Category Archives: Space

Business, Economics, Space

A Propellant Depot Architecture

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Dallas Bienhoff of Boeing presented their current concepts at a recent NASA in-space servicing workshop. It’s an impressive story of the performance leverage that a depot gives you, even with Constellation. I wonder if the trade includes dry launch in the depot case?

It’s interesting that he shows how they could use a Falcon 9, and an Atlas, but that Delta is unmentioned. Of course, now that ULA has taken over, perhaps Boeing has no institutional bias any more. I assume that this is the story that he’ll be telling at Space Access in a couple weeks, in the panel that we’ll both be on.

I’d like to see more detail on the ops (one of the slides came through as black for me). How do they propose to reuse the GTO/GEO tug? Aerobraking, or impulsively? You might want to check out some of the other papers at the link to Clark Lindsey’s site as well.

Political Commentary, Space

Houston, We Have A Problem

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Want to know why it will cost somewhere between ten and a hundred times more for NASA to develop a launch system/crew module than SpaceX? Things like this:

The NASA Inspector General said that during the three-day conference in Baltimore in 2008, the 317 attendees snacked on soda, coffee, fruit, bagels and cookies at a cost of more than $62,000.

As the article notes, that comes to over sixty bucks per day per person. And the ironic subject of the conference? Procurement.

Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Another Expired Obama Position

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In this case, it’s a good thing. Back during the campaign, when John McCain proposed an automotive prize, then-Senator Obama derided it:

Explaining that “when John F. Kennedy decided that we were going to put a man on the moon, he didn’t put a bounty out for some rocket scientist to win,” Obama believes that to speed alternative fuel development and increase fuel-efficiency, the full power of the government must be combined with the “ingenuity and innovation of the American people.”

But now, Jonathan Adler says that Obama has his eye on prizes:

Earlier this month, with little fanfare, the Obama Administration took a small but significant step toward encouraging greater technological innovation. On March 8, the Office of Management and Budget issued a guidance to federal agencies on the use of challenges and prizes to spur technological innovation. This memorandum seeks to “strongly encourage” federal agencies to “utilize prizes and challenges as tools for advancing open government, innovation, and the agency’s mission.” It further explains that many federal agencies have sufficient statutory authority to create technology inducement prizes with existing funds and spending authority.

This is particularly good news for NASA, because Centennial Challenges needs an infusion of funds. Fortunately, the current NASA administration is very supportive of this sort of thing, and can be expected to support new prize activities if they get the budget for it.

Political Commentary, Space

Lunar Property Rights

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OwenRichard Garriott ponders his:

I have noted the interesting point that I am now the only private individual with a flag or stake on the soil of the moon, and thus at the least I might be able to make some claim to the land beneath it, if not even more territory.

Surely my claim would be far better than the people who are currently selling lunar plots that they have identified only via telescope photographs. Those people have no physical basis of their claim. I at least have a marker on the soil which really belongs to me.

People have countered with the fact that there are international treaties that state “No country will make territorial claims off of the earth. This was agreed to after the USA and USSR had a brief race of sending impacting probes to the moon which scattered flags,and almost began a territorial race on the moon.

But I counter with the fact, that I am not a country! Also there is international convention, that if I were to go to an unclaimed pacific island (of which there are still many) and plant a flag on the beach, international convention is that any part of that new land which I use, is mine. Not the whole island but any part I use.

I could argue that my lunar rover has a lander at one end of its 40 kilometer track and has surveyed the land with probes and cameras along the track, and the lander is at the other end, thus I have used, surveyed and modified the moon in this area. Also my lander is still in active use, it has special mirrors which are actively used to measure earth moon distance to this day.

Some have countered that when I bought the rover, the seller could not make claim to the land as they were bound by the treaty and thus could not sell the land to me.

I can counter that even if that is so, my lander is still mine. It is still in use. and thus I can still make active claim on my own without any need of the transfer of such rights!

This could be an interesting test case. Is sovereignty required to have individual property rights? It certainly seems like it would be to enforce them.

One thing that doesn’t seem likely to occur under this administration is to renegotiate the Outer Space Treaty. But that might be an interesting outcome of the political pendulum swinging back in the future.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Space

State Socialists In Space

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I use the “s” word because the “f” word seems to really upset people, even though it’s more accurate. It’s a shame that Hitler gave it such a bad name.

Anyway, Jeff Foust has an article today on the irrational antipathy of Congress, on both sides of the aisle, to private enterprise. Well, OK, it’s not all irrational. Some of it just typical rent seeking. Congressman Culberson comes off as particularly foolish, and not just for his Marine analogy:

“If the private sector exclusively owns access to space, who owns the technology? They’d have the right to sell it to any nation on the face of the Earth?” (Not easily, thanks to the export control regime that covers space technology in the US today.)

“Imagine if America had to hitch a ride on a commercial vehicle,” he continued. “If the private sector and the Chinese and Russians control access to space, they could charge us whatever they want.”

Yes. Whatever they want. As long as the price wasn’t higher than their competitors.

Why does this so-called fiscal conservative either not understand, or not believe in, how markets work?

You know who really charges “whatever they want”? A monopoly cost-plus contractor for NASA. Which is why Ares I has already cost about twenty times as much as Falcon 9, for similar capability (if it’s ever completed), with first flight for the former still years away, versus weeks away for the latter.

Business, Media Criticism, Space

More Space Misreporting

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There’s a story over at the Grauniad today about the dotcom space millionaires, featuring Elon Musk and SpaceX. As usual, the reporter doesn’t understand what Constellation is/was:

His confidence has been boosted following last month’s decision by President Barack Obama to drop funding for the Constellation programme – the Nasa spacecraft intended to replace the space shuttle, which is to be grounded later this year.

Once again, Constellation is not now, and never was, a “replacement” for the Space Shuttle. If anything, it’s a replacement for Apollo. It’s an architecture of vehicles designed to get humans back to the moon, including launchers, capsule, earth-departure stages, and lunar lander and ascent vehicle. And the only parts that are really being cancelled are the Ares I launcher and the Orion crew module, because none of the rest of it was scheduled to start development for years.

Beyond that, the reporter doesn’t seem to understand the difference between suborbital and orbital, saying that Falcon I went to suborbit. Well, the first one did, but the other four went to orbit, albeit only the last two with full success. And all five were intended to.