Manned Space Will Never Be Great

Because the mind’s eye far exceeds ground truth, there are calls to “make manned space flight great again,” especially in the post-Shuttle era.

A new direction in collaboration among government and private space agencies, especially in nations with an established space industry infrastructure, might yield technologies and commercially viable projects that could benefit the world in ways we cannot yet imagine.

Yes, and mining the sea beds might also reveal the same. Or the use of hydraulic fracturing (AKA fracking) might be used to achieve U.S. energy-independence. Or… robotic space might benefit the world in ways we cannot yet imagine (and it’s cheaper, faster, and better than manned space to boot).

One problem with the “benefit the world in ways we cannot yet imagine” assertion is that despite all the cool stuff we might learn from, for example, Hubble or the yet-to-work James Webb Space Telescope (oh, and those are unmanned, BTW), those things don’t change life here on earth. I’ve been taught knowledge is good, but are the non-benefits of space science (relative to the cost) any sort of concern?

For example, human space technologies perhaps offer the best alternatives to protect against climate change by providing reliable and advanced methods to build sustainable shelters for people and livestock and to sustain agriculture in areas threatened by extreme weather patterns.

Groan. “Perhaps offer the best alternatives”? How do we benefit by recycling the tired ‘climate change’ chestnut again? I’m starting to think the settled science of manmade global warming was an even more successful disinformation campaign than the Soviets’ “nuclear winter” bit. Use Allen Iverson video below to hedge your intellectual bets and substitute “perhaps” for “practice.”

The assertion that manned space flight can be made great again depends on an underlying assumption that manned space flight was once great. And as one of America’s proxies in economic, technological, and military competition with the Russians, maybe it was great for the national ego, but that’s about the limit of it. Manned space flight was a stunt back in the day and it is far more of a stunt now.

Manned space is more of a stunt now largely because of breakthroughs in computing, sensors, and bandwidth. What is manned space now? A reality-suspended placeholder for those who think we’ll all kill ourselves or will be wiped out by an asteroid.

If space is to continue to have a future, it needs to be in ways that make life better here on earth. Robotic space-based communications, positioning, navigation, and timing (AKA GPS), and remote observation systems (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) systems have been successful and if manned space is to ever be great, it will be from the natural springboard provided by unmanned space systems.

I have seen the future of space and just like now, it’s dark, cold, and unmanned.

Manned Space: Too Fail To Big

To paraphrase Bill Freeza, how many times do the court astronauts (and scientists) have to be wrong about the impact of expensive government economic interventions in the space industry before we add them to the unemployment rolls?

…why are [space] activists who promote enlarging the size and scope of… [manned space] shocked when one [space] program after another is hijacked by [both new and old space] corporations that find it easier to seek favors in Washington than customers in the marketplace?

Interventionist thinking is furthered by the insidious onset of the fantastical (and I mean that in a bad way) efforts like the Beyond Planet Earth effort at the American Museum of Natural History, presented with a scientific veneer when being steeped in science fiction is the reality. Note: is it just me that thinks perhaps the museum was trying to be ironic in placing a futures display in a history museum? Perhaps it would be better called, in this example, the American Museum of Science Fiction Futurism?

As the Beyond Planet Earth exhibition is profiled by the New York Times, it is “to look forward 50 or 100 years.” What will this future yield?

The exhibition plays shamelessly to those of us who were captivated long ago by science fiction dreams and the notion that humanity’s destiny is somehow tied to the stars. For the most part these plans don’t come with price tags attached nor, for that matter, any indication of what currency the price should be denominated in.

Snip

Getting there [to the moon, regularly, by 2030] is also going to be interesting. By then, [exhibit curator] Dr. [Michael] Shara figures, we will have had enough of the violence of rockets and will descend and ascend from the lunar surface on a lunar elevator, “a skinny cable rising thousands of miles from the Moon into the sky,” anchored at the far end by the gravity of the Earth. In time, Dr. Shara said, the cable could be extended almost all the way to Earth.

The ‘violence’ of rockets is a big cost regarding space access, but let’s be real: something beats nothing. While it’s possible that breakthroughs in materials will have occurred by 2030 (and support a space elevator) and that an economic case for going to the Moon may be supportable, with the trend line we’re on, it seems… improbable. And there’s all that pesky radiation as well.

