Muckrock Takes A Deep Dive Into NASA's National Exploration Campaign
Trump’s NASA sees Space Force as a means to bring free market capitalism to the final frontier, Muckrock
“In an internal draft of NASA’s “National Exploration Campaign Report” from August 2018, the authors of the report identify the very first of five strategic goals for the new campaign as “Transition U.S. human spaceflight in LEO to commercial operations, which support NASA and the needs of an emerging private sector market.” It is only once you get to number three on the list of strategic goals that NASA plans to “Foster scientific discovery.”
Keith’s note: There is a nice long, deep dive FOIA response from NASA a a result of a Muckrock request at the end that makes fascinating reading.
The only “commercial” space that will exist for the foreseeable future, given current methodologies and mindsets, is the only one that already exists: telecommunications/weather/land-use. And the major threat to that will be the Kessler effect, either through hubris, or direct action which will negatively affect all space-faring entities. There will be no more human commercial activity in space than there has been at human commercial activity at McMurdo in Antarctica over the past 50 years.
Do the tens of thousands of annual tourists count as commercial activity?
https://iaato.org/home
International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators
Of course only a handful visit McMurdo Station. If you have seen one government base you have seen them all…
I’m not sure if tourists can visit MacMurdo. At least not without special arrangements or for longer than a day trip. I don’t think the Hotel California takes reservations through Expedia or something similar, and I wouldn’t want to sail a cruise ship into MacMurdo Sound. There probably isn’t any place nearby where can book a room.
I expect is is very controlled to avoid inference with the researchers, but there is a firm selling tours to Ross Island where its located and its lists McMurdo Station as a stop, but as you say it is most likely a day trip. The price, around $27,000, is about what you would expect for such a remote location.
https://oceanwide-expeditio…
Their ship is a surplus research vessel built in Poland, so its not a true cruise ship, but should be able to make it around the Ross Sea safely.
https://oceanwide-expeditio…
This of course would have been amazing to the early Antarctic explorers, or even those who built the original McMurdo Station, so hopefully in a generation or so we will see similar tours to the Moon Village. 🙂
“The only “commercial” space that will exist for the foreseeable future,
given current methodologies and mindsets, is the only one that already
exists:….”
Not surprising. The LBJians in Congress use government spaceflight to support their vassals, and get political support from them. The key to changing future use of Space is changing “current methodologies and mindsets” from those of the LBJians to those of people who want to use some part of the rest of the universe without asking a politician “mother may I?”
However the same report also lists that Scientific Knowledge as the first core national driver with economic development only listed fourth. (page 30 of the FOIA response) Global Engagement and National Security are 2 and 3.
BTW if folks are wondering the second strategic goal is, its;
“2. Lead the emplacement of capabilities in lunar orbit that support surface operations and feed forward to missions beyond cis-lunar space.”
So basically Commercial Crew/ISS is first and SLS/Orion/Gateway are second. Seems about right in terms of NASA spending at the moment. Then comes science (3), a return to the Moon (4) and preparing to send humans Mars (5). So nothing really surprising in it in terms of national space goals. NASA’s robotic programs have always had a lower ranking then HSF in the eyes of politicians.
And what people don’t seem to see/understand is that “science” will never serve as a sufficient driver or enabler of any growing commercial endeavors off Earth. Given expected vehicle designs and add a nonexistent base population growth model, and it will take NASA 150 years to get a permanently populated base the size of McMurdo on the moon (~1200 people). Such a rate will never drive real commercial endeavors nor keep popular interest, especially given so many other competing interests or risks to our species in the near future.
So maybe economic development should be kicked up a couple of notches.