carry a lightweight GEO comsat in its lower payload berth for approximately the same price as a SpaceX Falcon 9, but there has to be a heavy GEO comsat in the upper berth to defray the other 60% of the mission cost. Over the years, Arianespace has had a lot of trouble coordinating these dual payload deals such that neither party suffers too much non-revenue-producing wait time. Usually, one payload winds up waiting on the other to a significant degree. So the loss of on-orbit revenue due to waits is hardly an exclusive problem for SpaceX.

            The ULA Atlas V is more expensive than even the Ariane 5 and has a much smaller payload capability to GEO in basic (no strap-on solid boosters) trim. Each solid booster added to an Atlas V seems to raise the mission price by at least $10 million. To match the maximum performance of the newly operational Falcon 9 Full Thrust model, an Atlas V would need at least one strap-on solid booster.

            Viasat changed from a Falcon Heavy to an expensive dedicated Ariane 5 mission only after SpaceX moved the Falcon Heavy’s projected first test flight back another six months. This pushed back all the other Falcon Heavy missions thus far manifested – Viasat’s was one of the earliest such missions booked – and made even the big price jump between FH and a dedicated Ariane 5 worth it to avoid lost on-orbit revenue from their very big, heavy and high-bandwidth satellite. Unless there are further significant delays in the debut of the Falcon Heavy, there seem no other SpaceX clients likely to be in a comparable economic squeeze. Falcon 9’s are actually being launched, so most of SpaceX’s manifest seems unlikely to produce any defections.

        • duheagle says:
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          I’ll echo chriswinter. What other reliable vehicles?

          I do disagree with chriswinter, though, that the Russian vehicles qualify as reliable.

          The Japanese H2’s are reliable, but pricey and in only limited production. The Ariane 5 is reliable but it’s also pricey and production-limited. The Chinese? Their reliability seems good, but they’ve already said they can’t beat SpaceX on price. ULA? Also very reliable, but, again, pricey and production-limited. The Indians? The PSLV is terrific, but can’t put comsats in GEO. The GSLV isn’t in regular service yet.

          In all the sniping at SpaceX’s allegedly restive customer base the fact that no stampede for the exits is evident tends to get repeatedly overlooked. The biggest reason is probably that there really aren’t many exits. Satellite makers/owners can sit tight with SpaceX – which is aggressively working to ramp up both production and launch cadence – or try booking a mission on some other launcher. The reason almost none have gone this route is that there really aren’t any other launchers that will get those birds up any faster. The older launch service providers are solidly booked for most of the next two years or more. I think most of SpaceX’s customers, even if they are privately vexed by delays, understand that switching horses is only likely to delay them still more as they go to the end of someone else’s queue.

          • Tannia Ling says:
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            I agree that the other providers are booked solid. However, we have already seen ViaSat switch over. I expect we will see more soon. I predict that if the launch rate doesn’t pick up in the next 3-4 months we will see operators with 2017 launches start to look for alternatives. I would especially expect SES to move some birds, since they currently have 4 manifested with SpaceX that is simply too much exposure. Smaller operators with 2016/17 launches like Bulsat are probably sweating the lack of revenue, but as you stated, don’t have a choice any more. I could see Koreasat and Hispasat also looking for an alternative.
            Most of these operators were smart enough to require the satellite be compatible with a variety of launch vehicles, so the satellite won’t be an issue. If I was Ariane, I would be looking like crazy at ways to add two or three more rockets to my production schedule.

          • duheagle says:
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            The Viasat defection was from the yet-to-fly Falcon Heavy. Another FH customer has bought a Proton option from ILS, but still intends to use the FH if it’s ready by the time they need it. SpaceX has lost no Falcon 9 business. It’s true that SpaceX needs to step up its launch cadence, but by mid-year – 90 days or so – we should have a better idea of whether or not it’s likely to make the recently stated goal of getting 18 missions off the ground this calendar year. I don’t think any of the clients with Falcon 9 missions are going to geek in the interim.

    • ThomasLMatula says:
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      He is probably thinking based on going to Mars the NASA way. It will cost Elon Musk a lot less to do so, which means he will need a lot less money for it.

  4. TheBrett says:
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    It would be nice if he got to Mars in the 2020s, although I think that would probably bust his budget (he’s a multi-billionaire, but he’s not so rich that he could casually spend billions of dollars on a not-for-profit mission). But I’ll be happy if he gets launch costs way down and leads to a reform of launch contracting.

    • Ball Peen Hammer ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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      Don’t forget that a significant part of Musk’s worth is his stock in SpaceX, Tesla and Solar City. I can’t imagine how selling off SpaceX, for example to have the money to go to Mars would be at all helpful in his goal of getting to Mars.

      • Todd Austin says:
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        That’s clearly the stock he’d sell last, and then, preferably, to a partner who wanted to fund his work. Google has effectively already done a bit of that by sinking $900 million into SpaceX in exchange for stock.

  5. BeanCounterFromDownUnder says:
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    Interesting the contradictions on display here with Dr Tyson’s comments.
    “I’m not good at predicting the future …” So he goes ahead and very specifically does just that with SpaceX.
    He points out the motivation behind the Moon programs, the high risk nature of doing something first and then promptly explains that gov’ts are going to open up BEO with their “long” view failing entirely to recognise the all to clear nature of current politics and almost fanatical risk-aversion of NASA all the while ignoring the fact that say SpaceX and BO have both the motivation, higher risk acceptance and funding necessary to do what only governments previously did.
    He talks of failure to recognise product synergies while failing to recognise what SpaceX has been doing all along.
    All in all Dr Tyson’s long on talk and short on logic. Hopefully the adage any publicity is good publicity holds in his case.
    Cheers

  6. ed2291 says:
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    Bill Nye and Tyson and the Planetary Society cannot get beyond the government as the only means of space exploration. The government may well be the best choice for space exploration, but if NASA keeps playing the games it has played since 1973 then it is quite possible private enterprise or another government such as China might get there first.

  7. Anonymous says:
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    Don’t underestimate astrophysicists. They will persuade the voters to believe sending humans to Mars will damage the ecosystem of the planet and jeopardize the science of finding extraterrestrial life on Mars. They can even get laws passed to ban private exploration of Mars. When they say it won’t happen, they can actually mean it.

    • ThomasLMatula says:
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      That is the real danger from folks like Dr. Tyson, turning Mars into a private preserve for NASA and its scientists.

      The recent Space Resources act that only allows private ownership of abotic resources, basically making biological prospecting in space illegal, shows there is a desire to keep the search for ET an activity restricted to governments.

      Imagine the horror of folks like Dr. Tyson if a private spacecraft landed on Mars, found life, and patented its DNA 🙂

      • Anonymous says:
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        Dr. Tyson is not affiliated with NASA and there is no reason he wants to keep the job to NASA. He probably just wants scientists like himself to be in control of anything related to space. This position is not completely without merit, especially when you have people like Elon Musk talking about using nuclear weapons to change the Mars atmosphere, you do want some sane people to oversee the exploration process. However, the way Dr. Tyson talk about it really make it sounds like power grab.

