Nigeria's Orbital Ambitions

According to
THIS article in the Global Post, Nigeria has ambitious plans for its modest space program, including a manned launch sometime in the coming decade.

To Nigeria's misfortune, when many people in the US and other Western nations think of it, the first thing that comes to mind are their notorious internet scammers and spammers. But I know from my nephew, who is half Nigerian, that the central-african nation has much to be proud of. In recent years, that includes a small but ambitious space program.

The details are in the linked article, so I won't need to repeat them here. But I hope that they succeed in their ambitions in orbit, especially in launching their own astronaut by 2015. Space should be accessible to, and exploitable by, everyone, not just the most powerful countries and global corporations. Africa is a huge, diversified continent with vast natural resources that I think will come into its own as a major global player in the coming century, and its forward-looking countries like Nigeria that will lead the way for its peoples. Best of luck to them.

VASIMR Plasma Rocket Powers Up

Less than a day after my LAST blog entry, where I predicted that Plasma Rockets will become the predominant space propulsion technology later in the century, comes news that an experimental plasma rocket engine has just passed a significant milestone.

For full details go HERE for the original article from PHYSORG.COM. For the basics of how VASIMR and other types of plasma rockets work, go HERE.

Here's hoping the Ad`Astra Rocket Company continues to do such exemplary research and devlopment. I do think plasma rockets hold a tremendous amount of promise, and the sooner the technology is fully developed, the better off our future in space will be.

(Image Copyright Ad Astra Rocket Company)

Space Travel Feasibility Round-Up

In gathering articles for the main ORBITAL VECTOR site, I try to stay clear of favoritism for any particular idea. I DO try to make clear a particular technology's real-world feasibility, whether its hard science or soft science, how advanced society likely needs to be to produce it, etc.

However, that doesn't mean I think that all technologies I write about are equally probable. There are other factors besides just purely technological to overcome. Economics, politics, circumstance, location, culture, are as likely to determine if a technology becomes widely used or if it just sits on the shelves of history as a curiosity. The Segway is a perfect example. As a technology, it exceeded expectations, and fulfills its utility niche almost perfectly. However, it was cultural and economic factors--basically the fear of lawsuits--that killed its wide-spread use.

With all that in mind, I thought I'd give my own personal views of the likelihood of various Space Travel technologies I've written about so far on the main site. Just keep in mind these represent my own personal views of what will likely be developed or not based on political, economic, cultural, and other factors in the real world. Believe me, I would love to see a huge flowering of advanced space technology within the next decade, but I try to be as realistically constrained with the predictions as I could, while still assuming the world community in general continues to slowly develop space capabilities. Also, the needs and attitudes of various space-faring nations/companies/groups may change over time, so what seems likely now may also change in the future.

Each technology discussed is linked to an article explaining how it works.

CHEMICAL ROCKETS: Will probably remain the main means of obtaining orbit and maneuvering in space for at least the next half-century, if not longer. Its just too reliable and well proven a technology, and with so much infrastructure already in place to manufacture rocket components they will likely remain the cheapest option for some time to come. In the second half of the century I think they'll start slowly being replaced by other technology, but even so they will still linger for many decades.

SPACE PLANES: Also a well-proven technology, from the old X-series rocket planes to Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipOne. As Virgin Galactic gears up and actually begins running tourist flights, imitators will likely blossom from every corner, and I think the rocket/space plane will have a serious renaissance in the 2020s and beyond.

ION DRIVES: Now a proven technology, ion drives are very fuel efficient and will likely begin to slowly supplant chemical rockets as the main thrusters on deep space robes. Will likely be a routine technology by mid-century, used mostly for unmanned scientific and (hopefully) industrial payloads.

PLASMA ROCKETS: I do think old-style chemical rockets will begin turning over to these within a few decades, starting in the 2030s or 2040s; they have many of the same characteristics s chemical rockets but with much greater power. By the end of the century they will likely be the dominant space propulsion technology.

FISSION ROCKETS: Toxic radioactive exhaust will make sure this technology is never seriously used, despite its near-term feasibility and other advantages.

NUCLEAR PULSE DRIVES: Despite being actually much more dangerous than fission rockets, nuclear pulse drives have much more support among the space and scientific communities. Plus they also deliver phenomenal amounts of thrust compared to most other drives to compensate. Will likely be used for large deep-space missions in the second half of the century and beyond, perhaps even for the first interstellar probes.

