Keith’s note: We’re only a few days away from the “Pioneering Space National Summit” here in Washington DC – an event only a hundred or so space people will attend. Yet the semi-revealed organizers of this event seem to think that they can come up with a plan for America to lead the way in “Free Space” (whatever that is). As I noted in my rant “Yet Another Plan For Outer Space“ last week, this effort is almost certainly doomed to be irrelevant before a single word is even uttered. You see, space people just can’t fight the periodic urge to stage these self-indulgent exercises in futility – exercises that matter only to other space people. The real world outside the meeting venue (such that there is a ‘real world’ here in Washington) will move on as if nothing ever happened.
Space people enter any discussion with the default notion that space is important because space is important. There is no alternate answer to them. Space is a niche issue. Pick whatever poll you want. When the 300+ million people who actually pay for all the space stuff are asked what things matter to their daily lives space is at the bottom of a very, very long list. Administrations weigh niche issues like space against these larger popular issues when they exercise their political calculus. Would it not make sense for this space crowd to do the same and factor in a reality quotient by involving voices that have not been drinking the space Koolaid for decades? Of course not. Why be relevant to the real world? Space is important because space people say it is important.
You can see this by virtue of who has been invited to this event and who has not (no I am not referring to myself). Its like choir practice in an echo chamber. If you down select the opinions involved in your policy discussion by virtue of including some – but excluding others – you get a more focused end result. But you also get an answer that is lacking far too much in breadth and scope to be taken seriously. Many of the people attending this event are probably showing up for the drinks and snacks. When you see an event like this emerge out of nowhere – with stealthy patrons and funding – you just have to know that agendas are at work behind the scenes.
One theme that is circulating among the people who have been invited are window dressing for an apparent push to get everyone to throw their support behind SLS. I wonder how many in attendance know that there are efforts afoot to sculpt this get together into something other than advertised.
Oddly, one of the most effective organizations in terms of generating popular support – some of it actually from outside the space wonk world – the Planetary Society – is not listed as participating. Other groups such as AIAA and AAS and the Coalition for Space Exploration were added at the last minute – much to the bewilderment of many who work at these organizations.
And who is the intended audience for the eventual output of this event?
This White House has two more years of their own space policy to implement or not implement. So whatever this event produces will be useless to the Obama Administration – indeed I have been hearing that this event will provide little more than amusement. And if the Administration ever does need some external voices to lend support to the direction of their space policy all they have to do is make a few phone calls and reserve the Oval Office. So scratch the Obamanauts from the distribution list.
Will the output of this event be of any use to the 2016 campaigns? Doubtful. Space has never been a factor of any significance in a national presidential campaign. This crowd is not going to change that. Besides, whoever wins the election won’t even get around to thinking about their space policy until all of the larger policy boxes have been checked, and broader policies have been put into place within which much smaller things like space policy will be framed. In addition, when the new Administration does adopt a space policy – formal or otherwise – it will be a space policy of their own invention since (by definition) theirs has to be different than whatever was done before – regardless of the merits of their space policy or the one that preceded it. The Scott Paces and Lori Garvers of the next White House team already know what they want to do. So … nix the 2016 campaigns.
Who is left? The aerospace industry is almost totally absent from this event. The companies that are most likely to generate their own space policies by virtue of their own impressive resources i.e. SpaceX and Blue Origin are nowhere to be seen. If this was important to the aerospace community you’d see them being far more visible given that they regularly buy $100,000 ads in the Washington Post for things that are far less important than national space policy. So … scratch big aerospace.
Who is left? Who is the intended audience for the end result of this event? Why the space people, of course. Because at the end of the day space people like nothing more than to get together with other space people to tell each other how important space is – because space is important according to space people. It makes them feel good to have attended the pep rally to get ready for the big game – even if no one outside of their club even knows that there is a big game to begin with.
The “executive committee” (whatever that is) consists of Jeff Bingham, Mark Craig, Mary Lynne Dittmar, Jeff Greason, Paul Spudis, and Rick Tumlinson. They apparently have a plan to herd all of the space people in attendance into a room and extract a “basic SpaceMap for the United States” from them that will “identify strategic knowledge gaps to overcome for this nation to” … blah blah blah in space. None of the better organized presidentially- or Congressionally-chartered committees with big budgets and formal mandates have yet to do this during the past several decades. How is this ad hoc group that appeared out of nowhere expecting to do what others have failed to do before them?
