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Exploration

Its Time To Actually Go Somewhere Once Again

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
February 1, 2018

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

79 responses to “Its Time To Actually Go Somewhere Once Again”

  1. Neville Chamberlain says:
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    Humans have not been beyond LEO for more than 50 years. Time we got back out there.

    In the early days of the U.S.A., when settlers and pioneers ventured west beyond the Mississippi, no one counted how many survived for even 6 months. We really have no idea what the survival rate was once they left cities like Saint Louis. Some were well prepared. Most were not. Enough survived though and we moved west.

    It should be the same with space, we should not be counting the deaths in space. We should instead, treasure the successes. There is no gain to be made without risks. Let us not foolishly risk humans but let us not be paralyzed by the risk of death. Let us learn from our blunders and push on relentlessly in spite of setbacks.

    NASA has become so risk averse that it will probably be the mid 2100’s before we actually get to Mars if left up to them. Thankfully, visionaries like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are forcing NASA’s hands.

    We will get back to the Moon and to Mars, and as settlers not tourists, within the next two decades with SpaceX and Blue Origin dragging NASA kicking and screaming along with them.

    • ThomasLMatula says:
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      No one counted because the settlement of the West was not a structured government program like NASA. It was just a movement of free individuals. If you were dumb or unlucky, too bad.

      I agree, America will return, but the spacecraft and settlements will have the logos of SpaceX, Blue Origin and Bigelow Aerospace, and probably not NASA on them. I hope SpaceX follows through with its around the Moon flight after it does its Dragon2 tests for NASA. It will be especially entertaining for SpaceX to do an around the Moon flight if NASA decides Dragon2 is too unsafe for NASA astronauts.

      • Vladislaw says:
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        I beg to differ. There was a structured programs. The headright program in the east gave away millions of acres and in the west it was the Homestead act.

        “The Homestead Acts were several United States federal laws that gave an applicant ownership of land, typically called a “homestead,” at no cost. In all, more than 270 million acres of public land, or nearly 10% of the total area of the U.S., was given away free to 1.6 million homesteaders; most of the homesteads were west of the Mississippi River.”

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wi

        The US government gave away 270 MILLION acres .. it was not so much free movement as free land and all the resources on that land.

        • fcrary says:
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          I suppose that could be called “structured” program, but I’m not sure. Certainly, in the context of survival rates, it is nothing like human spaceflight as it currently stands.

          The US government give away land to settlers, and that certainly encouraged them. But once they did, what the settlers did, or if they even survived, was up to them. (I’m neglecting some requirements about ownership reverting to the government if the land wasn’t used; that’s not relevant in the context of survival.) Unlike NASA today, no government agency was considered responsible for the settler’s safety or blamed if they died. (Again, I’m leaving out hostile locals and the Army’s involvement in various indian wars. Human spaceflight doesn’t face a similar problem yet.)

        • Richard Malcolm says:
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          Government played a role, no question – it made lots of free land available, and provided a modicum of security, via the U.S. Army.

          But even so, it was a private endeavour, one which families could take advantage of with very little in the way of resources. Whereas for the foreseeable future, one simply cannot characterize any environment in the Solar System that way.

          • Vladislaw says:
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            oh come on … what did the government wave a magic wand and suddenly 400 million free acres appeared to be available to give away free?

            It was a HUGE undertaking by the government to “create” the free land by running off the owners and giving it to the new owners.

          • fcrary says:
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            Historically and in most cases, the settlers moved in before the Army. So it wasn’t a matter of the government running off the previous owners. Bailing out the settlers when they got the previous owners mad at them, now that was something the government ended up doing on several occasions.

            Sometimes, the settlers moved in when it was illegal (in violation of federal laws related to treaties); in those cases, the government’s contribution to settlement was neglecting to enforce those laws.

          • ThomasLMatula says:
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            The good thing about the Solar System is that there appear to be no other owners, except maybe for some microbes. And if humanity is lucky they won’t even exist to get in the way 🙂

          • tutiger87 says:
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            But why does anything have to be ‘owned’? Such a great concept that the Europeans brought to the world. To put a flag up and say “it’s mine and no one elses!!” Even if other people that dont look like them are already there.

            As we set out into the universe, I would hope that we abandon such behavior.

