Sigh…

I just got this email in response to my AOL News piece:

Dear Rand:

My name is Chris Berman, author of RED MOON. (about Chinese domination of trans-lunar space) I read your article, and I have to say I disagree. In my opinion, the Obama plan was designed to basically kill NASA’s manned space program. In fact, once shuttle launches were to be ended in 2010, we would have had nothing to fly into space with period. You talk about handing space over to Russia but the Obama plan gives the keys to the Moon to China. In case you haven’t noticed, the Chinese are developing a formidable military derived space presence that will include orbital refueling stations and manned military space stations, similar to the old Soviet Almaz stations. The Ares I and V are excellent space vehicles and the Constellation program should be considered a priority in light of abundant water ice on the Moon. Yes, we need commercial space flight but these ventures are for small payloads and so far, for making sub-orbital passenger flights for well heeled tourists at $200,000 a pop. You don’t go to your local boat building company with a contract to build an aircraft carrier. I’m hoping that the Senate and the Congress get more aggressive and restore the funds for Constellation. This is a far better investment than the billions of failed stimulus dollars that have accomplished little if anything for our country. I do know at least one former NASA astronaut, Norm Thagard, and he agrees that the Obama plan was very lacking in vision.

I don’t even know where to start. Have at it in comments.

36 thoughts on “Sigh…”

  1. Errr… That’s one book I won’t be buying!

    The thing that struck me the most is where he says that, under the Obama plan, we won’t have anyth8ing to fly one the shuttle retires.

    Has this guy even looked at the Constellation program? Did he miss the fact that Constellation would not, and could not, “give us anything to fly” this year, or next, or the year after, or for years after that…

    I also was floored by the way he referred to Ares 1 and Ares V in the present tense!

    I could go on and on, but that e-mail made my dizzy….

  2. I forgot my latest characterization of the Chinese “moon race” something along the lines of “a manned mission every 3 years, give or take” I think.

    China wants the prestige of a manned space program, they want to prove to the world that they are a 1st world nation. For that they are willing to crawl at a snail’s pace into space.

    It has now been almost 7 years since China’s first manned orbital mission, they have launched 2 more flights in that time frame. In the same amount of time since it’s first manned orbital mission the US developed 3 additional manned spacecraft (Gemini, Apollo CSM, and Apollo LM) developed and put into service 3 separate booster families (Atlas, Titan, and Saturn) and launched around 20 manned orbital missions. Oh, and they landed men on the lunar surface and returned them to the Earth.

    Meanwhile, in Russia several booster designs were designed and put into service or attempted (Soyuz, Proton, N1), several iterations of manned spacecraft were made (vostok, voskhod, soyuz), space stations were developed and hardware built (almaz), and put a man in space nearly every year.

    That’s what a space race looks like. A mad flurry of activity, rapid development along every line necessary to acquire the skills and capability to push the frontier forward. None of which bears absolutely any similarity to China’s actual current space program.

    P.S. Anyone who calls the Ares I an “excellent space vehicle” either depends on the program for a paycheck or hasn’t the slightest bit of cluefulness about rocketry.

  3. And Constellation would’ve done what, exactly, with that ‘abundant Lunar water’ that was unknown at the programs inception?

    Robin is right, for now, China is more interested in the appearance of parity, of being at least IN the game, whether they’re first at anything in HSF or not. I often find myself noting in other places, that I’m not worried about a nation that can’t yet average one human flight to LEO per year.

    As opposed to the Russians, whose capabilities are well-known, and may be limited much more by money than technology or desires…

  4. Hmm…just looked up that title on Amazon, and he’s not listed as the author. Their listing for “Red Moon” is an alt-history take on Apollo 11. It actually looks like a fun read.

    I suspect this guy is self-published, still pitching agents, or (shudder) just got a pub deal and is pimping his work.

    For what it’s worth, I’ve written my own techno-thriller set in one possible version of the commercial spaceflight business…and I know TWO astronauts. In yo’ face!

