The School of "If Only"

Dr. Paul Spudis, most recently from the Lunar and Planetary Institute, paid a visit to Marshall Space Flight Center yesterday and gave a lunch-and-learn presentation entitled "Using the Resources of the Moon to Create a Permanent Cislunar Transportation System." This was the sort of talk that one normally hears at an International Space Development Conference or other space advocacy event. It contained everything a space advocate could hope to hear: technical feasibility, visionary ambition, and a sense of political realism. It's been awhile since I've heard such talks--I was working during most of my ISDC--and it was a pleasure to hear Dr. Spudis's speech. Nevertheless, I had a few reservations, which I'll share after I summarize the talk.

Spudis began his talk by providing some background on the space industry, specifically its three "ages," the "Space Race" age (1957-1972), the "What now?" age (1972-Present), the "Beyond LEO" age (hopefully, from now into the future). He made the case early in his talk that if we lack an overarching beat-the-other-guys reason for space exploration, we need to find more pragmatic reasons, including national security, economic, and scientific, all of which space justifies in spades.

He next went on to discuss the operational challenges space efforts have faced, including a long habit of building customized, one-time-use platforms, which are then abandoned after one use. Spudis argues for a new template for human space activities, one involving incremental, extensible building-block components and systems that can be reused. He also argued (as his title suggested) for the use of space resources--but not for use here on Earth, but rather in space.

Another template or paradigm Spudis asked the audience to consider was a shift from an "Space Air Force" model, where there are small vehicles and small-scale, temporary visits to destinations to a "Space Navy" model where you see a large-scale, permanent presence in space and at destinations. It's sort of like the difference between The Right Stuff and Star Trek. However, instead of Star Trek, Spudis pointed to Arthur C. Clarke's Profiles of the Future.

It didn't surprise the audience that Spudis, a lunar scientist, advocated for using the moon as a base of operations and resources. As his PowerPoint bullets put it, the moon is "close, interesting, and useful." He got a little incensed by President Obama dismissing the moon with "been there, done that." Citing recent discoveries by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and Lunar Crater Observation Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), Spudis emphasized the usefulness of lunar resources, including local metals and most importantly water ice. For those unschooled in the matter, scientists have determined that under the rims of craters near the moon's north and south poles there are permanently shadowed areas where volatile materials such as water would not be able to boil off. This water, in the form of ice, comprises as much as 10 percent of lunar soil in these regions.

Water, as Spudis points out, is just about the most useful material available for human space exploration, as it can be used to drink, it can be split into hydrogen and oxygen for fuel, it can be used to provide oxygen for breathing, and it can be used as an insulating material for surface habitats. In short, water matters, and where we once thought the moon was bone-dry, we now know that there's enough water ice there to meet the needs of human settlements there for hundreds of years.

Having set the stage for "why the moon," Spudis next moved on to his architecture, which was developed in cooperation with Marshall Space Flight Center project manager Tony Lavoie. This incremental set of hardware includes (in order) communication and navigation satellites, polar prospecting rovers, in situ resource utilization (ISRU) demonstrator, digger/hauler rovers, water tankers, electrolysis units (for transforming water into hydrogen and oxygen), supporting equipment, and space-based assets, such as fuel depots in lunar and Earth orbit. Total price tag, about $5.5 billion per year for 16 years. That's an easier figure for Congress to swallow than the total pricetag, $88 billion, but it's MUCH easier than the $450 billion estimated for the Space Exploration Initiative, proposed by President George H. W. Bush in 1989.

The Spudis/Lavoie approach has several advantages:

• It is "vehicle neutral," meaning it is not dependent on any new or existing rockets to get its equipment into space (they start with the existing Delta IV as their baseline, but any existing rocket would do.
• Because the early missions--heck, the first 16--are robotically based, they can be developed more quickly, on shorter timelines than human missions. Multiple, short-term milestones and accomplishments are important because Congress runs its budgets one year to the next and is impatient with programs that they feel are not accomplishing anything.
• It allows transportation to be customized by function, much as Robert A. Heinlein envisioned it: Earth to LEO handled by one type of vehicle, LEO to the moon with another type of vehicle, and a reusable vehicle of another type to handle the lunar orbit to Moon run.
• It can identify an economic "break-even" point. In the case of water resources, any surplus above 150 metric tons of water extracted from the moon  would be sufficient for a lunar settlement to start paying for itself.

One question Spudis asked toward the end of his talk was, "Can NASA change the way they do things? That's one thing I just don't know." This sort of begs the question: what does need to change if NASA is to execute this vision?

And I should point out that this is very much a NASA type of vision, with the agency leading the activities. Why? Spudis's thoughts are much like mine on this: there is very little business justification for exploring the moon or building infrastructure. Basically, if this vision/architecture were left to the private sector, "it wouldn't happen." So another advantage of Spudis's architecture is that it concentrates government on activities that are unlikely to generate much initial commercial interest.

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It sounds like a cool, ingenious plan. But then so do a lot of the plans I've heard from the space advocacy community over the past 15 years. My comment (one seconded by Michael Doornbos when I mentioned the talk on Facebook) was, "All they need is an affordable launch vehicle." Other plans are equally ingenious, but they always have some missing unobtainium that hasn't been developed yet. All our problems would be solved if only we had...

• An affordable launch vehicle
• A reusable launch vehicle
• An ultra-light alloy that would make a reusable launch vehicle possible
• A new, high-energy propellant
• A new, high-strength material capable of building a space elevator
• A space station orbiting at the L5 Lagrange point
• A base on Mars
• Access to a nickel-iron asteroid with a trillion dollars' worth of platinum-group metals
• A Helium-3 reactor
• The political will to do [X]
• A heavy-lift launch vehicle
• A robust, low-cost commercial space industry

The U.S. is in the process of developing those last two, anyway. I wish Spudis well. It's a clever vision he has, and one of the more realistic visions I've heard articulated in recent years. Will it hold up? I guess it all depends on how many people stand up and start advocating for it. Being a lunar-centric guy myself, I suppose you could count me among them. What happens next is anybody's guess. If only.

The Cure for Space Burnout--Remember Why You're Here in the First Place

It’s not pretty, and we don’t like to admit it, but job/career burnout can happen in any line of work, even careers we’re passionate about. Such things usually happen through overwork, lack of creative control, lack of challenge, or as Dr. OZMG likes to say, “deeper underlying issues.” I’ve had a three-year job adaptation cycle for awhile now, where I spend the first year absorbing the content, the second year kicking arse using that content, and the third year repeating the performance of year two, but usually with a lower level of enthusiasm. My pal D2 reported a similar phenomenon to me, so it’s not unheard-of. The challenge, of course, is what to do if you’re burned out in the literal career of your dreams.

When I worked at Walt Disney World, I went through several three-year cycles, but managed to stay with the same company for 12 years. One of the things I would do just to keep myself happy and motivated was to “renew the wonder.” This would involve something like staying in one of the hotels I hadn’t stayed in before, taking a Disney Cruise, or just hanging out in the parks with no set agenda. My favorite personal recharging is still a walk through Epcot.

It’s a little hard to revisit rocket launches in the space business because they don’t happen very often. In fact, we’re only five missions away from the end of the Space Shuttle Program. That little fact is beginning to creep up on people outside NASA for the first time, and so now normal (i.e. non-space-geek) people like my family, Disney friends, and Dr. OZMG are starting to ask, “You’re closing down the Shuttle? Really? What do we do then?” And if you’ve been in the middle of that debate with little to no influence on the outcome but a whole lot invested in the outcome, you have to ask yourself what you can do to keep your spirits up and avoid the stress of prolonged uncertainty and possible massive changes in your program. In my case, I have to remind myself why I got into this business, what it means in normal-person terms, and what it means to me personally. Below is such an exercise. As usual, these views do not reflect those of NASA, my employer, etc. They are an English major’s view of why the space program matters to him.

