Category Archives: Space

Political Commentary, Space

Lori Garver

7 Comments

She’s the keynote speaker this morning at the ISPCS in Las Cruces. I’ll try liveblogging the speech.

The kind of energy at this conference makes it great to be out of the Beltway and among friends. Had to decide whether to accept, because she has developed a reputation for favoring commercial and personal spaceflight. Top ten reasons she decided to accept invitation (sorry missed some — she went too fast):

10. Since being sworn in, spoken at AIAA, AIA, other places and has always gone.

9. Alan (Stern?)would have been alternate and she didn’t want him to make another gaffe (inside joke?).

6. Bipartisan law now endorses commercial crew for ISS

5. Lot of heat, but this conference provides some light

4. Gets to greet Governor Richardson and Richard Branson tomorrow

3. Someone needs to keep an eye on where the tax dollars are going for this commercial stuff

1. Has been an uphill battle, and it’s your strength/commitment that gets her by

President proposed dramatic policy shift, and a significant amount of it has been signed into law. Not going to rehash, because we all know it. It is a bipartisan bill, and that deserves recognition in these times, leading up to tense political months leading up to one of the most important election in our lifetimes. NASA received increases proposed by administration in these fiscal times, and was supported by a broad coalition of big industry, startups, with major campaign by Space Frontier Foundation and Space Access Society. A commercial competition is going to be the primary means of transferring crew to the ISS. Think how far we’ve come. Remember the challenges of just allowing Dennist Tito to get into ISS when he arrived on a Russian vehicle. NASA had made calls to Russia to try to prevent that, and it was less than ten years ago. Ten years ago, when I was training to fly on Soyuz, no NASA astronaut had done so, and now it’s common. Gets us started developing technologies needed to open up space and contribute to growth of nation. Recognize that it was a compromise, and many see it as a dramatic shift. Debate in Congress demonstrates that the program inspires passion across party lines, and appreciates congressional support. Substantial increase in space science and earth science, and education to inspire future engineers and explorers. Will start a new transportation industry and start new heavy lift. COntinue COTS and CCDev, continue KSC upgrades to expand numbers and kinds of customers that we can serve.

1.3B over three-year period was a lot more than we have spent in the past. Requested more, but chairman has committed to six years instead of five. Asking how much we spent on Alt Access in 90s (answer from Brett Alexander — 10 billion). This is just the beginning. Critical milestones before work can even begin. Have to provide market assessment, set of best practices and processes for developing this, and human rating requirements. Starting a new show on NASA TV this fall. Lori Garver, Bureaucracy Buster in a silver suit. Just joking. Want to support the success of a viable industry to provide access for commercial crew and cargo. Have to assure ourselves that we can trust our precious astronauts to private industry. Going to be hard for us, but we’ve done it before (e.g., trusted commercial launchers for one-of-a-kind spacecraft to Pluto). We need to focus on what the government does best. Need to do a better job of what government will do, while seeding a new segment of the economy creating productive jobs for decades to come. Hope to procure LEO transportation as a service and not own the system. Part of a broader program for commerce, including expanding experiments on ISS and help create more markets, and non-governmental markets by demonstrating benefits at ISS at government expense, but not compete with other providers. Make NASA investment in buyers, starting a non-profit organization to stimulate use of ISS, not new idea, but going to implement it. Plan to extend ISS for at least another ten years. Will start competitive procurement phase. Transportation is critical, but so is ISS piece. Not often that industry has a chance to create a new global market. Going to buy data from companies going to the moon, and hope that we don’t need to develop and launch every mission for ourselves. Need to not keep fighting wars of the past, but prepare for wars of the future, and same with the space program. Need to keep enabling capabilities, including expanded partnerships with other government agencies, private sector and other countries. Look at X-Prize and kinds of things that Peter Diamandis has been doing for years. Tomorrow we’ll see a new spaceport dedicated. Was asked to be on board of advisors of X-Prize, but she learned a lot more from them than they did from her. She got Goldin to attend the kick-off in Saint Louis, and helped with credibility, while people were advising him not to. She helped get initial funding in a one-hour meeting and wishes all her hours were so productive.