SOLAR BOILER ROCKETS: Nominally a very cheap form of deep space rocket, these only become economically feasible if enough infrastructure in space exists to easily refuel them with water, which probably won't happen until the next century. But when that does happen, they will likely become the cheap transport workhorses of any emerging space culture.

SOLAR/MAGNETIC SAILS: A little too far out-there as a concept to gain a lot of real popular or political support, plus in order to turn them into decent-performance vehicles, you need to build powerful laser or particle beam facilities that could too easily be interpreted as weapons, making them a political sticking point. I foresee them being used only occasionally for certain scientific missions into the foreseeable future.

FUSION ROCKETS: Fusion has always one of the big "ifs" of science. They've been promising the big breakthrough for cheap, sustainable fusion power for half a century now, but if that will actually happen anytime soon is up for speculation. IF it comes within the next few decades, fusion rocket spacecraft may begin plying deep space sometime in the last half of the century, I'd guess. However, like with fission rockets, its radioactive exhaust will make its use infrequent at first, but as humanity moves further out into the solar system its superior power will become a premium. That likely won't happen until well into the next century, however.

ANTIMATTER DRIVES: The ultimate rockets, but the problems, technical and economic (and probably political, as antimatter can easily be turned into a weapon), involved in producing and storing antimatter means these probably won' be used in any significant way until well into the next century.

LAUNCH TOWERS: Feasible, but would probably only be seriously pursued if a space elevator proves definitively unobtainable. Even so they probably wouldn't be constructed until late in the century, after any space elevator projects fail.

SPACE ELEVATORS: With the development of carbon nanotubes, these seem definitively feasible, and there is currently a large populist push within the space and scientific community to develop one. It still unfortunately remains a little too far-out-there as an idea to get any significant funding politically, which probably won't really change for at least few decades yet. However, by the 2030s or 2040s I can see space elevator technology being seriously pursued, and the first commercial one may open in the second half of the century.

I'd love to hear other peoples' opinions. I may do another feasibility round-up of space technology (focusing on space stations and planetary exploration and such) some time in the future.

Our Near Space Future

(Image courtesy NASA)

Many people today will be pontificating about the fortieth anniversary of Apollo 11 landing on the Moon, as is only right. But I'd like to take the opportunity not to talk about the last forty years of space travel, but the forty years that's immediately ahead of us.

In my last blog entry, I talked about how people have trouble intuitively grasping just how vast the scale of space is. Which is partly why I think that for the next few generations, despite the current push outward for exploration to the Moon and Mars, I think the aspect of space travel that will have the most impact on normal people will be the opening up and exploitation of so-called 'Near Space.' Near Space extends from the upper reaches of the atmosphere up to about 500 miles altitude, or the inner edge of the Van Allen radiation belts. That's a scale well within most peoples' understanding, and still is on the shore of this exciting new frontier.

We're already seeing a number of exciting developments along these lines recently. The successful SpaceX launch, the construction of the Virgin Galactic "spaceport", the US Military's tentative plan for a near space 'stratostation' that could permanently occupy suborbital space. Combined with the enlarging community of space-capable nations (particularly China) and renewed interest by private companies just chomping at the bit to market space, it seems that we're poised for a renewed flowering of space travel and exploration. But this time, instead of just being limited to two competing nations, it seems the whole of the industrialized world will take part.

After the world more fully recovers from the recent economic chaos--which admittedly might not be for a full decade yet--I think space tourism will begin to fully take off, with Virgin Galactic and its inevitable competitors offering first suborbital flights, then full orbital excursions. Bigelow Aerospace is already hard at work designing and constructing the first 'space hotels', which would be no more than small, modular, inflatable space stations in which tourists and small crews could stay for up to a few days. And in their footsteps will follow other companies eager to cash in.

Even now, many countries see the ability to at least launch their own satellites as a matter of pride, and a number of them are beginning to launch their own space exploration probes as well, as exemplified by the recent lunar probes launched by India and Japan. How long before they begin launching their own manned space craft, and building their own space stations?

