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Commercialization

First Commercial Astronaut Is Not So Hot on Commercial Exploration

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
January 19, 2016
Filed under , , ,
First Commercial Astronaut Is Not So Hot on Commercial Exploration

Charles D. Walker: Don’t relinquish all space exploration to private firms, Charles Walker, Arizona Daily Star
“The idea is attractive, even if commercial plans for a Mars mission are hypothetical at best. But as much as I support the private space industry, experience and common sense tell me that a commercial Mars human landing won’t ever get off the ground not unless NASA goes there first. Businesses are slaves to short-term balance sheets, and private space-industry investors and shareholders are notoriously risk-averse. Even wealthy entrepreneurs won’t throw their money away. They’ll back straightforward missions like delivering cargo to the space station 250 miles above the Earth using mature and well-tested technologies if they can turn a profit within a reasonable time with acceptable risk.”
Keith’s note: This is the sort of Pro-SLS, only-government-can-explore sort of nonsense that Mary Lynne Dittmar and her Coalition for Deep Space Exploration are pushing. (this op ed is linked to from the Coalition’s website). This is how Dittmar retweeted a link to this op ed:

This statement by Dittmar is fundamentally silly given that the “whims of market or investors” are precisely what push the management of Lockheed-Martin, Boeing, Orbital ATK, ULA, Aerojet, and the rest of the aerospace sector to pursue big government projects such as Orion and SLS. Dittmar can’t have it both ways.
Keith’s additional note: At the NASA Advisory Council meeting last year, Bill Gerstenmaier made it very clear that NASA needs to have a fully commercialized LEO infrastructure in order to free up NASA resources to focus on SLS/Orion-based exploration of cislunar space – and later, of Mars. When asked what would happen if that LEO commercialization did not happen, Gerstenmaier said that NASA would have to reassess how it would accomplish its exploration goals. Clearly, Mary Lynn Dittmar, NASA’s future exploration of space is intimately tied to the success of LEO commercialization – an activity that will be driven by the “whims of market or investors”. Besides, everyone knows that NASA’s ability to explore is, always has been, and always will be “held hostage to whims of” — Congress. As such, what is wrong with trying to find an alternate path to enable the exploration and utilization of space?

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

156 responses to “First Commercial Astronaut Is Not So Hot on Commercial Exploration”

  1. ThomasLMatula says:
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    Change is scary. Its far more comfortable to stick to the old paradigm which you are familiar with than adopt the new unknown one that is emerging. Most space advocates have gotten comfortable lobby Congress and NASA to spend taxpayers money on their favorite goal. But when space exploration becomes commercial it will be investors and venture capitalists across the nation calling the shots, not legislators in Washington, and they talk a completely different language of income statements and ROI’s.

  2. AgingWatcher says:
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    The key question is not free market versus government. The key question is vision — or lack of it. Apollo was a wonderfully successful government program — and Musk may just make it to Mars through the vagaries of free enterprise. Vision that sees beyond the bottom line and focused will are the rare, essential first ingredients.

    • jon_downfromthetrees says:
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      Well, no. “Vision” has little to do with it.

      The market *can’t* sustain any effort that doesn’t turn a profit. So, the market might go to the Moon or Mars. But, it won’t make a habit of it unless it figures out how to make it pay.

      Governments aren’t reliant on profit. If a government decides to go to the Moon or Mars, it can do so if it can find the funds. It can do so again and again if it chooses to, and can sustain political support for that effort.

      Exploration is a form of research, and is never going to be a money maker. (And, by definition, it isn’t repeatable.)

      So, I’m sure we’ll see a continuation of the current scenario: Government claiming that it is going exploring — going where no market can go — while the market claims it will do much the same *and* make gobs of money doing it.

      In the end, the market will do what turns a profit, and government will do whatever the vagaries of politics permit. Each will generate a few one-off spectaculars that aren’t sustained because the right kind of capital can’t be generated and the perceived lack of financial or political profit.

      • AgingWatcher says:
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        Quite a succinct and thorough explanation of the conventional wisdom. Worship on at the altar of free enterprise, my friend.

  3. SouthwestExGOP says:
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    Many people have noted that businesses are not ALL “slaves to short-term balance sheets” and the government also has a tough time sticking to any one goal long enough to accomplish it. We have NO certainty that NASA (or any government organization) will ever reach Mars (or even the Moon, again!).

    Business has done a lot of research – Bell Labs for instance. Xerox Palo Alto Research Labs for one. Google is doing some neat things – companies like that innovate since they are free of government interference.

    Very likely the commercial companies will press on and hopefully the government can somewhat keep up.

    It sounds like Mr Walker needs to see where technology development is being done today.

    • ed2291 says:
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      Excellent point! It is absolutely true that “…the government also has a tough time sticking to any one goal long enough to accomplish it.” We landed on the moon when I was in 10th grade. I am now 63 and we have not been out of low earth orbit since the Apollo missions. Government has a legitimate place in many areas, but right now it looks like the free market is making more progress.

    • Jeff2Space says:
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      Specifically, companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin are (quite successfully) investing in lowering launch costs in a way that government has not. In my opinion, one of the keys is only accepting private investments to insure that your company is not beholden to investors who are unwilling to take a very long term view of technology investments.

    • John Adley says:
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      What Bell Labs? Is it still exist? Xerox is on it’s way to bankruptcy. The only kind of research Google does is mining your emails and web browsing habits so they can send you more ads to click on. The self driving car is totally a sideshow for testing machine learning algorithms that people at Stanford and Berkeley have been using for a long time, and ultimately the algorithms will help google to send you more ads.

    • Mal Peterson says:
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      You might want to do some further investigation into this. There is a big difference between a research arm of a public corporation and a research entity incorporated as a standalone entity. The research arm, e.g., Bell Labs, got its funding from a combination of the parent corporations investment capital and other sources, e.g., DOD, the IC and NASA.

      Please also note that the reason Elon Musk cites for not wanting to take Space-X “public” is that the stockholders would be reluctant to undertake long-term speculative investments such as participating in Mars Exploration.

      • SouthwestExGOP says:
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        You can nitpick the examples that I used but private research has created some amazingly useful capabilities. No one reinvents what is already existing, they make it available and useful to people. MapQuest used existing capabilities but took it in a new direction – now we all find on line maps to be nearly essential. Intel got both private and government investment but you cannot say that personal computers, phones, etc are all just an extension of government investment. The commercial aircraft companies are pushing the state of the art in cockpit systems, composite materials, engines, etc etc.

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      Your characterization of pure research undertaken by private companies might need some updating? The notion that a company can do anything not directly tied to shareholder value is long past. Sure, there are examples of companies behaving in responsible ways- Tim Cook has been vocal on this issue- but we live in a time when so many see corporations in a very narrow way.

      When I was in elementary school, for instance, GM made available countless brochures and pamphlets related to auto design, free for the asking and in huge quantities for distribution to schools- it was my job in 6th grade to manage the program. They sponsored annual auto design competitions across the country. All gone to the church of the quarterly return.

      And when America looks across the corporate plain of,modern America, they nod with glazed eyes, repeating ‘It Is Good’, not realizing that corporate citizens have become very bad citizens indeed.

