The Habitat Gap

The big news going around the space community recently is that China recently announced plans to construct and orbit a 60-ton, multiple-module space station by 2020 (pictured above.) You can find more details of it HERE on physorg.com's website. See also the original source HERE from the China Daily website.

I can do nothing but applaud this development. I know according to some people, China is supposed to be the US's big bad rival in the next decade, but any nation or organization that helps to expand on humanity's presence in the daunting frontier of space should be welcomed and encouraged.

The station itself, called 'Tiangong' (translated as 'heavenly palace') for now, will be composed of a main habitat module and two laboratory modules. It will be attended by a dedicated cargo ship and be designed to dock with Chinese space capsules. Though more modest than the ISS, it is definitely a step in the right direction for China's fledgling manned space program.

For the longest time, people pushing for human space exploration beyond Low Earth Orbit have focused almost exclusively on propulsion technologies. I think in some ways that has proven a mistake.

As I've stated a number of times on this blog, the development of long-enduring space habitats is as vital as advanced propulsion if we ever want to create a real human presence off Earth. And the way to do that is to actually live and work for long periods in space to determine which systems and techniques work best. That's what the project that eventually became the ISS was originally all about, but somehow people always end up whining (such as in the PHYSORG.com article's comment section) that the ISS "isn't going anywhere" or "isn't giving a valuable scientific return." It was never supposed to. It was originally supposed to be a testbed for humans living and working in space.

Some people seem to have the idea that all we have to do is strap a huge rocket onto an Apollo capsule and just like that we can zoom off to Mars. But even if NASA's advanced propulsion projects achieve all their goals flawlessly, future astronauts are still going to have to consign themselves to voyages of months or years once past the Earth-Moon system. Cramped, skimpy metal cans like current space capsules simply will not be able to keep human explorers safe and productive for such immense journeys, especially in an environment as hostile as space.

For those impatient to travel into the greater Solar System, one has to come to terms with the fact that improved propulsion technology like VASIMR alone is not enough. You also need space habitats that can keep a human crew healthy and in working shape for the entire voyage, and that's far, far more complex and tricky than most people surmise. In order to develop such habitats, we need the experience that space stations can provide us. Perhaps if more people had understood this and had not tried so hard to roadblock the ISS program in its various incarnations over the years, we might have already had human explorers on the way to other planets.

I have the feeling that future interplanetary spacecraft will end up looking much more like MIR or the ISS than the souped-up space capsules than many dreamers seem to envision. Or perhaps even like China's newly proposed Tiangong station, at a minimum. When you're out in the deeps of interplanetary space, on the longest journey by several orders of magnitude that any human has ever undertaken, what kind of ship would you rather have? A large one with the redundancy of systems and space to handle emergencies, or a cramped one that will tank if any one of several dozen life support systems fail?

NASA's proposed Nautilus-X, basically a mobile ISS, is definitely where things should be leading to by the 2020s. It would be relatively slow compared to some visions of interplanetary flight, but it definitely would be the best bet for getting a human crew alive and healthy to its destination. And the only way we can ever build such a craft successfully is through the data and experience we can collect through operating space stations. The public has to get past the notion that space stations are just hunks of metal orbiting in the sky, and understand that they are in truth our gateways to the heavens.

NASA's Exploration Mothership

(First a quick apology for lack of updates lately, both here and on the main site. I've been caught up in that whole 'earning a living' thing lately and that's been sapping time away from OV. Hopefully things will calm down soon.)

Its big. Its ugly. Its as graceful as a swan glued to an anvil.

I love it.

Its NASA's proposed Nautilus X ("Non-Atmospheric Universal Transport Intended for Lengthy United States eXploration"), an idea put forth by the NASA Technology Applications Assessment Team at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. You can read more about the details in THIS recent Discovery.com Blog.

Basically, it replicates ISS in over all design using cheaper components, attaches rockets and more up-to-date supplementary systems, and sends it cruising on long-term missions. Proponents say that it could be built for $4 billion dollars and be ready by 2020. Realistically, we know that all initial budget and time estimates are significantly low-balled, so let's say it would really cost 3 times that ($12 billion) and would take as long to build and assemble as the ISS, which means 15-20 years with an earliest launch date of say, 2025.

It would still be more than worth it, in my opinion.

This is EXACTLY the approach to long-range manned exploration we should be focusing on. A larger robust, customizable, reusable habitat that can use reasonable propulsion technologies. This is in contrast to the super-compact vehicles where most of the emphasis is on the engine rather than what keeps the astronauts alive and healthy. The idea behind the latter is that if you can get astronauts to and from their destination sufficiently fast enough, you needn't bother with advanced habitat systems.

