Which comes first, the car or the road?
“They’ve all looked at it from the perspective of how to build the car. We looked at it from the perspective of how to run an entire country without oil. You’ve got to put the infrastructure ahead of the cars.” The venture is coordinating with some car manufacturers who plan to create electric vehicles to ensure that the infrastructure will be utilized.
We have the same problem in space. No one is building vehicles designed to use gas stations in space because the gas stations don’t exist. No one is building the gas stations because there are no vehicles designed to use them. This is a place where government could lead by making it policy that this is the future of space transportation, and establishing standards (just as in the eighties, it was the flawed policy that everything would be flown on Shuttle, and that payloads had to meet its payload-integration requirements).
I’m not sure how “different” the roadways need to be for electric vehicles. Or why.
I think the gub’ment needs to get out of the way and let private enterprise take over.
Chicken & egg is one metaphor.
But if we return to the days when cars had carburetors and chokes (as with my first cars) then “starter fluid” might offer another metaphor. I have vivid memories of my first Ford Mustang – with high miles – and on the coldest days I’d have to stick an ice scraper or screw driver in the carburetor, spray in starter fluid and give it a go. Once the engine warmed up, I’d remove the tool from the carburetor, close the hood and drive away.
But starter fluid only works if there is gas in the tank.
I agree that if we require NASA to build propellant depots in LEO before we let them return to the Moon or go to Mars that could be analogous to spraying starter fluid into the carburetor and that could be very helpful or even needful to initiate robust space access ,but only if there also is gas in the tank (that being a private sector willing to spend sufficient private money to keep the engine running after the government subsidies are ended).
Unless the private sector carries on without taxpayer money after depots are built with taxpayer money, those depots will languish under-utilized and constitute a continuing drain on the Treasury.
Propellant depots built by the taxpayers will turn the engine over, but shall it actually start?
As of today, is there gas in that tank? If yes, then starter fluid is appropriate but if private sector demand is not sufficiently developed to sustain those depots after they are built, then maybe we need to develop lunar markets first, then build depots.
More in keeping with what Dennis Wingo argues.
= = =
An honest-to-God space hotel (meaning NOT ISS) devoted entirely to LEO tourism would be another starter fluid opportunity to facilitate the flow of money into human spaceflight from sources that do not pass through Uncle Sam’s digestive tract first.
I did not propose that propellant depots be built by the taxpayers.
From the Israel Electric Company website, I found a presentation that shows its breakdown of fuels for power generation.
As of last year, 10% of electricity was created by oil. 69% by coal. If IEC follows their plan, by 2012, 60% of electric generation will still be by fossil fuel. Of course, those plans may not assume the load of the Isreali transit system getting shifted to the power plants.
Better Place also wants to try out Denmark, which in 2004 used 41% oil and 21% coal.
Northern California may do a little better in “green” electricity production, but then it will be amusing to see how well California’s electricity capacity absorbs the extra burden of Northern California’s transportation needs.
So perhaps the question should be if the power generation should come first, and what power generation is acceptable?
If the objective is development work and smoothing the way for future deployment of propellant depots, I believe the Direct Team members are 100% supportive.
Direct 2.0 is an entire architecture, and not merely Jupiter 120 and Jupiter 232, and that architecture includes a road map for getting propellant depots on-line within a decade of the adoption of that architecture.
Leland, regarding plug in hybrid cars (almost electric) there are real benefits to charging cars at night as it evens out the grid loads and reduces the need for “peaker plants” that only run during hot afternoons for A/C use.
Here in Illinois (IIRC) Com Ed is looking into large plug in hybrid work trucks that would be parked to dump power back into the grid on hot summer afternoons (together with running their engines to add more power) and recharged in the early morning hours.
I might write up a proposal to do that with school buses. Ask Com Ed to subsidize the purchase of plug in hybrid electric school bus fleets in exchange for access to those buses in the summertime (no school) as a source of adding peak power into the grid.
Bill,
NASA’s role should be to provide initial demand for propellant, not to provide the propellant. The private sector needs to acquire the tools, technology and experience to provide fuel in orbit.
That said, I’m not sure how much private sector demand there would be for fuel in orbit. Satellites could benefit from a top-off every now and then, but they’re pretty fuel efficient. How often do they need more gas? Until there are mining or tourist shuttles to the Moon (or asteroids) and back I don’t see a big market for it – and that’s decades off, at least. Any propellant depot would be purely a government supply contractor until 2025 at the earliest I think.