Don’t like Moon life? Well, how about Mars?

Some geologists think that Mars could be transformed, or “terraformed,” into a livable planet over time in what would be the grandest and most expensive engineering project ever, one that would take thousands of years and entail the Mother of All Environmental Impact Statements and, yes, “trillions of dollars.” Only trillions?

These may well be the same geologists who think that California’s high-speed rail can also be brought in on spec, on budget, and on schedule.

Somewhere, teased out of all this, is the profound lesson that humans are the only creatures who can lie to themselves.

To quote myself, I have seen the future of space (and warfare) and it’s unmanned.

 

 

No Ride To The Space Station? BFD (Big Fat Deal)

Yes, three space passengers astronauts rode a Russian Soyuz to the space station yesterday. As a result, there is much weeping and gnashing of teeth at the ignominy of having to depend on our reset friends for a ride to space. Were there such a thing as space rated sackcloth, many would be wearing that as well.

Frankly, Americans (in general) should care less.

Want to know why?

First, it’s because manned space manned space programs provide nothing but prestige, if that.

Next, the manned space portion of the domestic space industrial base has been hopelessly lost to crony capitalism.

Finally, short of a blown booster or failed spacecraft, the space station is the least-value-on-space-investment ever. Am I anti-space? Hardly, but if you want value from your space programs, think robotic space.

So why is China pursuing a manned space program? They’re flush with cash (likely), need to employ a ton of engineers and scientists (certainly), and the aforementioned prestige. But mainly, they need to develop a heavy-lift booster which can be used for their unmanned military and intelligence missions.

Who should care that America currently lacks a domestic ride to the space station? Mainly those whose livelihoods depend on the domestic space U.S. government (that is, NASA)-industrial complex. They’ve managed to create and preserve a sanctuary of space work for themselves that adds little to no value to the nation.

Shuttle Retrospective, Part Deux

From Rand Simberg, 6 False Lessons Of The Space Shuttle.  I find it hard to argue with Rand, so I’ll just comment.

False Lesson #1: The Shuttle Proved That Reusable Launch Vehicles are Not Cost Effective

Comment: however, the shuttle did prove that it is not cost effective compared to expendables.  ZZ Top sings of Cheap Sunglasses (as opposed to Oakleys) and if both get lost or broken within the first month, that $6 loss hurts much less than a $160 purchase.  Similarly, while a Zippo may be a stylish and debonair way of lighting a smoke, a Bic lighter does it for about 1% of the cost.

False Lesson #2: The Shuttle Proved That We Must Move Beyond Chemical Rockets

Comment: if not chemical rockets, then what?  Graphene space elevators?  Rand holds out hope for competition and economies of scale and it’s true that quantity has a quality all its own.  However, the trained observer in me sees that competition is massively skewed by government (and certainly not just USG) intervention of all sorts (bids, contracting, subsidies, earmarks, legislation, and districts/states).  Similarly, economies of scale regarding space launch can still be categorized as unobtanium and/or vaporware and we’re still waiting for that breakthrough in propulsion, fifty-plus years into the space age.

False Lesson #3: The Shuttle Proved that Cargo and Passengers Should Travel on Different Vehicles

Comment: mission assurance and reliability have little to do with the payload being carried, whether cargo for the ISS, human beings, a sack of potatoes, or satellites.  Sadly, failures can happen at any time, including on dedicated manned missions. Additionally, off-pad failures are almost always catastrophic (Apollo 13 being the one known exception), meaning it matters little if a shuttle payload bay was carrying a gigantic satellite and matching bomb-like upper stage or simple foodstuffs for the space station.

False Lesson #4: The Shuttle Proved that NASA Should Have Stuck with, and Should Return to, the Safe and Successful Architecture of Apollo’s Heavy-Lift Vehicle and Crew Capsule

Comment (really a question): an Apollo-like vehicle and capsule in order to do what?  What is manned spaceflight trying to accomplish?  However, if every manned op looks like a lunar mission, every launch vehicle will probably look like a Saturn V.

