Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Ignorance On Space Power

8 Comments

I found the comments in this piece more interesting than the article itself. Power from space may or may not make economic sense, and there are valid arguments against it, but the opposition to it displayed here is typical, and ignorant, and one of the reasons that proponents persist. From what I can see, what was being proposed was simply to revive the small-scale test using power from the ISS that was cancelled this year. But instead, we get things like this:

Why does the proposer think that it would be more efficient to beam energy from the international space station when sun beams are directly bombarding the surface of the earth already? He needs to be able to explain the physics and the economics and he apparently failed. The money needs to go to proposals that can realize fruition in 10-20 years, not some pie in the sky experiments that makes no economic sense.

…The experimental packages carried by Apollo astronauts took years to develop at great expense to meet NASA’s high standards of light weight, reliability and safety in the harsh conditions of space. You don’t just hand NASA a laser and solar cell you bought off the shelf and assembled into a crude prototype and tell them to aim it at a village in Africa during the 5 minutes a day that ISS might be overhead, assuming it’s not cloudy, assuming the villagers all wear safety laser goggles not to go blind, and so forth.

The benefits of beaming from space (though not the ISS) have been explained many times, and yet people persist in asking such foolish questions.

And then we have this:

there is NO way that any non-telecom based orbital outerspace project will be PRIVATE- COMMERCIALLY viable and self sustaining (creating a net economic surplus sufficient enough to pay down the costs of financing the project over time) until the cost of putting payload in orbit comes below 1000$ a pound. This isn’t even a discussion. Do your homework.

First off, there are already non-telecom-based projects that are viable and self sustaining (e.g., remote sensing) at current launch costs. But beyond that, the implication here is that $1000/lb is some sort of unachievable holy grail, but it’s pretty clear to anyone who understands the economics and technology that if one were in the business of launching powersats into orbit, the sheer economies of scale would drive it far below that. Not that this means that it will be economically viable, of course, but any argument against SPS that involves current high launch costs is fundamentally flawed. Then, along those lines, we get this:

Last time I looked into it, even if launch costs are assumed to be $0 space-based solar power isn’t economical.

Again, that would depend entirely on the assumptions in the analysis. And then we get this from someone claiming to be a physics professor:

Energy from space has been discussed since the 1970’s. It is a thoroughly crazy idea. The cost of putting anything (Solar cells in this case) in space is “astronomical”. The resulting microwave beam at the ground would exceed radiation standards over the wide area needed to collect it, and a buffer zone outside. If the beam ever went astray, large numbers of people would be exposed to forbidden levels of microwaves, without their knowing (until later, too late to do anything about it) they were being irradiated.

“…astronomical…” Sigh…

And the beam can’t “go astray.” This professor of physics is apparently unfamiliar with the concept of phased arrays. And who knows what a “forbidden” level is?

The saddest thing, though, is the degree to which NASA has screwed up public perceptions about this kind of thing, as demonstrated by this comment:

As cool as it would be to get solar stations up in space, NASA can barely focus itself enough to get us to the Moon, a feat we accomplished forty years ago. What chance do we even have of this working at all, regardless of the technological barriers?

Note the twin assumptions, commonly held: that NASA would do it, and that NASA can’t do it any more.

Humor, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Satire

Their Long National Nightmare Is Over

I would just note that the media has to be very happy that they no longer have to cover the presidential vacation in Crawford, Texas, and that they’re back at the Cape (note for regular readers of this blog: “the Cape” means something different to space enthusiasts than it does to media elites). At least one thing is like the glory days of Clinton (who generally poll tested his vacation venues…).

Space, Technology and Society

Landers, Schmanders

21 Comments

Could we get back to the moon with an elevator?

It’s certainly a lot easier problem, and one more within current tech, than one from earth. This is the kind of innovation that NASA should have been pursuing, instead of redoing Apollo.

Of course, an interesting question is how you’d get to other locales on the moon, so you’d still need a hopper of some kind (pretty much functionally equivalent to a lander, except for total impulse requirements), but if you could manufacture fuel at the base of the elevator, you could deliver it to orbit with the elevator, and to the rest of Luna with the hoppers/tankers, really opening up the whole planet, while dramatically reducing costs of operating in cis-lunar space. For example, whether it made more sense to get to the south pole by going down the elevator, and then hopping, or direct descent from the Lagrange point using lunar propellants would be a function of the relative economics and propellant prices in the two locations. These are the kinds of studies that it would be nice to see out of an architecture revisit. It begs the development of scenario simulation tools (that would make for interesting sim games for the general populace as well…).

[Update a few minutes later]

It seems entirely possible that it would be cheaper to deliver propellant from the moon to LEO via elevator/high-Isp-tanker than from the surface of the earth. That would be a real game changer, but it would wipe out much of the new market for launchers. On the other hand, in-space transportation might become so cheap that it would open up vast new markets for other things. For instance, vacation cruises to the moon become much more affordable.

[Link via Clark]

Philosophy, Science And Society, Social Commentary

A Grand Bargain?

11 Comments

…over evolution?

There are atheists who go beyond declaring personal disbelief in God and insist that any form of god-talk, any notion of higher purpose, is incompatible with a scientific worldview. And there are religious believers who insist that evolution can’t fully account for the creation of human beings.

I bring good news! These two warring groups have more in common than they realize. And, no, it isn’t just that they’re both wrong. It’s that they’re wrong for the same reason. Oddly, an underestimation of natural selection’s creative power clouds the vision not just of the intensely religious but also of the militantly atheistic.

If both groups were to truly accept that power, the landscape might look different. Believers could scale back their conception of God’s role in creation, and atheists could accept that some notions of “higher purpose” are compatible with scientific materialism. And the two might learn to get along.

