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.

On one hand, I think that propellant depots could probably be fielded eventually without any specific government assistance.  On many levels I dislike any form of government subsidy or industrial policy, and think that most central planning is doomed to failure (see: current financial situation).  While a purely market-driven approach would take a very long time to slowly bootstrap its way up to a full-service depot capability, I do think it is possible, and am currently trying to find ways to attack the problem from that direction.

On the other hand, I think it’s pretty clear that in many cases, there are existing public programs that are spending billions of dollars of taxpayer money that are being done in a less-efficient manner because propellant depots don’t yet exist.  Many NASA probes and its manned exploration programs could be done more cost effectively and accomplish more if depots existed.  I’ve also seen ways that the military could benefit from the existance of on-orbit refueling services and space tugs.

While I dislike government just giving away handouts, I think that in areas that our representatives have decided to spend our money, investing in ways to make those expenditures more efficient is prudent.

With that in mind, I have some thoughts on things that I think the government could do to help encourage propellant depots, as well as some ideas I’ve heard that I think the government should not do to encourage propellant depots.  I’ll start with the things I would not like to see:

1. I don’t think NASA should be allowed build or operate a propellant depot.  A NASA-run depot is going to be subject to the same political pressures that gave us the current ISS, and will probably end up being a multi-billion dollar megaproject that in the end delivers little of its original promise (but at least keeps lots of people employed at JSC, MSFC, GRC, etc, etc).  It’s not that there aren’t talented people at NASA working on technologies like this, it’s just that the institutional incentives NASA faces are probably incompatible with any sort of economically useful depot.  People use the ISS as “proof” that microgravity science isuseless, and that we shouldn’t do orbital assembly or build space stations.  We don’t need moer “existence proof” like that.  Another reason why NASA shouldn’t run a depot is that a NASA-run depot will be a lot more restricted on who it can buy and who it can sell propellant to.  While NASA could probably build a propellant depot, it’s just a bad approach all-around.
2. I don’t think NASA should have a contractor build and operate a depot either (think “United Space Alliance”).   While I believe Boeing when they say that they could respond to a NASA depot RFP with a $5B depot plan, I also don’t think this is the ideal way.  You end up picking winners, there will be a lot more political interference in business operations, and many of the same incentives issues that exist for NASA would exist for a “contractor run” NASA depot.
3. I don’t like the idea of Congress setting aside money to “just buy a bunch of propellant on orbit”.  Not only do I think it’s a political non-starter, but I hate handouts, and think it would probably end up causing more distortions and more harm than good.  NASA has existing and planned projects that can use propellant depots.   There’s no legitimate reason to set up programs to buy propellants not tied to actual needs.

So here’s my thoughts on things the government could/should do to promote propellant depots:

1. Continue to invest money into propellant depot research and technology development.  NASA is already doing this on a small level with its SBIR program, as well as other small research projects.  It would do well to reinstitute the approach O’Keefe took with the H&RT program of providing significant funding for important technology demonstration projects like this.  I think such programs should be focused on driving the technology to the level of flight demonstrations as quickly as possible. Proposed cryo fluid management test beds like LM/ULA’s Centaur Test Bed and possible suborbital analogs, should make it possible to actually start reducing more of these ideas to practice with actual flight demonstrations.
2. Fund the “Fuel Depot Demonstration” Centennial Challenges (early proposed rules can be found here), or something similar to it.  The Centennial Challenges program hasn’t been given a cent other than in its first year.  It’s used that money very carefully, and preserved most of the money for actual prizes.  But they had several other interesting prizes that they wanted to roll out that they haven’t been able to due to lack of funding.  This prize, for $5M nominally (though I think $10M might make it more interesting) was for a system that could store at least a certain amount of LOX and LH2 for at least 120 days.  While one can argue with the details of the rules, the idea of offering small prizes for technology demonstrations is important.
3. Fund the development of an Industry Standard for Passive Orbital Propellant Transfer Interfaces.  There’s been a lot of talk over the years of standardizing things like docking interfaces.  I think that most of those ideas are premature–docking interfaces are complex enough, and the tradespace has been sufficiently poorly explored that it’s too early to set things like that in stone.  Things like a passive propellant transfer interface are ironically probably closer to a point where they could be standardized.  By a passive interface, I just mean a set of quick disconnects, power/data transfer hookups, etc that could be added to the outside surface of a tanker or customer that could be connected-to manually, using robot arms, or tugs and hoses/cords.  Fund some well-accepted standards group (like ASME/AIAA or someone else) to do a study to see if things really are at a point where the interfaces can be standardized.  If they are, have them put together a draft standard, and get industry feedback on it.  Creating a simple, publicly available standard for propellant transfer will make it easier for tug developers, tanker developers, propellant depot operators, propellant transfer customers, etc. to develop their systems.
4. Once there is an accepted standard, mandate that all government flights beyond LEO be done with stages equipped with those standardized propellant transfer interfaces.  A simple passive interface might be able to be used for normal fueling purposes, and might be doable in a way that adds minimal extra weight to a rocket stage, and doesn’t cost a bunch.  By requiring all launch providers who want to sell to the government to incorporate that feature, that feature also becomes available to other non-government customers, allowing them to be able to take advantage of that capability without having to foot the bill for that development work by themselves.  A mandated standard interface like that also helps make it so prospective depot owners know that there will be stages that can accept transfered propellant for missions where they need the capability.
5. Some time after that mandated interface rule has kicked-in, require by law that NASA (and other government agencies if possible) procure propellant from a propellant-depot if available for all stages, satellites, probes, and landers outside of LEO that are too big to launch on a commercial, single-stick (ie no strapons) launch vehicle.  The “if available” clause means that if a depot operator doesn’t step-up, NASA isn’t under any obligation.  This might also be the case where they want to launch a mission into an inclination where they couldn’t use a depot.  But in cases where they could use a depot, it requires them to obey existing laws to procure services commercially when they are available.  So, in a way this is just a reaffirmation of existing statutes.  It has the benefit that it reduces the risk to a depot startup that NASA would just ignore them and build their own HLVs to launch their own propellant.  Lastly, by giving them the option to fly “single-stick” missions without depots, it at least allows the smaller, simpler missions that don’t actually need a depot to work to proceed unchanged.

Now, these are just some thoughts I’ve had over the past several weeks.  My goal here is to set up incentives that encourage the private development of depots, reduce the risk to depot operators of NASA ignoring the law and not buying from them if they take the risk to provide that capability, while still not forcing NASA to spend lots of money developing those capabilities and infrastructure itself.

But there may be flaws I’m not seeing.  What do you all think?  I’d particularly like feedback from people in the Space Policy community.

Missing the Vision

Dr Griffin starts his defense of the chosen Constellation architecture by framing it “in the
context of policy and law that dictate NASA’s missions.” As he said on page 2:

Any system architecture must be evaluated first against the tasks which it is
supposed to accomplish. Only afterwards can we consider whether it accomplishes
them efficiently, or presents other advantages which distinguish it from competing
choices.

He then went on to discuss President Bush’s original announcement of the Vision for Space Exploration, and the NASA Authorization Act of 2005. I agree that it is important to make sure you know up-front what yardstick your program is going to be measured by. However, I think one thing becomes quickly obvious as you read Dr Griffin’s quotes from those documents–he entirely focuses on the technical implementation details, and never once mentions the actual policy goals!

Quoting from “A Renewed Spirit of Discovery: The President’s Vision for U.S. Space Exploration“:

Goal and Objectives
The fundamental goal of this vision is to advance U.S. scientific, security, and economic interests through a robust space exploration program.

These goals are the yardstick by which any VSE implementation needs to be judged. The rest of the technical details of how the space exploration program is carried out needs to be viewed in the light of these three areas of US interests. It doesn’t matter if a proposed implementation hits all of the other technical details, if it doesn’t really further US scientific, security, and economic interests, it isn’t really compliant with the goals of the president’s Vision.