          • Richard Malcolm says:
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            Not to justify the injustices sometimes visited on indigenous peoples, but few of them had any recognizable notion of *ownership* of land…

            But set that aside, since that wasn’t my point. If you were a newly arrived German immigrant, or a restless Virginia farmer, you needed very little to go settle some land in Ohio or Kansas beyond a wagon, a couple of oxen, and some basic tools and farm implements. You did not need to bring an entire closed cycle life support system with you, or propellant, spacesuits, or all the other things needed to settle anywhere in outer space. There is a point at which parallels to the settlement of the American West break down, because the physical environment is far, far more hostile. Which means that settlers will need far more in the way of resources and expertise to settle these places.

          • Vladislaw says:
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            I truely do understand your point you are trying to make. But the theme was government … and it took a HUGE government effort to put into place the system that ALLOWED an immigrant or restless Virginia farmer to cross that land and start somewhere else where there was free land and all the resourses on that land .. from minerals, water, timber, grazing land. The effort had already been expended.

          • fcrary says:
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            I’m not sure how you reconcile that claim with things like the Royal Proclamation of 1763. That banned all settlement west of the Appalachians. The King wasn’t all that concerned with would-be settlers and definitely uninterested in getting dragged into an Indian war. I’m also wondering about the early US settlers in the Black Hills and what is now Oklahoma.

        • ThomasLMatula says:
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          Remember that program wasn’t in place until1862 which was fairly late in the settlement of the west. So why did all the settlers travel the California Trail and Oregon Trail before then? How were areas like Missouri and Illinois settled without it?

          Also before 1872 there was no federal land allowing mining claims to be made, yet there were huge mining booms before then? In terms of Alaska, while it was a “military district” there were no laws allowing real property and yet it was settled. Laws help, but often they usually come after the pioneers open a frontier.

        • tutiger87 says:
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          270 million acres that didnt belong to them…

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        Once again I’ll take issue with the use of settling the American West as a stand-in for space exploration, and for several reasons:

        1. The availability of exploitable natural resources was obvious (the French figured this out very early).
        2. Transportation, while crude, was available; the Ohio, for one, thence covered wagons, and horses.
        3. Living off the land – a subset of #1 I suppose – was available and accessible to settlers accustomed to hunting and farming.
        4. New settlements would follow the eons-old model of human settlements built up around farming, ranching, and transportation, a model understood since Ur.
        5. And most importantly: there was a sense that life would be better! That a family could own a farm, the anyone could through hard work become better off than one’s parents.

        Space? Not so much.

        • ThomasLMatula says:
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          And this is the failing of both NASA and its advocates, stuck on seeing space exploration as science, not settlement, so they see no opportunities for settlement. It’s like the old Victoria nature collectors who travel the West and saw it as a waste land (the Great American Desert).

          There are resources on the Moon, lots of them, but NASA, being too focus on basic research, has done nothing to develop the ability to live off the land. But the resources are there waiting to be used. But like settling the West it will be up to private firms to develop them.

          Since NASA is looking only sending robotic spacecraft to the Moon and Mars because they are risk adverse they have no interest in developing practical transportation for HSF. So again, you have SpaceX (BFR) and Blue Origin (New Armstrong) having to do their job.

          The export of resources from the Moon will be the economic basis of lunar settlement. The costs of shipping something down a gravity well is much less than sending it up the gravity well. As for the quality of life, it will be good, since you will be living in a controlled environment, not some small module.

          • Bob Mahoney says:
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            “As for the quality of life, it will be good, since you will be living in a controlled environment, not some small module.”

            Quite the leap of faith is contained in this statement. How many long-duration stays have you spent at remote facilities dependent on closed-loop life support infrastructure where one cannot partake directly of the surrounding environment and where even the view is constrained by technology?

            I suppose someone living hand-to-mouth on the street would consider the quality of life aboard a nuclear submarine ‘good’ but after six or more months I suspect they might not feel as strongly in that regard given human psychology. Consider what ISS astronauts (and submariners) miss most about living down/up here in our ‘uncontrolled’ environments. Something of major quality is missing from their closed-environment living and I’m hard pressed to imagine that a lunar base or colony will be able to fill in that quality anytime soon, if ever.

            The quality of life in a lunar colony will be—measured—at best for quite a while. I highly recommend ‘Big Dead Place’ by Nicholas Johnson for any who (like myself) are hopeful for the establishment of bases and colonies on the Moon and other locations. Romance might get us to the Moon and economics might keep us there, but that doesn’t mean that life will be ‘good’—by the definition of most folks—for those living and working there.