    Now if I can just get a publishing deal, that’ll make me an unimpeachable authority by this guy’s standards…

  5. Heinlein: We’re ceding the Moon to the Ruskies.
    Sam: Uh, it turns out the Moon is not “the high ground” and has no current military or economic value. It could be a new world like you painted, but no one is stepping up.
    Heinlein: Just get a good public relations guys and they’ll all be singing my tune!
    Sam: Ike’s Military Scientific Industrial Complex has locked up all the good PR firms. It takes money to make money.
    Heinlein: Well start with hops from New York to Australia.
    Sam: Sorry, too much noise, schedule risk and not enough revenue. There is a private space station going up soon though. We’ve got inflatable space stations that cost less than an office building and private launchers that cost about one third of the cost of a fighter jet.
    Heinlein: Orbit’s half way to anywhere! What’s the hold up?
    Sam: Only 7 are willing to pay the freight in 10 years.
    Heinlein: We need volume! We need regular service! Why aren’t government and industry stepping in?!
    Sam: Government has been captured by people who think a big rocket is a thing of beauty to behold in itself, the more jobs and gold plating, the better. Industry has captured government and itself in a pork barrel. It’s a cargo cult and you helped found the religion. You left out the part about value for the money and government getting out of the way to make way for industry.
    Heinlein: Has common sense gone out of style? Where are all the patriots? Have we ceded Washington to the Ruskies too?

  6. Oh dear. There are so many leaps of logic in that email that it falls flat on its face.

    For one, the largest planned (not flying) Long March 5 Chinese rockets have about the same payload capability as an EELV Heavy. Not a huge monstrosity like Ares V. Anything else, other than Long March 5, is a problem beyond this generation.

    For another having water ice in the Moon is neat, but does not change the current economic obstacles to further space development. Namely that there is no economically worthwhile product from space (no spices, no cheap gold and silver, no tobacco, cotton, or whatever) which is not being exploited already. Water is something we are not in shortage of (thankfully) back on planet Earth. It will be useful for future moon colonists, as living there will be cheaper. It just does not make it *profitable*.

    Also, the Chinese themselves have said they plan to do robotic, rather than human moon exploration. Sometimes the Chinese claim they will have people on the moon, but they speak of it as a multigenerational strategic goal, without any actual work being specifically done on it. Even then you do not usually see this dialogue coming from the people actually holding the political power to do it, but some professor in a research institute.

    Von Braun and Korolev wanted manned exploration of Mars as a strategic goal, and we all know how that turned out. It is even more depressing when you look at some of the concepts back then for how to do it (nuclear-electric, or solar-electric propulsion come to mind) and compare it to the laughable technology we have today. Space propulsion technology has advanced very little since the late 1960s.

  7. Even if the Chinese decide tomorrow that they have to have a man on the Moon in the next decade, in the tried and true “failure is not an option” tradition, all they are likely to get for their trouble (if they are lucky) is a very pretty picture of their flag on the Moon. There really isn’t anything valuable enough on the Moon for a government to expend the resources needed to get there and set up a colony. Not with the current level of technology anyway.

    As a piece of fiction though, Red Moon doesn’t sound like a bad read.

  8. I do like the cover of my Create Space novel and both Peter Kokh (Moon Miners Manifesto) and Ken Murphy (Out of the Cradle) have written strong reviews of the book itself. Given the current state of the publishing industry (vampire stories get published, everything else not so much) self published books likely are the wave of the future.

    Anyway, Godzilla is correct that lunar water will reduce the cost of lunar exploration but will not generate profit. However PGMs might do that. Of course, my fictional characters also exploit another revenue stream:

    http://bit.ly/cKXqAA

    = = =

    As for “Red Moon” rather than being afraid that China will steal all the Moon cheese, perhaps we should be looking to sell Moon cheese mining equipment to the Chinese, subject to ITAR.

  9. @ Sam Dinkin

    Heinlein: Orbit’s half way to anywhere! What’s the hold up?
    Bill White: Yeah, but EML-1 is 80% of the way to everywhere!

  10. I don’t see anything about helium-3. There isn’t enough on earth to give it a try. It might be worth mining it from the moon’s surface.

  11. The stability of L4 and L5 might prove useful in the future but your revision of a great phrase to 80% is not accurate AFAIK.

    Pournelle was there with Heinlein at the beginning and has a chapter, ‘halfway to anywhere’ in his book which includes tables.

    7.6 km/sec to earth orbit.

    8.748 to solar escape (solar close orbit is higher, while everyplace else, all on the ecliptic on his table, is less.)

