I’ve allowed myself to get sucked into a discussion in comments over at Marsblog, and decided it made more sense to post about it here. There are a lot of misconceptions about the president’s Vision for Space Exploration (and they may actually be deliberate strawmen by those trying to twist it to their own ends).

Foremost among them is that the plan is to go to Mars via the moon, with the implication that everything that goes to Mars will therefore have to first go to the moon. Having established this as a fact, it is then blasted by some as a proposal to “build Cape Kennedy on the moon,” which is obviously ridiculously infeasible and expensive. It was the basis of this so-called argument by “Mark” against using the moon to get to Mars.

I believe the figures in the book demonstrate that the deltaV to get from LEO to moon is higher than that of getting to Mars. This is due to aerobreaking [sic] I think. Thus, even if there are prepaired [sic] fuel tanks waiting for you there for free, it’s more expensive to stop off at the moon. I could be fudging this as I don’t have the book in front of me.

He assumes that everyone going off to Mars “stops off at the moon.” If that were the case, then the relative delta Vs would be of interest.

But it’s not. This is nonsense, of course, and not what the president proposed.

What the president proposed was using the moon as a place to learn how to operate on another world, much closer to earth in case something went wrong, and looking into the potential to get resources there that could help go to Mars, particularly propellants. Propellants for a Mars expedition have to come from somewhere. They can either come from earth, by launching them from earth to LEO or L1 or some other staging point, or they can come from the moon.

If launch costs are such, and the ability to mine ice on the moon are such, that it’s cheaper to get the propellants from the moon than from the earth, then this is what will be done, and it has nothing with “stopping off at the moon.” It is simply logistics.

And no one can say with certainty a priori what the answer to that question is (including Bob Zubrin). We will only know after years of studies and initial robotic exploration, which are only starting to be performed now.

This article about the safety of the space tourism industry is wrong on several levels. I’ll be rebutting it one way or the other within the next day or two.

[Update at noon]

Clark Lindsey beats me to the punch (at least as far as publishing–ahh, the wonder of blogs), with many of the points that I’ll be making, probably in a rebuttal at TCS tomorrow.

If statistics were a child, Alexander Tabarrok would be arrested for abuse…

Heh.

[Update on Friday morning]

I have to say that I’m pretty underwhelmed by Professor Tabarrok’s response to my column. He seems to have read it sufficiently to complain about my use of the (admittedly overused) word “paradigm,” but not comprehended it. He certainly doesn’t offer any substantive response to my arguments or criticism, except to cling to his old myths. David Masten wasn’t very impressed, either.

The suborbital launch legislation seems to have finally given up the ghost, at least for this year. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, particularly given the fact that it almost passed a few weeks ago with a pill that would have poisoned the new suborbital passenger industry by overregulating it.

As Nathan Horsley points out in comments at Space Politics,

While a clear statutory basis for manned launch licensing is a desirable goal in that it would make it easier for new companies to tailor their designs to the regs, the existing companies should be able to go ahead under the current regime. The fact is that even under a new regulation, the licenses are still going to have to be tailored to each individual craft and mission plan (or at least series of similar mission plans). Further, the new push to include passenger safety as a factor in licensing is very dangerous. While the newest compromise limits this to situations where there has already been an accident, this is at best a marginal gain for the launchers in terms of insurance availability and litigation risk.

Bottom line, given that the FAA AST is doing a pretty good job under the current regime, sending the legislators back to the drawing board is not so bad a thing, and won’t even force launchers overseas.

Also, more from Alan Boyle here.

The suborbital launch legislation seems to have finally given up the ghost, at least for this year. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, particularly given the fact that it almost passed a few weeks ago with a pill that would have poisoned the new suborbital passenger industry by overregulating it.

As Nathan Horsley points out in comments at Space Politics,

While a clear statutory basis for manned launch licensing is a desirable goal in that it would make it easier for new companies to tailor their designs to the regs, the existing companies should be able to go ahead under the current regime. The fact is that even under a new regulation, the licenses are still going to have to be tailored to each individual craft and mission plan (or at least series of similar mission plans). Further, the new push to include passenger safety as a factor in licensing is very dangerous. While the newest compromise limits this to situations where there has already been an accident, this is at best a marginal gain for the launchers in terms of insurance availability and litigation risk.

Bottom line, given that the FAA AST is doing a pretty good job under the current regime, sending the legislators back to the drawing board is not so bad a thing, and won’t even force launchers overseas.

Also, more from Alan Boyle here.

The suborbital launch legislation seems to have finally given up the ghost, at least for this year. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, particularly given the fact that it almost passed a few weeks ago with a pill that would have poisoned the new suborbital passenger industry by overregulating it.

As Nathan Horsley points out in comments at Space Politics,

While a clear statutory basis for manned launch licensing is a desirable goal in that it would make it easier for new companies to tailor their designs to the regs, the existing companies should be able to go ahead under the current regime. The fact is that even under a new regulation, the licenses are still going to have to be tailored to each individual craft and mission plan (or at least series of similar mission plans). Further, the new push to include passenger safety as a factor in licensing is very dangerous. While the newest compromise limits this to situations where there has already been an accident, this is at best a marginal gain for the launchers in terms of insurance availability and litigation risk.

Bottom line, given that the FAA AST is doing a pretty good job under the current regime, sending the legislators back to the drawing board is not so bad a thing, and won’t even force launchers overseas.

Also, more from Alan Boyle here.

There’s apparently a lot of public support for going back to the moon, but not much for going to Mars.

While I agree with that sentiment, I found this part a little less encouraging:

Out of 5 options, Americans ranked “International participation and cost-sharing” as their #1 choice for funding the Vision — with certain conditions.

That’s a failure of public education, to my mind (or a success of propaganda, depending on your point of view…). They don’t realize that “cost sharing” tends to increase costs to the point that we end up spending more than we would if we simply did it on our own.

And here’s some more propaganda that people seem to have absorbed:

Americans understand and appreciate the benefits of the space program (“spin-offs,” science, and the impact of space-based technology developments to daily lives).

My concern with this is not just that it’s probably not true (spinoff is highly overrated as a net benefit of space programs), but that if the purpose of having a space program is international cooperation and spinoff, it becomes possible to have a program that achieves those goals with no discernable progress in actually doing something in space. See the ISS for a sterling example.

…is scheduled for a week from today at the Cape, between 2:30 and 5:30 PM EST.

I’m going to try to go see it–it should be pretty spectacular. One of the few benefits of living in Florida that I’ve found so far.

Bob Bigelow has announced the rules for his new fifty-million-dollar prize for an orbital vehicle. I saw this yesterday, but haven’t posted because I haven’t had time to think much about it, but Derek Lyons has.

Jon Goff has an excellent roundup of the recent Space Frontier Society conference in Long Beach, for those of us not fortunate enough to have attended.

[Via Clark Lindsey]

Keith Cowing is having some legal problems with Orbital Sciences Corp.