      • duheagle says:
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        When I was in elementary school, for instance, GM made available countless brochures and pamphlets related to auto design, free for the asking and in huge quantities for distribution to schools- it was my job in 6th grade to manage the program. They sponsored annual auto design competitions across the country. All gone to the church of the quarterly return.

        And yet GM’s quarterly returns in the “old days” were probably better than they are now. I couldn’t find any free on-line time series data to confirm this, but it’s hard to see how today’s GM could be outperforming the GM of the 60’s when foreign competition was negligible and the national economy was growing better than 5% per year. I remember the now-long-defunct annual Fisher Body Craftsman’s Guild design contests that were a big deal when I was a sprout. The Craftsman’s Guild went away in 1968, about the time bean counters consolidated their takeover of GM from the car guys and stuff like the godawful Chevy Vega started getting greenlit for development and production. Best time to sell a corporation’s equity short? Right after some Ivy League lox with a Harvard MBA takes over as CEO.

        • Michael Spencer says:
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          Yes, that was the program that I remembered as well.

          Are you saying that the GM corporate culture- as a stand-in for the broad American corporate culture- was more productive in the days we were young?

          In many ways this seems opposite to the general themes I see from your posts?

          I’d also point out, opportunistically I admit, that those same long ago days carried much higher tax rates; that unions were strong and allowed single-income families, among other things.

          • duheagle says:
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            Are you saying that the GM corporate culture- as a stand-in for the broad American corporate culture- was more productive in the days we were young?

            GM was better at its core competency – designing and building cars – when it was run by car guys. In an absolute sense, today’s GM cars are much better than those of yesteryear, but on a relative basis, they trail those of many competitors in a way that was not the case in the 60’s.

            Part of the problem is short-sighted cheese paring, like the infamous recent ignition lock fiasco. More consequential is the fact that the last engineers at American car companies who could competently design an engine seem to have retired sometime during the first Nixon administration.

            Saturn got higher quality ratings than any other GM marque during its brief existence. I’ve owned three in the last 20 years. Two were bought new and neither engine got anywhere near 100,000 miles before self-destructing.

            Given my impecunious current circumstances, a well-used model is now my ride and, after putting considerably more into it in repairs than I paid for it, it’s now nearing 100,000 miles on its original engine so I have my fingers crossed.

            I’ve owned other Detroit iron from all the Big 3 U.S. makes and they were all worse than the Saturns. Accordingly, I have finally learned, after far too long, that one is foolish in the extreme to buy anything built by the drunken louts of the UAW.

            I’d also point out, opportunistically I admit, that those same long ago days carried much higher tax rates; that unions were strong and allowed single-income families, among other things.

            The mid and late 60’s had annual GDP growth of over 5% largely due to John Kennedy’s tax cut – passed posthumously – that more than tripled the after-tax return to those in the highest tax bracket.

            Unions weren’t strong in those days, they just thought they were because the companies pretty much gave them anything they wanted. They could do this because – being nearly the only advanced industrial nation to emerge from WW2 with an intact industrial infrastructure – American industry didn’t have significant foreign competition until the 70’s. During this atypical period in American history, a blue collar worker with a union factory job could live a middle class existence. That hadn’t been true before WW2 and it didn’t last.

            After the 60’s, things got tougher and companies couldn’t indulge the illusions of entitled unionists to nearly the same degree. To the extent any company tried, it tended to get killed by its competitors – foreign and domestic – and disappear, taking all those union jobs with it. Heavily unionized mass-employment heavy industry tended to disappear in favor of leanly-staffed, heavily automated, non-union replacements. This process continues. The basic sales pitch of unions was “We can get you above-market wages.” They couldn’t. They can’t. Except, of course, for public employee unions, but that’s another story.

            The biggest reasons for the decline of single-breadwinner families were/are: (1) a return to “normal” times in which factory work was not an automatic ticket to the middle class, (2) the automation of white-collar work and the flattening of management hierarchies which had the same effect on office work as the restored global competition had on factory work, (3) the Women’s Movement and the entry of huge numbers of women into the white-collar and service ranks, and (4) the entry of increasing numbers of Baby Boomers into the workforce.

  4. TheBrett says:
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    Businesses are slaves to short-term balance sheets, and private space-industry investors and shareholders are notoriously risk-averse.

    It’s half-true. On the one hand, there are tons of space entrepreneurs who were taking the “long term” and getting into this despite the fact that they could probably make more money elsewhere in the same amount of time – Musk comes to mind, as well as Bigelow.

    But on the other hand, we don’t see the big institutions of finance piling into commercial space businesses. Maybe they will some day, but not today.

    • Mal Peterson says:
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      You appear to be using a definition of “commercial space businesses” that doesn’t include Lockheed-Martin, Boeing, Loral, and many others. And the big institutions of finance — which includes insurance companies — have made many investments in the companies that fit a more broadly defined definition.

    • duheagle says:
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      Where have you been? Even leaving aside how much of the common stock of Boeing, LockMart and Northrop-Grumman is in the portfolios of mutual funds that a lot of people have invested retirement funds in, there’s the $100 million bucks Fidelity invested in SpaceX last year. Not exactly chump change.

      The big financial institutions would be happy to invest in private space, but they don’t do venture capital and most of private space is not yet publicly traded so there’s no stock available. The Fidelity deal with SpaceX was, in essence, a private placement deal.

  5. John Gardi says:
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    Folks:

    The issue here isn’t whether commercial or government programs get to Mars first.

    If, as Elon Musk, has told us many times, we are to become a multiplanetary species, it seems to me that the shortest path to success is to have a firm business plan in place.

    Tesla Motors built electric cars and the customers came.

    SpaceX built the cheapest medium class launch vehicle ever and the customers came.

    If Elon says he can sell tickets to Mars for a half million, I have no doubt customers will come.

    What better way to save humanity than to offer just that on the open market?

    tinker

    • Riley 1066 says:
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      Musk needs to have more fealty towards NASA than he does or else the Federal Government should constrain his ability to engage in spaceflight.

      • Yale S says:
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        He offers a service at a great price and NASA (or any customer) jumps at the chance to buy it.

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        I’m wondering if you want to expand your remarks.

        • Riley 1066 says:
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          I want to pay taxes to the Government, some of which get sent to NASA and then I want NASA to explore space and then give the results of that exploration to the American Taxpayer (and by extension the rest of the world) free of charge. I don’t want the benefits of spaceflight to be possessed by the billionaire class and hoarded. The latter scenario is what awaits us if we surrender our space program too much to private industry.

          • Ball Peen Hammer ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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            How has our space program been surrendered to private industry?

            NASA designs missions and contracts companies to do the engineering, manufacturing and much of the operation of those missions.

            That’s what they did with Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Space Shuttle, the ISS, Commercial Cargo and Commercial Crew.

          • duheagle says:
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            What, exactly, do you imagine “the results of that exploration” to be? What, exactly, would the American taxpayer be “sharing” with the rest of the world? If a billionaire can finance the infrastructure necessary to offer profitable tickets to Mars for a half million bucks a pop, what, exactly, would he be “hoarding?” You sound like an adolescent lefty with a knee-jerk hatred of “The Rich.” A bit ironic considering how many of the present-day American rich are leftist progressives themselves. Elysium was not a documentary, dude.

