DoD Seems To Be More Interested In Space Futures Than NASA Is
Report: The Future of Space 2060 and Implications for U.S. Strategy: Report on the Space Futures Workshop, Air Force Space Command 5 September 2019
“Key conclusions reached were:
– The U.S. must recognize that in 2060, space will be a major engine of national political, economic, and military power for whichever nations best organize and operate to exploit that potential.
– The U.S. faces growing competition from allies, rivals, and adversaries for leadership in the exploration and exploitation of space.
– China is executing a long-term civil, commercial, and military strategy to explore and economically develop the cislunar domain with the explicit aim of displacing the U.S. as the leading space power. Other nations are developing similar national strategies.
– A failure to remain a leading space power will place U.S. national power at risk. To avert this, the U.S. coalition must promote and optimize the combined civil, military, and commercial exploitation of space to best serves the nation’s interests.
– The U.S. military must define and execute its role in promoting, exploiting, and defending the expanded military, civil, and commercial U.S. activities and human presence in space.”
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Hooray: Space Command / Space Force Is Here!, earlier post
Because of several reasons, NASA has and will have minimal influence in the future of space ‘exploitation’. First, it no longer owns the brain power and corporate memory to do a lot. We see that in the continual delay and huge cost increases on most NASA space projects. To great extent NASA did, in human spaceflight, do this to themselves by putting astronauts and operations people in chart of DDT&E and by eliminating the technical base from the 1980s to present. Second NASAs budget is not big enough to be anything but a catalyst for BIG projects. NASA ought to be doing research to help spur future development. But when it comes to advancing systems, NASA is usually following and not leading. To minor extent NASA is helping to foster commercial development. For society to advance, corporate industry needs to make the investment. Mainly Elon Musk is making that investment today with some help and begrudging encouragement from NASA. If we had a few Musks competing with one another, then we could see some real progress. NASAs budget is too minuscule for it to be able to do a lot more. However it should not be given huge increases because it wastes much of what it gets, and because NASAs mission of science and exploration has never been a huge force for advancing the economy. Technological advancement, education, and corporate profits have been far more significant.
“For society to advance, corporate industry needs to make the investment.” … no, governments also can make the investment. Corporations will invest when they see a payback, governments can invest if they see a return in the “general good” (however that is defined)..
“… governments can invest if they see a return in the “general good” (however that is defined)..”
Unfortunately, no. That has not been true since before Congress started killing off any projects that looked like they could replace part of the Space Shuttle’s functions. NASA’s problem is that it has been shaped by politicians for the benefit of those politicians. Sometimes what benefited the pols benefited the nation. Too often, not so much. NASA’s people have been splendid for the most part. Their low productivity reflects NASA being a pre-industrial institution by the competent definition of the industrial revolution:
“When a society moves from allocating resources by custom and tradition (moderns read here, by politics) to allocating resources by markets, they may be said to have undergone an industrial revolution” Arnold Toynbee-1884
Which projects that threatened STS did congress kill ?
Not surprising, they have a job to do, protecting America, and ensuring space access and protection of space assets is part of it. It’s why the DOD funded the DC-X and were working on RLVs in the 1990’s until President Clinton’s space policy limited them to funding ELVs. And going back further in time, if the U.S. Army hadn’t started work on the F-1 engine in the 1950’s the Saturn V would not have been available for Project Apollo.
Yes. It is exactly the behavior expected of the military: threat assessment. Nothing happens without it.
The Generals are often criticized for over-reaction, often rightly so. But the process is well-understood, and within certain guidelines it is mostly transparent.
I’m curious if this mission focus precludes development of a nuclear-powered LEO-to-cislunar/surface shuttle. Mentioned during Apollo era, how capable might it be compared to e.g. a refueled Starship?
That depends on the mission. Both for whether is’t something a space force would be interested in, and how it would compare to Starship. Is that for cargo or people? The trip time and payload accommodations depends on that. Nuclear thermal or electric? Going all the way to the surface, or to lunar orbit with a separate surface-to-orbit boat?
It is very interesting that the thought process seem to be linear and as if the same old problems are the only major ones that need to be faced or that will be drawing on financial assets in the future (SNAFU). There is no mention of the estimated 2 billion additional humans (including aging populations and population inversions) on Earth, the inevitable impacts on resources, pollution and ongoing climate change and its costs (recent largest recorded hurricane and fires ongoing). All will debilitate many if not all countries abilities in the future (i.e. next 30 years). And then you add in the ailing education system and its future impacts on economy, innovation, etc. And being a service based culture does not bode well for the future survival of our nation or species. All of these things are interrelated, but no one seems to want to work this holistic problem. And just taking the “high ground” in a military sense will not do much. And no one has a plan for mass human migration off Earth anytime soon to actually create and grow an off world economy.