A Misleading Debate

Stanley Kurtz enjoyed the “great debate,” mostly, it would seem, because it played to his own preconceptions. It set up the false choice of doing science with robots versus doing science (and more broadly, exploration) with humans.

He drew an analogy to the colonization of America that begged every question about cost, practicality, and timing. Zubrin?s five hundred year colonization time line turns his vision into a de facto fantasy.

I think that “fantasy” is too strong a word. There’s certainly nothing intrinsically impossible about it (just as there’s nothing intrinsically expensive about space activities, at least not anywhere near as expensive as present practice would indicate), but of course no one can predict anything even decades out, let alone centuries. Zubrin’s simply offering one potentially plausible timeline.

I, for one, think that it’s foolish to even have a plan to put a man on Mars in 2030 right now (which is why arguments against the president’s goals based on cost are absurd, since no one can know now how we’ll do it, and therefore how much it will cost). The technologies are evolving too fast, and it’s quite possible that the private sector (e.g., the Mars Society, or even the National Geographic Society) will be in a position to do it by then. Any firm plan that government officials come up with now is almost certain to be overtaken by events.

People argue against the New World analogy on two bases–the potential for material returns from space, and the high costs and technological barriers to achieving such returns.

What they forget is that many came to the Americas not just for material wealth, but for spiritual freedom. The resources that were here were not necessarily employed in trade with the old world, but were often for subsistence as a means of practicing their own religion (the LDS being the most notable example). The same will apply to space, where technologies on the immediate horizon will allow groups of people to live off the land (so to speak), free to pursue their own visions of society.

We are really not that far from the point at which it will be (barely) affordable for a middle class family to purchase the means to emigrate off planet (passage to America, or the purchase of a Conestoga wagon required the sales of much of a family’s assets, and once an infrastructure is established off planet, the equivalent functionality will be comparable in cost–Freeman Dyson has written about this extensively).

Frankly, I found these remarks just baffling:

I came away from the Mars debate still seeing colonization as a sort of libertarian heaven. I used to think libertarians, while giving short shrift to the social preconditions of liberty, were at least a hard headed lot. But the libertarian fascination with Mars increasingly strikes me as a quirky (if harmless) utopian fantasy. If anything, the radical precariousness of a Martian colony would necessitate a high degree of human interdependence. The Mars fantasy strikes me as a way of pretending that, if we could just wipe the slate clean, the necessities of social life which continually emerge to frustrate libertarian hopes would somehow disappear. Isn?t this just Marx in reverse?

I don’t know what this debate had to do with libertarianism. Zubrin is no libertarian, and certainly Park is not. This comment might have some relevance if there had been a libertarian in the debate, but there wasn’t. Park wants to send robots to space to do science with government funding, and Zubrin wants to send humans to Mars with government funding. Where’s the libertarianism?

As a comment outside the context of the debate, Dr. Kurtz’ position is one shared by many, but the point is not that space is by its nature a libertarian utopia, any more than (and yes, I know he dislikes the analogy, but that doesn’t make it invalid) were the Americas two and a half centuries ago. Yet somehow we created a form of government here previously unseen in the history of the world, that was quite libertarian in philosophy (certainly much more so than either major party today).

From the standpoint of forming new societies, the point of settling space is that it’s a tabula rasa, and that many different groups and ideologies will find room there to do social experimentation. This is a factor that is independent of technology. Yes, cooperation will be required, and perhaps even laws, but there’s nothing intrinsically unlibertarian about that. Ignoring teleological arguments about our duty to be the vessels that bring consciousness to the universe, this is to me the greatest value of space–an ongoing large petri dish in which groups of like-minded people can continue to seek improvements on society, unconstrained by existing governmental strictures that are now dominant on this planet.

It provides the best opportunity to perform the kinds of controlled experiments that might more conclusively resolve the kinds of issues that so greatly concern Dr. Kurtz. Comparing Sweden to the US to determine the potential effects of gay marriage is interesting, but not necessarily enlightening–there are too many extraneous factors to draw firm conclusions. I would think that this should be an exciting prospect to a social anthropologist, and wonder why it is not.

And I wish that he had attended this debate instead. There he could have found a true libertarian (though not a particularly knowledgable one) in the form of Ed Hudgins, but he would also have heard a broader (and more useful) range of viewpoints than one will ever get from a battle of the Bobs.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Will Wilkinson has a seemingly unrelated post, but not so much as it might seem.

…what we need is a theory of just how libertarian a particular society could possibly get, given human psychology, the set of social and economic relations, the available mechanisms of persuasion, and the set of belief systems or “macro mythologies”, at a given time, plus the dynamics that govern changes in these things. My guess is that for US society starting today, it’s possible to get significantly more libertarian, but not radically more libertarian. What might that society look like?

