While I was standing there looking at this pretty darned impressive hole in the ground, I started thinking about Larry Niven’s quip about how “Dinosaurs went extinct because they didn’t have a space program”. As I said on Twitter during the drive, I don’t think our space program would actually do us much good in stopping an extinction-level meteor strike, even if we had 5-10 years advanced notice (which we most likely wouldn’t have because we’re not doing the NEO search in the way that would actually give us much advanced warning).

I think a better way of thinking about this would be to say that “Dinosaurs went extinct because they weren’t spacefaring. Unfortunately, neither are we–yet.”

Speaking of spacefaring, I think that Paul Spudis’ article about the seafaring vs. aviation analogy for space was spot-on in illustrating this point. This is why I’m worried that the destination/mission focus of so much of the space debate is driving things in foolish directions. I actually side with Paul in thinking that cislunar space (including the surface of the Moon) is where it makes the most sense for us to develop ourselves into a spacefaring (and not just space-visiting) civilization. I just think a lot of the debate is on destinations versus whether we want to be forever stuck with one-off missions or whether we want to establish the kind of transportation infrastructure that enable something more like what Paul described (and ultimately what would be required if we want to be able to avoid repeating the fate of the Dinosaurs if it turns out some rock out there is addressed with our name on it).

Unfortunately, I’ve been hearing rumors that NASA may not even bother releasing the study results this time around, due to potential “ITAR” concerns. Unlike the military, NASA can’t so easily “classify” away things they don’t want people to read, but over the last half decade, the ITAR card has served as a sort of purgatory/Memory Hole where inconvenient information can be banished. I hope NASA does the right thing by making this taxpayer-funded research public. Seriously, how much truly ITAR-sensitive info is there really likely to be in these presentations? NASA has made studies like this public for decades, even since ITAR got ratched up into its current pain in the neck back during the 90s. If there really is a concern that some of the material might be ITAR sensitive, couldn’t they just redact the specific information that they deem ITAR sensitive (and then give US citizens info on where they can get access to the full, unredacted version)? Heck, I’d be willing to start a donation drive to pay for the lawyer’s time to go through and figure out what actually needs to be held back. My guess is that if they really redact anything it’ll probably be less than 5-10% of the content.

Hopefully I’m making a mountain out of a molehill, but I really hope this info sees the light of day. When NASA embarks on a $20B+ multi-year project, especially one where they’re trying to use sole-source contracts and lock in providers without performing an honest re-competition, doesn’t the public deserve a right to see what the contractors came up with, and if they actually agree with NASA? Sure, I wouldn’t be surprised if this time around several of the usual suspects actually come out supporting NASA, but I think the public deserves to see dissenting opinions as well. How can US citizens make informed oversight of their federal government, if the federal government isn’t transparent even with non-national-security issues like what architecture NASA should use for exploration?

Am I being paranoid or unreasonable?

Jeff made the point that you can look at space policy from a framework that has Goals at the top, with Strategies that help you achieve those Goals, Objectives that provide you measurable steps to gauge your progress at those Strategies, and then Tactics that determine what tools you use for meeting those Objectives. I really like this framework, and in fact it helped me clarify my thinking about Altius’ corporate goals and strategies (but that’s a blog post for another time, and probably over on the ASM blog).

After giving a few analogies (WWII military policy and the Space Race), Jeff then made the argument that “space settlement” was actually the policy of the United States. For me, my motivating goal for space development is a very closely related but slightly different focus–tapping the resources of space for the benefit of mankind here on earth. Now, there are challenges for both of these goals. As Jeff right pointed out, there are many who are afraid of openly proclaiming goals like these, because they are afraid that they might not actually be realistically achievable. In the case of settlement, there are questions of whether humans can actually reproduce outside of a 1g field, or if we can ever get to the point where we can economically support life indefinitely off planet. In the case of tapping space resources for humanity’s benefit, there’s the “minor technical detail” that most of these resources are extremely subeconomic right now.

I actually discussed the topic of subeconomic resources back in the early day of this blog, but I figure a revisiting of the topic is worthwhile. To recap, a subeconomic resource is one that you can’t profitably extract and sell under current conditions. Pretty much all space resources currently fall under this category. While you hear a lot of comments on space forums about the importance of better space property rights, the reality is that even if there was a clear way you could homestead a chunk of the Moon or a NEO or Mars, and sell anything you could harvest for it, I still don’t think you could actually close an honest business case around resource extraction today. With how much it would cost and how long it would take to go from where we are right now to the point where you could actually sell your first kg of lunar platinum or put the first drop of lunar derived LOX or LH2 into a customer’s tank in LEO, there’s no way you could actually make the ROI work for doing that privately, stand-alone. In fact, I’ve even got a certain coblogger who has made the argument that it’s impossible to ever mine a resource in space and send it back to earth for a net profit.

While I’m pessimistic on the current economics of space resource extraction, I think my friend is wrong. The point I made in my previous article on the topic and that I wanted to remake today is that resources that are currently subeconomic don’t have to stay that way. What got me thinking about this was actually reading a sign at the Hogle Zoo last week while on vacation. One of the donors for the zoo was the Kennecott Copper Mine, a major open-pit mine located in the mountains on the west side of the Salt Lake Valley. While this mine is one of the most productive mines in the world, there was still a time in the not-to-distant past, where even if you knew exactly how much gold, silver, copper, and molybdenum there was in there, that it wouldn’t have been possible to economically exploit that. But as transportation systems became more mature, affordable, and reliable, commerce spread, and eventually mines like it or deep-sea oil rig operations also became feasible and even profitable.

