NASA's Space Economics 101 Book
New NASA Publication: Economic Development of Low Earth Orbit
“In order for a viable, sustainable economy based on human spaceflight to emerge in low Earth orbit (LEO), a number of elements must be present. … Recent developments in spaceflight suggest there is ample cause to be optimistic about the future. … In addition to greatly advancing the state of rocketry, the new capability may have a significant democratization and commercialization effect, potentially enabling low-cost access to space for entrepreneurs, scientists, educators, and the general public.”
That’s the way to do it, as Paul451 always reminds us. Getting costs to get into orbit down as low as possible is paramount, making much more activities in space feasible.
“…a viable, sustainable economy…”
I don’t know what that even means, leaving aside the over-used and now pretty much meaningless phraseology.
I’m reminded of the advent of the internet in the 1990’s. Huge amounts of money were spent trying different ideas about how the ability to connect everyone could improve lives and how it could be exploited. The relatively low cost of entry and the promise of easy money made these efforts possible.
Didn’t turn out that way. In the case of space the cost of entry, even with a far-term SpaceX reliably reusing boosters, or success of Skylon, the cost of entry will dwarf the internet.
Granted the economy is much larger and able to support space activities. But exactly what is imagined as a ‘use’ for low earth orbit? What are the activities envisioned that aren’t better/cheaper/easier done with telecommuting?
Tourists? really? Crystals? 🙂
I DO see a far future where space near and far is populated with habitats, places where people actually want to live, rise families, and develop a career. But we are so far away from developing places where human families will want to live that guessing at the point is just a guess.So much fundamental research is needed: artificial gravity via spinning structures, ability to manufacture in space, adapting plants to space…the list is endless.
My guess is that NASA spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on this book, which is too bad since it is a repeat of dozens of books over the last 50 years. There is nothing new to see.
The real problem is that NASA has forgotten its own history with respect to utilization of space especially for human space flight.
In the early years of Shuttle launches and as a campaign was being established to start the station program, NASA invested heavily in a series of studies of the kinds of research, experiments, payloads, facilities, that might help to spur the use of the orbital environment. A lot of data was compiled in these ‘blue books’. Then, NASA got lots of feedback from the early payloads on Shuttle of how to better streamline the process of getting payloads into orbit. NASA and Rockwell established commercialization offices. NASA established Space Commercialization Development Centers across the US. Seed money was distributed to spur the creation of new research programs.NASA contracted for a commercial payload carrier, Spacehab, Spacehab streamlined integration processes. Lots of payloads were flown on Spacehab. Ultimately, Spacehab was so efficient and so inexpensive that it was selected as the carrier of choice for NASA-Mir and for the early ISS, and it replaced the Spacelab which was using archaic 1970s technology and integration processes. Because of the juxtaposition of schedule of Spacehab and NASA-Mir, many of the payloads flew on a space station: Mir. Then ISS management sought to shut down the existing utilization program and the recently departed ISS Program Manager did that very successfully-he even called it a high point of his career.
The ISS management took the position that since they had the only game in town for earth orbit research, everyone would have to play to their rules. That did not work too well, as few payloads came forward. While there was little capacity on ISS in the early years, there was even less utilization. This was essentially the same problem the program faced in the early phases of Shuttle, and so they are now re-starting the same process all over again. The new commercialization office is apparently thought to be in the form of CASIS. Shuttle had commercialization offices in the Shuttle program, at Rockwell, and ultimately in Code C, starting in 1983. At least at that time NASA sought experienced people with education in commercial processes. Today the ISS program gets ISS engineers with little to no related knowledge or experience and wonders why they are failing. As the engineer who heads up their RISE program lamented recently, “who knew that it was important for payloads to get on-board and complete their research in a 3 year time frame because of grad student schedules and costs”, Everyone knew who had been involved in commercial payloads for the last 30 years-but apparently she, who had no such experience, had no clue. Why is someone like this leading the effort? How do they select these people?
