In this post, some have expressed skepticism about comparisons between marine hardware and space hardware. Fair enough (and amusing that such a minor item out of the post has consumed all of the discussion about it).

Here’s one that will be harder to argue with. XCOR Chief Engineer Dan DeLong has experience in both worlds, and offers this little tale:

In the mid 1960s, the U.S. Navy decided to upgrade its capability to rescue crewmen from a stricken submarine. The McCann diving bell had been in service for over 30 years and had severe operational drawbacks. A new program to develop a submersible that would perform far better was started. The Navy contracted with Lockheed Missiles and Space, and the two Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicles were created. The first DSRV was built for $41 million . The two DSRVs performed well in trials (they have never been called to do their primary mission) and are still in service today.

A decade later, the British Royal Navy decided it also wanted such a capability, but it did not have the money to commission copies of the US Navy boats. So the Royal Navy went to Vickers Oceanics (now part of British Aerospace) who were in the business of supporting North Sea oil drilling operations with manned submersibles. Vickers and the Royal Navy agreed to have a new boat built that would serve commercial purposes in everyday life and be reconfigured for the occasional Royal Navy rescue mission. (One could argue that such a dual-purpose boat would be more expensive than a simpler, single purpose boat.) Vickers contracted construction to a U.S. company that built commercial oil field submersibles, Perry Oceanographics. The boat performed well as the Vickers VOL-L1 for both commercial oil drilling support and occasional practice rescue operations for the Navy. Perry?s sale price was $750K including profit .

Why $41 million for DSRV-1 and less than $1 million for the VOL-L1? They perform the same mission, though details are different. DSRV is bigger and dives somewhat deeper, but these are small differences. I firmly believe the difference lies in the types of organizations that designed and built the boats. DSRV was started assuming a particular cost, and the program lived up to expectations. The government customer and its traditional contractors all agreed on the size and scope of the job before starting. The Perry boat came from a different world; a world of commercial profit and loss, a world where getting the job done is the primary requirement. Perry was in the business of building similar boats at the rate of about one per year for the previous decade.

I spent four years designing prototype and one-of-a-kind hardware for the U.S. Navy as an employee of Westinghouse Ocean Research and Engineering Center in Annapolis, MD. I then went to Perry Oceanographics and spent six years doing similar things for the commercial world. I believe that a similar difference exists between the current space launch industry and what could be done if cost and mission performance were the real priorities.

More-than-occasional commenter Chuck Divine has a more extensive first-hand report from the panel discussion on space policy in Georgetown a few weeks ago.

Continue reading Georgetown Space Policy Panel Report →

Partly due to a paucity of time in which to post, and partly out of a desire to broaden the opinion bases here, Transterrestrial is becoming a group blog. I’ll still be posting, but there should be more content here as a result.

The first two victims that I’ve signed up are Allen Thomson and Andrew Case. Unfortunately, Dr. Case has a family emergency that’s taking him out of internet range, so we may not hear from him for a week and a half or so, but in general keep an eye out for new talent here (better, in all cases, than your humble correspondent).

[Update on Wednesday evening]

A commenter asks if I can provide some background to the new posters. I could, but I think that they could do so much better than I, and I expect that they’ll do so in their initial posts. Just keep sitting on the edge of your seats, folks…

[Shrug]

Unless they say that Marvin wants to negotiate before we go up there and kick his scrawny Martian butt for sabotaging all of our probes, I’ve little interest.

I’ve been very busy (though I’ll have a little more time now), but even if I were posting at full speed, space science just doesn’t scratch my itch, and I hope that people don’t come here in expectation of either excitement or profound thoughts on the subject.

My interest is in getting earth life into space, not looking for non-earth life. If all they say manana is that there’s water on Mars, that’s not news. We’ve known it for years. If they say they’ve found amino acids, that’s more interesting, but no more so to me than, say, the discovery of some new form of life on the ocean bottom.

[Shrug]

Unless they say that Marvin wants to negotiate before we go up there and kick his scrawny Martian butt for sabotaging all of our probes, I’ve little interest.

I’ve been very busy (though I’ll have a little more time now), but even if I were posting at full speed, space science just doesn’t scratch my itch, and I hope that people don’t come here in expectation of either excitement or profound thoughts on the subject.

My interest is in getting earth life into space, not looking for non-earth life. If all they say manana is that there’s water on Mars, that’s not news. We’ve known it for years. If they say they’ve found amino acids, that’s more interesting, but no more so to me than, say, the discovery of some new form of life on the ocean bottom.

[Shrug]

Unless they say that Marvin wants to negotiate before we go up there and kick his scrawny Martian butt for sabotaging all of our probes, I’ve little interest.

I’ve been very busy (though I’ll have a little more time now), but even if I were posting at full speed, space science just doesn’t scratch my itch, and I hope that people don’t come here in expectation of either excitement or profound thoughts on the subject.

My interest is in getting earth life into space, not looking for non-earth life. If all they say manana is that there’s water on Mars, that’s not news. We’ve known it for years. If they say they’ve found amino acids, that’s more interesting, but no more so to me than, say, the discovery of some new form of life on the ocean bottom.

The San Francisco Chronicle has some positions on space policy from the presidential candidates.

Sen. John Edwards: “I am a strong supporter of our space program. It reflects the best of the American spirit of optimism, discovery and progress. A manned mission to Mars is in the American tradition of setting ambitious goals for exploring space, but we must be able to pay for the program.”

What does that mean? Sounds like he’s saying it would be a nice thing to do if we can afford it, but he doesn’t know whether we can, and it wouldn’t necessarily be a priority of his to find a way to do it. And of course he focuses on the mission to Mars, with no hint of an understanding of broader issues or purposes.

