Category Archives: Space

Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Inspiration Mars

10 Comments

Joel Achenbach reports on Tito’s plans.

He wants to use Cygnus, but how does he propose to enter? Guess I have to read the paper. I think he’s crazy to stake the mission on an SLS flight.

[Update a few minutes later]

Jeff Foust has a more detailed description. I think it’s crazy to rely on unbuilt NASA hardware.

[Update a while later]

This makes so little sense that I am compelled to think that it is driven by politics. I smell Boeing/LM behind this.

If I were Tito, I’d be working with SpaceX to do the mission with a dual-heavy concept, and use Dragon, not Orion. I’d order a stretch Centaur from ULA, or use two of them. I’d also bypass OSC and go directly to Thales Alenia for a PCM. The changes needed are so extensive that it doesn’t make sense to start with a Cygnus.

[Early-afternoon update]

So Tito and Taber MacCallum had a phone call with the press afterwards, and said that they couldn’t make the case close commercially, that the solutions didn’t have the margins they wanted. Question: Did they ask ULA if they could demo orbital fueling within three years? Of course, Boeing/Lockmart would never let ULA do that, which is why it would be good for the space industry to force a divestiture. You have a commercial space company that’s hamstrung by its cost-plus-contractor parents.

Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Space, Space Science

The CBO And Human Spaceflight

8 Comments

It’s not surprising at all that it would see it as a potential area to reduce the deficit (see page 74). The entire NASA budget is an option for that, in fact, as is the entire federal budget, really. But it points out how completely out to sea we are on why we’re doing it. Note the underlying assumption.

This option would terminate NASA’s human space exploration and space operations programs, except for those necessary to meet space communications needs (such as communication with the Hubble Space Telescope). The agency’s science and aeronautics programs and robotic space missions would continue. Eliminating those human space programs would save $73 billion between 2015 and 2023, the Congressional Budget Office estimates.

The main argument for this option is that increased capabilities in electronics and information technology have
generally reduced the need for humans to fly space missions. The scientific instruments used to gather knowledge in space rely much less (or not at all) on nearby humans to operate them. NASA and other federal agencies have increasingly adopted that approach in their activities on Earth, using robots to perform missions
without putting humans in harm’s way. For example, NASA has been using remotely piloted vehicles to track
hurricanes over the Atlantic Ocean at much longer distances than those for which tracking aircraft are conventionally piloted.

Eliminating humans from spaceflights would avoid risk to human life and would decrease the cost of space exploration by reducing the weight and complexity of the vehicles needed for the missions. (Unlike instruments, humans need water, air, food, space to move around in, and rest.) In addition, by replacing people with instruments, the missions could be made one way—return would be necessary only when the mission required it, such as to collect samples for further analysis—thus eliminating the cost, weight, and complexity of return and reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere.

A major argument against this option is that eliminating human spaceflight from the orbits near Earth would end
the technical progress necessary to prepare for human missions to Mars (even though those missions are at least
decades away). Moreover, if, in the future, robotic missions proved too limiting, then human space efforts
would have to be restarted. Another argument against this option is that there may be some scientific advantage
to having humans at the International Space Station to conduct experiments in microgravity that could not be
carried out in other, less costly, ways. (However, the International Space Station is currently scheduled to be
retired in 2020, postponed from an earlier decommissioning in 2015.) [Emphasis added]

There are multiple flawed assumptions in this analysis. First that the only purpose of sending humans into space is about science. Second, that it is about exploration. Third, that Mars is the goal.

If we aren’t going to develop and settle space, there is no point in sending people there, or hazarding their lives. But we never have that discussion.

[Evening update]

Seemed to be a link problem. Hope it’s fixed now, sorry.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

The Real Barriers To Exploration

12 Comments

“Ray” over at the Vision Restoration blog writes about the ridiculous discussion last week on SLS/Orion:

This past week rewarded us with a panel discussion Removing the Barriers to Deep Space Exploration. The subject of the panel turned out to be the SLS heavy lift rocket and the Orion spacecraft. Surprisingly, in spite of the title of the panel, the discussion was not about cancelling SLS and Orion to allow funding to go to the robotic precursor missions, exploration technology development, and affordable space infrastructure needed for actual deep space exploration that have largely been squashed by the SLS/Orion pair. In fact, the discussion really didn’t seem to be about barriers to deep space exploration at all. Instead, it seemed like a snugglefest of love for the expensive capsule and even more wildly expensive rocket.

I weary of even writing about it any more, it’s so unutterably absurd.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Space, Technology and Society

No, Veronique

45 Comments

The moon is not Antarctica.

Many of the “rocks have rights” crowd would like it to be, though. One of the problems with the Outer Space Treaty was that it was modeled on the Antarctic Treaty.

[Update a few minutes later]

Oh, Paul, please:

With launch costs of thousands of dollars per pound (and unlikely to come down significantly for the foreseeable future)

They are likely to come down to hundreds, or tens of dollars per pound within a decade, now that we have some actual competition and innovation happening in the industry.