Going into a little more detail on these goals, the Renewed Spirit of Discovery document continues (emphasis mine):

In support of this goal, the United States will:
• Implement a sustained and affordable human and robotic program to explore the solar system and beyond;
• Extend human presence across the solar system, starting with a human return to the Moon by the year 2020, in preparation for human exploration of Mars and other destinations;
• Develop the innovative technologies, knowledge, and infrastructures both to explore and to support decisions about the destinations for human exploration; and
• Promote international and commercial participation in exploration to further U.S. scientific, security, and economic interests.

Once again, all of the specific technical details like the CEV, retiring Shuttle in 2010, etc. are all pursuant to these goals.

Lastly, the NASA Authorization Act of 2005 (available here) states, once again with my emphasis:

The Administrator shall establish a program to develop a sustained human presence on the Moon, including a robust precursor program, to promote exploration, science, commerce, and United States preeminence in space, and as a stepping-stone to future exploration of Mars and other destinations.

Once again, you will notice that the key goals of this Vision, elucidated by both the President and Congress include not only science, but commerce, and in the president’s case security.

I could go on about how Dr Griffin’s focus on the parts of the Authorization Act that talk about heavy lift and shuttle derived ignored other sections in the act that talk about “encouraging the commercial use and development of space to the greatest extent practicable” (see Section 101.a.2. parts B-C). But I think the fundamental issue is that by focusing exclusively on just the technical side of the requirements, and not on the underlying goals, Griffin is missing the Vision.

Growth Potential

On page 7, Dr. Griffin starts making his case for the Constellation architecture with this somewhat ironic statement about the Space Shuttle:

Once before, an earlier generation of U.S. policymakers approved a spaceflight architecture intended to optimize access to LEO. It was expected – or maybe “hoped” is the better word – that, with this capability in hand, the tools to resume deep space exploration would follow. It didn’t happen, and with the funding which has been allocated to the U.S. civil space program since the late 1960s, it cannot happen. Even though from an engineering perspective it would be highly desirable to have transportation systems separately optimized for LEO and deep space, NASA’s budget will not support it. We get one system; it must be capable of serving in multiple roles, and it must be designed for the more difficult of those roles from the outset.

And then Dr Griffin goes on to try and justify an architecture based on building a duplicative LEO capable only launch vehicle first, and hoping that when that vehicle is finally done, that there will be funding for developing “the tools to resume deep space exploration”…

After that auspicious start, Dr. Griffin then reminds us that “the new system will and should be in use for many decades.” Of course some of the historical analogies he draws could lead one to different solutions than it led him. For instance, he mentions that “In space, derivatives of Atlas and Delta and Soyuz are flying a half-century and more after their initial development.” An interesting thing to note about Atlas and Delta is that the only reason why vehicles with the name Atlas and Delta are “still flying” a half-century after their initial development, is precisely because they are only derivatives of the original. In fact, the current EELVs have very little in common with the vehicles that originally bore their names.

On pages 8 and 9, Dr. Griffin concludes that (emphasis mine):

The implications of this are profound. We are designing today the systems that our grandchildren will use as building blocks, not just for lunar return, but for missions to Mars, to the near-Earth asteroids, to service great observatories at Sun-Earth L1, and for other purposes we have not yet even considered. We need a system with inherent capability for growth.

While I disagree with the direction Dr. Griffin is going, I do agree with his point in that last sentence. We do need a transportation architecture that has inherent capability for growth. I just don’t think that the Constellation architecture really fits that bill.

The Promise of Commercial Space

Now, lest you think I’m going to spend yet another post hammering on Dr. Griffin, I’d like to quote a part of his speech that I really agreed with:

Further application of common sense also requires us to acknowledge that now is the time, this is the juncture, and we are the people to make provisions for the contributions of the commercial space sector to our nation’s overall space enterprise. The development and exploitation of space has, so far, been accomplished in a fashion that can be described as “all government, all the time”. That’s not the way the American frontier was developed, it’s not the way this nation developed aviation, it’s not the way the rest of our economy works, and it ought not to be good enough for space, either. So, proactively and as a matter of deliberate policy, we need to make provisions for the first step on the stairway to space to be occupied by commercial entrepreneurs – whether they reside in big companies or small ones.