    So it’s actually 46.5% to anywhere, but halfway is a reasonable approximation.

    So what is the Delta V to and from the Lagrange points?

  12. [[[EML-1 to C3: 0.14 km/s]]]

    This is what makes the EM L-1 Gateway really nice in that its ideal for the transition from the chemical powered rockets needed to lift you out of the Earth’s deep gravity well to Nuclear/solar ion or plasma powered deep spacecraft. And you have the option of picking up a nice boost by using the Moon for a gravity assist on the way out.

    EM L-1 and EM L-2 are indeed Earth’s on ramp to the Solar System gravity highway system.

  13. Let China collect all the Moon chese they want, provided US owned facilities at EML-1 and/or EML-2 handle the freight forwarding business. 😉

  14. Sheesh, this Berman guy evidently doesn’t know whats up. Everybody knows the Nazis have a secret base on the back side of the moon, where they keep all their flying saucers. /sarcoff

  15. The Ares I and V are excellent space vehicles and the Constellation program should be considered a priority in light of abundant water ice on the Moon.

    The Ares V has not yet been built, and thus never tested. The Ares 1 has not yet been built and thus never tested. The “Ares 1-X” suborbital test shares no commonality with Ares-1 other than overall size, shape and paint job, and is in fact the “Potemkin 1-x”.

    Claims that Ares 1 and V are “excellent vehicles” are thus based on hot, thin air. Water ice on the moon is irrelevant to whether Ares is a good design or not (it isn’t).

  16. Thanks for the link Bill, but it seems you are overlooking.

    LEO to EML-1: 3.77.

    So you save 0.69 km/s (3.77 + 0.14 – 3.22) by not going to EML-1. It’s not much, but it certainly doesn’t get you to 80% of anywhere… it actually reduces the truth of halfway to anywhere.

    The advantage of L4 and L5 is that they are stable and might be a good place for depots, unless earth orbit results in a lower delta V cost.

  17. LEO to EML-1: 3.77.

    LEO to EML-1 can be as low as 3.2 km/s for cargo, which actually saves you delta-v.

  18. In addition, total delta-v isn’t everything, the size of the individual hops is also important. Orion from LEO to LLO with a Delta upper stage is too much, but EML-1 would work. And departure from EML-1 to destinations beyond Earth orbit (and back) is much easier than from LEO.

  19. Ken –

    If all your fuel comes from Earth and you do not intend to re-use any of your BEO hardware the trade becomes closer.

    However, even a reusable lunar lander without lunar ISRU benefits greatly from an EML depot.

    Yes, a “one-off” flags & footprints mission can be done for less delta v from LEO but the moment we seek a permanent sustainable BEO presence, the benefits of EML architectures prevail.

    IMHO

  20. As long as we get fuel depots, I’m sure we can figure out the best place to put them.

    ‘Halfway to anywhere’ is very encouraging to me. For example, it takes less delta V to get to mars orbit from earth orbit than to land on mars from its orbit. Which means, if can get a lander to earth orbit, it can take itself to mars and wait for crew to catch up.

    As Pournelle pointed out in 1979, mars needs depots in orbit as well. We need them everywhere we intend to go and aught to get started. It just makes sense.

  21. Curious.

    From the moment you set out to dream up a mission architecture to the point you start building the vehicles, how much time is spent staring at trades, championing a decision and getting the sign off and budget to proceed to the next task? For example, how much time does Goff spend pushing a particular depot proposal as opposed to actually dreaming it up and putting it on paper?

  22. Just pulled this quote from his plot summary:
    “…to lead an international collation…”

    “Collation”??? So, the heroes are off to stop the Chinese from messing with our Xerox machines on the Moon?

    There will always be a need for editors; self-publishing rapidly becomes self-limiting.

  23. Obviously tons of good comments in the thread.
    But still, every time this “omg chinese are taking teh moon!” comes up and there is “are you kidding me, they launch every once in a blue moon!” response, one would at least for a moment think “hare, tortoise”

  24. Absolutely right. The Chinese hare sleeps for a couple of years after every manned flight, while commercial companies keep moving forward, however slowly.

  25. “You don’t have anything against hares now do you?”

    Properly marinated, seasoned, and slow grilled, not at all.

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