One of the things that really strikes you about all the conversations between NASA and Congress about NASA’s attempt to help you know, follow its charter and “seek and encourage, to the maximum extent possible, the fullest commercial use of space” by funding commercial development of crew transport vehicles is the emphasis on safety. Shuttle ended up killing two crews out of 135 flights, which is actually about what you’d expect to get from flying crews on EELV-class vehicles without a launch escape system of any sort, yet in almost every Congressional hearing, you hear a ton of hand-wringing about whether these vehicles will be safe enough for NASA’s astronauts. And you can tell that NASA has taken these inputs very seriously, with all the requirements (and referenced requirements, and requirements referenced in referenced requirements, and requirements referenced in requirements referenced in referenced requirements), paperwork, overhead, and with their attempt to force things into a FAR-based mold closer to how NASA does major programs. It’s pretty clear that NASA and Congress both see safety as the top priority for commercial crew. I know this may be heretical, but I’m wondering if this is a misplaced priority.

Maybe I’m wrong, but here’s my concern:

1. NASA really wants at least two independent, self-sustaining, affordable ways of getting people to and from the ISS. Having this capability means that if anything happens to one system, you don’t get the standdowns like what you had with the Shuttle program.
2. Having at least two affordable and healthy competitors also means more price competition, and more incentive to innovation.
3. There’s no chance that Orion on SLS is going to be anything within spitting distance of “affordable” for routine crew rotations.
4. As NASA has been openly admitting for almost as long as this blog has been around, they know that they can’t afford to go beyond LEO if they can’t offload all of the ISS crew and cargo needs to commercial providers using firm, fixed-price contracts.
5. But NASA only wants to buy about 8 seats per year (two rotations of four crew each) from commercial providers, in order to meet their ISS obligations.
6. You’re only likely to get two affordable and healthy commercial crew providers if they have enough demand to spread their fixed costs out over (and if they can keep those fixed-costs within reason).
7. I can only see a few ways of doing that (though there may be others):
1. Have the commercial crew vehicles be affordable enough that they can enable significant non-NASA crew, cargo, and recoverable freeflyer (like DragonLab) services.
2. Having the commercial crew vehicle be similar enough to a commercial cargo vehicle that each provider can actually get a decent number of flights per year out of a mix of crew and cargo.
8. Only the first of those two options avoids the challenge of a NASA/commercial crew monopsony scenario, where the ISS is the only thing keeping the commercial crew providers afloat.
9. While there is a small, but non-zero, chance that you could get sufficient demand from what Bigelow calls “sovereign clients” to get non-NASA crew/cargo demand even at the old $20M/seat Soyuz price, the best analysis I have seen with the existing data (pgs 43-53 of this presentation) suggests that the price point commercial crew needs to get in order to reach a tipping point is $5M/seat max, and possibly as low as $1-2.5M/seat.
10. While it may be barely possible for NASA to eke out a minor victory by getting two independent  and semi-healthy commercial ISS crew providers who also do ISS cargo deliveries on unmanned versions of their rockets/delivery vehicles, even this minor victory is only possible if the fixed cost of the crew capability isn’t too excessive.
11. With only two flights per year worth of crew demand, there might not even be enough demand for one commercial provider unless they can find synergies with ISS cargo deliveries, or more preferably non-NASA customers.

I guess my big concern is that it doesn’t appear as though NASA or Congress are being realistic about how to properly prioritize safety. Ultimately you can always spend extra money on safety (one more test, one more certification, one more sign-off, one more review, etc)–the only way to have 0% chance of losing a crew on an ISS mission is to not do the mission. If you are actually going to fly, there’s a point where you have to accept some risk, and you have to say at some point that you’re only willing to spend a certain amount of money to potentially buy down tiny fractions of a decimal point safety-wise. If you have to make that decision anyway, then it makes sense to do it in the framework of the big picture of the mission risks and overarching goals.

This is something for instance that the Constellation program utterly failed to do–the core justification for Ares-I was that it’s launch ascent safety was supposedly going to be so darned good (a 1 in 2106.4823910293 chance of losing a crew on ascent, at a 50% confidence interval…), but in the light of a program that expected a 2% or greater chance of losing a crew on a given lunar mission, it’s pretty clear that spending money to go from a 1 in 1000 probability on existing LVs versus spending a decade and $10-20B on a new launcher to buy that risk down a bit was money very foolishly spent. The problem is I worry we’re going down the same path with commercial crew.

