Paul Spudis has some guidance for the Augustine Commission to update the 1990 report to the 2009 report, based on what we know about the moon now that we didn’t then:

what do these discoveries mean for lunar return? We now know that sustained human presence on the Moon is possible, largely because we’ve found a source of near-constant power (permanent sunlight) and a source of sustenance and rocket propellant (volatiles, including water). The robotic Clementine and Lunar Prospector missions showed us that the poles, almost completely unknown in 1990, are inviting oases on the lunar desert. There, we can extract hydrogen and oxygen to make air and water for life support and propellant to fuel rockets. The sunlit areas can generate near continuous electrical power, with regenerative fuel cells providing power for the short duration eclipse periods. Locally obtained power and consumables means that continuous human presence is possible, without the enormous expense or unproven technology of large nuclear reactors and the delivery of massive quantities of material from Earth.

The new Augustine committee should be made cognizant of these facts. The more we learn about the true nature of the Moon, the more the goal of learning to live there on a quasi-self sufficient basis appears feasible. This opens up wholly new areas of operations and commerce in space, undreamed of as little as twenty years ago. It has the potential to change the entire paradigm of spaceflight, from a narrow, government-run, science-oriented program, completely dependent upon the caprice Congressional largess to a self-sustaining, free-market program, in which NASA develops and demonstrates new technologies that open up spacefaring by many different passengers and payloads for a wide variety of purposes.

Wouldn’t that be a breath of fresh space policy air?

Dr. Griffin is telling people that there is no need to check his work. Of course not.

In comments, “Red” sums up the problems with Griffin’s approach:

Dr. Griffin doesn’t seem to be aware of what the goals of the Vision for Space Exploration are. The goal is not for NASA to build a rocket, or two rockets. The goal is not to send astronauts to the Moon, or to Mars, or to near-Earth asteroids. Here’s the goal, according to the Vision for Space Exploration:

“Goal and Objectives
The fundamental goal of this vision is to advance U.S. scientific, security, and economic interests through a robust space exploration program. In support of this goal, the United States will:
• Implement a sustained and affordable human and robotic program to explore the solar system and beyond;
• Extend human presence across the solar system, starting with a human return to the Moon by the year 2020, in preparation for human exploration of Mars and other destinations;
• Develop the innovative technologies, knowledge, and infrastructures both to explore and to support decisions about the destinations for human exploration; and
• Promote international and commercial participation in exploration to further U.S. scientific, security, and economic interests”

Note that the space exploration program is just a means to an end. The purpose is to “advance U.S. scientific, security, and economic interests”. Also notice the strong emphasis on innovative technologies, knowledge, infrastructure, and international and commercial participation. Also note that some “decisions about the destinations for human exploration” are left to the future.

To emphasize commercial participation, the document later states:

“Acquire crew transportation to and from the International Space Station, as required, after the Space Shuttle is retired from service.” (Note that “Acquire” doesn’t mean “Design, Build, and Operate”).

“Pursue commercial opportunities for providing transportation and other services supporting the International Space Station and exploration missions beyond low Earth orbit.”

The Ares-based plan has nothing to do with any of this. Unlike EELVs or new commercial launchers, Ares rockets don’t support U.S. economic interests. The’re government rockets, so they can’t capture commercial launch business, or launch commercial satellites. They also aren’t useful for U.S. national security launches or payloads. They also aren’t useful for science payloads beyond astronaut missions (Ares V class science missions are too expensive).

The Ares rocket plan doesn’t involve international participation. It takes money away from the robotic exploration program mentioned above and described in detail in the VSE. The Ares rockets are too expensive to develop and operate, and hence fail the VSE “sustained and affordable” criteria above. Ares rockets are too expensive to allow space infrastructure like the VSE mentions. Even if Ares I and V were kept, they could incorporate in-space fueling to bring in commercial participation and spur the U.S. launch market (and as a side benefit dramatically increase payload to the Moon), but they don’t. The Ares plan under Griffin didn’t fund COTS-D commercial crew transport needed by the VSE (see above) – the recent stimulus package partial funding related to commercial crew transport came after Griffin. The Ares program is intended to break as little ground as possible technologically to reduce development risk, so the innovation mentioned in the VSE is gone. Innovation in other areas is drastically reduced to fund Ares (you don’t see very many robotic ISRU demos on the Moon, for example, or reusable space transport components in ESAS, in spite of that approach being central to the kinds of economic, security, and science benefits described here by Dr. Paul Spudis and Dennis Wingo).

