File Under: “Couldn’t Have Said It Better Myself”
Jul 16th, 2009 by Jonathan Goff
Mr X over at ChairForce Engineer has one of the best Apollo retrospectives I’ve seen this week (which is only helped by linking to one of my other favorites from this week, by Reason’s Ron Bailey). Their points are well-taken. At some point, we’ll have evolved our space transportation system to the point where we can make the leap to a lunar market that actually makes economic sense. We’re just nowhere close to that point yet. I still have hope we’ll get there before Jonny’s old enough for his 10 year college reunion–but not without a lot of hard work.
Of course, the odds of us developing a commercially relevant space transportation network would greatly improve if people would stop trying to repeat the dead-end architecture that Apollo first developed back when my dad was a teenager.
Which comes first, chicken or egg?
Will anyone spend the money needed to deploy a “sufficiently evolved space transportation system” prior to viable markets emerging? If so, who?
Bill,
That isn’t exactly what I was saying. What I’m saying is that there are no lunar surface markets big enough to justify the development of such a system all-at-once. I wasn’t saying there weren’t any markets along the way. On the contrary there are many intermediate markets of relevance, even if NASA’s lunar program either goes away, or goes down an irrelevant path. I think you really can bootstrap your way. First a mix of suborbital RLV stuff, orbital stations like Bigelow’s, tugs, small orbital depots (mostly focused on servicing tugs and eventually small upper stages). Then maybe you’re close enough to start taking the next steps.
My point was just that without NASA really doing the right thing, commercially the leap from where we are to a lunar transportation network is too big. But the leap from where we could be in 5-10 years (suborbital and orbital RLVs, tugs, commercial orbital stations, small LEO depots) is much smaller.
~Jon
Two points -
(1) The US government receives benefits from NASA unrelated to the development of genuine space-faring capability, such as prestige and jobs programs. There also is a large component arising from the “self licking ice cream cone” and related bureaucratic inertia even if Defense Department procurement boondoggles trumps NASA in that department. Defeating those who think like Senator Shelby would be a monumental task.
(2) NASA – at least imho – CANNOT be transformed into a profit motivated entity. It’s just not in the Agency’s DNA.
Therefore when Wingo and Spudis want NASA to engage in lunar resource development, I find myself thinking, “Huh?”
Therefore, leave NASA off the critical path. Find revenue streams not dependent on Uncle Sugar. In the short term?
I believe a LEO zero gravity sports arena could be profitable, supported by media rights and advertising and selling the name rights for the facility itself. However, given ITAR and NASA’s jealousy against anyone else attempting human spaceflight it might be necessary to flag such a facility overseas.
The failed MirCorp attempt shows the road forward, IMHO.
Such facilities would also consume more RLV flights that a NASA-centric fuel depot would.
Again, leave NASA off the critical path. But to do that we need to identify markets not dependent on Uncle Sugar.
I am also disappointed that Ron Bailey failed to note that Reason’s own archives contains a 1996 article that covers this exact same ground in far greater depth than Bailey’s does.
http://www.reason.com/news/show/29945.html
Its long, but well worth reading the entire thing if you care about locating profitable revenue streams for human spaceflight, other than slurping at Uncle Sugar’s trough.
One thing that strikes me is how little benefit from the Apollo program carried over into the one truly successful portion of the commercial space industry – launching and operating commercial communications satellites . Of course, the Saturn launch vehicles never carried any commercial satellite payloads. Somewhat more surprisingly, none of the big Saturn engines (F-1, J-2) ever was reused in a launch vehicle for commercial satellites.
The Delta II launch vehicle does incorporate some Apollo program technology but mostly in engines that were descendants of pre-Apollo engines. The RS-27A fist stage engine is a descendant of the H-1 from the Saturn I but also the pre-Apollo Thor / Jupiter engines. Likewise, Delta II second stage engine is a derivative of the AJ-10, another derivative of which was used for the Apollo service module, but this engine goes back to Vanguard and Thor-Able in the fifties.
The only other direct contribution I can think of is that some geosynchronous satellites have used liquid apogee engines that are derived from an Apollo RCS thruster, the R-4D.
That is a surprisingly small contribution given the magnitude of the investment in the Apollo program and the percentage of space related spending that it represented in its heyday. Most US satellite launch vehicles have evolved from ICBMs whereas the Apollo/Saturn vehicles diverged on their own dead end path. This is more tragic given that we seem to be set to repeat this mistake with Ares I and V, which will both be single purpose vehicles with little or no utility beyond the manned space flight program.
Replacing Ares I with an EELV Heavy or Flacon 9 Heavy derivative to launch Orion makes much more sense from this standpoint. Flying four manned missions per year using heavy launch vehicles with three cores would require 12 cores per year. Considering that the EELV program has launched only 32 cores over the last seven years (16 Atlas V mediums, 7 Delta IV mediums, and 3 Delta IV heavies with three cores each), for an average rate of a little more than 2 cores per type per year, upping the EELV core production rate by an additional 12 cores per year would substantially improve the economics of the EELV program. The same would be true if a Flacon 9 derivative were selected. Periodically recompleting the launch contracts between Atlas, Delta, and Flacon 9 would further push the economics of space access. The decreased marginal cost per launch would not only benefit NASA’s manned program but also commercial customers, other government customers, and even NASA’s own unmanned programs.
If we don’t want to end up in another Apollo dead end, NASA’s launch purchases for manned space flight need to be integrated into the wider launch vehicle industry so the benefits of higher launch rates accrue to the whole industry.
Any talk of bootstrapping to the lunar surface, realistically, has to face the Pittsburgh Problem : “there’s no *there* there”. The great thing about Luna, from a development (as opposed to an exploration) perspective, is what has been inelegantly called ISRU potential, & I am convinced that boostrapping *downward* from a toehold on the lunar surface is by far the more effective route. This does, however, seem to require an unhesitating commitment to colonization from the get-go, because from a capabilities perspective making it work requires the “One-Way Manned Space Mission” model.
Bootstrapping – ascent stages and reusable lunar landers need
to use that burn ISRU fuels and oxidants.
Nuclear energy can power the Moon bases at night. Power day time manufacturing from sun light. Sun light can be used directly as heat, say to melt metals. Sun light can be converted to electricity using solar arrays, possibly containing ISRU silicon, or Stirling engines attached to generators. Stirling engines can be made out of ISRU iron and/or aluminium.
Rovers can be powered by burning aluminium or ISRU magnesium and use Stirling engines to convert the heat to electricity.