While I don’t personally have any really sage advice on how best to ensure safe operations while still keeping the overhead low enough to keep commercial crew provider costs low enough to give a realistic shot at enabling a new market to emerge, I am worried that the current balance is a well-intentioned disaster waiting to happen (see also Wayne Hale’s previous warning on this topic).  If NASA and Congress continue down the path they’re going with safety, there’s a very real chance that they’re going to make commercial crew commercially unviable. And that would be the ultimate Pyrrhic Victory–having one or two “commercial” crew providers that in the end that are flying, but are so expensive that only NASA can afford them.

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.

I think this is potentially a really positive move forward that might open the doors for commercialization of technologies that NASA is helping fund development for. Just thought I’d pass along the thoughts.

All of this discussion assumes that space exploration is, of itself, a valuable goal.  As I see it, the only real deliverable of space exploration is that it keeps that VERY SMALL percentage of the population not content with beer and football entertained.

I would argue that the only demonstrated net social value from space has come from defense and communication and for that, “going round in circles” is fine.

While space exploration is something that I find personally very fascinating, I’m definitely a member of the “not content with beer and football” crowd. I know that a lot of unmanned space exploration sorts like talking about how “you can get so much more science for the buck with robots”, but at the end of the day, even unmanned exploration is just a form of edutainment for most people. Sure, there are occasional side benefits that come up from these programs, but at the end of the day, it leaves you wondering why space exploration for exploration’s sake really deserves so much more government support than say exploration of oceans, or other National Geographic-like expeditions.

Now, I think that exploration could be done in a way that it was more meaningful to society than just another, rather expensive form of edutainment. Which was the point that Marburger made a few years ago:

If we are serious about this, then our objective must be more than a disconnected series of missions, each conducted at huge expense and risk, and none building a lasting infrastructure to reduce the expense and risk of future operations. If we are serious, we will build capability, not just on the ground but in space. And our objective must be to make the use of space for human purposes a routine function.

Exploration that is not in support of something else strikes me as somehow selfish and unsatisfying, and not consistent with the fact that we are using public funds for this enterprise, no matter how small a fraction of the total budget they may be.

If the architecture of the exploration phase is not crafted with sustainability in mind, we will look back on a century or more of huge expenditures with nothing more to show for them than a litter of ritual monuments scattered across the planets and their moons.

I just bring this up, because I’ve seen time and time again a lot of the wasteful decisions NASA makes is due to being myopically overfocused on maximizing the specific mission they are trying to carry out, without putting any thought into the big picture of how to make this relevant to the rest of us. In many ways this ties back to my first real blog post on this blog–your focus really does determine your path.

If your aim is to help humanity incorporate more and more of the solar system into its economic sphere, and to make space beyond communications, GPS, and weather satellites meaningful beyond mere edutainment, you’ll make decisions differently than if your only goal is to optimize some narrowly defined mission.

“While it is true that prudent investments in science and technology will almost certainly yield future economic gains and will allow our knowledge economy to grow, it is also true that these gains can be thwarted by poor decision-making,” Chairman Hall said. “Americans expect and deserve better. With our unemployment hovering at over 9 percent, they expect us to reduce or eliminate those programs that are duplicative and wasteful and examine ways to advance real job creation and economic growth, not just spend their hard-earned money on what the government assumes is best for them.”

Hmmm…I can think of a few examples of massive projects that fit those descriptions. Like say SLS?