        • ThomasLMatula says:
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          I never said Dr. Tyson worked for NASA, but he is definitely a fellow traveler with the NASA Mars community, you only have to look at his statements to see that.

          In terms of Elon Musk using nuclear devices on Mars, the Comprehensive Test Treaty the U.S. is party to prohibits the use of nuclear devices (i.e. weapons), in space, in the atmosphere and in the ocean, so that is already illegal.

          As for space scientists being in control of the exploration of space, that is one of the factors that has produced the current state of affairs in terms of space policy, the selection of NASA goals and missions based on their scientific merit instead of their value in enabling the exploration and development of space. It is the modern equivalent of putting paleontologists in control of the exploration of the American west in the 1800’s. If that had been the case most of it would still be wilderness, fulfilling President Jefferson’s prediction that it would take 600 years to settle it.

          I have no problem with NASA doing science missions, just as it made sense to include scientists on the government funded western mapping surveys. But when you make that the prime mission, not an simple auxiliary one, you shouldn’t be surprised at the results.

          • Anonymous says:
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            Well, I won’t argue with you about the semantics but when Dr. Tyson talked about NASA he could simply mean government funded space research, NASA is not the only agency in the space business.

            Using nuclear device on mars is not illegal under the comprehensive test treaty because it is not “testing” but actual application. The bombs will not be used on earth, and mars is technically not space (need to look up on that). We need a new law or Elon can just do whatever he wants as long as he can get himself a nuclear bomb to play with.

            Forgive my ignorance but I am not aware paleontologists were put in control of the exploration of the American west in the 1800’s. Space policy in this country has never been controlled by scientists, though they probably very much like so, but by politicians. Scientists can only lobby or advice and that’s it. If the politicians really want mars mission to happen, there is nothing to stop them. It is not happening. I think many scientists probably want the same kind of adviser role in Elon’s Mars mission, but Elon probably think of himself scientist enough and need no advice from anyone else. That probably annoyed some.

          • ThomasLMatula says:
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            I posted a link to the treaty in a post above and it doesn’t make the fine distinctions between tests and operational explosions on space or a planet’s surface. It simply makes all nuclear explosions illegal anywhere and holds nations responsible for making sure their nationals don’t play with nuclear bombs.

            Yes, it probably goes overboard given their potential engineering uses in space, but that is the wording.

            BTW if you are wondering about how nuclear explosions may be used in NEO defense, legally they aren’t allowed unless a nations claims it was defending itself under Article 51 of the UN Charter. But the problem with that is there is no opportunity to test them on NEOs until they are needed. But then space was not really on the minds of the diplomats writing the treaty.

            Paleontologists weren’t which is why it was settled so quickly. They were just allowed to tag along on the survey missions, just as Charles Darwin was on HMS Beagle, or called in if strange fossils were found as at Como Buff.

            In terms of Elon Musk thinking himself scientist enough for Mars, keep in mind that he is not going to Mars for the benefit of science, but to create a back up to human civilization. So the role of “scientists” in his expeditions would be about the same as their role in building the Transcontinental Railroad, technicians you go to for specific advice, such as how to make a steel rail stronger or deal with loose soil. So its unlikely he would have a science advisory committee, or even science goals like NASA has and that is probably what Dr. Tyson is unhappy about.

            Also, just a history note, but space policy basically started out with the IGY and that was run by scientists. It is why space is still seen today as being in the realm of science policy.

          • Bulldog says:
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            Don’t forget, there is an RTG on the Curiosity rover. Some forms of nuclear may be acceptable.

          • ThomasLMatula says:
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            RTG are driven by the heat of radioactive decay in a controlled fashion, just as nuclear reactors are controlled reactions. Neither is considered a nuclear explosion.

          • fcrary says:
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            I’m not sure I want to get into this, but I don’t think the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty prohibits the use of nuclear weapons in space. Specifically, I think it bans the _testing_ of nuclear weapons in space. If, for example, I wanted to use one as an energy source for a seismic measurement (as geophysicists used to do with high explosives), that would technically be an operational use, not a test. And I’m also sure the judge and jury would get a laugh out of this defence.

          • ThomasLMatula says:
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            Actually it is very clear 🙂

            https://www.ctbto.org/the-t

            Article 1
            BASIC OBLIGATIONS

            1. Each State Party undertakes not to carry out any nuclear weapon test explosion or any other nuclear explosion, and to prohibit and prevent any such nuclear explosion at any place under its jurisdiction or control.

            2. Each State Party undertakes, furthermore, to refrain from causing, encouraging, or in any way participating in the carrying out of any nuclear weapon test explosion or any other nuclear explosion.

            An operation nuclear explosion is still a nuclear explosion 🙂

            And Article 3.1 basically holds nations responsible for seeing their nationals don’t set off any nuclear explosions or play with nuclear bombs 🙂

            Yes, this will be a problem if we wish to build Orion style starships driven by nuclear explosions, they will need an amendment to the treaty to be legal.

          • Tannia Ling says:
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            Could you please tell me how exploration of Mars can be anything else than scientific? What do you perceive the financial gain will be? How is the analogy of the American West to Mars valid?

          • ThomasLMatula says:
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            I guess you haven’t read Dr. Robert Zubrin’s book. 🙂

            Exploration as science is only a very recent development, really the voyage of HMS Challenger being a good starting point. For the bulk of human history exploration has been for financial and personal gain, finding new lands to settle, new resources to develop. Who cares about science if you are interested in just developing your space settlement? What “science” that will be done will be practical engineering, as in the Martian, to survive. No one will care about looking for life or the history of the place a billion years before unless it is relevant to their survival now.

            Sadly many scientists raised in the entitlement era of big science following WWII have forgotten its roots and why science emerged as a field of study.

            So yes, their are analogies to the American west since it is a new frontier for Americans to explore and develop like the American west. The gain will be the ability to live the lifestyle the pioneers wish to live, the same as it is on any frontier. Financial gains will likely follow from lifestyle gains as they identify local resources to sell.

          • Gary Eichelberger says:
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            Ludicrous. Living off the land or on minimal provisions was relatively easy and cheap for the pioneers, so much so that the “everyday person” (if made of considerable fortitude and fiber, it turned out) could do it. You didnt need to be a scientist or a millionaire. No Advanced degrees. The fact is, No such equivalency exists in pioneering a distant planet. It is enormously expensive and unspeakably difficult under even remotely conceivable technologies. The “lifestyle” of life on Mars will be nothing to seek out in terms of freedoms or real benefits for at least several hundred years into such colonization. It promises to be a dreary grind, beyond the pure scientific interest, that makes the American westward thrust look like a picnic. Even modestly lenghty stays on ISS are noted for being described as filled with tedium. Humans wre in no way even remotely prepared for the reality of Mars travel, much less Mars colonization.