Now don’t get me wrong, just because it’s possible for some subeconomic resources to become economic over time, that doesn’t guarantee that a specific resource will do so. Personally, I’d be really surprised if anyone ever harvests Helium-3 from the moon for use in fusion reactors, for instance. But I think there’s a reasonable case that a space program run with the goals I mentioned earlier (settlement and resource utilization), and with a suitably well-thought-out and implemented strategy, can enable at least some extraterrestrial resources to become economically extractable for mankind’s benefit.

Imagine for a second that the White House actually proposed such a goal, and a strategy like Jeff’s “planet hopping” strategy, and found a way to get Congress on-board with such a strategy, and NASA to competently execute it’s part of that strategy long enough to get us past our first two major objectives (depots in LEO and L1 and a working lunar ISRU operation capable of delivering respectable amounts of LOX/LH2 to L1). Also imagine that the idea of prepping these new capabilities for a handoff to commercial operations was built-in from the get-go instead of being an afterthought like it usually is. By that point, we would have already started some virtuous cycles. By providing an anchor tenancy need for propellant in LEO, you’ve now provided a large enough stable market to close the business cases for several lower-cost launch providers. You’ve also helped establish infrastructure and systems to allow sending large amounts of crew, cargo, and other materials to the lunar surface. You’ve also established the first market for propellant in L1 (servicing missions both to the Moon and also to NASA’s next steps in the “planet hopping” strategy). If the price point of propellant in L1 from lunar sources really is cheaper than shipping it from home, you’re also getting the start of a transportation system that has a made a lot of progress towards being able to extract and ship home Lunar PGMs at an economically useful price point. While you might not yet be all the way there, you’ve now lowered the amount of additional work that has to be covered by a lunar PGM extraction business plan substantially, and also removed a lot of content and time between fundraising and when that first bar of platinum can be sold on earth. Also, by providing steady demand for propellant in L1, NASA has also provided an economic incentive for people to improve the cost of delivering stuff to L1 (say by improving the reusability of lunar landers, building a small lunar mass driver, rotovator, launch loop, sling, or a lunar beanstalk). By providing an anchor tenant for LEO and L1 propellant, NASA has also made it easier for other people with business ideas to factor those into their company’s plans, or their country’s space program.

To summarize what has now become a much longer blog post than I intended, I think a properly done settlement/resource extraction goal with a “planet hopping” strategy could actually start making lunar resources economically extractable even before we’ve managed to put a human foot on Mars, even if such resources are currently nowhere near economically feasible today.

All that aside, this post is related to Joe Carroll’s last topic–reduced gravity research facilities. His talk reminded me that I needed to dig-up and finish this blog post I had started back in May about the importance of such reduced gravity research facilities, and a clever approach I had seen to providing them.

Reduced Gravity Effects on the Human Body
I first made this point almost five years ago, but it bears repeating: while we have a lot of data on human health at 1g and at 0g, we have almost no data in the middle. I say almost, because we did have a dozen people live on the moon for at least 24 hours each…but that’s pretty much the only data we have on reduced gravity health effects, which is far too little to draw any really useful conclusions.

Most readers of this blog know that the data from microgravity impacts on the human body don’t look too promising–even with lots of exercise, there are apparently biophysical mechanisms that can have large negative health impacts (osteoporosis, neurological and pulmonary issues, etc) that begin to show themselves very quickly. However, as I pointed out in that earlier post, we have no idea which of the curves below really represents human health impacts of reduced gravity:

Does just a little bit of gravity go a long way (my personal guess I explain in the other post)? Or do you need almost full earth gravity? Or is there actually some gravity level less than 1g that’s actually better than earth gravity? While natural selection for humans has obviously been focused on a 1g environment, that doesn’t mean that humans are so hyperoptimized to 1g that nothing else will do. It’s unfortunately possible, but right now we don’t know. Without getting some “center points”, any guess at the shape of the response curve is just that–a guess.

Why This Matters
The reason why this knowledge void matters is that it greatly impacts the future expanse of humanity into space, as well as near-term human exploration. For instance, we don’t know if someone who goes to live on the Moon or Mars can ever really come back to earth, or if they have kids, if their kids can return.

If however it turns out that lunar gravity is already enough to counteract the worst of the effects of microgravity, it might be that the best way to do initial lunar human exploration is something like a One-Way To Stay (for a while) approach. If you knew that you could send someone for long durations while still being able to bring them back later if needed, it would open up some big possibilities. The return portion of a human lunar mission is one of the big performance drivers that make human missions so much more expensive than robotic ones. Even if you couldn’t close the life-support loop, just not having to return the initial explorers right away could allow you really enhance robotic exploration of the Moon by having people there on the spot to help troubleshoot, fix, upgrade, iterate, etc on your robotic systems. I know a lot of people think we can just send robots and have them make a turn-key base. It’s possible, but I expect you’re going to break a lot of robots along the way, and you could avoid that by having people in the loop. But its ethically hard to do a mission like that before you have some data on what long-duration exposure to 1/6g is going to do to your explorers.