Want to turn routine activities to private sector, but hard to see transporting people to space as routine. Every astronaut is brave and every payload precious. Has to be a true partnership, and NASA needs to recognize that just because you don’t wear a NASA badge, and your investors need a return, and your jobs are not secure, this is still important. Not ceding space program to anyone, but expanding it. Funding Google lunar prizes technologies, seeding suborbital industry. Being focused on grand challenges that NASA working with others can help us reach. Make space part of humanity’s natural environment, routine economical and safe. Manage space as a natural resource, manage it as we do on earth, though with higher bar. Portable and economic energy on demand in space. Third, blaze trail to universe, extend limits of humanity’s knowledge and capabilities as far as they’ll go. Will christen Spaceport America runway tomorrow, and it’s not a federal program. Lot of challenges ahead. Must come together as a community, stop talking about old versus new, and established versus emerging. Perhaps most important was the broad coalition that emerged from recent bill passage. Fight has been stressful. Goldin’s criticism of her was that she may like to be liked too much. Golding told her today that she may have overreached. Cannot turn weapons on each other. In our foxhole, we have a mutual enemy — the deficit. We came together, and need to do everything we can to keep it moving forward.

First met Peter, Todd and Bob while at NSI in 1985, met Gary Hudson in 1986 (with actual groupies sitting at his feet), traveled for the first launch of Deke’s first licensed vehicle, came to the DC-X launch in 1993 (brought her son who’s now in Colorado College), led studies at NASA on ways to incent the private sector, David Gump was one of her first paying sponsors when she was going to be Mom in space, still has shirt with Radio Shack logo. Learned marketing tip from Lance Bass. Thinks that her work over the years has been pretty balanced. First worked for John Glenn, then NSI, everyone thought in merger that she was industry stooge, remembers Tumlinson telling her that he was starting new organization because NSS was too wedded to status quo. Sierra Club versus Greenpeace (or Earth Firsters). How to merge the histories, the brain trust that is the space community? Will only succeed if we utilize all of our resources. Can’t imagine more exciting time to be in the space community, and looks forward to our thoughts and comments.

Questions. What is vision for accomplishment of commercial crew to keep program sold in Congress.

NASA has to meet initial milestones in the next ninety days. You need to work closely with us to develop successful acquisition strategies. Need all comers, competition that allows strength to come forward.

How does investing hundreds of millions of dollars in new space better than in established industry? Boeing et al can do commercial, too.

Issue is not who, but how. Can’t continue cost plus, must develop and set requirements up front. Hope and expect both large and small companies to be bidding. A little tough to take criticism of hundreds of millions of dollars when we’ve spent billions in traditional ways with continued failure.

How will NASA do this without overbearing amount of oversight.

Recognize that this is heart and soul of agency, and have a lot of experience, and are trying to bring it to bear while allowing innovation and efficiency of private sector without watchers watching watchers watching watchers. Space Act Agreements for COTS have worked incredibly well, and want to build on those lessons.

See a need to train the NASA work force for new directions?

You bet. All working COTS have consistently said that all sides were working as a team. More than halfway through the day before she realized on a SpaceX tour that several people were badged NASA. Have to call NASA on things like “what size will office be for commercial crew.” Have the law and intent to do it and do it well, and can’t succeed without you.

Why not execute COTS-D options to close gap?

Not sure. Everything is a compromise, hard to see why we didn’t just do that. We didn’t storm the Hill, burn down the House. Wanted to work with existing contractors to try to preserve assets from half a century. Even after Augustine Report (still don’t understand how that panel could be maligned for being in the tank for commercial) said that commercial crew was the best way to close gap, still amazing how hard it was to get it established in policy and law. Wanted a new competition for crew, and not just extend existing COTS contractors.

Where do we lead and not lead and share technologies? Haven’t figured out yet what to keep and what we can and will do ourselves in government and not immediately transfer to private sector, and how to work internationally.

Question about China. Objectives were purely to meet and get to know leaders and members of the Chinese space community. Just about relationships, and very beginnings. Satisfied with outcome.

What about Russian/Energiya taking over Sea Launch (which is in bankruptcy).

Getting a briefing next week. Sea Launch has never been a US entity. Doesn’t concern us as long as we’re there, too. Need to develop competitive commercial market that can win back business, rather than restricting others. We’ve learned it’s less about keeping others down than sprinting to stay ahead. Want to pass the baton on some things, as you sprint ahead, but all of us sprint out into the universe.

Business, Space

Armadillo

11 Comments

Neil Milburn just showed video of a flight to about a mile in altitude, with deployable legs. I think they have a little too much compliance in them, though. It did a cute little bounce after what looked like a slightly hard landing. Talking about a “tube” vehicle, fifteen-inch diameter, that will be useful for testing out avionics. It’s interesting to see that both Masten and Armadillo’s new vehicles have aeroshells.