But the reality of both the vast distances in space, as well as our own near-future technological limitations (no warp drives or antimatter rockets any time soon. Sadly,) would seem to dictate the former approach. We HAVE to get used to the idea that if you want to go anywhere interesting beyond the Earth-Moon system, you're going to be spending a long time getting there. And that's just for manned exploration. Trying for economic exploitation such as construction or mining will require even more capable long-term mobile habitats.

Astronauts in these situations don't need cramp capsules attached to gigantic rockets, as many deep space proposals have posited, such as those to send astronauts to an asteroid or even to Mars in nothing more than two linked Orion capsules. They need actual ships that they can properly live and work on for months at a time. If you were trying to cross the Atlantic, it wouldn't matter how big a motor you attached to a canoe, because in the end it would still be a canoe, and poorly designed to handle the rigors of transoceanic travel. But if you had a big enough ship, travelling slower wouldn't be that big a deal, and you would be much better prepared to handle unforeseen circumstances.

This analogy I think very much applies to space travel, and why an idea like the Nautilus X is a big step forward. If we want to go back to the Moon, to an asteroid, even beyond to Mars or Venus, having an actual reusable ship that can do all that in succession makes more sense than building a new ship for each task. Plus the Nautilus is designed to be modular, and can be modified and updated through it operational lifetime.

But whether anyone at NASA will take the Nautilus-X seriously and moved forward with it is another matter. The space community is nothing if not traditionalist and slow to change, not only in their methods but in their modes of thinking about space exploration in general. Let's hope that won't be the case this time.

NASA's Solar Sail Makes Saving Throw, Orbits Earth

NASA had some amazingly good luck recently as its NanoSail-D spacecraft spontaneously came unstuck from its mother satellite and unfurled its solar sail. It has since been orbiting Earth. For the full story, go HERE to read the full article on NASA's science page.

Earlier in January, a defective spring aboard the FASTSAT mothership had prevented the NanoSail-D from separating from it. For reasons still unknown, however, it spontaneously launched itself free on January 17th. On January 20th, the spacecraft unfurled its solar sail, only the second such to be deployed in space after Japan's IKAROS probe last year, and the mission is now proceeding as scientists had hoped.

NASA has often caught a lot of bad luck in the past on too many missions, so its nice to see them catch some good luck for a change, especially in testing a technology that could be very vital to a number of future space efforts.

(Plus for those who didn't spend (mis-spend?) many hours of their youth playing tabletop RPGs, a 'saving throw' refers to a D&D trope where a character has to avoid a bad outcome by a literal roll of the dice.)

Constellation Given A Reprieve

The Constellation program has apparently been given at least a partial reprieve by President Obama. See the full story HERE in an article from spaceref.com.

Good news indeed that the administration has decided not to let US manned space program languish entirely in the hands of private business. Not that I don't believe that a number of private firms will eventually be up to the task, but for the time being they're still a largely unproven commodity. It really is best that NASA and the US government keep pushing forward with manned space flight for the time being, and give private enterprise time to prove their worth before we shift anything major over to them.

((And sorry about lack of updates lately, life has a habit of getting in the way of such things. Hopefully soon I'll be able to contribute a lot more than I have.))

Comet Ghosts Haunting Earth Orbit

A new type of asteroid, or at least a type that's been poorly studied before because of their difficulty to spot-- has been detected in orbits that cross Earth's own. Go HERE for the full article from New Scientist.

Basically, the scientists are guessing that these may to be the remnant cores of dead comets, having long since used up all the ice and other volatiles that made up their visible tails. They reflect less than 5%-10% of the light that strikes them. However, because they absorb so much more, they are able to be spotted much more easily in the infrared spectrum, such as in the photo above (image courtesy of NASA, btw.)

I think its a very cool discovery, considering they're like comet 'ghosts' haunting the space near Earth. As long as none of them hit us, of course.

600 Million Tons Of Lunar Ice

Recent data analysis from India's Chandrayaan-1 probe has confirmed the presence of water ice in craters near the Moon's poles. The full article can be found HERE on NASA's main website.

If their estimation techniques are correct, the scientists estimate there being at least 600 million metric tons of water ice in the lunar polar region. That is of course spectacularly good news for future bases, and further into the future, colonies, on Earth's natural satellite. That much ice, combined with careful recycling and management, could both provides water, oxygen, and rocket fuel for manned endeavors there for many decades.

