Doing What's Important

It seems to be human nature that, as long as things are going well or predictably, we don't think too much about what we're doing with our lives. Are we doing the right things? Are we focusing on what's important? Et cetera. Usually it takes a crisis for someone to get off their duff and to do something important or constructive or meaningful with his/her life.

Luckily, in my case, no crisis was needed. I had the first adult conversation with myself when I was around 25. I was writing an "alternate history" in which I tried to imagine what my life would have been like if my parents hadn't divorced, and how it would have been better had they not. It was a faintly ridiculous exercise, and I realized--even as and after I wrote it--that I did not believe the premise. All the life circumstances I'd described in the story were relatively achievable, I realized, if I just did something. The reason I call this my first "adult" conversation was that this was the first time I stopped asking, "Why me?" and started asking, "What do you want to do about it?" The specific question I asked--jeez, 20 years ago now--was, "What do you want to do with your life?" And a scared but determined little voice in the back of my mind said, "I want to go into space."

So what this answer led to was a simple question and a few realizations. The question was, "So what are you going to do about it?" From there arose the following realizations:

• My life wasn't going to get better waiting for some magical thing to just happen to me.
• I could change my life's narrative.
• I could take constructive steps on my own behalf to live the sort of life I wanted and make the sort of world I wanted to have happen.

That was some heady stuff at 25. I still need occasional reminders at 45 that this is what I'm doing. But at 25, that meant changing my attitude for the better at work (I did); getting smarter about space (which I did, first in the form of reading a lot of the eminent books on the subject, later through formal schooling); and trying to figure out what sort of career I could have to make "space" a reality. Eventually I became a space advocate, got myself a better degree, and developed a daily habit of doing something constructive every single day. That last habit continues. Mind you, it took about 15 years to realize that going into space might not be the best career choice for me, given my biological susceptibilities to claustrophobia, motion sickness, and fear of heights. But I'm still working in the space business. I can't help it. It's what's important to me.

Why?

Funny thing, that. From a very young age, I've just always believed that going into space was fundamentally a good thing. Call it an article of faith, if you like. The words coalesced around that kernel of faith later, but here they are: If human beings are out in space, they're expanding their literal and figurative horizons. They're looking outward, trying to understand the universe and gaining knowledge for themselves rather than looking inward and meddling in the lives of their neighbors. They don't see life as a zero-sum game. They have an expansive view of themselves and their place in the universe. They believe that they have the abilities necessary to learn what's out there and how to survive in it. A society that's going into space believes that it's worthwhile to do so because it believes that it's worth expanding; that their way of life is worth replicating on other worlds; that it has confidence; and that is worth emulating, and worth duplicating on other worlds.

My way of supporting that cause is to write. In my case, writing takes on many forms: some glorious, some complicated, some mundane. I write outreach materials for NASA. I write technical documents and proposals for organizations that do aerospace work. I write policy papers and manifestos. I create documents and processes so Science Cheerleaders can go out and get kids excited about science.

So that's what motivates me. Your mileage might vary. In any case, I'm living my life in line with and in support of my ideals. I am not waiting for some major catastrophe to rip me out of my world and ask, "What have I been doing with my life?"

Neil Armstrong, 1930-2012

The first human being to walk on another world has passed away today. He was a quiet man, a solid test pilot, an accomplished astronaut, and a man of few words, before and after his famous flight. However, he did manage to misspeak a few words that will outlive us all, outlive this century, and I think live last as long as human beings have a history worth writing as he set foot on the Moon: "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind." As a friend put it, the world is now poorer without him. His family's statement speaks of his modesty and dedication to public service and hard work, suggesting that those serve as his legacy as a man, not just the moon landing. I concur.

I first heard the words when I was seven years old, maybe younger. The words moved me in a way that was deep for a kid, combining in one moment a supreme act of achievement, exploration, and patriotism that still thrills me when I hear them. I didn't get inspired to become an astronaut or become a scientist, or even a pilot. Nevertheless, the words spoke to me, telling me space exploration was something great, something worth doing. I wanted to hear more words like that. For those words, I will forever thank Neil Armstrong. Rest in peace, sir. You will forever be a part of history.

Book Review: Architecture for Astronauts: An Activity-based Approach

I was came to this book in a roundabout way, but I was really glad that I did: Architecture for Astronauts provides a high-quality, user-friendly overview of habitats designed for long-term human occupation in space. If you note the price, you'll see that the book is not inexpensive, but the author, Sandra Häuplik-Meusburger (hereafter SHM), has gone to great lengths to make the content accessible and visually appealing.



