Burt Rutan thinks that the operating cost of EADS’s proposal will be too high. I’m actually much more concerned (as is he) with the development costs. I’ve seen an estimate of a billion Euros. At 200,000 euros a ticket, you’ll have to sell about five thousand rides just to get back the non-recurring costs, and that doesn’t even include the cost of the money.

I think that the suborbital market makes sense, but not if you have to spend that much money up front. I think a smart entrepreneur could get to orbit for that amount (Elon has only spent a tenth of that amount, though he’s not returning). I just don’t think that a conventional player, like EADS (or Boeing, or Lockheed Martin) has either the cost structure or the risk acceptance to take on a program like this and make it successful. I suppose, though, it’s possible that they’re willing to take a bath on it if they expect it to give them a pre-cursor for a much larger point-to-point market, or military applications.

[Reading a few more articles]

Ah, they’re not committed to it. They’re just floating a trial balloon:

“We are offering a profitable system and have given ourselves until early 2008 to find industrial partners to share the risk, private investment of around

I hadn’t noticed this before, but apparently Mark Wade has put up a little history of the CEV and Constellation program, which describes how Mike Griffin’s NASA, for whatever reasons, completely ignored the advice of its contractors, to whom it had paid millions of dollars to provide potential solutions, and came up with an architecture that, in “synthesizing their suggestions,” bore no resemblance to any of them. Of course, they were just doing their job, trying to follow the dictates of the Aldridge Commission (including affordability and sustainability, and synergy with national security), which NASA seems to think no longer matters.

David Portree has some ill-informed speculation about the NewSpace (which he misspells) industry and space tourism. I was going to respond, but Jeff Foust and Clark Lindsey have already done so more than adequately in his comments section. As Clark notes, it would be nice if people who call themselves “space historians” would educate themselves about what is actually going on instead of embarrassing themselves, and potentially misleading others, in blog posts.

Back before the 2004 election, there were rumors that the Bush administration was considering withdrawal or renegotiation of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which briefly encouraged me. Alas, the pebble disappeared into the pond with nary a ripple.

Now, apparently the administration is instead pushing the Law Of The Sea Treaty. Andy McCarthy is appropriately appalled:

Our current threat environment, coupled with the abysmal performance of international institutions, cries out for a re-thinking all these multi-lateral commitments. Negroponte and England’s claim that we need to ratify LOST in order to demonstrate our commitment to “the rule of law” is absurd. The American people, who do more for the people of the world than any nation in history, have a rule of law; it is known as the Constitution. It allows us to make agreements as needed with nations based on our mutual interests (and it is worth noting that most of the benefits under LOST are already honored under other treaties and international law

Back before the 2004 election, there were rumors that the Bush administration was considering withdrawal or renegotiation of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which briefly encouraged me. Alas, the pebble disappeared into the pond with nary a ripple.

Now, apparently the administration is instead pushing the Law Of The Sea Treaty. Andy McCarthy is appropriately appalled:

Our current threat environment, coupled with the abysmal performance of international institutions, cries out for a re-thinking all these multi-lateral commitments. Negroponte and England’s claim that we need to ratify LOST in order to demonstrate our commitment to “the rule of law” is absurd. The American people, who do more for the people of the world than any nation in history, have a rule of law; it is known as the Constitution. It allows us to make agreements as needed with nations based on our mutual interests (and it is worth noting that most of the benefits under LOST are already honored under other treaties and international law

Back before the 2004 election, there were rumors that the Bush administration was considering withdrawal or renegotiation of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which briefly encouraged me. Alas, the pebble disappeared into the pond with nary a ripple.

Now, apparently the administration is instead pushing the Law Of The Sea Treaty. Andy McCarthy is appropriately appalled:

Our current threat environment, coupled with the abysmal performance of international institutions, cries out for a re-thinking all these multi-lateral commitments. Negroponte and England’s claim that we need to ratify LOST in order to demonstrate our commitment to “the rule of law” is absurd. The American people, who do more for the people of the world than any nation in history, have a rule of law; it is known as the Constitution. It allows us to make agreements as needed with nations based on our mutual interests (and it is worth noting that most of the benefits under LOST are already honored under other treaties and international law

In light of the latest assembly mission to the ISS, Clark Lindsey points out one of the many absurdities with the ESAS approach:

I’ve noted before that I find it odd that a fundamental goal of the Constellation project design is to minimize in-space assembly. This is a task in which NASA has actually become quite good. If NASA went to the next stage and combined its in-space operations capabilities with fuel depots and a space tug, it would have the tools and skill sets to do some amazing stuff, especially if it worked in close cooperation with private ventures like Bigelow.

Unfortunately, as with building Ares 1/5 instead of using existing (e.g. EELV) or nearly ready vehicles (e.g. Falcon 9, K-1), the aim seems to be to time warp back to 1972 and continue on to Apollo II, ignoring much of what was learned and developed subsequently.

Indeed.

This wouldn’t surprise me, if true:

No one seems to be all that fond of continuing the development of Ares 1 (a government-owned solution) or the cost of developing something that already exists i.e. something you can buy now (EELVs). Of course, much can change between now and the election – and who will run NASA in 2009. But the writing on the wall is starting to become rather clear.

This isn’t really a surprise to anyone familiar with him and his history, but Newt Gingrich is continuing to promote prizes for space achievements. I agree with commenters that his proposal of twenty billion for a human Mars mission is a prize too far, not just for all the reasons stated (too much money to raise privately, too long-term a proposition, too little faith in the government to keep its word) but also because I’m not sure that there would be adequate public support for the goal itself. A more incremental approach is indeed required–going from a ten million dollar prize to a twenty billion dollar prize is just too much of a leap.

I also agree with this comment, with a caveat:

IMO, we should start with smaller prizes. I would create three (3) prizes, in the following order: 1) orbital RLVs, 2) LEO propellant depots, and then 3) Processing oxygen on the Moon, and 4) Delivering the oxygen from the lunar surface to a LEO prop depot.

I suspect that it will be a long time before it’s economically viable to deliver lunar LOX to LEO, at least directly. What I would envision happening is a LEO depot, an EML1 depot, and a continuous parade of low-thrust tankers (which might also serve as the depots themselves while in place) moving back and forth between the two locations, delivering propellant to wherever the price dictates. If the tankers could deliver lunar LOX to LEO at a lower cost than delivery from earth, then they would do so. If it only made sense to use lunar LOX one-way as propellant to leave the moon, and it was cheaper to refuel at EML1 for the return using LOX delivered from earth, then that’s what should happen. The important thing is to establish the propellant supply infrastructure, regardless of the source of propellants. Building roads and a gasoline-delivery infrastructure was critical to making reusable cars (as opposed to the one-way Conestoga wagons) practical, and we need to do something similar in space.

Over at The New Scientist. And contrary to commenters who think that few indulge in it, the current top posting repeats the fallacy of high launch costs.