          • Michael Spencer says:
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            Your comments require a bit of thought and this thread is getting old. I would note that it was 17th century ‘billionaires’ who received New World land grants, as they were the only ones able to finance new towns and farms. And that waves of immigrants came to the New World in later centuries.

    • John Adley says:
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      “What better way to save humanity than to offer just that on the open market?”

      If you mean dumping some rich folks onto mars and never let them back again can save humanity, I totally agree with you.

      • Yale S says:
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        SpaceX is planning way down the line to take colonists. The goal is $1/2 million. This is not “rich”. The target is derived from the net worth, including the house equity, of a middle class person. Remember they are living there, simply swapping suburbia with Marstown. And it includes a no questions asked return seat to earth.

        • John Adley says:
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          Sure, folks like you are more than welcome to take the one way trip. Please don’t come back.

        • Michael Spencer says:
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          Pretty easy these days to come up with that kind of money. Realize that colonists would be liquidating everything on Earth- except some investments, I suppose. Interesting question.

          I wonder if earth money would buy things on Mars? I suppose it would buy space on the next supply ship for Mars Bars 🙂

      • Bill Housley says:
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        He’s not talking about “dumping some rich folks onto mars” he’s talking about millionaire investors dumping boatloads of cash into Mars entrepreneurship to send lots of other folks to Mars.
        First go the New Money Billionaires like Musk and Bezos.
        Then go the New Money Millionaires.
        So far, it is starting to look like New Money is far less risk averse than Public Money when it comes to space…especially in these slow economic times.
        The risk averse crowd that Walker is talking about are the Old Money rich, like venture capital firms.

      • Yale S says:
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        [Click on image to expand]

        http://cdn.financialsamurai

  6. duheagle says:
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    deep space exploration should not be held hostage to whims of market or investors

    Of course not. Everyone knows it should be held hostage to whims of Presidents, Senators and Congresspersons.

    Like God intended.

  7. DJE51 says:
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    What the author fails to acknowledge is that SpaceX is not bound to a board of directors, nor short term profits that they would dictate. It is privately owned and operated my Elon Musk. If he wants to spend his fortune on getting us to mars, more power to him – and it may be that he develops a market all by himself, that no-one else has the vision to foresee.

    • kcowing says:
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      Exactly.

    • Yale S says:
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      And its not just his fortune. He has a number of high and low profile investors. They are being given a dual opportunity. Relatively safe high return on his “conventional” government and commercial cargo and taxi services, plus a higher risk, but virtually unlimited return, ground-floor option on owning the future.

    • Yale S says:
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      http://www.spaceflightinsid

      Saturn V (comparable to Orion/SLS in size), estimated SpaceX MCT, and Falcon 9

    • Ball Peen Hammer ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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      SpaceX most definitely is bound to its board of directors, like any other corporation.

      The board of directors however is bound to the shareholders – and I suspect that Musk still owns the majority of the company. Even if he doesn’t his investors were hand picked as people/companies who share his vision for SpaceX’ future.

      • Bunker9603 says:
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        SpaceX is not publicly traded, therefore no board of directors

        • Yale S says:
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          Even tho its not a public company, it does have a board. But Musk is the Boss.

        • Ball Peen Hammer ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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          Corporations do not have to be publicly traded to have boards of directors. A board of directors is the normal structure for a corporation, regardless of how ownership in the company may be bought and sold.

          Kimbal Musk is chairman of the board of directors, and Steve Jurvetson is managing director.

          SpaceX is not publicly traded – therefore you can’t buy stock in the company on a public stock exchange.

    • Stephen54321 says:
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      So just how many space exploration missions has Musk green lighted?

  8. Michael Spencer says:
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    “”whims of market or investors” are precisely what push the management of Lockheed-Martin, Boeing, Orbital ATK, ULA, Aerojet, and the rest of the aerospace sector to pursue big government projects “

    I think you’ve missed it here, Keith. These companies don’t innovate or establish goals. They respond to RFPs and such. Different story.

  9. BeanCounterFromDownUnder says:
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    Nailed it! America’s deep space exploration program should not be held hostage to the whims of Congress.
    There, fixed that for you Mary.
    Cheers

    • Stephen54321 says:
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      So just how many space missions that aren’t going to the ISS or launching commercial satellites has the private space industry proposed, much less greenlit?

      I know of only two. Both involve sending humans to or near Mars, and both currently involve a good deal of skepticism that they will ever eventuate. I am aware of several past proposals (e.g. NEAP), all of which are now defunct.

  10. korichneveygigant says:
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    Nailed it! America’s deep space exploration should not be held hostage to whims of POLITICAL CLIMATE or POLITICIANS.

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      Who SHOULD control our space program, then, if not the representatives we elect?

      • korichneveygigant says:
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        The Smoking man?

        It was partly in jest, but to be completely honest, I don’t think any science or scientific endeavor should be controlled or guided by elections or any one elected.

        The general public and politicians are fickle and swayed far to easily.

        Oversight yes, direct control and path shaping, no

      • ed2291 says:
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        I don’t have any easy answers, but based on the last half century we are on the wrong path. At least NASA is.

      • duheagle says:
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        The government will, of course, control any government space program. If Elon and SpaceX manage to get to Mars on their own dime, I see no basis for our government, or any other, to be “controlling” any part of it.

      • Vladislaw says:
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        What is the “space program”? A program to do what? Create jobs? Make sure we have a technical base of workers? Investigate? Explore? Push the frontier? Help entrepreneurs and new start ups? Push tech into the Private sector? Act as a pump primer? Raise the TRL (technology readiness level) of new technologies?

  11. Neil.Verea says:
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    Walker and Gerst have it right. Those who take Elon’s Private Humans to Mars statements as gospel, well they probably believe in Stanty Clause and the tooth fairy. The reality is that the first humans to land on Mars will be Government people not private, if you don’t buy this then you have a distorted view of reality, and an even more distorted view of what private industry does and why. Going to Mars is not like Elon’s launches to the ISS which on a technical level are all based on capabilities the GOVERNMENT developed over decades and Billions of $ of investments in successes and failures over that period. As Gerst and others have, IMHO, stated, going to Mars will require a focused combination of resources to overcome the obstacles and achieve success. That means using all parties involved to perform what they do best in stitching it all together. Private industry, (not the kind that receives government money to develop its products) has an incentive to make money for that reason alone it will not be leading the charge. It may lead the cheer leading though

    • kcowing says:
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      Has NASA ever safely returned a rocket stage – from a lunch vehicle that put something into space – back to Earth for reuse? Just asking.

      • Joe Denison says:
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        Well the space shuttle did return the main engines and the boosters and the “payload fairing” so yeah NASA has done that.

        I don’t say this in any way to diminish SpaceX. Their accomplishment is amazing and I for one am very happy about (even though I also support SLS/Orion).

        I just couldn’t take the knock against NASA when they did pioneering work on reusability.

        • Monty says:
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          Most of the reusability lessons we learned from the Shuttle are negative ones. Beginning with the falsehood that the Shuttle was “reusable”. It wasn’t. It had to be extensively (and expensively) overhauled after every mission. The engines basically had to be completely torn down and rebuilt every time. The central tank was thrown away. The SRB’s were retrieved, but the cost-savings from doing so were minimal — it probably would have been cheaper in the long run just to discard them along with the central tank.

