Amazon’s Great Space Blunder

You may have heard that Amazon had to smoke their booster, AKA they had to use the flight termination system for an anomaly/non-nominal event.

So what does this all mean?  That trying to “do space” has to be the worst business decision Amazon has ever made.  

Why?  First off, it’s a high risk-low margin endeavor (but it is very cool, yes.  So are time travel, tractor rays, and invisibility cloaks).  Next off, it’s a saturated market (consider China, India, SpaceX, et al).  Thirdly, it’ll make them government-dependent (that’s how you make money in space: selling products to the government.  Isn’t selling your company’s soul to the government a self-evident bad thing?).  Finally, to be successful as an aerospace endeavor, space has to be a core competency. 

I see space as more of a hobby (if that) for the Amazon overseers. 

 

Is SpaceX Really “Commercial Space”?

Loren Thompson asks the question “Is SpaceX really commercial space?” While a space-outsider would say “No,” the insider answer is “It depends on how you define commercial space.”

The reason for such an answer is because SpaceX makes much of their space money the old fashioned way: by selling space services and hardware to the government.  And if that’s “commercial space,” then everything is commercial space; after all, the government doesn’t have any rocket or satellite factories.

Then what is SpaceX?  I’d call it ‘new space’ for lack of a better term.

Yes, SpaceX is penciled in to do the launch ops for the Iridium Next constellation which does appear to be true commercial space and entailed SpaceX beating out the Chinese and the Indians along the way.  But without the selling-to-the-government part of the SpaceX company business in place to sustain their operations, would an excursion into ‘real’ commercial space be possible?

“Commercial space” may be an ill-defined misnomer, perhaps best defined by what it isn’t: existing legacy practices with massive levels of government oversight, directed rework, and intrusiveness.

Space Refueling? Recurb Your Enthusiasm

Reuters reports on the future of refueling on-orbit satellites.  They give a balanced assessment regarding it’s potential (unlike those who thinks it lacks a not-taxpayer-funded future).  Against:

Because the satellites weren’t designed with refueling in mind — they have no navigational aids, no reflectors, nothing to help guide in an approaching spacecraft — the technical hurdles are steep.

Since the same technology also could be used to disable satellites, [deputy project manager for the Satellite Servicing Capabilities Office at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Benjamin] Reed said NASA intends to be as open as possible about the project.

Yes, if the military was doing this, the cries of “space weapons” and “dangerous proximity operations” would be heard unto the ionosphere.  NASA doesn’t get that much.  Is that an argument for the existence of our civil space program?

On the ‘for space refueling’ side:

There are currently about 360 operational commercial communications satellites and another 100 [U.S.] government-owned satellites orbiting Earth.

"Every single one of them one day is going to run out of fuel and be thrown away. That’s the way it’s always been done. If a robot can go up and refuel it, you wouldn’t have to throw it away," Reed said.

“Throw it away”?  I was under the impression we didn’t have a space trash can, but it could have been some sort of covert shuttle op.  Is that another argument for the existence of our civil space program?

If refueling were the only variable, there would be more of a case to be made for space refueling.  But it is far from the only variable: consider space law issues regarding liability; refueling versus replacing aged-out satellite technologies; solar arrays and other components which have been degraded by the space environment on the refueled satellites; how to economically orbit and deorbit the refueler itself; etc..

As such, space refueling has potential as a space service that can be sold to the U.S. government.  Without such sponsorship, it is stillborn.

NASA Forecast: Rancor with a Foreshadowing of Angst

The Washington Post addresses the last shuttle flight as a sort of metaphor for NASA itself.

Shuttle jobs?  All they are is dust in the wind.  The infrastructure?  Abandon in place. The future…

So what is the way ahead for U.S. manned spaceflight?  It appears to be all hat and no cattle (and the hat costs so much that it precludes buying some cattle).

If so, why does China want to push round mounds of renminbi into their manned space program?  It’s all for the prestige (analogous to looking good in the shower) and providing dual-use make-work for their armies of engineers, technocrats, and the China Great Wall Industrial Corporation. 

Ah, but back to NASA and the WaPo article:

Here’s Bob Crippen, who was the pilot of the first shuttle mission, STS-1, back in 1981: “I’ve never seen NASA so screwed up as it is right now. . . . They don’t know where they’re going.”

It gets worse.

“We’re all victims of poor policy out of Washington, D.C. — both at the NASA level and the executive branch of the government,” [shuttle Launch Director Mike] Leinbach said recently at a news conference here. He said he was “embarrassed” about the lack of guidance.

