Commercial Space Enables Exploration

Sure, 30,000 engineers trying to figure out why Toyota cars have bad acceleration pedals.

"What are we waiting for?" He asks.

The question should be what *were* they waiting for?

If commercial is the kick butt solution they should have passed up NASA years ago.

Where is the first crewed orbital commercial craft?
Where is the first commercial space station?
Where is the commercial crewed reusable large cargo capable orbiter?
Where is the commercial footprints on the moon?

Where is even a commercial crewed flight of a single orbit of the earth?

Because they should have done something like the above by now without any gubmint funds if commercial were the big answer at this point.

Hmmmmm

Not to be critical, but ...

1. If memory serves, there were earth-based communication companies and systems before comsats were established, large and capital-intensive enterprises which didn't have to stretch too far in technology or finance to begin using satellites. Comparable entities engaged in commercial planetary science, exploration, and extraterrestrial resource utilization seem to be a bit thin on the ground at present.

2. It's worth noting that both weather satellites and geographical placement systems have given rise to commercial on-ground enterprises, but neither has yet led to commercial satellites. Similarly, while the value of earth observation systems has been praised for three or four decades now, Landsat and similar systems have not yet managed to spark a substantial earth observation industry.

Apologies for being a crude Nay-sayer, but we are dealing with over 40 years of experience at this point.

Alan's statements are correct. The commercial space industry targets demand and is very profitable. The US Government - NASA, could not manage the demands of that industry now. It will not be too long before there is an industry for space tourism in LEO but human space exploration is going to be limited by cost and risk until new technology arrives. I support Obama's halting of Constellation but we do need to set Mars as an objective, as for example, JPL does and uses as a driver for a lot of its R&D activities. Lets build a program for getting to ISS with commerical vehicles and at the same time lets set a priority list of technology we need to get to Mars. I support the continued work on a heavy lift vehicle.

Commerce really doesn't have the demand for such a large launcher so it is reasonable for NASA to take it on to fill its need to get heavy payloads to LEO. Whether to the Moon or Mars, a heavy lift chemically driven rocket will remain the only choice to first reach LEO. Once in LEO, with the proper investment in next gen propulsion, humans will traverse the solar system at 100K-Plus MPH and make round-trip expeditions to Mars in a year rather than 3 years. Be certain though that the returns on human exploration will be ephemeral and dwarfed by the capabilities of future robotic probes. The value lies 90% in being there, touching, feeling first hand - being human, not in scientific and commercial return. Robotics will accomplish the latter.

Humans will eventually populate the Solar System and as a result subspecies of humans will eventually be created (within the next 200 years). Just as one would argue that Blacks share equality with Whites, subspecies of humans will share equality; do not fixate on 'sub'. It will be necessary to adapt to environments elsewhere, thats all. Expansion of human populations will be a preventative measure against a mass extinction event on earth. However, I think it most likely that it will not be a necessity. The 3rd World will modernize within 100 years and family sizes worldwide will drop to western civilization levels and the world's population will stabilize and actually shrink. Effectively unlimited inexpensive energy will be achieved (

In the mean time, keep humans at LEO, put a small human output at Geosynchronous, say a Skylab (x2). If you want to see humans in the vicinity of the Moon, wait until space tourism does it in a few years (fly-arounds, orbitals, figure-8s with the earth & moon). Sorry Neil but NASA has nothing to prove and little to gain with stepping humans back on the moon. Robbie the Robot will get a lot more done for us instead. [pardon the digression to brave new world but it is a reasonable vision to hold]

Dr. Stern is absolutely right.

When there is a solid business case to be made, investor money will flow, stockholders will invest and money will be made; witness, as he points out, the commercial communications satellite industry.

Too bad that model (I think it's called capitalism) doesn't see a solid business case for HSF; solid enough that the risk that Obama and Bolden are taking makes sense.

ObamaSpace is more about how Obama wants to be thought of, i.e. not like any other president or politician before him, than something that will make a difference.

NASA is now at the affect of Obama's style, vs a plan that makes sense.

If we continue down the path of a government-run program with a huge standing army to do development and operations, along with the cost of the fixed infrastructure associated with doing so, we're going nowhere.

Many of those who post on this site reflect the view that a government-run program is the only solution.

An Exec from one of the prime NASA contractors told me recently that I simply needed to accept the fact that NASA is a jobs program.

All this is very sad.