          We did away with the side-mounted crew vehicle and put it back on top of the stack. We did away with the delta-wing design and went back to the capsule. We did away with the tiles and went back to an ablative coating for heat dissipation on re-entry. We separated the crew from the payload. And so on and so on and so on. It never achieved any of the goals set out for it at the beginning of the project: not in terms of flight-rate, not in terms of projected development costs, not in terms of safety, not in terms of lowering launch costs, and not in terms of providing a robust architecture for future space exploration.

          The entire design philosophy of the Space Shuttle was repudiated in the design of the SLS/Orion stack, which marks the Shuttle program pretty decisively as a failed project.

          • Yale S says:
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            The shuttle was never reusable. It was partially recoverable and required massive refurbishment. All to haul 28k kilograms into LEO at a cost towards $1.5billion while risking crew lives and flights separated by months.
            Dead waste.

          • Joe Denison says:
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            Even SpaceX’s Falcon 9 is going to require some type of overhauling. Should be much less than shuttle sure but under your definition it would not be “reusable.”

            Even though the shuttle wasn’t perfect it did contribute to progress on reusability. Negative lessons do contribute to progress. It might come as a surprise to you that most people don’t get everything right on the first try. Edison had many negative results before he made the first lightbulb.

            Also the reason the shuttle didn’t achieve all its design goals is because they were impossible given all the requirements on it. NASA wanted it for different reasons than the Air Force but the design had to accommodate everybody. That was the problem with shuttle.

            I just get upset with the arrogance of some of the people who comment here who treat the shuttle like a complete failure. Sure it wasn’t perfect but it built an amazing space station (which is the only reason SpaceX exists now), launched and serviced the most important space observatory ever, launched many other important payloads, and inspired the imaginations of many people.

            What have you done lately? Not nearly as much as the space shuttle and the people who worked on it.

          • Yale S says:
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            Even SpaceX’s Falcon 9 is going to require some type of overhauling. Not if things go as planned. The Falcon is designed NOT to need overhauling between flights. It is designed to be restacked and refueled and reflown within 10 hours.

            The parts with the greatest stress are the engines. And Musk said about their life: There is no meaningful limit. We would have to replace a few parts that experience thermal stress after 40 cycles, but the rest of the engine would be fine. And the engines at 40 cycles would just be swapped in and out in the hanger next to the launch pad.

            As to the value of the “negative lessons” of the shuttle… 30 years of lost time, $100s of billions in lost cash, and 14 dead astronauts is not worth the education.

          • Joe Denison says:
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            Well if things had “gone as planned” with the shuttle we wouldn’t be having this discussion. 😉

            I have no doubt that SpaceX will make massive strides in reusability. That said I am unconvinced that they will get to the level of plane reusability.

            Apollo, Soyuz, and SS2 had astronaut deaths too. The Russians still use the Soyuz and VG is still working on SS2. Also it is important to point out that Challenger was the fault of the managers for launching in too cold conditions.

            Sure the shuttle was less safe than what is coming down the pike but it wasn’t some wasteful deathtrap.

            In terms of “30 years lost time” the simple fact is that Nixon wanted to shut down everything after the moon landing and was barely convinced to support the shuttle. Politically there was no “better way.”

            Without those “100s of billions in lost cash” we wouldn’t have ISS, Hubble, or probably any prospect of commercial human spaceflight.

          • Yale S says:
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            Without those “100s of billions in lost cash” we wouldn’t have ISS, Hubble, or probably any prospect of commercial human spaceflight.

            No, other paths would have been chosen. The shuttle was a choice. Other HLVs existed and others could have been built. There wasn’t anything that a Titan or Saturn 1B couldn’t carry.

            Big Gemini (9-12 person) [CLICK IMAGE TO EXPAND]

            https://upload.wikimedia.or

            That said I am unconvinced that they will get to the level of plane reusability.

            You don’t have to be convinced. Only SpaceX needs to be convinced. …and they actually know their rockets.

          • Jeff2Space says:
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            Big G might have been better, but we’ll never know for sure. Paper rockets and paper spacecraft are *always* better… on paper.

          • Yale S says:
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            Its the case of the Road Not Taken. One could say that a Big Gemini, with a replaceable heatshield, and a parasail, being launched on a Titan 3x or 4x, for example, would have be a lower risk system then the Space Shuttle, where essentially everything was created from scratch.

            Look at the Falcons (9 and Heavy) and the 2 Dragons. There would be nothing about them (superficially) that would be shocking in 1970. And they offer better performance and flexibility than the shuttle ever had (and at a fraction of the cost).

            Very advanced computing is the most innovative aspect of the falcons and dragons.

          • Jeff2Space says:
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            Except we know that big segmented solids, like those on Titan III and Titan 4, tend to go “boom” every once in a while. That would have been a VERY BAD DAY for a Big G. Again, paper vehicles always look better than ones that have actually flown.

          • Yale S says:
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            I am not advocating a specific option, just pointing out that alternatives with less risk existed.
            However, looking at the Big G, other all liquid boosters were possible. The Saturn 1x would work, as would the unbuilt Titan 3L variant that used 3 Titan cores exactly as the Delta 4 Heavy or the Falcon Heavy.

          • Yale S says:
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            Well if things had “gone as planned” with the shuttle we wouldn’t be having this discussion. 😉

            The difference is that the shuttle became an ever increasing source of “negative lessons”, while Falcon is circling in on ever improving costs, performance, and capability.

          • Michael Spencer says:
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            That is called design iteration. STS never went through that process.

          • Yale S says:
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            [Click on images to expand]

            Serious refurbishment needed on this one!:

            http://spaceflightnow.com/w

            Just a nice trip thru the carwash for this one:

            http://img.scoop.it/9lPDoL1

          • Jeff2Space says:
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            To be fair, the space shuttle had a limited development budget and they pretty much stuck to it. Unfortunately, this meant compromises during development which traded lower development costs for higher refurbishment costs. That and the shuttle was declared “operational” after only five flights, so the design was pretty much “locked in” and did not fundamentally change over the life of the vehicle.

            But even if Falcon 9 isn’t as reusable as SpaceX wishes, it’s still their first generation reusable. They are developing the LOX/methane Raptor engine which will power their next generation launch vehicle. So, lessons learned from Falcon 9 will no doubt be incorporated into this new vehicle.

          • Vladislaw says:
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            The problem with the shuttle was that the NASA workforce and contractor base was trying to be protected so a shuttle had to be designed around utilizing as much as that workforce as possible. No congressional member wants to vote for cuts in jobs in their district especially high paying government tech jobs. If the Dyna soar or a HL20 – HL 42 with a human flown flyback booster would have been pursued, it would have cut a lot of jobs so smaller was not an option

          • Jeff2Space says:
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            That and DOD had very aggressive “requirements” for STS which combined both very large payload capacity with very large (to the point of unreasonable) cross-range capability upon reentry and landing.

            NASA’s requirements (crew and cargo resupply for a space station) were far less aggressive and could certainly have been met using a far smaller vehicle design.

          • Michael Spencer says:
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            There are many here with direct, hands-on knowledge of STS. I’m just an interested and barely informed citizen.

            I do understand engineering iteration, though, and I understand the what happens when immature systems are declared operational. I also get design development, and as I observe STS it was woefully lacking in design development.

