Paul Spudis says that NASA lost its way on the way to the moon.
It was clear that once the Griffinites came in, the lunar goal was being sabotaged by people who didn’t really believe in it (e.g., Doug Stanley). But I’m more sanguine than Paul is. There’s plenty of time to again make the case for moon first, and most of the things that we need to do (get commercial crew going, develop depot technologies) are independent of destination. That’s what Flexible Path is all about. As the time approaches at which it will be realistic to think about affordably going beyond LEO, we can decide how best to proceed. The most important thing in the near term, it seems to me, in that regard is to fund ISRU technologies and further prospector missions, and perhaps even robotic prototypes of processing facilities. That will provide a lot more ammunition for Paul and others who want to exploit the lunar resources and bootstrap the rest of the solar system with them.
You will be proven correct, Rand, if funding for the R&D for the enabling tech you describe remains in NASA’s budget in future years.
I wonder how our lunar efforts would have turned out if the powers that be simply proposed to keep the shuttles flying for the sole purpose of launching trans-lunar vehicles and landers into orbit. In that case, the expense of any new launchers would have been avoided and just two or three shuttle launches would have been needed to assemble the components for each attempt at a moon landing. The moon program would have simply consisted of an Orion capsule, an Altair lander and a super service module capable of transferring the other two pieces between Earth and Moon. Or as an alternative, can’t these pieces simply be launched on multiple EELVs and assembled in orbit? Perhaps I’m just too simple minded to understand why the Ares I/V was needed.
You will be proven correct, Rand, if funding for the R&D for the enabling tech you describe remains in NASA’s budget in future years.
Well, only the future will tell on that, but it says nothing about the wisdom of the current policy, which remains much better than the previous one, even from Paul’s viewpoint, because ESAS/Constellation was killing the moon as a goal.
I think making the claim that you’re going to the Moon to get fuel to explore the solarsystem has a wacky feel to it, similar to how I feel whenever people talk about mining He3 on the Moon for fusion reactors that don’t exist. So its no surprise that the level headed people at NASA, especially after they had the “read my lips: no new technology” mantra bashed into them by Griffin, reject it as the goal.
Bill,
I fully expect funding to NASA to be cut, whether they stuck with the PoR, whether they go with DIRECT, or whether they go with the R&D approach. Remember, back in the 90s, when the economy was in much better shape, and the government fiscal situation was a lot better, that Shuttle and ISS barely missed getting axed, in spite of all their parochial supporters in Congress. Even with pork-fed political support, I don’t think NASA is going to be able to avoid taking cuts like the rest of the government is going to need to take. The difference is that with the Obama budget, if NASA HSF got cut in half, you’d still be able to get some things done, just a bit slower. With something like DIRECT or the PoR, if the budget got cut in half, the program would grind almost to a halt. Sure it might twitch on in Zombie-like fashion like the PoR has for the past several years, but it isn’t going to lead to anything worth the money that’ll be flushed away.
In the end, my bet is that NASA’s budget is going to be more determined by what value they’re providing to 95% of the country, not how many jobs it provides to the other 5%.
~Jon
This is central planning gobbledygook. In a free market there would be no debate about where “we” should go first. A free enterprise would go where it wanted when it was good and ready, without needing large artificial doses of money from any politicians based on where they or political activists thought we should go first. If that kept the fans of this or that pet destination unhappy, tough luck. Free markets unlike political activists can’t afford to create religious calendars of future pilgrimages based on economic fantasies paid for with other peoples’ money.
@ Mike Thompson
It’s too late for the Shuttle now, but there have been proposals to that effect:
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/earccess.htm
While I was under the impression that we were going to the moon to test habitation and base-building technologies, the idea that we could get fuel from the moon is not that “wacky”, either, particularly in light of the recent discoveries of water on the moon. There isn’t really much He3 in harvestable concentrations, nor do we have reactors that can use it, but LH2 is pretty easy to burn and can possibly be harvested from the moon in significant quantities without much new technologies.