Returning to the Joe’s talk, he suggested looking at .06g as well as lunar and martian gravity, as a possible minimal gravity level that people could intuitively adapt to without lots of training. If travelers can get by without large negative health hazards by .06g worth of gravity, that would really simplify the concept of providing artificial gravity for long-duration deep-space trips (like to Mars or NEOs). If there’s a “knee in the curve” above which you can avoid the worst of microgravity effects, that can make it a lot easier to provide artificial gravity for trips like that. If you have to provide a full 1g, and can’t go with high RPMs (which Joe suggested that the terrestrial centrifuge data might be suspect due to the presence of a 1g downward gravity vector), that implies very large structures, which become a much bigger engineering challenge.

xGRF
The question becomes, what’s the best way to get this data? Most of these effects take timescales on the order of hours, days, or weeks to express themselves. And there’s no way on earth to adequately simulate hypogravity. The only real way of testing this, short of going there and finding out the hard way, is to build some sort of orbital research facility. The ISS was originally going to have a Centrifuge Accommodations Module, but that project got defunded, and the hardware is no longer flightworthy from what I hear. I had suggested the idea of doing a “CAM in a Can” before, but even that would be limited to studying small animals–there’s no way you could fit a human in there. To get the data quickly, you really want some sort of artificial gravity facility that is human-sized. In his presentation, Joe Carroll talked about building a large rotating space station with facilities on different lever arms from the CG of the facility. While this is interesting, and would allow you to have your gravity decoupled from your spin rate, I think that Kirk Sorensen’s xGRF “Variable Gravity Research Facility” concept makes more near-term sense (Joe and I disagree on this point BTW).

I’m not sure if Kirk reads this blog very much anymore (he’s pretty busy at his new job as Chief Nuclear Technologist at Teledyne Brown), but I have to toot his horn a bit. While not all of his ideas are ones I’m sold on, he’s had more than his fair share of clever ideas. The idea behind xGRF is very simple. You have a small facility–something on the scale of a Sundancer or Nautilus module from Bigelow, and you attach it via a long tether to a large counterweight (such as the upper stage that delivered the module to orbit in the first place). In LEO the gravity gradient can be used to force such a system to adapt an orientation with the long axis pointing through the center of the earth. In such a situation, the CG will be somewhere between the two end pieces, and the module will be going slightly slower than the orbital velocity of other components at its altitude, and the counterweight will be going slightly faster. This provides a tiny bit of settling force on each end (acting like a tiny bit of gravity with a vector pointed outward from the center of the system).

Ok, you may be thinking, that’s nice. But where do you get the “Variable” Gravity from? That’s where Kirk’s idea gets really clever.

Basically, something in a gravity gradient orientation is still actually spinning–it just completes one complete rotation per orbit around the earth…What happens if you take a spinning object like this, and decrease it’s moment of inertia by, oh say winching in the tether? By conservation of angular momentum, the object has to start spinning faster!

You can winch the habitat and the counterweight together until you reach the desired level of artificial gravity. Depending on the design details, you can pick any gravity level you want between say microgravity and 1g. How do you dock, say to transfer crews or deliver supplies? Well, it turns out you can despin the system by just reeling out the tether:

Pretty clever. By doing this, not only can you pick any gravity level you want, but you can also do your rendezvous and docking in a simple, non-spinning environment, you can eliminate the need for having rotating and nonrotating parts of the station, or of long elevators or connecting tunnels. I really like this concept, because the system ends up being pretty simple, with everything being able to be launched on a single EELV flight. You don’t have to assemble a huge space facility and then spin it up. This can be a small project that might actually get built. I think the big station Joe might have more capabilities, but I’m worried that detractors would paint it as a second ISS, and it would never get funded. Something on this scale though is within the realm of feasibility.

Flagship Technology Demonstrators, Expansion Options, Future Uses, and other Parting Shots
One particularly interesting way to get something like this funded (and what I was originally writing this blog post back in May as a response to) is as a replacement for the “Inflatable Technology” Flagship Technology Demonstrator. Back in Galveston late last spring, NASA rolled out several proposed FTD missions to flesh out plans suggested in Obama’s FY11 budget proposal. One of the missions was to build an inflatable module and attach it to ISS. To be honest, this seemed a little duplicative–it looked for all intents and purposes as though NASA was going to spend $500M-1B duplicating what Bigelow was doing on his own dime. I think a much better way of both flight demonstrating inflatables while killing multiple birds with one stone would be to build something like xGRF as a Flagship Technology Demonstrator. Leverage either a Bigelow Sundancer module or compete it out and have ILC Dover also bid on it. For the same amount of money, you get a much more useful lab, that doesn’t endanger the ISS, and which allows you to do reduced gravity research that compliments ISS’s microgravity focus.

As Joe pointed out, even after the initial experiments (say at lunar gravity first, then Martian, then at the .06g level), a facility like this would have lots of follow-on utility. You can answer initial questions relatively quickly–ie even a few months at each level would tell you a lot compared to what we know right now, but getting longer-duration data could be very useful for future space settlement efforts. I’ll have to dig up my notes on all the reasons, but there’s a lot of long-term potential for a station like this.

