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Even More Aldridge Thoughts

I've skimmed the report. It's got a lot of good things in it, and it's probably the best report of its kind to ever come out in terms of policy recommendations (which is to damn it with faint praise). I agree with Andrew that absolutely the most damaging recommendation in it is to initiate a heavy lift program as soon as possible, and to imply (with that photo of a Shuttle-derived vehicle on page 29) that the Shuttle would be a good basis for such a program. It provides absolutely zero support for its contention that (from page 30) "...Heavy-lift capability is a critical enabling technology for mission accomplishment and a plan for achieving this capability needs to be developed now."

A major omission in the section on engaging the public was any mention about public space travel. This was disappointing--I had hoped that they would have paid attention to Tony Tether's testimony. Apparently they didn't. Instead, they fall back on the same time-worn calls for better propaganda:

The Commission recommends that industry, professional organizations, and the media engage the public in understanding why space exploration is vital to our scientific, economic, and security interests.

The poor proles just don't seem to be able to understand why we should take money from their wallets to send government employees off to other planets so they can watch on teevee. Apparently we haven't been explaining it well enough. This time for sure!

It was particularly disappointing that in support of a repeat of this flawed approach, they chose this comment from an audience member, rather than Tony Tether's:

And so my One Urgent Request…Give Us More! Distill the Spirit and Energy of everything you’ve heard of what is Possible to its Quintessence! Make an MTV Video – An X-Box Game! Show us a human and a robot doing a “High Five” on Mars! …

Give us your Results in a form powerful enough to keep a nation of nine-year olds Awake All Night!

Knock Our Socks Off!

– Roger G. Gilbertson
“comments from the audience”
Commission’s San Francisco Public Hearing
April 16, 2004

Note that whoever transcribed this heard capital letters in it where they don't belong, making it look like a kook post on Usenet.

Somehow, the commission decided that a call for better video games and voyeurism was the key to gaining public support, while ignoring the vast numbers of the public who want to go themselves.

One other major lost opportunity (particularly sad, considering the earlier call for an easing of regulations). In the section on motivating the nation's youth to study math and science there is no mention of model rocketry, traditionally the most powerful gateway to a career in aerospace engineering, or the idiotic policies that are making it much more difficult for kids to build model rockets. It's particularly ironic that they missed this in the context of this statement, on page 43:

At present, there are insufficient methods for students to acquire hands-on experience in the scientific and technical disciplines necessary for space commerce and exploration.

A strongly worded reprimand, or at least a mention, in this report would have elevated the issue within the administration, but its absence means that it won't even be considered in the context of the new initiative.

Posted by Rand Simberg at June 17, 2004 09:54 AM

Comments

In the section on motivating the nation's youth to study math and science there is no mention of model rocketry...

This might be a good opportunity to do a little lobbying for sensible hobby rocketry regulation.

Posted by Andrew Case at June 17, 2004 10:35 AM

Rand,

I have to agree with Andrew though that the by far most important one of the kvetches is the HLV problem. I just see absolutely no need for such
a beast. Heck, we don't even neccessarily need
launchers as big as the Delta IVH to do very good
lunar space development. A little bit of on-orbit assembly, combined with the creative use of ion-tugs (which was the magic squirrel juice for my suggestion last night) can allow for truly amazingly big payloads to the Lunar surface. Even as much as 20,000lbs cargo to the lunar surface in a single landing....how much more do you really need? You could fly 10-12 passengers to the moon in that size range. I just don't get why people think we need HLVs.

Sorry to rant here--I could go on.

Posted by Jonathan Goff at June 17, 2004 10:47 AM

Check out http://www.orbitersim.com

The great thing about this sim is that it has a full blown programming api that always you to code accurate sims of current and historical rockets and spacecraft

It has a great community around it.
And it is free.

Posted by Robert Conley at June 17, 2004 10:52 AM

Check out http://www.orbitersim.com

The great thing about this sim is that it has a full blown programming api that always you to code accurate sims of current and historical rockets and spacecraft

It has a great community around it.
And it is free.

Posted by Robert Conley at June 17, 2004 10:52 AM

Actually, Tony Tether's quote is in there but its not attributed and, IMHO, it doesn't get his point. It's on page 13. Here's the context:

Public ownership of this agenda must be broad, deep, and nonpartisan. Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo astronauts did not really belong to NASA, but to the public. That was just one manifestation of public ownership of NASA during that era. We heard from many in the public and the aerospace industry how President Kennedy s challenge to land a man on the Moon affected an entire generation. One witness from the government said simply, "We all wanted to go".

The context of that quote suggests that they felt he was saying that he wanted to be there with them in the same way that we might watch a NASCAR race and think "wouldn't it be cool if we could ride along" knowing all the time that you can't. Its a subtle thing and maybe I'm reading my own bias into it, but I think there might have been a misunderstanding of the point Tony was trying to make.

