White House Decides to Outsource NASA Work

[Skipjack]

I am all for human space exploration actually. In fact I am for space colonization as a very long term goal.
However, the currently available technology does not allow for any of this in a serious manner (read "not stunt"). It does allow to do some really serious research in LEO though.
NASAs job should be doing R&D and science. It should not be in the business of developing the actual vehicles and instruments to do the science. This should be left to commercial companies that DO NOT work with "cost plus" contracts. Personally, I think that NASA could do a COTS for everything they are planning to do.
Anyway, when I said R&D earlier, then I mean serious research into new enabling technologies. NASA should spend most of its money developing new heat shield technology, new propulsion systems for both in space and earth to LEO vehicles. NASA should be having their fingers everywhere. Fund the ME Thruster research, fund Polywell, fund FRC reactors, fund material sciences, etc, etc. Compared to the cost if LV development, even the cost of a single launch, these are fundable with peanuts.
Commercial companies wont want to fund this research because it is too risky, but NASA can. The result would be technology that should then be propperly documented and made available to US(!) LV development companies such as the ULA, or SpaceX or Orbital, so they can then use this tech to build the next generation NASA launchers and space craft.
That is what NASA should do. Not design and build waaay overpriced LVs that stay in design phase wayyy too long, then after massive cost overruns they get cancelled anyway with nothing to show in return. Even the technology has historically been lost with all the tooling because noone bothered to propperly document it, so it can later be used by someone else (e.g. all the X33 related stuff).
Anyway, this is what I see NASA doing.

[Tom Ligon]

Forgive me for coming into the discussion late, or if I repeat something said in preceeding four pages. I was prompted to join in by headline found on Yahoo News a few moments ago, essentially saying NASA is out of the Moon business for now.

Obama evidently is not Kennedy.

Anyway, the former Analog assistant editor, Ian Randall Strock, quit to take the lead at The Artemis Society around the same time I left my job and found EMC2, so he and I corresponded some. Artemis had the idea of saying to heck with NASA, let's do it ourselves. They were working on business plans. It was to be a bare bones effort, down to building launch vehicles that were basically lawn chairs with rocket engines.

The Lunar Lander Challenge was won recently after some years of trying. The talents of the competitors are impressive. I conclude the project is ambitious as hell, but maybe ....

In essence, they are sort of an open source volunteer group dedicated to getting back to Luna and staying there. With enough money they could probably do it. In other words, they're a lot like Talk-Polywell, just with a different focus.

The seem to have undergone a name change, but apparently something still exists.

http://www.asi.org/

http://www.moonsociety.org/

[CaptainBeowulf]

Shuttle derived heavy launch does support a non-stunt program if you use Zubrin's Mars Direct model.

You use a Jupiter/Ares to send some modules to Mars. They auto-land around the same place on the surface, setting up a base. One includes a nuclear reactor, presumably fission at this point, but hopefully we can get a polywell. The reactor starts making fuel form the methane in the atmosphere etc.

Zubrin suggested one automated lander, one human lander... but what the heck? You could send two or three automated landers first, then people.

Same sort of model can be applied to the moon if you find significant water deposits somewhere.

And, should we remain stuck with chemical for earth-to-orbit, I maintain the way to "break out" is to ultimately build an orbital ship factory, fed by resources from asteroids.

It's not necessarily a question of trying to do the next step before the first step is complete. It's more like settlers starting to build a road on the west side of the Mississippi even though they don't have the technology to build a bridge yet... they just use a ferry in the meantime.

[CaptainBeowulf]

Also, relating to SpaceX, there's not one very good site, but if you google around a bit you find:

1. Merlin-2 was originally conceived as a heavy lift engine, a follow on from the current Merlin engine SpaceX uses.
2. Some later announcements suggested that Merlin-2 will be an improved Merlin; most importantly it would add regenerative cooling. It wouldn't necessarily be bigger.
3. A future Merlin, perhaps a Merlin-3, would be an extension of Merlin-2; a scaled up regen engine.

Supposedly, the Falcon-9 could evolve to have have one scaled up Merlin-2/3 instead of 9 Merlins. Then, 4 or 5 Merlins could be used to create an HLV.