Beginning with an overview of the spacecraft--Apollo, the Salyut series, Skylab, Mir, Shuttle, and the International Space Station (ISS)--the author explains why some spacecraft were covered, but not others. For instance, while the Mercury, Gemini, and Soyuz spacecraft all had long missions, they were not included because they were more or less made for transportation, not habitation. Another nice feature of the front matter is that it provides infographics depicting how mission time and habitat space are allocated. In the case of describing the interior space, SHM depicts the spacecraft architecturally and logically. For instance, there's a nice table on pages 92-93 showing where astronaut activities are performed within the common area(s) of a spacecraft--work, sleep, hygiene, eating, and leisure--and which are performed in a detached area. For instance, an extravehicular activity (EVA) is depicted as being "outside the circle," while eating, hygiene, and leisure occur within a common area or areas.

The color-coding is also useful, as it ties to the colored edging tabs for each primary section (sleep, work, etc.). Along with color-coding activities in space, SHM provides some handy tables, such as the one above, which list the attributes of individual spacecraft vertically to allow the reader to get an overview of that system as well as horizontal comparisons by attribute. Also, each major section includes a set of lessons learned (called "Design Directions") for future spacecraft designs. Lastly, each topic is covered in a series of two-page spreads so you don't have to flip back and forth. In short, a lot of work went into making this book visually appealing, accessible, and useful.

I would consider this to be a good introductory textbook providing a historical overview of human-rated space systems for the space architecture practitioner. If you're looking for a good look into human factors in space, I would recommend this book as a starting point, then shift over to Out of This World: The New Field of Space Architecture, which concentrates more on the structures than the astronauts and Patricia Santy's Choosing the Right Stuff, which delves into the evaluation and selection of astronauts (and which I still need to read!).





For someone like me, who's an enthusiast, the book provides just about the right level of detail. If you want to know more, each chapter provides an extensive list of sources, including interviews conducted with nine astronauts across the entire range of systems (though I was mildly surprised that there were no women included among the interviewees).

I mentioned that I came to this book in a roundabout way, so I'll explain that briefly. The author of this text coauthored a paper with an American I met at the Global Space Exploration Conference. That paper concentrated on one area covered in Architecture for Astronauts: the inclusion of plants as a way to improve the quality of life for astronauts on long-duration space missions. I liked the paper, became friends with the coauthor, then acquainted with the author via Facebook.

What I got most out of this book is how downright unusual and unnatural human travel through space is. I've been on the machinery end of NASA for six years, and I tend to forget about the people actually doing the work. It's not just a matter of making machines that can survive launch, orbit, and landing in space environments, you have to make those machines capable of keeping humans alive, safe, healthy, and sane for days, weeks, or months at a time. It's not just a matter of cramped quarters or zero gravity, but radiation, loud noises, isolation from friends and family, and overwork that can creep up on the astronaut and make him or her a little stressed. And after reading the section on "Hygiene," I've never been so grateful for Earth gravity and regularly functioning toilets. At any rate, we're still a long way from Star Trek and "normal" life in space.

If Architecture for Astronauts has one flaw, it is that the two-page-per topic format prevents the reader from getting too far in depth with any one subject, which made me want to know more about how all this stuff fits together. In that case, I suppose, this book is a resounding success!

Trip Report: The Global Space Exploration Conference

It isn’t just NASA that spends time thinking about where humanity will go next in space. Russia, Canada, China, India, the European Union, and Brazil have their own space agencies, as do some nations that you wouldn’t necessarily expect, including Ukraine, Israel, and the Czech Republic. Not all of these nations are launching rockets, satellites, and people into space, but those who have an interest in advancing their technology are at least taking the time to pay attention to space. Back in 2007, when the Constellation Program was still active, NASA invited the world’s other space agencies to discuss the future of human space exploration. That group, which travels under the easy-to-say name of the International Space Exploration Coordinating Group (ISECG), in turn, developed a document called the Global Space Exploration Roadmap, which laid out in general terms where the 17-nation ISECG thought human space exploration might be going.

The ISECG hosted their first Global Space Exploration Conference (GLEX) last week. I attended while wearing my NASA hat and got recruited by Jason, my buddy at Zero Point Frontiers, to become a "rapporteur" (fancy French word meaning reporter, or rapper, for all I know) for the sessions dedicated to discussing and improving the Roadmap. Below are some of the thoughts I gleaned during my adventures.

Destinations

The debate regarding the next destination(s) for human spaceflight is not settled yet:

·        Commercial space advocates tend to support human missions to an asteroid, the current U.S. policy.

·        Scientists, members of the international community, and some members of the U.S. space community (Former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin, Lunar and Planetary Institute scientist PaulSpudis, Dynetics executives Steve Cook and David King) favor going to the moon first.

·       The Mars Society (Robert Zubrin, et al.), Explore Mars Inc., and other focused advocacy organizations are obviously focused on Mars.