Perhaps I misunderstood you and you didn’t need this pointed out, but you get it anyway, on the house.
Jon, on the house, you don’t think a one way human trip to the Moon is wacky 🙂 What’s the difference between fusion of lunar He3 and ISRU of lunar ice in cold traps? TRL1 vs TRL2? Actually, that’s being generous isn’t it? I mean, there’s people working on fusion, and they’ve actually built hardware 🙂
The main reason NASA has and will continue to underfund ISRU is that it’s a culture of aerospace engineering, not of people doing mining engineering or chemical engineering. If all you have is a hammer, the only problems that seem worthwhile are nails.
If we want to locate the biggest source of the problems in NASA, many of them can be found in the ideas Spudis himself has been promoting: especially with the life-long obsession many at NASA and the space activist community have had with the “logical steps” of the Von Braun/Disney itinerary. Is it really “logical” to keep following an economic fantasy dreamed up in the middle of the last century before silicon chips, unmanned spacecraft, computer networks, effective robots, and so much else? Is it “logical” to obsessively return to an itinerary of heavenly pilgrimage dreamed up, not by anybody in a commercial space business, but by a Hollywood cartoonist and a national socialist military engineering manger? Is it logical to keep pursuing this path that has lead to so many dead-ends like Apollo and white elephants like the Shuttle, the many Russian space stations, and the ISS? Or are these beliefs in “next logical steps” a pathological faith in a secular religion of central planning that has long grown obsolete now that we are in the 21st century? Hasn’t the over half a trillion dollars of taxpayers’ money wasted on these hallucinations of yore been enough?
googaw, wow, I agree with you.. what? are you on your meds today or something?
Googaw, I agree with you too. No one can seem to articulate a real reason for human exploration that doesn’t involve “punting” to the next destination, i.e. “we have to go to the Moon to go to Mars, we have to go to Mars to go to Jupiter, we have to go to Jupiter to go to Pluto, etc.”
Why do we HAVE to go anywhere? Don’t get me wrong, I personally would LOVE to walk on the Moon, but why should the government be paying for anyone to do these things? Even COTS, at its foundation, is still government funded human spaceflight, albeit on commercial providers. What is its justification?
…why should the government be paying for anyone to do these things?
I personally don’t, but let me be devil’s advocate and further suppose ‘these things’ were a list of the right things (whatever those might be.)
Does the government have any responsibility to promote the general welfare by developing any capabilities that a company wouldn’t because it doesn’t promote their bottom line in a timely manner? Could the government do anything as a service to business that would make them more likely to expand into space because it has become profitable as a result?
My feeling is we are now at the point where a company could put a general purpose spaceship in orbit for a couple of billion and then have willing customers to pay for the investment (ROI being perhaps less than five years?) I don’t know of any company that has plans to do that.
Trent,
After the MMM and LCROSS data, the moon is looking a lot more water-bearing than might have been previously anticipated. MMM shows fairly broad portions of the moon with either water ice or hydrated minerals in the regolith; LCROSS confirms polar cold trap water that corresponds to the neutron spectrometry data from Lunar Prospector. The 23 October 2009 Science magazine has good summaries of current data.
Until we get some proper samples of material from these regions, there will always be room for doubt, but the Moon is looking mineralogically more complex, there appears to be some process that moves water around the moon, and it looks as though the equatorial and mare sites where the missions to date have landed are where the water is not.
Now there is certainly room to be doubt what the economics of producing propellant and exporting it to a cislunar staging point will be. I’m personally optimistic about that but it isn’t done until its done.
As to the technical feasibility of getting propellant, I’d say it’s somewhere between TRL3 and 4; more work has been done on this than is at first apparent — again, it’s the economics of it which can’t be validated at subsystem level.
Therefore, if I were doing this, I would plan an approach which could exploit lunar propellant if it proved economically attractive, but which was well suited to alternatives. That is one of the reasons why I liked the L1-staging point identified in most of the CE&R studies by NASA in the 2004-5 time frame; if you use electric propulsion to get propellant from LEO to a staging point, it is a good jumping-off point for later missions and it provides the market for Lunar propellant we will need to find out if that is economically feasible.