“So Keith, what would you do?” You see, I can read your thoughts. My answer:
1. Not this event.
2. Figure out the bigger picture within which space policy functions before you try and create a “SpaceMap” – one that includes input from people who could care less about wonky ‘cis-lunar infrastructures’ or ‘flexible paths’ – but who want to know that they will have a job and that their children’s lives will be as good – if not better – than their own. Once you have a real world notion of what all of that is then you can proceed from that epiphany to actually tackle the issue of making space relevant and important in a way that transcends the space community’s self-imposed universe.
3. Drop everything you have tried until now. It does not work. Blockbuster space movies affect nothing in terms of space budgets except to spur more blockbuster space movies. Telling people how their lives have been changed by space goes in one ear and out the other. If you cut NASA’s budget to zero tomorrow would their space-derived cellphones and smoke detectors go away? Space people need to stop talking to other space people and talk to other people instead. You need to find a way that regular people as well as space geeks can personally participate in the exploration and utilization of space. When space becomes a personal adventure – or one that their children truly perceive to be their calling – then you will see people beating a path to Washington to demand more money for space.
4. If you want a “come together” moment that is supposed to represent the space community as a whole then it needs to represent the space community as a whole. Otherwise, call it what it is: a subgroup of a larger group that cannot even agree on the basic things it wants America to spend billions of dollars on after decades of arguing and arm waving.
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I think it’s consciousness-raising and solidarity-building for space people. They get together and re-affirm their commitment to space*, so that when they do have some opportunity to lobby and petition congressfolk they’ll have a group willing to do it.
* Not me, though. This kind of stuff just makes me more depressed about space exploration.
Space Wonk Cosplay.
Except most of the players show up wearing the same costume year after year: 50-something white males in business suits.
And new space is millenial White males in business suits. Not much change from my perspective…
Good points, Keith, but space was important in one presidential race: 1960. With the Soviets lofting large satellites, animals and whole top stages into orbit, and us responding with tiny Explorers and tinier Vanguards, we looked pretty pathetic. Not so much for space itself, but what it said about the Soviet Union’s ability to loft heavy objects (like nukes) anywhere in the world.
Kennedy made the “Missile Gap” a central part of his campaign, unaware of what was really going on. After he was elected, Ike pulled him aside and said, “Jack, we have to talk…”
“Space people need to stop talking to other space people and talk to other people instead.”
What do you think Moon Day is all about?
http://www.dallasnews.com/e…
Although I do acknowledge that the popularity of Moon Day is not because it’s a space event (although that helps), but rather because it is a hard-core STEM event with real science and engineering, not craft projects with a veneer of science. That and the Lunar Sample Bag swag bags are becoming legendary for their awesomeness.
I would also note that I’ve had a $0 budget for Moon Day in our first six years, and so far in year seven. As a consequence, we’ve never had an astronaut (although we are having our first private space traveller this year to help with our ARISS Uplink), and other than the museum’s historical assets we have little current space hardware to show off (though I beg SpaceX for an engine every year from McGregor, especially one what’s been blowed up, because they always have the most fascinating physics stories behind them).
Nevertheless we have about 30 exhibitors, family classes and adult lectures, tons of activities, Scout badges and patches, art shows, space book and toy exhibits, door prizes, tons of activities and of course over 200 Lunar Sample Bags for the first kids through the door (everyone <=18). In 2013 we distributed over half a ton of informational materials in this manner. Last year we had 1500 visitors, this year we’re anticipating 2000-2500. It is without question the biggest annual space-themed, STEM-focused event in Texas, and any Texan will be happy to tell you it ain’t bragging if it’s true.
Or how about updating the Boy Scout Space Exploration merit badge pamphlet?
http://www.thespacereview.c…
How many Boy Scouts are space insiders?
Or giving out scholarships for space projects at the science fair?
http://www.thespacereview.c…
How many middle and high schoolers are space insiders?
