Category Archives: Space

Political Commentary, Space

More Lane Thoughts

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I put up a post the other day in which I described how unimpressed I was with Neal Lane’s comments on space policy. It turns out that Paul Spudis didn’t think much of them, either. He’s actually harder on him than I was:

(Neal Lane) has made some public statements that are so egregiously ignorant that I cannot remain silent.

Tell us how you really feel, Paul.

[Update a few minutes later]

Paul writes:

Aside from the idea of continuing to fly the Space Shuttle (not a very good idea for many reasons), none of this is particularly new but rather a re-statement of the Apollo-era meme that, “If we can go to the Moon, we can solve the (fill-in-the-blank) crisis.” Since energy and climate change are the current crises du jour, some seek to capitalize on the public’s fondness for the NASA of old (“The Right Stuff”) with the frantic cry that it should be redirected to make these “fixes.”

I deconstructed this kind of thinking last summer, for the Apollo landing anniversary:

Putting a man on the moon was a remarkable achievement, but it was a straightforward well-defined engineering challenge, and a problem susceptible to having huge bales of money thrown at it, which is exactly how it was done. At its height, the Apollo program consumed four percent of the federal budget (NASA is currently much less than one percent, and has been for many years). Considering how much larger the federal budget is today, with the addition and growth of many federal programs over the past forty years makes the amount of money spent on the endeavor even more remarkable.

But most of the other problems for which people have pled for a solution, using Apollo as an example, were, and are, less amenable to being solved by a massive public expenditure. We may in fact cure cancer, and have made great strides over the past four decades in doing so, but it’s a different kind of problem, involving science and research on the most complex machine ever built — the human body. It isn’t a problem for which one can simply set a goal and time table and put the engineers to work on it, as Apollo was. Similarly, ending world hunger and achieving world peace are socio-political problems, not technological ones (though technology has made great strides in improving food production, which makes the problem easier to solve for governments that are competent and not corrupt). So most of the uses of the phrase never really made much sense, often being non sequiturs.

It’s important to understand that landing a man on the moon (or developing atomic weaponry as in the Manhattan Project — another example used by proponents of a new federal energy program) was a technological achievement. Achieving “energy independence,” or ending the use of fossil fuels, are economic ones.

As I note at the end of the piece, if we can land a man on the moon, why can’t we get people to stop making inappropriate analogies with landing a man on the moon?

[Saturday morning update]

Over at Space Politics, commenter “Red” has some useful thoughts:

Continue reading More Lane Thoughts →

Political Commentary, Space

A Space Council?

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Jeff Foust has some interesting testimony from the president’s science adviser:

We have been looking at what the best way to resurrect the National Space Council in the White House would be. I think that’s going to happen. There’s no question that the gap in our capacity to put people in space is a matter of great concern with the shuttle program coming to an end and its successor program not yet ready.

That seems like good news. I wonder who will head it. Let’s hope that Joe Biden’s involvement is minimal.

He also lays out rationale for space:

Space is crucial to our national defense; it’s crucial to civil as well as military communications and geopositioning; it’s crucial to weather forecasting and storm monitoring; crucial to observation and scientific study of the condition of our home planet’s land, vegetation, oceans, and atmosphere; and it’s crucial to scientific study and exploration looking outward.

That’s all right, as far as it goes, but no mention of planetary defense or off-planet economic development or resources. There is nothing in there that would support an effort to open up space for the masses, or imply more support for private efforts. Too bad that there was no follow-up questioning in that regard.

Political Commentary, Space

The National Environmental And Energy Administration

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Jeff Foust talked to Neal Lane last weekend, who remains as misguided and illogical as ever:

“People don’t care about going back to the Moon and there’s no rationale for going back to the Moon. I would really like to see NASA go forward in a big way and have a larger and more exciting space program. But right now there’s not the support for it, and NASA’s flailing.”

That’s why, he said, he and Abbey decided that NASA would be better advised to focus on “solving the energy problem” and build public support for the agency that could be leveraged for other missions in the future. “If we keep blowing all our money on Constellation there will be nothing left,” he said. “Our hope was to put something out there that would actually be good for NASA, helpful, and give it a solid foundation to build from again until the American people get excited again about space exploration.”

He seems to be stuck in a mindless false choice between continuing with Constellation as is, or forgetting about space (other than his asteroid plans, which would require much of Constellation, other than the lunar lander, at least functionally). If NASA isn’t going to do space, there’s not much reason for it to exist. We already have government agencies responsible for energy and the environment, and there’s no reason to think that NASA personnel have any unique expertise in these areas. What would be the point of redirecting the agency in a direction that has little do with its charter or experience when it would simply be redundant? This is policy foolishness.