          • ThomasLMatula says:
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            And that is the real problem. Folks keep looking at this from the narrow perspective of a science station. It is like comparing the standard of living on the ISS with that folks will have living on Kalpana One.

            That is the difference of taking brief science collecting trips versus going somewhere to settle. In one you just design in the minimum needed to survive eating prepackaged food. In the other you are building for the long run.

          • fcrary says:
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            Building for the long run doesn’t necessarily mean comfort. You might want to look up “dry cabins” in Alaska. (Google finds that, but there doesn’t seem to be a wikipedia entry.) But I agree a “I only have to put up with this for a few months” mentality doesn’t contribute to comfort in remote bases or stations.

          • ThomasLMatula says:
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            Of course that is in the sense of a 20th Century definition of comfort. Even mansions in England didn’t have running water before Victoria times, so I guess comfort was unknown before then 🙂

          • Bob Mahoney says:
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            And, Thomas, you seemingly have an amazing ability to stay in the tracks of your own notions while missing the point of others’ posts.

            When would you anticipate a lunar colony, commercially founded & supported as you posit, being able to enclose and terraform the entire surface (or even large portions thereof) of the Moon so that residents can walk freely about on grassy hills and through deep forests, freely breathing the air around them? To look up at the Earth and stars with their own eyes each evening? To walk upon the sandy shores of lakes and seas with their children, feeling and smelling the breeze and splashing in the surf? Gardening in their own backyard, again out in the free air of their larger planet, drinking water, lemonade, or wine at their leisure?

            These are the things that typically shape a person’s perceived quality of life today, not mere access to conditioned air and not living in a module. As rough as it was for the early pioneers on the North American (or any other) continent, they could always step outside (albeit briefly in some places) and take in the view…no spacesuit, no bubbles or shielding, no conditioned air…while not being immediately moment-to-moment dependent on mechanical equipment for maintaining even their very atmosphere.

            Your word choice was ‘good quality of life’. Perhaps you should more precisely define what you mean by these words and so better anchor your position so that we can all understand.

          • ThomasLMatula says:
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            And that is the basic problem, you and many others are unable to think beyond your Earth based biases. You are unable to make the paradigm shift in your thinking like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk have. It’s like those that choose to stay in Europe to serve the masters of their manor or to starve because living in the New World was so alien.

            Why would you waste time terraforming anything? Instead you design to leverage the environment. Danridge Cole covered this well in his book, “Challenge of the Plantoids”. Isaac Asimov in his stories the “The Martian Way” and “Caves of Steel”’as well as the essay “No place like Spome”. Robert Heinlien also covered it in “Menance from Earth” and “it’s good to be home”.

            Quality of life is a personal perspective. The very small minority that go to space aren’t going to be into Mother Nature, but into high tech and having environments not governed by the whims of Mother Nature. They will thrive in the artificial environments they create and control and look at the folks who cling to the surface of Earth with sadness knowing that they will always be limited to a single small world while the settlers will have the entire Galaxy as their future.

            Sadly, that is probably the worst thing NASA has done, it has really killed the dreams of science fiction visionaries who gave it life. Thank goodness folks like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk still have them, and will take humanity to the stars.

          • Bob Mahoney says:
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            Thank you for clarifying, Thomas. I understand your perspective much better now. I am sorry that you still can’t seem to understand mine.

          • ThomasLMatula says:
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            You seem to be arguing the thesis of Kim Stanley Robinson novel “Aurora” that since humans will have to always live in artificial habitats we should just give up on human space exploration. A really depressing book that shows he had gone full environmentalist.

            Yes, the first workers will live in small modules as the settlement is established just as the pioneers live in dugouts. But like them they will be motivated by building something of importance, of extending civilization and of providing a better world for the next generation.

            By again, it will be a dedicated minority that goes to the frontier. It always has been. During the 1600 emigration to the American settlements from England was less than 2000 a year and about 10% gave up and returned to England. Space will be the same, but the ones who stay, adapt and build will take humanity to the stars.