          • duheagle says:
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            In light of my recent comment to fcrary, above, I find it a bit ironic that your avatar looks so much like a stereotypical Mormon missionary.

          • ThomasLMatula says:
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            Gary,

            Not so to the pioneers, who were as technically advanced for their day as you are for today’s world. Do you really think a generation raised on smart phones won’t be able to handle the technology required for a basic Mars settlement? Think about it. You could take the leading scientists of the 19th Century, hand them an iPhone, and they wouldn’t have a clue as to what it is or how to work it, something your average 7 year old does without thinking now. It won’t be the technical challenge you think it is. For that matter you could probably put those same 19th Century scientists on a western homestead and they wouldn’t have a clue on how to make it work.

            No, in terms of Mars settlers, scientists would probably be the last folks you would want to send to burden a Mars settlement with. Jamestown almost failed because the settlers were mostly “Enlighten English Gentlemen” with few practical skills or abilities. They had no idea how to farm the land or fish, so they starved. It was only when they started sending indentured workers from the working class and farmers, often illiterate, that it made the progress needed to succeed. They actually knew how to do the work needed.

            When Elon Musk selects his space settlers he will hopefully learn from history and send mostly technicians and practical engineers used to getting their hands dirty working rather than selecting any scientists who will be more interested in searching for life than fixing the leaky plumbing or replacing the air filters. Yes, scientists will eventually make it to Mars in the private space exploration model, but only after there is a well established infrastructure to support them. But unless they are practical technicians they will be just a burden when that infrastructure is being built.

            As for the boredom of the ISS. What do you expect, given there isn’t
            anything to do but stay busy fixing it. Comparing the life of an
            astronaut on the ISS to a Mars pioneer is like comparing the life of
            someone working in a 19th Century sweat shop to a western pioneer. One
            is merely earning a salary for doing work assigned versus an individual
            being in charge of their life with the ability to make it as good or bad
            as their abilities and drive allow.

          • fcrary says:
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            Science and financial gain are not the only options. Many places (including the American West) were settled by people who would simply did not want to stay where they were. There have been a huge number of reasons. Science hasn’t been a significant ones; money has been only one of many significant ones.

          • duheagle says:
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            True. That’s one of the few things that I found reasonably credible about the future portrayed in The Expanse – the big Mormon presence and their dedication to ginning up interstellar colonization for religious reasons.

          • Tannia Ling says:
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            I think that “did not want to stay where they were” almost always equated to “hoping to improve their lot in life” which is usually directly tied to improved financial conditions. Yes, there were a small handful of colonists (Pilgrims, Mormons) escaping religious prosecution, but I think that was the minority. And the initial explorers were all in it for the money

          • fcrary says:
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            I think, if you look at the history of North American colonization (both by Europa and of the west by the United States and the Dominion of Canada), you’ll find plenty of examples of non-financial and non-religious motives. Avoiding a girlfriend’s very angry father and brothers; avoiding arrest for one crime or another; having to leave after fighting on the losing side of a civil war; etc. All would count as “improv[ing] their lot in life” but money wasn’t involved.

          • duheagle says:
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            I’ll refer you to my comment a little further up which posits Mars as a major future source of Argon as reaction mass for the electric propulsion systems likely to dominate future transport within the Solar System.

            Not a lot of people will be needed in situ to make this come true, though. And probably none needed for long-term habitation on the Martian surface. Short-term drop-in visits from the rotating orbital habitats we’ll build out of Deimos and Phobos will serve to handle the occasional problem that overwhelms the maintenance bots.

  8. Wayne Martin says:
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    I am a fan of Neil but he is really starting to sound like some jealous young child!

    He bolsters his opinions yet backs down from debating anyone… i.e. Alan Stern and Pluto!

    Hmmmmm me Think He “Neil” doth thou protest to Much…

    Be careful about what you ask for…

    Although I would Love to see him debate Elon!

    He’d be dust but in a few seconds!

    • Paul451 says:
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      The irony that you follow “starting to sound like some jealous young child” with a reference to Stern – a guy acting like a baby whose candy was taken away.

      • Wayne Martin says:
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        That’s true! It was painful to watch Alan Stern during the NASA Pluto press conference! Fairly self absorbed… and actually when I see people like Alan challenging Neil or Robert Zurbrin attacking Franklin Chang Diaz and challenging him to a debate… it definitely screams of deeper insecurities!

        Although I have to say… when someone is called out in the media with the word delusional… and of course Neil is referring to people who think SpaceX will be taking us to Mars… Well… not to cool….

        In the End No one can predict the future with any certainty… but if Elon’s Mars architecture proves to be revolutionary and affordable then is it the enabling idea or the financial backing that gets us to Mars?

        Neil is on a very slippery slope indeed!…

  9. buzzlighting says:
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    Neil deGrasse Tyson is no rocket scientist. No experience in building
    rockets,engines,capsules and fly them into space and recover them by land or sea. SpaceX has this kind of Space experience , so Neil Tyson lack this knowledge make him look like Idiot fool making this stupid statement about SpaceX doesn’t apply them. The Elon Musk dream to setup human colony on Mars insure human species doesn’t go extinct if something bad happens to Earth. SpaceX is not publicly traded stock company right now closed to common stock share holder and only open to private investment like Draper Fisher Jurvetson partner group,google and fidelity mutual fund thus he does not have to answer to shareholder on a 3 month basis. So Neil Tyson analogy of a Space Corporation simply doesn’t fit the SpaceX model perfectly at all because of two factors like setup human colony on mars save human species and Elon Musk he majors share holder of SpaceX. Thus Neil Tyson argument statement are so weak that a lot people never going to believe him to be true.

    • Tannia Ling says:
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      For that matter, most of SpaceX’s groupies are not rocket scientists either.
      I do wonder how many of those investors you list “DFJ, Google, and Fidelity” are interested in setting up a colony on Mars? As a space aficionado, I would love to see SpaceX set one up – as an investor with Fidelity I would consider that gross mismanagement of my funds.

      • kcowing says:
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        But SpaceX rocket scientists are rocket scientists.

        • Michael Spencer says:
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          Yep. And contrary to what lots of folks think, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to make policy decisions.

      • Todd Austin says:
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        Fidelity owns ~1% of SpaceX and has spread it across half a dozen funds. They recently stated the estimated value of their holdings, which had gone up a very healthy chunk since acquisition (sorry I forget the specific numbers). As SpaceX never makes a secret of its ultimate goal, it would seem that aiming for Mars is, at least for now, quite a profitable enterprise.

  10. orbital_mechanic says:
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    I think he doth protest too much. Who is really delusional?

  11. Donald Barker says:
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    So what is wrong with a healthy dose of pessimism? Everything in life is probability and statistics, and each of us has a little different grasp on understanding them. What each of us needs to do is to get the “ego” out of the discussion.