• Duplicative: In the near term, without any plan for BEO exploration hardware, SLS will be duplicating the function of commercial crew launchers–sending astronauts to the station (on MPCV), but at far higher costs.  If at some point an upper stage and actual exploration hardware do get funded (10-15 years from now), SLS will mostly be launching propellant–something private rockets are also capable of doing.  So, duplicative? Check.
• Wasteful: The development cost to the government of both the EELV programs and the two COTS programs are less than half one year’s worth of SLS funding, even at the lower projected rate that Obama proposed in his FY’12 budget, and even including the $300M increase in COTS funding. Those programs are giving NASA and the DoD four launchers, with at least some capabilities on both coasts, as well as two ISS cargo vehicles.  Even if you include the total government and private investment in developing those rockets, the total cost is far less than SLS alone will spend over the next 3 years, let alone to completion. Even if you insist on building an HLV, and even if NASA is the only customer (likely), these programs demonstrate that the expected $10B+ development cost for SLS is disturbingly high compared to the cost of developing vehicles for launching critical national security assets.  Wasteful? Check.
• Job Creation? Economic Growth? SLS is a NASA-specific products with no real outside commercial benefit, that will reuse obsolete technology in an effort to maintain as many existing jobs as possible. It is really just a zero-sum wealth transfer from the productive part of economy to politically-connected contractors. Actual economic growth and job creation come from creating new goods and services that provide for peoples wants and needs at increasingly affordable prices.  Innovation, both technical and entrepreneurial are what drive job creation and economic growth–not running government-directed design bureaus to produce products that are irrelevant outside of NASA’s needs.  Contrast this with EELVs, the COTS vehicles, Commercial Crew, and many of the technology programs NASA wants to fund, that serve multiple public and private needs, create wealth, and provide jobs that are backed by eventually self-perpetuating wealth-creating enterprises. So, Job Creation, Economic Growth? Not so much.
• Spending Tax Money on What Government Thinks is Best for Them? The big push for SLS development from the Senate (which has won it the nickname “the Senator Launch System”) and the even bigger push from the House, were led primarily by Congressmen from states that directly benefit from continued spending in this area. The ironic thing is that it’s pretty clear that even NASA doesn’t entirely want SLS, but you have Congressmen trying to legislate the design of a launch vehicle. To the point of Utah reps bragging about how language they put into the bill supposedly can only be met by using hardware procured in a non-competitive manner from bloated contractors in their districts (which I’m sure didn’t make any campaign contributions to help grease the palms of their Congressional enablers). There are few clearer examples of Congress forcing the government to build something that is more in the personal interests of certain Congressmembers than is actually beneficial for tax-paying public. Check.

Not trying to pick on Representative Hall.  I actually have a bit of a soft-spot for the guy, since he came out and spoke at the NGLLC awards ceremony.  Just pointing out that he has good advice, and it would be great if he consistently followed it.

Personally, I think this is mostly a terrible idea. While offering fixed-price services, and moving to FAA regs is nice, I really don’t see how this fits with the spirit of CCDEV.  After all, USA is talking about taking over an existing government asset, and flying it temporarily through 2017, not providing a long-term commercial crew capability for ISS in the post 2016 timeframe.  And the budget ($9B over the next six years), is way outside the $6B NASA was going to give to commercial crew, or the $3B that the anonymous Senate staffer last week thought would be the real number.

But shuttle huggers, don’t despair.  If something like this goes forward, they could probably do this by taking money from the SLS and MPCV budgets.  After all, this would be offsetting some of the carrying costs that NASA would have to pay for keeping the Shuttle infrastructure in place.  By doing this, there also wouldn’t be any rush to finish Orion or the 70-100 ton version of SLS, because you could just keep flying the shuttle “commercially” for another year or two if commercial crew faces delays.  In fact, this would allow NASA to go straight for their beloved 130mT SLS and deep-space rated MPCV, because there would be no need for the intermediate vehicle.  They can take as much time as they want.

The only even remotely legitimate purpose for trying to rush SLS/MPCV was the worry that possibly all of the commercial crew providers would be running late.  It’s possible I guess, especially if they try and put all their money on just one or two providers.  But, under the current Senate-designed plan, if commercial crew does work, SLS/MPCV would be a giant budget-sucking white elephant for several years while actual mission hardware (EDS stages, landers, and/or habs) was developed.

But with this plan, you can just go straight to “exploration class” HLVs and mission hardware, without having to worry about the fate of ISS.  Something like this would allow you to keep your HLV infrastructure alive until you actually need an HLV without killing commercial crew.

And anyway, SLS and MPCV have big enough budgets that this would only be cutting out maybe 1/3 of the money they’d be getting over that time frame.  If the DIRECT fanboys are right, there may even be a straightforward way for NASA to still deliver on something like that within the budgets they’ve been given, even with keeping the Shuttles flying.

And if there are budget cuts, hey you have the shuttle still flying, you can just stretch out the SLS development even further.

If NASA tries to go this route, they should do so under the SLS budget, not the Commercial Crew one.

What was the general response to these claims? Most in industry other than the fanboys treated their claims with healthy skepticism.