The Big Picture

Before I got interested in space as an actual business or line of work, I was a science fiction fan. Science fiction encompasses everything from the space fantasies of Star Trek and Star Wars to the sociological utopias/dystopias of Ursula K. LeGuin and Ray Bradbury to the “hard” science fiction works of Larry Niven, Arthur C. Clarke, and Michael Crichton. Many of these stories depict human beings living, working, and having regular human problems in a future where space travel is not just possible but commonplace. We are nowhere near there yet, but that’s the “vision thing,” as George H. W. Bush might’ve said.

The space advocacy group I belong to, and currently write policy/position papers for, is the National Space Society (NSS). Their vision is “People living and working in communities beyond the Earth.” I dug that. I liked the idea of homes and businesses on the Moon, on Mars, in space stations circling this planet or others. It intrigues me that human beings could explore the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, collect helium 3 from the atmospheres of Neptune and Saturn, and use water-ice objects from the outer solar system to add water to the atmosphere of Mars. It startles and humbles me that I live in an age where objects made by humans have and can leave the solar system. I can’t do any of it, but the dreams are big, and such things appeal to me. If NSS is doing our jobs right, we get those aforementioned normal people to take an interest in the policies and technologies that will make such a future possible.

Technology

It’s not just a matter of zipping around to other planets, making footprints on the sand, and taking pretty pictures for political consumption back home. There have been and continue to be huge benefits from space exploration, direct and indirect, to people on Earth who would never in a million years consider being an engineer or an astronaut. The revolution in miniature integrated circuits—the basis for our computers today—had its birth in data collection for the Saturn V. We can thank the space program for many of our most advanced high-technology medical tools, from the CAT scan and MRI to improved breast screenings and lightweight eyeglasses. Would these advances have occurred if we hadn’t gone into space? Perhaps some, but not most of them. The key to “spinoffs” is what philosopher Gonsalvo Munevar called the serendipity of exploration:

• You develop a widget that helps a spacecraft (probe) perform a task or survive in a place with no atmosphere, high vibration (upon liftoff), temperature extremes, and strange radiations not encountered on Earth.
• You work on improving the device, material, process, or technology for future use.
• You or someone else realizes that the new device—which would never have been invented if it hadn’t been for our crazy desire to explore space—has certain properties that would also be useful for more mundane but equally useful Earth-based purpose.
• Life is improved on Earth through the new application of the space-based device.

Energy

There are two big gorillas in the medium-term future of space power that deserve to be investigated: space-based solar power (SBSP) and helium-3 fusion.

The idea behind SBSP is that you put a large farm of solar panels—say, one square mile’s worth—into geosynchronous orbit (the sort of orbit where the satellite’s period of revolution around the Earth is exactly one day, so it always stays in one place in the sky). The solar panels collect unfiltered sunlight 24 hours a day—at roughly three times the intensity felt on Earth’s equator on a hot day in spring—and transmit the energy in concentrated form via microwaves to a receiving/rectifying antenna (rectenna) on Earth. The rectenna is plugged into a city’s power grid, and voila! Fewer brownouts, fewer coal-burning power plants, less pollution, fewer hydrocarbons used. I’ve heard arguments against SBSP, but until we invest in one and put it into orbit, we really won’t know. And if we want to continue to have a prosperous, high-technology future, we’re going to need new sources of energy; “green” technologies are all too small to have much impact on our future large-scale needs.

Another potential future energy source would be nuclear fusion using helium-3, an isotope of helium that is more easily fused into other elements without as much hard radiation as a side effect. We’ve been pushing for fusion for over 50 years, and it’s always been “only 20 years away.” Helium-3 is most likely a longer-term energy solution, but again should not be discounted until we at least try it. If we want both a high-technology civilization and an improved environment, space technologies offer two possibilities worth investigating. The long-term energy supply from both of these sources runs into the centuries, not just decades.

Materials

John S. Lewis has postulated that a nickel-iron asteroid a few miles across would be enough to meet the metal needs of our planet for 20 years or more. The reasoning being, these asteroids have a lot more than just nickel and iron (an decent combination for making stainless steel, by the way), including platinum-group metals, and other useful metals, not to mention organic materials (carbon, nitrogen) and water ice, all of which could be used to build things in space or meet our metal-hungry civilization back on Earth. Of course we’d need more routine access to and from space before the cost of hauling in such a treasure trove was possible, but in the meantime, the possibilities asteroids open up for building a civilization in space are very exciting.

Civilization

Raised in the American Midwest as I was, I grew up learning about the Northwest Ordinance, and the six-by-six-mile squares that were parceled out to German and Irish and other European farmers to make the settlement of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin possible. The government offered up land for sale, and people bought it, promised nothing save the right to make what good use of it they could and the responsibility to pay taxes when they did. The “frontier narrative” speaks to me as a freedom-loving American. It won’t be completely repeatable in space because human-made habitats will be extremely vulnerable—much more so than wagon trains moving across the Great Plains—but space as a place offers the hope of establishing a new life for the very dedicated few.

Education

Exploring and living in space will require our very best efforts. It will take the combined works of many, many smart people to make it so safe that someone who is NOT that smart to live out there without a degree. The specialties cover the range of human civilization to date, from garbage collection to quantum physics. Everything that we do here we will do or try in space. We just have to learn how to do them all over again, and that will take a very unique educational system, very technical and very creative. To make those works possible, we will need people educated people capable of understanding how structures, machines, and people will act in unfamiliar environments. We will need artists and musicians and yes, even writers to be out there eventually to convey the views of people living away from the blue-green-brown-white ball we call Earth and taking their best shot at the meaning of it all. If expanding our civilization into space is our long-range goal, then our educational systems must rise to meet the challenge. Just developing the curriculum for that would be the work of several lifetimes—but how rewarding, if successful!

Summary

So there you go: I want it all. I want a thriving, bustling, free civilization in space. I want to see great works of art and architecture. I want to see risk-taking, new experiments in freedom, an expanding pie of economic growth, cheap and plentiful energy and materials for a combative world. And I believe space exploration can make such things possible. However, it is very easy to get wrapped around the axle with the current politics or arguments of the day: where do we go first? What rockets do we build? What do we spend money on, how much do we spend, and who spends it? Should we send robots or humans? How far should we go to prevent pollution of the space environment?

Space is as much a philosophical as it is a technical adventure, as America was to the Europeans 500 years ago. What lessons might we learn today that we didn’t learn then? That is the reason I stay in this gig: I want to learn—and maybe even contribute—some of those answers.

Is Space Advocacy a Matter of Altruism or Self-Interest?

The short answer is yes...to both.

I had the pleasure of reading a paper by my friend Dr. OZMG concerning the role of altruism in particular professions--in the case of her paper, people going to school to become counselors--but the paper caused me to think about how altruism applies to the arguments used to sell space exploration, development, and settlement.

So what, precisely, is altruism? OZMG's paper defines it nicely as "concern for the welfare of others and/or actions toward that end." One might improve that definition by stating this concern for others implies that the actions done for others are done so without regard to a thought for personal gain, as opposed to self-interested motives, where individuals do things that help others merely to enhance their own social standing or opinion of themselves.