            In my world- no life or death issues here, though hundreds of millions are often at stake- a thorough, complete, and lengthy design development wouldn’t have allowed a project to go forward without, say, fully understanding the single point of failure represented by heat tiles. Or a number of other SPF. It’s true that my world consists of proven technology, so there’s no direct comparison. Sewer lift stations (A Florida specialty) sized too small? Roadways with curves too tight? Lakes too small to allow surface drainage? Not even close.

            But those issues never come to construction because the process depends on first, my layout, and then a different engineer checking my calculations, and other independent team members looking at the land plan, including Mr. Moneybags (the developer).

            STS was like building a subdivision from a tracing paper sketch. But my god it was a hell of a bird.

          • Vladislaw says:
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            The question is .. did it just slow the whole process down? It sucked up so much funding the right lessons learned from the shuttle failures were never allowed to put forward because it became the shuttle or nothing.

          • Vladislaw says:
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            If anything the Shuttle was a how to on how NOT to approach reusability.

      • Vladislaw says:
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        Should have predicated it on a propulsive landing of hardware. The shuttle was wheels and glide.

        • ReSpaceAge says:
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          Watching a Saturn V first stage, use its center engine, to land at the Cape would have been something! 🙂

      • Neil.Verea says:
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        Keith was that a rhetorical question? I’m sure you know the answer, and you also know that it proved not to be as cost effective as the the designers thought it would be.

    • John Adley says:
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      Don’t underestimate the market of Tooth fairy, probably much larger than mars and moon combined.

      • Jeff2Space says:
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        Be careful of ridiculing speculative markets. Some of those will become a reality.

        In the 1970s, I’d never have expected that today I bought “smart phones” for each of my family members for “only” about $800 each and that they would all have built in GPS receivers and connectivity to the Internet. Back in 70s, only the super rich could afford “car phones”, NAVSTAR was a military positioning system, and there was no such thing as Usenet, let alone the Internet.

    • Monty says:
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      It’s entirely possible that NASA will end up traveling to Mars using hardware purchased or built under contract by private companies. In fact I think this is by far the most likely scenario, since the SLS/Orion stack is too expensive by far, and unsuited to the kinds of things we’ll need to do before we ever strike out to Mars. I think the SLS will be mercy-killed at some point, maybe by the new Administration in 2017.

      You’re investing NASA with a level of competence and ability to execute that they have not shown in a long, long time. They can build good hardware…eventually, at twice or three times (or ten times) what it would have taken the private sector to do the same thing. But programmatically, NASA is a mess — they have neither the funding, the administrative capacity, or the project-management ability to embark on a serious program to explore Mars. And they know it, which is why this “mission to Mars” always seems to be twenty or thirty years into the future of whatever the current timeframe is. (Seriously: go back and read some of the stuff from the 1970s, 80’s, and 90’s from NASA regarding Mars: it’s always twenty-five or thirty years off. By NASA’s lights, we should have had colonies on Mars by now.)

      Remember that debacle over the Constallation-era J-2X test stand that was built and then abandoned? http://www.bloomberg.com/in… That’s NASA in a nutshell. It’s not a federal space program; it’s a federal jobs program.

      NASA is saddled with an aging, expensive workforce; huge fixed costs for the next decade or so (ISS, Webb, SLS/Orion); and no real *reason* to send people out into space.) They can either build the SLS or payloads to fly on it, but not both. The most optimistic estimates of when astronauts will fly into space on the thing range from five years from now to a decade from now.

      Now, given all that, where does the optimism that NASA can manage (or pay for) a Mars program come from?

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        Oh I can answer your last question. There’s optimism for NASA because it’s the only pony.

        On the other hand, there’s a new foal out there in California. And those crazies who follow the space industry know what’s about to happen. It’s not yet apparent to the general public. Remember the $500 toilet? Wait until the press figures out the cost of SLS vs. FH.

        What a sad, sad state we are in. Our premier space agency is just beat to hell. Sure, NASA owns the solar system, mostly. But my god what a mess, nicely summarized by Monty.

        • ReSpaceAge says:
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          First falcon Heavy launch is also on my bucket list!
          You Just made me realize the importance of that rocket.

          • Michael Spencer says:
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            I’ll be standing next to you on the causeway.

          • ReSpaceAge says:
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            Instead of the causeway I would suggest you spring 15 Bucks and watch from the Jetty Park pier at the mouth of Port Canaveral. That is the closest public view of the landing Site to my knowledge. I watched and video the landing on the 21st from there, and it was unbelievable! I tried to get in touch with you on the 20th through Twitter but you never replied.

          • Yale S says:
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            Make sure it is the best viewpoint for pad 39a, not 40.

          • ReSpaceAge says:
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            Watching maybe two boosters coming in for a landing would be very cool, can’t wait to see a booster return to land in the day time in person. To me this kind of stuff is much cooler than just a big rocket Launch.

          • Yale S says:
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            I would wet myself!

            https://www.youtube.com/wat

          • ReSpaceAge says:
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            This what I saw on the 21st from Jetty Park
            My perspective 🙂

            Check this out!

            20 seconds to history 🙂

            https://twitter.com/dtarsge

          • Michael Spencer says:
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            So sorry…was down with kidney stones the entire month of December. Much appreciated.

      • Neil.Verea says:
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        I hear and sympathize with your frustration, but some of your arguments are not based on facts. For instance NASA procures all human spacecraft hardware, it is not in the manufacturing business. And in all cases the procurements are made from private for profit entities. Going to Mars, using non-SciFi technologies, will unfortunately require large heavy lift rockets like SLS or Ares V or whatever the next administration names it, its driven by the physics.

        Going to and landing on Mars is more challenging then going to the Moon, and has REAL Show Stoppers in the path to the surface. One major obstacle is the capital resources required in a short period of time so that all elements can be integrated. To overcome that will require extraordinary organizing skills, political will and most importantly LEADERSHIP which has not been exhibited in recent times, across a wide multitude of disparate participants, some of wish will be on the critical path but not be as passionate as others. The Apollo Program will pale in comparison.

        • duheagle says:
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          Yeah, yeah, yeah. “I tol’ Wilbur ‘n I tol’ Orville ‘n now I’m a-tellin’ you that thing’ll never fly!”

        • Monty says:
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          “For instance NASA procures all human spacecraft hardware, it is not in the manufacturing business.”

          Buh? Can you explain the purpose of Michoud, Stennis, or Marshall? There’s an awful lot of machining, welding, fabricating, and building going on at those places. Perhaps you’re using a different meaning of the word “manufacturing” than I’m familiar with.

          Goddard and JPL both manufacture spaceflight components and other craft, and have for the entire history of NASA. (Not for human spaceflight, true, but they still manufacture a lot of stuff for NASA’s missions.) Some of it they subcontract, but they do a lot of it themselves, and they act as prime integrators.

          Your statement is just plain wrong.

          • Neil.Verea says:
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            Umm…. I use the common definition for manufacturing. As for your question, I think you can answer your own question by “Explaining what does (did) North American Rockwell, McDonnell Douglas Corporation, Lockheed Corporation, Boeing, Northrup Grumman do” for Human Spaceflight.