Not everyone is stuck in the paradigm you describe, but it may help that Dallas is rather out in the sticks, spacewise, and so we have to find our own way and do things relevant to our community (like collecting space toys for Santa’s Helpers to distribute to disadvantaged youth).
And some of us want to do space because we recognize the energy and resource benefits that could accrue to our planet if we grow the space industry well beyond the current level of activity. Space is a huge opportunity to create a new powerhouse sector of American industry that’s selling good product at a fair price to the rest of the world. Not “space is important because space is important”.
Lastly, sure my cislunar econosphere article (http://www.thespacereview.c… may have been wonky, but it was cited by Le Monde Diplomatique so that’s wonky.I can live with.
Ken, you seem to take everything I write and interpret it as a personal attack on your projects. Congratulations on your efforts. You have made your point. Move on.
No, I don’t view them as personal attacks, but you do sometimes paint space advocates with a rather broad brush and its hard not to feel splattered. There are a lot of good people out there quietly doing good work, not just a bunch of myrmidons in lockstep behind a handful of personalities (though those personalities may wish it were that way). Oh, and I knew you were talking about Dr. Spudis’ cislunar economy work, which is a bit too gov-centric for my tastes.
I do entirely agree that the old ways (come up with the next version of Das Marsprojekt, get the government to make it happen) aren’t working and haven’t for a while. But there are a couple of new generations out there in the wings, with new ideas, new approaches, and new priorities. Eventually they’ll have their day.
No, I was not referring to Paul Spudis. I just grabbed a few space nerd terms to use in that sentence – terms that space people get upset about when they talk to one another yet the general public knows or cares nothing about.
myrmidons! Now THAT is a term that makes a classics major happy.
> If you cut NASA’s budget to zero tomorrow would their space-derived cellphones and smoke detectors go away?
This is a nice writing prompt idea. Can I steal it?
Sure. Just quote me 😉
Hey, Congress must have just blocked NASA funding.
I’ve got no bars on my phone and my house caught fire…
It is a cool line. I actually wrote a scifi book with the cancellation of NASA as one of the core plot devices.
Government usually takes action when government looks bad by not taking action. No action in the face of Sputnik? Looks Bad…so Lets do Apollo.
No space program after Apollo? Looks Bad, so lets’ do Shuttle.
Fold the tent after Columbia when Shuttle is too dangerous? Looks Bad. so let’s do Vision for Space Exploration.
No president or Congress will ever want to cancel NASA. Why? It would look bad. So lets keep it going. Just enough not to upset the congressional ‘jobs in my district’ calculus. But not enough to really impact American’s prosperity.
A pointless and endlessly boring space event among a bunch of old space fuddy-duddys? In Washington?
I believe it.
“pointless” is the operative word.
“Space Koolaid”? Really? I resemble that remark. 😉
Granted, it is a bit presumptuous to take such a small and selected subset of people and, with that group, attept to map out “national policy”. “National Policy” should at least pretend to represent the “nation”.
That being said, us space wonks are called “space wonks” because we go about wonking folks upside the head trying to wake them up to the reality of their space-integrated world. We are all made of space stuff, our stuff is made of space stuff, most of our jobs are impregnated with space stuff, and all of our futures and our children’s futures will depend on space stuff. Many future millionaires will have their bank accounts stuffed full of space stuff over the next two decades.
As for SLS, which I often criticize, let me just say this. Lots of folks’ jobs rely on it to such a degree that it pretty much fits into the criteria for relevency described in this article.
As for spinoffs…well…they speak for themselves and if anyone ever attempted to project trends and models (like the Global Warming Wonks do), then projected, future, as-yet-unknown spinoffs alone would justify every penny of space exploration spending.
http://www.marchstorm.com/
This looks important to me??
Space Frontier Foundation
Read the history of previous Involvement.
2015 citizens space agenda includes
1)establish settlement as an official purpose of NASA
2) Cheap Access to Space (CATS)
3)Commercial crew, cargo
4)A”NoGap”transition to Commercial Space Stations
5) Don’t Over-Regulate Commercial Human Spaceflight
[retracted – I have no idea why I’m even writing this. I apologize.]