Space advocates have a mixed relationship with altruism, which is partly due to the way space was first "sold" to the public. While the Soviet Union and then the United States launched satellites in 1957 and 1958 as part of the International Geophysical Year, a worldwide scientific endeavor to help the worldwide scientific community learn more about the Earth (arguably an altruistic enterprise), there was no doubt that the two Sputniks and Explorer I represented objects of international competition. Sputnik in fact scared policy makers and media types in the U.S. because there was an assumption--correct, as it turned out--that a rocket capable of launching a 180-pound sphere into orbit could also launch an atomic bomb of even larger size to a target anywhere on Earth.

Nevertheless, the superpowers did their best to put benevolent faces on their respective space programs, even though both used primarily members of the military for their astronaut corps. The first communication satellites were launched and quickly transformed the shape of worldwide perceptions and news broadcasts to the point where "live via satellite" is now taken for granted.

Arthur C. Clarke, science fiction writer and inventor of the geosynchrononous communications satellite, declared in the mid 1980s that his invention had, in fact, made the world a safer and more peaceful place, as it has informed developed nations of imminent and past humanitarian crises while also preventing dictatorships from committing atrocities for extended periods simply because the news of their depradations can no longer be hidden. At best, the record of communication satellites as contributors to world peace has been mixed. True, they have alerted the world to hurricanes, tsunamis, and earthquakes, and allowed humanitarian aid to be sent more rapidly than might have been the case otherwise. And on the credit side of politics, satellites have brought the world the images of dissidents squaring off against tanks in Tianenmen Square along with the massacres of Muslims in Bosnia. However, similar images broadcast from Rwanda and Zimbabwe, while just as compelling, have not moved the international community to take action.

More positive altruistic benefits can be seen from weather, environmental monitoring, and search-and-rescue satellites. Weather satellites have been tracking and warning people on Earth of oncoming hurricanes and other storms for over 40 years. Environmental monitoring and land use satellites like LandSat have allowed farmers to detect healthy and unhealthy crops, environmental damage, erosion, and crop yields. And search-and-rescue satellites launched by all of the spacefaring nations have been used to detect and send compassionate aid to ships in distress on the high seas.

Military observation satellites, too, have a mixed record and at least on the surface cannot be said to be altruistic in their purposes. However, satellite imagery has been a critical tool in verifying compliance with nuclear weapons treaties. The most famous military satellites have been the Global Positioning System, or GPS. Originally designed--and still used--to help military units on the ground, in the air, or at sea pinpoint their position and those of their enemies, GPS satellites now have secondary civilian benefits through onboard automobile maps, travel location devices, and even games like "geocaching," where hikers find "treasures" simply by their GPS coordinates. And while GPS-guided bombs cannot be seen as altruistic, they have enabled U.S. military units to more precisely hit targets, reducing civilian "collateral damage."

So, again, satellites as technologies can be applied both to altruistic and non-altruistic purposes--with some satellites performing both functions at the same time.

What about other arguments used to "sell space?" On the altruistic side of things we might credit space exploration with contributing the following direct or indirect benefits:

• New scientific knowledge, from the Sun to the planets of this solar system to the stars and distant galaxies brought to us by the Hubble Space Telescope. The knowledge and images these tools have brought humanity give us all a better understanding of the nature of the universe and our place within it.
• New technologies, from lightweight plastic lenses to CAT scans and MRIs to charged coupling devices, originally used to examine images on Hubble and now used to detect breast cancer. The "spinoffs," while often resulting in profits for the companies leveraging them, are perhaps one of the best examples of exploration serving humanit on Earth, albeit not directly or immediately.
• New resources. While we have yet to tap fully the enormous power of the Sun via space solar power or to tap the potential of helium-3, a more benign element for producing nuclear fusion, the exploration of space has allowed us to expand our horizons and consider less harmful sources of energy to power our world. Power sources are not the only resources available in space. Low-Earth orbit (LEO) offers a unique microgravity environment and high-purity vacuum for developing new materials. The surface of the Moon offers an atmosphere-free location for performing dangerous research that would create harm on Earth, while its Far Side could be used for placing telescopes away from the radio noise of our bustling planet.
• New places to live. We are still not at the point where we can ensure long-term survival of humans on other worlds, but we will be eventually. The ability to spread human life beyond this world could be one of the greatest gifts of the Space Age, especially if our world is struck by another "dinosaur-killer" asteroid.
• All of these activities have led some--not all, but some--of our young people to become inspired to get better educations in the sciences and engineering and then to produce other products and services that benefit humanity. While a second- or third-order effect of space exploration, inspiration for education cannot be overlooked. It even causes English majors to go back and get advanced degrees so they can work for NASA, so stranger things have happened.

Of course we cannot overlook the less altruistic reasons human beings have expressed for going into space. These include:

• New Markets. These include orbital hotels, space-based entertainment, remote-controlled robots on the Moon, and eventually cruises around and to the surface of the Moon. No one can pretend that such things are for anything other than personal enjoyment. That's not a bad thing, but not an altruistic motivation.
• New Resources and Markets. Right now if we found mountains of gold on the Moon, it would still be more cost-effective to dig for more here on Earth because there's no launch system capable of low-cost access to our nearest celestial neighbor--at least, not yet. And even if resources such as gold or more importantly water are found on other worlds, they will be of most value to people living and building businesses in space rather than people back home. That's fine, as space offers the opportunity for a whole new economy to be formed. But as every economist going back to Adam Smith can explain, economics is not a study in altruism.
• New Freedoms. This is an argument Robert Zubrin makes in The Case for Mars. If Mars or other worlds are opened up to immigration and prisoners of conscience are allowed to establish new, free societies there that lead to better lives for their citizens, that must certainly count as a form of altruism. However, it must be admitted that any new freedoms desired in space are most likely the result of individuals or groups not getting what they want for themselves on Earth. Still, the United States and its citizens have been the largest donors to humanitarian causes in history, and those donations were made possible by a very self-interested capitalism.

So where does that leave us? As with most human activities, space exploration offers the chance for us to indulge our personal desires but also to seek the good of others. It remains for future space advocates and the audiences they reach to determine which motives will ultimately bring us closer to the stars.

Potpourri CIII

The usual mixed bag, so let's get to it. Five days to vacation and counting.

From the Down Under Defense Expert (DUDE):

• A suggested reading list for young 'uns. I'm a little embarrassed that I didn't read a lot of these, but some of them I wish I hadn't and some I'm probably still glad I haven't, so it might be a wash.
• Also, an overseas source for buying electronic gear.

Some additional second-guessing about Administrator Bolden might or might not have said about Ares I-X. After Mr. Cowing admitted to posting flat-out rumors, I'm beginning to take him less and less seriously.

This struck me as surprising and more than a little disturbing: Boeing is looking to move more of its operations overseas...to China. Not a bright idea--that would make U.S. proprietary technology that much more accessible to a nation that does not have our best interests at heart. And isn't Boeing supposed to be exporting products to China, not itself? I'll be interested to see what the Department of Commerce and the State Department have to say about this.

Here's something interesting from my friends at Science at NASA: could investigating the process of fusion on the Sun allow us to build a better fusion reactor here on Earth? That would certainly be a useful spinoff from astronomy, wouldn't it?

From Father Dan:

• A Fox News story (via YouTube) about Obama's new flyover policy regarding an event that honors America's military service members.
• Father also recommended I check Clark Howard's web site to seek out deals on calling overseas. I'll have to do some more reading here. Clark either assumes that my phone can be easily switched over to use in Europe (something Verizon told me was not doable) or he's offering advice on switching services, which I'm not looking to do. I might just buy a disposable phone or a phone card. I think I've reached the saturation point on helpful advice. I just want to get there, ya know?