  12. Dewey Vanderhoff says:
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    I normally do not plug commercial entertainment programming from cable networks to make a point on edifying space forums such as Keith’s NASA Watch here , but….

    … how many readers have been taking in ” The Expanse” series on the SyFy Channel. Setting aside the story arc, I refer you’all to the portrayal of a future where asteroid and icy moon mining is a reality. So much so that the Belters ( humans who are born live and die in the asteroid belt ) are trying to secede from both Earthers and the more militant Martians. The homeworld of the Belters is none other than Ceres, nicely engineered into a colony and spaceport. ( It’s good to see current Dawn probe imagery put to such good use ). ” The Expanse” goes to depth to show the tensions and politics between Earth by way of the ruling UN ; the sovereign Martians who seem to be the enforcers and most militarized , and the insurgent Belters complete with a separatist underground the OPA. What ” The Expanse” shows us is a future where governments, commercial interests, the military , and entrepreneurs have outer planets as their ” new” continents and a Manifest Destiny of exploration and development has already occurred. Now they challenge one another as competing interests trying to claim and control the shipping lanes and exoplanetary resource base. This is all analagous to the seafaring empires on Earth of the 1700’s when the British French Spanish Portugese and Dutch were first colonizing our entire world with trade and wars and belief systems, except it’s measured in astronomical units of spaceflight , not leagues of clipper ship sailing.

    The producers of ” The Expanse” have done a great job of depicting a future about 150 years from now when space commerce rules . I hope some of you take the time to watch an episode or two . Mentally bridge where we are right now at the dawn cradle of solar system exploration and development, and the domain ” The Expanse” portrays on the far side of a space-based colonialism era.

    Then go back and read what this Dittmer woman and her Coalition are saying here. Those who do not learn from history … etc.

    • kcowing says:
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      I like “The Expanse” and there are some interesting concepts developing as to what might happen after several centuries of space utilization.

      • duheagle says:
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        I’d like the show a lot better if it wasn’t virtually suffocating under an avalanche of threadbare leftist media memes we’ve all seen a million times before. The two leading examples would be the idea of the U.N. being a One World government for Earth and the portrayal of space corporations as Eeeeeeeevil Incarnate. If I had a nickel for every time I’ve seen either or both of these tired wheezes used in a televised Sci-Fi project, I could afford to retire to Mars along with Elon.

        Also, the underpinnings of the extraterrestrial economy portrayed are completely ludicrous in view of recent findings by planetary probes. Mars turns out to be, comparatively speaking, sopping wet. Why would it be clandestinely sending warships out to hijack asteroidal water? Come to that, why would Ceres be such a heavily populated colony world if it had to import all its water as seems to be implied in the first two episodes (all ‘The Expanse’ I’ve yet had time to watch)? The Dawn probe and telescopic observations from Hubble have found that Ceres may have a lot of subsurface water itself.

        The McGuffin of the piece seems to be a missing girl who is the rebellious daughter of one of the future exploitive space plutocrats. This seems like a manifestation of how many showbiz lefties like to think of themselves – as dangerous rebels – instead of just over-aged adolescents with daddy issues.

        I gather this series is based upon books which, even though published quite recently, may have been in the works before some of the more recent findings about the relative richness of water resources in space became known – or well-known. Too bad so many key features of the The Expanse’s universe have been rendered nonsensical so quickly, but sometimes them’s the breaks.

  13. koshka13 says:
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    All of the discussion about “commercial” space is a farce. Other than satellites, there is nothing even remotely on the horizon that is commercially profitable. Relying on government contracts funded by the tax payers has NOTHING to do with commercial business. It is the same government contractor system, in a different form, that has existed for a hundred years. You can’t stuff enough billionaires in a space capsule to Mars to pay for the trip and the hotel to house them. So, whether we like it or not, congress is the only customer in town … whether it is SpaceX, SLS or Joe Bob’s rocket emporium. There is nothing to be mined on the moon, Mars or Pluto that will ever make it commercially profitable without a revolutionary breakthrough in propulsion technology. I like what Elon is doing. He is pushing the industry kicking and screaming into the future. But, spare me that “investors” and “private commercial companies” are doing anything other than gaming government contracts.

    • Yale S says:
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      Evidence please. Numbers and reference.

    • Monty says:
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      Your biggest error is in assuming that any putative resources we gather in space must be sent down to earth. That’s not anyone’s business model — the point is to use those resources *in space*. The most valuable “ore” in space is probably water-ice: it can be broken down into air for breathing, volatiles for rocket fuel (oxygen = oxidizer, hydrogen = propellant), and the ice itself for insulation and radiation shielding. Platinum-group metals have a myriad of uses (and could even profitably be shipped back to earth, depending on where the spot price is at) and are fairly common in asteroids. Solar power generation for use by other space-based assets is another profit opportunity: set up a generating station and sell your power to space stations, satellite operators, etc. Or you could set up garbage-tugs to sweep up the junk from critical orbits. Or send your tugs to safely de-orbit geosynchronous satellites that have gone dead (and thus free up those valuable slots for use by other satellites). Or refuel the satellites and allow them to continue to be used.

      There’s a lot of ways to monetize space. The limiter until recently has been launch costs and enabling technology, but those barriers are falling rapidly. The same thing has happened in human history with ocean-going vessels and railroads; once the technology matures, commercialization will proceed apace and companies will pile in.

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        Thank you for pointing out that the money in space is not at the bottom of gravity wells. And that the needed research is in learning how to locate, mine, smelt, and create finished product from in situ materials. This kind of original research is within NASA’s budget, sans SLS.

        At some point we must stop thinking of earth as a shipyard for space ships and start building real space ships. In space. That never touch Mars or Earth or Ceres. That refuel, perhaps initially, from fuel depots, but in the long term gain fuel from abundant solar energy and the stunningly available water in the Solar System (Earth contains a small fraction of the total). Ships accessible at some expense from Earth, yes, but once aboard providing gravity and comfort.

        Yes, it’s a completely different way of thinking. But the notion of lining up half a dozen SLS birds for a one-time trip to Mars is just ludicrous and completely, obviously unsustainable.

        Why aren’t we laughing out loud??

  14. Boardman says:
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    Elon Musk is “notoriously risk averse?” No, not at all. Really reveals the whole statement as patently pointless and biased.

  15. ReSpaceAge says:
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    Interesting that this NASA astronaut(future SpaceX passenger) should say these things.

    Obviously it will take both private enterprise and government to go to (explore) mars.

    The question is who should lead?

    Answer
    The group and or person that can field a Mars Space ship (system to get people to Mars) FIRST.

    Welcome to the New SPACE RACE ladies and gentlemen.

    SpaceX VS NASA

    Elon Musk AGAINST NASA/(SLS/Orion/old space companies/CongressPorkers)

    MY MONEY IS ON THE KIDS 🙂

    Mr. Musk will build his reusable mars rocket First.

    Will future NASA Astronaunts fly SpaceX to Mars too.

    Likely!

    • Yale S says:
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      Musk has always said that Mars will be a public/private project. Just that SpaceX will lead.

    • John Adley says:
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      I am 100% for Musk’s adventure, fully funded by his own money and ticket sales. NASA should stop thinking about sending humans to Mars using taxpayer money, and focus only on scientifically useful robotic missions.

