Unaffordable and Unsustainable, NASA’s failing Earth-to-orbit Transportation Strategy Options

[Guest_DonPMitchell_*]

The Space Frontier Foundation has gotten a lot of attention from the mainstream press with their latest Whitepaper.

They advocate a more extensive support fo free enterprise and entrepreneurship in the American space program. They suggest that NASA should no longer be allowed to develop and own new launch vehicles, and that CEV and CLV development should be cancelled. They also advise that NASA rely on Altas 5 and Delta 4 rockets, and transfer more funding to the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program.

I cannot find the actual white paper on the SFF website. I don't know if SFF is particularly professional (certainly their gaudy website doesn't look it), but I have to agree with some of their points.

[Guest_DonPMitchell_*]

There certainly is a lot of government involvement in the launch industry. The US military in particular consideres it strategically essential to have multiple vendors. Europe granted a monopoly on commercial launching to Arianespace.

I agree with Richard that in theory a committee made up of ideal people is best. But I've never seen such a thing in my life. Coming out of the research community (in computer science) I am very cynical about the kinds of people who join powerful committees, and the self-serving behavior of those bodies. Industry often is forced to ignore or actively impede imcompetent committees who gain power (e.g., W3C). I've just never seen creative behavior, and I think it is because truly creative people are elsewhere -- they are tinkering in the laboratory and the factory, not serving on committees.

I don't see atropy in the US industry. We don't have an Apollo program going on now, but nobody else seems to be doing better. China's rocket technology is crude. Ariane's use of LH2 is nice, but the Vulcain engines are not particularly modern (still tinkering with gas-generator and gas-expander cycle engines). The Delta IV seems to be a solid design, all LOX/LH2, cheap disposable staged-combustion engines with some distinctly Russian design tricks.

I disagree with the SFF white paper in areas where probably many folks here would not. I'm tired of politically motivated agendas in space, like ISS or Bush's Moon/Mars programs. I'm hoping commercial enterprise will find more intersting things to do. A money-making space station than regular people can visit would make ISS irrelevant.

[Stephen]

I'm hoping commercial enterprise will find more intersting things to do. A money-making space station than regular people can visit would make ISS irrelevant.

Let's face it. "Regular people" will not be going into orbit any time soon. Space stations--hopefully of a profitably money-making kind--may well get sent up there, but as long as the cost of visiting them requires winning a lottery or two first they and space travel will remain the playground of millionaires and astronauts on government payrolls rather than "regular people".

In fact by the time the cost does come down far enough for "regular people" to go up the ISS will probably have been designated an historical monument.

(In any case an orbital tourist trap does not strike me as the sort of place where much science is likely to be done. How many science laboratories are there in Las Vegas?)

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Stephen

[Guest_DonPMitchell_*]

If space is limited to academic science experiments and taxpayer funding, then exploration will never proceed beyond the level we see now -- small robotic probes sent every few years. On the other hand, if private enterprise lowers the cost of reaching space, then science benefits as well.

How much interesting new science is being done by ISS? Low Earth orbit is not a mysterious region today, and Soviet space stations have done years of human, animal and plant studies. The science-per-dollar is not impressive. It's particularly an issue for Americans, who have paid a disproportionate amount for this orbiting boondoggle.

I am both interested to see what private enterprise can do, and I would also like to see the political space burocracy decline. I question whether NASA is even allocating money for science in an effective manner.

[Stephen]

If space is limited to academic science experiments and taxpayer funding, then exploration will never proceed beyond the level we see now -- small robotic probes sent every few years. On the other hand, if private enterprise lowers the cost of reaching space, then science benefits as well.

I don't doubt you're right about the fate of taxpayer funded efforts; and also about the benefits that would come if private enterprise could indeed invent a way to lower the cost of "reaching space". But the fact remains that whether any of us like it or not every single scientific mission thus far sent into deep space has been conceived by a government or academic agency (American, Soviet, European, or Japanese), paid for by taxpayer funds, and launched on a rocket whose development was paid for by the taxpayers of one country or another. That may well change eventually, but I would not count on it changing soon.

Next year is the fiftieth anniversary of the launch of Sputnik 1. In that time NASA has sent (or are sending) probes to every planet in the solar system, and has even landed men on the Moon. Yet where has private enterprise been?

Back in the 1990s various commercial outfits conceived plans for sending missions to the Moon. Orbiters, landers, even rovers. Yet thus far not one has been launched.

Innovative launch vehicles of assorted kinds have been conceived. Yet where are most of them today? (Even Bigelow's Genesis-1 module was launched on a standard Russian rocket.) Furthermore, AFAIK they were all targeted towards the LEO market.

Then there was the NEAP (Near Earth Asteroid Prospector) mission, which was going to be the first commercial deep space mission. Yet it too has not yet reached the launch pad. (In fact it is unclear whether any actual hardware has ever been built for it.)

So while none of us may like the pace at which space exploration is proceeding, at the moment and for the foreseeable future government space programs would seem to be the only shows in town as far as (deep) space exploration is concerned.

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Stephen