A good editorial by one of my fellow NSS Policy dudes, Ryan, on what should be done with NASA. One can only hope we get this lucky.

From another NSSer, Ken, a list of 25 reasons we should go to the Moon. The space advocacy community is getting its message out there, but who's listening?

From Hu: a link to a blogger suggesting "concourse cruising," that is, walking up and down an airport concourse and saying "thank you" to any and all uniformed military personnel you encounter. I'm a fan. If I see any in the airport bar, I try to buy 'em a round. Whatever. They're the ones running around with 80 pounds of gear in 120-degree weather, getting shot at.

From Gwen, a spectacular way for space geeks to humiliate their dog.

Could Kindle and related electronic books spell the end of hardcover books? Maybe, says I.

A school is trying a "no touching" policy to prevent the spread of the H1N1 virus. That's going to make joining hands to sing Kum-ba-ya difficult...jeez. Keep your hands washed, don't come into school if you're sick. It's not rocket science.

How much real estate would it require if we wanted enough ground-based solar power to power all of the Earth's needs? This site offers one answer, though it ignores things like night and day, bad weather, etc.

The British have developed a spacecraft to help deflect asteroids. Cool! Now all we need is a launch vehicle capable of lifting it into orbit.

Communicating About Space with the Public

You know, I've heard "NASA doesn't communicate well with the public" quite a few times lately, and it's starting to grate, mostly because I'm one of the folks helping the agency communicate. It's certainly not for lack of trying...conference papers, speeches, brochures, presentations, NASA TV, NASA.gov, Facebook, Twitter, FlickR...and yet I hear that that's still not enough. Or we're using the wrong channels. Or we're boring. My personal opinion is that the general public just doesn't give a flip about space, and the jazziest marketing campaign on Earth wouldn't matter a tinker's dam if no one wants or cares about the product.

It was pointed out to me that a) I shouldn't take such things personally (too late), and b) the general messages NASA sends out are weak--for example, can you explain why we're going back to the Moon? No. Can I? Well, maybe. But there's not central theme, no BIG MISSION, no philosophy or hot deadline or significant action pushing us. So if I'm not able to say with absolute certainty what the central message is behind a return to the Moon or a human journey to Mars, why should I expect the general public to care?

Motivating people in advertising is much like investigating motives for a crime. While particulars always vary from crime to crime and person to person, the motivations that cause individuals to act--for good or evil--can fall into several broad categories:

• Anger
• Fear
• Love/sex
• Ambition/greatness/fame/adulation/admiration of one's peers
• Honor/pride
• Transcendance/worship/awe
• Greed/gain
• Jealousy
• Obedience/following orders
• Survival/desperation/hunger
• Curiosity/experimentation
• Revenge
• Self-improvement/overcoming weakness/proving oneself
• Altruism

There are others, of course, but that covers most of the broad human motivations for anything...and at one time or another, all of them have probably been tried to get people to be interested in or supportive of space exploration. Some motivators work better than others and some last longer. No one means of argument works with every individual, and even if you find an argument that persuades a particular individual or individuals, that argument most likely will not last forever. People change, attitudes change, interest rates fluctuate, etc., etc.

This is why I tell my engineering friends that they've got it easy--the laws of physics don't change. Communication is akin to chaos theory.

Potpourri XLVII

Articles here and here on Ares I-X...

Here's a list of things that have to go right to get human beings to and from the Moon safely. All of them must take place at extreme velocities, temperatures, or environments and require our greatest efforts to correctly. How is it that people cannot be inspired by the space program? How is it possible for a nation to make space exploration boring?

From a friend of Hu: a company that ships wine to Alabama legally. Better read the fine print first.

Here's the official White House press release on the nominations of Charles Bolden and Lori Garver.
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
_______________________________________________________________________________________FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 23, 2009
President Obama Announces More Key Administration Posts

WASHINGTON, DC – Today, President Barack Obama announced his intent to nominate the following individuals for key administration posts: General Charles Bolden, Administrator of NASA and Lori Garver, Deputy Administrator of NASA.

President Obama said, “These talented individuals will help put NASA on course to boldly push the boundaries of science, aeronautics and exploration in the 21st century and ensure the long-term vibrancy of America’s space program.”

President Obama announced his intent to nominate the following individuals today:

Gen. Charles Bolden, Nominee for Administrator of NASA
Charles Bolden retired from the United States Marine Corps in 2003 as the Commanding General of the Third Marine Aircraft Wing after serving more than 34 years, and is currently CEO of JackandPanther LLC, a privately-held military and aerospace consulting firm. Gen. Bolden began his service in U.S. Marine Corps in 1968. He flew more than 100 sorties in Vietnam from 1972-73. In 1980, he was selected as an astronaut by NASA, flying two space shuttle missions as pilot and two missions as commander. Following the Challenger accident in 1986, Gen. Bolden was named the Chief of the Safety Division at the Johnson Space Center with responsibilities for overseeing the safety efforts in the return-to-flight efforts. He was appointed Assistant Deputy Administrator of NASA headquarters in 1992. He was Senior Vice President at TechTrans International, Inc. from 2003 until 2005. Gen. Bolden holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis and a M.S. in Systems Management from the University of Southern California.

Lori Garver, Nominee for Deputy Administrator of NASA
Lori Garver is the President of Capital Space, LLC, and has served as Senior Advisor for Space at the Avascent Group, a strategy and management consulting firm, based in Washington, D.C. She was the lead civil space policy advisor for Obama for America, and she helped lead the Agency Review Team for NASA during the Transition. She has intimate familiarity with the agency and knows well the challenges it faces. From 1998 to 2001, Ms. Garver served as NASA’s Associate Administrator of the Office of Policy and Plans. Reporting to the NASA Administrator, she oversaw the analysis, development, and integration of NASA policies and long-range plans, the NASA Strategic Management System, and the NASA Advisory Council. Ms. Garver also served as a primary spokesperson for NASA. Prior to this appointment, she served as a Senior Policy Analyst for the Office of Policy and Plans, and Special Assistant to the Administrator. Ms. Garver earned an M.S. in Science, Technology, and Public Policy from the George Washington University and a B.A. in Political Science and Economics from Colorado College.

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A Space Review editorial compares NASA to the automobile industry.

This one from the corporate office: the Baltimore Sun is reporting that you're going to need to pony up with your middle name when it comes time to fly. I actually inquired how much it would cost to legally change my name from Bartholomew to Bart because I sign my checks Bart but my mother and the State of Alabama call me Bartholomew (and the former only when she's angry with me). Why? Because the TSA was getting p!$$y with me about my driver's license not matching my credit cards. Parents beware: I won't be the only one to contemplate this change to save myself the aggravation at the airport. Another lesson in the law of Unintended Consequences from our government: make the law more intrusive and yoiu can even cause people to change their names.

This one from Nickomundo: Anderson Cooper believes the current generation is going to be shafted by the recession. Jeez, spare me. Every generation is screwed by a recession, usually temporarily, as the ability to make more choices and obtain more opportunities is reduced by slowed economic activity. Recession means your mom buys from the discount rack or sews your clothes when you rip them. Recession means you don't go to the Chuck-E-Cheese once a week or don't get high-end snacks with your lunch. Or that you don't buy your lunch. Or vacation gets put off a year. You're sad, you're disappointed. A couple of more fortunate, more shallow peers might laugh at your cheap, off-the-rack clothes. You're hurt. You move on.

