NASA Future In-Space Operations: Public Policy
NASA Future In-Space Operations: A Primer on Public Policy, Why it’s Important for Space Activities, and Current Hot Policy Topics
Now available is the November 2, 2016 NASA Future In-Space Operations (FISO) telecon material. The speakers was Brian Weeden (Secure World Foundation) who presented “A Primer on Public Policy, Why it’s Important for Space Activities, and Current Hot Policy Topics.”
Note: The audio file and presentation are online and available to download.
Marc’s note: Some of the “Hot Topics” discussed included some of our favourites topics here at NASA Watch; The Asteroid Redirect Mission, go directly to Mars or back to the moon. Not much time was spent on these topics, but the presentation does provide a good overall introduction on how policy was shaped up to this point and what the next administration will face.
Interesting presentation; Yet, given that the talks second topic, “Why it’s Important for Space Activities,” is so prevalent in the title, it is really not addressed in a true format regarding the overarching question “Why” – one of our greatest selling failures for all space except for Earth orbiting satellite services and to a lesser extent some of the planetary and astronomy successes. All other proposed “why” answers are a nebulous mix of “science” and “the future” and dont truly examine this question. So, when will anyone truely address the question significanly and approriately?
No one ever seems to want to answer that with “we must for survival.” I agree the selling of space exploration based on science return is an outdated strategy, it can only grow the programs so far, we see that very obviously now.
‘Those things’ are not perceived as affecting MY personal survival and likely never will be (until a substantial asteroid takes out northern Italy—see Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama), so answering it so is a non-starter.
The answer, if it lies anywhere, is deep inside us either as humans or as a society (as some sort of need more than a nature).
If no such inherent need(s) exist(s), then, well, never mind.
And so goes humanity into extinction. Why cant we finally change our nature and start being proactive as opposed to reactive, thrifty as opposed to greedy, and so on, and so on?
Why not, indeed?
Human spaceflight has both cost and value, and together they determine a curve of supply and demand. Right now the cost is over $60M per seat to orbit, and at that price almost no one will pay. Cut it to $20M and we will have a few customers, as we did before. At $1M per seat the demand is still modest but high enough to actually sustain an industry. We should stop looking for a mission of infinite value to justify a nearly infinite cost. Instead we should develop the technology that will make human spaceflight available to scientists and tourists at a cost they are willing and able to pay.
Unfortunately nothing in the presentation suggests that NASA should partner with industry to reduce costs, and focus on missions that are affordable. In fact the most affordable and valuable mission right now is earth observation, which one party wants to eliminate entirely.
On that point, Dr. Woodard- I find myself increasingly dismayed as I look for rationality in space exploration.
The scientific windfall is self evident.
Less so: where is the rationality for HSF? How do we view the idea of lunar or Martian settlement in terms an historian or geographer or cultural anthropologist would recognize?
The case for sustainable human presence in space sImply hasn’t been made and perhaps cannot be made. Imagine a world where seats are, say, $10000 – comparable to a berth on Henry’s caravales, perhaps.
At that price millions can go. But so what? Where do they go, and why? What do they do once ‘there’?
More provacatively, are we not imagining ‘space’ the way Ford’s unquiried future market imagined not cars but faster horses?
I agree there isn’t any persuasive existential reason to spend a lot of tax dollars, but if people want to go and can afford it, we don’t have to ask them why, and market studies have shown that such a market exists at the right price. Antarctica is popular for science and tourism, and the same might be true of space in the future.
Obviously robotic systems can survive in space more easily than humans. I do however believe that advances in artificial intelligence will soon blur and ultimately erase the line between human and robotic exploration.