Which means you might also want to upgrade it down the road. If you overbuild the tether, and the docking facilities, you could probably attach additional modules to a station like this pretty readily. To add to the counterweight, you could say have facilities on the original upper stage that could allow it to be outfitted as a depot…but that’s getting a little too crazy for now.

But I think the time for something like this is now. FTDs are getting money, even if it’s greatly reduced from what Obama wanted. The budget for exploration technology development, including flagship missions is currently authorized at over $1.1B over the next three years. At that rate, you could fund most of the work on both the depot approach that was proposed by the joint industry/NASA group I participated in last year, as well as xGRF, and still have money left over for starting another FTD like say an aerobraking or aerocapture one. Even if funding gets further reduced in appropriations, there’s enough money to pursue something like xGRF and depots in parallel.

I think this is an idea whose time has come.

May 25th, 2010, Mojave, CA, USA: XCOR Aerospace and Masten Space Systems, two of the leaders in the New Space sector, have announced a strategic business and technology relationship to pursue jointly the anticipated NASA sponsored unmanned lander projects. These automated lander programs are expected to serve as robotic test beds on Earth, on the lunar surface, Mars, near Earth objects and other interplanetary locales, helping NASA push the boundaries of technology and opening the solar system for future human exploration.

Masten’s award winning automated vertical take off, vertical landing (VTVL) flight vehicles combined with XCOR’s strong experience in liquid oxygen (LOX) / methane powered propulsion systems and nonflammable cryogenically compatible composite tanks, brings to NASA a powerful and competitive combination of innovative talent with a proven record of producing exceptional results quickly and affordably.

Last October, Masten won the $1 million first prize for Level II of NASA’s Lunar Lander Challenge, beating out a host of New Space rivals, and demonstrating they are the leading VTVL development group in the country. In 2007 XCOR Aerospace’s LOX/methane engine, developed for NASA, was named by Time Magazine as one of the “Inventions of the Year”, recognizing XCOR’s successive advancement in the state of the art of both pump and pressure fed reusable, throttle-able rocket propulsion systems. XCOR and Masten have also demonstrated the ability to rapidly take from concept to live fire, new propulsion and control system designs using innovative rapid prototyping techniques that surpass client requirements in much shorter periods of time than traditional aerospace methods.

Dave Masten, founder and President of Masten Space Systems commented “Masten Space and XCOR are next door neighbors here in Mojave. We’ve worked together on many tactical problems over the years and our corporate cultures mesh well. Working together on something like this simply made too much sense. We can’t wait to start working with Jeff, Dan, and the XCOR team to help NASA build affordable and responsive landing platforms.”

“Our company work ethic and styles are very compatible, and with XCOR propulsion and Masten VTVL technology, we can solve problems of national interest, and I am excited about the possibilities,” said Jeff Greason, CEO and Founder of XCOR.
Andrew Nelson, Chief Operating Officer of XCOR added, “It’s a no brainer, Dave’s team is the absolute best New Space company when it comes to VTVL and autopilot unmanned operations – they demonstrated that in October by winning NASA’s lander challenge. And we feel our LOX/methane engines are unsurpassed in the trade space today by anyone. We should bring this tandem set of best in class capabilities to NASA, it just makes sense for them and for us.”

XCOR and Masten will be jointly marketing their skill sets and services to the NASA community as prime contractors, and as joint teaming partners for larger systems integrators and prime contractors servicing the NASA community.

# # # # #

Masten Space Systems is a Mojave, CA based aerospace company developing fully reusable vertical takeoff, vertical landing (VTVL) launch vehicles, rocket-related products, and engineering services. The company’s 6000 square foot production facility and 200,000 square foot testing facility is located on the Mojave Air and Space Port. The company designs and builds aerospace solutions that focus on durability, long operational lifetimes, and minimal per-flight maintenance. For more information on the company see http://masten-space.com

XCOR Aerospace is a California corporation located in Mojave, California. The company is in the business of developing and producing safe, reliable and reusable rocket powered vehicles, propulsion systems, advanced non-flammable composites and other enabling technologies for responsive private space flight, scientific missions, upper atmospheric research, and small satellite launch to low earth orbit. The Lynx is a piloted, two seat, fully reusable, liquid rocket powered vehicle that takes off and lands horizontally. The Lynx production models (designated Lynx Mark II) are designed to be robust, multi-commercial mission vehicles capable of flying to 100+ km in altitude up to four times per day. XCOR’s web address is: www.xcor.com.

Contact:
Michael Mealling
Masten Space Systems
Phone: +1-888-488-8455 x102
Email: mmealling@masten-space.com

Mike Massee
XCOR Aerospace
Phone +1-661-824-4714 x127
Email: press@xcor.com

I can’t speak for the company, but personally I’m really glad we were able to find a way to make this partnership work. I’ve got nothing but respect for the XCOR team, and have been trying to find a way to work with them for years. As Jeff said at Space Access, it’s deals like this that show that the industry is starting to grow up.