If you want to go HLV, you probably can't just keep using lots of the same engine. Sooner or later you end up with two engine models. Still, having a medium lift and a heavy lift vehicle that both use the same engines retains some economies of scale... like using the same engine for Falcon-1 and Falcon-9 does. Falcon-1 would stick with the "little" Merlins.

[93143]

@pfrit: $200B is a quarter century of NASA's entire HSF budget, or fifty years of half of it. Think about that.

BTW, the idea that we count on the problems being solved by the time to need it goes for the idea of sending robots who perform better than humans on mars as well.

Robots that perform better than humans, or even nearly as well, are a long way off. A.I. hasn't advanced much since the '70s.

Besides, sending robots gives us no incentive to solve the human-related problems...

[pfrit]

@pfrit: $200B is a quarter century of NASA's entire HSF budget, or fifty years of half of it. Think about that.

BTW, the idea that we count on the problems being solved by the time to need it goes for the idea of sending robots who perform better than humans on mars as well.

Robots that perform better than humans, or even nearly as well, are a long way off. A.I. hasn't advanced much since the '70s.

Besides, sending robots gives us no incentive to solve the human-related problems...

The only $ amount for Vision on Space Exploration (Bush's mars program) I found was for 2005 and it was 16 billion. It planned 30 years of work to get men on Mars (and the moon). If you believe that the cost would not have gone up (yeah, right) that is 480 billion in 2005 dollars. Granted we would have gotten a lot more than just Men on Mars, but that is for a 30 year effort that only starts building the final mission in, what, 25 years?
Solving the human related problems does not require any humans in space. You may need humans in space to test some of the solutions, but radiation shielding does not need a person in space to get rads. Do you realize that the cosmic ray exposure in space is so intense that many people are able to actually see the radiation? Aldrin was the first to come forward and actually ask why he kept seeing flashes of light when he closed his eyes(great story, BTW). NASA is required to keep to OSHA standards, but they do not count astronauts. Why? Because if they did, there would be no astronauts. If I remember correctly, 18 months on the space station (which is within the Earth magnetic field and thus protected from much radiation) is a lifetime exposure for radiation. With out solar flares or space walks. Forget bone and muscle loss. They are compartively easy to deal with. Mars has no magnetic field or atmosphere to handle solar or cosmic radiation. How many meters of water do you need to bring the background radiation down to Denver's level? At what happens during the all too possible solar flares?
I always loved the Sci-Fi pictures of domed cities on Mars and the Moon. In reality, any colony would have to be buried (preferably with the water cistern above the living quarters) quite deep to provide a safety level necessary for life.
After all of this, you probably think that I am against manned space missions or exploration. As it turns out I am a fervent supporter of manned space exploration. I simply think that "tin can" approach is very stupid. I don't think we should send anyone (except perhaps a overseer for telepresence robots) to the moon or Mars until base has been safely built. Space is hostile. Not like the ocean or the artic. If you do not respect its lethality, you have no business in space. Just make the assumption that anyone you send to Mars or the moon (for a prolonged mission) will be dead before 5 years are up (and probably sooner) and factor that into the cost. Space allows for very close to zero room for error when it comes to humans. NASA always said that there was no room for human death in its missions. Ask MSimon what the engineer's actually thought about that.

[KitemanSA]

If the plan is to send MANY missions to {Moon, Mars} then building many reusable peices makes a lot of sense. A rocket to LEO, a ferry from LEO to GEO or higher orbit, a ferry for GEO to {Lunar, Martion} orbit, A ferry for {lunar, Martian} orbit to landing. If it is a stunt mission, then you have the Apollo disposable system.

And yet another NASA induced space business catatonia at the end of the dog and pony show!

If NASA wants to put mass into space, hire a business to put it there. If NASA wants to put a LOT of mass into space, let business know and I am confident they will respond better faster cheaper than NASA ever could.

Of course, the simple way to prove me wrong is to make outlandish requirements about HOW the mass is put into space. This is a favorite trick of bureaucrats. I know. I am one.