            The recent discovery of caverns with areas measuring in the square kilometers, one is estimated to be 400 square kilometers in extent, is a game changer for lunar settlement. NASA of course has zero interest, but NASA never had much interest in the Moon even during Apollo, its was always seen as just a detour on the road to Mars. Hopefully the new generation of rockets will be enough to get us off this rock before the doom and gloom enivironmentalists like Kim Stanley Robinson kill the dream.

          • Bob Mahoney says:
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            I seem to be arguing…as your mind chooses to see things. Again, Dr. M, I am sorry that you continue to miss where I am coming from.

            Maybe if you stopped asserting so often what others are supposedly thinking you might be more open to perceiving what they are actually saying. Just a thought for your consideration; you are of course free to ignore it.

          • ThomasLMatula says:
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            So what exactly are you arguing?

          • Bob Mahoney says:
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            Carefully read my previous posts—with a completely open mind—and perhaps my point will soak in. If it doesn’t, I can’t see how further words will help.

          • ThomasLMatula says:
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            It still doesn’t make any sense. No one is proposing to terra form the Moon. And the small modules of the first work teams will quickly give to larger more permanent family based communities, so the isolation studies they are doing now, all on none family groups, will have little relevance to space settlements. And your arguments about what folks want assumes that everyone is the same, which they are not.

            Space settlement, like climbing Mt Everest, won’t be for everyone or even the over whleming majority of folks in the early years. But enough, perhaps one in ten thousand, will see it as presenting a better quality of life based on their perception of what quality is and they will drive it, just as a small minority prefer life in Second Life to their first one. That has always been the way of pioneers.

            If Daniel Boone had been born in England he would probably been hanged or lived as a poucher. Instead he had the American frontier to prosper in, always moving further out as civilization advanced on him.

          • Bob Mahoney says:
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            Missed again, Dr. M. I fear that the box that seemingly contains all your extremely firm presumptions is just too tight.

            In the words of HAL (a science fiction character…I’m sure you like him):

            “…this conversation can serve no purpose any more.”

            Good luck.

          • ThomasLMatula says:
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            More likely your beliefs on space settlement and qaulity of life are so narrow only another fellow traveler would see it. Ever listen to the old Danny Kaye song “Civilization”? It might give you some insight into different perspectives on the quality of life.

          • fcrary says:
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            “Quality of life is a personal perspective”

            In fact, I know some people who wouldn’t mind living underground and never going outside (especially if it’s cold.) But they would absolutely hate what telecommunications rates, bandwidth limits and two-way light time delays would do to their social media access.

          • Richard Malcolm says:
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            And this is the failing of both NASA and its advocates, stuck on seeing space exploration as science, not settlement, so they see no opportunities for settlement.

            I don’t know about the advocates, but in NASA’s defense (sort of), exploration is in its charter – and settlement is not.

            NASA does science well. Policymakers just need to realize that there’s a lot more opportunity to space beyond that. Opportunities NASA is simply not equipped to taken advantage of.

          • ThomasLMatula says:
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            Yes, sadly NASA rejected and ignored its responsibilities under the Space Settlement Act of 1988. And the constant rejection of space settlement by NASA as a space goal is probably why supported for NASA is limited. President Kennedy sold Apollo as the first step to a new frontier. But what America ending getting afterward was just an occasional science special on PBS…

          • Richard Malcolm says:
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            Unfortunately, “we do science, not development or settlement” is so deeply encoded in NASA’s cultural DNA that it’s really futile to change its statutory mission at this point.

            You really need some other agency or public-private entity to oversee that now.

          • ThomasLMatula says:
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            Which is what I have been proposing for years and which was the strategy that worked for the satellite communicarion industry. But space folks seem to think that NASA is the beginning and end of space policy.

            The ISS, SLS and DSG are classic examples. NASA should never have been part of building a space station and should have no role in DSG. And it should no longer be involved in space launch. NASA should just focus on its activities on deep space and a new agency for space development should be established.

          • Brian_M2525 says:
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            I agree that NASA should get out of anything that smacks of routine operations. NASA is inefficient when it comes to anything repetitive. NASA ought to stick with technology development and knowledge creation and to some extent information distribution. Everything else belongs with people trying to commercialize and earn an ROI.

          • ThomasLMatula says:
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            The problem is how to get the Congress Critters to recognize that. In the 1960’s they did, which is why they gave the creation of satellite communications to Comsat. If NASA had it they would probably still be doing research on the best design for one.