Posted by Michael Mealling at June 17, 2004 11:13 AM

Ooo yes, the space shuttle video game that came out on the Atari long ago was just so riveting. How about Space Shuttle II: Attack of the Foam Debris or could otherwise be known as SRB madness.

Posted by Hefty at June 17, 2004 11:44 AM

I read someone claiming that the report contradicts itself in several places. Can anybody provide some examples?

Posted by Dwayne A. Day at June 17, 2004 12:57 PM

What does the commision mean by "heavy lift"? What in general is meant by "heavy lift"? Are we talking 100 tons payload to LEO? 30 tons payload? 20 tons? What?

Posted by Brad at June 17, 2004 12:59 PM

It's probably politically impossible to wipe out the entire shuttle infrastructure. Some sort of heavy lift craft based on shuttle components (boosters, fuel tank) seems likely to me, if only to keep all of those people employed. This is the government, after all.

Posted by Dan at June 17, 2004 01:02 PM

Jon- I don't know about Rand, but I rather like it when informed people post on topic material, regardless of whether they segue into ranting.

I'm inclined to agree that on-orbit assembly is something we need to fully suss out. The way to do that is to do lots of on orbit assembly. I don't think you really need magic squirrel juice, but ion thrusters or some sort of electric propulsion is probably a good bet, just to keep the propellant requirements under control.

Another thing that might be worth the investment is a spacedock, which could be as simple as a big truss, a hab module, and an arm which can move up and down the truss (and stationkeeping thrusters, solar panels, yada yada). It might be possible to leverage off some of the ISS design elements. Maybe not - I don't know the details of ISS design. It would be nice to recover some of the investment in ISS, though.

Posted by Andrew Case at June 17, 2004 05:01 PM

Exactly. I would note that they said "affordable heavy lift" which, while it can be interpreted in many ways, at least says they were thinking about cost. I was pleased they also mentioned we needed better spacesuits. Today it is commonly thought that on-orbit assembly is extremely difficult, so you want to minimize it as much as possible - hence heavy lift. I think it is a matter of bad equipment and inexperience. The current spacesuits are a joke, there hasn't been much work on appropriate teleoperation systems, and a specialized orbital construction area/space dock would help a lot. Most important, people need to DO IT. We're never going to get very far in space if we build everything on the ground.

Incidentally, IF you have a reusable craft, smaller isn't necessarily much cheaper than larger. IF you have a market that can use it, it makes sense to build it as large as possible. But, the emphasis should be on reusable, lift capacity only after that.

Posted by VR at June 17, 2004 05:34 PM

Andrew,

> I don't know about Rand, but I rather like it
> when informed people post on topic material,
> regardless of whether they segue into ranting.

Thanks.

> I'm inclined to agree that on-orbit assembly is
> something we need to fully suss out. The way to
> do that is to do lots of on orbit assembly. I
> don't think you really need magic squirrel
> juice, but ion thrusters or some sort of
> electric propulsion is probably a good bet, just
> to keep the propellant requirements under
> control.

The ironic thing with ion engines is that while
it cuts the number of launches and docking needed
for a give sized flight, it doesn't actually end
up lowering prices much at all. And there are
some long-term operations issues. They do seem
good for prepositioning large objects without
needing heavy lift or tons of EOR work though.
In fact, for regular flights (like say taking
passengers, travellers, etc to and from the moon),
the efficiencies of scale you can get by just
using pure-rocket systems makes the case seem
pretty solid for using them.

Ion engines would make sense for moving components
out to one of the LaGrange points, or into LUNO to
put together a staging base. They also make sense
for prepositioning landers and heavy equipment
shipping to the moon. Anyhow, that's probably
a topic best explored in a decently long article,
not just the comments section.

> Another thing that might be worth the investment
> is a spacedock, which could be as simple as a
> big truss, a hab module, and an arm which can
> move up and down the truss (and stationkeeping
> thrusters, solar panels, yada yada).

I was about to get to that myself earlier. Yeah,
assembly/refueling stations make a ton of sense.
They also allow you to remake existing markets
(such as by doing on-orbit assembly and checkout
of satellites), and make cis-lunar transportation
a lot easier because it allows you to break up the
transportation problem into smaller baby steps,
and aids in reusing equipment.

> It might be possible to leverage off some of the
> ISS design elements. Maybe not - I don't know
> the details of ISS design. It would be nice to
> recover some of the investment in ISS, though.

It's possible. You'd be amazed how many reams of
paper studies have been done in the past (as well
as some hardware). I'm sure that anyone building
an assembly node would probably try to borrow as
much knowledge (or hardware) as possible from the
different programs. Lots of lessons that can be
learned. I'm also interested in Bigelow's space
station Nautilus idea. A nice 20-ton inflatable
habitat section could form a nice part of an LEO
or L1 or LUNO transportation station. At least
with the LEO one, there seem to be enough other
possible near term markets to make something like
that feasible. As for the others, I think we'll
start without them, then add them as they make
sense......also a nice topic for further development elsewhere.......