• The land grant size proposed is too big–about 4x the surface area of California for a single base.  While this allows you to raise lots of money off of a pretty crappy land valuation ($40B raised at $100/acre), I still have to wonder if you’d really be able to sell this.  I mean, what’s the value other than speculation for any of the land parcels much more than say 10-20 miles beyond the base?  Here on earth, where you can breath the air, and where the dust isn’t viciously abrasive, it still takes a huge amount of effort to bring even a reasonable fraction of that land area into productive use.  I think a better strategy would be sticking with more reasonable land area grants (say tied to the distance you can travel on the ground in a day or two), with the goal being to charge a higher value per acre over a smaller number of acres.
• I just can’t help feeling this is super premature.  Part of why land prices on the Moon in this scheme are assumed to be low is that it isn’t clear how we’d make money on the Moon, and our methods of reaching the Moon are still utterly primitive and barbaric.  Once we have things like depots, and have had some robotic landers on the lunar surface, and maybe commercial crew in LEO and a few other things (ie sometime in the next 10 years), we might actually be close enough to a lunar venture that this might be more useful.
• That said, once we’re ready for it, having something like this in place might not be a bad way to help raise revenue for the initial venture.  I’m just worried that if we jump the gun too far, the more likely result is going to be people getting burned, and investors getting a bad taste in their mouth for lunar ventures.

Just some quick thoughts.

Oh, and one small caveat before I jump in–while I think there’s some real potential here, electromagnetics is a topic that I’m truly awful at. I’ve never had another class, including a PhD level turbulent fluid dynamics class that made me feel like such a brow-dragging neanderthal as my Physics 122 class on Electromagnetism. This may be yet another niche technology that while somewhat interesting, ends up not being all that useful. But it looks at least possible that this may become a game changing technology in many space transportation fields. Without further ado, let’s go over some of the basics.

Some Background on MHD Aerobraking and Thermal Protection
The basic concept behind MHD Thermal Protection is that during hypersonic flight, above about Mach 12, the shockwave formed in front of a blunt-bodied vehicle reaches a high enough temperature to form a weakly ionized plasma that is conductive enough to be manipulated by strong magnetic fields. A powerful magnet near the leading part of the vehicle interacts with charged particles in the plasma via the Lorentz force. This force bends the trajectory of charged particles, creates large hall currents, which if I’m understanding correctly repel the magnetic field. These charged particles also impact with the uncharged gas particles nearby (the plasma is only “weakly ionized”) transmitting these forces to them as well. Here’s an interesting diagram I’ll reference from one of the papers I’ll talk about more later (“Trajectory Analysis of Electromagnetic Aerobraking Flight Based on Rarefied Flow Analysis” by Otsu, Katsurayama, and Abe–well worth the $28):

Figure 1 (from Otsu et al): Schematic View of the Flow Around a Vehicle With Applied Magnetic Field and Induced Current

If the magnet is strong enough, this leads to two interesting effects–first, the distance from the vehicle to the bow shock increases (I think the plasma density between the bow shock and the vehicle also decreases, but I’m less sure about that). This can significantly reduce the heat transferred into the vehicle for a given velocity and altitude. The other big effect is that the Lorentz forces create forces that can produce drag or lift. At high altitudes these Lorentz forces can greatly augment the aerodynamic drag forces, effectively making it as though the vehicle had a much lower ballistic coefficient. It should be noted that this force is electrically controllable. In fact, depending on the sophistication of the magnetic apparatus and its location within and orientation with respect to the vehicle, it can possibly also produce lift as well as control torques without the need for aero control surfaces.

Both of these help from a reentry thermal standpoint, because by the time you hit the denser air, where the heating is the highest, you’re going a lot slower than you would’ve been otherwise, and a lot of that earlier braking is done at much lower heating loads than would have been the case without the electromagnetic effects.

Several of the papers I’ve read introduce an interaction parameter term, Q, that relates the relative strength of the Lorentz forces to drag forces. The relationship takes the form:

Equation 1 (from Otsu et al)

Sigma is the conductivity of the weakly ionized plasma, B is the magnetic field strength, L is a reference length (I think related to the magnet configuration), rho is atmospheric density, and V is velocity. As you can see, for a given magnet, the drag forces start dominating as the conductivity drops and as the atmospheric density increases. Atmospheric density increases dramatically as you descend from orbit, so for a reentry application, you get most of your benefit from the first little bit of descent.

We’ll go more into some of these ramifications starting in my next installment.

Horse-Trading on Even Earlier Markets
A good point that was made on the same day by Wes Johnson in comments, and my boss Dave on the carpool down to Mojave, was that the “horse-trading” trick at the center of the business concept I gave could work even before manned landings. One of the big challenges with any lunar surface robotic exploration is the lack of a suitable lander. The big up-front development cost of a lander (especially one done the traditional way, without leveraging the capabilities of us VTVL developers) usually makes it harder to get these projects funded. If you could do a deal where the PI for a proposal only had to come up with the launch costs plus the marginal cost of the science payload such as rover(s), ISRU technique demonstrators etc., it might make it easier to close their proposal. More importantly, as Wes pointed out, PI’s on science missions have a lot more leeway on negotiating details of how to get the payload to the destination. You’d give them the same deal as the others–in exchange for covering the launch cost, you give them free delivery to the lunar surface, and get to sell the other half of the payload.