What to do?  Quick, blame someone else (either the previous administration or alternatively, Congress, who is responsible for funding NASA) and maybe no one will notice anything.

“We have brought the program back from the brink,” [NASA Deputy Administrator Lori] Garver said. “We inherited a program that was in disarray.”

So the current NASA crew snatched space victory from the jaws of defeat?  How so?

Obama zeroed out Constellation in the president’s 2011 budget request. Under the NASA authorization act passed by Congress, Constellation is officially dead, though some major elements are still lurking, rebranded.

Brought back by defunding Constellation (in order to pursue commercial space)?  I’m good with the decision but I wouldn’t call that bringing NASA back from the brink.  So now, NASA is no longer in disarray, but is in…array?  How about other voices on the Constellation cancellation and shuttle retirement?

“What they did was abandon a plan for no plan,” [former NASA Administrator Mike] Griffin said. “We are retiring the shuttle in favor of nothing.”

Of course, Griffin has his legacy in play, so his position is pretty predictable, but still, what hath the shuttle program—including this last one—all wrought?

In retrospect, that [the shuttle] was arguably too much spaceship for most of what was needed for missions in low-Earth orbit. NASA wants to get away from using a single vehicle to carry humans and cargo. It’s safer and cheaper to send cargo separately.

After Challenger, the military utility of having a reasonably diverse set of ways to get to space became obvious.  Now, it appears, NASA sees it too.  But the shuttle program still lumbered along all those years.

Perhaps the real lesson is this: if the plan is just to spend money, Constellation was great for “old space.”  If the plan now is just to spend money, commercial (that is, “new space”) space will do the job as well.  But if the vision is for NASA to use a manned space capability to make life better for people on earth, the shuttle’s legacy has been an epic and expensive failure. And the way ahead, even sans shuttle, looks much the same.

Without a space vision, the space people perish.

China orders imagers from Surrey

Why would China want three Surrey-built one-meter imagers?

Several reasons come to mind:

China will have a crew in the Surrey plant for ‘quality assurance’ capable of providing insight into Surrey’s design, engineering, and manufacturing methods.  In other words, reverse engineering/industrial espionage.

China could do it themselves, but can’t beat Surrey on performance, cost, and schedule.

China could do it themselves, but they’re so flush with cash they feel compelled to ‘spread it around’ a bit.  Of course a by-product (buy-product?) of the effort is the Brits become more comfortable sharing with China, selling to China, and become indebted (so to speak) to China.

Surrey really needs the business.

The authorities are aware of the potential problems and have taken some actions to try and mitigate the technology transfer/intellectual property issue (and from the Space News article):

The Chinese customer will be able to command the satellite to take images of a given area, but will not have control of the spacecraft. No Chinese engineers will be trained in satellite design for the program, and for the moment SSTL [that is, Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd.] has no intention of launching the satellites aboard a Chinese rocket. These concessions were made to reassure British and U.S. government officials that the transaction steers clear of technology-transfer concerns, which in the United States are known as ITAR rules, or International Traffic in Arms Regulations.

So I guess the Chinese control the sensor while Surrey flies the bus.  And that’s my emphasis on “for the moment.”

One thing I’m sure of: China isn’t doing this out of the goodness of their hearts.

Who Then, Shall Regulate Us?

Question of the moment: What if having a vibrant space program requires bypassing NASA?  

The question really means “What if having a vibrant space program requires bypassing the U.S. government as the primary space customer and space regulator?”  That’s because NASA, the Air Force, and the NRO don’t build the space hardware or provide space services, but rather, operate things that are placed in space by aerospace contractors. 

What the USG agencies do is provide “oversight” and sometimes “insight” into the myriad processes needed to get a satellite on orbit.  Similarly, the FAA tries to mitigate risk by requiring compliance with procedures, rules, regulations, and the like.

Wayne Crews, writing at Forbes, has a few excellent observations (meaning great minds think alike) on the way ahead for commercial space:

But while it’s still early in the game, we should strive to keep regulators earthbound.

Earthbound is of course a sort of space-faring metaphor for largely out-of-the-way USG oversight, insight, and risk mitigation.  Yet some regulator involvement will be required in order for commercial space providers to obtain insurance and to help build public confidence and trust in the endeavor (the effort, not the Space Shuttle Endeavor).  Without any trust in commercial space, consumers of all sorts won’t be inclined to use it.  Crews expands this idea in the second half of his article. 