This isn’t a statement that’s going to gather any significant support from the space activist community (not that it’s an important voting block). He’s just trying to avoid taking an actual position.

Sen. John Kerry: “Our civilian space program represents a great
opportunity for scientific research. Sending a person to Mars is a great mission worthy of a great nation like America. Given the Bush budget deficit, it is imperative that we balance funding for a manned mission to Mars against critical domestic needs as well, such as education and health care.”

Again, hardly a forthright declaration of intent, and again, the focus is on sending someone to Mars. And again, no sophistication or nuance, or indication of an understanding of the issues.

Also, it betrays either a fundamental ignorance of budgetary matters, or disingenuousness (you can guess where my money would be), because it implies that the budgets for space, and education and health care are somehow comparable, and that there is a scale on which we could place space on one side, and the social programs on the other, and it would be roughly balanced. The reality, of course, is that you could pay for a mission to Mars with a single month’s expenditure on those other items, and get a lot of change.

You could fund an invigorated space program with a tiny fraction of the education and health budgets, but if you took all the funding going into federal space activities and put it into education and health, it would hardly be noticed.

Both Kerry’s and Edwards’ statements are empty motherhood, but Kerry’s seems more cynical to me.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich: “An International Space Station in Earth orbit is a far more practical launch platform than a base on the moon. So, if we as a nation decide to send manned missions to Mars, I would not support construction of a lunar base. In regard to space exploration, we are faced with an unprecedented national deficit and a war without end, both of which will force this nation to abandon many hopes, dreams and aspirations, including space exploration, if allowed to continue.”

I actually like Kucinich’ position better. It seems much more honest.

I don’t agree with it, and he’s technically wrong, but it looks like he’s actually given the matter some thought, in the warped mindset in which he lives, and he actually has a position. It sounds as though he’d actually try to fund something (albeit at the expense of the Pentagon budget).

Al Sharpton: No response.

No surprise. No disappointment, either, except that he might have said something amusing.

President Bush: No response.”

No need for one. He’s on record as of January 14th what his space policy is.

From a purely space policy standpoint, I think that George Bush is the best candidate. His policy’s not perfect, but it’s a vast improvement over that of Clinton, and either Kerry or Edwards would be likely to return to a more Clintonesque policy, with emphasis on jobs and international cooperation, and a lack of interest in actual accomplishments. To the degree that the president’s policy is a good one, they can almost be counted upon to reverse it simply because it’s his, and there’s nothing in either of their stated positions here to indicate that their replacement would be an improvement in any way.

The San Francisco Chronicle has some positions on space policy from the presidential candidates.

Sen. John Edwards: “I am a strong supporter of our space program. It reflects the best of the American spirit of optimism, discovery and progress. A manned mission to Mars is in the American tradition of setting ambitious goals for exploring space, but we must be able to pay for the program.”

What does that mean? Sounds like he’s saying it would be a nice thing to do if we can afford it, but he doesn’t know whether we can, and it wouldn’t necessarily be a priority of his to find a way to do it. And of course he focuses on the mission to Mars, with no hint of an understanding of broader issues or purposes.

This isn’t a statement that’s going to gather any significant support from the space activist community (not that it’s an important voting block). He’s just trying to avoid taking an actual position.

Sen. John Kerry: “Our civilian space program represents a great
opportunity for scientific research. Sending a person to Mars is a great mission worthy of a great nation like America. Given the Bush budget deficit, it is imperative that we balance funding for a manned mission to Mars against critical domestic needs as well, such as education and health care.”

Again, hardly a forthright declaration of intent, and again, the focus is on sending someone to Mars. And again, no sophistication or nuance, or indication of an understanding of the issues.

Also, it betrays either a fundamental ignorance of budgetary matters, or disingenuousness (you can guess where my money would be), because it implies that the budgets for space, and education and health care are somehow comparable, and that there is a scale on which we could place space on one side, and the social programs on the other, and it would be roughly balanced. The reality, of course, is that you could pay for a mission to Mars with a single month’s expenditure on those other items, and get a lot of change.

You could fund an invigorated space program with a tiny fraction of the education and health budgets, but if you took all the funding going into federal space activities and put it into education and health, it would hardly be noticed.

Both Kerry’s and Edwards’ statements are empty motherhood, but Kerry’s seems more cynical to me.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich: “An International Space Station in Earth orbit is a far more practical launch platform than a base on the moon. So, if we as a nation decide to send manned missions to Mars, I would not support construction of a lunar base. In regard to space exploration, we are faced with an unprecedented national deficit and a war without end, both of which will force this nation to abandon many hopes, dreams and aspirations, including space exploration, if allowed to continue.”

I actually like Kucinich’ position better. It seems much more honest.

I don’t agree with it, and he’s technically wrong, but it looks like he’s actually given the matter some thought, in the warped mindset in which he lives, and he actually has a position. It sounds as though he’d actually try to fund something (albeit at the expense of the Pentagon budget).

Al Sharpton: No response.

No surprise. No disappointment, either, except that he might have said something amusing.

President Bush: No response.”

No need for one. He’s on record as of January 14th what his space policy is.

From a purely space policy standpoint, I think that George Bush is the best candidate. His policy’s not perfect, but it’s a vast improvement over that of Clinton, and either Kerry or Edwards would be likely to return to a more Clintonesque policy, with emphasis on jobs and international cooperation, and a lack of interest in actual accomplishments. To the degree that the president’s policy is a good one, they can almost be counted upon to reverse it simply because it’s his, and there’s nothing in either of their stated positions here to indicate that their replacement would be an improvement in any way.