There was still consensus at GLEX on Mars as the “ultimate” destination for the foreseeable future, but as one panelist noted, “The rest of the universe is out there.”

Capability- vs. Mission-Driven Framework

The capabilities-vs.-missions debate generated a lot of conversation at GLEX. For clarification: a "capabilities-driven" space architecture means that a space agency focuses on developing generalized hardware for getting to or working in space without a specific destination in mind; a mission-driven architecture would focus all technology development on getting to a specific destination. The Apollo Program might be seen as the prototypical mission-driven program while the Space Shuttle was a capability-driven program. The debate comprises several components and viewpoints:

·        Missions are easier to keep “sold” with elected officials and the general public because there is a definite goal/end in mind. Not everyone is vehicle or technology focused. Others just want to know what we’ll do when we get to the destination.

·        Ends (missions) shape means (vehicles, infrastructure, and technologies) and thus budgets. Abandonment of either can create wasted effort.

·        Some believe that hardware cannot be designed properly without a specific mission.

·        The lack of a mission focus runs the risk of technology projects becoming ends unto themselves, becoming endless “science projects” without real-world application.

·        Capabilities can be kept under budget caps more easily.

International Participation

International partners are still concerned about where they can participate within the current exploration architecture. Mars Exploration Rover lead scientist Steve Squyres suggested that the long-term plans for robotic expeditions to Mars would be ideal. In the human spaceflight world, NASA is speaking with ESA about developing Europe’s Automated Transfer Vehicle as an Orion Service Module. A lot of emphasis was placed on using the International Space Station as a base from which to test long-duration, high-reliability life-support systems prior to missions to an asteroid or Mars.

Space Launch System (SLS)

The GLEX audience, working from the Global Exploration Roadmap, agreed that a heavy-lift launch vehicle (such as the Space Launch System NASA's developing at Marshall Space Flight Center) was a necessary starting-point technology for long-term human space exploration. The heavy-lift rocket was taken as a given, with most of the concern directed toward the next generation of vehicles/technologies (i.e., the stuff we'll use at our chosen destination, whatever that turns out to be). There was some concern about how to plan for the next generation of hardware when the destination question was still unsettled.

Commercial Space

With SpaceX making history last week as the first commercial entity to launch and berth a spacecraft at the International Space Station, it was impossible to avoid discussions about what role the commercial sector might play in our future in space. One thing I learned in a previous job is that the civil society and private sectors are much stronger in the United States than other parts of the world. The vigorous discussions we're having in the U.S. space community over what government should do in space vs. commercial providers aren't as prevalent elsewhere--in short, most nations assume that the private sector will follow their government's lead and provide whatever technologies or vehicles the government needs rather than pursuing ends of their own.

Be that as it may, the U.S. commercial space sector--both the traditional aerospace companies like Boeing and Lockheed and newcomers like SpaceX--seem likely to let NASA lead in some instances and try to take the initiative in others. For instance, the newly formed Planetary Resources, is looking to mine an asteroid for profit; Bigelow Aerospace is building inflatable private space stations; while Stratolaunch is looking to air-launch SpaceX rockets without government funding. However, until prices come down substantially (it's $200,000 to fly to suborbital space on Virgin Galactic, $20 million to fly to the International Space Station, $100 million to fly around the Moon--the latter two through Space Adventures), space tourism will remain a sport for the rich for the foreseeable future.

One thing that was abundantly clear from listening to the private sector panel was that more customers are needed to make space a flourishing economic sphere a reality. Right now, aside from communication satellite companies, governments are the primary customers for space products and services. Mike Griffin labeled that government contracts for space activities are a "procurement, not a strategy." When it comes to human exploration beyond Earth orbit, though, I'm guessing that private-sector companies are going to continue to follow the government's lead for the time being. Exploration is high-risk and expensive with an uncertain payoff, things which make venture capitalists nervous. That said, there's always the unexpected. Will the government establish a lunar base so commercial companies provide high-priced cargo supply services like they do for ISS today? Will private companies or other nations try to mine Helium-3 or platinum on the moon or on an asteroid? Interesting times ahead.

Budgets

Constrained budgets continue to be a challenge, not just for NASA, but also many national space agencies due to worldwide economic uncertainty, particularly in the European Union. Most national space agencies are starting to make long-range plans that assume flat budgets in the coming years.

Like I said, interesting times ahead, my friends. Stay tuned. There's bound to be more excitement to come.

Experts on the Future of Space

For a space geek like me, the nice part about living and working in Huntsville, Alabama is the ready access one can have to hearing and speaking with some of the eminent voices in the human spaceflight community. This week, a former program manager, former Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) Director, and former NASA Administrator held forth at a lunch-and-learn session at MSFC's Activities Building titled "The Evolution of Space Flight from Government to Private Sector."