Business, Space

Bigelow

27 Comments

“No company on the face of the planet knows more about these expandable habitats than we do.” 185,000 square foot expansion of facilities in North Vegas for production, not R&D. Clients are corporate and “sovereign client.” Up to fifty countries interested in this. Talked about meeting with the Chilean astronaut corps, who sat in one chair in his office. A lot of pent-up demand for smaller countries to get into space in some way other than NASA and Russia. Coming out with client leasing guide in middle of November. Have been cautious about shallow pocket books in the recession, so have expanded menu items from seven to eighteen, for more flexibility in amount of time and volume clients can lease. Using a real-estate model. Are offering financing. View themselves as wholesaler, so have no problems with reselling or subletting, as long as users meet minimum requirements. Thinking farther out, look to moon as stepping stone to Mars. Would like to see Delta IV upgraded to seventy-eighty ton vehicle.

Business, Political Commentary, Space

Private Space Station Progress

10 Comments

Bob Bigelow was at the reception last night. So was Leonard David, who got him to spill the beans on his “sovereign clients.” I think that Mike Gold makes an important point:

While countries in Asia and Europe take commercial advantage of space, “my fear is that this could become yet another extremely lucrative economic opportunity that is engendered here … and then shipped overseas,” Gold cautioned. “The U.S. Congress should spend less time questioning the business case of the commercial market. They need to spend more time trying to figure out how to grow that market and ensure that it happens here in the United States.”

With their blinkered “NASA must develop, own and operate its own vehicle” mentality, they are unwittingly aiding commercial space — in Russia.

Administrative, Space

Off To Las Cruces

To the ISPCS. Probably no posting until tonight.

[Late evening update]

Well, I made it, and made it to a great reception sponsored by Spaceport Sweden, with Absolut, whole salmon, herring, shrimp, cheese, and other healthy food. No Swedish bikini parachute team, but most of the spaceport people were women.

Off to bed now, for a busy symposium tomorrow.

History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Space History

RIP, Outpost

12 Comments

And RIP, Apollo mentality:

The Outpost was an icon of the previous generation of NASA – test pilots, rough-and-tumble guys who blazed trails into outer space with their grit and determination. Or so the story went – when you delve deeper into the details, you find out that really it wasn’t their grit at all – the Right Stuff that we all know so much about really had very little to do with humanity reaching space. The world, America, even NASA allowed the myth to continue because it made much better press – some superhuman beings stretched us from the ordinary to the extraordinary. To glamorize the engineers who actually made it happen: how boring!

Unfortunately, that view was allowed to persist long after it was useful. Today’s NASA is hampered by many forces; one of the most detrimental is the crew office. The crew office is the greatest bastion of the Space Ego, where test pilots, sports heroes, and other mythical creatures can take refuge in perceived greatness.

Time to let go of the Cold-War past, and face a bright new free-enterprise future.

[Update Sunday afternoon]

A lot more (depressing) discussion in comments at NASA Watch. What this comes down to (a recurring theme here) is that space isn’t important. If it were, we’d fix things.

[Bumped]

[Update a few minutes later]

I think that this is related. As far as I’m concerned, shrinking the astronaut office is a good thing — they’ve had too many for years. And what they’ve really had too many of (with exceptions, of course) is people with attitudes like this:

Ross personally does not like the idea of turning to commercial providers to fly astronauts to the International Space Station.

“My personal druthers are to keep the program totally within NASA like we’ve done in the past – the vehicle, the launch team, control, everything – because I know, I’ve seen, how difficult it is to do and I’ve seen what happens when you don’t pay attention to details,” he continued. “Even as hard as we’ve tried to pay attention to details, being what I will call a professional flight launch team, and processing team and flight crew team and flight control team, we still miss things.

“We’re going to have some people that are very much novice in what they’re doing, and trying to do things as inexpensively as possible to make a profit and we’re now going to be putting our crewmembers onto those vehicles and trusting them to launch them safely and that concerns me,” he adds. “You can do it. I’m not going to say that you can’t. It all depends on how much insight, oversight, control, leverage that NASA is given in the overall process. That’s the big key to it,” Ross said.

I grow increasingly weary of the oft-repeated (and much too oft-repeated in the last year) canard that private transportation providers will cut corners and be unsafe because they have to make a profit. The other one is that NASA somehow has some magical expertise and insight that private industry doesn’t have into human spaceflight safety, when in fact much of that, to the degree it exists is in private industry at places like USA and Boeing (who is building a commercial capsule).