A point that evolutionists make is that nature has to work with the materials available, so pandas build thumbs out of existing radial bones. I suspect that if we want to truly implement new societies, we’ll have to start, at least in some sense, from scratch (at least in terms of existing governmental structures, if not cultures), and there’s really no place left on this planet in which it’s possible to do that.

Where There’s A Will

I don’t have much time to write, but fortunately some of my readers do.

Mitchell Burnside Clapp, of Pioneer Rocketplane, has been commenting on spacesuit gloves in the previous post, but he also passes along some comments, via email, about how much smarter we are now than we were in the sixties.

I was thinking recently about NASA and its desire to invest heavily in new technologies to develop better launch vehicles. I know this is worthy work and that NASA’s charter requires them to do a fair bit of this sort of thing, but I can’t help be reminded of the kids who spend a hundred bucks on top of the line basketball shoes in the hopes that it will give them game.

Continue reading Where There’s A Will

Where There’s A Will

I don’t have much time to write, but fortunately some of my readers do.

Mitchell Burnside Clapp, of Pioneer Rocketplane, has been commenting on spacesuit gloves in the previous post, but he also passes along some comments, via email, about how much smarter we are now than we were in the sixties.

I was thinking recently about NASA and its desire to invest heavily in new technologies to develop better launch vehicles. I know this is worthy work and that NASA’s charter requires them to do a fair bit of this sort of thing, but I can’t help be reminded of the kids who spend a hundred bucks on top of the line basketball shoes in the hopes that it will give them game.

Continue reading Where There’s A Will

Where There’s A Will

I don’t have much time to write, but fortunately some of my readers do.

Mitchell Burnside Clapp, of Pioneer Rocketplane, has been commenting on spacesuit gloves in the previous post, but he also passes along some comments, via email, about how much smarter we are now than we were in the sixties.

I was thinking recently about NASA and its desire to invest heavily in new technologies to develop better launch vehicles. I know this is worthy work and that NASA’s charter requires them to do a fair bit of this sort of thing, but I can’t help be reminded of the kids who spend a hundred bucks on top of the line basketball shoes in the hopes that it will give them game.

Continue reading Where There’s A Will

Working Hand In Glove

Many of those enthusiastic about the president’s new space policy want to redo Apollo.

I pointed this out when it was first announced, but I didn’t really describe all the implications of it.

There are many, but I want to focus here on those aspects of it that affect our choice in launch systems to achieve the president’s goals, whether existing, or new.

There is an assumption that we cannot move humans beyond earth orbit without a heavy-lift vehicle, like the Saturn that first took men to the moon three and a half decades ago (and the fact that this July 20th will be the thirty-fifth anniversary of the first lunar landing makes me feel quite ancient). This assumption is based on the fact that it’s how we did it the first time, and some have too little imagination to conceive that it could be done in any other way.

But that was then, and this is now.

What are the differences between then and now, in terms of our ability to fling humans beyond earth’s orbit, and on to other worlds?

First, of course, we know much more now than we did then, if for no other reason than we’ve done it. But more importantly, technology has advanced over the past third of a century since we first went to the moon, in a time period in which technology has been generally advancing at a dizzying pace, with a seeming continuous acceleration.

Computers are much smaller and faster, materials are stronger with the ability to take higher temperatures, our ability to design is much greater, and our ability to get designs from a computer screen to functional hardware is phenomenal, compared to our capabilities in the 1960s.

Consider also that our goal then was not to open up space in any sustainable way, but to simply beat the Russians to the moon.

Under those conditions, our choice to launch a lunar mission on a single large rocket probably made sense. It wasn’t cheap, but it was low risk, since we knew how to build big rockets (we only had to scale up what we already had), and we didn’t know how to assemble things in space.

But there seems to be an assumption on the part of many that large launch systems are an intrinsic requirement of manned space travel. Accordingly, they’ve skipped past the part of the trade studies that would determine whether or not this assumption is valid, and gone straight to debating the best way to get heavy lift.

Of course, there’s another motivation on the part of many engaged in such debates–a large launch system means a large development contract that provides continued employment for many who may fear losing their jobs when the space shuttle is phased out.

There is a huge constituency for the Shuttle program–in Florida where they are processed and launched, in Utah where the Solid Rocket Boosters are manufactured, in Louisiana where the external tanks are built, and other places. The president’s announcement that we will no longer fly the shuttle after the end of this decade had to have cast a pall over many people in those places, because even if the new initiative blossoms, there’s no guarantee that it will benefit the communities that are currently supported by shuttle-based jobs.

So it’s not surprising that some are talking about building a new heavy-lift launch system that uses shuttle components. If they can’t keep the orbiters, there are certainly many parts of NASA and its contractors that will work very hard to maintain the rest of the (costly) shuttle infrastructure. Concepts for shuttle-based launchers have been around as long as the shuttle itself, and many will claim that this is the fastest and cheapest route to the capability that they insist we need.