Ken, the only human-related activity in space that I see having any possibility of returning a profit is suborbital tourism. And lo and behold, what do we see? Commercial companies investing their OWN money to develop the capability, in hopes of finding that profit. They’re not using any of the “capabilities” supposedly developed by five decades of NASA human spaceflight to do so. Even if I accepted your argument that NASA needs to develop the technologies that corporations supposedly won’t, what possible indication do we have that NASA would have the least interest in pursuing economic approaches to human spaceflight? Certainly the Constellation experience is clear evidence that they have not the slightest interest in minimizing costs, rather in maximizing the workforce participation.
The most important acronym in NASA is “FTE”.
Jeff, even if there were tank farms of distilled water sitting for us at the South Pole of the Moon, how does that fundamentally change the argument of “why are we sending people to the Moon”.
By the way, I visited your shop a few weeks ago with Jon Goff and had a great time. Your guys were really nice and helpful. I think you were out of town. Your rockets looked awesome.
Even if I accepted your argument that NASA needs to develop the technologies that corporations supposedly won’t, what possible indication do we have that NASA would have the least interest in pursuing economic approaches to human spaceflight?
I think needs is too strong a word, but they could have some part which today is a small percentage of their budget going to private companies. NASA as an organization may have no interest, but segments within it may? My desire is extreme regarding small government and few would probably agree with it… eliminate the commerce clause and limit the fed to national defense. Economic growth is a part of national defense, but I wouldn’t give the fed too much leeway in that regard.
the only human-related activity in space that I see having any possibility of returning a profit is suborbital tourism.
Then there are the next steps… orbital tourism, cislunar tourism, national geographic expeditions beyond lunar orbit… etc.
If a ship were in Earth orbit now, willing to sell tickets, they’d have customers even if they didn’t leave orbit. We currently have a problem getting to orbit, but that should be resolved soon (again simply by the purchase of a ticket from private companies selling the ride.)
A good story, told well, will always sell. Always.
Even if this is not the greatest story ever told (after all it is Easter weekend) humanity becoming spacefaring certainly would be among the top 5 greatest stories ever told.
Sell the story of humanity becoming spacefaring and invite Nike, Red Bull and all the other major advertisers along with the major TV networks to help pay for it. Bring along people from around the world and sell the story globally.
There are a few technological hurdles (e.g. the low temperature) and more information needed (e.g. the exact chemical composition of the ice), but the biggest key to getting propellants from the lunar poles, assuming no dominant artificial intervention, will be figuring out how to do it on a scale appropriate to real markets. Let’s start with the natural market and do some back-of-the-envelope parametric estimation.
The biggest real market will be the one for getting the few tens of satellites headed to GEO per year from GTO or LEO to GEO. With a market share of 50% this works out to perhaps about 50,000 kg of propellant per year or so. If the system has a mass output ratio of 100/yr, the mass of the entire system comes to 500 kg. That’s probably divided up among about 25 spacecraft and robots for redundancy and flexibility, so we’re talking on average about 20 kg per device.
The economically optimum scale is thus about three orders of magnitude smaller than an HSF-based approach would be. I don’t see any basic reason why this is not doable — we have for example microprocessing technologies for very small scale reaction and separation processes — but it will certainly require thinking far outside the traditional boundaries of lunar plans.
Kirk,
[[[Even if I accepted your argument that NASA needs to develop the technologies that corporations supposedly won’t, what possible indication do we have that NASA would have the least interest in pursuing economic approaches to human spaceflight?]]]
That is why a lunar development corporation is needed. Unlike NASA its focus would be on the economics of lunar resources.
Googaw,
[[[The main reason NASA has and will continue to underfund ISRU is that it’s a culture of aerospace engineering, not of people doing mining engineering or chemical engineering. If all you have is a hammer, the only problems that seem worthwhile are nails.]]]