False Lesson #5: The Worst Result of the Shuttle Program was the Death of 14 Astronauts

Comment (OK, more questions and then a comment): how many lives were lost on the nation’s interstates yesterday?  How many Americans died in World War II?  How many lost their lives on the Oregon Trail?  Death is a part of life and that includes untimely deaths.  If we know the benefits and the risks, there are some bets we should make and others we shouldn’t.  My point of view is that robotic space can (at this point) do everything we want manned space to do sans one: inspire.

False Lesson #6: The Ultimate False Lesson: That the Space Shuttle Proved Anything at All

Comment: while the shuttle’s sample size is small and the inputs are skewed, I’ll offer that the shuttle proved at minimum that it was the wrong tool for the job.  The only way you could say the shuttle was the right tool was if the job was to spend money and (generally) create national pride and a sense of unity. Pearl Harbor and 9/11 had the same sort of effect and while those events were memorable, it was for all the wrong reasons.

Shuttle Retrospectives

Rand Simberg has two shuttle articles, The Final Launch and 6 False Lessons Of The Space Shuttle.  This article will focus on The Final Launch; the second article warrants its own post.

The fundamental take behind The Final Launch is that the shuttle program didn’t work and the Constellation program wasn’t working, so the President was correct in pursuing a market-based solution to get astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station.  The phrase “didn’t work” is a summary phrase to address a system’s actual cost, performance, and schedule versus what it had been advertised as doing. 

So while the shuttle may stir patriotic feelings, present a fantastic photo-op, and get astronauts and cargo to the ISS, it has 1) missed its own safety standards, 2) costs way too much (somewhere around 20 times the initial per launch estimate, and at that, government accounting can be charitable characterized as an imprecise black art) and 3) hugely misses its advertised launch tempo.  As such, the shuttle has been a money pit that has prevented NASA from undertaking other potentially more useful initiatives.

Simberg offers our whole civil space program is a major departure from Eisenhower’s first vision, was fueled by the Cold War, and suffers from the effects of regulatory capture.  I’ll add that it was purposefully romanticized beyond recognition after John Kennedy’s death.  So as Steven Covey might say, our space program reflects the law of the farm; we’re reaping what we’ve sowed for the last 50-plus years.

So what’s a nation to do?  Surprising many, the President has offered a common-sense, market-based space launch solution, and new space efforts like SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, XCOR, Armadillo, Blue Origin, Sierra Nevada, and Bigelow abound.  While many of these outfits have names that sound like microbrews, they are for real (although by government standards, the depth, breadth, and scope of their efforts is to-date smaller). 

SpaceX, for example, has a modern and capable facility in Hawthorne, CA (I spent about four hours not that long ago) where they make many of their own rocket components, to include rocket engines.  The SpaceX facility compares very favorably to the old General Dynamics facilities in San Diego (Atlas and Centaur manufacturing, infrastructure, and sustaining engineering) or especially the old Mac-Dac site in Huntington Beach (Delta launch vehicles) which was reminiscent of a 1950s high school metal shop writ large, complete with sea-foam green painted machines and oil-stained/metallic shaving covered concrete floors.  Although SpaceX’s facility (which was used in the movie Iron Man 2) is nothing like the behemoth EELV manufacturing facility in Decatur, AL, it doesn’t need to be (nor for that matter, is it easy to justify the massive amount of excesses capability present at Decatur).

And EELV itself is a great point of departure in examining all that hasn’t worked out as expected on the military side of the space launch issue.  Based on bad assumptions (exploding—figuratively, not literally—space economy) with shared infrastructure and overhead costs, EELV has failed to deliver on cost (and has in fact, breeched Nunn-McCurdy).  Since then, the “solution” was about what you’d expect: more government oversight and significantly, allowing the two major contractors to consolidate into a single effort.  Has it worked?  Performance and schedule-wise (including the NRO’s just-completed and fantastic launch campaign), yes; cost, no.  Isn’t it intuitive that reducing competition tends to do bad things on cost?