And of course, ironically, this comes on the heels of the Obama administration killing off any prospect for returning to the Moon in the short term. We can now see much more clearly how feasible a long-term manned presence on the Moon can be, only to have the prospect of establishing such an outpost pushed out of our reach to at least until the mid-2020s. Its not that the other projects the new administration want to pursue aren't worth doing, but actually opening up a brand new world to humanity would seem to be the better choice of a long range goal, in my opinion.

Oh well. One thing I should suggest to NASA (not that i think anyone there will actually read this): as long as you're underwriting various private space endeavors and X-prize like contests, how about underwriting a sample-return mission for the lunar ice? We can learn definitively what's in it and probably how it was formed. plus the mission may just help to scout out a possible future manned landing site...

The Future In Space Has Just Been Gutted

Go HERE for the full article in the Orlando Sentinel. basically, the Obama administration has decided to kill ALL aspects of the Constellation program and hand over most if not all manned space operations over to the private sector.

I didn't have too much problem with the current administration refocusing space efforts. Just about every administration for the past 50 years has done the same when they took office. But this isn't just turning it in a different direction, this is clubbing it on the head and dragging the body off for disposal.

This is not a 100% done deal, but without the executive branch's support, which appoints and oversees NASA's administrators, its doubtful NASA can go any way except the way the White House wants, no matter what Congress may decide.

With this decision, the United States ceases to be a nation of explorers. There will still be US citizens who explore, certainly. But as a matter of national will and direction, we have decided to abandon our outposts, anchor our ships, and just huddle by the hearth fire.

I understand there's an ongoing recession, that one out of six Americans are out of work. But space exploration has always been long-term investment, one whose seeds you plant today to reap the rewards decades down the line. No matter how hungry you are, you don't eat your seed corn. We need investments for the future--investments that go beyond shoveling cash to already affluent corporations. We need an investment that we, as a nation as a whole, can believe in and wholly own part of. Our space program was always that. It was OUR space program. The People's space program.

WE launched men into space. WE step foot on the Moon. WE sent probes to the far reaches of the solar system. WE built most of the ISS and assembled it in orbit.

But now its going to be THEY. THAT company, THAT corporation, THAT foreign country who ferries our astronauts into space.

Yes, there are other space agencies and organizations in the world, but even if they're willing, it will be a decade or more before they can catch up to what NASA is capable of...WAS capable of.

I think, when historians decades hence look back, they will mark this as the end of the First Space Age.

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.

From New Scientist: Abandoned NASA Projects

The magazine New Scientist just put up a very interesting article on abandoned space projects.

Take note of when most of the projects were canceled; either in 1993 or 2001-2002--basically when a new political party took over the White House. I suspect that most of them weren't canceled because they were necessarily bad ideas or too costly (what space project doesn't have cost overruns?), but simply because the new administration wanted to kill the projects of the previous one out of politically-motivated spite.

As I've stated in previous entries here, we have to stop this political game of tit-for-tat every eight years with our space program if we ever want to accomplish any long range goals, such as returning to the Moon or going to Mars. Space is just to vast and difficult an undertaking for such short-term petty-minded tactics to get anywhere.

The Moon Is Off The Table

According to THIS linked article in the Miami Herald, the presidential panel reviewing NASA's manned space flight program has concluded that sending astronauts back to the moon by 2020--or even by 2028--is simply not doable with the space agency's current budget. One of the panel's members, former astronaut Sally Ride, said that in order to accomplish more Apollo style landings, NASA would need at least another $50 billion, money that is very unlikely to be freed up anytime in the near future.

Given the recent financial meltdown, which wasn't anticipated when the manned space program was 're-envisioned' in 2004, this wasn't really much of a surprise. Also of no surprise is the public's desire to extend the ISS's operations beyond the Bush administration's deadline of 2016, which will take a great deal of money away from other manned space endeavors.

I talked about the "Deep Space Flight" option in an earlier Blog, and its just as worthy a goal as Returning to the Moon. But the bad part is we're once again shifting focus for what should be a long-term ongoing endeavor. It is somewhat like Christopher Columbus shifting direction every few hundred miles during his first voyage across the Atlantic. As I've said a number of times before, space is too vast and too dangerous to keep frivolously wasting our time and resources finagling about what direction we should go. If we want to get anywhere beyond Low Earth Orbit, we need to pick a strategy and stick to it, no matter which political party is in power or what the financial situation is.