Is NASA "over the hill" if the average age there is 49? All depends. People keep telling me that "40 is the new 30." Which means what for Gen Y? It means you'll be waiting another 10 years before you get promoted. (Just a little snark/humor to offer insight into how your elders might be thinking.)

Leonard David, whose brain I'd like to borrow for a week, has a blog on a new approach to searching for Earthlike planets.

The International Space Development Conference officially gets under way tomorrow. The Space Investment Symposium (SIS), which has become attached to ISDC since 2006, happened today. That's an event where they put wannabe space entrepreneurs and venture capitalists into a room and try to educate the space people on the right way to write a business plan to get investment money from the VCs. I first wrote about the SIS in 2007 and have been trying to keep up with it when I can. Lately I haven't been able to afford the leave time--or the ticket price. I don't complain about that--I got in gratis as a journalist in '06 and '07.

I see the SIS as a positive sign in the space advocacy movement because it shows that space businesses are becoming routine, part of the regular investment and business environment, like utilities or drug companies. However, I've heard complaints that this emphasis on business also raises ticket prices for space-related events and eliminates that "grass roots" touch/feel to the activity. I look at it this way, speaking purely for myself and from a strictly appearance-based point of view: more suits means more people taking space seriously. It's the difference between space advocates showing up in t-shirts or Star Trek outfits to lobby Congress and those same advocates showing up with suits, professional attire, and briefcases. Which one would you take more seriously? Apperances matter. And if that means that the space movement loses the "common touch" but gains credibility among the non-space-minded public, then I'm willing to make the sacrifice. If you want to wear t-shirts and Star Trek outfits, there's probably a science fiction convention out there waiting for you. If you want to make a serious effort to get civilization into space, leave the t-shirts at home and get ready to do business.

Am I Adding Any Value Here?

I've discovered quite a few things about the space advocacy community. They tend to be a very independent, bright bunch. They are not afraid of exploring new ideas--indeed, many welcome them--but they can also be very much self-educated and attached to particular ideas once they get hold of them. Among us you will find experts in propulsion, space elevators, space mining, space solar power, Mars exploration and terraforming, and so forth. So I sometimes wonder, with all these smart people in the room, where I fit in.

Obviously they have a need for a technical writer, or I'd be at best a hanger-on. But more importantly, I've specialized in philosophy. I keep asking the deeper questions:

• Why are we doing this?
• Are we certain this is a GOOD thing to do? Why?
• What are the implications if we're right/wrong?
• Who will pay for X?
• Who will benefit from Y?
• How else might Z hardware be used?

And so forth. I've read a lot of science fiction but also a lot of "big picture" histories to anticipate what actions might happen next if certain actions are taken. In short, I've specialized in politics. That's not entiely a bad thing--somebody has to--I just wonder if my exposure to it has made me more cynical or pessimistic about the whole enterprise. If anything, I've learned which questions, while sounding naive, are not stupid questions. Progress, of a sort.

Potpourri XVI

I must put my DoD budget analysis on hold again. Dog ate my homework, what can I say?

I also owe Darlene the Science Cheerleader a blog on reviving the Office of Technology Assessment. In the meantime, you can check out Dar's original entry on this petition. You can also check here and here for my earlier entries on this topic. Given all the other silliness in Washington, a calm, sober group of analysts providing sage advice on science and technology issues sounds like a good idea.

Oh yeah, and I decided to spend my tax refund on a Kindle 2 with case. I'm expecting to take delivery on Monday. I'll write a product review once I've had a chance to work with the toy a bit.

This looks like something to write while drinking a glass or two of wine: a winery is holding a contest to write the blurb on the back of their latest label. The catch? The name of the wine is Rocket Science.

OpenNASA has a new posting on reinventing NASA.

7,000 uranium centrifuges in Iran, and so Obama wants to convene nuclear arms talks with them.

A Rasmussen Poll states that only 53% of Americans think capitalism is better than socialism.

An NSS blog on a Catch-22 in space development.

Fox News reports on NASA cost overruns.

The Pentagon played an economic war game recently--and the results were not promising.

President Obama's new science advisor talks about many issues with Science, including space and NASA.

This is an interesting site: you can track this guy's GPS position as he climbs Mt. Everest.

Space Potpourri

Some interesting things being said in the space industry, mostly because there haven't been a lot of interesting things being done.

Jeff Foust has a good editorial about the challenges facing the Constellation Program. There's also an interesting essay on the aimlessness in the Obama administration's space policy (which I agree with) and the need for yet another "independent" assessment of the DIRECT architecture (which I do not agree with). In fact, if you haven't subscribed to The Space Review yet, you should do so. It is probably the best outlet I've seen for editorials dealing specifically with space advocacy.

Astronaut Mike Massimino is Twittering to give folks a behind-the-scenes look at NASA's astronaut biz. I'll be interested to see how much "truth" they allow him to write. The agency as a whole is very protective of its "brand" (image). They're rather like Disney in that way.

USA Today has a very cool Flash feature depicting the assembly of the International Space Station.

The Space Frontier Foundation in this editorial is offering the following policy suggestions to the Obama administration:

• Kill the overbudget, behind schedule Ares rocket project;
• Launch NASA’s new Orion capsule on human-rated expendable launch vehicles;
• Provide more money to NASA’s COTS programs to support the development of private human space systems;
• Fund the cheapest medium-lift vehicle launcher possible to facilitate Moon missons.

This isn't space-specific, but a coworker referred me to a site providing multiple links to women and technology called WomenTechWorld.

Someone is offering suggestions for theme music for the Constellation Program.

Former astronaut Lisa Nowak's defense team is trying to make the case that she was autistic. Oh, come on, really?? You don't get to be one of America's best and brightest by being autistic. They wouldn't let her on the Space Shuttle if she had that. I happened to see Ms. Nowak at MSFC during a crew visit the November before her little "incident." She was focused, composed, and engaged, none of which--as far as I'm aware--are habits of typical autistics.

The U.S. space industry is not yet seeing a slowdown, despite the iffy economy. Huzzah! Some good news for a change!

The Orlando Sentinel has fired another broadside at the Constellation Program.

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And on the lighter side of things--and not related to space whatsoever--hat tip to my dad for finding this "tutorial" on how to speak car mechanic gibberish. Engineers should watch this so they have some idea of what it's like for an English major during some meetings about rocket science.

Space Advocacy, Philosophy, &Religion

Fair warning: this essay touches on two things most likely to irritate you--politics and religion. Ignore it such things bother you. Other readers consider yourself warned.

I keep getting invites to an organization called the Space Renaissance Initiative (hereafter the SRI). Now I know several of the people who have been inviting me, if by "know" you mean "are acquainted with their viewpoints via Facebook or other sites on the internet." To my knowledge no one I know personally has invited me, though several folks I've met have joined.

I've decided to touch the third rail of space advocacy because this has become a point of concern and contention in my own mind. Before I start opening fire, here are a couple of links to help you understand what I'm responding to:

• The Space Renaissance Initiative home page
• The Right to Space, a Constitutional Clause Draft
• Concepts for a New Humanistic View of the World

What Was the Renaissance?