Last time I checked, Southwest Airlines had a perfect safety record. Last time I checked, it was one of the most, if not the most profitable airline. And they seem to do both without any oversight by the “professional flight launch team” at NASA. Because, you know, those at Boeing and SpaceX and other places (many of whom are NASA veterans), are just “amateurs.” By these peoples’ theory, Southwest should be killing passengers every week or so. Why don’t they?

Gee, could it be because that they know that killing your customers is bad for business, and that if you go out of business, you don’t make any profits? On the other hand, the agency that not only hasn’t had to worry about profits, but had so much vaunted expertise in human spaceflight, and “knew what they didn’t know,” destroyed two multi-billion dollar Shuttle orbiters, and killed fourteen astronauts, while spending untold billions of dollars of other peoples’ money in apparent futility to make them “safe.” And each time that happened, the agency was rewarded with budget increases and new programs, which they then proceeded to screw up.

So you tell me, who has the more useful incentives, in terms of both cost and safety?

Mind, I’m not complaining that they kill people occasionally — this is a new frontier, and people are going to die. What I’m complaining about is that they’re spending so much money (and again, other peoples’ money) to do so, for so few results.

Space

Two Weeks To Go

3 Comments

An email from the executive director of the Space Studies Institute:

Space Manufacturing 14 begins two weeks from today, with pre-registration and the Friday night round table at the Sheraton Sunnyvale Hotel. The full agenda is posted on the website.

Today is the last day to book hotel rooms online.

After today, please call the Sheraton Sunnyvale sales manager direct at 408-542-8284 and ask for the Space Studies Institute group rate.

A reminder: Tickets for the Saturday night dinner event are extra. We hope you will join us for a talk by Prof. John Lewis about Asia’s Road to the Moon.

Register here.

Warning: I’m planning to attend.

Political Commentary, Space

Back To The Moon

46 Comments

People are making a big deal of the latest story that Buzz Aldrin has seemingly changed his mind since April about the need to go back to the moon:

Aldrin believes NASA should move in stages toward a manned mission to Mars, by building outer space fuel stations and developing the moon. He said NASA has already spent hundreds of millions researching the projects, and their investment should be utilized — as recommended by Norm Augustine, former chairman of the Pentagon’s Defense Science Board and chairman of the Review of the U.S. Space Flight Plans Committee.

What’s more, Aldrin said, the American government should not simply shrug off the considerable experience we have with lunar travel. “The U.S. has the most experience in the world, of any nation, in dealing with the moon,” he told FoxNews.com. “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that flexibility is needed here.”

Back in April, this was what was reported:

Aldrin prefers that NASA forgo our moon in favor of a trip to the Martian moon Phobos and then a permanent settlement on the Red Planet itself. President Obama’s proposed $3.8 trillion federal budget request cuts NASA’s moonshot Constellation program, which has cost $9 billion over six years, instead proposing to hire private contractors to fly resupply missions to the International Space Station. It also focuses research money on new rockets that could one day be used to send astronauts into Mars, its moons or an asteroid.

So what happened? Let’s leave aside the common confusion between Constellation and returning to the moon (there are many ways to get back to the moon, almost all of them better than Constellation). Let us also stipulate that Buzz can be…mercurial (no pun intended). It could be that what he meant at the time was that he was opposed to redoing Apollo, which was essentially what Constellation did, by Mike Griffin’s own admission, and that this was misinterpreted as an opposition to going to the moon at all. But even if he has changed his mind, aren’t people entitled to do that?

This is the first time that I’ve heard him talk about “fuel stations,” but once one starts thinking about fuel stations in cis-lunar space, it’s inevitable that one will think about the moon as a source for the fuel (and oxidizer).

A couple months ago, I had (non-alcoholic) drinks with Buzz for an hour and a half after Bill Haynes’ funeral, where we bemoaned the current state of space policy. Afterward, I emailed him the link to my piece from last year at The New Atlantis. Perhaps he read it. It would account for his new-found enthusiasm for fuel stations.

Maybe I’ll give him a call and ask.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

“Decolonizing” Space?

12 Comments

I don’t know whether Barack Obama is an anticolonialist or not, but it’s quite ignorant to think that this would be an explanation for ending Constellation, which was not an “ambitious” project. An ambitious project would have been one to make it possible for us to actually colonize the moon, not redo Apollo. NASA is not being “converted” to improving Muslim self esteem, and anyone who actually understands the new policy knows that, but very few people seem to.