Again, this is why NASA is not the agency which will develop lunar resources. Their organizational culture and focus are not a match.
But Thomas (and I’ll really not trying to be difficult about this) what lunar resource can we postulate might have net present value here on the ground? Surely we can sit down, even at this early stage, look at the composition of the Moon, perhaps even extrapolate about potential resources (polar ice, helium-3, PGM asteroid remnants), speculate about transportation costs from here to there and back again, and see if there is sufficient current or future demand for such materials to merit going.
For instance…let’s say we speculate that there are PGMs in asteroid remnants, and the terrestrial market is (such-and-such) and in the future it will be (so-and-so) and if we use transportation approach #3 the delivered cost of such PGMs will be (this-and-that) and we anticipate that it has…net present value?
This is the kind of thing that needs to be done before the establishment of any Lunar Development Authority and not after. It’s the equivalent of “due diligence” that an investor does before buying a position in a stock.
see if there is sufficient current or future demand for such materials to merit going…we anticipate that it has…net present value?
Kirk, this is indeed the correct approach to take, and something like this can be done for the market for propellants for LEO-to-GEO trips. Again very rough back-of-the-envelope. Let’s say that we can launch two instead of one satellite from LEO to GEO for the same launcher by providing the upper stage with lunar propellants. That nearly doubles the value of a $50 million launch, let’s call it $90 million. Let’s split the value-add evenly with the customer and charge $20 million. If we win 15 orders per year that’s $675 million per year. If recurring costs are low enough we have a net present value of a few billion dollars for up-front R&D. This doesn’t justify any HSF-scale expenditures (and per above the optimal physical scale for everything but the OTV itself is about three orders of magnitude smaller than HSF can achieve), but it still could make a dandy business, probably not in the present decade but in the foreseeable future.
This doesn’t justify any big state project resembling what NASA has planned or space activists have traditionally lobbied for, of course. It probably does justify some DARPA/NACA-style research in, for example, low temperature materials processing.
Lunar Development Authority
Oh please no. The only thing we need government for here is research (not development) and adjudicating property rights etc. (basic legal functions).
Water on the moon pretty much trumps all else. For now it is the commercial Holly Grail. And it goes far beyond anything the ISS or a manned moon base could offer towards developing LEO, infrastructure, and commercial ROI.
Shoot the moon via a commercial based VSE type effort ASAP. Not sometime in the distant future when all of us will be long dead and gone. Why for decades while our manned space program has been permanently stymied and crippled in pursuit of un-focused flex-path generated chaotic technology developments.
Go for the water now…it will drive everything else in a free market focused development effort. Do not waste this opportunity do not let it slip through our fingers. This has the potential to bring about a paradigm shift in manned space exploration, and at long last infrastructure development. Time to drop flex/constellation BS and get focused razor sharp on the water.
Water on the moon is a gift from God now we can either ignore it or leave it for another culture, nation or race to claim and harvest or we can go for it. So are we truly a society of free market commercial based entrepreneurs or are we just a bunch of self-centered NASA subsidized no-risk, cowardly slackers? Shoot the moon, shoot the water NOW!
That is why a lunar development corporation is needed. Unlike NASA its focus would be on the economics of lunar resources.
Thomas, if a lunar development corporation is needed then why aren’t you circulating a business plan among potential investors?
Or perhaps you are and I’m just out of touch. Any luck?
Googaw, you have to watch out for your competition too. A momentum-exchange/electrodynamic-reboost (MXER) tether can sling payloads from LEO to GTO quickly, and then restore orbital energy without consuming propellant over the course of about a month. That’s a much simpler approach to develop than going to the Moon to mine propellant, to drag out of the lunar gravity well and burn up most of its orbital energy taking it down to LEO.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFKdYscRpVo
Shoot the moon, shoot the water NOW!
Why, why, and why. You keep telling us to do it, but you can’t (or haven’t) told us why in terms of net present value.
Why do we HAVE to go anywhere?