    • Tannia Ling says:
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      “So what is wrong with a healthy dose of realism?” would be more appropriate, I think.

      • duheagle says:
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        I agree. The difficulty is in deciding of what realism consists. What a life-long left-statist like Dr. Tyson would regard as “realism” seems to include a great deal that people such as myself, who don’t share Dr. Tyson’s politics or basic worldview, regard as arrant nonsense.

      • Gary Eichelberger says:
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        Realism only flourishes hand-in-hand with an abundance of critical thinking.

  12. Tannia Ling says:
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    I couldn’t agree more! Let’s look at the three reasons Tyson gives:
    “One, it is very expensive. Two, it is very dangerous to do it first. Three, there is essentially no return on that investment that you’ve put in for having done it first.” Keith’s attack on Tyson is purely personal, without any meat to back it up. So here are some thoughts on why Tyson is right on, if Keith wants to disagree, then he should come up with some counter reasons!
    1) Even SpaceX hasn’t significantly dropped the flight of spaceflight. In fact, they were the MOST EXPENSIVE contender in CRS2. We don’t know exactly why they were more expensive but clearly if they had some magic sauce to make things much cheaper they would have leveraged it more heavily. Even if we give SpaceX the benefit of the doubt and assume that they can launch anything 20% cheaper than the competition, it still makes it very, very expensive to go to Mars, on pure launch costs alone.
    2) The danger part may be possible to avoid if you have a purely commercial enterprise with willing individuals – See Mars One.
    3) The return on investment is the big one for me. Musk wants to establish a colony for the “preservation of the species”. Valiant effort, but how do you fund it. You may be able to convince me that Musk has enough money to send a quick exploration trip to Mars (doubt it) but to establish a colony? How do you fund that? How do you make the colony self sustaining? When the European explorers of the 1500s and 1600s were spreading out, they always were looking to make money. The early colonies survived on exports of natural resources until they became self sufficient tens if not hundreds of years later.
    There is the fourth issue that Tyson didn’t bring up at all – flight rate, flight rate, flight rate. When and if SpaceX can start living up to its commitments, then maybe, just maybe, I will think they are credible at getting to Mars. Let me be clear, I think that SpaceX has achieved great things, and has certainly got the whole industry to rethink the way they do business. But Musk cannot walk on water and SpaceX is still bound by the same physics and economics as the rest of the world.

    • ThomasLMatula says:
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      You are confusing the price SpaceX quotes with its costs. Yes, Elon Musk needs money to settle Mars. And he will get it by good old profit maximization, pricing his services as high as he is able to in order to maximize his profit margins.

      BTW that is why the government went to cost plus contracts in World War II, because they felt firms would make “excessive” profits on fix priced ones as they did in World War I.

      • Tannia Ling says:
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        Very fair point. Without insight into SpaceX’s finances it is all speculation, of course, but my gut tells me that their margins on CRS will go primarily to cover their costs of the past 10 years, and not much will be left for Mars exploration.

        • duheagle says:
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          I guess our respective guts will have to agree to disagree.

          I could, I suppose, go through the evidence and reasoning behind my contention that a complete satellite launch version of the Falcon 9 costs SpaceX only about $15 million to produce, but I’ve already done that a number of times in other threads on this forum and on others and it’s late and I respectfully decline. Search my other comments on this site if you’re curious.

          I’ll simply note that, per Occam’s Razor, the simplest explanation for why SpaceX hasn’t gone, and isn’t going, broke as everyone in legacy space seems to feel is inevitable is because SpaceX actually can build rockets for sums the other rocket makers would regard as barely more than rounding errors and still be the low-cost provider even after factoring in gross margins of 300+ percent.

          Many have looked for secret billions in either government or venture capital funds – or both – as alternative explanations for how SpaceX can seemingly continue to do the Indian Rope Trick year after year. They’ve uniformly come up empty, but they keep looking because they all just know there’s got to be something there. Having already cited William of Occam, a real Englishman, I’ll cite here a fictional one, Sherlock Holmes: “When you have eliminated the impossible, then whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”

    • duheagle says:
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      You are misinformed with respect to CRS 2. NASA didn’t say SpaceX was the most expensive provider, period, because they aren’t. Overall, they’re still far and away the least expensive, as they are for CRS 1. What NASA did say was that SpaceX was the most expensive provider based on the only metric that was applicable to all competitors, which is delivery of pressurized cargo.

      This metric favors Orbital-ATK most heavily as their vehicle provides 100% pressurized cargo space. Sierra-Nevada’s Cargo Dream Chaser provides mostly pressurized cargo capability. SpaceX’s Dragon design is biased toward transport of unpressurized cargo, which was entirely ignored in the NASA metric. It’s the only cargo vehicle that can carry big, vacuum-tolerant things like the new Commercial Crew docking adapters and the Bigelow BEAM module. Thus, the Dragon is much more essential to ongoing ISS operations than the vehicles of the other CRS 2 contractees. And yet SpaceX got gigged for this by the, uh, eccentric metric NASA elected to use.

      There are other cost criteria that could have been computed – $/kg. of total cargo mass or $/kg. of returned cargo mass, for example, but the first would heavily favor SpaceX and the second would exclude Cygnus as it can’t return anything.

      So, be clear. SpaceX is the low cost provider of access to space. The only other outfit that might challenge SpaceX’s claim to that title by the time the first Mars Colonial Transport is loading is Blue Origin. No national space agency, NASA especially, is going to be any competition at all on the cost front.

      Thus, going to Mars would certainly be very expensive for NASA to do in their time-honored fashion, especially if SLS/Orion is the basis of the expedition transport. Going to Mars would still be expensive for SpaceX, but easily at least an order of magnitude cheaper than it will be for NASA. As the late Peter Lorre’s character in Casablanca quipped about the price of letters of transit, “I found myself much more reasonable.” Elon Musk will be able to say the same.

      • Tannia Ling says:
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        If SpaceX’s CRS2 contract was that cost efficient, then NASA would not have rushed to put in an order for 8+ launches under CRS1. The truth is that the largest single use for CRS missions is pressurized cargo, and that is why NASA put the most emphasis on that metric. Orbital ATK offered a fully unpressurized option, which NASA has also selected.
        As for costs to Mars, even the most generous estimates of SpaceX’s launch costs are that they are only 20% cheaper than the competition. That is a far cry from “an order of magnitude”. Mind you I think SLS/Orion is a joke, and I have no delusions that NASA can do anything cheaply. But SpaceX cannot make magic either. At the end of the day the rocket equation applies to them as much as to anyone else.

        • duheagle says:
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          I don’t think NASA rushed to do anything. The CRS 1 contracts had already been extended once into 2017. They needed to be extended again because CRS 2 missions don’t start until late 2019. There was a calendar gap to fill.

          Also, if SpaceX is not the low-cost provider, then why did NASA keep increasing the fraction of CRS 1 missions awarded to them? The original contract gave SpaceX 60% of the missions. As of the most recent contract extension, SpaceX will have 67% of the missions.