Despite the large commercial statellite communciations industry, NASA still operates it's own network of TDRS satelites to provide spacecraft communciations. Even if a commercial industry exists it may not meet government needs and government solutions may still be required.

I disagree with the analogy that because commercial operates critical unmanned satellites they have the experience to operate manned spaceflight. There is a huge difference in the mindset and the skillset for HSF because for unmanned the cost of loosing a vehicle, no matter how expensive or critical, is much lower than that for humans. Unless NASA mandates or incentivises the commercial crew contracts such that they go out and hire people from NASA or it's contractor force with actual operational (not design or manufacture) HSF experience the commercial guys will end up killing crews in totally preventable mistakes.

For those that think commercial will go out and hire the current HSF workforce without incentives then you don't understand commercial's mindset. They place little to no value on actual experience in HSF (as does most of American buisness and culture in all fields of endavour)and in fact are downright dismissive of NASA experience. It is exactly this hubris that will cause them to underestimate the complexity of operations and the required resources and lead to mistakes and accidents that would never happen with an experienced workforce.

"Many of those who post on this site reflect the view that a government-run program is the only solution."

I think you are wrong about that. I think most people very much would like to see commercial spaceflight thrive and grow but for those of us who do this on a daily basis we have to live in the real world. That world doesn't show a strong buisness case for truly commercial manned spaceflight. So the government is the only customer and given our responsibility to our fellow employee's safety, the commercial worlds complete lack of operational experience, the best solution is a government run operation. That ensures our needs are meet rather then having to settle for what the commercial guys are willing to do.

The commercial communications industry does launch more satellites than NASA, but the money "saved" does NOTHING at NASA. The FAA flies payloads on these commercial sats to guide commercial aircraft into airports; the Coast Guard flies payloads on commsats to identify ships for security, the military flies tech demo payloads on commercial GEOs-- and buys lots of commercial bandwidth, especiallly in theatre. But NASA seems unable to capture these savings for its Earth and space weather missions, having declined multiple proposals that rated "outstanding" in all criteria. Working with the commercial industry is seen by NASA science as too risky, even while we push to do human access to space (not hardware payloads) commercially.

"An Exec from one of the prime NASA contractors told me recently that I simply needed to accept the fact that NASA is a jobs program."

Unfortunately, I must agree that it seems to most politicians that NASA is just a jobs program and the discussion is not about true exploration and space flight.

The jobs are being lost because shuttle is retiring yet all the debating is about the Constellation decision which in reality has only a minor impact on the total NASA job numbers, it seems to me that there is no way to get out of the political fighting over jobs until we get past the shuttle has called "wheels stop" and the pink slips have gone out and it's over.

Perhaps at that point we can refocus the discussion on how to pursue space exploration again. In my opinion, extending shuttle would be the worst thing that can happen to NASA and our goal of true exploration 5 to 10 years from now because the only thing it will really do is extend the political fighting and block our ability to focus on the future.

Lay-offs stink and I may get one myself but it is the unavoidable path we're on now that we must endure to enable a re-engagement on the future of exploration.

"The question should be what *were* they waiting for?"

Investors.

(That will happen, but not soon.)

""The question should be what *were* they waiting for?"
Investors.
(That will happen, but not soon.)"

I was at Founders Fund (a Bay Area VC) in the late autumn last year, and they had a nice shiny model of the Falcon in their lobby - they're one of several VC's that put money into SpaceX - and I'm guessing some of the other potential orbital operators have some VC investment.

Sci-Fi novels aside, the only way we're going to get any significant progress to large numbers of people in orbit, and bases on the moon, etc. is if there becomes an economic drive to do so, and then volume kicks in such that costs go down. With 40 years of post-Apollo experience now in the bag, if everything has to remain focused on government funded efforts, we're simply not going anywhere anytime soon - that's as true now as it was with Constellation, the Vision, the SEI, etc. I'm not saying the commercial efforts are going to succeed, only that realistically they're the only hope.

Going commercial frees NASA for deeper space?

If that's true then:

1. Why is the Obama administration decreasing the amount of money related to man spaceflight from $8.4 billion a year as of 2009 down to less than $5 billion by the year 2015?

2. Why is $4.1 billion (more than 80%) of that manned spaceflight related money being spent for 'uber' missions to LEO (ISS and the emerging commercial spaceflight companies)? In fact, the Obama budget increases NASA funding for the ISS (the ultimate mission to LEO) from $2 billion a year to over $3 billion a year by the year 2015.

and

3. There's nothing in the budget the immediately funds the development of a heavy lift vehicle. Bolden claims that they need to study the issue for another 5 years after HLV concepts have already been studied to death by NASA and its private vendors for the last 20 years!