The believers who need to hear this sermon aren’t just adherents of “intelligent design,” who deny that natural selection can explain biological complexity in general. There are also believers with smaller reservations about the Darwinian story. They accept that God used evolution to do his creative work (“theistic evolution”), but think that, even so, he had to step in and provide special ingredients at some point.

Perhaps the most commonly cited ingredient is the human moral sense — the sense that there is such a thing as right and wrong, along with some intuitions about which is which. Even some believers who claim to be Darwinians say that the moral sense will forever defy the explanatory power of natural selection and so leave a special place for God in human creation.

I’m not as sanguine as Bob Wright about the prospects for a truce between fundamentalist atheists and theists. I do believe in a teleology of the universe, and if he can make a scientific case for it, more power to him, but unlike creationists, I have sufficient confidence in my faith that I don’t demand that science validate it.

Political Commentary, Space

The New Policy Starts To Take Shape

29 Comments

Clark Lindsey has a summary of the direction that the new space policy seems to be taking, based on Space News reporting:

/– NASA not likely to get the boost in budget of $3B that the Augustine panel recommends
/– Looking for ways to save money and a Deep Space Option sort of approach with no early landings on the Moon or Mars. Instead, asteroid visits and flybys.
/– ISS will be extended to 2020
/– A commercial crew competition program would get $2.5B as the panel recommends.
[/– Deep space exploration projects would get $1B starting in 2012-2013 time frame.]
/– Will also try to save money by using fixed-price contracts rather than cost-plus.
/– Looking at the possibility of a private contractor operating the ISS
/– R&D will get ~$800M rather that the $1.5B recommended by the panel.
/– Ares 1 will probably be axed. Orion could survive as a backup to a commercial capsule.
/– An amended NASA budget will be submitted to Congress in mid-Sept.

It seems much more promising, and budgetarily plausible, than Constellation ever was. I wonder how, and where, they plan to implement the fixed-price procurements? There’s no mention of robotics, but it would be nice to see some ISRU demos on the lunar surface. If successful, they would provide a lot of leverage for lunar landings. This might be a good prize program — land something on the surface that can generate TBD lbs/hour of LOX (and possibly LH2 as well).

[Update a few minutes later]

Here’s an NBC news report, with complaints about job losses. And Andy Pasztor has a story at the Journal:

A presidentially appointed commission on the future of U.S. manned space efforts is wrapping up a study urging the White House to rely on commercial transportation of both cargo and crew to the space station. The commission, which presented its initial findings to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and senior White House science aides earlier this month, wants President Barack Obama to revitalize NASA by getting it out of the routine business of shuttle operations: launching to and returning from low-Earth orbit.

Instead, the commission recommends NASA rely on a combination of commercial and government-developed technologies to explore deeper into space. The study group, for example, wants NASA to start working on ways to combat the rigors of cosmic radiation, lengthy travel times and other challenges presented by possible manned missions to nearby planets and outside the solar system.

In the shorter term, companies expected to benefit from the heightened commercial focus include Space Exploration Technologies Corp. and Orbital Sciences Corp., both already working on cargo-delivery systems for NASA. Proponents of the new approach are betting that more competition will emerge as companies see more focus on outsourcing certain missions.

Proponents of the commercial approach also say it would save the government money because companies would use their own funds to develop innovative new technologies and recoup their investments over a longer period by providing services. Such programs also are intended to be faster, more nimble and less bureaucratic than traditional NASA acquisition procedures.

With less than $10 billion annually earmarked for manned space exploration, commission members concluded NASA can’t afford to embark on sweeping new initiatives at the same time it is pursuing plans to return astronauts to the moon, most likely after 2025. One of the biggest decisions facing the White House is whether it is willing to shelve those moon ambitions, at least temporarily, even if that results in industry disruptions and job losses. That would entail ending development of an expensive new crew capsule, dubbed Orion, along with work on certain rocket and lunar-lander projects.

And of course, there is no mention of propellant depots or refueling. I’ll be curious to see what the final report has to say about them. Has there been no discussion of them, or do the reporters not understand their significance?

Also, Keith Cowing seems to have corroboration of Rocketman’s report that Bolden questions the value of the Ares-1X “mission.” And Keith displays the sunk-cost fallacy:

Given that the hardware is in place, and the money has more or less been spent, it would seem to be a total waste to not finish things up and then fly the mission.

What is the value of flying a test of a system that isn’t particularly relevant to the actual hardware when the program itself is going to be cancelled? The money has been spent, and it’s dollars over the dam, but there is still some risk involved in the flight, and I haven’t heard that the Range-Safety Office at the Cape has given the go-ahead yet. Yes, it is a waste of money, but it was always a waste of money. Let’s finally stop wasting the money.

Business, Economics, Technology and Society

Some Thoughts On Trust

4 Comments

This piece kind of jumped out at me, because of this post the other day:

…my Comcast cable service crashed yesterday afternoon at 4 p.m. That not only means my Internet access is down on all five of our family computers, but my cable television is down as well. In fact, the only service still working in our house in the landline phone – and that’s only because, when Comcast offered that service as well, my wife replied, “I don’t trust you people not to screw that up as well. I need something in this house I can depend on to work right.”

And, in fact, she used that phone to call Comcast to report the outage. And I took off for Peet’s to file this column.

As someone noted in comments at the landline post, during Florida hurricanes, he lost everything, and his POTS phone line fell down on to the ground, but it never quit working. My experience during Frances and Jeanne five years ago was the same — no power, no cell, but I never lost phone, including DSL. I was blogging right after the storm, using a laptop and modem plugged into a power inverter running off the car battery.

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