First, I do understand the impetus for and positive outcomes of the Renaissance and Humanism. Europe experienced a resurgence of Greek and Roman learning after the Turks sacked Constantinople in 1453. The Greek scholars there found new homes in the trading cities of Venice, Genoa, and Florence, bringing with them ancient texts and art forms that were radically different from the forms current in feudalism. The spread of Greek and Roman philosophies reignited ancient notions of independence, freedom, democracy, and art. This rebirth of Greek and Roman learning allowed the Italian city-states to become rich and foster the great geniuses of the time: Michelangelo, Raphael, DaVinci, Machiavelli, etc. Meanwhile, Southern Europe got back in touch with ancient Graeco-Roman learning, Northern Europe was getting back in touch with the essential truths of the Bible, which reforming Protestants like Martin Luther felt the Popes had lost to opulence and power-seeking. This led to a less centralized, more individualistic Christianity in Germany, Denmark, Scandinavia, and eventually Great Britain.

I also understand some of their downsides. Catholics and Protestants fought some of their nastiest wars during the Renaissance, including the Thirty Years War, which wiped out a large chunk of the population of Germany. In response to the Reformation, the Catholic Church excommunicated the Protestants like Luther and invoked the Inquisition on those who were deviating from the edicts of Rome. Et cetera, et cetera. Christianity splintered in the wake of this massive religious and political conflict.

The Renaissance, in turn, led to the Enlightenment, which brought forth notions of popular freedom and atheism as widespread doctrines—one can see two results from that experiment by reading the histories of the American and French Revolutions.

Why Create a Space Renaissance?

I believe the SRI folks hope to invoke the Renaissance because they see how the exploration of the New World brought wealth and the ability to afford new luxuries and arts to the Old World. In truth, the gold and new foods from the Americas contributed to the changes I already mentioned above. And it should be noted that Portugal and Spain "found" the Americas as a way to avoid the land route through the Ottomon Empire--colonizing a New World was not their original intention. The Renaissance, then, was a time of dynamism thanks to old ideas being reborn in Western culture at the same time that new ideas, wealth, and products were arriving from America.

America experienced a Renaissance of its own in the 1960s as old ideas of middle-class life and radical ideas of cultural life were at war at home while the nation itself was fighting imperial collectivism overseas by the Soviet Union. The decision to go to the Moon resulted in a radical transformation of American science and technology, and we have been living off of that dramatic inheritance since the end of Project Apollo in 1972. But, again, the adventure into space was a reflection of, not always a cause of, advances and changes already underway. And you could make an argument that the cultural warriors of the 1960s won that particular war, because while science and technology continue to advance, further adventures in space and other technical developments (e.g. nuclear power) have been curtailed in favor of "more important things here on Earth" or the more "environmentally friendly" ethos of the Baby Boomers.

Some questions come to mind, then. Using historical analogies are always tricky, especially with postmodernism calling everything into question. Which parts of the Renaissance would they seek to invoke? The parts that dethroned God and religion from the center of our culture? They're a little late. Today's culture warriors are doing their best to hasten religion off the stage, so there's little need to give that change any more support.

Do they seek a return to older forms of art and philosophy? That might be of some value. The Greeks and Romans had some very bright things to say about the human condition, and their views of aesthetics were much more tasteful than much of what's coming out of the art schools these days (I speak here of political art--the stuff that is put out there to deliberately offend and provoke--there are still folks who adhere to creating things that are pleasing to the eye). And a little Christian humility might behoove some of the technophiles who would try to "perfect" humanity through technology.

Do they seek a return to adventure? Ah! I think this is what they had in mind. The Age of Discovery, led by adventurers like daGama, Columbus, Vespucci, Magellan, etc., created great advances in Europe's knowledge of the world. Those advances in turn brought new advances in the technologies needed to further explore and settle the places explored. And unlike non-European Earth, the rest of the solar system is so-far uninhabited. However, anyone who dares to invoke such an age must now face up to the fact that Christopher Columbus is considered a villain by post-colonialism historians 500 years after his landing at San Salvador. To invoke the glory days of Europe is to reassert the right of cultural (or any other type of) imperialism. Are the SRI folks prepared to fight that battle? If so, I wish them luck.

Do We Need a Space Amendment to the Constitution?

Next, as far as the proposed amendment to the Constitution (I presume they mean the U.S. Constitution--they never really come out and say it), the authors imply that the Constitution as currently written prevents human travel into space. I dispute that. Is the goal to ensure that private citizens, not just civil service astronauts get to go? If so, they need to be explicit. I’m convinced that many provisions in the Constitution have been warped over the last 200+ years because the Founders didn’t think to state the obvious negative corollaries to their principles.

Establishing a New Philosophy

Finally, there is the very long Concepts for a New Humanistic World. I must presume, based on the impressive length of the document, that they seek to create a new philosophy for space, forged out of whatever they see as the best of older philosophies. Clearly they're focusing on philosophy and "evolution" (cultural or biological--it's hard to tell). God and religion are almost completely absent from this document, and that is what bothers me the most.

Side note: I am, perhaps, an increasing minority in the space advocacy community: a conservative churchgoer who believes in exploring space and using the knowledge found there to improve life here. It's been my experience that many Christian sects emphasize the next life more than this one (after all, you really can't take it with you). However, I derive from my faith my desire to use space to do good for my fellow man, not as a means of earning merit toward Heaven, just as something that should be done as a positive good. No doubt someone will correct me, no matter what position I take.

Returning to the Concepts...As near as I can tell, the writers of this document are a mix of pro-science, pro-technology, pro-free market, but also pro-multiculturalism advocates. I say this because the document includes aspects of all of these, and not surprisingly, the document often contradicts itself. For example, Section PC.1100, the "Cultural Openness declaration," states:

We are for cultural Openness, without discrimination based on skin colour, gender, religion, or creed, except where these are themselves anti-Human! We apply the concept of Open World in all aspects of human activities and relations.

I have no argument with this. However, there are cultures that are not so enlightened. What does the SRI propose be done about other cultures that don't share Western notions of equality under the law?

PC.1300, "The Cosmic Destiny," is similarly problematic:

We propose a Cosmic Destiny for the Human Species. Unconscious life expands to occupy all available niches: yet, it's unable to escape extinctions imposed by the natural cycles of the parent planet. Only Intelligent Life can now prevail, thanks to technology, taking beyond the blue planet its civilization and its culture, gardening the otherwise empty and barren spaces.

Are they proposing some sort of new "manifest destiny" for humanity? What if they encounter non-intelligent life on other worlds? Does the New Humanist view support shunting aside life forms below a certain threshold of intelligence? Mind you, I'm partial to expanding humans to Mars myself, slime molds, or no slime molds, but it'd be best if they just come right out and say that.

HE.1900 says,

We are for a politics of controlled growth, able to keep the growth positive, and not in collision with the available resources and environment.

However, this doesn't square with their desire for the freedom of individuals to achieve any end they want to reach their potential. So, are they promoting capitalism or something different?

HE.2100 says,

In the next century, the number of human beings should be controlled within limits sustainable, beyond the ecosystem of Earth alone!

However, PC.300 acknowledges

that Life strives to penetrate, occupy and utilize all locales within its reach to further its survival and expansion. We defend the right, for Humanity, to accede to a greater ecological niche.

and then there's PL.1100...

We reject and condemn any repressive political practices that prohibit the freedoms of expression and the rights to life, happiness, prosperity and justice.

So how am I to interpret this--it's okay to expand the domain of life throughout the solar system, but we must accept population controls here on Earth? Restricting birth rates is a restriction of freedom.

Moving on, since I've already hit most of the cultural questions, the reader encounters SD.500:

We envision the following strategic goals:

1. Space Power Systems on the Moon and/or in Orbit (see MMS short paper on this topic);
2. Permanent industrial and scientific settlements on the Moon and artificial orbiting platforms;
3. Artificial Small Ecosystems research settlements on the Moon and/or in Orbit;
4. Orbital and lunar defenses against potential impacts by other celestial bodies;
5. Orbital Medical Research Centers and hospital complex;
6. A Shielded Astronomical Observatory compound at appropriate location (e.g. SE-L2).