          • tutiger87 says:
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            Stop using ‘they’ and ‘them’ when you talk about NASA. Start using ‘NASA management’ or ‘Congress’. It’s reall quite offensive to the overwhelming vast majority of people who work around here when you paint with a broad brush.

        • Vladislaw says:
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          Eridu came before Ur .. smiles

        • tutiger87 says:
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          And let’s not talk about the treatment of the indigenous people either…Hopefully we wont make that same mistake again in a few hundred years…

  2. BlueMoon says:
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    Here is the problem. Neither Wayne Hale, Keith Cowing, me, nor all the other NASAWatch readers are the customers of NASA. The REAL customers. We and every other plain old citizen in the USA can scream we want to go to Mars, NOW, and NASA will not listen. Why should they? Who are the true (i.e., paying) customers of NASA Human Space Flight? I’ll let you answer that for yourselves, but if you say the taxpayers, you are touchingly naive.

    Until NASA’s real, paying, customers demand NASA go someplace by a less than decades-away date, it’s not likely to happen, no matter how much the taxpayers, and individual NASA and NASA Contractor employees and managers, want and try to do so.

    • kcowing says:
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      Both Wayne and I pay taxes as do all of the Americans who read NASAWatch. I assume you pay your taxes. Taxes pay for the whole NASA thing.

      • BlueMoon says:
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        C’mon, Keith, let’s talk about the real-world, not the PoliSci theory world. I’ll give you my reply in 2 versions:

        1. The wants of some taxpayer/customers and taxpayer/customer groupings are vastly more important to NASA than the wants of you, me, and Wayne, when NASA decides what to “produce” with our communal tax dollars. Why is that a majority of taxpayers, according to polls, supports the same major NASA Human Spaceflight goals and objectives as the space advocates, but NASA achieves few of those goals?

        2. We pay taxes to the United States Treasury, not directly to NASA or any other Federal Gov’t entity. Yes, we taxpayers provide the dollars that are “paid” to NASA, but who tells the Treasury how many of our dollars to “pay” NASA, and also tells NASA how to spend those dollars? It ain’t you, me, and Wayne. So, who do you think NASA sees as it’s “hard money money on the barrel-head” paying customers?

        • kcowing says:
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          I am a taxpayer. My taxes fund the government. NASA is part of the government. Ergo my taxes pay for what NASA does. I am just as much of a customer for NASA or any other part of the government as any other citizen.

          • BlueMoon says:
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            OK, we’ll try it your way for a while. Are you a satisfied NASA customer?

          • kcowing says:
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            In some cases yes, in other cases no. BTW there is a limit to the time I spend in a conversation with an anonymous poster. I think you’ve used up your allotment and have made your point. See ya.

        • kcowing says:
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          White House submits a budget to Congress. Congress responds with its version as a bill. White House signs the bill and it becomes law. NASA along with other agencies then get the funds specified by the appropriations bill signed into law. Citizens elect Congress and the President. Citizens pay taxes. No special rights are given to one sector of the electorate over another. I took civics class.

    • Bill Keksz says:
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      So, BlueMoon let us know who the true customers are.

      • Johnhouboltsmyspiritanimal says:
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        I would assume he is implying the true customers are Congress taking care of space Libby who line the decision makers pockets

    • Vladislaw says:
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      NASA is not a business so they do not have customers, unless you are referring to the customers buying trinkets at the gift shop.

      We are the owners of NASA.

  3. Michael Spencer says:
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    Well, gee.

    Here’s the thing: there’s no real reason to go to space. And before th epitchforks come out, let me explain that by ‘reason’ there’s no obvious money to be made beyounf LEO, and a limited amount in any sort of orbit.

    Why? Because we are approaching the issue looking through the Holy Book of the Church of Free Enterprise.

    Was there ever a better example of how poorly free enterprise serves us?

    Space exploration and ultimately the establishment of settlements is the sort of thing that is good for humanity. Period. Elon ‘gets’ it and has managed to find a way to make it happen, maybe. But the USA is so caught up in commercialism that we fail to see one of the true functions of goverment: establish broad goals for where we want our country and our civilization to go. This is a task only dangerously left to free enterprise.

    And there are so many examples: the government determines that safety belts are needed. Car companies? solve the problem however you wish as long as they work. The EPA determines that dirty water is bad for us. Companies? Make it work. Air? Ditto.

