Panel Discussion – NASA Exploration Technology Review

1. I’d like to know some of those ideas that came from your meetings.

   As to other missions: Can you spell W-e-b-b?

2. What Dave said.

   The baseline projects, SLS and Orion, combined with business as usual, and as usual awaiting something to end (ISS, thus commercial cargo, and commercial crew) to go do something else (an Earth departure stage, spacecraft/habitat, etc.) never adds up. All the people who have done the basic scenario math (NRC, NAC, others) conclude this. No one has ever shown how it can add up in relevant time-frames (Mars in 2073, with a million optimistic assumptions from here to there, does not count as adding up). The SLS/Orion project paths chosen have proven impossible to connect to anything sustainable, Mars or otherwise advancing NASA’s space exploration mandate.

   The alternative, however improbable, admitting the space sector must grow, becoming more commercial, meaning having non-government business as primary, and seeing that NASA has to play a key role here accelerating this transition process, is inevitable if we are to become a truly space-faring civilization. Access to space and activities in space must enter the realm of the routine, of non-government, private sector activity.

   As long as the DoD or NASA insist on owning space, then space exploration, settlement and becoming a space-faring civilization will be delayed, shut-down by self-appointed gate-keepers.

   1. As long as DoD or NASA insist on owning space? I’m not sure what you mean by this…anybody can build a rocket and fly to the moon or Andromeda if they like.

      Or, if they know how to do it. Enter NASA.

      The process has been fairly straightforward: find a giant, build a ladder, get up on those big shoulders. NASA has provided a solid body of knowledge for decades without which SpaceX etc. would have been, as I mentioned a few days ago, building high-speed sledges, or wondering people can swallow in space. Problems solved.

      Go find your billions and build a rocket.

      1. Ahh yes, to come back to this. The old “go find your own ball to play with” argument. Insert variation here-, like “go find your billions and build a rocket”. Sounds convincing? Not if looking deeper. When monopolies are strong this is one of the typical arguments against opening up an area to competition. Cable companies try to spread this same myth – if anyone want’s to compete all they have to do is build out their own cable infrastructure (actually competitors are kept from doing so by sweetheart exclusive deals with local governments, a point conveniently not mentioned in spreading the misleading blurb).

         Ma’Bell had a version of this back in the day as well, referring to MCI and the upstarts – go build your own telephone system and so on. Some things never change. Change is difficult, and the people defending a lucrative monopoly condition will say any non-sense to sway public opinion.

         Consider the monopoly analogies – they are many, and that’s how laws about certain kinds of integration (airlines/aircraft makers) and concepts such as refusal to deal (defacto anti-trust) and many legal aspects of anti-trust in general came about. Protecting competition means not protecting competitors or monopoly positions. The similarities to what the DoD has done with ULA are uncanny – both by legal and by historical similarity. Remember, the SEC did not concur with the formation of ULA, and DoD went and allowed it anyway. Again, like with many a historical example, these monopolies seems to make sense at the time, but eventually they are a problem that has to be dealt with and dismantled if need be.

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