Space Commerce: Back To The Future

akear, if you think private industry isn't ready, do you think NASA (and DOD, and NRO) should also stop launching all their robotic spacecraft and satellites on commercial launchers, as they've been doing for many years now?

Both Kubrick and Clark would have been sickened by Obama's recent space policy.

And what evidence do you have to support this statement? Stanley Kubrick, for one, was rather ambivalent about the whole space program. Arthur C. Clarke was a strong proponent, but he may actually see the new plan is a great development.

Don't know for sure, but Arthur C. Clark surely shook his head when he looked at ISS. We spend millions trying to understand the effects of zero gravity where he understood that we have to simulate gravity to travel and live in space. Also,in 2001 Space Odyssey, I don't recall a space capsule docking to the space station either, all vehicles were winged space ships which there seems to be such an abhorrence for.

I would prefer for the government to be pushing the envelope. That they prove concepts and the viability of space travel/exploration. After initial testing/science periods, this would largely be turned over to private concerns. Given the amount of time NASA has spent in LEO, I would love for LEO to become the domain of non-governmental entities.

This would free NASA to focus on the moon. After some time of operating there, this would then be turned over to non-governmental entities, and NASA (or substitute any government-led space organization) would tackle other planets.

Government has already been largely used to help open new markets for private companies to operate in. Let's apply this same model to space travel. The government should own all the intellectual property and science related to this work, which would then be released to the public domain. If the public is paying the bills, they should own all of the blueprints, test data, etc, and companies following behind should not have to reinvent any of it.

"A measured and careful approach is better than throwing all your eggs in one basket."

OK genius, for the record: which one basket is that? And how was Constellation any different than putting all eggs into one basket in the first place?

Looking forward to seeing you expose your ignorance again.

> A measured and careful approach is better than throwing all your eggs in one basket. If you don't mind a ten year manned space gap then by all means support Obama's plan.

I'm glad to see that you now agree that NASA investing in multiple competing commercial providers is superior to putting all of its eggs into a single Ares/Orion basket.

The small amount of money designated for developing private manned spaceflight capability has nothing to do with Obama's decision not to return to the Moon. He's only giving these companies $1.2 billion a year.

The Constellation program was being funded at about $3.4 billion a year. The Space Shuttle program is being funded at about $3 billion a year.

So the question is why can't we fund a beyond LEO manned space architecture with $5.2 billion a year?

Marcel F. Williams

I'd say that based on recent evidence, NASA isn't ready either.

NASA hasn't successfully developed a manned launch system in 30 years, and with the 2 failures of the Orion parachute system and staging incident with Ares 1-X, it's not like they are batting .1000 here.

The last estimate to develop Ares-1 are $40 Billion dollars!!!!!! That's twice what it cost to develop Shuttle (adjusted for inflation). Explain to me why spending an obscene amount of money to develop a vehicle less capable than the Shuttle with a lower flight rate and a higher per flight cost is going to somehow magially open up the solar system? I don't see how anyone in their right mind can defend Constellation.

"He's only giving these companies $1.2 billion a year.
The Constellation program was being funded at about $3.4 billion a year. The Space Shuttle program is being funded at about $3 billion a year.
So the question is why can't we fund a beyond LEO manned space architecture with $5.2 billion a year?"

Yes, *this* is the important question.

Attempting to get Earth-to-LEO into (multiple) private hands is an approach that (contrary to many posts) has the virtue of never having been tried (as anything other than an utter carnival side show). Let's see how this pans out. The only valid alternative is continuing the shuttle (which given the numbers, isn't entirely out of the question - at least until commercial comes online - oh, yeah, and I guess it fixes the risk part too in terms of the gap).

BUT the important question for NASA is: what do we do about beyond LEO. If that's just paper studies for 10 years, then this new plan will be a failure by any standard that most of us care about. Instead, it will have to have operational components in the near term. What can NASA do in terms of deep space manned systems if it is freed from the actually getting people to LEO? I can imagine a whole bunch of stuff right of the top of my head (e.g. a LEO-to-whereever transfer vehicle is clearly needed), but can NASA and will NASA and will any of it really be do-able. That's the big challenge.

Bottom line is it's way, way too early to tell what we'll get out of it. If Bolden is as poor as Griffin, we're in deep, deep trouble. But there is also a glimmer of a hope here that we might be able to rescue something viable from behind of what so clearly non-viable with the old POR, long may it RIP.

akear:

We're putting our eggs into several private baskets. Constellation wasn't going to avoid the gap, so just get used to it. There's going to be a gap... so what!

"""So the question is why can't we fund a beyond LEO manned space architecture with $5.2 billion a year?""""

It seems increasingly clear that the administration may have picked option 5b off of the Augustine menu. Commercial crew with a commercial hydrocarbon HLV to be developed later + fuel depots, flexible path, etc.

Then instead of investing in the HLV now, they are also taking up the Augustine promoted R&D banner in a big way. Maybe give the commercial crew time to mature and then see who can handle HLV.

The results are for the future to sort out.

It is interesting that the still published with this article shows not only two Americans and the Howard Johnson's logo, but the flight crew in front of the American are Aeroflot Russians (who had their own 'Orion III' like shuttle called the Titov V, some obscure trivia for those who like that!)(In fact we find out from Clarke's novel of 2001 that the Orion shuttle was a two stage to orbit vehicle!)(Not shown in the film.)
We also know the Russians had a base similar to
Clavius base.
Also the wonderful , the not yet completed station the Orion III docks with was Space Station 5!

When Kubrick and Clarke took on the film project in 1964 the engineering team of Fred Ordway and Harry Lange were hired , or rather detailed from Wernher von Braun's staff at Marshall.
Things were 'hot' in the manned spaceflight scene at the time and Kubrick and Clarke thought things would proceed at the pace of Apollo for the next 30 years. It's not clear where the 'commercial'
aspect of the film came from , maybe it seemed a natural evolution to Clarke/Ordway/Lange ...
(Most science fiction writers through out the 40's and 50's speculated that ...that scale of spaceflight would not happen until something like 2100 or gave no specific date.)

I think Clarke was willing to give optimism a shot, but I think he had his doubts, not sure what Ordway and Lange really thought. (One might note that this may be the only science fiction film where the director actually embraced his scientific advisers!)

Of course , even then it was known that extended periods of weightlessness could be a physiological problem and solutions to artificial gravity go back to the 1920s.
One recalls von Braun's famous toroid station.

Even in the sequel , 2010, the Alexei Leonov had artificial gravity!

Still it's hard to see large scale commercial manned space flight looking at the bottom line payback. Unless one wants to go retrieve one of those solid platinum asteroids!

(By the by I see the same old misconception about Kubrick, that he was a technophobe , quite the opposite he was really a technophile, which is one reason 2001 the film looks so beautiful.)