Robotic Precursor Missions
An interesting development in the NASA budget proposal that has gotten almost no real discussion in the blogosphere, was the funding for a series of robotic lander missions on the Moon and possibly other destinations. These could be a very interesting potential market for the initial lander work. I could imagine the private entity trying to build up to the manned one-way missions could set up a Space Act agreement with some of the groups at NASA to facilitate sharing of information on lander systems, then possibly using a combination of more traditional aerospace and newere entrepreneurial space entities (“OldSpace” entities since they tend to have a wider range of specialized knowledge, and “NewSpace” entities since they tend to have ways to flight test hardware cheaper, and to do cheaper rapid prototyping), could develop the lander in support of these missions. The money for the lander development could be mostly made back by selling the remaining hardware space to one or more up-and coming space countries that wants to get a leg-up on their competition (say either India, China, Japan, or South Korea). Groups that aren’t actively planning lunar landers in the near-term, or which might be a bit behind their competitor might be the most natural targets. Imagine South Korea being able to beat Japan to the lunar surface by partnering with a private space company? Or India beating China. South Korea has already demonstrated its interest and willingness to partner with commercial space companies to get a leg-up in regional technical rivalries. Just food for thought.

Also, this might tie into stuff like Project M, a youtube of which has been floating around the intertubes for a week or so. JSC has been working in the background on trying to put together a plan to do a quick robotic lunar lander, “within 1000 days of go-ahead”. If they don’t get the money to do such a project entirely themselves as-planned, teaming with a private entity might still allow them to pull such a feat off.

Lunar Surface Systems
After thinking this over and talking with some of the commenters, I think this is one area that I was being overly optimistic on. There is going to be a fair deal of expense for lunar rovers, life support systems, habitats, ISRU experiments (including stuff like systems to try out regolith fusing), power sources, etc. Some of these could be supplied as “demo units” by companies interested in selling future versions to other private or public expeditions, some could be supplied by governments wanting to pretest systems before sending their own people, but ultimately some of these systems would likely need to be developed by the private developer running the project. The good news is that if you can get initial revenue from selling some robotic flights on the lander, it might be possible to raise enough money to invest in the lunar surface systems.

Anyhow, just some thoughts. I just think it would be ironic if due to the lunar precursor lander funding, Obama’s “Evil Exploration Eradicating NASA Budget Proposal” somehow enabled the US to beat the rest of the world back to the Moon and ultimately cemented its lead in lunar exploration. All without having to blow tens of billions on new launchers.

As far as implementing this idea, the technology isn’t the hard part. Technologically, this is something that could’ve been done in the 70s. Modern technology and modern launch services make it a whole lot easier and more feasible, but the technology isn’t the key obstacle. Money is and always has been the biggest obstacle. But I think I have an idea, and it’s just crazy enough that I want to share it.

Any business plan whose first step is “first we convince a billionaire to give us lots of money” usually deserves to be laughed off the stage. But this isn’t a business plan competition entry, or some pitch before VCs that I’m demanding to be taken seriously, so I’m going to suggest just that. Even with a wealthy philantrocapitalist, I think you’d still want a concept that both gives you a reasonable chance of making the money back if things go well as well as minimizing your losses if it doesn’t work out.

Anyhow, this is a bit of a long-shot, and definitely not fully-baked, but here’s what I have so far. The business case revolves around a few core concepts:

• A privately developed simple lander and an ITAR approved method for launching it on both US and domestic launchers.
• Using barter with various space agencies with domestic medium-lift vehicles to provide both the startup launches and the sustaining launches
• Making revenue off of selling remaining space to corporations, research institutions, and smaller countries that are interested in lunar experiments, but lack indigenous launch capabilities
• Possibly offsetting initial lander development by selling rover delivery services to NASA or other large space agencies.

Some of these sound a bit crazy, so why don’t I explain them in turn.

Private Landers
The key technology piece in the project is obviously the lander. As discussed before, I’m thinking of something in the 10-20klb IMLEO range, with a payload in the 4-6klb range. The propellant combination for the lander doesn’t hugely matter. It could use storables like Martijn likes, it could use space storables like LOX/Methane or LOX/Propane. Heck, it could even use LOX/LH2. While the state of the VTVL industry isn’t quite mature enough where you could just order one of these custom and have it delivered to your launch pad 6 months ARO, a lander in these capability ranges isn’t a huge stretch for the commercial space industry, especially if they can partner wisely with some of the more traditional space companies or work with NASA via Space Acts. DC-X was actually a much bigger, probably more complicated system, and was done by a traditional aerospace company for around $100M in current dollars. A bare-bones lander, developed leveraging the emerging capabilities in the entrepreneurial community could probably be fielded for less than that. Possibly in the $50M range. You don’t need to push too hard on mass fractions or engine performance (you need to push a bit, but it isn’t as weight critical as some of the Apollo LM systems), and the technology is a lot more mature than it was in the 60s.

An important part of this process is not just developing the lander, but also working from the start with ITAR to make sure a process is in place that will allow you to launch on as many international launch vehicles as is feasible. This may not be fun, but is probably doable with appropriate precautions.

International Horse-Trading
Most space agencies prefer to spend money within their own borders, and interact with other agencies on a barter basis as much as possible. While this can sometimes lead to suboptimal solutions, it might just work in this situation. On the launch side, the barter would go something like this–the private entity would provide a lander, all lander ops, and physical launch integration work, and the space agency (NASA, ESA, RSA, JAXA, ISRO, or CNSA) would provide the lifter and upper stage for the mission. The launching country would get a certain share of the lander’s cargo space for their own experiments, a certain portion would be reserved for consumables and spare parts, and the remainder would be owned by the private entity to resell to other countries without launch capabilities (say a 40/40/20 split). In addition to transportation of the space hardware, the launching country would also get a share of the astronaut’s time on the surface. So basically you’re providing them with transportation and manned experimentation on the lunar surface in exchange for them providing a launch done by their own people. If one of the countries is willing to take some additional risks, they could even “buy” one of the two initial astronaut slots, in exchange say for a commitment to a certain higher share of the logistics launches per year. In exchange they’d get both the prestige of having one of the initial lunar crew, as well as a higher share in the available time. Over time, as the risk decreases, the initial crew could also be expanded (once again on barter terms that would have the agency in question shouldering a larger share of the required launches).