    My examples aren’t precise. But the point is clear.

    • ThomasLMatula says:
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      Free Enterprise did well setting the goals before WWII. Private fur traders were exploring the Northwest decades before the government finally got around to sending Lewis and Clarke. Traders pioneered the Overland Trail, Santa Fe Trail, California Trail and Oregon Trail decades before the government established forts along them.

      A commercial sealer discovered Antarctica two decades before a U.S. government ship happened along, and the first American vessel to sail around the world was a private trading vessel over 40 years before a U.S. Navy ship did so. Most of the expansion of the U.S. west of the Mississippi River, including Hawaii and Alaska was due to free enterprise leading the way. Oh, and don’t forget the Virgin Islands the U.S. bought only a hundred years ago.

      It was private industry that built the first steamships, railroad, telegraph lines, telephone lines, electric grids and airplanes. And both Jamestown and Plymouth were settled by private for-profit enterprises, not the English government. The English government just took control later after they were established.

      Safety and regulation are another matter, but remember that the private Underwriters Laboratory was established 80 years before the Consumers Protection Agency.

    • David_Morrison says:
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      Remember, a lot of government spending (think of the military) is not directly tied to profits or “free enterprise”. Would we want to leave the protection of our country, or our planet, to for-profit enterprise? Does anyone think the for-profit US health care system is better than the countries that believe people have the right to health care?

      • ThomasLMatula says:
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        The military is a good example of a public good. It falls under national security.

        In terms of health care, if we nationalize it where will the Canadians and other foreign patients go when their nationalize systems don’t have the ability to serve them, or have to wait to get the specialize service they need? And where would the best and birightest of the foreign medical professionals find work equal to their skills?

        But exactly what is the national security needs of space exploration? What makes it a public good?

        • Daniel Woodard says:
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          We’ve been waiting more than half a century for the Canadian health care system to collapse.
          https://www.healthaffairs.o
          In the early Sixties (I am that old) the AMA hired an out of work actor named Ronald Reagan to make film shorts that were distributed to doctors’ wives clubs, in which with great sincerity he warned that passage of Medicare would put America on the road to a Stalinist dictatorship.

          • ThomasLMatula says:
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            It doesn’t because it has the U.S. system as a safey value. And Medicare doesn’t limit your options. You may use it or go to providers outside the system if you wish and have the insurance to do so. And that keeps it efficient since most healthcare providers in Medicare also provide service outside the system. It’s really just a payment option, not the only option as in the government run healthcare systems.

    • Vladislaw says:
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      “there’s no obvious money to be made beyounf LEO, and a limited amount in any sort of orbit.

      Why? Because we are approaching the issue looking through the Holy Book of the Church of Free Enterprise.”

      Actually we are not. If we were property rights would have been established and capital would have already been chasing free resources. When you look how we colonized North America it was free resources on relatively free land through the head right program and later homestead act.

      You think if you could grab BILLIONS of free acres on Luna no one would be grabbing it?

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        I don’t think anyone would grab moon property, no. What for? How does it turn into money?

        • Vladislaw says:
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          LOL .. ya right .. that is why dennis hope has been selling lunar property for almost 4 decades.. because no one wants a piece. MILLIONS have bought an acre or more from him. granted it is listed as a novelty but to a LOT of the customers they truely believe they are owners… hell even congress members and two past presidents have bought from him. The republicans in the senate even gave him the senate businessman of the year award when bush was president because they thought we were landing..

          • Ball Peen Hammer ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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            Someone selling novelty land titles to people who lack the capital to make any use of or extract resources from the lots they deacribe does not a compelling case for a lunar economy make.

          • Vladislaw says:
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            I am not trying to “make a case” I am simply saying.. if the world governments came together and established property rights. we KNOW people would buy millions of acres at 30 bucks an acre. Which shoots to heck the argument that no revenue or income can come from Luna and no one wants it.

          • Ball Peen Hammer ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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            The revenue you describe is not generated by lunar resources their marketability or any Kumar commerce. It is 100% terrestrial bureaurocracy.

    • Richard Malcolm says:
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      …there’s no obvious money to be made beyond LEO, and a limited amount in any sort of orbit.

      That’s true. Any business case to be made right now in cislunar space is going to be almost entirely dependent on the activities of “sovereign clients,” i.e., national space agencies. Who else – right now – would use any ice-derived propellant mined on the Moon?