      • ReSpaceAge says:
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        https://uploads.disquscdn.chttps://uploads.disquscdn.c… So you must be a strong supporter of NASA doing a red Dragon Mars Sample Return in the next few years then.
        GREAT! We agree
        I can’t wait to see NASA return some red rocks on earth either.

      • ReSpaceAge says:
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        How many billion do you think NASA should pay SpaceX for the Red Dragon Sample return anyway.
        1 Billion?
        2Billion?
        3 Billion?
        4Billion?

        http://www.dailymail.co.uk/

        • John Adley says:
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          The short answer is zero. Since NASA has already chosen to send rovers that analyze data in situ, it is a hard to make the case for sample retrieval. The one you linked look too much like a dry run of a human mission, NASA shouldn’t fall into the trap. Ultimately science mission selections need first be recommended by NRC. Many mission concepts are studied at NASA and elsewhere, only a small fraction get a chance to fly. I think NASA should forge ahead with more $100M size missions in astrophysics, solar physics, space physics and earth science.

          • Jeff2Space says:
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            There is no good substitute for sample return. Even many university laboratories have more capability to examine samples than the most sophisticated NASA rover. For example, exactly which Mars rover has had a scanning electron microscope on it? How about future mars rovers?

  16. ed2291 says:
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    “The reality is that the first humans to land on Mars will be Government people not private…” Not necessarily. Repeating the mantra over and over again based on examples from the 1960s does not make it true. Computers capability is orders of magnitude cheaper and more powerful and Elon Musk seems about to do the same thing with getting into low earth orbit. If these trends continue, it is quite possible the first humans on Mars will not be representatives from any government or group of governments.

    Should the first people on Mars be from government projects? Perhaps so, governments might better represent humanity. Then again, they might not. It is right now a moot point for the United States which has not sent a human beyond low earth orbit for almost half a century and and that Orion continues to be a joke that will never fly. Looking at the trends since 1973, I would not bet my life against Elon Musk or a SpaceX derivative reaching Mars first. However unlikely, he has a plan and a vision which governments lack.

  17. Riley 1066 says:
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    Lord American People … with their regent for Space Affairs being NASA.

  18. Brian_M2525 says:
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    I am also 60 plus a bit and I’ve been on the inside of NASA for well over half that lifespan now. I’ve worked the design and implementation of several human space flight programs. I’ve worked the design and implementation of both NASA and commercially owned vehicles. NASA needs to go back to the NACA model. If new technology is needed and its cost prohibitive for investors to invest in its development, but the potential pay-off is great, then NASA has a role in the development. But once the goal becomes using mainly existing technology, then it ought to be turned over to competitive industry.

    Shuttle was a great technological achievement in 1981. But then NASA lost its way trying to operate an “operational” system (that was never really operational). NASA never tried to improve the safety and efficiency of the system (and neither did anyone else). NASA was damned inefficient in operating the system. The mistake was semi-turning it over to an industry that never was interested in making it more efficient either. There was no profit motive beyond being on the government dole.

    Look at Orion. Not much different in technology, sophistication or capability from a Dragon or CST100, but the cost is ridiculous and the rate of completion is nonsensical. Orion should not be under government management if there is not any new technology (and there is none), regardless of where it might go someday (which no one knows today).

    NASA is damned inefficient, bureaucratic, and in large measure corrupt in how they try to accomplish things. Competitive industry will spend less and get more done more quickly.

    There are a few roles for government: research, education. In exploring new worlds, I would say the initial surveying is a government role. That is probably limited to unmanned space flight. Operating a well developed system is not a government role. If NASA can show that it is commercially viable, then its up to industry and investors to develop the system for making it commercially viable.

    Is it NASA plots flying the Twin Otters filled with researchers to Antarctica? No. And the government doesn’t maintain the airplanes either. The government sets requirements and standards for the aircraft and inspects on a limited basis to ensure cert criteria of airplane, engines and pilots is met. The government had a hand in design the airfoils and the nacelles and other aspects of the aero technology, but once the technology was well developed, manufacture of the airplane and the motors was turned over to industry. The government sends some researchers-and they might even run the research program, but they are only passengers on the airplane.

    The older I get, the more experienced I get, the more I see of how NASA and the world operate, the more I think we ought to go back to the way the system worked when it used to work well. Right now we are wasting a lot of money and going nowhere fast.

    • Jeff2Space says:
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      Brian_M2525 is spot on.

      Commercial Cargo and hopefully soon Commercial Crew is saving the taxpayers money over a NASA developed solution. Commercial HLV could replace SLS and a “deep space” Commercial Crew could replace Orion which would free NASA to work on truly cutting edge technologies needed for a manned Mars lander (e.g. inflatable heat shields, in-situ fuel manufacturing, and etc).

      • ReSpaceAge says:
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        The bill for the next cargo contract is fourteen billion for 18 flights????
        That is not cheap?
        I guess there is money in there to develop Dream Chaser and I think a few flights before the 6 a piece start?
        Still seems like this second ISS cargo contract is rather steep?

        • Arthur Hamilton says:
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          $14 billion is the cap. 6 flights each is the minimum. That’s $4.6 billion for each of the 3 companies which amounts to about 18 to 23 flights for OATK & SNC & 25 to 30 flights for SpaceX. This is speculation.

        • Jeff2Space says:
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          To be fair, NASA is changing the requirements on the CRS providers. CRS-1 required only berthing (hold still and have the SSRMS grab the cargo ship). But CRS-2 requires that when a missions is ordered NASA gets to specify if that mission will berth or dock.

          Docking is more challenging, in my opinion, and likely has more NASA safety requirements. Because of this new requirement, all of the providers will have additional development work to perform which will cost money (no free lunch).

          • Yale S says:
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            SpaceX will certainly have a running start since it will have been docking its Crew Dragon for 2 years.

          • Jeff2Space says:
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            I have a feeling that the CRS-2 Dragon will be little more than a (crew) Dragon V2 that has been stripped of crew couches, flight controls, fancy displays, and etc.

            By the time CRS-2 is flying, I’d expect that this new cargo Dragon will be doing propulsive landings at KSC or Cape Canaveral Air Force Base. That is another additional capability that the current CRS-1 cargo Dragon does not have.

          • ReSpaceAge says:
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            ISS cargo 1 cost about 3 billion, this round 14 billion.
            Don’t buy the docking argument??

          • Jeff2Space says:
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            NASA has also said actual costs will be lower, but has so far refused to go into details. My guess is that $14 billion number would be if they purchased the most expensive options for every single mission. In reality, they won’t do that.

  19. Bill Housley says:
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    Congress needs a competitor in space, as does the military-pork-style procurement process that has ruled the space exploration roost for about 6 decades. The best thing that can happen to the SLS timeline will be the Falcon Heavy’s 3rd or so flight.
    Also, Walker is wrong. NASA doesn’t have to arrive first, since all NASA partners know how to get to Mars since they have access to NASA knowledge. Further, even if NASA does have to get their first for risk deflection purposes, it doesn’t have to be on a NASA rocket. They can get there first paying one or more commercial partnerships to achieve the same first and maybe do it sooner.

  20. numbers_guy101 says:
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    Charles Walkers perspective is especially curious, as nostalgic as it is out of touch.