Great! Who's going to pay for and build all this? Who's going to benefit from them?

EC.300, Specificity of the Greater Earth Economy...

We believe that the economic aspects of the Greater Earth development are quite different from anything before.

Different how? Leading you to what conclusions or actions? Again, are you supporting capitalism, welfare-state capitalism, socialism, communism, or fascism?

PL.200, Evolutionary social behaviour

Our beliefs are liberal, democratic, libertarian and antiauthoritarian. We act in the interest of all humanity.

It’s hard to square an "antiauthoritarian" program with some of the other statements.

PL.500 - Defense of the Scientific Research

We reject the idea that Scientific and Technological research is guilty of the environmental and ecological problems and any assumptions which would limit progress in these areas.

Previously they stated that global warming and the means to overcome it were necessarily human-created and -directed activities. Which is it?

PL.700 For an open scientific world

We defend an open concept of Scientific and Technological Research and the universal dissemination of its results.

Good.

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The problem with any manifesto or other philosophical/political document developed by committee is that the more minds you have working the problem, the more likely it is to descend into incoherence. Clearly there are several different minds contributing to the SRI. I can find agreement with some of it, but much of it disturbs me, and some of it just isn't gelling for me. A primary advantage the space community has over other Earth-focused advocacy communities is that we can come to agreement about at least one common principle: exploring space is good for humanity. The problems come up when you start asking questions like:

• What should our goals be?
• Where should we go first?
• What technologies should we use?
• Who's going to make the decisions?
• What should the values of a space-based civilization be?

Heck, we can't even answer these questions on Earth, much less hope to answer them for the solar system. But perhaps we should at least try. Space is a technical discipline, to be sure, but it is also at heart a philosophical one, and if the advocates cannot come up with "something completely different," then the rules pertaining to life on Earth will inevitably rule the spaceways as well. I commend the Space Renaissance Initiative folks for contributing to the conversation, but their effort also demonstrates how far we still have to go.

Sorting Out Engineering Reality

A recurring problem I have in my line of work is judging what’s “true” and what’s not. It’s not so much that I think people are lying to me about what’s going on in the space business, it’s just that I was too lazy in junior high, high school, and college to get myself a serious education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). This is a problem for me and, I fear, for many more Americans, as more and more of our nation’s future choices will be STEM-based. This is part of the reason I’m such a fan of Darlene the Science Cheerleader: she’s a strong advocate for science education among the non-scientific masses, and gosh knows we all need it.

Now mind you, the space business has, as one of my previous employers put it, “plenty of engineers; what we need is a writer.” So that’s been my role: technical writer. I translate Engineerish into English. I’m able to do this without understanding the work 100% because I understand how words work. They aren’t paying me to understand it all. I do my level best, of course, to educate myself so that I do understand it. And I understand enough about political philosophy and policy to be an advocate.

Sometimes, however, it’s difficult to know which technologies, among the many I’ve supported over the past 8 years, stands a solid chance of succeeding. That leaves me the option of taking things on faith or getting myself a better education. The following narrative, then, is a review of the hot technologies space advocates support, how they’re supposed/claimed to work, and what the objections to them are. I can explain them clearly, as you’ll see, but I can’t for the life of me sort out all this.

Space Solar Power (SSP) / Solar Power Satellites (SPS) / Space-Based Solar Power (SBSP)
How It’s Supposed to Work
A solar power satellite is a large array of solar cells—say, a mile across—placed in orbit. Because it is above the atmosphere and in the sunlight for longer periods of time, the theory is that the SPS would collect more solar energy than ground-based solar. The energy collected from these solar cells would then be transmitted, projected, or beamed down (pick your verb) to a rectifying antenna (rectenna) on the ground. The power would then go out from the rectenna to a nearby electrical grid. The potential output of such a system would be in the 1-10 gigawatt range.

The Arguments Against It

• It’s too expensive to get the hardware into orbit.
• Even if you could bring down launch costs, the operating costs would still not make SSP commercially competitive with any ground-based energy source, including ground-based solar.
• Even if you could get the hardware up there cheaply and get it to provide power competitively, any usefully scaled SPS is too big to fit on any known launcher (except, maybe, Ares V).
• Even if you could get the hardware up there cheaply and on a properly sized rocket, it wouldn’t work for the following reasons:
  --Beam attenuation; i.e., the microwave or laser transmitting power to the ground rectenna would lose too much energy to be worthwhile.
  --The SPS would be so big and so lightweight that solar radiation pressure alone would cause it to keep drifting along its orbit. This is how one powers solar sails, which are meant to travel.
  --Even if you could get the hardware to work, it would never be accepted by the public because:
  o Environmental activists would go bonkers protesting it because it uses radiation as its primary output (even if that same radiation is also used to power ground-based solar cells).
  o Government environmental regulations would stifle the technology somehow, with or without encouragement from the environmental lobby.
  o “Someone could use it as a weapon.” (See the James Bond flick “Goldeneye” for a sample of what that might look like.)
  o It wouldn’t provide much more energy than ground-based solar power.

Fine. I would submit a bit of my own hardheaded criticism, if I may: All of these objections come before anyone has even tried to build, field, and test a single SPS. We should at least try the bloody thing before trashing it or dismissing it out of hand. The cynics and skeptics might be right, but I’d feel more confident of their verdict if they had hard data to back up their assertions.

Reusable Launch Vehicles (RLVs) / Single Stage To Orbit (SSTO) / Two Stage To Orbit (TSTO)
How It’s Supposed to Work
A Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) is just what it sounds like: a rocket for getting to space that you can fly more than once. An RLV is supposed to be completely reusable, operating like an aircraft. No stages are dropped into the ocean, the vehicle flies multiple times, and costs are thereby reduced through mass production and repeat flight cycles.
The Arguments Against It
NASA has spent a great deal of time and money trying to develop precursor technologies or actual RLVs for the last 20 years or so. The Space Shuttle system, designed in the early 1970s, is partially reusable. Its solid rocket boosters return to Earth by parachute and splash down into the ocean. The orbiter, which houses the crew and cargo, lifts off like a rocket, its fuel tank is discarded and dropped into the Indian Ocean, and the orbiter then completes its mission, reenters the Earth’s atmosphere, and comes in to land like a glider. The orbiter is then refurbished and refitted for another mission.

The failed or incomplete RLV or partial RLV programs include the National AeroSpace Plane (NASP), Space Launch Initiative (SLI), Orbital Space Plane (OSP), DC-XA, X-33/VentureStar, and X-34. For want of budgetary support or technological feasibility or both, NASA has not been able to do it. Does that mean RLVs are impossible? No, but they are really damned difficult, and the work has been attempted by some very bright people, both inside and outside the world’s premier space agency. Jerry Pournelle is more optimistic on this score than I am. He believes that the problem with RLV/SSTO has not been the technology so much as the organizations running the programs. He believes if the old NACA “X program” model is followed, then technology development could happen—not immediately, and not with billions and billions of dollars spread around a number of big contractors and important states—but with single contractors, small budgets, shorter timeframes, and more humble goals. Unfortunately, I don’t think our government is up for small and humble anymore.