Kirk, do ever leave your bedroom? People don’t *have* to go anywhere, but they *want* to. That’s true in space just as it is on Earth.
Googaw’s argument against space travel reminds me of some really bad panels at science-fiction conventions where cyberpunk fanboys argue that “cybersex is better than sex.” The argument is never convincing to anyone who doesn’t already believe it.
(Also, I think Googaw must be confusing Spudis with someone else, since Spudis is almost as much of a robot fanboy as Googaw is. He once said that NASA needed 8-10 robots before it could safely land humans on the Moon.)
In reality, calling satellites “unmanned spacecraft” does not mean they are as capable as the real thing. NASA is a long ways from being able to build a Commander Data or a C-3PO. They may call their radio-controlled cars “rovers” but that doesn’t mean they have the intelligence of a real dog — or even a grasshopper. One of the JPL scientists said that their rovers did less science in six months than an astronaut could have done in a day.
It isn’t true that robots are always cheaper, either. Right now, Space Adventures can sell you a circumlunar flight for around $100 million. The Human Lunar Return architecture, studied by JPL in the 1990’s, could have landed humans on the Moon for $2 billion. If you used Russian hardware (such as the mothballed LK-1 lander), it could probably be done for under $1 billion. It costs NASA $500 million to do a robotic lunar orbiter, and Marshall was going to spend $2 billion to land one robot on the Moon.
At the end of the day, if humans are not going into space, what is the point of spending billions of dollars just to get back pretty pictures that people can watch on television? That’s a very expensive way to provide television entertainment, and why is it the government’s job to provide entertainment?
As for Googaw’s notion that a few communication satellites are “the biggest real market,” that’s based on the common fallacy of extrapolating current markets linearly into the future. It’s the same line of reasoning that led people to conclude there was no market for automobiles, airplanes, or microcomputers. Applying his reasoning at the beginning of the 20th Century, on could argue that the biggest market for airplanes would be carrying equipment up to inaccessible hilltops for Marconi’s radio transmitters. There may be nothing of value in space beyond a few radio towers right now, but that doesn’t mean it will be that way forever.
“Remember, back in the 90s, when the economy was in much better shape, and the government fiscal situation was a lot better, that Shuttle and ISS barely missed getting axed, in spite of all their parochial supporters in Congress.”
Shuttle was not in any danger of being axed at that time.
Kirk, do ever leave your bedroom?
I don’t know, Ed, do you ever engage your brain?
@ Kirk Sorenson
That is a very nice video on MXER. Well done.
Kirk, thanks for the reminder about MXER. That hundred-kilometer tether and the solar panels look heavy relative to the mass of the satellites they’d be slinging. But that’s just from eyeballing the pictures, what mass ratio do you think can be achieved? If it’s an economically feasible number for the market I described I’d love to see MXER also tried out as a small-scale NACA/DARPA-style project. Plenty of room in a rational technology research budget for both that and lunar ice ISRU.
Googaw, roughly a 10 to 1 ratio between the tether and its payload for a LEO to GTO throw. Figure that the upper stage from LEO to GEO roughly masses about the same as the payload, so that after 10 throws you’ve paid off in mass the mass of the tether. Like any other reusable system, its economics all depend on your flight rate.
Kirk, that sounds pretty good, it can sling its own mass about every eight months with the LEO-to-GEO market numbers I was using (15 satellites per year). This is probably much less than the potential mass output ratio per year of the lunar propellant system, but as you point out MXER is probably much simpler. Let’s research both.
Correction, it can only sling its mass every 10 months if it takes the tether a month to fly back for the next sling. At 15 flights per year and a fly-back time of a month the mass ratio per year is limited by the fly-back time rather than by the flight rate. With the same fly-back time but less than 12 flights per year it would be limited by the flight rate.
Jon, TRL3 and 4 means “too risky” for NASA. That was my only point. To boldly put forward that your mission goal is to do something that has such a low technology readiness is just too non-conservative for NASA. It’s wacky *to them*. To the rest of us, technology development is what modern life about.. business is about risk, etc.