          NASA has plainly stated that they used the metric they did because it was the only one that included capabilities common to all competitors. No need to speculate or make stuff up.

          I’m not able to locate any source for your assertion that an unpressurized Cygnus will be part of the CRS 2 mix. If you have a link to such, I would be interested in looking at it. All reportage on the CRS 2 contracts I’ve been able to run down either say nothing in detail about the Cygnuses that will fly such missions or they reference only the Enhanced Cygnus, which flew on the two Atlas V missions, but which is just a lengthened version of the standard Cygnus and, like it, is 100% a pressurized container.

          This is not to say that Orbital-ATK can’t do a lot of other things based on Cygnus. Orbital is pitching Cygnus as the basis for a deep space habitat module for NASA’s Journey to Mars, for example. I have also found written references to proposed, but never built, versions of Cygnus that were fully unpressurized or which included a re-entry vehicle that could return downmass from ISS.

          I’ve even found pictures of some other concepts including one with a berthing hatch at each end, another with a second berthing hatch in its side and one with an internal bulkhead that separates pressurized and unpressurized zones within the basic “tin can” hull.

          I’m not sure how some of these would work with respect to ISS. None are shown with a propulsion/service module attached, for instance. At least two of these concepts would appear to need to provide some way to remove Cygnus’s service/propulsion module from one end in order to expose, respectively, a second berthing hatch or an unpressurized “trunk” area. I would think this would be true even for a completely unpressurized Cygnus that used its berthing fitment merely as an attachment point and not as an access hatch. Berthing is already pretty time-consuming and complicated without having to throw in partial disassembly of the cargo vessel, then reassembly before departure. Perhaps these concepts were rejected by NASA for imposing too much additional work burden on the ISS crew?

          It might also be that some of these concepts date from when ISS was still under construction and aren’t related to the COTS/CRS mission at all. Cygnus is, I am given to understand, a derivative of the multi-purpose cargo modules that used to ride to orbit in the Shuttle cargo bay. Perhaps these pictures are of never-built variants of these pre-Cygnus “tin can” modules?

          Finally, as Dr.Matula also reminds, don’t confuse what it will cost SpaceX to get to Mars with what they might charge as the price of such a mission to others – NASA particularly. Cost is not a variable in the rocket equation. The physics of rocketry imposes no hard and fast lower limit on how little it can cost to build an orbit-capable launch vehicle.

          It is understandable that people at both NASA and the legacy contractor firms would be incredulous that SpaceX, or anyone else, could build good rockets for so much less than the princely sums they have long accepted as the next thing to a law of nature in their universe. They are, nonetheless, quite wrong in this belief. Unless you are one of these people, I don’t see why you should seem so invested in their parochial point of view.

          • Tannia Ling says:
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            In terms of my parochial point of view – I build satellites, not rockets. It is in my (and my customer’s) interest to get the lowest possible launch costs. I would love nothing more than to be told in two years I was totally wrong. I’ve been saying for the past three years that SpaceX needed to update their flight rate to prove themselves. In 2014 they finally started increasing the flight rate, and then in 2015 they had an accident. If they can at least launch 10 this year, I will increase my optimism. If they reach their advertised 17, I will be blown away.

            Your quote that the “princely sums” is the next thing to a “law of nature” sums it nicely for me. I think ULA is very cost ineffective, but Arianne, Orbital ATK, Soyuz are all in the same domain, and I think it is exactly because of the laws of nature. Kinetic Energy, Newton, and the rocket equation are the same for everyone and significantly reduce your solution space and therefore the room you have to innovate and save costs.

            As for Orbital ATK’s unpressurized option. From the source selection document: “[Orbital ATK offers] a comprehensive set of capabilities at the maximum requested SOW pressurized and unpressurized cargo upmass … Orbital’s proposal offers three standard missions. Two missions provide pressurized cargo delivery and disposal, and one provides unpressurized cargo delivery and disposal”.

            Finally NASA awarded SpaceX CRS1 missions exactly because it IS the low cost provider within that contracting vehicle. SpaceX CRS1 is the cheapest option for upmass for NASA. SpaceX CRS2 is the most expensive option for upmass for NASA. So my point stands. The cynic in me says that SpaceX is trying to recoup CRS1 losses with CRS2. The fan in me says that SpaceX increased its price point as high as the market would bare to increase margins that can be reinvested.

          • duheagle says:
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            Thanks for the info about Orbital’s unpressurized cargo option. Would still like to know what that version of Cygnus is supposed to look like, whether it needs a detachable service/propulsion module and what modifications to the current berthing process would be needed. It would also be good to know if it can accommodate really big stuff that won’t fit through a berthing hatch like Dragon’s trunk can. I don’t expect you, personally, to have access to any of the answers to these questions, mind you, I just wanted to get them out there.

            Didn’t know you were in the satellite biz. That – perhaps – explains a lot about the nature of your assumptions.

            A long time ago, I knew a lady industrial engineer who worked for Hughes (now Boeing). She spent over a decade fruitlessly banging her head against the wall of apparently complete incomprehension on the part of her management that there were such things as standard platforms, assembly lines and factory automation out there in the world. It had been so long, by then, since Hughes had actually mass produced aircraft, that there was, it seems, no one left “upstairs” with any memory of those times. The satellites of that time (the 80’s) were all artisanal artifacts involving almost exclusively human touch labor to build. Duesenbergs, not Fords.

            Elon Musk doesn’t come from a world of artisanal production, he’s in the car business. He employs automated production processes where legacy aerospace tends to just throw a lot of bodies into the mix. That’s one of the reasons he can already build more cores a year than ULA can and will soon be able to build more cores a year than the entire rest of the legacy launch industry put together. Same thing with engine production.

            Believing that the cost structures of legacy producers are inevitable is both self-flattering, if you’re one of said producers, and self-limiting as you are unlikely to entertain the notion that any other way is possible absent an existence proof from outside “The Club.” SpaceX is that existence proof, but there are still plenty of people looking for “the trick” in all the wrong places.

            So, respectfully, no, SpaceX CRS 2 is not the high-cost provider. Its CRS 2 missions will cost about the same as its CRS 1 missions. On a $/total delivered kg. basis they may even be cheaper as the current Falcon 9 has a better throw weight and the later Dragon 2-ish versions of Cargo Dragon will have bigger unpressurized trunks. SpaceX has no need to “recoup losses” from CRS 1 with CRS 2 revenue as there were no CRS 1 losses to recoup.

        • Michael Spencer says:
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          There’s that “20%” assertion again. It’s been disassembled in other threads.

          • Tannia Ling says:
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            I’m basing it on what my customers are getting quoted when they directly approach SpaceX for a launch quote. I wish I could share it publically, to back up my statements; unfortunately I can’t and I realize that reduces my credibility.

