Or…Honey, I shrunk the economy!

China’s GDP is forty percent smaller than previously assumed. Walter Russell Meade considers the implications.

One that he doesn’t point out is the hysteria by some (including the NASA administrator, except that in his case I suspect that it’s just a cynical attempt to scare Congress into giving him more money for “Apollo on steroids”) that they will beat us back to the moon is even less justified than it was at the higher number.

China not only has a much smaller economy than ours after the PPP recalculation, but it has a much smaller economy per capita, since their population is over four times ours (resulting in average per capita income of about an eighth of ours), with a much smaller middle class. That means that the Chinese peasants, the vast majority of whom are still in poverty by US standards, are likely to be even less happy about boondoggles to the moon than we are.

And as Meade points out, the government is not sufficiently stable to risk the popular uproar that might be engendered by large numbers of people who are unhappy to see their national wealth spent to send a few taikonauts off to Luna, while they continue to have no running water. I expect the Chinese program to continue at its current snail’s pace, but to think that they will beat us back to the moon any time soon, or at all, remains a fantasy.

[Via Instapundit]

Business Week reports on a nuclear electric battery (more like a reactor) that has 27 MW for 5 years worth of juice and it’s “the size of a hot tub”. It’s patent pending (20040062340; search for “uranium hydride over at USPTO.gov). That’s about 64 cubic feet. That’s 1.2 terrawatt hours or 1.2 billion kwh. They say it’s 70% cheaper than natural gas–maybe $30 million? If it’s 54 cubic feet and pure uranium hydride (a high overestimate), it would weigh about 15 tons. Compare that with 15 tons of LOX and hydrogen with 66,000 kwh at 39 kwh per kg of hydrogen. Pretty good ISP. Thrust to weight not so good. Combine it with a reaction mass fill up on Mars?

Speaking of The New Atlantis, in addition to the Zubrin excerpt, the fall 2007 issue has a lot of space essays to commemorate the half century since Sputnik. It has a classic essay from the early space age by Hannah Arendt on man’s limitations (which I may get around to commenting on later), with several current-day responses, some retrospection from Jim Oberg and (at long last) my review of Michael Belfiore’s Rocketeers.

Are we nearing the end of COTS? Happy New Year.

It’s probably not too late to do anything about it:

If you’re even half as angry about this as I am, then it’s time to let Congress know that you’re mad as hell and not going to take it any longer. Even if it doesn’t do any good, won’t it just feel grand to let your Representative and Senator know how you feel!? And while you’re at it, write a letter to your local newspaper editor.

If you want to communicate with the Member of Congress who is sponsoring this destructive anti-COTS language, I recommend calling or writing to Senator Barbara Mikulski, who can be reached at:

Senator Barbara Mikulski
Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
PHONE: (202) 224-4654

Here’s the Space News story from Brian Berger.

I guess I’d be more disappointed if I had had higher hopes for the program. But it was conceptually flawed to begin with, in many ways, and while the people executing it are good people, they had to battle a bureaucracy whose primary focus was on maintaining jobs and Constellation, many of whose cohorts (along with the porkmeisters on the Hill, such Senator Mikulski) no doubt viewed it as both a threat and a distraction.

I don’t know whether or not this effort will save the program or not, but I’m not sure that it really matters. SpaceX always had a plan that didn’t involve COTS, and will continue to move forward without it. Bigelow is continuing to offer his market incentives. The suborbital business will go on in the absence of COTS. As for how ISS is supported, that will continue to be a slow-motion train wreck into the next decade. I think that in the end, it will go off the tracks, as more and more people realize in Washington that the federal human space program is FUBAR, and likely to be replaced by a private one.

We need to be worrying more about smaller ones than we have been:

Simulations show that the material of an incoming asteroid is compressed by the increasing resistance of Earth

Well, actually not brand new–the archives actually go back to September, but relatively new. It’s called “Rockets and Such” and reads like it’s written by an insider, either a NASA employee or a contractor (I’m guessing the former). Presumably, “the Emperor” (who also presumably has no clothes) is Mike Griffin. The references to pony tails are almost certainly about Doug Stanley.