~Jon

Posted by Jonathan Goff at June 17, 2004 05:35 PM

VR,

> Incidentally, IF you have a reusable craft,
> smaller isn't necessarily much cheaper than
> larger. IF you have a market that can use it, it
> makes sense to build it as large as possible. But,
> the emphasis should be on reusable, lift capacity
> only after that.

Not sure I agree with that. Smaller equals higher
flight rate per given launch requirement. Higher
flight rate gets you cheaper flights as your fixed
costs can be amortized over more launches. The
higher flight rate will also likely require more
vehicles which moves you quicker down the learning
curve on the manufacturing side as well.

That said, there is probably some sizes that are
"sweet spots" in the market, where going much
smaller would drive cost up, but so would going
much larger. My guess is that once the market
gets going, there may be a few sweet spots, much
like we see with airplanes today. Not everything
is done by ultra big jets, but not everything is
done by Cesna's either.

~Jon

Posted by Jonathan Goff at June 17, 2004 05:41 PM

"A nice 20-ton inflatable habitat section could form a nice part of an LEO or L1 or LUNO transportation station."
Hmm.. are you thinking inflatable structure ( folding cylinder ) _around_ the assembled structure ? Inflatable spacedock for shipbuilding ?
Zero-g shirtsleeve environment would make manned construction work so much easier.

Posted by at June 18, 2004 02:02 AM

Aldridge Commission points to the obvious problems NASA has been under for a long time -thank God a commission decided to cue the agency.

But its recommendations will require drastic changes spanning various U.S. administrations that have their own slants on 'space power politics'. So far the democratic candidate seems not to get involved proactively in the space arena, this leads me to believe the commission's recommendation if and when a democrat were to enter office will only throw Aldridge's advice into to the heap of ignored past recommendations.

I do give it high marks naturally for me, the key point HIGH PERFORMANCE NUKE POWER AND PROPULSION and acknowledgement of heavy lift capacity, massive autopiloted C shuttle cargo(LEO spacerail)needed for future LEO fuel depot construction, spacetugs, NTR/NEP nuke reactor service dockside near earth orbits. If you're serious about space human habitation exploration and commerce the commission's recommendations are a step in the right direction. NO... I don't feel the big aerospace companies should have a lock on every single contract. Small contractors need to be permitted to hustle for bids national and international. Student and training should be present for kids made readily available. Because without domestic sources of trained personnel forget going into space. If Aldridge is taken seriously I smell meaningful space jobs for those that like to hustle in space.

www.nuclearspace.com

Posted by Bruce Behrhorst at June 18, 2004 09:35 AM

Anonymous,

> Hmm.. are you thinking inflatable structure
>(folding cylinder ) _around_ the assembled
> structure ?

I was actually thinking more of an inflatable
habitat module

> Inflatable spacedock for shipbuilding? Zero-g
> shirtsleeve environment would make manned
> construction work so much easier.

Yup. I've looked into that a lot too. I have a
few ideas for how to make ridiculously huge
"dry docks", and they seem pretty feasible. While
it won't entirely eliminate the need for EVA work,
it will move some of it into an easier environment.

~Jon

Posted by Jonathan Goff at June 18, 2004 07:41 PM

Um -- corrections:

This report is one of the worst documents for policy recommendations I've ever seen. It lacks evidence and facts (unlike the CAIB report) and specifics (unlike the recent Diaz report). Just because it's written in a breezy uplifting style does not make it useful for people who actually have to plan systems.

And as for government employees getting into space -- well, apply for a job as an astronaut. A new class of folks was just accepted into a class this summer. Surprising as it may seem, the government is made up of normal Americans, too. I suspect that I would feel worse if only billionaires could get into space, rather than folks who work hard to gain the skills to become an astronaut.

Another correction: NASA was already working on changing its culture & addressing causes of previous accidents -- as so eloquently detailed in the CAIB report; already working on nuclear propulsion; and already gives 85% of its money to contractors. This commission will derail the good hard work that is currently being done (initiatives like OneNASA, which attempts to get the field centers to be more unified/collaborative, and the BST contract to address the safety culture issues and leadership problems). Sudden drastic privitization runs counter to CAIB report recommendations, which come from facts rather than political motivations.

And of course, we all know that private industry is always without safety issues, right?

Apologies for the ranting -- this ignorance is making me fume. www.nasawatch.com is a good site for covering many things, and both the Diaz report and the CAIB report are available online.

Posted by SP at June 21, 2004 10:20 PM

...already gives 85% of its money to contractors...

I don't think that they were proposing that NASA give more money to (cost-plus) contractors. They were proposing that NASA purchase services from private enterprise (and not just engineering hours).

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