I'm apparently in good company in my concerns about the administration's new space policy.

...a sustained human presence on the moon, advocates say, is best achieved by harnessing the full creativity of the commercial sector.

"It is my hope that this new vision does have an ample opportunity for the commercial sector," said Courtney Stadd, NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe's former chief of staff who left the space agency for private industry in late 2003. "If it is limited to just a few astronauts exploring the moon and Mars, as we learned after Apollo 17, it will not grab and sustain public attention."

David Gump, president of Fairfax, Va.-based LunaCorp and author of the 1990 book, "Space Enterprise: Beyond NASA," agreed.

"It's up to the administration on which path it takes into the forest," Gump said. "If it welcomes private participation, life is good."

We'll find out Wednesday, if Keith is right. Or perhaps not. Even if the president makes a formal address, it would still be possible to do so without getting into the implementation details (though I would argue that this is an argument of philosophy and purpose, as much as implementation, and certainly should be specifically addressed in such a policy announcement).

If the concepts of "settlement", "general public", "development of space", "new frontier" wont outweigh "exploration, science and inspiration" in the formal statement, its a dead cause.

Hmmm... Rand, would you feel more enthusiastic about this if the Administration announced it would buy all launch services from commercial vendors? I just looked at the annual transportation requirements of some previous NASA lunar architectures:

* 1969-72: Apollo (two Saturn V launches per year on average, transporting about 250 metric tons/year to LEO)

* 1969 Space Task Group: about 770-1100t of propellant & supplies for supporting 6 astronauts on the lunar surface and 6 in lunar orbit. This plan would have required 34-48 annual space shuttle missions.

* 1984 NASA "Lunar Bases and Space Activites of the 21st Century" plan: ~630t/year supporting 18 astronauts on the Moon as well as in lunar orbit.

* 1989 Space Exploration Initiative "90-day" study: six Shuttle-C launches (=~400t) supporting a crew of eight. This total will rise to 1000t/year once manned missions to Mars begin.

* 1992 "First Lunar Outpost": 250-500t per year (=1-2 uprated Saturn V launches)

* 1993 "LUNOX" by Kent Joosten & Lisa Guerra: 2-3(?) Shuttle-C missions per year or 160-240t.

* 1995 "Human Lunar Return": 4-8 Proton, Ariane or Titan IV-class launches (80-160t)

Granted -- some of these architectures would require a heavy-lift launch vehicle. But it seems the least costly option, in terms of DDT&E, would try to utilize existing launchers such as the EELV and Ariane-5. This, in turn, would require a "spacedock" refueling node in low Earth orbit as well as partially or fully reusable space/lunar transfer vehicles. Even the 1992 FLO plan could be compatible with this, with some modifications.
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About 75-80% of the upmass will be propellant, if the LTVs utilize efficient chemical rocket engines. This means the payload itself will be cheap and hence not require launch insurance etc.. Also, no expensive upper stage will be needed. Notice that even a modest program would require 160-240t/year of cargo (approximately the same volume as *all* commercial geostationary launches + International Space Station resupply flights) while the most ambitious ones are in the 600-1000t range. That's 100 flights/year for a Delta Clipper-type vehicle although low-cost Beal or Falcon type ELVs might be a better bet in the short term. Right away, we notice that Boeing, Lock-Mart and Arianespace will receive some much-needed launch contracts for their subsidized launch vehicles. But a "U.S. Air Mail" type program would supposedly reward the lowest bidder. Current NASA studies tend to assume a launch cost per metric ton of $5-10 million/t. So there is room for improvement.

Note, in passing, that there is much more to the problem than LEO transportation costs though. The manned lunar landers listed here typically cost $0.5-1 billion per copy! CATS *alone* will not solve all our problems. Truly affordable lunar exploration won't happen until we have cheap and fully reusable RLVs *and* deep space transfer vehicles as well as propellant production/storage facilities on several places in the Earth-Moon system. This is not going to be easy, consequently I feel it would be a mistake to focus all efforts on some low-cost RLV. Far better to attack the problem from several directions

MARCU$

...would you feel more enthusiastic about this if the Administration announced it would buy all launch services from commercial vendors?

Possibly. It depends on how the procurement occurs. I'd feel a lot better about it if they demanded lower prices than were possible from Atlas or Delta, and precluded foreign vendors (not because I necessarily want them to buy America First, but because I don't want cut-rate subsidized launchers from the second world to prevent the development of true low-cost systems).

There would be no point if it simply continued to fund business as usual (aka Delta/Atlas).

As for the high cost of lunar landers, that is a strong function of the high cost of launch. I don't buy any cost estimate based on current paradigms.

Lo and behold, theres a new UPI article. For the Grand Plan, Bush will go seek help from foreign partners.
No word yet, whether he will ask the help of domestic private enterprises.

> Possibly. It depends on how the procurement
> occurs.

It's a fairly big market... Check out this page -- http://www.abo.fi/~mlindroo/spacemarkets/sld007.htm

The U.S. launched about 200-400t/year into LEO during the 1970s, 80s & 90s. A manned lunar exploration program would boost this total by a factor of two or more, depending on the scope of the effort. And the manned spaceflight-related payloads will get funded anyway, due to bureaucratic inertia, porkbarrel politics and nostalgia. If this activity were separated from the LEO transportation business while preserving compatibility with commercial rockets, it could serve as a powerful market driver.

> I'd feel a lot better about it if they demanded
> lower prices than were possible from Atlas or
> Delta,

Dream on. USAF is paying hundreds of millions to keep both launch providers afloat. If Elon Musk is willing to tackle Orbital Sciences, surely you RLV guys ought to be willing to do the same to Boeing & Lock-Mart provided the launch market seems sufficiently large?
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Anyway, the beauty of this plan is that one could start small (say 4-8 EELV launches per year) while launch costs are high. There will be a large scale lunar utilization program only if and when launch costs start to drop, though.

> and precluded foreign vendors

I would have no problems with that. Arianespace should be allowed to sell services as long as ESA is a partner in the lunar initiative, though.

> As for the high cost of lunar landers, that is
> a strong function of the high cost of launch. I
> don't buy any cost estimate based on current
> paradigms.

But the 1969 cost estimates were based on the assumption that the Shuttle would reduce launch costs to $250-$600/kg (1999 rates). That's almost as low as the expected cost of a "mature" space tourism vehicle such as Kankoh Maru ($20,000/ticket). Yet I notice the NERVA tugs would have cost more than $150 million per copy. True -- these estimates were somewhat lower than for today's equivalent NASA plans but the difference isn't *that* great.

MARCU$