[KitemanSA]

I am inclined to think that we will colonize the solar system when individuals want to go themselves and not before. Historically, the only other way to do it is by the state sending criminals or religious zealots...

I ALMOST agree with you. Sending criminals is one way (Australia), but religious zealots need to be able to send themselves, or con a business into sending them (Pilgrims).

Heck, I'd probably think SERIOUSLY about going into indentured servitude to get into space!

[KitemanSA]

Currently, though, with expendable rockets, all else being equal heavy lift is cheaper per kg to orbit...

When comparing big throw away rockets to little throw away rockets to do lots and lots of work, you may be right. But that is a disgusting way to do business in my opinion.

When comparing big ELVs to (little ELVs + little RLVs + on orbit infrastructure), I doubt the same would apply. JMHO

[93143]

The only $ amount for Vision on Space Exploration (Bush's mars program) I found was for 2005 and it was 16 billion. It planned 30 years of work to get men on Mars (and the moon). If you believe that the cost would not have gone up (yeah, right) that is 480 billion in 2005 dollars. Granted we would have gotten a lot more than just Men on Mars, but that is for a 30 year effort that only starts building the final mission in, what, 25 years?

$16B was NASA's ENTIRE budget for that year. Basically none of it went to Mars-forward development. HSF is less than half of NASA's total expenditures.

No one is proposing sending humans to Mars now. But if we don't start moving in that direction now, we will still be doing laps in 30 years and wondering why no one has developed solutions to any of the problems inherent in a crewed Mars mission.

Did you know that Congress has passed a law that prohibits NASA from doing any development specifically for a crewed Mars mission?

Also, you're exaggerating the radiation danger. It's solvable for individual sorties without severe risk. Longer-term (colonization)... well, we've got time...

There are plenty of things we can do to minimize the radiation threat. Fast transit using VASIMR, maybe with fission, maybe with Polywell. Magnetic shielding should be fine for solar protons, and a high-power, high-Isp mission should be capable of carrying a fair amount of polyethylene or water since the mass budget is much more forgiving than for a chemically-fueled mission. Perhaps some routine scouting tasks could be performed by simple telepresence rovers with the astronauts in a buried hab, only coming out to check out interesting finds, fix broken machinery... Maybe a solar observatory should be sent to SML1 to watch for flares...

Also, wasn't there some noise a while back about a possible chemical technique (ie: a drug) for radiation damage mitigation? (Apparently the lethality of high prompt radiation doses is largely due to the free radical effect.) I wonder if that sort of idea could lead to a long-term mitigation strategy? And it might turn out that this sort of low-level bombardment from cosmic rays isn't as bad as we think (radiation hormesis)...

When comparing big ELVs to (little ELVs + little RLVs + on orbit infrastructure), I doubt the same would apply.

False dichotomy. What we're headed for now is big ELVs (Jupiter) + little ELVs (Falcon) + little RLVs (Skylon) + on orbit infrastructure (PDs).

Now you can launch a lot of little things cheaply, but you aren't locked into the strategy of docking dozens of bits together in orbit for a single deep space mission (I suspect the extra hardware and ops cost could easily wipe out the cost difference between Jupiter and Skylon), and if you've got something that you absolutely can't launch on anything smaller (a nuclear reactor, just to pick an example at random), you aren't screwed.

[MSimon]

I think that without Polywell (or equivalent) we are stuck on Earth or near abouts.

[MSimon]

Nuclear reactors are small. It is the radiators that kill you (mass/volume wise).

[93143]

How heavy would a 50 MW space reactor be?

[93143]

In other news, there are indications that Jupiter may be commercially owned and operated, due to some technicality or other about the disposition of intellectual property post-SSP... meaning it may be available to paying customers...

[Josh Cryer]

How heavy would a 50 MW space reactor be?

This is a link I had bookmarked because I am fascinated by the SAFE-400: http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf82.html

It may not give you an idea, but yeah.

As far as Heavy Lift is concerned, they're saying it's going to be commercial. I don't know if I like this idea. But if a company can come up with an Ares V or equivalent I am happy.

Putting the whole of NASA into the commercial sector *has* been something Libertarians have been begging for, for, well, decades. I guess we can try it out!