So whether it’s EELV or manned space flight, at the end of the day, it seems to be an issue of ‘keep doin’ what you’re doin’, keep getting’ what you got.’  Regarding manned space flight, the nation has an opening to move beyond the same-old government oversight/insight model and using the best tool at hand, new (commercial) space, pursue space-access solutions that are cheaper, faster, and better.  Will Congress let it happen?  Simberg offers that unless it doesn’t, our space access and manned space programs in general will wither away under the burden of unaffordability.

After all, it’s the law of the space farm.

(Image Wikimedia Commons)

Russia Wins The Space Race? Get Serious

The Daily Beast writes Russians Win The Space Race.  That’s not true at any level but a more accurate headline that says Russians Possess Launch Vehicles Which Have Endured The Shuttle Era ain’t gonna create a lot of page views. 

But that’s just what the Russians have done: come to possess launch vehicles which have survived the space shuttle era.  Why have the Russian vehicles survived?  There are three main reasons: they’re cheaper, faster, and better than the shuttle.

Cheaper in the fact a shuttle launch represents an amortized cost of about $1.5 billion per launch while the Russians are charging about $50 million per astronaut.  And although that fee will go up, it won’t ever approximate shuttle costs.  Where do the savings come from?  Low pay is certainly part of the equation; the Beastly article mentions $1000/month for an astro engineer.  Interns at Loral make more than that.

Faster in that the Russians can support a rapid launch ops tempo.  They are planning up to 24 launches to the ISS each year; four manned and twenty unmanned.  While that may be a success-oriented plan, if the shuttle is running four missions per year, the team is running as fast as they can.  And don’t forget the two year return-to-flight break following the most recent shuttle failure.

Finally, better in that the Russian vehicles have not suffered the sort of catastrophic loss of life that plagued the shuttle program.  They have simple, reliable configurations that are well-proven.

What the Beastly article misses in total is that unmanned space is really where it’s at.  In that regard, Russian space programs don’t have anything that compares favorably to our GPS, communications, missile warning, intelligence, or scientific space programs.  The coin of the realm in space is information and while space launch provides the necessary access to space, once satellites are in orbit, the information that comes off U.S. systems is superior.

Manned space?  It’s a sort of Cold War vestigial stunt.

(Image Wikipedia Commons)

 

 

 

John Logsdon and Country Joe: Space Cassandras?

John Logsdon asks a very straightforward question: was the space shuttle a mistake?

His answer?  Yes (with a few caveats).

Logsdon acknowledges several shuttle achievements and benefits (international cooperation, Hubble, the de-testpilotification of the astronaut, and a creation/display of American pride and prestige) and then asks if these outcomes were worth the shuttle’s $210 billion program cost.   

His answer: at about $1.5 billion per mission, probably not.  This work could likely have been done more capably/less expensively using non-shuttle solutions (of course, the space station is highly culpable here as well). 

Logsdon gives a head nod to NASA’s management of the shuttle’s initial development effort followed by a gruesome (but accurate) observation regarding NASA’s ability to subsequently operate the shuttle program on-budget.

Then-NASA administrator James Fletcher told Congress in 1972 that the shuttle would cost $5.15 billion to develop and could be operated at a cost of $10.5 million per flight. NASA only slightly overran development costs, which is normal for a challenging technological effort, but the cost of operating the shuttle turned out to be at least 20 times higher than was projected at the program’s start.

This leads to one of the major points of Logsdon’s article:

The shuttle’s cost has been an obstacle to NASA starting other major projects.

The space transportation system (STS), AKA the shuttle, became the mission that (almost) ate NASA.  And that leads to another major observation:

Today we are in danger of repeating that mistake, given Congressional and industry pressure to move rapidly to the development of a heavy lift launch vehicle without a clear sense of how that vehicle will be used.

So, with apologies to Country Joe and the Fish

And it’s three, two, one

Here we go off to space

What to do way up there? 

I don’t know and can’t make a case

With the S-T-S,

Astronauts get on aboard

Manned space it gives us glory

It’s some sort of allegory

The Kennedy Space-Myth

How do myths get started?  As an effort to burnish legacies.

Which is exactly what happened with President John Kennedy and the U.S. manned space flight program.

Check out this awesome post, a review of the John M. Logsdon book “John F. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon” from which you can only conclude that the U.S. manned space flight program was all about looking good in the shower.