  13. mfwright says:
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    I think everyone just doesn’t get it. One, we are not going to land a man on Mars for a very, very, very long time. Everyone been yappin’ about “we will have humans on Mars in 20 years” for past 50 years! One, NASA will never get amount of funding needed. Two, there is no sound business reason to put humans on Mars. Three, we are following outdated “manifest destiny” of settling on Mars when it is a cold, dry, almost zero pressure place but we romanticize of it because it is so far away (set it as a goal but have some other smucks allocate real money for hardware to get us there). Nobody talks about the Moon (except Wingo and Spudis) because if they do, then someone needs to come up with real money now (but nobody wants to do that).

    However, lowering costs to LEO is something that first must be done as affordable access is the Grand Challenge. SpaceX has made strides towards that, and other commercial space have developed some interesting stuff. Big question is can it scale up to industrial size? Can chemical rocket technology besides LH2/LOX be able to deliver beyond earth space to cislunar space?

    • Neil.Verea says:
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      Your first statement summarizes the central issue. Your second and third provide the evidence to close the deal.

    • Chuck_Divine says:
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      Let me follow up with a few more points.

      First, let me state that I strongly support free enterprise for the exploration and development of space and have since I got interested in this kind of stuff back in the 1970s.

      That said, we have many problems to solve.

      Currently it will take months at least to get humans to Mars. Humans who have spent months on ISS come back with significant health problems.

      Second, we have yet to establish an independent biosphere. Yes, some fine people are working on that. But that hasn’t been developed yet. Until we do that we can’t really live anyplace but Earth. Mars has almost no atmosphere. It has no life like we need to live. It is also lacking a geomagnetic sphere to protect life from solar flares etec.

      Now let me bring up another billionaire with, shall we say, some interest in space. Richard Branson became a billionaire via the creation of companies like Virgin Records and Virgin Airlines. One of his more recent creations is Virgin Galactic. What is Virgin Galactic trying to do? Offer brief jaunts into space for rich customers. Think send them up there for a few minutes — not month long trips to Mars. The government did something like that decades ago with the X-15 project. Burt Rutan and Scaled Composites managed to do that with Space Ship One back in 2004. Back then we were promised space tourism in three years. That hasn’t happened yet. Virgin Galactic seems to have some problems. I expect they will eventually succeed.

      Oh — some of us are advocating various reforms in STEM fields in general to make them better able to succeed at whatever work they are doing and to bring young people into these fields. A few of us are even talking about STEAM — with the A standing for the Arts.

      Enough for now.

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        well, with respect to your comments on STEAM: this won’t happen, at least not soon, and that is because the inherent value of education has been snuffed by the monetization of college degrees and further degraded by the enormous costs now passed to students as they look for those degrees.

    • Tannia Ling says:
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      You have put it much more eloquently than I could. I would add one thing to your comment about Mars: It is cold, dry, almost zero pressure, and has no economic resources of a value to earth.
      Colonization/Manifest Destiny only works if you have goods to trade with the motherland while you become self-sustaining. What will Martian colonists trade for replacements when their air purifier breaks, or their master computer motherboard shorts out? The technology required to keep a human alive on Mars is much more advanced than the technology required to keep that same human alive in the uncolonized wild west. If my cast iron stove broke, I could make do with a fire pit for cooking until I collected enough pelts to trade for a new stove. I don’t see an equivalent trade routine for Mars.

      • duheagle says:
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        Mr. Musk’s thus-far articulated vision is really of Mars as a kind of extra-terrestrial Del Webb/Sun City-type retirement community. He has repeatedly said that he envisions his typical colonist as a late-middle-aged retiree who converts most or all of his Earth-based asset portfolio into cash and puts that toward buying passage to Mars and a place to live once there.

        Food, clothing and other staple necessities would, presumably, be locally manufactured so, except initially, there wouldn’t be much necessity for “trade” and most of that would be imports. You start by importing people and cash and the physical plant needed to build both more physical plant and more consumer necessities and let the local economy expand from there without more than modest additional external inputs – other than more people and cash, that is.

        One can’t, for example, currently liquidate the actuarial present value of future Social Security payments and take that with you, so government pension checks would presumably be the basis for the on-going purchasing power Musk’s colonist-retirees would have in the local economy. The model is one of a quasi-perpetual economic sink, not a trade-dependent economy. This model might work for a time. It could even work for quite a long time if the total population size reaches some modest equilibrium level and more or less stays there.

        I think the attractions of Mars simply as a place to be, long term, will probably not be able to compete with life in free space habitats for the average person, especially for retirees. Martian surface conditions are not, for instance, terribly conducive to the construction of golf courses. Neither, to be fair, are free space habitats unless they are built to an O’Neillian scale. But doing so is at least possible, whereas the surface of Mars is likely to stay a very rough and inhospitable place for a very long time.

        • Tannia Ling says:
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          I think I agree with the general model you describe, but disagree that there will ever be enough interest to sustain it.
          I’m a space geek, and have always been. I would love to see Red Mars type colonies. Without some massive, fundamental technology breakthroughs, I don’t see it happening any time soon.

          • duheagle says:
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            Yeah, I think Musk’s model is maybe doable on a small scale, but not on the scale he intends. And it’s not really sustainable even at a small scale without some actual economic sustainability at some point.

            There may always be small numbers of cross-grained/masochistic retirees wanting to “pioneer” on Mars, but I think, long-term, they will be vastly outnumbered by people who’d much rather live in a nice, 1G, dust-free rotating habitat in free space.

            Mars has a potential economic future as a part of the coming story of human expansion into the Solar system, but, as noted in my previous comments above, a place for mass human habitation is not that role.

            And, yeah, it’s too bad none of the classic sci-fi visions of Mars colonization are ever likely to come to pass. I haven’t read any of Robinson’s stuff but I feel a decided pang of melancholy nostalgia for the never-was-or-will-be Mars of Heinlein’s Red Planet and other works.

    • ThomasLMatula says:
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      NASA maybe won’t, but I wouldn’t count out entrepreneurs like Elon Musk. Just look at the case of the human genome, it took Craig Venter a fraction of the time, and money to sequence the human genome as it was taking the government scientists to do it, likely because the government scientists spent most of their time in planning meetings and developing viewgraphs than working on it, just as with “Journey to Mars” or what ever its new name will be next year 🙂

      • Gary Eichelberger says:
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        Complete non sequitar. One does not equate to the other. There is no viable economic or financial model that supports what you envision other than “billionaire x” coughs up the money to make it happen. It is like the cartoon of the scientists with a chalkboard full of equations with one skeptic pointing out that one of the intermediate steps buried in the middle reads “and then a miracle occurs” This dreamy approach underestimates what it really will cost and moreoever the key question, “what comes next?” And how all those next steps are supported. There is no pathway that leads to sustainability beyond eternal subsidy from the pocket of the billionaire. Other than subsidy from the collective pockets of the (earthbound) taxpayer. I have to agree with the other contributor that “mars in 20 years” is not much closer than when we heard it forty years ago. In fact, 20 years ago, i wrote somewhere that we would be on Mars in any meaningful way closer to 200 years ahead, not 20. I still think that is right. (Not counting the probably flyby or trip to the proximity of Phobos) but landing on anything more than a brief exploratory sojourn is too far to seriously comtemplate. Then again, these imaginings aren’t really serious. Too much remains to be done in the interim.