The talk actually mirrors the careers of Steve Cook, Dave King, and Mike Griffin, who were leading NASA, Marshall, and the Ares Projects a scant four years ago and are now all in the private sector to one extent or another. Cook and King are senior managers at Dynetics while Griffin has been an engineering professor at University of Alabama-Huntsville.

Much to my surprise, the gentlemen did not prepare any remarks. This was a straightforward ask-the-experts panel, with the audience members asking questions on a microphone or on 3X5" cards. Given the stated topic of the appearance, the questions quickly honed in on where government would most likely play and where in the space business.

Getting Started

Griffin started off the discussion, stating that he believed government should most likely fulfill the role of providing the first guaranteed market(s) for private industry, which would attract private investment. Another future role would be for the government to build what it thinks it wants first, then license the intellectual property so others could build it. However, right now Griffin believes that, "Regrettably, the market's not big enough." The biggest barrier to private-sector entry into space right now was the prohibitive cost of RDT&E (NASA-speak for Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation).

Cook answered the rhetorical question, "Do we (commercial entities) have the ability to launch cargo into space? Of course. Crew? Hasn't been done yet." For Cook, the issue wasn't capacity, but market size. "Committed investment by the government could provide that and it would justify the investment."

Griffin's ideal choice of a guaranteed, lucrative government market would be providing cargo for an established lunar base. Yet he cautioned enthusiastic supporters of commercial space, stating that human spaceflight carries with it huge risks, and that while large commercial firms like Boeing might absorb the damages from a catastrophic failure, smaller firms could get wiped out.

Cook suggested future needs for the super-heavy-lift Space Launch System, including the lunar base Griffin alluded to and space solar power systems, both of which would require large payload space initially. Cook likened SLS to the Transcontinental Railroad or Interstate Highway System: a large investment made by the government for the benefit of all.

Government and Private Sector Roles

Griffin pointed out that venture capitalists like investments that give them a return on investment (ROI) ten times their initial input. Proven space-based investments like communication satellites only provide 13 to 15 percent. He pointed out that space investments are on the high end of risk for business investments. This fit well with my own personal view, and the card with my question came up next, which was "What activities do you think it's crucial for government to do in space, and what activities are crucial for the private sector?" Griffin responded that "Nobody is stopping anyone in the private sector from doing what they want in space. If they've got a proven business model, they should do it." A self-described fiscal conservative, Griffin did not think government should have a say in where the proper balance point is, that's for the citizenry to decide and for the private sector to conduct as much private activity as the market will bear.

King felt government should help the market along, taking the lead on strategic capabilities and ensure that commercial capacity is a going concern. He did point out the need to get access to low-Earth orbit (LEO) at a lower cost, but didn't make any specific recommendations as to how to effect that outcome.

Cook shifted gears a bit, talking about the regulatory environment and how government should ensure consistent safety standards for astronauts and passengers. He felt that safety standards should be the same whether someone was flying aboard a NASA spacecraft or commercial one. He also noted the difficulty in defining "commercial" missions right now (I suppose an example would be something like NASA astronauts flying aboard a private vehicle to the International Space Station--the launch provider might be getting paid, but is the flight really "commercial?") In any case, Cook felt the rules should be the same, and that would take some negotiation among NASA, the FAA, and private industry.

The Long View

The panel also touched on international affairs, with Griffin stating emphatically that "Space is a strategic human frontier for the future" and that the only way to ensure that Western values and practices such as freedom and capitalism are continued as human civilization expands outward is for the United States to participate. However, the entrepreneurial investments would not occur without a long-term commitment by the U.S. government to space activities.

The Local View

Someone asked what Dynetics' new rocket-launching partnership with SpaceX and Scaled Composites, Stratolaunch, would mean for Huntsville. Dave King felt that the Stratolaunch vehicle would be able to transform how we view space tourism, space launch, and other activities. Stratolaunch is based in Huntsville, and Dynetics has responsibility for a major component of the system as well as systems integration. One side effect would be to bring more commercial space activity to Huntsville, which King felt was too dependent on the government dollar anyway.

Life "Outside the Gate"

Marshall Space Flight Center is situated in the middle of Redstone Arsenal, which is the property of the U.S. Army and thus "gated" off from the general public. A member of the audience asked the panel about the difference in their lives outside the gate. Cook was the first to answer. He talked about the similarities first, emphasizing the need for a manager to communicate a clear vision and to get employee buy-in for what you're trying to do. He also felt the employees' passion for the work was kindred. The biggest differences he cited were the smaller bureaucracy and the lack of distinction between "institutional" and "project" functions. King felt that privately held companies could make longer-term decisions with fewer rules and less institutional friction when it comes to making decisions. Griffin added that there was less work in the private sector related to "grooming the institution."