    He most definitely appears to be espousing space exploration as flags and footprints, divorced from any notions that would make our next steps self sustaining. His references to “Magellan’s trip around the globe to the Lewis and Clark expedition” reveal this mindset. So we should once again go about Mars exploration in Apollo style, only to retrench later when that proves unsustainable.

    I also don’t see where anyone has “suggested that we outsource to these companies [commercial] even bolder space exploration.” It has been proposed that there are many elements in space exploration, from propellant, to landers, to habitats, where the ISS cargo “COTS/CRS” model could better align incentives near and far.

    NASA would benefit from exploring with the best systems, redundancies in providers, less financial risk to NASA, at far less cost than the usual cost-plus traditional ways of doing business. Safety would be improved as well, as providers would be favored who could build private sector business cases for these same elements, allowing faster learning and improvement across many customers and flights.

    NASA wouldn’t be able to do these things cost-plus ANYWAY, for lack of funding at the levels cost-plus entails.

    It’s not about space exploration as commercial OR cost-plus. It’s about “more commercial/less cost-plus”, versus “blowing 100% of the budget on 10% of the system using cost-plus -and going no where”.

    On “Fewer launches means lower costs, shorter timetables and, most important of all, less risk to our astronauts.” well, that might be true IF the fewer launches were fewer, cheaper launches, versus more and costlier launches. It’s not true when considering the specific costs of SLS, on a per useful kg basis, or even if budgeting amply for in-space assembly, or refueling, both activities that have to mature and occur even within SLS architectures. Do the math.

    I can almost sympathize with Mr. Walker; that nostalgia to just be given all the money you need, and a national mandate, and a sense of focus, purpose and resolve. I never quite knew that myself, being from the Shuttle/ISS generation, but I saw it in the older Apollo engineers I knew over the years.

    I feel that sadness in Mr. Walkers editorial, that nostalgia for times gone by, where part of the sadness is hearing the reminiscing as if all we need to do to fix today is go back to the past. Not a plan, but still, sad.

  21. mfwright says:
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    Talking about humans on Mars is a bankrupt discussion. Arguing should it be commercial, NASA, Chinese, Russians, whoever doesn’t matter except academic exercise in debates. My reasoning is we simply don’t have the capability (we may if enough money is allocated but it never will) in terms of habitat modules (you need something *big*) and enough rocket capacity to get from Earth to Mars.

    Everyone loves to talk about Mars, nobody about putting a man on the Moon (except Spudis and Wingo). Reason is if Moon is goal then real money for a transfer stage and lander will have to be spent now. For Mars it can remain and R&D with lots of PPTs and whining on the forums, to spend real money can be deferred to some other smucks 20 years into the future (and it will always be 20 years!).

    Brian_M2525 summed it up as NASA should work on new technology and turn it over to commercial. Not all new technology will be embraced by commercial industry, those are the breaks. But some of it will.

    • Jeff2Space says:
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      We would have HAB modules if we’d throw a few hundred million dollars at Bigelow Aerospace.

      My point is that private industry really can innovate and reduce costs if the government (NASA) can keep the requirements simple and the government oversight at the level of a “commercial” style contract rather than a”cost plus” style contract that is very heavy on government oversight.

      Similarly, killing SLS and replacing it with a mix of “commercial launch” and “commercial fuel depots” would be a good thing. We need a diverse transportation infrastructure, not a single HLV.

  22. Vladislaw says:
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    “Nailed it! America’s deep space exploration should not be held hostage to whims of market or investors.” –
    Mary Lynne Dittmar

    Ya .. Nailed it alright .. deep space exploration should be held hostage by Congress and the usual suspect contractors.. you know the NASA traditional way of exploring deep space.

    • LPHartswick says:
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      Unfortunately my friend if you want the government to pay for it
      whether you are NASA or SpaceX, you are going to be held hostage to what the Congress once. That’s the budgetary process. I don’t like it, you don’t like it, but that’s the way it is. And they are politicians, so they’re always looking feather their own nest. Expecting something different is just not realistic. If you look carefully at where SpaceX facilities are located I’m
      sure you’ll find those politicians are very pro commercial space… whatever that is.

  23. SpaceMunkie says:
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    I guess he got a tour through Elon’s dream factory and saw the quality local hardware store engineering that goes on there. They have excellent paperless office – nothing is ever put down on paper.

    • Skinny_Lu says:
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      All modern design, manufacturing and production systems are created and stored as digital data. No paper required. As long as you have redundant servers and back up systems to keep all your data safe, very few business processes need paper anymore. Welcome to the 21st Century.

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        If only. How would you suggest I bring a set of blueprints to a constriction site? There’s nothing like a 24×36 piece of paper. Yet.

        • Jeff2Space says:
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          Where I work, we have high definition TVs on the walls for use as monitors in our “huddle rooms”. these beasts are something like 60″ (diagonal) displays. Larger conference rooms have high definition projectors. For our customers who have people on the “shop floor”, tablets are becoming quite popular.

          Want to see more detail? Zoom in to the area of interest. Far more flexible and interactive than a 24″x36″ piece of paper.

          • Daniel Woodard says:
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            I have heard from multiple sources that SpaceX has less documentation than older manufacturers. This could be good. bad, or both, It remains to be seen whether they have retained the documentation that is really needed.

      • SpaceMunkie says:
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        yeah, except that SpaceX doesn’t even have that

  24. Littrow says:
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    It should have been obvious to everyone and particularly to NASA before Constellation, and even more obvious after Constellation’s demise that the point of the human space program is not missions to place flags and leave footprints, or even to pick up asteroids. Unfortunately the operations mentality that took charge of the program in the Shuttle years doesn’t see it that way; for the sake of inspiration, we have to have astronauts that do something. That will never be supportable. Look at the rate of Orion development – for a system far less sophisticated than anything else NASA has developed in decades, and look at the lack of payloads or missions for SLS. NASA needs to figure out what its role is and how to build a sustainable program. What they are doing isn’t it. The other thing that bothers me is the current NASA leadership’s willingness to ditch ISS when nothing else is forthcoming. ISS can remain an important part of the infrastructure for a variety of research and technology development. NASA is making precisely the same mistake with ISS that they did with Shuttle. Instead of developing new elements or systems to be tested as elements of the ISS, and instead of working towards greater efficiency, such as for payload integration (amazing it is so poorly implemented and that they have not fixed the problem years ago), instead the management figures ISS is finished and they should ditch it and move onto the next program. If they keep throwing their systems away then they will never get anywhere, which perhaps is why the entire idea of NASA in human spaceflight needs to be rethought.

    • BeanCounterFromDownUnder says:
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      NASA has consistently stated that the next space station will be commercial. LEO must become commercial so that NASA has the funds to do BEO. Now the timing for ending ISS is a bit of a moving feast at present but a Bigelow module is going up to the ISS this year and commercial crew has been fully funded for the first time so at least these two instances provide some evidence for NASA statement.
      On the issues of timing, SLS and Orion, well funding and risk aversion and political will will IMHO be the major determinants.
      Cheers

  25. Michael Spencer says:
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    Am I the only one struggling to work with these very long threads? So often many other posters have excellent ideas worth reading and considering but when the posts are this long even ‘sort by newest’ is little ell. And the Disqus site isn’t much better. I wonder how others do? or feel?