        • duheagle says:
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          I share your dubiousness about Mars as a destination primarily for human habitation, though I disagree about the potential profitability of Mars as an industrial site. See my previous comments above for some details.

          You are, overall, correct that space will never be a place for humans so long as the getting there and the doings once there are subsidy propositions. With government budgets essentially fixed, long-term, the best NASA, ESA, etc. will ever be able to do is establish serial ghost towns in space. Each will need to be successively abandoned in order to “free up” resources needed to pointlessly and unsustainably pursue construction of the next.

          We abandoned the Moon in the 70’s to build in LEO. Now there are factions warring about where our next such future ghost town should be – the Moon again, or Mars. The conflict is real as there is no way to even unsustainably do both on the government’s dime. Both warring factions seem to appreciate the mutual exclusivity of the situation. Neither, unfortunately, seems to see the essential unsustainability of either goal. The only thing they seem to agree on is that LEO must be the next abandoned ghost town. So it goes.

          I differ with you mainly in that I think I see a sustainable, non-governmentally-based way forward toward sustainable human presence in space. A forum comment is too limited to lay out said path, but I expect to be publishing some lengthier things in other fora in the not too distant future.

        • ThomasLMatula says:
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          Gary,

          And that is exactly what Elon Musk, Robert Bigelow, Jeff Bezos and other billionaires are doing. Unburden by the NASA way of doing things, nor needing to justify it to anyone, they are going for the stars.

          The problem with space exploration is that it got off to a bad start, first with competing science satellites for the IGY, then as a race between the U.S. and Soviet Union. This created an impression, which you seem to have bought into, that space is only about science and that it is so expensive only governments are able to do it. It’s not and we are finally starting to recovery from that bad start and see it for what it is, the economic future of humanity.

          Mars is not about science, its about creating a new world for humans to live and work on. That is the hard idea that Dr. Tyson and you are not able to gasp.

          The value of Mars life, if it even exists, is not in the creating career making academic papers of the handful elite scientists NASA will allow to study it, but in the potential to exploit it for economic gains for everyone. If it has DNA, which is likely, there will likely be interesting genes to be used in biotech. If not, it may show an easier path for biotech engineers to make synthetic life. Really that is the only justification for the billions American taxpayers have spent searching for it, not the philosophical musings about our place in the Universe.

  14. Neil.Verea says:
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    SpaceX like the Russians talk a big Game about Exploration bases here colonies their etc., though neither has gone beyond LEO with Humans to make everyone eat their doubting words. They both have shown that where there is money to be made they are all in. Exploration is a money pit for Private industry at this time, perhaps in 30 + years they will be players after governments have laid the ground work.

  15. RocketScientist327 says:
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    Neil is all classroom and no real world application.

    To be fair – we need both. We need theorists and people who live in the real world.

    We are lucky with Musk – he does both – plus he is a billionaire.

  16. Gene DiGennaro says:
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    I think Tyson has a very good point. SpaceX is not an exploration nor an R&D agency. They have to make money. I don’t think that SpaceX should be our defacto space program. I get the impression that lots of fanboys think that should be the case. I think SpaceX should be a SUPPLIER to our national space program. If Falcon Heavy can deliver performance close to SLS at a lower cost, which appears to be the case, NASA should BUY as many Falcon Heavies to do the job. If a Dragon can do the job of an Orion and can do it cheaper, buy the Dragon. That’s the role I see SpaceX playing in our national space effort.

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      I see. So you want NASA to be in the driver’s seat? And in control of any space exploration?

      • Tannia Ling says:
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        IF SpaceX’s investors are willing to let SpaceX be an exploration or R&D agency, then I’m all for not having NASA in the driver seat. Realistically, I don’t expect that will be the case. I think SpaceX investors are more patient than most and willing to put up with the normal trials and tribulations of developing a new rocket, knowing that ultimately they will get a return on investment. Long term, however, I don’t see them willing to fund Mars exploration which will have almost no ROI.

        • Michael Spencer says:
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          That’s a premature assessment, probably. And remember that about all Mr. Musk has said is that he expects the venture to be funded by the colonists.

      • Gene DiGennaro says:
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        Yes. As I said, SpaceX is not the American space program. It’s exciting to watch SpaceX do their thing and I hope they do revolutionize the industry. However I don’t think NASA should just turn it all over to Elon.

        • duheagle says:
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          Except that eventually, space needs to just be a place and not a program as somebody else once said. If space does not become primarily a realm of enterprise, it will never amount to anything in consequential human terms and should, in that case, simply be abandoned as an egregious waste of government money.

          For the reason why I think a government-directed and funded “space program” has no worthwhile long-term future, see my previous comments here about serial space ghost towns.

          • Gene DiGennaro says:
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            Of course eventually space will become just another avenue of commerce like our oceans and air lanes are today. But we still run scientific expeditions to the ocean floors. Despite there being thousand of airliner flights each day, research aircraft are still being built, flown, and tested on taxpayer $$.
            One day there will be space freighters and passenger liners making their way between the planets all in the name of commerce. Just like Lewis and Clark, it is my prediction that governmental expeditions will blaze the path for trade to follow.

          • duheagle says:
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            Yes there is both oceanographic and aeronautical research being done today. Doing the latter is even part of NASA’s job. But NASA spends far more on designing, producing and operating hardware these days than it does on research. It would be nice if NASA got back to doing purely research projects, but that isn’t going to happen until all the operations types are finally pensioned off without being allowed to hire their successors.
            NASA is not going to accomplish such a self-transformation in the absence of outside pressure.

  17. mdocur01 says:
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    So we have two questions at play in this discussion:
    1. Should we go to Mars? and 2. Who should do it (who should pay for it)?
    Reading the earlier posts, there is no consensus (same as you would expect in the general public) as to the answer to question #1… but I think the answer to both questions is quite simple… Let those people that want to go to Mars, pay for going to Mars. That’s the MarsOne (& possibly the SpaceX) approach & that’s why I support both of them.

    For all the nay-sayers on going to Mars, though, I do offer these words from Carl Sagan: “All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct” And as Elon Musk has stated, we have an opportunity window that has opened up (technologically) where we can now go to Mars and we don’t know how long that window will remain open. We have the ability, right now, to become a multi-planetary species and ensure a longer-term survival of our species. Mars is the best place in our solar system with the resources to support life (water, oxygen, CO2). And if you don’t agree, no problem, just stay out of our way.

    • Tannia Ling says:
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      I wonder if Carl Sagan’s quote is the answer to Fermi’s paradox…

      • duheagle says:
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        A lot of people have wondered that. Fermi, himself, was one of them IIRC. Not very likely any of us now alive will ever find out for sure, though. Too bad.