NASA's Option 5: Deep Space Flight

My last Blog outlined what I thought at the time were the four most likely paths NASA's manned program could take in the coming decades. In brief, they were:

1. Return To The Moon
2. Flight To Mars
3. Space Stations/Orbital Infrastructure
4. Asteroid Exploration and Exploitation

However, according to THIS linked article from the New York Times a panel looking into exactly this issue has come up with a fifth intriguing possibility: deep space flights with no landings.

The panel is calling it by the rather PR-safe title of the "Flexible Path" option, one created as much out of budgetary realities as by the desire to push the US's space capabilities forward. The Space Station is very close to completion, and public opinion is making it very clear that it won't be abandoned anytime soon, as the previous administration had planned to do in a few short years.

However, keeping the ISS going will eat up a portion of the manned space program that wasn't otherwise anticipated, so in order to save money, the panel hit upon the idea of deep space flights for their own sake. Presumably, these flights will do close flybys of important destinations, such as the Moon, Mars, and nearby asteroids, but won't make any provisions for manned landings. The idea is to build up a deep space flight capabilities first as a framework for more ambitious missions to follow in the decades after.

Though this is obviously a compromise solution that will prove a disappointment to many if adopted, it does offer concrete benefits nonetheless. Developing both advanced long-range propulsion technology and the means to create long-enduring space-borne habitats are very important to any plan for expanding a human presence beyond the Earth-Moon system. This strategy would put an emphasis on both kinds of technology, and without having to concentrate on things like landers and planet/moon/asteroid outposts, both capabilities could be advanced faster. Experience with space habitat systems on board the ISS would actually prove very valuable in developing the systems needed for these deep-space flights.

Hopefully, whatever path the administration chooses--either the 'Flexible Path' option discussed here or one of the others discussed in the last Blog--the important thing is that they stick to it long enough to actually accomplish something of value out from it. Hopefully, at least for the sake of the manned space program, we can only hope political winds don't shift too much, or if they do, any new political faction that comes to power will realize the importance of sticking with a long-term plan for space exploration.

Moon, Mars, Space Stations, Warp Drives, Whatever...Just Pick One

THIS linked article from ABC News illustrates why our manned space program isn't much farther along than it is.

Every four or eight years, either we elect a new president and/or a new political party takes power, and the space program undergoes yet another overhaul. Programs that have been moving forward for years are often suddenly disrupted, delayed, or canceled altogether. The history of NASA is literally littered with the epitaphs of otherwise promising projects like the SSTO or X-33/Venturestar.

Unfortunately, space has proven too difficult an environment in which to do anything quickly or easily. Apollo with its breakneck pace of historic accomplishments turned out to be the exception, not the rule. We need long term commitment to a single vision of space exploration/exploitation in order to really accomplish any major worthwhile goals.

Though I doubt we'll ever see one any time soon, what we should have is a national referendum on space. The public should weigh in on exactly what we should try to accomplish in space, and whatever administration is in power should follow that as a guideline, instead of just canceling or downgrading projects out of spite against the previous administration, something both political parties have been guilty of for decades now.

But which general plan would the public back? Actually the best way we can decide this is educating people on the general directions the space program could take.

As an example, four feasible general strategies are outlined below. It should be noted that none of these are mutually exclusive; one can eventually lead into one or more of the others very easily.

Return to the Moon: This is the strategy outlined by the Bush administration in 2004, which NASA had been working toward since. I should note that I was not a fan of many of the previous administration's science policies, but I do think its 'refocusing' of the manned space program was spot on, especially since the retirement of the shuttle fleet was inevitable. The Constellation vehicle system under development was specifically geared for this mission.

The purpose of this strategy was not only to send more Apollo-style manned missions to the Moon, but to establish a permanent manned presence there in the form of a moonbase. The advantage of a Moon goal is that it has been underway for half a decade now and is already fairly well developed. As a result it could probably be achieved sooner than the other strategies outlined here. Also, the experience of building and maintaining the ISS would come in very handy in creating a slowly expanding moonbase. For long term benefits, the Moon offers vast resources, particularly the potential fusion fuel helium-3, that could produce a potential windfall for any country that gain a significant lead in developing them.

Mars: The second most talked-about path, many Americans want to forge directly ahead to the Red Planet on one or more grand voyages of human discovery. It is perhaps the most romanticized of the strategies, very appealing to generations of Americans who grew up on the space exploration adventures of various scifi heroes.

