George Knapp: To infinity — and beyond!, Las Vegas City Life
“Business deals don’t get much bigger than this one. Have you ever read a contract that gives a governmental green light to a program to “place a base on the surface of the moon?” Ever see an agreement signed by the U.S. government that declares a specific goal “to extend and sustain human activities across the solar system?” Me, either. Yet that is essence of an adventurous deal already reached between NASA and Las Vegas space entrepreneur Robert Bigelow. An official announcement is still a few days away and will likely happen during a news conference at NASA headquarters.”
Keith’s note: Something is in the works. Stay tuned. This will be a rather odd turn of events given that just a week ago Charlie Bolden said “NASA will not take the lead on a human lunar mission … NASA is not going to the Moon with a human as a primary project probably in my lifetime. And the reason is, we can only do so many things.” Then again, Charlie Bolden first said NASA was going to go to an asteroid. Then he wanted to go to L2. Then he said that you did not have to go all the way to an asteroid to visit one. Then he said he’d bring the asteroid back to Earth (L2). Things change quickly in Charlie Bolden’s strategy, it would seem.
Knapp’s reporting seems to come directly from Bob Bigelow, which is good on one hand (he’s a primary source). On the other, we need to remember that Bigelow is good at promotion. So, we shall see…
I’ll be interested in the press conference. If the deal is as described, I would hope that this work would be done under an SAA. And because it might be viewed as an extension of the commercial space push, that might explain Bolden’s comments about NASA not doing such things–private enterprise would be doing it. Maybe.
As for Bolden’s earlier statements, there is always the possibility that Charlie was the victim of poor staff work, or that he just made a mistake.
For now, I’m “diminishing my expectations” and just hope the presser is live streamed.
One has to wonder if there is any connection with the “Re-asserting American Leadership in Space Act.”
The timing is certainly interesting.
The debil is in details…
Is it possible that (maybe, just maybe) if we take Administrator Bolden at his word, that NASA may have a contract with Bigelow Aerospace that has Bigelow taking the lead on a Lunar base proposal? He DID state clearly that NASA would be willing to partner with other entities that would lead a Lunar effort- could this be what is happening?
Sounds like Bolden is handing moon development to the private sector. Probably to stifle criticism from the ‘moon not asteroids’ folks in NASA and Congress.
If it stays in school it could even become kewl cover art on the Wall Street Journal.
NASA is just throwing darts at a wall to see what sticks..in the hopes they can get their HSF program flying in space again. Just more proof that NASA is floundering due to ever increasing budget cuts.
No bucks? Well, no bucks.
This is about Bigelow, written by a third party. It’s a bit of a stretch to imply that it’s NASA “throwing darts.”
Perhaps a BEAM type device topping a basic lander like Morpheus?
Before we send the habs to the Moon we need some long term tests of Bigelow’s life support systems.
Initially on Earth and then possibly in LEO.
They need to test it under the correct pressure differential for long duration; where could they do that? It might mean building a dedicated facility. Solar/UV testing will be a tough one, too. This testing alone might lead to the creation of facilities that will make other programs more doable as well. Fingers crossed.
A pressure differential is easy to do on the Earth. You just blow up the skin like a bicycle tire. Bigelow has already had 2 of his spacestations in orbit.
It is the docking ports, station keeping motors and the internal systems that need testing.
You suggested possibly testing in LEO, and a facility on Earth is no good for that. Also, Bigelow is talking about new, much bigger modules, possibly to be used by NASA, therefore new, bigger testing facilities would be required.
Having other units in orbit is not good enough. Every single inflatable made will have to be individually tested. And if I understand you correctly, you’re saying they can pressure test the units by inflating the inside to the correct differential while the outside is at Earth-normal pressure? I say that’s not good enough. Testing must be under actual pressure and temperature conditions to be at all valid. Which means vacuum outside and actual pressure inside, cycling through the actual in-space temperature conditions. Anything less, on every unit, would not be acceptable. I still remember the Apollo 1 fire, caused because test conditions were not actual conditions. We can not afford any more setbacks in space development. From a QC/QA perspective, I think using these inflatables should be subject to mission critical standards; human lives are at stake (and a whole new, much better relationship between NASA and industry that could really be a game changer).
Equipment needs a proper in-flight Beta test before we put it into regular use. However since the engineers are on the ground as much debugging as possible should occur here.
“Things change quickly in Charlie Bolden’s strategy, it would seem.”
Well, if you call the strategy “Flexible Path”, one could argue that he has been fairly consistent.
Here’s a link to the C2C Knapp/Bigelow radio interview that Knapp referred to in his article. It appears there’s more going on here than just purchasing a moon base from a private contractor. A lot more.
http://www.youtube.com/watc…
In the interview Bigelow said NASA should be making an announcement about this and about in this timeframe. Anybody hear any rumors or rumors of rumors about such an announcement?