Space Elevators
How It’s Supposed to Work
A space elevator (also called an “orbital tower” or “skyhook”) is a structure that stretches from a point on Earth all the way out to geosynchronous orbit. The centrifugal force of the Earth’s rotation counteracts the elevator’s tendency to fall, so the tower stands straight out from the planet like a giant radio tower. The structure becomes an “elevator” when you attach climber vehicles capable of transporting people or cargo up and down the tower’s surface—the most common imagined climber would be a maglev (magnetic levitation) train. The maglev climber would require only electrical power to move, and would not produce sonic booms or require explosive chemicals, as rockets do.
The Arguments Against It
The structural materials strong enough to build a self-supporting elevator were only theoretical until the late 20th century. Then companies began experimenting with artificial diamonds, carbon “whiskers,” and now carbon nanotubes. Unfortunately, no one has made enough carbon nanotubes (which are molecule-sized) to build load-bearing structures. At present, they’re simply too expensive to mass produce.

Another interesting argument I’ve heard is that the elevator would act as a massive short circuit for the entire planet’s ionosphere, which would essentially fry, melt, or disintegrate the tower. The argument here is that the large amount of charged particles in the Van Allen Belts would follow the elevator all the way down to the Earth, becoming the world’s largest lightning rod.

The last argument against the elevator comes from my own experience observing the Space Elevator Games in Las Cruces in 2006. These Games are sponsored by NASA as a means of generating competition to create technologies that could lead to a space elevator. Rather than a typical wound cable (the original concept for the elevator), these experimental crawlers all had to make their way up a six-inch-wide, 60-meter (~197 feet) tall industrial belt suspended from a crane. We were in the desert, mind you, so winds tend to be a little fickle, but the best guess was that winds were gusting to 10-15 miles per hour. Even in that slight breeze, the belt was whipping about in the wind like a crazed sail or weather flag in a full gale. Several teams had difficulty just attaching their crawler to the belt, much less getting their vehicle to climb the twisting belt. My verdict: even at great tension, atmospheric effects on the Earthbound side of the elevator would prevent any vehicle from traversing the distance safely, to say nothing of what sorts of oscillations might develop when moving through orbital space.

Asteroid Mining
How It’s Supposed to Work
Planetary science professor John S. Lewis makes a pretty compelling case for mining the metals of nickel-iron asteroids to fulfill resource needs here on Earth or for building settlements in space. These asteroids include massive amounts of iron (obviously), platinum-group metals (useful for fuel cells), water and ammonia “volatiles,” and the equivalent of natural stainless steel.
The Arguments Against It
We’ve landed a couple of robotic spacecraft on asteroids. They weren’t designed for that, but the gravity on asteroids is so small (measured in thousandths of a gravity) that they could just about turn off their thrusters and drop onto them without a jar. That microgravity will be a problem for humans working there, of course, as we’re learning from the International Space Station.

Next, we have never developed the technical tools for mining, extracting, and refining materials in micro- or zero gravity. (An obvious answer, of course, is “why don’t we?”) However, most mining and refining processes done here on Earth require high heat and gravity effects to separate different components from each other.

Finally, returning to Lewis’s book, he made a point that if all of the useful metals and other materials were mined from a single Amon-class asteroid and sold on Earth at current market prices, their value would be $20 trillion. It’s a great theory that ignores economic reality. Let’s say we found an asteroid that really did make platinum as common as sand on Miami Beach. Even if the platinum were put to work building catalysts for a worldwide fleet of fuel cells, the price of the commodity would drop to about what you’d expect to pay for a handful of sand in Miami Beach. The materials of the Asteroid Belt may be abundant, but they’ll have to make people rich in space because they sure as heck won’t be on Earth.

Space Tourism / Personal Spaceflight
How It’s Supposed to Work
Civilian excursions into suborbital space by Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, etc., could generate enough demand and traffic to produce mass-produced rockets, experience in operating RLVs (see above), and capital for a functioning space economy in orbit.
The Arguments Against It
Space tourism has been “just around the corner” since 2004, and it looks like it’ll be another year or two before Virgin Galactic is able to fly paying customers aboard their Burt Rutan-built Spaceship Twos. A lot of operations have folded since the X Prize was won. Others are working in secret. Many things can go wrong, and the American public is not quite as willing to embrace risk as it was 40-50 years ago. One bad accident, and some believe that lawsuits will all but kill the “personal spaceflight” movement.

The more sarcastic individuals within NASA are quick to point out that SpaceShipOne did not make it to orbit, but “repeated something the X-15 was able to do 40 years ago, and Rutan did it using technology developed by NASA.” Aside from the sour-grapes and elitism in those comments, they are technically correct. Yet work on personal spaceflight continues because there still are people willing to shell out the big bucks ($250,000 for a flight on Virgin Galactic, if and when) to fulfill their dreams of space travel.

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And these are just some of the issues to be addressed in the space business. I haven’t even touched on the Ares vs. EELV or DIRECT/Jupiter 120 debate (nor will I comment publicly on activities where I have a vested employment interest). I know a little more about the government vs. private sector debate, but feel that that’s an argument for another night. In any case, this evening I wanted to focus on technical issues because these are the bigger questions that I do not have enough basis in theory or practice to answer properly. Political questions are another matter.

So, seriously: if there are any technical folks out there who know a reasonably quick way to get smart on the big engineering questions floating around the space business today, I’d be happy to hear it. In the meantime, I can only help the ones who DO know the facts and theories behind their pet projects frame their arguments in better language. The rest, unfortunately, I have to take on faith.

Space Advocacy in the Age of Obama

The National Space Society Board of Directors met here in Huntsville this past weekend, and it was quite illuminating, as always. NSS is not, of course, uniform in its demographic or ideological makeup. That's why we have committees and votes and officers--to keep things reasonably orderly. We are a consensus organization, more or less, and unlike some organizations, bipartisan in makeup. This makes life more interesting for the Policy Committee and other groups, as we have to craft documents that will reach the bulk of the American public.

Anyhow, because of this diversity of opinion, we are faced with many different perspectives on, and reactions to, the election of Barack Obama. There is obviously a great deal of uncertainty. This is common with any new presidential administration, I think. There's a a difference between electioneering and governing. Will Obama deliver on the lofty things he said regarding our nation's space program? Will he be able to?

Regardless of the speculation, space advocates must go forward accepting that Obama and his party's ideology will soon have firm control of the government. My positions were:

1. Space is not a priority for Obama (nor was it a priority for McCain, if it came to it).
2. The economy, foreign affairs, and education will be his priorities.
3. Space advocates need to tie the value of space exploration to the things that DO matter to the incoming administration.

This is probably rather pragmatic of me, but the alternatives are uglier. My libertarian friends, who advocate that space exploration be placed completely in the hands of the private sector, overlook the political popularity of NASA. The odds of having NASA disbanded? Zero. The odds of the private sector (SpaceX, etc.) getting additional support for their efforts in space? Better than even (IMHO). The odds of getting Constellation replaced by some other architecture? Slim.

So that's the political reality. That still doesn't prevent NSS from "going bold." One might hope or push for a Kennedyesque call for a return to the Moon or a human mission for Mars. Advocates can lobby for Obama to call for American greatness, technological leadership, energy independence, quality education, and peaceful international leadership, using space exploration as a vehicle. I've suggested as much in my blog on mass marketing. Could it happen? Maybe.

We also have a "friend at court" of sorts--Lori Garver, a former NSS Executive Director and NASA Associate Administrator, is Obama's space policy advisor. She speaks the advocates' language, and she had a hand in crafting Obama's most recent space policy. So: there's hope that Obama's policies can be made more pro-space.

This conversation is probably moot until Obama is sworn in, so I'll drop it for now, but "always in motion is the future," as Yoda might put it.