Where did the U.S. lead the Soviets back in Kennedy’s day?  Military space applications?  Check.  Commercial and civil space applications?  Check.  Scientific space applications?  Check.  Prestige space programs?  Well, we Americans could do a small bit of some work there (largely as a form of political theater). 

Ready for some unburnishing (deburnishing?)?

During his Senate years, Kennedy showed no interest in space exploration. Like many Americans in the late 1950s, he mistakenly viewed Soviet achievements with the Sputnik launches aboard their R-7 intercontinental ballistic missiles as evidence of a "missile gap" that threatened U.S. security. (Apparently Kennedy himself originated the phrase, in a Senate speech on August 14, 1958.) During his 1960 presidential campaign, Kennedy received a CIA briefing which showed him no missile gap existed — but he didn’t correct the public misperception he himself helped create.

I’m shocked, shocked that political rhetoric could be disconnected from reality.

Kennedy’s legacy as a space visionary has been diffused by the prism of history. This myth was substantially debunked by a tape recording of a November 21, 1962 meeting between Kennedy and NASA Administrator James Webb, along with budget and other government officials. Webb pressed for more money to accelerate Apollo as well as conduct more science missions. Kennedy replied, "I’m not that interested in space," and reiterated that his sole interest was in showing the world that U.S. technology was superior to the Soviet Union.

So what’s the way ahead for space in the here and now?  Robotic (see UAVs) space, same as it’s ever been.

Manned space is and will remain a prestige issue.  The biggest benefit of new space/space tourism may well be to write down the costs of doing other things in, to, through, and from space that are truly useful.

When space becomes more concerned about making life better for people here on earth (delivering energy, materials, new services, additional security, etc.) it will have fulfilled its essential mission.

 

Space: White-collar Welfare or Crony Capitalism?

Should NASA spend $10 billion across six years using shuttle-based/shuttle-derived/shuttle-recycled components to test a new crew capsule while they figures out what they really want to do regarding a next-generation heavy lift capability?

And interestingly, the shuttle-based effort keeps the incumbents ATK and Lockheed on board (and on the payroll and gives them perhaps significant head start on the next “competition”) while a new heavy-lift capability is pondered.

Sounds like a groan-inducing waste, crony capitalism, regulatory capture, and can-kicking regarding the real issue: what is the future of manned space flight? 

I’d offer that the low-earth orbit being “explored” by the ISS should be pretty well known at this point.  What’s next?

Critics in the Orlando Sentinel have even given the shuttle-based idea a name: the booster to nowhere, or alternatively, the Senate Launch System.

NASA: not about space anymore?

Telling snips from the article:

“It’s a complete farce,” said Berin Szoka, a member of the FAA’s Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee…

Added U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., a senior member of the House committee that oversees NASA: “I think it’s a wasteful compromise that is being proposed for political reasons and not for any long-term space strategy that makes sense.”

 

Space Shuttle: $1.5 Billion Per Launch

Manned space flight is expensive.  The shuttle is manned space flight.  Therefore, the shuttle is expensive.

How much so?  $1.5 billion per mission.

Of course, the “b” number has lost much of its power to shock recently, what with USG deficits in the “T’s.”  Still…

The comments following the article are hilarious and tend to gloss over fundamental things like unmanned boosters could have placed the Hubble on orbit; replacing, instead of servicing the Hubble would have made sense; emotion items like ‘space is important’ and ‘we’ll feel bad when China plants a flag on the moon’; bank bailouts cost more; blah, blah, blah.  

One commentator got it right with this:

We spent 3 billion using the shuttle to get the telescope in space and fix it and the Telescope only cost 2.5 billion to build.  $192 billion to launch 807 astronauts works out to be $237,918,216 per astronaut. Kind of makes the Russian’s $60 million/seat look like a bargain, doesn’t it?

Ah, that calls for an update to the lead-in: U.S. manned space flight is expensive.  The shuttle is U.S. manned space flight.  Therefore, the shuttle is expensive.

Remember, the shuttle legacy, besides the tragedies, has largely been to build the ISS.  And the legacy of the ISS was to use the shuttle for much of its construction…

I didn’t see any mention of Tang or Velcro.