I have to say that for all my disagreements with Griffin, he at least talks a good talk when it comes to commercial space. I full-heartedly agree with his point in this paragraph. When you think about it, even assuming everything works out according to his plan, Constellation is never going to be capable of supporting more than a dozen people off-planet at any time. While that may be a lot more than we have now, Ed Wright has a point when he says that that is a round-off error, not an exploration program. Basically, the only way we’re going to see large numbers of people off planet, and the only way we’re going to see the large-scale manned exploration and settlement of our solar system in our life times, is if the private sector can eventually play a much more expansive role in space transportation. As it is right now, so long as the commercial industry continues to play second fiddle to parochial interests and NASA-centricism, we’re not really going to go much of anywhere.

So, the fact that NASA is at least doing something to help promote that day is a sign that they at least partially get it. A successful and thriving entrepreneurial space transportation industry is going to help them actually achieve their goal of extending human life throughout the solar system in a robust program of space exploration.

Griffin continues with more good comments in his next paragraph:

If designed for the Moon, the use of the CEV in LEO will inevitably be more expensive than a system designed for the much easier requirement of LEO access and no more. This lesser requirement is one that, in my judgment, can be met today by a bold commercial developer, operating without the close oversight of the U.S. government, with the goal of offering transportation for cargo and crew to LEO on a fee-for-service basis.

But here is where the conversation takes a dangerous turn:

Now again, common sense dictates that we cannot hold the ISS hostage to fortune; we cannot gamble the fate of a multi-tens-of-billions-of-dollar facility on the success of a commercial operation, so the CEV must be able to operate efficiently in LEO if necessary. But we can create a clear financial incentive for commercial success, based on the financial disincentive of using government transportation to LEO at what will be an inherently higher price.

To this end, as I have noted many times, we must be willing to defer the use of government systems in favor of commercial services, as and when they reach maturity. When commercial capability comes on line, we will reduce the level of our own LEO operations with Ares/Orion to that which is minimally necessary to preserve capability, and to qualify the system for lunar flight.

While I agree that the government not only is the government being “willing to defer in favor of commercial services” is a really good idea, I think that this approach (of hedging their bets by coming up with a competing in-house launcher) is fraught with risk. Also, while on first blush, it may appear to be common sense to not “hold the ISS hostage to fortune”, it is my contention that this line of reasoning not only doesn’t hold as much water as it seems.

First off, as has been pointed out on numerous occasions, including in Griffin’s statements above, a commercial solution to ISS crew/cargo is going to be a lot more affordable than the in-house Ares-1/Orion solution. It has been mentioned before by people high up at NASA, that they really need COTS to succeed, because if they have to fly all the ISS missions themselves (especially if ISS doesn’t get retired in 2016, which Dr. Griffin mentioned in this speech as a possibility), there really won’t be anywhere near enough money to develop the lunar portions of the proposed Constellation architecture in time for the 2020 lunar return goal. You could say in a way that the existing Constellation architecture holds the rest of the Vision hostage to the fortune of COTS. If COTS doesn’t succeed, there’s no way NASA is going to be able to afford executing on the rest of the vision. If the supposed “backup plan” for ISS resupply won’t produce acceptable results anyway if COTS doesn’t turn out, NASA shouldn’t be trying to make it a backup plan at all–they should invest more heavily in making sure that there are multiple COTS competitors and that they have enough resources to succeed. One of the single biggest execution risks for any COTS company is financing risks. And having a NASA “backup plan” that could potentially compete with them is one of the single biggest obstacles to be overcome in raising money for a COTS team.