So by 2050 or so, I'm hazarding an educated guess about what we'll see: many different nations and probably at least half a dozen private companies involved heavily in human space exploitation. Those that don't already have a manned presence there will be planning on it. There will be at least a dozen space hotels, most small, but perhaps a few as large as the old Mir station. Companies will start ofering point-to-point suborbital flights. Russia, always a major proponent of space stations, may have an ISS-like large station, and will probably have plans for something even larger, like a ring station. China may still be playing-catch up, hoping to industrialize Near Earth Orbit, and close on its heels will be alliances and nations like the ESA, Japan, India, Brazil, and others.

But where will the US space program fit into all of this?

For some reason, the slow but deliberate process of constructing orbital infrastructure does not seem to sit well with the American public. This seems to go beyond just its high price tag and the old manned vs robotic exploration debate. I think it goes back to why the Apollo program is such a jewel in the eye of the American public, and why space efforts since, despite their on-paper practicality, haven't been as popular.

I think there's a very deep need in the American psyche to explore. Most of the population in the US is descended from people who left their homelands and set off toward someplace unknown in the hopes of something better, and I think that tendency is pretty much embedded in our national DNA. We love building things and making money, but even more fundamental than all that is that we, as a people, want to go.

Apollo spoke to that very deeply. Man landing on the Moon was an amazing technical achievement, but I think to many around the world, especially Americans, it felt right. Like it was what we were destined to do all along.

But many at NASA, in that era and since, realized that sending humans beyond the Moon would need an extensive orbital infrastructure to be practical. You need someplace to construct the giant vehicles necessary, you need workhorse vehicles to haul all the material to orbit, as well as a place to test out long-term habitation and industrial techniques. Thus the need for a shuttle and the space station, and the other plans NASA had its old 'grand architecture.' This goes back to what I talked about last time--just how vast the scale of space is. We're microbes trying to cross an ocean on specks of dust. With our current level of technology, there really is no other way to go about sending humans out into the solar system without this infrastructure.

In the coming era, I think space agencies and companies may begin to specialize--instead of being a catch-all for all space efforts the way many agencies have been, they may begin specializing according to what they do best. For example, the private companies will be all about tourism, the fledgling countries will want to compete for launch services, Russia I'm sure would love to be at the forefront of space stations and colonies in orbit, Japan seems determined to create solar power satellites, and so on.

And Americans I think will work very hard, as they have historically, to be humanity's great explorers of space, to always push the envelope of where humanity goes and what we go out in the Great Dark. The next great age of American manned exploration may not start until the other countries catch up and build the infrastructure that the US needs to explore but still seems very reluctant to participate in. I'm sure that there will be American stations and moonbases and what not, but the US will not fully wake from its current ennui about space until we once again can finally start taking great leaps for all mankind.

Mistakes About Space Stealth and Revamping Lasers

In 2005 I wrote a fairly extensive article on space combat called "Hunters In The Great Dark," which was published in Strange Horizons. One of my main assertions was that stealth in space was a given; the sheer scale immense of the battle field seemed to assure that. Also, one of main rationales for that was how real-life astronomers have had a lot of difficulty finding even the majority of near-Earth asteroids, objects that can dwarf many proposed space battle ships. If there's such a problem finding flying mountains, why would it be any easier to find much smaller ships?

However, in the years since, people have pointed out the problems with that, and with a great deal of reading on my part for how sensors and such would work in space, I now have to admit I was wrong about that. The hunt for asteroids has taken place only in a limited spectrum (visible light) so far, and doesn't take into account multiple-spectrum IR detectors and more. Life support, various ship systems, and engines create waste heat that can at best be masked for only a short time, more than likely not long enough to mount any kind of successful attack.

Given "realistic" projections for future space technology (on the OV scale, that would be up through Tech Level 15), stealth for manned ships is not very likely and for unmanned attack craft difficult at best. Like most things about future technology, I don't want to say its flat-out impossible, because too many dismissals of 'impossible' things have been proven wrong. I still think its probably doable in certain specialized circumstances, and some unforeseen innovation (like metamaterials, which looks like it may lead to a real life 'invisibility' cloak) may throw a monkey wrench into it all.

But otherwise, I was wrong. Oh well. Sorry about that. At least I got paid $100 for the original article way back when, so I think my pride will survive.

