…and the far one. Thoughts from Rick Tumlinson on where we go next in space policy.
Category Archives: Space
NASA Is Authorized
The president signed the bill today. As Jeff Foust notes, the main thing this does is to start the clock ticking on some reporting requirements for the agency. I assume that they’ve already been working on the analyses. I hope that they’re done and released more transparently than ESAS was.
Not Waiting For A Heavy Lifter
Some common sense from the Europeans:
“We need the courage of starting a new era,” Europe’s director of human spaceflight, Simonetta Di Pippo, told BBC News.
“The idea is to ascend to the space station the various elements of the mission, and then try to assemble the spacecraft at the ISS, and go from the orbit of the space station to the Moon. We need the courage of starting a new era.”
“What we are thinking about right now – but again we need more technical work to address this – [is] it should be a small spacecraft that goes around the Moon.”
…Learning how to assemble exploration vehicles at the ISS would also be part of this new vision.
If humans ever do go to asteroids or Mars, the scale of the infrastructure needed to complete a safe round trip could not possibly be launched on a single rocket from Earth. It will have to be sent up on multiple flights and joined together in orbit.
Gee, what a concept.
Doing this assembly at the ISS means it can be overseen by astronauts with ready access to tools if needed.
And if the crew assigned to man the deep-space mission travels up separately to the station, it would also mean all the elements for their long-duration flight could be launched without the complications of ultra-safe abort systems that complicate manned rockets.
The crew could instead ride to orbit in a simple, tried and tested rocket, such as a Soyuz, and then transfer across to their deep-space vehicle already waiting for them at the ISS.
The only problem with this is that it doesn’t address the issue of how to get back to the ISS orbit from deep space. As I said at Space Access in April, I view this as one of the fundamental problems of decoupling earth-LEO from pure space transportation. The solution will lie in either aerobraking, or cheap propellant, or some combination of the two.
But it’s nice to see people starting to think about how to make progress without waiting for a heavy lifter that will never arrive. It’s not the lack of heavy lift that has trapped us in LEO for decades. It’s the false perception that we need it.
[Update a while later]
A question in comments:
Would shifting the ISS orbit higher (now that it doesn’t need to be shuttle-reachable) be of any use here?
Not much, unless it’s a lot higher. L-1 or L-2 are much better portals to the rest of the solar system. Here’s a question — how big a launcher would it take for a direct inject of a capsule (Dragon or CST class) to L-1? The idea here would be to have a propellant depot in LEO that could deliver the propellant to L-1 by a slow ship, with a crew system to get people to/from L-1 quickly. Eventually, perhaps, the propellant could come from the moon. An alternative would be to depart to L-1 from the ISS, but not return to it from there, instead going directly back to earth. That way, you’d have a good staging area that was also relatively easy to get back to, and allow multiple expeditions without having to enter the atmosphere.
The SSI Space Manufacturing Conference
A discussion of the revival by Lee Valentine and Doug Messier. It’s coming up in less than three weeks, and I hope to attend, money/schedule permitting. I attended some in the later seventies and early eighties, but it would be my first since then. It will be a little weird for it to not be in Princeton.
First Free Flight
Virgin Galactic has released video. Interesting that they’re using a skid on the nose instead of a wheel. Makes sense from a weight standpoint, and it’s easy to refurbish or replace between flights if necessary.
[Late morning update]
I suspect that Sir Richard is exaggerating. Given all the other hype, one would think that if they were having successful engine tests, they’d invite the press for one or two.
To Boldenly Go To China
A discussion over at Slashdot. As a commenter notes, it’s not very smart politics to go against the wishes of the incoming chairman of the appropriations subcommittee. I’d really like to know what the White House thinks. I think that it’s time for Charlie Bolden to go, though, as I’ve said, it will be tough to replace him, particularly in the current heated political environment.
Congratulations To Scaled
SpaceShipTwo had it first free flight today. Obviously these tests are on the critical path to first flight, but so is the engine, and we still haven’t heard much news about that lately.
[Update a while later]
Clark Lindsey has the press release.
More Lost Moon
Paul Spudis isn’t very happy with the NASA authorization bill. I don’t think it’s great, myself, but it’s much less disastrous than the House version would have been. I agree with Clark Lindsey’s critique of Paul’s post (and not just because he quoted me).
Space Policy Foolishness
This is a sample of the kind of thing we’ll be working against next year: a Weekly Reader version of space policy, presumably from Representative Olson:
President George W. Bush inaugurated an ambitious and important plan to establish a base on the Moon by building much larger and safer rockets to take our astronauts beyond low Earth orbit. These rockets, called Ares I & Ares V, were part of a system called Constellation and they would be the backbone of a new system of vehicles capable of landing and supporting astronauts on the Moon or elsewhere in the solar system.
Mr. Obama, the candidate, announced he would cut the program and put the production of a heavy lift rocket for five years. But as the election approached, Obama changed his story to get elected and said not only had he always supported NASA & space flight but that he could and should do it better than the Republicans. Once elected Obama quickly returned to his original position and KILLED the program saying it would wait FIVE years.
Pete Olson has been working in Congress to save the space program and the jobs that go with it. Those jobs, filled by engineers, technicians, scientists and managers, are essential to the space program and if lost could never be recovered. This loss of personnel would be only a small part of the tremendous loss the entire nation would suffer as America would lose its lead in space flight. Pete Olson understands all this and working with the entire Houston delegation struggled to preserve what could be, but that was not enough.
I was, myself, dismayed to learn the program was greatly reduced in scope, but Olson explained as in a month when he expects Republicans to take the lead in the House again, that he and the others will be able to put more funding back into NASA to restore the mission. This is not the end. This is just the beginning Olson reported. I believe him.
What Pete Olson doesn’t understand about space space policy and technology would fill a middling-big library. No mention of the budget problems and schedule delays. No mention of the new technologies that will finally be funded. Nope, it’s the standard kindergarten treatment — George Bush had a wonderful plan for exploring the galaxy, bold and ambitious, and going along just swimmingly, and then that mean commie Barack Obama came along and Ended Our Space Program. It just makes you want to cry.
Is Bolden Off The Reservation?
I cannot imagine what he thinks he’s doing. He seems to be defying no only the likely chairman next year of the appropriations committee, but the White House as well. He may be a short timer in that job, and it’s hard for me to feel bad about that. The question is, who will they find to replace him that they can get confirmed in the new congress?