One thing King suggested to anyone interested in jumping outside the gate was that the individual should pick an environment where the values match yours. Along similar lines, Cook stated that you need to "hold onto your core values, but be willing to change everything else" to adapt to the market environment.

What Next?

Someone had to ask the magic question: "How do we assure long-term support for programs that take 20 to 30 years to execute?" Griffin, typical of his sense of humor, responded, "Why are you asking me when I'm obviously inadequate to the task?" Still, Griffin felt that long-term support for large national programs are possible. He cited examples such as the Transcontinental Railroad system, which took over 50 years to complete; the Social Security system; and maintaining funding for the armed forces. He believes NASA has long-term public support. However, Griffin did not agree with the administration's call for a mission to an asteroid: "You're not going to have long-term support for a vision when the goals make no sense."

Another question concerned keeping the workforce motivated in periods of institutional or programmatic uncertainty. The advice wasn't too unfamiliar: decide what you want to be passionate about, focus on what you can control, and "Run to the fire, go find some hard problems to try to solve and be bold about it."

Parting Thoughts

Returning to themes that began their discussion, the panel members reiterated their belief that the future of commercial spaceflight wouldn't be too promising without a guaranteed government market as a matter of public policy. Griffin noted that "Europe sees the strategic value of owning the space launch market. What's wrong with us that we do not?"

Dave King had one of the closing comments of the afternoon in responding to the ongoing rivalry between government and commercial space, stating that people were focusing on an unnecessary conflict. He wished "we could see value in each, concentrate on the genius of the 'And' instead of the tyranny of the 'Or'."

We'll see what happens next.

Book Review: Fallen Astronauts

Every once in awhile I read a book that covers aspects of the space program that I hadn't known before. Such is the case with Fallen Astronauts, a book cowritten by Colin Burgess, Bert Vis, and a Facebook space friend of mine, Kate Doolan. The subtitle of this book, Heroes Who Died Reaching for the Moon, conveys the topic well: this is a series of stories about American (and Russian) astronauts who died during the race to the moon but never made it there.



Primarily this is the story of Americans who died prior to Apollo's eventual triumphs. Their names are mostly unknown outside of the space community--Gus Grissom, Ed White, Roger Chaffee, Ted Freeman, C.C. Williams, Charlie Bassett, Elliot See, and Ed Givens--but most of them can be read on the Astronaut Memorial wall at Kennedy Space Center.

A few patterns begin to emerge in reading these men's biographies: white males born 1925-1935, interested in engineering or aviation from an early age, driven to attend one of the nation's military academies (West Point or Annapolis), very smart, very patriotic. Like most of America's astronauts, they were and are among the best of our best--intelligent, physically fit (Ed White tried out for America's Olympic team), and possessed of the maturity, professionalism, and fearlessness required to fly into space when our nation's space program was still new and highly dangerous. Space exploration is still highly dangerous and subject to accidents (the last seven astronaut names added to the memorial wall were added in 2003), and our astronauts continue to be the same types of overachievers as the men portrayed in this book.

The Soviet space program, much more secretive, still had its share of best-and-brightest space heroes, also drawn from their air forces. A single chapter of this brief book (254 pages of text) discusses cosmonauts who died on the other side of the Cold War space race. Even after the fall of the USSR, Russia remains protective and quiet about the failures of their program, and some secrets might never be known. However, the courage of their astronauts was no less than ours, and like ours they faced the very real possibility of death in space--as some of them did. Some of their names, at least those that were known to the West in 1971, were included on a plaque mission commander Dave Scott left on the moon during Apollo 15.

A few things struck me about this book, in addition to the striking biographies of the astronauts. First, given that the book was written by three non-Americans (two Australians and a Dutchman), I was surprised by the great seriousness, sympathy, and respect the authors showed toward their subject. This approach was gratifying, as it could have gone very easily into maudlin sentimentalism (they come close) or outraged anger (the closest they come is making a plea for Ed Givens to be included on the Astronaut Wall). For the most part, though, they give us just the facts. Also, the authors did their homework, seeking out sources beyond the typical technical briefings or NASA press releases, going so far as to solicit letters from family members and peers of the astronauts to get a sense of the astronauts as men. The letters are quite affecting. Lastly, the quality of the writing is simply excellent.

If I have any criticism of the book--and it's a minor one--it is that when you read the individual chapters, you can tell they were clearly written by separate authors as there is some repeated content in each of them that could have been eliminated. Because of that, the book reads like a series of separate essays rather than a unified work. However, the authors all manage to write in a similar style and convey the same general themes and sentiments.