It should be mentioned how crazy of a bargain this really is for them in comparison to the typical lunar mission approach. Look at Constellation. It will be a lot more capable, but ultimately, somewhere around $10B/yr (and about $150B up-front), you get 4-person years/yr (2x 4-man crew rotations) and about 75klb of cargo (2x 17mT landings) on the moon once you have a base setup. Calling it a 60/40 split on costs (for manned vs cargo flights), that comes out to $1.5B per person-year, and about $53k/lb on the lunar surface–ignoring development costs. With a program like this, say you gave a country 1/4 of a man-year per launch, and about 1800lb, at a cost to them of call it a $200M launcher plus extra upper stage for the transfer. Splitting that $200M the same way (60/40), that gives you $480M per person year, and about $45k/lb on the surface. You don’t save a huge amount per pound of cargo on the surface, but your cost per person hour is about 1/4 as much (which is once again not too surprising–you’re not rotating crews, and not having to carry enough propellant to get them home–which takes about 4x as much mass per mission compared to a one-way manned landing). And you don’t have to spend tens of billions up-front, and you can buy your lunar program “by-the-slice”. Paying for an extra launch every year (and some lunar systems costs) is well within the budget capabilities of many of these agencies. While they might not be willing to take the risk of flying their own astronauts, or of “owning” the program, they are a lot more likely to be interested in a program like this, where someone else is shouldering the key risks, and they’re just getting a cheap deal. Even if they have their own lunar ambitions down the road, using a service like this would allow them to drastically reduce their technological risk moving forward, and might allow them to get a lot more benefit out of their investment when they eventually get that capability themselves.

“Sovereign Customers”
One of the key markets Bigelow is looking at for his inflatable space habitats is providing smaller countries with a way to participate in space for much cheaper than trying to do everything in-house themselves. By lowering the cost to participate, it makes it a lot more feasible for smaller countries, and even some corporations or research institutions to participate. This may be a country like South Korea wanting to send a rover that can get maintained by the astronauts over time. It may be a country wanting to do its own sample return mission–with the ability to have a human on the ground helping to presort/preprocess samples to maximize the bang for the buck. It could be a company like Catepillar that wants to get involved in lunar surface systems for future exploration programs sending a bunch of bearing concepts to test exposed to the lunar environment. It could be some small startup that has a crazy idea for lunar dust mitigation that it wants to try selling to future government programs, but needs testing and debugging first. There are many possibilities. The key here is that since the launch is already paid for, the private entity running all this can price the payloads however makes the most sense. You do need to cover lander costs, ground-ops costs, and the time of the scientists, but it might be possible to offer these slots at a price that is lower than they could buy commercially to try and stimulate demand, or if there is enough demand already you could price it high enough to make a decent profit. If there’s enough demand, you might even be able to justify paying for an additional “purely commercial” flight or two per year. You would want to save up some of the money to cover contingencies–like if something breaks down and you have to fly an emergency resupply flight on short notice, or if you decide for one reason or another to throw-in-the-towel after a few years, you can send enough propellant to get the settlers home. But depending on the interest level, this could easily be a business that has revenues in the low hundreds of millions per year.

Minimizing the Initial Risk
One additional market for the lander, and one that could allow the initial investment to be recovered a lot faster, would be to see if you could sell it to one of the space agencies for landing a rover or some other scientific package. The key here is that the lander is getting developed, on the philantrocapitalist’s own dime regardless of if he can presell any lander slots. This makes it easier to sell it as a commercially available service instead of a government funded development program. Using a light Atlas vehicle for instance (maybe with one or two strapons) you could probably short-load the vehicle enough to put a couple hundred pounds of useable payload onto the lunar surface. For a bundled price of say $200-250M for the launcher and lander, it would still be a steal transportation-wise for your customer, but could possibly pay off the initial costs of the project in one shot, even before the initial landings. The good news is that while its great if you can presell the landers for other applications, it isn’t the end of the world if you can’t.

One other way of minimizing the downside may be to see if you can prearrange the initial several launches. If you can line up enough international partners, it may be possible to get the initial setup done without having to actually buy any of the launches yourself. You’d still have to pay for the landers, but this way your total capital at risk for the startup is only the cost of 3-4 landers.

Anyhow, comments? thoughts? attempts to send nice young men in their clean white jackets to cart a certain space blogger away?

