Category Archives: Space

Political Commentary, Space, Space and Campaign 2008

The NASAverse

21 Comments

Clark Lindsey has some thoughts on two parallel universes, in which one has orders of magnitude higher costs than the other. As he notes, I too hope that the new administration will reside in the one with the low costs, but if it does, it will be fought tooth and nail by legislators to whom jobs are more important than either taxpayers’ money or progress in space.

[Update a while later]

I see that, amusingly, Mark Whittington is foolishly attempting to lecture his intellectual betters on matters that he doesn’t understand:

If the sole purpose of Ares/Orion was just to get people into low Earth orbit, Clark would certainly have a valid point. But the purpose of Ares/Orion is to get people into Low Earth Orbit in a vehicle (Orion) designed to go to the Moon. Dragon doesn’t have to go to the Moon. (Of course, imagining a Dragon that could do that, with the extra radiation shielding, the extra consumables, and so on would be an interesting thought experiment. Could a Falcon 9 Heavy still loft such a vehicle?).

There is vastly insufficient difference between a vehicle that goes to the moon and one that goes to LEO to justify the cost difference between Orion and Dragon. A lunar mission requires a) additional radiation shielding, b) twice the thickness of the entry heat shield and c) extra consumables (two of which he points out). That doesn’t translate into orders of magnitude in cost difference by any sane cost model. As for “lofting” it, it doesn’t need to be lofted in a single flight. Once you break out of the notion that you have to do everything in a single launch, it becomes easy to build both a spacious crew capsule, and a service module with abundant consumables. But Elon’s BFR follow on would even be able to “loft” it in one go, and I’d be willing to bet that he could get there on a billion dollars or less, extrapolating costs from Falcon 1 and 9 development. Again, this could be done at much less cost (both development and operational) than is currently planned for the Orion/Ares combination. What part of already spent ten billion on Ares without its even having passed a legitimate PDR, while Elon has only spent a small fraction of a billion does Mark not understand?

This is pork, not progress.

[Late afternoon update]

Now Mark says I (in addition to fantasizing that I claimed to be his intellectual better) that breaking up CM and SM would require three launches “in a short time.” No. They would require two launches, one for each system element, and one or many launches for propellant, but none of which, other than the CM launch, would have to occur in “a short time.” Propellant could be stored on orbit for an indefinitely long time with proper depot design, and there is nothing intrinsically in an SM that couldn’t allow weeks or months of on-orbit LEO storage.

I don’t know where this myth comes from. People who want to justify tens of billions for a heavy lifter, I guess.

Business, Economics, Space, Technology and Society

Space Solar Power And Launch Costs

3 Comments

There’s a long piece in this week’s Economist on the current prospects for solar power satellites. It’s a pretty good overview, but has a few problems. First of all, it doesn’t mention lasers at all. This is particularly a large oversight when it comes to the discussion of military applications. If space-based power is used for military logistics, it’s unlikely that it will be of the microwave variety — the power density is far too low to be practical for many of the envisioned needs. Lasers are more likely (though they will still not be a cost-effective weapon, despite the paranoia of some who will oppose the concept).

Also, in the discussion on launch costs, they didn’t spend enough time discussing the suborbital route, though they mentioned it. And while there was never much prospect of Gene Myers launching ETs into orbit, the chance that it will happen now is essentially nil, so the discussion of Space Islands is (at best) anachronistic. A description of Bob Bigelow’s activities with his orbital facilities, which weren’t mentioned at all, would have been much more useful and relevant to the reader.

[Update a few minutes later]

There seems to be a push on to get the Obama administration to adopt SBSP as a new energy initiative. Given all the other energy alternatives they want to chase (wind, terrestrial solar, etc.) why not? Even if it doesn’t pan out, it could result in lower launch costs for other things, which (as the report points out) are a prerequisite.

Political Commentary, Space, Space and Campaign 2008

It’s A Start

4 Comments

We’re finally starting to take the asteroid threat seriously enough to start dedicating new telescopes to looking for them. A hundred million dollars seems like a pretty cheap insurance policy against another Tunguska or worse, in a populated area.

Unfortunately, we’re not developing the kind of spacefaring capability we need to do something about it if we see one coming. This is one kind of change that I’d be happy to see with the incoming administration. But it remains to be seen what space policy will come out of the process.

Political Commentary, Space

Good News, If True

I had suggested this to some people on the transition team, but I’m sure I wasn’t the only one. It looks like the Ares V RFP (and perhaps others) that was going to ruin (as is often the case) the contractors’ holidays with the need to work a proposal, is being postponed (and perhaps going away altogether — we can only hope). It’s a waste of money and contractor resources to force them to bid on a Phase I of a program that’s under review as to whether it should exist at all. Clearly, as noted over at R’n’S, Mike was trying to rush these things to entrench them and make them more of a fait accompli before he leaves, and fortunately, the incoming administration is having none of it.

I’m not sure how that worked, exactly, since they don’t actually have any authority until January, but (just as a guess) if I had been them, I would have told the contractors that I had no intention of funding the program without (at a minimum) a requirements review, which would imply (at a minimum) a rebid, and hope that they would in turn tell NASA that no one would bother to bid now.

Political Commentary, Science And Society, Space

Safe, Simple, Soon

4 Comments

Now, the “off-the-shelf” five-segment first stage for the Ares 1 is going to a new propellant formulation, for environmental reasons. No, that won’t take long or cost much to develop or test. And apparently we don’t even have the capability in country to do it currently — we have to rely on the Swedes.

If they were worried about the environment, they shouldn’t have gone with a solid in the first place.

How long before this monstrosity is put out of its (and our) misery? They need to just take the whole concept out behind the VABarn and put it down with a sledge hammer.

History, Philosophy, Popular Culture, Science And Society, Space, Technology and Society

Living On Mars

3 Comments

Some thoughts from Bob Zubrin, who apparently has a new book
out on the subject.

I have to say, though, that when he says:

It’s a common view that Columbus was just interested in finding a spice route to the Indies, and that was his sales pitch to the Spanish courts. But I actually believe that contrary to conventional history, Columbus was looking for unknown continents — he just couldn’t pitch it that way.

I’d be curious to know the basis for that belief, or if it’s just wishful thinking or projection. My reading of the history does not indicate that Columbus was averse to making a buck.