Jon, TRL3 and 4 means “too risky” for NASA.
Trent, it didn’t used to be that way. And I find it suspicious how technologies that would hinder or obviate the development of a heavy lift vehicle are “too risky” while they’re willing to toss billions at other similarly undeveloped technologies (the active, rocket-based suppression system for thrust oscillation of the Ares I, for example).
Trent, in my ten years at NASA I’ve observed that TRL is only used against you when they don’t want to fund your technology anyway. If they have something that they need and it’s TRL 1, they’ll fund it and develop it. I have argued long and hard to my management that TRL is a subjective and abused metric that should be put aside for the foreseeable future, like most of the management and powerpoint innovations that John Mankins foisted on us.
No… although TRL may be used to justify or not technology development, that’s irrelevant to this discussion. The point is that the technology is undeveloped, so you can’t base a mission on it, whether the technology is just one part of the mission or, worse yet, a critical part of the overall mission.
If you have a technology development program that consistently pushes the state of the art in predictable ways then its perfectly reason to bet the farm on that trend continuing. Starting development of systems that require a certain level of affordable computer processing that will only become practical once the project goes into production is a perfectly good example.
But NASA doesn’t have a systematic technology development program. So when they plan missions they have to use whatever technology they’ve got.. if they’re going to throw in something experimental it has to be in a role which doesn’t jeopardize the overall mission.
Of course, last time I said this to Spudis he made a non-sequitur.. in effect suggesting that the entire purpose of the VSE was to do ISRU technology development, with humans, on the Moon, which I assumed I simply must have misinterpreted.. but when I asked for clarification, he reiterated. So as I’ve said in these pages before, I give up on that crazy duck.
The point is that the technology is undeveloped, so you can’t base a mission on it
Trent, I quite agree with you here. NASA should certainly not be doing development for any missions or “infrastructure” or anything else of the kind based on lunar propellant ideas. Or based on any other futuristic ideas or hypothetical technologies for that matter. The issue for me at least is whether future applications (based on conservative estimates of real markets, such as I have outlined above, not based on hypothetical markets or on NASA’s own supposed future development or use) justifies NASA spending research dollars to help advance technologies needed for lunar polar ice extraction, for example microchemical processing in space environments, and for that question I believe the answer is yes. Kirk has also convinced me that research dollars would be great for MXER or similar as well, but it would be equally obnoxious for NASA to fund the development much less the operation of a MXER infrastructure. Development is the job of real markets, not of political money pretending that it is creating real markets.
BTW, I’m sorry I keep having to use phrases like “real markets” and “real commerce”, but the euphemization of our language by government bureaucrats and contractors trying to pretend that what they do is no different from what natural markets do forces me to use these phrases to make clear that I am not talking about government contracting, I am rather talking about what markets would do in the absence of government money. Anybody who does not understand the very broad distinction here between natural markets and fixed-price government contracts needs remedial study of economics ASAP. It is disgusting beyond foul words that we have some space activists putting great energies into confusing these extremely different kinds of economic relationships.
As for the difference between lunar propellants and He3, the market for flights from LEO to GEO is quite real, whereas whether an economical fusion reactor based on He3 can be made to work, and if so when, even if He3 were free, seems to be quite hypothetical. If any research money is justified in this area it would be to make a He3 reactor work at substantially greater than break-even — a job for the DOE not NASA — and only after we get that to work worry about the relatively easier task of He3 mining research.
It should go without saying, but alas must be said, that none of this justifies anything remotely resembling the HLVs, manned lunar bases, or other extravagant rituals out of the pages of 1950s Collier’s magazines that the faithful keep trying to find new justifications for.
In summary, my discussions of these potential future technologies in a political context are to inform decisions about where to put research money, not about where to put development money. Outside of military applications that latter decision is a job only real markets can do well. That many other space activists want to turn these kinds of ideas into central planning for future government-funded civilian development is an extremely unfortunate legacy of over fifty years of having an economically unaccountable socialist space program.