Thanks Jim.
Yes, they can build the modules. But who is going to build the lander?
As far as ECLS, they can buy from the same providers of the ISS. I don’t think the manufacturers would have and exclusivity clause with NASA.
But it makes sense for NASA to start letting commercial companies design and build things like this and then lease the facilities. Why? Because in general it can be done quicker and cheaper than a government entity can do it.
These song lyrics really do come to mind…
WE’RE BUSY DOING NOTHING,WORKING THE WHOLE DAY THROUGH.TRYING TO FIND LOTS OF THINGS,NOT TO DO.WE’RE BUSY DOING NOTHING,ISN T IT JUST A CRIME?WE’D LIKE TO BE UNHAPPY,BUT WE NEVER DO HAVE THE TIME.
I just want to know why?
Folks:
Here’s Bob Bigelow’s plan in a nutshell. He made his riches being an exceptional general contractor (DTARS will understand this). Through economical and timely use of subcontractors he built a small real estate empire. What he is intending is to become a general contractor for space projects. He’ll be the one who chooses the subcontractors to fulfill the wishes of his client.
It’d work like this: NASA wants an L2 station. Bob Bigelow comes up with a general contract at a fixed price. NASA only cares that the station is in place on time with the right services available and (most importantly) a supply chain for crew and cargo is established. They don’t (and shouldn’t) care how the station got there or what it took to be readied for use. Bigelow Aerospace builds the habitats, Orbital builds a propulsion module, Boeing makes connecting nodes and airlocks, Solar City makes the power modules and SpaceX tosses it all up there. SpaceX gets the crew rotation contract and Orbital gets cargo resupply.
NASA’s happy, the subcontractors are happy, everybody gets works in their individual specialties without trying to do it all on their own and stuff actually gets done!
NASA goes to Congress and says “OK, we get our L2 station for 10 billion, one tenth the cost of ISS. We can completely service it and rotate crews for a billion a year.”. If they’re asked who’s building or launching the hardware, NASA can just say “that’s at the discretion of our primary contractor. NASA is a technology enabler and we have the final say, but it’s our contractor’s job to get the job done as best they see fit.”
Do you think Congress would buy it? I’m sure someone will bring up the ‘sole contract’ issue but I think Bob Bigelow has that one covered. Instead of NASA coming up with a mission and soliciting for a contract, Bob is offering NASA to come up with a mission and he’ll do the leg work to see if it’s possible and how much it’ll cost. His skills are a brain trust that simply isn’t transferable. There is no other company or group of companies offering this kind of service. Also, we’ve seen in the past how contract competitions have ended up with unsustainable technology and cost overruns. If the tool’s broke, replace it.
Since the whole idea is an end run around lawmakers getting their hands into the minutia of rocket design, I don’t expect this to go over well.
tinker
NASA can handle sole contract by putting the procurement for competitive bidding. If there is only one bid then there is only one bid. Although say Boeing may enter its own bid.
Very well thought out justatinker, I imagine you’re not too far off the mark in your comment.
Stuart:
I have a background in architecture and have thought that a general contractor model, in the manner of constructing a building, would be the best way to make space infrastructure.
Over a decade ago, I designed a rotating space station to commemorate Clarke and Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. My limitations were:
– Reuse (or use) everything! No expendable launcher stages, etc…
– No new technology.
What I came up with was a 750 foot diameter station that could be spun up to about 1/3 g (Martian gravity). The launch system could put 500 tons into orbit so the station could be completed in just four launches (three for the ring and spokes, one for the hub). Part of the launch vehicle would become structure and it’s booster stages would all be reusable.
When I say ‘complete’ in four launches, I mean functional. Life support, power, docking facilities, etc. It would still have to be outfitted. Think brand new office building and what you’d expect to find there before moving in. With some gravity in the outer ring, plumbing would be a lot simpler!
The ring would be a minimum of 40 feet in diameter with two living decks with services in the outermost (bottom) deck. That’s two decks about 2,400 feet long, almost half a mile per deck. Three of the spokes would be made from launcher tanks 40 feet in diameter with decks all the way through at different gravity gradients, including the Moon’s. The transportation system would be smart elevators that could move throughout the station, through the hub, up and down the spokes and through the service deck of the ring. They would transport people and cargo as well as being air tight with their own backup power to use if needed during an emergency. The ring would be connected to hub by a rotating airlock that the elevators would pass through.
The whole point was to recreate the office building, hotel experience in space. I didn’t have a ‘mission’ beyond that, just the hope that if I built in the right place, provided access, and charged affordable prices that I’d have no shortage of clients. “Build it and they will come” sort of thing.