Lane said he hasn’t gotten any feedback from the Obama Administration about the study, but he believes that the administration will change course from the current exploration architecture. “I think it’s clear since Mike [Griffin] left that they don’t intend to go down the same road,” he said. “If you were going to just continue, why not keep him in, right?”

Wrong. Or rather, right, but not because they won’t stay the course in terms of goals. There are many ways to have a robust (and even much more robust) space program besides Constellation. Changing course can mean changing how we’re doing things, not changing the fact that NASA is going to do manned spaceflight.

Political Commentary, Science And Society, Space, Technology and Society

Ad Astra To A Visionary

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I’ve just learned that Tom Rogers, former head of the Space Transportation Association, has died. I hadn’t talked to him in a few years, and deeply regret now that I hadn’t. There is so much more to say about him than that he is the former head of the STA, and I’ll make a probably pathetic attempt to do so on the morrow. All that I can say now is that I am more frustrated than usual with this news by the boneheaded space policies that the nation has had for half a century, and all of the dreams that they have crushed, and all of the hard-working and far-sighted people who couldn’t live long enough to see better.

[Update a few minutes later]

Konrad Dannenberg has died as well.

Do space pioneers go in threes, like Hollywood? If so, who’s next? I don’t even want to speculate.

[Late evening update]

Clark Lindsey has some Rogers-related links.

[Tuesday morning update]

There are some more encomia for Tom over at NASA Watch. Here’s one from Courtney Stadd:

I interacted with Tom for over 25 years – both in my capacity as a government official and in my various private sector incarnations. In speaking truth to power, he marshaled his data and did everything he could to persuade the government that the commercial space sector offered innovative and cost effective solutions. And if logic failed to penetrate the prefrontal cortex of his intended target – e.g., a Member of Congress during testimony or an agency official or the audience at a space conference – Tom was legendary for raising his voice to a decibel level that ensured that no one with functional hearing could possibly ignore his key arguments. His footprint was deep and wide – from early pathfinding work on GPS, among other leading edge research (during his tenure heading the Air Force and MIT R&D labs) to the first director of research at Housing and Urban Development. For many years his was a lonely voice in the wilderness as he organized fora on space tourism and funded a series of studies via his Sophron Foundation. (I was a happy recipient of one of his grants many years ago.) His Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) study regarding the issues and challenges of the International Space Station – issued during the Reagan Administration – is a classic in terms of clarity of thought and prescience regarding the cost and policy challenges that have confronted the Space Station in recent years. In a world increasingly populated with self-regarding incrementalists, Tom’s legacy is an inspiration to all of us who believe in the power of big ideas (based on sound principles) and the passion and courage to counter conventional wisdom in pursuit of one’s convictions. As Arthur C. Clarke once said, “The limits of the possible can only be defined by going beyond them into the impossible.” Few embodied this philosophy as well as the late Tom Rogers. Godspeed, Tom.

I was also a grant recipient, about a decade ago. The results were this study on near-term prospects for space tourism. Also over at NASA Watch, Mark Schlather recounts (though he bowdlerizes) Tom’s stock response to anyone who asked him why he wanted to go into space: “None of your goddamned business!” The point being that no one should have to justify to anyone, government or otherwise, why they wanted to go into space or what they wanted to do there. Only if the government was paying for the trip should it care.

I had heard Tom give one of his fire-and-brimstone speeches on commercial space at the Denver ISDC back in the mid-eighties, but I didn’t actually meet him until I attended a conference sponsored by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the early nineties, on standardizing commercial space operations. He saw the dreaded word “Rockwell” on my name badge, decided to make me a surrogate for his big-aerospace nemesis, and proceeded to harangue me on everything that the industry was doing wrong, repeatedly calling my company “Rockwell North American.” It took several discussions over the course of the conference before he finally decided that I wasn’t one of those horned devils trying to hold America back in space for purposes of corporate greed. It was the beginning of a wonderful and productive friendship, with breakfasts at the Cosmos Club whenever I was in Washington. Sadly, though, it’s one that I’ve regrettably been remiss in upholding in the last few years on my end.

Tom was a raconteur (to dramatically understate), and he loved to tweak the establishment, though he was deeply of it. For instance, I never saw him not wearing a suit. On the other hand, one of his favorite (non-space-related) stories was when he was invited to a meeting at Orbital Sciences, and was informed that the company dress code was casual. He showed up out in Reston, as usual, in his suit, and walked up to the receptionist behind the counter inside the entrance. She signed him in, and then gently reprimanded him: “Mr. Rogers, you didn’t need to wear a suit. Didn’t anyone tell you that we dress casually here?” He replied, “You don’t understand, dear. I know you can’t see from where you’re sitting, but I’m not wearing any pants.”