Hell, that’s never slowed me down any!
A plan that spending 7.5B/year (and it needs a 2B/yr plus up) on a super HLV and no missions, a LEO taxi service, and crew certifies a LV with solids that will be retired in the hopes of having a space tourist market — is *absurd*. This plan does not inspire and folks who support or advocate this decades old plan lack ‘executive leadership’ skills, so there is nothing to follow 🙂
The big picture is quite simple and it really excites quite a few folks. NASA will phase out excess LV capacity and shift the funding to BEO missions and infrastructure. The increased BEO flight rate will lower launch costs, and enable at least a broader and faster communication market. Its great…even if the 2.7B is spent on powerpoint..there is potential for something BEO and the next generation, while providing the exact same results as before: a LEO taxi service.
Will this be discussed at the event? https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Not sure how increased demand for BEO flight would lower cost. It’s a pretty basic rule in economics that increased demand raises cost. We saw that when the Shuttle was shut down and the demand for seats on Soyuz to the ISS increased.
That is the rule for increased demand and limited supply. A more relevant rule of economics concerns the efficiency of scale, particularly with complex products with a high development cost. How much would a Ford Focus cost if they could only sell 10 of them a year?
Economies of scale come into play when a manufacturer introduces new technologies and production methods that substantially reduce cost, as SpaceX is attempting to do. Simply buying more of an item when the manufacturing process is unchanged, particularly when there is no competitive pressure to reduce costs, is an increase in demand and normally results in an increase in costs.
More specifically, the manufacturing process for the SLS and Orion is already determined and there is no way I am aware of to reduce its cost while maintaining the legislative mandate to use Shuttle-derived hardware. Removing the mandate and competing each launch would permit SpaceX to offer an alternative that might apply economies of scale.
There are always fixed costs that have to be divided between the launches. Actually, with the extremely expensive infrastructure which accompanies it, the SLS program and the Shuttle program that preceded it are excellent examples of how high fixed costs combine with low volume to yield ridiculous prices. You are right that economy of scale involves new manufacturing processes, but those processes require high volume to work in the first place.
I find your post intriguing. Many very competent folks who combined understand rocket science and exploration, want to change the architecture away from Apollo. The benefit, in addition to $ for missions and technology development, is that it will reduce launch costs for the potential of at least a broader and faster market + discovery, while shifting the workforce to new challenges. Suggestions welcome.
In simple terms, the decision won’t work and there are better ways forward regardless. The knowledge gained from these past programs is invaluable. Perhaps those who learn and understand history will repeat it when necessary. Here is a partial reason why the decision, based on the flawed ESAS study, will not work.
In Chapter 6 of The Space Shuttle Decision, the concept that could fit the budget was nowhere in sight and lost out to Titan unless it flew 28 times per year. Increasing flight rate reduces launch costs, but one needs $ for payload hardware, but few $ for dirt cheap propellant, which is most of the mass, so separate the crew/hardware/propellant as necessary. Include IPs to help loft this mass.
Per the JSC Oral History Series, Max Faget:
“Then John Yardley came up with the idea of using solid rockets alongside…I was working very closely with the people from Boeing, and they pointed out, well, you could do that. You could also still keep the liquid stage behind the thing and light the engines at the same time. But the NASA officials had already shown the solid rocket configuration to the President, and he said, “Go ahead,” and pretty much set things in motion. Nixon.”
“The mistake we made on the solid rockets, it was a major mistake. I know it was a mistake, was that we decided that we’d build the solid rockets in Utah, and that limited the size of the solid rockets. We staged those solid rockets at only a little over 4,000 feet a second, which really meant that the Shuttle and its tank had a big job to do, and it really limited the performance and inhibited any growth in the payload capability, which the program has had to suffer with all this time.”
http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/his…
http://www.nss.org/resource…
Lemme guess, Rick will start off the summit by saying “Welcome to the revolution” for the thousandth time. #Crickets
Except he has not invited half of the groups who are not talking to each other …
And yet interest in space exploration seems almost universal, across political and demographic boundaries, instinctively. I am convinced that people understand that it is IMPORTANT — just not URGENT. Which is probably true. Just like that first lungfish crawling out onto the land. (It was urgent to him, because the water was drying up in his tide pool, and he had to breathe air or die. Or, maybe he needed to escape some barracuda predator.) We were scared of the Russians. Now we are just oozing along, developing technology slowly, until the next crisis comes along; or it gets so easy we just do it.