Hey, but other than that, it’s a great plan.

[Early afternoon update]

In looking at this analysis, while I knew that ESAS was missing much of the Aldridge recommendations and the VSE itself, I hadn’t realized how almost completely orthogonal it is to them until I saw it all in one place like this. Was the Bush administration unaware of how far off Griffin had taken the plan, or were they indifferent? I know that if I had been the president, I’d have asked for an evaluation by the Aldridge team immediately upon announcement of ESAS/Constellation, scoring it against their own criteria (and we paid very close attention to those criteria when performing the CE&R studies), because it was a radical departure from previous anticipated plans. And I’d have likely forced a course correction on it. It would be worth an interview with Marburger to find out just what was going on.

My suspicion is that they just didn’t pay much attention to it, once the policy was in place, and they had an administrator who was supposed to know what he was doing. It just wasn’t a policy priority in the context of the other problems. Which isn’t surprising, of course, because as I’ve long pointed out, space isn’t important, and hasn’t been for over forty years.

I’ve often noted that, had the Bush administration been truly serious about the VSE, they would have at least attempted to create a new agency to carry it out, because NASA simply carries too much bureaucratic and pork-laden baggage from its Cold-War origins. This would be similar to what happened in the eighties, when the Reagan/Bush administration realized that they couldn’t count on the Air Force to do missile defense properly, and set up SDIO to report directly to the SecDEF.

Anyway, Frank Sietzen asks the question today, if you were building a new space agency from scratch, what would it look like?

The latest word is that the new administrator is going to be Charles Bolden. I remain disturbed by the Abbey connection. It will be interesting to see what Augustine comes up with, and how it’s received.

[Update a few minutes later]

Here’s the NBC story.

I have some recommendations for the new Augustine Commission, over at PJM.

[Afternoon update]

Just to clarify for Mark (who as usual misunderstands my point), when he writes:

Is it really NASA’s job to do something like commercial transportation that should be built–well–commercially?

The answer is no, and I didn’t say or imply that it was. It is NASA’s job to provide basic technology and incentives to private industry for them to provide transportation services, though. NASA should be a good customer, and purchase commercial services (like propellant from depots, and rides to various locations, including from earth to orbit). If the private sector had any confidence that NASA would be such a customer, it would be able to raise the funds itself for development of the infrastructure. Though it wouldn’t be unreasonable for NASA to build the first depots itself, to reduce technical risk for the later private investors. This would be the closest equivalent to the Interstate Highway System analogy. What it shouldn’t be doing is developing launch vehicles. We have plenty of those, with better ones in prospect if NASA will provide a sufficient market for them.

[Bumped]

There’s a good analysis in comments over at Space Politics about the COTS-D situation (comment by “TANSTAAFL” at 9:32 this morning):

SpaceX clearly over-reached with their lobbying campaign on Capitol Hill in the last year. I believe that Elon’s large ego is getting in the way — going up on the Hill and (in effect) saying “Just give me the money and I will eliminate the gap” was not an effective message strategy.

Not even the advocates of COTS-D want to just hand Elon the market. He gave the opponents ammunition, and lost many of his allies. It was an ill-advised strategy.

If Elon had lobbied, instead, for a COTS-D initiative that would fund many competitors, it probably would have had a different result.

In reality, there are multiple “real” competitors. Boeing bid COTS-D in the last competition. SpaceDev (now owned by Sierra Nevada) has a COTS-D concept. There is at least one serious, credible (and well funded) COTS-D competitor that is not publicly known. Under the right circumstances, even tSpace and Rocketplane Kistler could re-emerge if NASA seriously funded COTS-D.

IMO, if this nation is serious about substantially reducing “The Gap”, we could (and should) have a COTS-D competition with 4-5 winners. This nation should adopt a portfolio investment approach to diversify risk, and to increase competition and innovation.

If the Ares 1 costs $44 Billion, why can’t we take $2-3 Billion of the savings, and apply that to COTS-D? That amount of money would get us 4-5 well-funded competitors. That would be an exciting competition.

It sure would.