You can see exactly the same lack of experience in the set of people comprising CASIS. Why would NASA spends tens of millions of dollars, only to fill the ranks with military astronauts with little or no applicable experience?
ISS is now nearly 16 years into operations in what was, at the outset, a 25 year operations program, and only now is NASA realizing ISS needed viable research programs more the the research programs needed the ISS. Its a little late for this realization.
The opening chapter laments the fact that there is little data on the payloads that have flown, and their implementation schedules and results. The ISS program has a database of payloads. It is incomplete and the data has not been filled in in many cases. There is a large mission science organization. Maybe they need to get to work filling out the needed information? Why don’t they do their job?
First sentence in the preface: “In the next decade, NASA will seek to expand humanity’s presence in space beyond the International Space Station (ISS) in low Earth orbit to a new habitation platform around the Moon.” Wait, what? Did I miss a memo?
Yes 🙂 Actually it’s an ATK proposal.
https://www.nasaspaceflight…
This report doesn’t live up to its title. It is just eye candy to dazzle policy wonks. There is nothing new in it. What a waste of money.
As with other reports on the commercialization of space it’s mostly
theoretical speculation, a few generalize equations and the usual
puzzlement on why firms in the commercial world are not beating NASA’s door down to do microgravity research.
Really Keith could have done a better report posting a thread here on how to best commercialize microgravity research 🙂
But it’s to be expected given the background of the authors. Theoretical economists and government policy researchers were the wrong experts to hire for a report like this. All they know is general theory, not practice. What NASA needed was to hire experts in industrial marketing research.
I suspect the motive of this report was not to figure how to build LEO
industrial markets but just to have something to dazzle Congress with.
“See we have studied it.” That would explain why they hired a Nobel
Prize economist – they are great at dazzling Congress critters in
hearings. Especially when they start throwing out complex equations.
Now don’t get me wrong. Economists are fine for explaining how a nation’s economy works or modeling competitive structure in an industry. I have a graduate background in it and teach it on a regular basis. But what you need here isn’t economics but basic industrial marketing research. It’s like putting Dr. Stephen Hawking in charge of building a nuclear reactor. He will tell you theory and give you basic equations but you will be left to puzzle out the engineering yourself. But like this report his presence will look impressive and dazzle those who have no understanding of the issue.
What this report illustrates once again is that NASA hasn’t a clue about the commercialization of space. NASA not only doesn’t know the right
questions to ask, it doesn’t even know enough to know which academic
disciplines to go to in order to find the right experts. Unfortunately when it comes to space commerce NASA is still lost in space.
I see this exact pattern in my own small corner of the world: so-called ‘planners’ who want, for example, to supposedly re-vitalize a tired part of town with visions of residences over shops and street-level dining. Folks with lots of planning experience but with no real knowledge of business.
The book was apparently timed for release for the ISS R&D conference this week in San Diego. Like the book, there was a lot of hype about the potential value of ISS, but no real results. Not to worry, the attendance was poor so few people heard about the potential value if only they could get to the point of doing some genuinely useful research. Cost of a conference like this, to the taxpayer, is in the $$millions, but what the hell, San Diego is a nice place to visit in the summer especially if your from Houston.
Between really poorly done products like this book, and the ‘on the road to Mars’ meaningless hype, looks like NASA has gotten carried away with social media and communicating, instead of actually establishing real working processes It wasn’t that long ago that NASA people were doing real work and making real progress. Where did they go wrong? Why? Why can’t they get back some of the knowledgeable, capable, productive people?
Because they have a better option, the emerging space commerce firms, where there is lot less red tape, a sharp focus on the goals of space development and a chance to be rewarded with something more than a gold watch if they are successful.
Look at the young, energetic, happy engineers in the videos for SpaceX and Blue Origins. There are the ones that have moved beyond NASA.
While I do not dispute what you say, there are a lot of NASA people. They are usually well trained and capable, but as we are seeing, they seem to be accomplishing nothing positive. How do they get turned around? Where’s the leadership?