There’s been a lot of programmatic chaos going on in Constellation and ESAS that I haven’t been commenting much on. The program remains in big trouble, both because it has weight/schedule and budget issues, and because the budget issues are getting tougher, with continuing resolutions and the like. These are all the result of bad initial choices made in the architecture, which focused on an unnecessary new launch system, instead of coming up with concepts for sustainable in-space infrastructure that could use existing commercial launchers, as recommended by some of the CE&R teams.

The latest problem is that the lander design apparently won’t close, a problem exacerbated, as pointed out in comments, by its requirement to do part of the lunar orbit injection burn. This is a problem that would be greatly mitigated by an architecture employing a depot in lunar orbit or (more likely) L1, or even in LEO. The former would also enable reuse of the lander. And ultimately, after the collapse of ESAS, I hope that’s the direction that the program will go, assuming it survives at all.

One other interesting point is that the J-2X engine development for Ares 1 will probably be delayed by the Shuttle ECO sensor problems, because they don’t have enough test stands at Stennis. And in another bait and switch, it turns out that while based on the classic J-2, the engine is basically a completely new one, in terms of development costs and testing–very little of the original design can be used, due to escalating requirements. One more nail in the coffin for the program ultimately, I suspect.

Anyway, I’m adding it to the space blogroll–it looks like a good place to track this stuff, at least for now.

[Mid morning update]

Rob Coppinger has more on the lunar lander problems.

Some thoughts from Vernor Vinge himself.

What’s a real space program … and what’s not

• From 1957 to circa 1980 we humans did some proper pioneering in space. We (I mean brilliant engineers and scientists and brave explorers) established a number of near-Earth applications that are so useful that they can be commercially successful even at launch costs to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) of $5000 to $10000/kg. We also undertook a number of human and robotic missions that resolved our greatest uncertainties about the Solar System and travel in space.
• From 1980 till now? Well, launch to LEO still runs $5000 to $10000/kg. As far as I can tell, the new Vision for Space Exploration will maintain these costs. This approach made some sense in 1970, when we were just beginning and when initial surveys of the problems and applications were worth almost any expense. Now, in the early 21st century, these launch costs make talk of humans-in-space a doubly gold-plated sham:
  • First, because of the pitiful limitations on delivered payloads, except at prices that are politically impossible (or are deniable promises about future plans).
  • Second, because with these launch costs, the payloads must be enormously more reliable and compact than commercial off-the-shelf hardware
    

Some thoughts from Vernor Vinge himself.

What’s a real space program … and what’s not

• From 1957 to circa 1980 we humans did some proper pioneering in space. We (I mean brilliant engineers and scientists and brave explorers) established a number of near-Earth applications that are so useful that they can be commercially successful even at launch costs to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) of $5000 to $10000/kg. We also undertook a number of human and robotic missions that resolved our greatest uncertainties about the Solar System and travel in space.
• From 1980 till now? Well, launch to LEO still runs $5000 to $10000/kg. As far as I can tell, the new Vision for Space Exploration will maintain these costs. This approach made some sense in 1970, when we were just beginning and when initial surveys of the problems and applications were worth almost any expense. Now, in the early 21st century, these launch costs make talk of humans-in-space a doubly gold-plated sham:
  • First, because of the pitiful limitations on delivered payloads, except at prices that are politically impossible (or are deniable promises about future plans).
  • Second, because with these launch costs, the payloads must be enormously more reliable and compact than commercial off-the-shelf hardware
    

Some thoughts from Vernor Vinge himself.

What’s a real space program … and what’s not

• From 1957 to circa 1980 we humans did some proper pioneering in space. We (I mean brilliant engineers and scientists and brave explorers) established a number of near-Earth applications that are so useful that they can be commercially successful even at launch costs to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) of $5000 to $10000/kg. We also undertook a number of human and robotic missions that resolved our greatest uncertainties about the Solar System and travel in space.
• From 1980 till now? Well, launch to LEO still runs $5000 to $10000/kg. As far as I can tell, the new Vision for Space Exploration will maintain these costs. This approach made some sense in 1970, when we were just beginning and when initial surveys of the problems and applications were worth almost any expense. Now, in the early 21st century, these launch costs make talk of humans-in-space a doubly gold-plated sham:
  • First, because of the pitiful limitations on delivered payloads, except at prices that are politically impossible (or are deniable promises about future plans).
  • Second, because with these launch costs, the payloads must be enormously more reliable and compact than commercial off-the-shelf hardware
    

They are if lunar land prices are really a leading indicator. If so, I wonder why?