More from Crews:

We’ll inevitably need to revisit the global Outer Space Treaty…

[and]

Subsidies should be discouraged…

Why?  Because if we don’t, the OST will continue to inhibit the commercial use of space and without such commercialization, space will continue to suffer the consequences of being largely dependent on government programs and subsidies. This means that space should be viewed as a frontier and not as an extraterrestrial commons (as the OST views space and do other platitudinous sayings such as ‘space reflects the common heritage of mankind’).  A frontiers mentality has a goal of making life better on earth and that’s what free-markets are best at.  Conversely, legacy government space programs have little or no interest in this area and are subject to regulatory capture.

Commercial space, in my mind, is closer to what the new space actors are doing and further from the space-tourism thing (go up to 100km, float around for a few seconds and then come home) that Branson has in mind.  New space has the opportunity to create real value for Americans (energy production and materials); space tourism is a thrill-ride for the rich (to include the USG, which is more profligate than rich). The hope many have (and remember, hope is not a strategy) is that the economies of scale brought about by space tourism will focus more people on the things a robust (and not government dependent) space economy could provide.   

China and SpaceX

From Aviation Week:

China’s space industry remains hopeful it can do business with the U.S., despite a renewed chill in relations.

Apparently we need relational global warming climate change with China or perhaps a Chinese reset button in addition to the existent Russian reset.  Or maybe the chill was about to expire and it needed to be renewed?

But I digress: the point of the article is China says it can’t compete on price with SpaceX.

(E)xecutives at China Great Wall Industry Corp. are finding it hard to believe that California-based Space Exploration Technologies Inc. (SpaceX) is offering lower launch prices than they can.

“Hard to believe,” eh?  So reading between the lines, you might think that China is accusing SpaceX of some sort of unfair trade practice, loss leader, nose-under-the-tent effort, or too-good-to-be-true deal and is proclaiming the same to the commercial space world.

SpaceX may want to batten down the intellectual property firewalls if they haven’t done so already.

When China says they want to do business with the U.S., that means 1) sell us a service or 2) snag some tasty technology/intellectual property. 

Maybe China agrees to buy more U.S. debt in exchange for ‘benign’ technology transfers with the U.S.-based SpaceX?  While there are huge legal barriers, such things are capable of changing relatively quickly.

.3 Meter Resolution For Sale

More from Aviation Week:

DigitalGlobe’s WorldView 3 spacecraft, set for launch in 2014, will generate resolution of 0.3 meters, too fine for commercial sale under U.S. policy but sure to be of interest to government customers.

Yeah, but the real lesson is that the space-genie is out of the bottle.  Want better space?  We accept PayPal, Debit, and bullion.

The Iron Logic of Government Space Traffic Control

Why space traffic control should be a free public utility

So This Is Space Cooperation?

Can space cooperation lead to reduced prices at the pump, a more enduring access to affordable energy, and general peace and happiness?  Maybe…

From the White House with the major head nod to Space Politics regarding the President’s trip to Brazil:

President Rousseff welcomed the emphasis the U.S. National Space Policy has placed on international cooperation and expressed her wish to expand the dialogue with the United States bearing in mind the guidelines of the Brazilian space policies, aimed at technological capacity building and the commercial use of infrastructure and technology.

Space Politics speculates the “commercial use of infrastructure and technology” words regard using Brazil as a launch site, something they’ve had little success with. 

In this context, they welcomed the signing of a new bilateral Framework Agreement on Cooperation in the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space and expressed their desire to commence negotiations of a new agreement to protect launching operation technologies.

While an equatorial launch site is desirable, what does it mean to “protect launching operation technologies”?  I’m not sure, but it’s definitely something other than the China-Hughes relationship, where technology was transferred one way—from the U.S. to China, of course—for the purpose of allowing more money to be made.

Furthermore, they affirmed the commitment of their countries to security in space and decided to initiate a dialogue in that area. They also instructed the appropriate agencies in the two countries to discuss the establishment of a Brazil – United States. Working Group on satellite-based earth observations, environmental monitoring, precipitation measurement, and natural disaster mitigation and response that would facilitate future dialogue and cooperation in these fields.

While talk is alleged to be cheap, assuming a small army of talkers and the traditional bill-payer, the costs add up.  Not that this whole endeavor might not be worth it, depending.  For example, space cooperation with Brazil might be along the lines of Turkey getting an astronaut on the space shuttle.  You know: that prestige thing.

Conventional wisdom surrounding the President’s Brazil trip holds that the whole thing is fundamentally focused on oil; that is, having Brazil find and pump more so we can buy from them.

Is it too late to get a Brazilian on the shuttle?