Sorry, but all of this sounds like Orwellian(1984) double speak to me! The Obama manned space program is the ultimate mission to LEO! And to add insult to injury, we have to use Russian rocket ships to get there:-)

Marcel F. Williams

The point which CessnaDriver and others makes is perfectly true of course - commercial has not delivered yet because no-one has found any real commercial market (apart from telecomms).

But this is missing the point. Getting business enterprises into space is an end, not a means. It's primary goal in its own right. Without this, there will be no significant human presence off-planet, only gubmint and military funded.

The real challenge is not to build the rocket, it's to create the market. It's the biggest risk and the boldest gamble. But would be a home run.

ex_navy said "...the commercial worlds complete lack of operational experience..."

I trust that you are referring solely to the entrepreneurs, such as SpaceX.

There are dedicated people that are launching Atlas V and Delta IV with an unprecedented record of mission success for NASA, AF, NRO and commercial customers. Atlas V has achieved NASA Category 3 certification to launch NASA's most critical spacecraft.

And Boeing is working on designing a capsule for CCDev to provide Commercial Crew capabilities. And they're launching it on an Atlas or Delta.

You would be hard pressed to characterize Boeing and ULA as having "complete lack of operational experience."

In your attempt to discredit commercial crew, you ignore the obvious answer, because you recognize that it's the one that can deliver!!

Folks:

The reason commercial human spaceflight has failed in the past has been fiscal rather than technological. Not enough money, too many investors or by foolishly going "public".

SpaceX and Virgin Galactic have gotten as far as they have by keeping their financing close held in private hands by people who care about space flight.

No board meeting, no shareholders.

To succeed we need our Wright brothers and our Howard Hughs' to get us over the hump. Today spaceflight is akin to where flight was in 1910. We don't have the luxury of a war to make spaceflight reliable and economical. So we have to rely on daring individuals with dreams to move forward.

It's worked before... it'll work again!

tinker

Going commercial frees NASA for deeper space?

If that's true then:

1. Why is the Obama administration decreasing the amount of money related to man spaceflight from $8.4 billion a year as of 2009 down to less than $5 billion by the year 2015?

{snip}

Suspect the simplest. Possibly NASA does not want to go BEO.

In the Know -- "NASA is a jobs program."

In a _typical_ month when the economy is going well, about 400 thousand people lose their jobs and about 500 thousand people find jobs. We've currently got an unemployment problem because only 1-200 thousand people find work after losing their jobs, in a _typical_ month.

NASA has under 30,000 employees. Adding all the contractors working for NASA, on everything from sweeping floors to building interplanetary spacecraft, might bring the total up to 400,000 -- one month's worth of potential unemployment. We could fire everyone at NASA and everyone who works even indirectly for NASA and the impact on the nations 10% unemloyment rate would be negligable.

If this is "a jobs program", it's the worst one since the Pharoahs started putting up pyramids, and for some odd reason economists and political scientists have chosen to ignore it for 40 years.

How very odd. Do you suppose, just suppose, maybe consider it a little teeny tiny bit, that your high placed executive buddy might have exaggerated a bit, or -- heavens! -- felt some animosity toward NASA or some branch of NASA, for reasons other than pure disinterested economic analysis? Is that conceivably possible?

Right Dr Stern

NASA is working on it.

Keep the idea of Science and the Scientific method to find the truth cannot be ignored.

"I trust that you are referring solely to the entrepreneurs, such as SpaceX."

No, I include ULA, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin in that equation unless Boeing and LockMart are planning to disband USA and actually use the HSF experienced workforce their. Given the anxiety and planned layoffs there it would appear that there is no plan by Boeing or Lockheed Martin to utilize that experienced workforce.

"There are dedicated people that are launching Atlas V and Delta IV with an unprecedented record of mission success for NASA, AF, NRO and commercial customers. Atlas V has achieved NASA Category 3 certification to launch NASA's most critical spacecraft."

As I said previously it is a completely different mindset and skillset to do manned spaceflight versus satellite control (not just launch but control throughout the whole mission). This not a disparagement of their skill or expertise but it is a reality. Works both way. Just because someone is good at manned spaceflight doesn't mean they would be good at unmmanned spaceflight. If I was going into the unmanned spaceflight buisness I would be trying to hire experienced people from Goddard, JPL, ULA, Space Command at Peterson, etc. not JSC flight controllers because they have actual experience with unmanned spacecraft operations.