Tom had decades of experience in the Beltway, and had learned through an accumulation of (as he often put it) “cleat marks in his back” the difficulty of the task that was laid out for us, and how long it would take. He always cautioned against impatience, and to not expect sudden shifts in policy, or overnight success. He would counsel, instead, to look for smaller signs of optimism, to consider the immense inertia of federal policymaking, and just look for “curvature in the wake” of the policy. It is pretty hard, on a day-to-day basis, to see it. But when one looks back over the past thirty years or so, the ship has changed course considerably, from an era in which it was almost inconceivable that a private entity could put up a satellite (let alone a human) to one in which the FAA is granting launch licenses to suborbital space tourism firms, with prospects on the horizon for private human spaceflight into orbit. And one of the heaviest shoulders on that stiff rudder was Tom Rogers. And wherever he ends up, whether with God or Beelzebub (the latter seems highly unlikely), either of them will have their hands full with him, and he’ll have a great time.

[Bumped to Tuesday morning]

[Update a little later]

Some more thoughts over at NASA Watch from Alan Ladwig (Obama administration space adviser), which I also remember:

He was a great mentor and always had time to share ideas and dispense advice. At various points in my career he would stop by my office to admonish me for focusing on non-priority issues. ‘Ladwig,” he proclaimed, “stop screwing around on page two and page three issues and concentrate on page one!”

I think about this proclamation constantly and although I still get bogged down on the back pages, he gave me a goal to strive towards that I’ll never forget.

The problem with space policy is that it remains on the back pages in general. Tom always advocated a complete scrape-down-to-the-paint approach to remaking space policy (as have I, and even more since meeting and being influenced by him) that the politics and policy inertia simply will not allow.

Business, Space

Return Trip

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Jeff Foust has an interview with Charles Simonyi, who is about to become the first space tourist (and unlike many, he doesn’t dislike the phrase) to do it again.

There are two interesting points to me. First:

If you look at professional astronauts and cosmonauts, it’s astounding how many of them fly multiple times. It was something I never quite understood: I would see the same names again and again, and I would wonder why this person is flying again when there are others who would probably want to fly too.

The answer is that space agencies see that people with experience do much better. The “start up” time on that first flight takes away so much from the overall performance compared to the second and third flights. The top ten people have 60 flights among themselves, which is a lot of flights. It shows that, with experience, you can do so much better. In my case, I hope to accomplish more, in terms of experiments and amateur radio communications with schools and so on.

To me, while you obviously want to use the best candidates for a mission costing hundreds of millions of dollars, this validates the theory that George Abbey grew the astronaut office to a high surplus in order to maintain control over them, by forcing competition among them for the limited flights available.

As for the frustration of some in the space community with these millionaires who buy rides for themselves, but don’t otherwise help the nascent industry with their millions:

I’m not an investor, I’m a customer of these industries. I recommend it to everyone else to be a customer. Whether it’s a good investment is a completely different question, and one I’m not qualified to talk about.

Well, we do need customers, so he is playing a key role. It’s just a shame that, at least for now, “everyone else” can’t afford it. So we’ll need investors too.

[Monday evening update]

Here’s another interview with Simonyi over at Popular Science.

Political Commentary, Space

Space Policy “Tensions”?

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Rob Coppinger is hearing some rumours (if I had heard them, they’d be rumors) of dissension within the White House over the NASA administrator pick, apparently over whether or not to put a retired general in charge (at least two of the candidates, and perhaps three are). It could be that the space people favor it, but that other administration members are anti-military, but that’s purely speculation (though not an unreasonable one, knowing the types of people who would be in this administration). He also thinks that it could be a year before the administration pays much attention to NASA. Which makes all of the transition activity on the subject somewhat puzzling.

Political Commentary, Space

Space Is Really Big

25 Comments

But not quite big enough:

In an unprecedented space collision, a commercial Iridium communications satellite and a presumably defunct Russian Cosmos satellite ran into each other Tuesday above northern Siberia, creating a cloud of wreckage, officials said today.

What a mess. At that altitude, the pieces are going to be there a long time, and present a hazard to other LEO satellites. I hope that this isn’t the event that sets off a cascade. I don’t understand why NORAD didn’t predict this. I know they don’t have the elements to a precision necessary to know that they’ll collide, but I would think that they could propagate enough to see that they would come close. And if we had true operationally responsive space capability, we could have sent something up to change the orbit of one of them, if they couldn’t do it themselves. This is the price we pay for not being a truly spacefaring civilization, despite the billions wasted over the past decades.

[Update in the evening]

Clark Lindsey has more links, and thoughts.

[Thursday morning update]

The Orlando Sentinel was somewhat prescient about this story, having run a piece on space debris last weekend.

[Mid-morning update]

Clark Lindsey has several more links.