Jeff Krukin points out another shortcoming of the Aldridge Commission report. It doesn’t contain the word “settlement,” settling (as it were) instead for the more neutral (and neutered) phrase, “extended presence.” It remains focused on exploration, and not the broader vision.

He is announcing the formation of a new Space Frontier Foundation project to rectify the public perception of space as exploration, rather than the broader view, called the “Space Settlement Project.”

Sounds like a worthwhile activity.

John Young is going to speak after lunch.

David Gump of Lunacorp started off his talk with a twenty-year old poster about business opportunities in space, displaying the Shuttle and the then newly announced space station program. It was a cautionary note, reminding us of all the things that can go wrong, and how the more things change…

[Update]

Central lesson learned:

Government-owned infrastruxture (with federal employees as the space workforce) is poison to commercial ventures (cannot be overcome by good intentions–institutional barriers are too deep).

Privately owned facilities (vehicles, platforms, bases) are essential to success.

He hates the phrase “space advertising.” Emphasis needs to be customer rewards.

Prizes are good, but cannot be the only way for NASA to involve the private sector (same point that Jim Benson of SpaceDev made yesterday). Prizes are good for amateurs and angels, but businesses won’t accept the risk of being beaten to the deadline.

Lunacorp’s submittal for the NASA exploration initiative was to rely on the invisible hand, by nurturing private enterprise, and not to attempt another “Stalinist plan.”

Thanks to Michael Mealing (see comment here), I’m back on the air, and waiting for the first talk (Wendell Mendell, lunar guru from Johnson Space Center).

[Update about 9 AM]

Dr. Mendell is relating a history of how his thoughts have evolved on getting back to the moon. Brief summary: he started out naive in the early eighties, and but eventually came to realize that NASA was incapable of carrying out the vision, and that private activities will be the key. He made a variation of a theme that I’ve commented on in the past (when I called space, including currently low earth orbit, a wilderness). He described it as an undeveloped country with vast resources, but no infrastructure.

[A few minutes later]

He’s hammering on a theme now that Paul Spudis reinforced yesterday in the keynote address: that various players are working hard to subvert the president’s initiative to support their own agendas. Moreover, the continued focus on Mars indicates that people were not listening to what the president said (he mentioned it only once, as part of the phrase “Mars and beyond”).

He’s knocking down the misconceptions that the only purpose of going to the Moon is to learn how to go to Mars, or to test equipment that will be used on Mars.

More thoughts on this later (and probably a column or two) after I collect my thought, and am not distracted actually listening.

[Another update]

This was mentioned briefly yesterday, but Dr. Mendell says that there is serious talk among some at NASA of doing a “touch and go” on the Moon. In other words, immediately after a lunar landing, we’ll then go on to Mars, thus somehow (in their demented view) having satisfied the letter (if not the spirit) of the president’s vision.

NASA has published a report (PDF) on last month’s Centennial Challenges Workshop (thanks to Neil Halelamien over at sci.space.policy for the pointer).

I haven’t read the whole thing, but I did go look to see what they did with my glove idea.

I regret that I wasn’t there–they made some decisions that I would have argued about. I think that the glove should be 8 psi, not 4.3–a large part of the idea was to eliminate the need for prebreathing and avoid risk of the bends. I like the idea of providing plans for gloveboxes to the contestants, and think that worrying about someone injuring themselves is silly, not because it’s not a danger, but because it’s a danger we have to accept if we want to progress. I still like my task idea of tearing down and rebuilding an auto, or motorcycle engine. I proposed a million, and they came up with a quarter million (though they recognize that the amount may be too low–it’s driven by legal constraints which will hopefully be removed in the future).

Anyway, it looks like a promising start, and Brant Sponberg should be congratulated. Let’s hope he can keep the ball rolling.

SpaceRef has a summary of the hearing on prizes for space achievements, held on the Hill this morning.

Molly Macauley made an excellent point:

“Even if an offered prize is never awarded because competitors fail all attempts to win, the outcome can shed light on the state of the technology maturation. In particular, an unawarded prize can signal that even the best technological efforts aren’t quite ripe at the proffered level of monetary reward. Such a result is important information for government when pursuing new technology subject to a limited budget,” she said.

The DARPA Challenge is a good example of that, in my opinion.

Of course, we have the usual caviling:

“While establishment of a NASA prize program is certainly worth considering, we should not be lulled into thinking that it is any substitute for providing adequate funding for NASA’s R&D programs,” cautioned Subcommittee Ranking Minority Member Nick Lampson (D-TX).

Rep. Lampson is one of the representatives from JSC.

Overall, while there were some appropriate cautionary notes, there seemed to be a consensus that this was a good idea. Let’s hope that they can get the funding now.