And what are those sentiments?

A few days ago, as part of my day job, I was asked to review a speech astronomer Neil DeGrasse Tyson gave at the National Space Symposium. He was talking about the philosophy of our nation's space program, and he compared it to the sort of exploration cave men first did: "Not all of us leave the cave. Not everyone wants to, and that's okay. Not everyone who leaves the cave comes back. But we erect statues to those who do because they are heroes." Amen.

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.

*

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.

Fusion Propulsion in Our Lifetimes?

One of the benefits that keeps on giving here in Huntsville is that it's very easy for the local space-geek club to get some serious speakers to talk about topics of mutual interest. This evening's speaker was Dr. Jason Cassibry, a professor from University of Alabama-Huntsville (hereafter UAH). I understand he gave this talk at the conference I ran, but like most of the content going on at ISDC, I didn't hear it. Cassibry seems to be one of those profs you hope to get if you're a liberal arts major because he's an animated speaker who manages to make his talk interesting, if not always understandable--you do have to do SOME homework, after all. I'd also be surprised if Cassibry was older than 30. Sheesh, I'm getting old.

All that said, Cassibry's presentation title was "The Case and Development Path for Fusion Propulsion," and the case he made was a good one. But then, being an English major, I think most of these guys give convincing talks because I don't know enough science or engineering to call BS on most of what they're saying. This is why I'm a tech writer, not an engineer: all the juicy content, none of the math.

Cassibry began his talk by briefly going over "why explore?" The answers there were familiar to this space-friendly audience (planetary exploration, spinoffs, asteroid mining, outliving the Earth, taking really expensive vacations). From there he moved to his primary emphasis: developing a propulsion system that could make possible a seven-month mission to Mars (three months outbound, one month there, three months back). Why seven months? Because the longest mission aboard the International Space Station was 210 days, and that seemed to operate fine without any serious side-effects on the crew. Longer than that, and I'm guessing that the close quarters might make people get a little stir-crazy.

Next he ran through the potential propulsion candidates available with existing or reachable technology: advanced chemical systems, electric propulsion, and nuclear fission or fusion. For those of you who haven't taken high school physics in awhile, fission is where you split atomic nuclei; fusion is where you combine (fuse) several smaller nuclei into larger nuclei. Fission and fusion both produce tremendous amounts of energy--something like a thousand times greater than chemical propellants of the same mass--but they also produce ionizing radiation, which can damage human beings at the cellular level (cancer, sterilization).

According to Cassibry, using the best chemical propulsion available, you could get a 1,000-metric-ton vehicle (with 100 of those tons dedicated to useful payload) to Mars in around two years. I've heard shorter estimates, but then those were for vehicles 1/10th the size. A 1,000-tonne vehicle would require nearly ten flights by NASA's in-development Space Launch System, which would not be cheap.

Moving down the list, nuclear electric propulsion could provide power levels of around 100 watts per kilogram (W/kg) of propellant. Fusion power would kick that energy level up to 1 kilowatt per kilogram (kW/kg), while a more advanced fusion energy source would be kicking it to the tune of 10 kW/kg and be able to make the round-trip to Mars within the 7-month timeline.

What sort of fusion are we talking about? It turns out there are several combinations of lighter elements that could be fused usefully, including deuterium-tritium (two- and three-neutron isotopes of hydrogen), deuterium-deuterium, deuterium-helium-3, and deuterium-lithium-6. Cassibry dismissed tritium as having too many radioactive byproducts and pointed out that it would take something like 1,000 nuclear plants to make enough of the isotope to be useful for space travel. He similarly didn't like helium-3 because while it's a darling of the pro-space movement, the cost of building all the infrastructure on the Moon to harvest it are cost-prohibitive. Instead, he advocated for using deuterium and lithium-6; deuterium is the most common hydrogen isotope, while there are "tons" of lithium-6 available in the ground in Tennessee--and we've already used both elements to make bombs.

It was at this point in Cassibry's talk that the PowerPoint slides started rapidly ascending over my head. He talked very rapidly about a number of existing approaches to fusion, including the ITER reactor, inertial confinement fusion, and magnetized target fusion (MTF). The way this would work--and I'd heard some of this talk at Marshall during my day job--is that you'd have a ring of high-energy plasma guns all firing at a target sample of hydrogen. Another way to induce fusion could be something called "Z-pinch" fusion, which Sandia National Laboratory has been working on, and which UAH is planning to work on at the Aerophysics Lab near Redstone Arsenal. Assuming Cassibry and his teammates get the funding and equipment they want, they could have the equipment within six months and tests beginning in a year.

Cheaper and smaller in scale than any competing fusion reaction, this whole thing, from testing to flight test, could theoretically get done in ten years. Joy, bliss, and happiness for everyone, right? Yeah, BUT...

