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.

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.

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.

Beanstalk Disaster Animation

Broken Beanstalk Animation

What happens if a Space Elevator snaps?

Though still science fiction, more an more enthusiasts and experts are pushing for serious research into the technology. Reaching right from the surface of Earth to over 22,300 miles into space, a Space Elevator could provide a railroad track right into orbit and beyond for pennies a pound.

But being such a huge structure, the inevitable question pops up of what would happen if something went disastrously wrong and its snapped somewhere along its length. The animation in the link above demonstrates a number of possibilities--the elevator cable snapping at its base, at its orbital counterweight, and several points in between.

There are a couple of surprises, as Blaise Gessend, the creator of the animation points out in the accompanying article, primarily that as the earth-anchored end falls back toward the planet, the free end of the cable experiences such tremendous sheer forces as it whips around the curve of Earth parts of it are likely to tear off and going flying back out into space.

Beanstalks collapsing have been used in science fiction before, particularly in the novel Mercury by Ben Bova, and I have myself contemplated the idea to drive an as yet tenuous story, so this is very interesting indeed to me. It certainly opens one's eyes to the astonishing physics such a megastructure could entail.

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.