So anyway, I'm taking down "Hunters In The Great Dark" from the Essay section for a possible major rewrite at some future time. I'm also going to take down the "Laser Firearms" article in the "Firearms" section. The article is still accurate as far as it goes, but it was one of the first articles I did in for OV back in 2003. There have been a number of developments and rethinking about laser weapons since then, and I should rewrite the article to reflect all that.

Coke Bottle Plasma Rocket

Mini Helicon Plasma Thruster

Researchers at MIT have produced an advanced miniature plasma thruster, using the same principles as the VASIMR (Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket) plasma rocket that NASA has been developing for deep-space applications a number of years now. The mini helicon notably uses nitrogen, instead of hydrogen that VASIMR uses, and the neon and xenon of other ionic thrusters currently in use.

The most interesting part of this research is that students built a thruster out of an old glass coke bottle and an aluminum can, to prove just how simple and hardy the system is. A short video is in the link above, complete with the characteristic sky-blu glow of the nitrogen exhaust.

Thoughts On Ares, Constellation, and Beyond

Article Link (from the International Herald Tribune): The Fight Over NASA's Future

Apparently there is a bunch of growing tensions between Michael Griffin, the current head of NASA and a Bush appointee, and the incoming Obama administration. The two apparent bones of contention are whether Griffin will keep his job, and the future of the ARES rocket program. More detailed info is in the linked article, above.

First, I can't say I've been a fan of just about any of Bush's science policies. But one of the (very) few things I think he did right was re-focus the country's space efforts back into manned exploration. After the ISS was completed, it was the next logical step anyway.

Griffin, however, had it exactly wrong when he said the US space policy was misguided post-Apollo. Not at all. What NASA did was outline a long-term approach to exploring the solar system, first by sending out probes and robotic emissaries as scouts, and at the same time building a kind of 'step ladder' of outposts and waystations for human explorers into the Great Dark. I've heard this plan occasionally called NASA's 'Grand Architecture' for space exploration.

The shuttle was the first component; intended to haul heavy loads cheaply into iorbit for construction of the first of these outpsosts, which later became the ISS. Both systems in turn would help build the later generation of stations, including an outpost at the Earth-Moon L-1 point to facilitate future lunar exploration, outposts at L-4 and L-5, and more into the future.

It was a measured, smart man's plan that unfortunately came to maturity in a stupid man's political climate. Most people don't realize that rockets, re-entry capsule, and other such hardware are only part of the equation of human space exploration. The other is building long-enduring, human-friendly habitats away from Earth, a capability we are still very much struggling with. The presence of these stations and outposts would basically allow for a permanent supply chain of needed resources to anywhere human explorers would go in the near future.

Unfortunately, money for very complex rocket science is controlled by populist anti-intellectual luddites, aka Congress, and NASA found itself making many compromises just to hold onto its funding. As a result, the general mission for both the Shuttle and the ISS have been diluted to the point that NASA's old 'Grand Architecture' scheme is all but unrecognizable today.

Griffin, perhaps justifiably in the light of this, wants to return to an Apollo-style overall plan, which I guess could be called the 'Space Direct' scheme. If you want to go anywhere in the solar system, you launch directly from Earth, no waystations (theoretically) needed. This is the whole point of his baby, the Constellation program.

However, Griffin has gone about trying to achieve this in what is reportedly a very hard-headed, politically-charged, and heavy-handed way, very typical for a Bush appointee. Details can be found in the article. This is why I think he should be scuppered; he'll butt heads too many times with the Obama administration, and nothing will get done. The Constellation program should continue, even the embattled ARES I rocket, but perhaps following an independent review to see what could be done better.

One thing I would like to see happen is extending shuttle flights until the Orion capsules can start flying crews itself. The US should NOT go without manned spaceflight capability, dependent on other countries, for half a decade as Griffin wanted to happen. We have the shuttles, they're flight-worthy and useful still, so let's use them. Yes, two shuttles met with disaster. But then again, so did two Apollo missions (Apollo 1 and 13.) And the Russians, who we were supposed to be dependent on from 2010 to 2015, have had a far worse safety record with space flight (well over 100 casualties--that we know of.)

I do want to see the Constellation program succeed, but I think it inevitable some changes are going to have to be made, and I really don't think Griffin should remain as part of the equation.