The advantage of this plan would be mostly in the technology that would developed in order to make it viable; namely long-term space habitat systems and true interplanetary manned spacecraft. The human exploration of another whole planet would also be very valuable, conducting observations and experiments that current robotic probes aren't easily capable of. But more, a human being stepping onto the surface of another planet would be a monumental historical event that would resonate for generations.

Going to Mars would be the longest-range goal discussed here because of the immense distances and logistics involved, and could actually incorporate a return to the Moon and/or a manned asteroid rendezvous as an intermediate step.

Orbital Infrastructure: Instead of manned exploration, NASA concentrates much more on building up potentially useful and profitable structures in Earth orbit. This is not necessarily a stay-at-home strategy. Post-Apollo, NASA had a 'Grand Architecture' vision for space, focusing on building up a 'step ladder' of stations leading out into the solar system. The shuttle and the ISS as they were originally envisioned were just the first two major projects of this architecture.

In this vision, NASA maintains the ISS as long as possible and follows up with bigger, more advanced stations, as well as other useful orbital structures, such as solar power satellites, orbital hot labs, zero-g factories, or perhaps even a launch tower or space elevator. The idea would be concentrate as much as possible on making space much more of a money making venture than it is now, and use the built-up infrastructure to eventually build the interplanetary craft needed to carry humans further into the solar system.

Asteroids: Somewhat of an underdog compared to the others, its still mentioned occasionally in various sources. Instead of concentrating on 'major' bodies such as the Moon and Mars, emphasis for this strategy is placed on the manned exploration and exploitation of near-Earth asteroids. Technical difficulty would be somewhere between returning to the Moon and sending expeditions to Mars. And with thousands of potential destinations, NASA could be constructively busy for decades.

This strategy has two major potential pluses over the others. First, Asteroids taken in their thousands represent an immense treasure trove of mineral wealth; an estimate of single typical nickel-iron asteroid from a few years ago put the worth of the asteroid's minerals and metals at over $12 trillion.

Second, asteroids can be made mobile using even today's technology. It would be a very slow and gradual process, but valuable asteroids can be 'herded' closer to Earth, inserted either into an L4 or L5 Lagrange point or into Lunar orbit, where they can be much more easily studied and harvested. Hollowed asteroids also offer ready-made armor against radiation and impact hazards in space, and small, properly hollowed and modified asteroids could serve as the chasis fo interplanetary craft.

Which strategy would be best? That would depend on the goals people wanted to accomplish. All have advantages that could benefit not juts the US, but the world beyond as well. However, if we want to see any of these objectives succeed in our lifetimes, we have to pick one and stick with it.

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.

Video Tour Of The International Space Station

ISS VIDEO TOUR PART 1

Just follow the link above for the first part, and then check out the links to the right of the YouTube page to continue the tour in this multi-part video. Some very cool stuff, definitely worth watching. Learn the reality of life on the final frontier.

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.

Happy 50th Birthday, NASA

Fifty years ago as of this writing, NASA officially came into existence.

To most people today, NASA is a background concern, for some a source of pride and wonder, for others a waste of time and resources. It is almost always a nexus for controversy, in one way or another.

But I also think the NASA will turn out to be one of the real legacies that we leave today for world history. A hundred years or more from now, a lot of what's happening now--the Iraq War, the various 9and apparently endless) government scandals, the housing bubble bursting, etc--will be at most just notes in a history book.

But NASA, and what it accomplished, will still be pretty well remembered. The 'NASA Era" of the past 5 decades (and hopefully at least a few more to come) will be looked upon fondly, and perhaps even with a grumble of envy, much like the pioneer days of the Old West has been idolized all through the 20th century. This is not to say that the people who ran and worked for NASA were perfect--hardly. There have been a LOT of missteps, scandals, controversies, mistakes, and even outright bumbling. Lives have been lost, billions of dollars wasted, careers ruined at times.

But...

NASA has done legendary things. They have expanded the scope of human endeavor and knowledge far further than any other single group in human history ever has before. Thanks to NASA, Earth Orbit, the Moon and Mars are no longer abstractions in the sky, but real, tangible places that either we or our machines have actually touched and investigated. Under NASA's watch, man made objects have visited alien worlds billions of miles beyond our warm, protective biosphere, and have crossed into interstellar space. The first human being to ever step foot on another world did so wearing a NASA logo. Seven of our solar system's planets were first seen close-up by NASA probes. The first craft to enter the interstellar void did so as a child of NASA.

These are not accomplishments that will be easily shaken from the collective human psyche. They will endure long after I will.

And so, hopefully, will the agency that was responsible for them. Happy 50th Birthday, NASA