Since 2001, the technology has advanced, launch prices could potentially come down a lot (SpaceX’s Grasshopper) and Bigelow’s advances with expandable habitats gives me more confidence I can make that four launch limit.
Anyway, after all that, I get the idea Bob Bigelow is thinking pretty much the same way I was back then. Only, he can do something about it! 🙂
tinker
Tinker,
Just curious, in your station design, with the spoke elevators you’ve described, how were you compensating for shifting mass not putting a wobble in the station’s rotation? (even a small wobble would be a sever problem).
Steve
Steve:
Think big! The ring and spokes would mass 2,000 tons once outfitted. The cars by their very nature would be very light. Maybe other cars, even empty ones, could go the opposite direction to compensate.
I did approach the project as an architect not an engineer so I’m open to suggestions :).
The idea here was to create a shirt sleeve environment as close to ‘home’ as possible. I settled for a Martian gravity gradient in the ring for a few reasons:
– To obtain an Earth gravity gradient without folks getting ill, the station would have to be over twice the diameter and would take four times the number of super heavy launches.
– One third Earth gravity is enough to make the plumbing work right (ours and the stations). Most other aspects of life would be pretty normal (while a few other would get more… interesting ;);)<|<|).
– We could discover in short order whether Martian gravity is enough to stave off bone loss or not. A good thing to know if we’re going to colonize Mars.
– Tourists would love it! Like home enough not to get spooked, exotic enough to Skype home about it.
It would also open up space to the other intelligent species we share our planet with… cats!
tinker
Tinker,
OK; I won’t harp on the subject, but it is a more delicate balancing act than one would at first assume.
Like the elevators themselves, any compensating mechanism has to be accelerated and decelerated at controlled rates, not just turned on and off. The “speed” and acceleration of your of your elevators will likely be limited by your compensation mechanism. Things get harder when you have more than one elevator, which will certainly be the case.
The big thing to realize is that it’s not the size of an error that’ll get you, but rather the cumulative effects of constantly aggregating errors. This will be a common consideration in several systems. In addition, you need some sort of reset-to-zero mechanism to occasionally cancel accumulated errors.
An airplane keeps track of its position inertially, but at each known waypoint in its database it resets its computer position to its real position as given by the waypoint location. Your space station has no equivalent waypoints by which to recalibrate its attitude and null any accumulated wobble or drift, so you want your real time error accumulation to be as small and as controlled as possible.
On the ISS all they have to worry about is orbital altitude, not attitude, because it (hopefully) doesn’t rotate. This makes adding a centrifuge to the ISS, like many have proposed, a more difficult task than is generally assumed. Any similar non-lateral motions on a rotating space station will have to be compensated for. A mass being small compared to the whole station doesn’t eliminate its undesirable effects, it just changes the rate at which the small effects add up.
Hmmm…. I guess I did harp after all. Sorry.
A note about pumping water: It’s handy, since you’ll have it there anyhow, but water in zero-g retains all of its momentum and elasticity, so there will be a ringing effect, as opposed to a simple start and stop of motion, so the rate at which you can pump water (specifically start and stop the movement) is very limited, or else the ringing effect will actually increase the errors that you’re trying to compensate against.
Steve
Water can be pumped between 3 tanks on the ring and possibly one near the centre. That will keep the mass similar allowing a smooth ride.
AMS:
That’s a great idea! Pumping just requires power and, if it’s the cost of doing business, you work that margin into the system.
Another aspect of my station idea is that the hub would not rotate and would itself be a 400 foot long cylinder, 40 feet in diameter. That’s a lot of free exterior space to stage hardware on; consumables tanks, empty stages (to be turned into more habitats), spare parts and anything else you want. The more mass on the hub, the less problem with moving mass throughout the station.
Since the ring rotates and the hub doesn’t, I had to come up with a quick way to transfer from one to the other. Making a rotating seal to keep air in would be iffy at best, so you need an airlock between the two. It would work like this: Elevator cars would stage in the rotating part of the hub. The transfer lock would open (both inside & outside hatches) and the cars would file in. Both hatches close and seal. the transfer lock’s rotation is slowed until it is stopped relative to the hub. Hatches in the other side of the transfer lock open and the cars file out. Cars headed to the ring would file in and the process is reversed.
Now here’s the trick to make it quick. Instead of pumping air out of a vestibule or dumping precious air overboard each cycle, don’t have a vestibule at all. However you accomplish this, the hatches at each end of the cycle would be touching before they are opened. No air, no vacuum, no issue with air loss. The transfer lock could simply move a small amount back and forth to touch the hatch that will be opened or not touching either as it spins up or down during the transfer. Multiple seals surrounding the hatches would engage each time giving lots of redundancy for an often used system.
tinker
I wonder how much confidence we can place in a story from a web site called “Las Vegas City Life”.