  18. fcrary says:
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    Just out of curiosity, has SpaceX actually said anything about plans for a Mars mission? Seriously, I know quite well that Mr. Musk has, and he’s the founder of SpaceX. But I can easily imagine someone (with a net worth over $10 billion) believing he could pay an efficient, “new style” aerospace company to send people to Mars. I could also imagine such a person starting up an efficient, “new style” aerospace company, to make sure one was around. That wouldn’t be a delusional idea that a private company would spend billions on an unprofitable venture. It would be a commercial proposition for the company, a very expensive hobby for a very rich person, and a rich person making sure a company was available, to provide the services his hobby required. I’ve no idea if that’s the case with SpaceX and Mr. Musk, but it’s an interesting idea.

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      Coming to a conference this September. Scheduled, in any event.

      There’s a lot to say, too, including what the rocket following FH looks like.

  19. Bill Housley says:
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    I like Dr. Tyson, and his comments are on the right track. His conclusion that SpaceX can’t go it alone to Mars is spot on.
    The problem with his path of logic is that it is naïve on the issue of “alone”. SpaceX is a NASA partner. They are not alone, have not been alone, and will not be alone when they head to Mars. They are a space transportation company, not a long-term space habitat company, not a manned space flight company (yet). They are part of a pattern and they know it. They are learning from NASA and their other customers now and will continue to do so, so they are far from alone.
    This is a data-driven enterprise and being a NASA partner, with former NASA people on your payroll, means that there are ideas and data moving back and forth. Even when and where there is no direct funding, there is the still data exchange. That’s what being a partner means. When Orion flies, SpaceX, Boing, Lockheed, Orbital…etc. all see the data and those lessons learned will go into private designs. When SLS flies, those lessons learned will go into improvements to the (then) already flying Falcon Heavy. Next month, SpaceX will carry a Bigelow module to the ISS. That means that they will learn how to integrate, carry and deploy a space station module. Right? So when it comes time to carry Bigelow’s or ESA’s, or NASA’s or whoever’s habitable property somewhere, anywhere, they will already know how because they were never alone.
    Also, as to Dr. Tyson’s and Rich Smith’s comments about business models, it’s totally true but misses the point. When has SpaceX ever launched anything without a paying customer on board? Get NASA off the brain people! SpaceX IS a business and it knows that it is a business and only governments are stupid enough and wasteful enough to fly ballast to space on a test flight. SpaceX will develop the capability and sell that capability to someone. How much does it cost to build a rocket company? Yet, Elon isn’t into it very deep at all. Combine all of the costs that SpaceX has and Elon’s individual investment is seed capitol. Also, when they fly to Mars they will not be flying a bunch of billionaires expending their fortunes to be the first. That’s the most idiotic notion that I’ve read anywhere. Billionares just don’t do that and SpaceX has not been a space tourism company yet, so why does Smith think they will turn into one? No, they’ll follow something like the business model that they are following now. When they fly, they’ll fly NASA people, or ESA people…someone who’ll do something once they get there and fly on someone else’s wallet like they do now. Oh and please everyone tell these know it all pundits to stop using ULA and NASA flight cost estimates when talking about SpaceX rockets to Mars. Give them some credit and drop that extra digit.

    • duheagle says:
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      Generally agree, Mr. Housley. But NASA knowledge is not the only space-related knowledge base. The USAF also does space.

      The Merlin engine was developed as an improved version of several engine projects originally commissioned by USAF but never incorporated into any flight vehicles. Elon Musk acquired this knowledge base for SpaceX by hiring Tom Mueller, the guy who was chief engineer on these projects when he worked for TRW, to be his propulsion boss. Mueller is still at SpaceX and neck deep in Raptor.

      A comparable example with NASA origins would be how SpaceX took the PICA thermal protection system material NASA developed and proceeded to developed it further. There have been three or four generations of PICA-X, SpaceX’s improved version of the original NASA PICA material. Compared to PICA, PICA-X is said to be lighter, far easier to fabricate and to have a significantly lower ablation rate. To help accomplish this, SpaceX took on the NASA guy who originally developed PICA as a full-time consultant for two years.

      Even with respect to NASA, while the data and knowledge flow has been dominantly in the NASA-to-SpaceX direction thus far, that is beginning to change. SpaceX’s work on recovering its Falcon 9 1st stages intact involves use of retro-propulsion at hypersonic speeds as a form of both braking and dynamic thermal protection. NASA flies high-altitude aircraft equipped with sensors to collect data on these missions relevant to future NASA plans for large Mars landers. SpaceX gets this data as well and trades NASA back the data captured by sensors on the Falcon 9 1st stages.

      As more time passes, the data flow from NASA to SpaceX is likely to be first rivaled and then surpassed by data flowing in the opposite direction. If I may respectfully disagree a bit with something else you wrote, I think that, even if SLS and Orion survive as programs long enough to actually fly, the reusable Falcon Heavy will yield far more lessons for NASA than the SLS is going to yield for SpaceX. As a learning organization, NASA may well be the junior partner in the NASA-SpaceX relationship by the time SpaceX has reached twice its current age.

      • Bill Housley says:
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        If I could upvote this twice I would. Great stuff. Thanks.
        I do think SLS will fly at least once. I think that because I think that NASA knows all that stuff you said about information flow and they want to keep priming the pump. SLS will stop existing before it can take humans to Mars. NASA’s bird will die on the ground, riddled with budget cuts, and with it NASA’s tradition for military-style contracting to build space launch vehicles. They will get out of the business of space propulsion forever and ride on commercial rockets with the rest of us.

  20. buzzlighting says:
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    Tannia Ling have to disagree with your statement Draper Fisher Jurvetson partnership group,google and Fidelity mutual fund wouldn’t invested in SpaceX Elon Musk company if there wasn’t potential growth and profits to benefit from it. I read recent story that Steve jurvetson with
    Draper Fisher group, SpaceX and Planet Labs in business venture to build a Moon base by 2026 thesundaytimecouk on march 27 2016.

  21. stonemoma says:
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    SpaceX fans everywhere. Sad to see that good advertising is making people forget to think. For a few years I see every where that every press conference SpaceX is giving every word about future projects is believed to come true. In reality most of the things come true in a much smaller scale than what was proposed to be the SpaceX way. Where are the 60t from and too the space station as a first guess for CRS 1-12? They will never be reached. This was a press conference and it clearly was a satement which was not necessary but it sounded cool. The first cargo flights were mass limited because the Falcon9 1.0 was by fare less capable than advertised. Nobody questions the numbers for the future rockets although all previous advertised numbers were a little bit higher than later in reality. The same is true for launch schedule SpaceX never reached the number they advertised, but still if you mention this you are not a space technician to know enough to question this.
    So there might be a SpaceX programm for Mars in the future, but it will be small compared to wht is advertised now.