"And Boeing is working on designing a capsule for CCDev to provide Commercial Crew capabilities. And they're launching it on an Atlas or Delta."

I am not talking about designing and building a spacecraft, I am talking about operating it in space. Two completely different things. I have lots of faith in commercial's ability to design a spacecraft to NASA's requirements and then build it. They currently do that and have lots of experience. Personally I wouldn't buy a Boeing product based on their perfomance with ISS (more customer service then technical performance, i.e. their focus is on avoiding fixing problems and dumping as much on NASA as possible rather then being a team player focused on making things better). In any case my comments are about operating the vehicle after launch so the fact that they are building something hardly is relevant to my comment or arguement.

"You would be hard pressed to characterize Boeing and ULA as having "complete lack of operational experience.""

I think that is an accurate statement in that currently no one from Boeing or ULA currently operates a manned spaceflight vehicle on orbit.

"In your attempt to discredit commercial crew, you ignore the obvious answer, because you recognize that it's the one that can deliver!!"

In your blind love of the cool new game changing commercial buzz word world of Washington you are ignoring some real risks and real downsides of the commercially operated path. The first reality is that there is no other market for manned space flight in the near future except governments. Second reality is that only NASA and it's contractor force has actual manned space flight experience. To mitigate the risk associated with commercial spaceflight's lack of experience you either have NASA operate the vehicles or you make sure that your existing experienced contractor workforce is used by the commercial providers to operate their spacecraft. That's the prudent path to take to actually achieve success with commercial crew.

The future of space is not NASA vs. Commercial. The entire history of aerospace has been about government - industry partnerships. Airbus would not be an $80B annual business without the long term support of the European governments. Likewise Arianne dominates the commercial launch industry thanks to the generous $10B invested by ESA in the development of Arianne V and aggressive on-going support. Similarly the US commercial satellite industry relies on technology and contracts from the US military and NASA. It is in America's interest to encourage these constructive partnerships in terms of international trade, American jobs, national defense and national prestige.

Similarly NASA should encourage and robustly support commercial crew development. With ISS as a market NASA can provide this nascent industry with a foundation from which to build a potentially lucrative human space industry. NASA benefits by achieving faster and less expensive near term American access to ISS. More importantly, commercial crew is likely to follow the entire history of commercial space activities and continue to innovate resulting in safer less expensive space access over time.

As I said previously it is a completely different mindset and skillset to do manned spaceflight versus satellite control (not just launch but control throughout the whole mission). This not a disparagement of their skill or expertise but it is a reality.

if that is accurate (and I dont agree with it) then how do you explain the decision making process by "NASA" personnel with Challenger and Columbia?

In both instances it was NASA personnel who overruled either contractor or internal concerns (or both) to continue on a decision path that I doubt most uncrewed spacecraft operators would have.

I doubt very seriously that any of the start up companies trying to provide COTS would hire many of the folks who have worked on shuttle or station...The analogy here is Brannif airlines. When SWA started they purposely looked for people whose experience was outside of the established organizational model for operating airliners...because the trick to lowering cost was to think outside the proverbial box of airplane operations. The fuel etc cost for moving a 737 are not all that different no matter where, and SWA people are some of the highest paid in the industry...so the efficiencies had to come from less people doing the same jobs.

If Human spaceflight cannot be done differently then how NASA does it (smaller standing army, less reliance on ground control and more on thinking it through much like any other industry as it happens...) then we will never leave low earth orbit (comm time delays) and we will never get the cost down. When the folks on the space station have to get Huntsville on the line to get a procedure to change a harddrive on a laptop, and have them "walked through"...

well that has to change.

Robert G. Oler

The problem with using the ISS to help the emerging manned spaceflight industry is there is simply not enough manned spaceflight traffic from the US side to the space station to support more than one US company.

Private companies need to launch there own space stations into orbit in order take wealthy tourist into space. Polls show that 7% of those wealthy enough to afford to travel into space would like to go. That's nearly 7000 people!

The Federal government also needs to help encourage the development of the space tourism industry by setting up a 'space lotto' system so that average Janes and Joes can also get a chance to fly into space aboard private commercial spacecraft.

Marcel F. Williams