Brock, concerning this . . .
NASA’s role should be to provide initial demand for propellant, not to provide the propellant. The private sector needs to acquire the tools, technology and experience to provide fuel in orbit.
Even Mike Griffin has said that if the private sector actually delivers propellant to orbit at a lower cost than NASA can achieve for itself, he’d buy the propellant. Just no guarantees before the depot is deployed and before we learn whether its cheaper or not.
Two questions:
(1) Should Congress / the White House tell NASA that they cannot leave LEO until that private sector depot gets built?
(2) Should Congress / the White House tell NASA that they must purchase fuel from the depot even if NASA claims that buying fuel from the depot actually increases net mission cost? What if OMB agrees with NASA?
Who’s math do we use?
(1) Should Congress / the White House tell NASA that they cannot leave LEO until that private sector depot gets built?
Not explicitly. They should simply forbid the agency from developing any launch vehicles.
(2) Should Congress / the White House tell NASA that they must purchase fuel from the depot even if NASA claims that buying fuel from the depot actually increases net mission cost? What if OMB agrees with NASA?
I wouldn’t worry much about the latter. OMB rarely agrees with NASA.
I agree with both (1) and (2). I suspect that (2) would be controversial, but I favor it anyway for three reasons:
(a) Having NASA spend a few extra million more to get a fuel market up and running is a good investment of taxpayer dollars. It defeats the chicken & egg problem and will provide long term benefits.
(b) I don’t trust NASA’s numbers much anyway. Government has lots of ways of hiding costs that the private sector simply cannot hide from its investors.
(c) If the first private sector prop depot is so inefficient that they can’t do it cheaper than NASA launch costs, competition will put them out of business quickly while lowering fuel costs in the end anyway.
That said, I’m not sure how much private sector demand there would be for fuel in orbit. Satellites could benefit from a top-off every now and then, but they’re pretty fuel efficient. How often do they need more gas? Until there are mining or tourist shuttles to the Moon (or asteroids) and back I don’t see a big market for it – and that’s decades off, at least. Any propellant depot would be purely a government supply contractor until 2025 at the earliest I think.
Satellites aren’t very good candidates for refueling for a variety of reasons (different orbits from the depot, types of propellant stored, etc). However, a reusable space tug is a different matter. The depot could contain propellant to refuel the tug.
The tug would be used to move the satellites from a LEO parking orbit to their final MEO or GEO orbit. This would mean that if you needed to send a payload to GEO (say 3-5 metric tons), all you need to buy is a booster powerful enough to get the payload to the correct LEO orbit. That alone could save tens of millions per launch.
The tug would then dock with the payload and take it to GTO or perhaps all the way to GEO. Once the payload is released, a retro-burn can lower the perigee to the point where aerobraking can take it the rest of the way down.
The key to making this happen is a refuelable, reusable tug. The key to making the tug happen is fuel depots in orbit.
Bill-
I like your ideas, mainly because they echo much of my thoughts soon after the VSE was announced:
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/85/1
It seems like the whole human race is in the hands of a few nuts with vision.
Space needs an anchor tenant.
People don’t build infrastructure first. They build infrastructure to support an existing demand.
That demand is created by the insane that do what everyone else can clearly see is crazy.
Nobody tells circle K, seven-11 or stop-n-go they need a gas station on this corner to support the infrastructure. They do it becauise cars are driving past.
Some nut had to first decide to live in the dessert before they build the roads and gas stations. Nuts do it all the time. Thank god for nuts.
Colonize. Colonize now. One way. Let everybody else catch up and then tell you it was their idea in the first place.
Soon the government will not matter. People will stake their claims and live in the new-new worlds.
They’re nuts. Most of them just don’t have the cash right now (but Elon is just waiting to sell them the ticket and others will sell them the habitats and supplies.)
I’m with Ken on the gas stations. The first cars travelled with fuel to get out and back – there weren’t gas stations. The gas stations are feasible once there’s enough traffic to support them, and they in turn change what used to be an major expedition into a Sunday drive.
I really like the “nuts in space” concept, reminds me of some of Heinlein’s writing.
Colonize. Colonize now. One way. Let everybody else catch up and then tell you it was their idea in the first place.
When are you planning on leaving, Ken?