But do we?

Most people are unaware that other options were considered for Apollo, including earth orbit assembly, but as I wrote above, this mode was ultimately rejected as being too risky in terms of the primary goal–beating the Russians to the moon.

But as the president said last month, this isn’t a race–it’s a journey, and we need to come up with modes of operation that recognize that, and make the journey an economically sustainable one. A heavy-lift vehicle, even a shuttle-derived one, will cost a lot to develop, and unless it flies enough, it will be difficult to amortize those development costs. Smaller vehicles, flown more often, will be more likely to reduce launch costs in the near term.

The objection, of course, is that orbital assembly carries its own risks. What few realize is that this is because NASA hasn’t really devoted the effort necessary to reducing them (particularly in developing space suits that don’t tire out the astronauts).

The current soft suit resists motion because bending a joint changes the volume of the air inside it, providing a force that wants to restore it to its original position. Think of a rubber glove, limp until inflated, but difficult to bend the fingers once under pressure.

In fact, the glove is the biggest problem in designing the high-pressure space suits necessary to avoid the bends (the same problem a diver has when she surfaces too quickly) when an astronaut goes out into the vacuum of space. Larger joints like shoulders and knees have special designs that are zero-volume change, but no one has yet miniaturized such a design to finger joints.

Because this is a critical technology, and one that has great leverage in influencing launch system trades, I would propose the following:

Build a vacuum glove box with a task box inside (perhaps an automobile engine that has to be dissassembled and reassembled). Put up a purse of a million dollars to the first person who can achieve the task working through gloves under a pressure differential of half an atmosphere, without a break.

Unlike many space activities, it’s a project that can be literally done in someone’s garage, and it may spur a great amount of innovation for very low cost. Accordingly, it would make an excellent candidate for the Office of Exploration’s new prize fund, and I hope they’ll strongly consider it. At very low cost to the taxpayers, one or more successful concepts could lay to rest myths about the intrinsic difficulty of working in space, opening up the options for how we will get to the planets beyond redoing Apollo, perhaps saving billions in dollars, and constituting a major step toward becoming a truly spacefaring nation.

Space Debate Report

In comments on this post, Chuck Divine has a review of last night’s space policy debate in DC.

Muncy was superb. His top ten myths of the Bush space plan were excellent. Myth #1? The plan is about NASA. No, it’s not. The plan is about us (humans). Muncy eloquently put forward the observation that space was about all kinds of human endeavors.

Former astronaut Searfoss was the big surprise. He was critical of NASA, supportive of private space endeavors. He observed he lost six friends when Columbia burned up. I was very favorably impressed.

Hudgins and Park were very predictable. To be honest, I could have done a better job at presenting cases for their positions (even though I have some disagreements with both) than they did. Debate training from high school and college (at least what I got decades ago) does give me a bit of an advantage, though.

Rick Searfoss wouldn’t have been a surprise to me. He’s a ‘stro who gets it, and is on XCOR‘s board of directors.

Return Of The Queen

For those who were following the saga, I brought Stella home yesterday. She had another close call on Friday, but the antibiotics seemed to finally kick in on the weekend.

She’s as ornery as ever, particularly when fighting to keep pills from going down her gullet twice daily. She has banished the usurper, Jessica, and retaken her rightful place in my lap.

The More Things Change…

I’m still too busy to write much, and it’s not going to get much better until the end of the month–it will be a challenge even to do my Fox columns this week and next–but in the meantime, go read this little history of presidential space initiatives by Dwayne Day, over at The Space Review.

For those who aren’t familiar with past attempts to set a new direction for NASA, it provides a lot of good guidance, and potential food for thought as to how to avoid the mistakes of that past. It also debunks the nonsense that anything that NASA does beyond LEO automatically costs four hundred billion dollars (which of course, because NASA is doing it, is automatically inflated to a trillion dollars by clueless commentators).

And by the way, congratulations to Jeff Foust on the one-year anniversary of The Space Review. It should be one of your weekly must-read links if you’re interested in space policy and technology.

[Update on Wednesday]

Clark Lindsey has an email from someone at NASA who says that the SEI cost estimate was even more inflated than Dwayne says (scroll down a little).

…the internal NASA JSC number was $100 Billion — this number was doubled by the comptroller at JSC and then doubled again by the Comptroller at NASA Headquarters.

It wouldn’t surprise me at all.

[Update at 8:45 AM PST]

Dwayne responds in comments.

Off Line

Sorry, for the light posting, but I’m frantically busy, still have a convalescing cat (who’s unfortunately still not out of the woods), still have a furnace that isn’t working (I’m pretty sure I’ll have to replace the valve, whenever I can find the time to pull it off and go find a replacement), and am off to Florida for the weekend to see my darling Patricia.

See you Monday.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!