I’ve listened to the radio show since I typed the above. Unless it’s a hoax, Bigelow lays out what sounds like an encouraging situation.
Apparently this will be an SAA. IMHO, that’s a good thing.
Rumors appearing online about an announcement the 17th or 18th.
Crikey chaps. this certainly has put a cat amongst us pigeons…!
I listened and the first thing I heard was UFO. Run the other way! This SAA is for research only. To give NASA the cost if Bigelow makes up the contract for NASA to sign. NASA has already done this and I doubt that Bigelow can do any better. Companies have to charge so much to make a profit and because Bigelow asks them to lower their fees is a joke. It sounds like he does not have the money to launch his modules in ’16. He says building them has not been cheap.
S13:
Don’t run just yet. Bob has taken a very pragmatic approach to UFOs. He’s actually looking for proof and nothing else will satisfy him. He’s worked on a number of data searches and real scientific observations into UFOs for over a decade.
If he’s a wingnut, he’s a very successful one :).
tinker
10 years and nothing. Just like everybody else. Ever since USAF Blue Book. He has some money yes,but he does not have enough. This is a way to get somebody else to pay for it. He says NASA has been being ripped off. So prove it. This sounds like turning planning over to Bob Bigelow. Like we want a Moon base.Give us a price. NASA was not formed to be run by Bob Bigelow.I think he gets 60 days. I don’t think NASA will buy one from him Keith,but the Reaganites are in charge and they want to privitize everything.
What does 🙂 mean Tinker? Am I being insulted?
S13:
Certainly not! I laughed when I typed that because I don’t care if he’s harmlessly crazy as long as he gets the job done. We’ve had far more eccentric inventors who had way more impact than Bob Bigelow. Howard Hughes & Nicola Tesla come to mind.
As you pointed out, 10 years and nothing. That’s always a possibility in research and considered a success in some circles if the data was acquired properly. Sometime no answer is the answer!
tinker
Even if it is only a paper study, it’s good to see someone seriously looking at this.
In some ways,it’s a bit like how Inspiration Mars’s most probable outcome is a lot of good information about long-duration ECLSS and Golden Spike’s most important outcome will be lots of good, tested plans for MLV-based BEO and commercial landers. I doubt most of these early proposals will pan out but they’ll create the foundations upon which later groups will stand and ultimately succeed.
Ben:
A good point. Maybe it’ll take a person like Bob Bigelow to put all those divergent skills into a functioning package. I think a lot more companies would get involved if they thought they get a little piece of the space pie. Already there exists many ‘parts manufactures’ for the space industry and a lot of them are small companies focusing on doing a few things very well. This kind of enterprise could explode if the market for their products existed.
For example: I’d like to start up a company called ‘General Spacecraft™’. My first product would be what I call a ‘Fairing Form Factor Hull’ or ‘FFFH’:). The shape of the hull would be that of the maximum size of fairing the chosen launch vehicle could lift to orbit. This hull would be outfitted with everything it needed to be a spacecraft: decks, bulkheads, cabins; plumbing, electrical, data; propulsion, power generation, consumable storage; life support and control systems. Pretty much anything ‘bolted down’ but with consumable storage empty. If it was launched by a Falcon Heavy the size could be 24 feet in diameter and possibly 60 feet long weighing 50 tons at launch.
So, OK, I’m a general contractor. I get Scaled Composites to make my initial hull, Bigelow Aerospace to cover the outside with the meteor shield part of his expandables, SpaceX for reaction control systems and flight computers, other companies supply what I can’t build in house.
Once the spacecraft is on orbit, it could be outfitted with fuel, consumable liquids and gasses as well as all the stuff that’s not bolted down. It would use a temporary propulsion module tailored to it’s mission and refueled or replaced when necessary. Since it would never be able to return to Earth, it would have a crew capsule attached while occupied much like the space stations we’ve had so far.
So, could I build something like that for, say, the cost of an airliner? I think I’d be able to provide this spacecraft on orbit ready to be fueled and outfitted for less than the cost of a single 787 (though not by much). A 787 is worth two hundred million dollars.
There’s a few people who can afford to buy a 787… so I know who my first customers would be ;).
Maybe I should call my company ‘General Spaceyacht!
tinker
🙂
I agree with Keith in that something is in the works. A new lunar unmanned rover mission has been announced. It will drill down and look for deposits of water.
http://science.nbcnews.com/…
Question: Why is Bolden playing this cat and mouse game? What’s going on?