Yet the window of opportunity may not stay open forever; I just hope it does not close on us. Does anyone else think that creating one or more economically self-sustaining colonies off-Earth by the end of this century, would be a respectable and reasonable goal for humanity? Then homo sapiens would be safe from most of the many existential threats we face (except political, 1984-style suicide, of course).
It’s a reasonable goal on humanity’s behalf. But, a vital distinction, it’s not at all reasonable to count on humanity adopting it as a goal.
Back when I was first getting involved in all this, I saw a poll that had been commissioned by a then-major aerospace company (Rockwell?) As best I can tell, the numbers haven’t changed significantly since.
The gist of it was, over 2/3rds of the American public thought space was cool, neat stuff, important to the future. Call it 70%.
About one-tenth of that total thought space was important enough that the country should spend more on it. Call it 7%.
And about one-tenth of THAT total thought space was important enough to incur some level of personal expense and inconvenience. Call it .7%.
That .7% is us. That 7%, plus what we bring to the table ourselves, is what we have to work with.
People have been trying to grow that 7% to 51% for a generation now without notable success. My take is, wait for “Humanity” to seriously adopt space settlement as a goal and you’ll be waiting a long, long time.
If it happens, it’ll happen because of the combined effect of things we do as individuals and things we do as a minority pressure group. Accepting THAT is the first step to becoming an effective part of getting us closer to the goal.
I think it is a very bad idea to talk about building colonies. I was relatively neutral, if not disinterested completely in Space X until that one started talking about retiring on the mars (a colony pitch). Something about his saying it simply infuriated me. I don’t exactly know why, but it did motivate me to look into that organization.
I once worked for this company where I handled some plastic that was cured on a shuttle flight, a microgravity experiment. The bubbles of nitrogen from the stuff cured on Earth would be up at the top of the tube. The microgravity left the nitrogen bubbles evenly distributed through out the whole rod. Not good given that this stuff was for optics. They didn’t do any of the other physical tests. It was just left in a box.
I remember the marketing people decided to take that material cured in microgravity and make promotional pieces out of it to be slung around by these sales guys. They put NASA logos on special boxes holding the trinkets made from the space plastic.
All the pictures and other promotional stuff from NASA, that was kept in this very cool metal cabinet, like the kind that you put maps in with large area, shallow drawers. Nice paint job. It was on big wheels so as it got in peoples’ way they would roll it around the building. It had a lamp on it for a while, when 9/11 happened they put a tv on it, it ended up in my lab holding a water tank that I made plastic in. Nobody really paid any of it attention, unless they felt like it might sucker some clients into thinking that R&D at the company was more than it actually was. In that case they would go through the drawers looking for logos at the right resolution for their copy, that or promotional material to plagiarize.
So, that was about the time that I started looking at space stuff, because of all the pictures in the metal cabinet that got me started. The plastic would be in the tank polymerizing, and the cabinet offered light reading. I sought additional material as a result. I was really amazed by Apollo, and super-amazed at what a dog the shuttle was. I had the insight of commercial space right before me, the reality of it (it was useless). That probably helped build the foundation of realism that I have today.
Now, I’m totally bummed out and a colony is not helping. You know what is needed: a total emergency that mandates a program. A real program that has a goal and what not. I think that you guys over-rate the “taxpayer”. We’re mostly morons and hardly any of us care at all about anything let alone complicated space politics. I don’t know how to convince any of you, but the taxpayer is totally irrelevant. Ask the Air Force.
Also, you need a real administrator. The administrator can’t be a test pilot that dropped bombs in Cambodia. That’s an astronaut. Astronauts are great, but as an administrator? That person has to be a viper lawyer, or similar, that understands how to do business with politicians and giants in industry. And he can’t have a deep relationship with something like TRW (or non-profits funded by the CIA) like that last guy. God only knows when you’ll get a real administrator and where he’ll come from.