Eight years later, even after that company successfully nails a picture-perfect launch and reentry, people are still skeptical that in the end their prices are going to end up much cheaper than anyone else. Heck, even I’m still wondering if they’ll be able to keep the prices they’ve been claiming once they’re really into routine and reliable operations–and I’m about as close as you can get to a koolaid drinkin fanboy without having spittle in the corner of my mouth.

Then there’s this other rocket group. Like the first one, they haven’t actually demonstrated the ability to successfully design and build new rocket vehicles. At least not within my lifetime. They also start making claims about how by implementing some key industry suggestions (this time those found on “Page 38″ of last month’s HEFT report) they can deliver a new vehicle for far less than past experience dictates. Unlike the first team though, this team does have a track record. But it is a track record of 30 years of consistently overrunning budgets and getting major projects canceled.

“But it will be different this time” they say. “If we use the suggestions on ‘Page 38′, we can dramatically improve on the affordability of developing new rocket vehicles.”

Now, it’s not that the suggestions on Page 38 are bad. They’re not. They’re actually pretty good. Just like “using the best practices from Silicon Valley” sounds good too. I’ll admit that I’m kind of curious how on a $20B project they’re going to “Model, test and fly early and often” or “Use small lean projects with highly competent empowered personnel”, or how a project that is more or less designed by Congressional committee is somehow going to “Push decision authority to the lowest level. Trust them to implement and don’t second guess (over-manage)” [Aside: if Congress really intended to allow NASA to do that last one, they wouldn't be specifying the size of the rocket, what hardware it can use, and which contractors they have to maintain contracts for]. I’m also somewhat curious of how many of the items on that list CxP managers would claim they were already doing…

…but leaving all of those specific details aside, I just don’t get why this second group of people gets all offended when the net result from industry is once again healthy skepticism. Especially given their past track record. When you’re trying to get people to entrust you with a multi-billion dollar project that all past experience and your management claim is unlikely to fit within budget or timeline, is it really that offensive when people have a hard time swallowing that somehow one powerpoint slide is going to change everything?

I mean, it is totally possible that like SpaceX, this new team is going to surprise us, and totally knock this SLS project out of the park. Heck, maybe they’ll even come in far enough under budget that Shelby, out of the kindness of his generous soul, will decide to put the savings into commercial crew or propellant depot development. It’s totally possible.

But is it really rude to be skeptical about this outcome?

I’ll start with my positive impressions first. Most importantly, I like the idea of using reusable in-space vehicles. One of the points I had intended to make with the MHD aerobraking series was that such technologies might lead to the day where directly returning to earth from the moon interplanetary space via a capsule is considered an anachronism. So, I’m a firm supporter of space architectures where the earth-to-LEO segment is totally separate from the in-space segment, and where the in-space segment favors reuse.

I’m also a fan of many of the technologies that the MMSEV was talking about, such as artificial gravity, actually dealing with radiation issues, etc.

But on net, my overall impression was that while interesting, this will never happen. At least not with the NASA we have today, and not on the budget they’re claiming. Unless I’m totally misunderstanding what all falls under “DCT&I”, $3.7B to develop that vehicle over five years sounds wishful thinking when you realize that Orion has spent more than that over a similar amount of time to get to PDR. Realistically, in a world where Orion and SLS are expected to cost over $20B more and take at least another 6 years to get to service, I really have a hard time believing that a vehicle that much more complicated, done by the same groups, is somehow going to be available that much sooner and for that much less.

I’m not trying to badmouth the guys who put their hearts and souls into this concept. I think it is visionary, and has many elements in the right direction. I just think that compared to where we are today, the budget and timeline numbers they’re claiming are overoptimistic, and that we’re not really anywhere close to being able to do something like what they’re talking about. More to the point, we’re not even to a point where we need something like what they’re talking about. While I’m a fan of NEOs and Phobos, reality dictates that most human spaceflight over the next few decades is likely to be focused in cislunar space. We may do occasional ventures beyond, but they’ll likely be riskier, smaller, and cheaper missions.

I hope we get there (to a point where we’re ready to build something like Nautilus-X) someday while I’m still young enough to appreciate it, but I think there are bunch of steps between here and there that need to be taken first if we’re going to be serious about not just exploring space, but making space part of “humanity’s natural environment”.

Bravo Aerojet for showing some cajones!  If you guys setup a legal fund to help pay for trying to force this issue, you’d have at least one donation.