      That doesn’t mean that this will always be the case, of course.

      But that doesn’t mean that private enterprise does not have an important role to play. It does mean that neither government actors or commercial actors can accomplish development of cislunar space by themselves. By aggressively using commercial partners, it *is* possible that NASA and other agencies could possibly bootstrap a lunar economy into existence over time.

      But if the United States (or any other) government tries to do it wholly by itself, it’s simply not likely to work. It’s invariably inefficient and hostage to vested interests, and the political support for the kind of expenditure needed to overcome those disadvantages and do something durable simply is not there – not even remotely. Not unless we find a killer asteroid or alien artifacts in the neighborhood.

      • fcrary says:
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        “Any business case to be made right now in cislunar space is going to be almost entirely dependent on the activities of “sovereign clients,” i.e., national space agencies. Who else – right now – would use any ice-derived propellant mined on the Moon?”

        Commercial satellite operators, especially of geostationary communications satellites. I don’t know if the business case works, but they could certainly use the propellant and (within limits) they’d be willing to pay for it.

        • ThomasLMatula says:
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          The settlers will have use of it, far more than those government programs. They will never generate enough demand to make it practical to recover it.

          The first generation exports from the Moon that will pay are PGM and the basic chips produced from it.

          • fcrary says:
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            Let me try that again. I was talking about commercial, communications satellites. That is not a government program. The idea is using extraterrestrial water to fuel a LEO to GEO tug, or other, similar infrastructure, to decrease the costs and increase the lifetime of communications satellites. SES and/or the government of Luxembourg (as a investor in communications satellite, not a government per se) are funding a study of the concept.

            It may well turn out this is a bad idea. But people with an actual financial interest in a real, existing and profitable industry think the subject is worth looking into. And worth looking into at their own expense. I haven’t seen anyone involved in platinum group metals or microchips express similar interest in lunar exports.

          • Michael Spencer says:
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            What a magical place we inhabit.

            Water – the stuff of life – with a bit of solar energy becoming at the same time a fuel to the solar system.

            Two elements.

        • Richard Malcolm says:
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          Commercial satellite operators, especially of geostationary communications satellites.

          Sure, in time. But not right now. A) Because the means do not exist to transport such propellant off the lunar surface, let alone to GTO orbits, and B) because few of these satellites are properly equipped for refueling in the first place.

          All of which could be one of those markets which could be bootstrapped into existence within a generation or so. But they really do not exist yet.

          • fcrary says:
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            Developing any sort of space infrastructure can easily take five to fifteen years. So I’m not sure how “within a generation” is all that different.

        • Michael Spencer says:
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          This just seems backward – mining ice on the moon to service earth satellites. Gotta make more sense to attack the problem from Earth.

          • fcrary says:
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            Well, propulsively, I get a delta v of over 11 km/s to go from the Earth’s surface to geostationary orbit. From the Moon’s surface to geostationary orbit it’s a hair over 5 km/s. Geostationary orbit is around the Earth, but it’s a very high orbit.

            In any case, I’m not saying this is a good or a bad idea. I’m saying that an actual communications satellite operator is interested and thinks the idea has enough potential to be worth studying. That’s the closest thing I’ve heard of to business plan.

  4. Nick K says:
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    Pretty good discussion.

    I have to agree with Michael Spencer and Elon Musk that settlements, colonization, and with Vladislaw that seeking resources are good reasons to go, and none of them have much to do with NASA-nor should they.

    NASA’s and government’s direct role in exploration should probably be limited to unmanned reconnaissance. If there is scientific or technological research to be done, whether building new kinds of rockets or health research to protect colonists, those are proper roles for government. Educating people about what we’ve developed and found and about the capabilities NASA systems and facilities offer is a proper role for government.

    Remember as we all complain about the waste going into Orion and SLS, the same lame idea that we have to hurry up and go somewhere, is behind that waste. That foolish idea prematurely ended Shuttle and ended promising technology without ensuring we understood it or and fixed it. And now it is threatening the one foothold we have in space for such research and development, the ISS.

    The idea that NASA owns the role of sending a handful of people to set up a flag-in Apollo that was for a political goal, and it had zero to do with exploration or the idea of going somewhere. It was all about beating a competitor in a race.