Looking around, the best idea I ever thought would work for NASA to get things rolling again: transporting nuclear waste into orbit and then putting it into a decaying orbit around the sun. That and a robot telescope to keep track of the stuff and incoming asteroids and what not. A paying job.
Kurion makes glass with that stuff suspended in it, but they don’t know what to do with it. And there’s always process problems that NASA engineers could handle blindfolded.
There’s a lot of it, the bad stuff, and in so many variations at thousands of sites. Everywhere they put it is a mistake. They put it in a salt mine, the mine catches on fire and blasts plutonium out and they can’t get back in. Then more of it falls apart. And they’re like, they don’t know what to do with any of it. They want help. They’re up to their throats and nobody cares. There ten others like them. Everyone just tells them to lie, to make the glass, and that’s it.
You NASA guys should get in on that because you might do a good job where nobody else can. Why not? You look at it and say: “well, you’ve been doing this for a long time and it’s not working. We’ll have to get it off the planet for you”.
You guys put unstable isotopes up, so you have experience. Those plutonium things with the thermocouple encapsulated in ceramic. Those things have probably been in explosions on the pad, tossed off a failing stack at max-q, and I know they’ve re-entered. So you put more of that stuff in larger containers and start lifting it. You could design the containers, blow them up in different phases of flight at centers around the country and run copy in papers and on tv. “Hey, watch this:” Boom!
Once you’re doing that, stabilize your situation a bit, get an infrastructure derived from a real problem instead of cartoon fantasy, the scumbag lawyers clean up the mess, figure out what the engineers think they can do, then they pump resources in that direction. Develop a single stage to orbit. Follow the Chinese to the moon. Turn the ISS into a submarine.
I mean, something like all that. Something that’s scares the shit out of people. Take something that’s a problem, make it worse than it really is. The “first step to Mars” stuff… that’s not going to work. How can any of you think that’s going to work?
What’s wrong with an astronaut eventually becoming a NASA administrator? The bottom line is past Presidents trying to Congresses trying to “cheap” NASA. That included the last 6 yrs too.
Thanks for your comments. There is much truth in your concerns, but harsh and alien as the space environment seems, I think you underestimate the potential it offers, as well as human adaptability.
Fundamentally, Life needs three things to prosper: thermodynamic free energy, material resources, and room to expand. All three of these are available in enormous abundance in space, and we can engineer the rest.
Life took a long time to adapt to the land. I do not suggest the solutions will be quick or easy. Many of our younger enthusiasts underestimate the time needed. But the technical problems you cite are the sort of thing that persistence and ingenuity have mastered again and again in the last century or so. I committed to this project in 1952, when I was ten and the Collier’s magazine space series series began. There von Braun et al predicted a human expedition to the moon in 100 years. It took less than 17.
Considering the progress that has been made in the painful “wasted decades” since (we have seen the Solar System! ), I think there is every reason to believe sustainable colonies can be established in the time frame I suggested as a goal. But it would help for those of us who believe in the promise of space colonization to be active in arguing the case now, lest more lost years pile up.
Space settlement will not save humanity down here, yet it may offer helpful resources, energy in particular. But as I said, we do not know when the window of opportunity may close, given the obvious and serious existential threats that we face here on Earth, so advocacy is Important, even of the project is not quite Urgent.
Affordable space with the goal of settlement is what I seem to think the most about this days. I have found you can catch space news faster with tweeter, as well as like minds. @dtarsgeorge
On twitter I took some pictures of Spacex’s barge dock where I hope to witness history soon.
I think it is likely that Musk will have us well on the way to having a life boat in the sky before his days are through
You give me hope Bill 🙂
I don’t tweet, alas, having only a StupidPhone as yet. (You can find me as william.wheaton.39 on Facebook tho.)
But thanks! I think the fundamentals are terrific, and will win out in the end, if we can just keep at it and avoid some catastrophe that cuts everything short. So please do not lose hope, and keep arguing the case with anyone who will listen. Voices crying in the wilderness are important.
Also, read John S Lewis’s book “Mining the Sky”, if you have not. He knows much more about the chemistry of the Solar System (which is the nitty gritty of extraterrestrial resource utilization) than I ever hope to learn, and is another True Believer. (He was Harold Urey’s best grad student when I started grad school at UCSD in 1965, knew him slightly.)