Fusion has been worked on since the 1950s, and it's always been "20 years away." Cassibry conceded that, but believes that the applied energy and approach are not as expensive at the $10-billion ITER reactor (theoretically in the $50-100 million range). He also had to ask questions from people worrying about everything from "polluting the solar system" ("a molecule in the bucket compared to what's already being put out by the sun") to "What's the worst-case scenario if this thing blows up?" (That'd be me, the concerned citizen.) To my question he responded, "That wouldn't happen, but you might lose a few capacitors or the test rig. You'd have three feet of concrete between the experiment and the outside, and the staff would all be 100 meters away." So okay, the test article won't be creating a mushroom cloud over Huntsville. People were laughing at me, but d@mmit, I didn't know, and someone had to ask the tough question, because you can be quite sure that the EPA will be asking them when they fill out their environmental impact report.

I really didn't mean to give Cassibry a hard time. Like I said, most of his talk was quite engaging, and the technology sounded promising, given proper funding and technological success. It might require a much smaller demonstration test to prove out the concept. If Cassibry's schedule is correct, he could get a 100-ton test article aboard the SLS when it's ready. So we'll just see what happens next. In the meantime, it'll be interesting to see what other exciting technology comes out of Huntsville. If you take away one big project from the rocket people here, their creativity will find outlets elsewhere. The future awaits!

Potpourri CLIII

Diving in...

I will do a more detailed analysis of these two articles at some point, but it is interesting to contrast the views of Kim Stanley Robinson, who believes that scientists should assert themselves as some sort of scientific leftist elite while Anthony Gottlieb believes that scientists need to be more humble about forcing their conclusions on people.

From Hu, the latest proposed outrage from the airline industry: even less leg room.

The only thing more arrogant than asserting that human beings alone are capable of "destroying the planet" might be human beings asserting that we can fix the planet. Makes for interesting science fiction, but we're a ways off at this point from doing either.

Here's an editorial from The Space Review on the Space Shuttle's imminent demise and the programmatic mistakes made along the way.

Feeling snarky? Sarcastic? Pessimistic about the state of humanity or the world in general? This site might be for you.

From Twila: an editorial on bringing back the manned space program. Caveat visor: I haven't read this one yet.

This amuses me greatly: a terrorist made the mistake of asking one of his captives to help him set up his smart phone. This is a truly Ayn Randian moment--or at least a teachable moment, to use the current political lexicon. The assumption on the part of the terrorist is that the civilized person will comply with his wish to keep the machinery of civilization working at the point of a gun. This stuff needs to stop.

Melissa forwarded me this site of videos about the Periodic Table of the Elements after I explained that I was learning about them via another class-on-CD from The Teaching Company, "The Joy of Science." You know: because I don't have anything else to dod with my free time.

From the MSN Lifestyle section, a little helpful primer for women on rejecting men who ask them out.

I was feeling pretty good about my salami and provolone sandwich I was eating the other day, then I ran across this: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1310805/TV-chef-Martin-Blunos-creates-cheese-sandwich-costs-incredible-110.html

From Lin:

• An editorial pointing out that private property rights in the U.S. are deteriorating. How badly? Well, when China and Ghana(?) are ahead of us on that score, you've got to wonder.
• An editorial on the fact that the U.S. is now getting cozier with Vietnam, a place where we once had quite a nasty war. This isn't terribly surprising. I see it as part of an ongoing effort to surround China with U.S.-friendly nations on the Asian mainland: Vietnam, Thailand, India, and some of the Central Asian republics. The Spanish Hapsburgs tried to rein in France in the 16th-18th centuries in a similar fashion, much as we tried to hem in Germany after World Wars I and II and the Soviet Union during the Cold War and Iran today. The enemy of my enemy is my friend...at least for the moment. Or so the thinking goes. This is how we ended up giving arms to Saddam Hussein, then turning on him when he started messing with our interests in Saudi Arabia. Lin quoted Lord Palmerston aptly on this: "Nations have no permanent friends or allies, they only have permanent interests."

I have more, but that will do for now. I simply must get caught up on my sleep at some point.

Potpourri CLII

Let's get to it, shall we? I've got a lot of junk clogging up the arteries of my inbox.

This one came to me via Lin and Father Dan. Food for thought as we continue to debate the Ground Zero Mosque.