Which brings me to my other concern. The danger of having NASA in-house launch vehicles and space access capabilities that can serve as a backup to COTS also allows them to directly compete with COTS if the budgetary situation goes sour. Think about it. If Ares-1 finally gets built and working, but Ares-V doesn’t get funded, there’s nothing for Ares-1 to do but service ISS. With how hard the esteemed congressmen from Florida, Utah, and Alabama are fighting to maintain the Shuttle workforce and infrastructure (even to the point of suggesting continuing to fly the Shuttle!), does anyone really think that they would just “stand down” at that point, even if there was a clearly superior commercial alternative? Not very likely. I’m sure they would come up with some technical reason why Ares-I was superior (after all, our probabilistic risk assessment says that Ares-I has a 1:2106.5923 chance of killing a crew, while our numbers show that they have a 1:500 chance–who do you want flying our brave astronauts?) and find a way to not actually stand down. The frustrating thing is that by setting things up the way NASA is doing, the NASA people don’t even have to be malicious for such a result to happen–it’s a natural and likely consequence of the perverse incentives that NASA and Congress are setting up.

So, while I personally think that Dr. Griffin really and emphatically believes in and supports commercial space development, I’m afraid that there’s a high chance that some of his well-intended choices could end up coming back to haunt us.

Moon, MARS!!!! and Beyond

The last item I’d like to point out in Dr. Griffin’s speech is one of the justifications he used for the “1.5 launch” architecture they selected. Dr. Griffin made the point that while he feels that Constellation needs to be backward compatible with ISS as a backup plan, it also needs to be forward compatible with Mars, because sometime in the 2030s, we’re going to be going there. Now, I’m of the opinion that trying to guess what the best technical approach will be for a problem 30 years from now is somewhat of a fools errand. But that’s just me I guess.

So, starting on page 16 he begins to layout his case:

On the other end of the scale, we must judge any proposed architecture against the requirements for Mars. We aren’t going there now, but one day we will, and it will be within the expected operating lifetime of the system we are designing today. We know already that, when we go, we are going to need a Mars ship with a LEO mass equivalent of about a million pounds, give or take a bit. I’m trying for one-significant-digit accuracy here, but think “Space Station”, in terms of mass.

Now, I’m not going to go into the fact that there are probably plenty of other approaches to Mars exploration that can change the equation entirely. That’s a post for another day. For now, let’s just run with that premise.

He then repeats the “everyone knows that ISS taught us that using 20 ton vehicles to build something big is a bad idea” catechism, but that’s not what I’d like to discuss. The real gem is in this paragraph on page 17 (emphasis mine):

But if we split the EOR lunar architecture into two equal but smaller vehicles, we will need ten or more launches to obtain the same Mars-bound payload in LEO, and that is without assuming any loss of packaging efficiency for the launch of smaller payloads. When we consider that maybe half the Mars mission mass in LEO is liquid hydrogen, and if we understand that the control of hydrogen boiloff in space is one of the key limiting technologies for deep space exploration, the need to conduct fewer rather than more launches to LEO for early Mars missions becomes glaringly apparent.

It is true that one can draw that inference–that hydrogen boiloff means you should build as big of an HLV as possible. However, the conclusion I would draw is that if cryogenic propellant storage technologies are “key limiting technologies for deep space explortion”, then the right answer is to stop trying to kludge around the problem–develop them! Don’t use the existing state of the art in propellant handling and problems that are still 20 years down the road drive multi-billion dollar development projects today.

There are current technologies under development that could yield very low to zero boiloff of cryogenic propellants. There are multiple groups (ULA, Boeing, groups working with Glenn Research Center, etc.) pursuing multiple approaches to solving these problems. There are passive cooling and active cooling techniques. This isn’t some high-risk technology like nuclear fusion. The technologies needed for cryogenic fluid management in space are mostly low-risk extensions of 40 years worth of research and development. More to the point, many if not all of these technologies need to be developed to make Constellation work for lunar trips anyway, and would still be needed for Mars trips.

Is 2030 really so close that we can’t afford to do this right and actually develop the technologies we need instead of trying to kludge by with existing technologies?

Once you have the boiloff issue reduced or solved, that ~500klb of hydrogen ceases to be a headache, and begins to be an opportunity. That’s a lot of demand for propellant in orbit, and it can be supplied commercially. You’re already going to need propellant transfer technologies anyway if you have to launch the hydrogen in multiple launches, so what’s to stop launching it in even smaller launches?