    Neither the US nor any other country owns the territory of the Moon or Mars or the resources of the asteroids. If people want to homestead in space, and seek those resources they should be free to do so. Let them invest their time, energy and resources to do so.

    Quite frankly the statement that it is time for us to go somewhere. Why? To “explore”? That is nonsense. It might be nostalgia for Apollo but it is not a proper way to waste taxpayer-my money; especially at the rate NASA wastes it.

    Columbia is actually a great example of how NASA wasted people’s lives and taxpayer resources because NASA’s proper job was to pay attention to the problems and the specifications of Columbia and fix the problems or the specs. That was NASA’s job and they failed. That was a waste of human life and of our resources.

  5. TheBrett says:
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    We’re getting there, although it’s slow. We just need to get the costs of launch and operating in space down more – a lot more. Right now, it’s still mostly a game for governments and a handful of rich companies who need telecom satellites.

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      Well, sure, but it’s something of a Catch-22, no? It’s true that a price of going to space will be widely beneficial. But one of the reasons that the price has taken so damn long to come down – finally being addressed by people thinking about it in a new way – is because there is no pent up demand. Period.

      Telesats have been so hugely successful, and able to bear stunning launch and development costs, because the costs are divided by many millions of users.

      It is possible that I am completely wrong in my assertions about space development – that we’ve identified no compelling reason to do anything like settling space. But right or wrong, it is sure that nothing will happen until prices are dramatically lower.

      • TheBrett says:
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        That’s a good point. It’s why we didn’t really see a lot of movement in that direction before Musk, because at the end of the day launch costs for existing space-related stuff (however expensive) are just a fraction of the overall cost of doing anything in space.

        To be totally honest, I’m divided on whether we’ll ever get launch costs down a lot – down the point where a regular person could afford it at great relative expense to themselves. Space robotics might beat that to the punch, with relatively little being launched off-world anymore because we just make it from space resources.

        It is possible that I am completely wrong in my assertions about space development – that we’ve identified no compelling reason to do anything like settling space.

        No, I think you’re right. There’s no compelling reason to settle space in the next couple centuries (or even millennia) other than people wanting to live there because they want to, and there’s too few people like that (with too little money) for space colonization to happen anytime soon. I’m hopeful that will change eventually, but it could be a very slow process.

        I often wonder if Apollo had been cancelled in the 1960s, would we even have a crewed spaceflight program now? Probably yes, because the Soviets had one and we couldn’t abandon that as long as they were doing it. But maybe not – if we’re being totally unsentimental, there’s not much reason to send people up there in the near future.

        • Michael Spencer says:
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          The costs issue can/will be solved in the same way that the airliners solve it; this is Mr.Musk’s approach, of course.

          But it is far from enough. It’s like dropping 200 people in the desert with no hotel. There is so much basic science required to develop support tech – it’s the next big hurdle.

          EDIT: unless of course the idea is that the BFR will serve as a home-away-from-home, a little like a Winnebago, in the sense that the rocket is big enough to have life support, food, etc., plus refutability; this scenario would let crew land about anywhere, and it is cheap too boot. Don’t laugh- this might seem far-fetched but it’s the sort of new direction that SX does. You can do an awful lot in a box that is 30x30x30.

          After that, finally, hopefully, and late in this century, folks can finally settle space.

          • fcrary says:
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            I can’t quire see converting a BFR into habitat after it lands on Mars. Not that it’s impossible, just that if you fly it back to Earth for another set of passengers, it seem like a waste.

            But the idea does raise an interesting question. How much of the life support and other hardware for a trip to Mars, would also be useful to live on Mars? Since the idea is for BFR to be reusable, long lifetime and ease of maintenance are desirable. It’s not like the systems on BFR would be designed for one trip to Mars and then replaced. So could you fly a BFR to Mars with a second copy if its passenger accommodations along as cargo?

          • Michael Spencer says:
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            That was my thinking: there being so much duplication.

            Remember that BFR is actually in two pieces, and that the part at the top would stay on Mars while the booster would leave.

          • fcrary says:
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            So not so much a Winnebago as a car towing a camper. Live in the camper during the multi-day trip to your destination, set it down once you’re there, turn it into a trailer park sort of home, and let the friend who just came along for the ride drive the car back to whatever place you started from. That isn’t unreasonable or a bad model for space settlements.