One of the big challenges in lunar exploration, settlement, and economic development is our profound ignorance about our closest celestial neighbor. We have no idea if economically interesting concentrations of important metals or elements exist, or if so, where. We have ideas for dust mitigation and ISRU techniques, but really have no idea for sure if they will work.  More importantly, we have no idea  how many iterations it’s going to take to make it work.  We have no idea if lunar gravity is high enough to avoid the effects of microgravity on the human body.   There have been lots of lunar manufacturing ideas floated, from fusing regolith with microwaves based on nanophase iron embedded in the regolith to bulldozers, pneumatic excavators etc.  The problem is that it’s impossible to simulate enough of the lunar environment here on earth to really know that there aren’t subtle but important effects we’re ignoring.  Really for most of this stuff, the only way to find out is to go there and try it.  And fail.  And figure out why you failed, and try again.  The whole idea that we can make complex aerospace hardware work the first time in an environment we do not fully understand and can’t adequately replicate here on earth is hubris.  We might get lucky, but more likely than not, it’s going to take work to sort a lot of this out.

There is a reason why the Technology Readiness Level scale exists.  It doesn’t matter how pretty your calculations are, because in reality you’ve made at least one or two incorrect assumptions.  It doesn’t matter how good your bench test went, because when you test it in the right environment in a flight-weight integrated system there are environmental effects and subsystem interactions you couldn’t adequately test on the ground.  That doesn’t mean you can’t eventually make the system work–it’s just that the only way to know a technology is ready for primetime is if it has been adequately tested in the actual environment.  It’s only then that you’ll have figured out all the weird and quirky second-order effects that can’t be ignored.  It’s only then that you can know that a system is actually dependable.  That may sound harsh and unfair, but it’s probably sugar-coating the case.

What would really be useful is to find a way to break out of this knowledge-poor environment we’re in, and lower the cost drastically of getting lunar technology through the try-fail-fix cycle.  The earlier in the design process you can get correct information, the better the decisions you can make.  One-way lunar missions are an interesting way of achieving that goal of early information.

When you think about it, you actually only need a single piece of new transportation hardware for a one-way lunar mission–the lander itself.  You don’t need a crew capsule return capsule capable of reentry from lunar trajectories or capable of autonomous operations in lunar orbit for months at a time.  You don’t need an ascent stage that has to be hyper-weight-optimized because it drives the mass of the whole system.  You don’t even need an HLV or an Earth Departure Stage–a stock Atlas V 551 or Delta-IVH would be more than able to softland two people on the moon in a single launch.  You don’t even need depots, long-duration cryo storage (though it would help), tugs, RLVs or anything else.  In fact, you probably don’t even need a “man-rated” booster, a crew capsule, or a launch escape system unless they’re already available (the odds of dieing on a mission like this are substantially higher than the odds of an EELV failing during the 80% or so of the mission that the lander couldn’t do an abort-to-orbit).

You’d probably want to prelaunch some supplies and extra living quarters, and be ready to launch regular supply missions.  Call it three flights to get setup, and the fourth carries the crew.  You might be talking about $1-2B total to develop the lander and get the crew and their supplies there, and another $500m-2B per year to support them (assuming current EELV prices–it’d be cheaper if Falcon 9 pans out, or if you can use foreign boosters).   I’m probably being overoptimistic here, but we’re in all likelihood talking a very tiny fraction of the cost of any of the typical lunar architectures, and you could have the project going within only a few years.  More importantly, the project is cheap enough that you could start getting your initial information from the lunar surface while simultaneously preparing the systems needed for a more robust round-trip transportation system (depots, transfer vehicles, crew return vehicles, reusable landers, etc).  In comparison, the Constellation PoR would cost about $200B to get to the first boots on the ground, and cost about another $1-2B per set of boots thereafter.  For the first few years, you’d probably be talking about mostly short sorties, so the $/boot-day factor would probably be ridiculously high for a long time.

The risk is a lot higher of course, since you can’t easily get back to earth in a hurry, but the situation isn’t anywhere near as bad as a one-way Mars mission.  First off, even without any of the other systems developed beyond the lander, you can actually get the crew back from the Moon.  It would be a complex, inefficient, sub-optimal, and more risky approach, but you could do it.  You could just send enough cargo landers with propellant to refuel a lander to take them back to lunar orbit, and from there do a TEI burn.  Instead of direct reentry, you could do an aerobraking maneuver designed to minimize the number of passes through the van Allen belts.  You would need access to some sort of crew return vehicle like Soyuz to get you down from orbit, but you could do all the hard work of coming back.  So the crew isn’t really stranded with no hope of return until a bunch of other stuff gets developed.  Also, if something critical breaks down, it’s realistic that you could launch a resupply mission fast enough that the crew could just sit-tight in their spacesuits for a few days.

Is something like this still beyond the pale politically?  I’m not sure.  You’d definitely be accepting risks much higher than CxP (probably in the 25% range), but many of the worst risks from the Mars one-way option would be gone, and a lot of them are front-loaded.  If you can make it through the first month or so, it’s likely you can keep them resupplied with stuff frequently enough to prevent catastrophe.  It would definitely be a more nitty-gritty and therefore interesting mission.

Anyhow, I know I’m leaving out a lot of details and thoughts, but I wanted to throw the idea out there for discussion.  I’m not suggesting that this should be done in lieu of getting a real lunar transportation system done right (ie one with RLVs, depots in LEO and L1 or L2, private crew transportation to orbit, reusable transfer stages and landers, etc)  I’m just suggesting that this is a way to get information quickly, and quickly figure out what ISRU options are really viable, and therefore how difficult it would really be to start doing medium-scale settlement of the Moon.