I guess my point is that if one of the key arguments for the 1.5 launch architecture over a more commercial one, or a less expensive shuttle derived one like DIRECT is hydrogen boiloff, I think their kludge around the issue isn’t the right approach, and that they’d be better off just doing it the right way. Also, part of the reason why we have a federally funded aerospace program is to help prove out the technologies necessary for enabling the commercial exploitation of space, and actually solving problems like these would be much a much more responsible use of public funds than developing a kludge around point design like Ares V that doesn’t advance the state of the art for the commercial benefit of the country.

Conclusions

I guess overall while there were some good points, there was also a lot of issues with Dr. Griffin’s latest defense of Constellation. As discussed, I think that an a myopic focus on the technical details while ignoring the overall goals of the VSE has led to an architecture that isn’t responsive to the key policy goals laid out by the president and reiterated by Congress (particularly with respect to promoting the commercial and security interests of the United States). I think that in spite of Griffin recognizing the need for growth and flexibility in any architecture, that he chose a rather brittle and inflexible one. I also think that while he showed that he does recognize the potential of commercial space, and the importance of NASA trying to promote it, I think that the way he’s running COTS and Constellation will likely end up being highly counterproductive. Lastly, I think that in many cases, when confronted with a solvable engineering problem, Constellation has instead decided to kludge around the problem instead of properly solving it.

There are plenty of other issues I could’ve raised, but I figured these were some of the more obvious ones that I felt needed discussion.

[T]he one absolutely key stumbling block is ownership of Lunar mineral rights. No-one is going anywhere unless they know, rock solid, that they will own what they find. If space advocates want to get us off this rock, the single best thing that they can do is lobby their local governments to recognize Lunar property ownership. Once that happens a lot of other things start to happen in very well-known ways.

Now, I’m not saying this to pick on Tankmodeler, but I think this is a common opinion. I also think it’s wrong.

First off, while the state of extraterrestrial property rights isn’t as solid as one would hope, they’re probably good enough. Basically, while property rights aren’t formally and intentionally recognized by international law, the law does informally create a regime that is close enough for practical purposes. You can’t own a deed to lunar property. But anyone who wants can land hardware there, and do whatever research or resource extraction they want. Anyone who has hardware in space can seek legal redress if someone tries to interfere with their operations. Anyone who harvests materials on the moon still owns them when they land.

Heck, using the exclusion principle, you might even be able to structure a deal that smells rather strongly of real estate. While you couldn’t say sell the right to the lunar land underneath a LOX extraction facility, you could sell the facility, and the right to exclude anyone from interfering with it…it ain’t perfect, but life is about taking what’s possible and running with it.

More importantly, while there is definite room for improvement when it comes to extraterrestrial property rights, there are no real obstacles that couldn’t be overcome if there were a sufficiently compelling business case to be made. As Jim Dunstan pointed out a while ago, there used to be all sorts of legal restrictions about oil extraction in the Alaskan wilderness. But, once the technological and economical case for extraction was solidified, the legal restrictions were overcome in short order.

I’m pretty much with Jim. The reason why we don’t see lunar mining ventures right now has little to do with legal ambiguities about property rights. It has a lot more to do with the immaturity, unaffordability, and to put it bluntly, non-existence of cislunar transportation systems. And our relatively limited knowledge of lunar resource concentrations, extraction techniques, and the lack of experience with technologies capable of long-term lunar surface operations. I may be biased, but I think it’s the transportation architecture and infrastructure immaturity that is the real obstacle. Once you have affordable, reliable, and consistent access to the lunar surface, doing the exploration necessary to get a good handle on the location of useful resource concentrations becomes feasible. Doing the development work of making equipment, spacesuits, and structures that can handle the abusive lunar surface environment also becomes more feasible. Etc.

That isn’t to say that we should just ignore space law, or that the situation is perfect. I’m sure there are several space law experts who can offer good suggestions for practical next steps, and things we can do to improve space property rights (Jim? Berin? Jesse?) What I am saying is that I think it’s really easy to lull ourselves into thinking that the main thing standing between us and space profits is those meddling socialists in DC and Turtle Bay, as opposed to more mundane things like creating solid business models and building reliable and affordable technology.