From Greg: It's a little old (2008 or so), but this story purports to cover Spain's efforts to give apes and similar non-human hominids "human rights." Assuming the story is true (and one wonders about anything one sees on the internet these days), I think it's a bit of a legalistic stretch regardless. Can laws be made to protect animals or punish crimes against animals more severely? No doubt a convincing case can be made. However, granting animals the same "rights" as humans presumes the capacity of said animals to accept, appreciate, and act upon such rights. Can animals enter into legally binding contracts, for instance? Would they know how to sue if that contract was violated? Can animals be held liable for crimes if they commit them? Oh, they're not liable? Why is that? Are we going to give them special status without any strings attached? Rights also have responsibilities attached to them. Or don't we believe that anymore?

Also from Greg: deep-fried beer. Really.

A few items I found while surfing:

• Role models for boys down to “superheroes and slackers.”
• The art and science of whiskey making.

Karen in Bay Hill sent me an interesting bit of political thought. I've deleted the extra rambling around it so that you can focus on the heart of the matter:

This law (or amendment) makes eminent sense to me. Which means that someone with a J.D. will probably tell me why such a law would be a BAD idea and shouldn't even be considered. I read somewhere awhile back that 90% of the Politburo of the People's Republic of China has an education in science or engineering, vs. the U.S. Congress, where I'm pretty certain that a large chunk of them have degrees in law (actually, it's 179 members of the House and 57 senators). Food for thought.

Proposed 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution:

"Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators and/or Representatives; and, Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators and/or Representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States .."

What's the biggest threat to our national defenses? Al-Qaeda? North Korea? China? Nope. Guess again.

This is now old news, and the perpetrator has since been moved on to his eternal fate, but here are the demands of the man who held employees at Discovery Communications hostage last week. As with the equal-rights-for-apes story, this begs a serious question: are some of these folks really serious about elevating respect for the Earth and other living creatures in it, or is their real purpose to denigrate the value of human beings--and if so, to what end? If you downgrade the value of human beings individually or collectively, who stands to gain from that stance? My guess: anyone who wants to reduce the freedoms of said human beings in the name of "the planet" or some other equally general notion. It's a shame, really. Some of my favorite people are human beings.

From Lin:

• What now passes for "scandal" if you're a conservative. Wow. Some reporters need to get a life.
• A Charles Krauthammer editorial on governing liberalism and its reactions to (or against) the people it means to rule. One of the most difficult things about interacting on the internet is the knee-jerk reactions of some folks if you politely state that you are for one position or against another. The assumption is not that you disagree and therefore have a worthy point of view but that you are OBVIOUSLY evil, corrupt, stupid, bigoted, etc. I find this method of attack (which seeks to humble, humiliate, or beat back, not argument, which would seek to convince) offensive. As I've said before, disagreeing with the President does not automatically make you a racist. If liberals want to win more of the electorate's hearts and minds, they might stop assuming or baldly stating that this is so.
• A TED video on the cultural roots and effects of choice. Caveat visor: I haven't watched this yet.

From Martin:

• A "manly" reading list. Great. More stuff for my Amazon wish list. On the plus side, I have at least read some of these already...oh, well. I've got another 40 years or so. Certainly the time will come up, right?
• An argument against the X-20 spaceplane.

From Gwen: a Star Wars shower curtain.

From Twila: a discussion of the effects of NASA stimulus spending.

Speaking of the stimulus, government spending on such things has now exceeded the seven years of the Iraq War, which certain friends of mine assured me would destroy or bankrupt the country.

Some amateur rocketeers in Denmark want to launch a human being into space on their rocket. Um, eek?

This interested me: how faculty authors can implement an open access policy (to reading their papers) at their institutions.
From D2: another TED talk on civilizational ethics.
 
From Father Dan: the world's top 50 resorts.
 
Okay, that'll do for now. Have a good, short, week.

What Hurts the Most

I had a good chat with one of my civil service customers yesterday about this situation. Neither of us like it. We'd both rather continue with The Mission. And that's one thing that gets left out of a lot of "calculations" about workforce and budgets: the people who come to NASA to work are there because they believe in human space exploration beyond low-Earth orbit. We're not there to kill or fill time (okay, there might be some like that, but there aren't many, and there are certainly easier places/jobs to do that, yes?).

I got a master's degree in technical communication so I could work in the space business. Specifically, I wanted to support human space exploration. The Space Station, Hubble Space Telescope, Mars Rovers, and the rest are all very cool, and it'd be fun to work on those, too, if it comes to that. But the reason I came to Huntsville, Alabama, was to work on a mission to send human beings where they'd never been before. The whole Star Trek thing.




That stuff matters, and it hurts to see it go away because a lot of us believed we were doing good work. I have not questioned going into work a single day at NASA. I know why I'm there, and I believe in the rightness of the task, even if my role is only communicating about it, not building the stuff. I salute those who do, and the ones brave enough to get up there and fly the hardware and put on hard suits to walk on other worlds. Regardless of the future direction of the agency, we will continue to need those skills and those people. The road to space will still go through Huntsville.