But NASA doesn’t have a systematic technology development program.
They used to. I was part of it for eight years. And it was going very well. That tether video you saw was a small part of it. But Griffin killed the technology program along with every other form of technology development in his quest for ATK’s rocket.
But NASA doesn’t have a systematic technology development program. So when they plan missions they have to use whatever technology they’ve got.. if they’re going to throw in something experimental it has to be in a role which doesn’t jeopardize the overall mission.
Trent, that strains credulity. While I grant NASA may have in the past or future, have missions that are so important that they can’t risk the success of those missions on untried technology, most NASA missions are not important enough. The VSE is a great example. I wouldn’t go as far as Spudis does in claiming that the VSE was ISRU development, but to be blunt, if the VSE (or any other systematic attempt to explore the Solar System) doesn’t have ISRU development as a key focus of the program, then it is a waste of money and resources.
Edward, you beat me to it (and said it better than I ever could.)
It would be wonderful if there was some resource that made obvious economic sense to go after, but if there isn’t the assumption that it makes no economic sense to go is bullcrap (becoming my favorite word lately.)
Some economic activities have to be bootstrapped (after which people will tell you it was obvious all along when it wasn’t.)
Perhaps it makes no sense to put a two billion dollar (which includes the cost of getting it to orbit) general use spaceship in Earth orbit from off the shelf parts today so nobody is going to do it. But if that ship were parked in orbit it could be operated profitably (certainly if you discount the sunk costs.)
No colony anywhere makes economic sense. But once there you have economic activity (like a lot of places here on Earth.)
Earth is the cradle of mankind, but eventually you have to leave the cradle. — spoken by the Russian father of space (paraphrasing, too lazy to look up the exact quote.) This still is the most compelling argument to just do it. In my experience, justification is often an afterthought and even makes sense in some cases (ok, some will be appalled by that thought, even me, but it’s still true.)
Recently I’ve been disabused of the concept of intrinsic value. Value is determined by people and can be different for each. Any attempt to say something is not economical has to consider it may be given different assumptions. It doesn’t matter if most people put zero or negative value to something if someone with the resources and will puts positive value to it and goes for it. That’s the key that makes the argument.
Perhaps the Fermi paradox can be explained because all aliens are good economists?
Jim,
[[[Thomas, if a lunar development corporation is needed then why aren’t you circulating a business plan among potential investors?]]]
I am afraid your question makes no sense. Why would private investors want to see a business plan for a government corporation? The only thing they would be interested in would be a prospectus when its starts to issue project specific bonds, and that is a ways done the road.
Tom
Kirk,
[[[But Thomas (and I’ll really not trying to be difficult about this) what lunar resource can we postulate might have net present value here on the ground?]]]
Recent findings of ice would indicate water would have potential, as well as oxygen extract.
However keep in mind a government owned Lunar Development Corporation is more of a funding mechanism that enable nations to pool their resources to build infrastructure, like communication systems, navigation systems, EM L1 station, lunar surface base(s) more efficiently then if each built its own., making a lunar return sustainable. The infrastructure created then lowers the cost for commercial firms to develop lunar resources.
Imagine mining the American west before the government surveyed it, the U.S. Army set up outposts, and the government sponsored telegraph and railroad systems were built. Imagine the huge barriers a firm would have to overcome. The only resource that was worth it was gold mining and then only if it was rich enough to mine with pick and shovel and transport out on a pack animal. The equivalent of someone bringing back some lunar rocks to sell to collectors. The industrial development of the west only begin after the infrastructure was in place to enable it. That would be the mission of the Lunar Development Corporation. The closest analogy would be the Alaskan Railroad.
Tom
Googaw, you seem to be confusing technology development (continuing testing to the point at which it is ready for deployment in an operational system) to system development (the development of said operational system). The former is perfectly appropriate for NASA to do (as its predecessor NACA did). It is the latter that has been disastrous for the agency, or at least for those who want to see space itself affordably developed.