Bill, you don’t need a cell to use twitter. Just Google Twitter and make an ID once there. You could follow me and copy my friends to start. In the last week or so even had the pleasure of asking @torybruno directions which answered 🙂 In twitter you can ask more than one person a question at once and possibly get them talking.
I does have a Facebook acct. But I never use it. I will try to figure it out.
I will be watching launch tonight at 10:50 🙂
Excellent article, Keith. I drank deeply in decades past of the Space Kool-Aid – in fact I actually heard about Jonestown on the radio rolling thru Harvard Square one night on my way back to my dorm room at MIT as a grad student in Course 16 Aero Astro. These days I read zerohedge.com for my daily planetary reality check, and urge all of you to do so as well. Why, just today Ronald Regan’s old budget director, David Stockman, weighs in on just why there’s not going to be a major investment in a big-budget space program anytime soon:
“…demand has run smack up against peak debt — I think that’s the right word for it. We had a tremendous study come out in the last week or so from McKinsey, who do a pretty good job of trying to calculate, track and total up the amount of credit outstanding, public and private, in the world. We’re now at the $200 Trillion threshold. That’s up from only about $140 Trillion at the time of the [2008 financial] crisis. So we’ve had a $60 Trillion expansion worldwide of debt just since 2008. During that same period, though, the GDP of the world saw a little more than $15 trillion from $55 or mid-$50s, roughly, to $70 Trillion. So we’ve generated, because of central bank money printing and all of this unprecedented monetary stimulus, we’ve generated something like $60 Trillion of new debt in the world and have barely gotten $15-17 billion of new GDP for all of that effort. And I think that is a measure of why the fundamental era is changing. That the boom is over and the crackup is under way when you see that kind of minimal yield from the vast amount of new debt that has been generated….
…These are extreme unsustainable deformations, if I can use that word, that just scream out, “Danger ahead. Mayhem has happened.” And the unwinding of this and the resolution of this is not going to be pretty…”
BTW, I’ve kind of lost count. How many space policy organizations are there nowadays anyway?
I see and agree with most of Keith’s points. If this was a “we must stand together or we will all hang separately” moment it needed to include everybody and be open.
That said I think a “we must stand together or we will all hang separately” moment is desperately needed. Like Keith said space is a niche issue and the few people who do put space as one of their top concerns are fighting each other constantly instead of convincing people about the reasons space exploration is important (FYI in my view there is no one overarching reason that space is important. It is the combination of many reasons).
I have chosen to embrace both commercial space and SLS/Orion. Do I think there are issues with both? Absolutely. Do I think they are perfect? Absolutely not. The only way we will get the public excited in any way about space again is to talk both up and support them both.
Back in 2010 I had my teenage dreams of watching a return to the moon dashed because a program that could have worked was cancelled. SpaceX, Boeing, Orbital, and NASA have done a good job reigniting some of my generation’s interest in space. That said if in 2016 we go down the same road we did in 2010 we will lose my generation and the next generation and be right back where we started.
Forgive the rant but I am sick and tired of the constant SLS/Orion bashing and the belief that the only way forward in space is to cancel them. They are not perfect but they are being built and we can use them. If Elon Musk finds a way to build and operate an SHLV safely and at lower cost so be it. I will cheer and dance and I will support SLS being phased out. That’s said lets hedge our bets and support everybody. Hopefully that way we can avoid the disappointments of the past.
We’re not going to lose any generation. The seeds have been sown and we’re pressing on.
You do realize how many people think Obama canceled NASA right? I myself stopped paying attention to space issues for a year or so afterwards because of how terrible I felt and I am a space junkie! If NewSpace’s “glorious vision” of the cancellation of SLS/Orion comes to pass there won’t be any money for their grand visions of only commercial space travel. At best we will be stuck in LEO for 30 years.
UNLESS …
That money is used for funding in a different way instead of funding the status quo.
I tend to agree with a new blog post by Wayne Hale.
https://waynehale.wordpress…
“A lot of what I do – make that almost all of what I do – is covered by ‘Non-Disclosure Agreements’. In other words, I can’t tell anybody about what anybody else is doing. There are a lot of times when I have to bite my tongue, but that is the nature of the job. Reminds me of the old days when I worked on ‘classified’ shuttle flights. In the name of national security I had to keep a lot of things from a lot of people. Kept me busy trying to remember who I could say what to and who I couldn’t. Interesting mental exercise to partition your memory and thoughts like that. Good training for my current work.
So, while I’d like to blog about what my clients are doing, well, you will just have to wait for them to tell you themselves; I’m not authorized
But what I can tell you is that it’s amazing.”
We also almost have the three legs of the stool, commercial cargo, crew and desitination in place.
That will be the start of a paradigm shift.
The first time in the history of the planet, that if you have a big enough checkbook anyone can get into outer space.
I pretty much agree with everything you stated. Mr. Hale is a very smart guy and he is 100% correct in what he said. Notice though he didn’t say, “Cancel all the big jobs programs (e.g. SLS/Orion).”
SLS and Orion have a place in the future. More than likely they are the placeholders until a better system can come about. But even as placeholders they can be extremely useful. I want to see men orbit the moon in 6 years, not wait 10 years or more for the “perfect system.”
LEO is going commercial but right now commercial space needs NASA to be the guaranteed customer in order to usher in a market. It is yet to be seen though if a such market can be sustained on its own.
There is much less of an emerging market for BEO than for LEO. NASA will have to play much more of a role in this case. No company can afford to run an SHLV on its own so NASA will have to run the show. Right now NASA and Boeing and others are building the shuttle derived SLS.
I agree that it is overpriced but the total price of a SLS/Orion program plus hab modules (and maybe even some landers) will cost less than Apollo and be on par with the Space Shuttle in the long run.
SpaceX is doing a tremendous job but building and maintaining an SHLV may be beyond their scope right now. Obviously they are going to try and I say more power to them. Maybe building it on their own will make it better and cheaper than SLS. We will have to see.
Joe, it is not I am against, big rocketry, or I am against NASA. I am against how congress forces NASA to make everything more expensive through a contracting system that ensures maximum touch work, duplicity etc so that the finished product is 4-10 times more expensive than COTS ( commercial off the shelf) . For me it has always been most bang for the buck. Congress never seems to worry about that though as long as each little poliitical fiefdom is protected at all costs.
I have a tendacy to view space transporation as just that, a transportation issue. When you look at it in those simplier terms,
How has the federal government worked towards other forms of transporation. Cars and roads, Canals and canal boats, Planes and airports, Ships and ports.
Who can fly higher who can fly farther.
I feel it will be the same. Once you have did your trip to LEO then what?
What do you do next?
How do you “fly higher” ? What can commercial competitors offer next? A flight LEO2GEO? A flight to EM1 or EM2? A lunar fly by? A trip to a Lunar orbital station?
I am a strong believer that you will “keeping up with the jones’s” in space just like on the ground.
“But honey Mrs Gates has a lunar diamond why can’t I have one” … lol
Joe wrote: “commercial space needs NASA to be the guaranteed customer in order to usher in a market”
I have never disagreed with that. In a lot that I have advocated for in the past it is NASA to play the anchor tenant. Like for a fuel station. NASA build a couple NAUTILUS-X vehicles and start doing road trips LEO2GEO. build an orbital platform in GEO to visit – hang a ton of experiements on them and visit every other month for a few weeks. maturing technology, testing materials through the van allen belt, gaining experience etc.
In the mean time you have NASA utilizing a fungible product ( fuel) that can create a fierce competitive environment for launch companies.
NASA is acting as an anchor customer by purchasing flights to the ISS from both SpaceX and Boeing under the Commercial Crew Program.
if the Repubs in the HOR has their way, there will never be a commercial crew program. Once they succeed in a down select to one provider, eventually that one provider will be defunded in favor of the Orion/SLS system for LEO & BEO.
Actually they would down select to Boeing.
Just an observation from the morning news that brought to mind this discussion: News anchor mentions the new NASA initiative for a TITAN mission. The co-anchor turns and says, “well of course they’ll have that done this afternoon”.