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starship-design: The Outstretched Empty Hand of American Space Efforts
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=893
The Outstretched Empty Hand of American Space Efforts
Dennis Wingo
Tuesday, October 28, 2003
I had a dream the other night. I was in China, riding on a train.
The train pulled into a station and I got off to take a break. In
the lobby was a magazine advertising a major U.S. University and
its academic programs. Across the page from the advertisement was
a picture of a painting. The impressionistic painting showed a
statue in a snowstorm of an American with an out stretched empty
hand. The title of the painting was "American Efforts in Space,
the Outstretched Empty Hand."
I awoke from this dream and realized that the outstretched empty
hand is a perfect metaphor for American human space efforts. How
many times have we stretched out our hand with human spaceflight
to open the space frontier and come up empty handed? From the
fall of Apollo to the debris field of Texas and the quandary over
the fate of ISS and its predecessors we cannot seem to get our
act together or develop a vision for our space efforts.
It is not as if visions (which in the biblical definition means a
sense of purpose) do not exist. Indeed from the images and work
of Von Braun, Bonestell, and Disney to the Gene Roddenberry world
of Star Trek we have had visions of what the future could be like
in space. All of these visions have the common thread that PEOPLE
are involved, not just robots. The difficulty is that there is a
serious disconnect between the visionaries view of the future and
the implementation plan of our national space policy.
A lot of people, both inside and outside of NASA realize the
above. However, there seems to be confusion about how to rectify
the situation. In the coming days Senator John McCain will hold
hearings about the future of NASA where he in his honest way will
seek to find answers to the question of "what is the future of
our national space program". Mr. O'Keefe will give testimony
about what he (and by proxy the Bush administration) sees what
the future will be. Mr. Rick Tumlinson and Dr. Robert Zubrin will
do the same and knowing Rick and Bob the themes will be private
enterprise and Mars respectively. However, all of the testimony
as well as Mr. McCain's question will miss what the real point,
which is why we have a national space program. What must follow
why if we are to not result in the outstretched empty hand.
For the American populace the why is almost self evident and has
been illustrated and promoted by the pioneers (including
television) above. For space to be worth the effort and national
treasure the answer to why must be "to benefit mankind here on
the earth". Star Trek makes the argument in an almost backhanded
manner. How many times did Kirk or Picard speak about how space
eliminated poverty, disease, and provided opportunity for a
richer life for all humans? This was also a fundamental premise
of Disney, Von Braun, Ley, and the other pioneers of the factual
(as opposed to our love of warp drives) development of the space
frontier by humans. The difference today, and the Apollo and ISS
programs are illustrative of this, is that the development of the
space frontier has been separated from the scientific interest in
space.
Up through the 1960's the inherent assumption about our future in
space was that this development would be of dramatic and
permanent benefit to the earth and that people, lots of people
would be involved, both on earth and in space. Indeed, president
Kennedy himself cast the Apollo program as being "an important
first step in the conquest of space". However, the Apollo program
is where the shift began from a real space program to what we
have today. Dr. Von Braun argued passionately yet unsuccessfully
for the Earth Rendezvous method of going to the Moon that
presumed that we would build a modular space station in Earth
orbit. This station would be used to assemble the Lunar vehicle
that would then fly from Earth orbit to the Moon. Von Braun
argued that by utilizing the Lunar Orbit Rendezvous method we
would be left without any meaningful infrastructure in space to
carry on after the initial landings were made. This decision is
what turned the Apollo program into flags and footprints and
resulted in the outstretched empty hand in the first space age.
In an effort to salvage Apollo Von Braun and NASA, with
considerable congressional support developed the concept of the
Apollo Applications program. I urge Senator McCain and all who
are interested to read the document "The Space Program in the
Post Apollo Period", A Report of the President's Science Advisory
Committee, prepared by the Joint Space Panels and published by
the White House in February 1967. It is instructive to read their
recommendations and see how far we have diverged from them, back
then as well as today. Here are their five recommendations that
have as a fundamental precept the why of space exploration.
1. A limited but important extension of Apollo to exploit our
anticipated capability to explore the Moon. 2. A strongly
upgraded program of early unmanned exploration of the nearby
planets on a scale of time and effort consistent with the
requirements for planning future manned expeditions. 3. A program
of technology development and qualification of man for long
duration space flight in anticipation of manned planetary
exploration. 4. The vigorous exploitation (by all appropriate
agencies of Government) of space applications for national
security and the social and economic well-being of the Nation. 5.
The exploitation of our capability to carry out complex technical
operations in near Earth orbit (and the Moon) for the advance of
science, particularly astronomy.
The why for space exploration is best laid out in 4. above: "for
national security and the social and economic well-being of the
Nation". This is what has been lost to the space program and it
began and ends with science being the all consuming reason for
having a space program that now the core value at NASA.
By the early 1970's and the lack of follow through by congress
and the president on the recommendations of the President's
Science Advisory Committee NASA shifted gears to justify their
budget and programs in terms of scientific return. If you read
the post Apollo records of conferences and papers the change in
emphasis is clear. This is also when the academic peer review
process was formalized for the unmanned space program that put
scientific value as the primary criterion for missions and made
the project scientist the principal investigator for unmanned
missions. This led to a shift to the new and uninvestigated
phenomena in space and a shift from the 10% of the budget for
unmanned missions in 1967 to the one third to one half share
today. This is the reason that the Lunar Observer lost out to the
Mars Observer mission. This is also the reason that, as a
response, many private space advocacy groups came up with the
Lunar Prospector mission. The name of this mission was
specifically chosen in order to emphasize that prospecting for
minerals is important to space development.
First this is NOT an attack on science, only on relative
priorities assigned to science at NASA and throughout the federal
government's non defense space activities. Indeed space science
has contributed to the social well-being of the nation, if for no
other reason, the beautiful pictures that the Hubble telescope
has produced. Space certainly contributes to the national
security of the nation as has been demonstrated by the success of
the GPS program and a plethora of other national defense space
programs. Even the economic and social well-being has been
enhanced by communications satellites, Direct TV, XM Radio, and
other commercial services. However, as the favorite buzz words of
the defense department illustrate, we have not had a
transformation, or a revolution, in our lives as a result of the
above recommendations and indeed very few of them have been truly
addressed. It is quite evident at NASA in that we have an Office
of Space Science as a core enterprise but no Office for Space
Development.
Today in the defense department we hear a lot about the need for
transformational capabilities and for revolutionary change. The
same is true in NASA and the rest of the U.S. government's
approach to space. Again the International Space Station (ISS) is
the poster child for both the problem and the opportunity. ISS,
originally, Freedom was conceived as a permanent facility in
space in many ways conforming with the Joint Panel's
recommendations above. The space station as Reagan envisioned was
originally conceived as a waypoint in space, where a large hanger
would be used for assembling Lunar and Mars bound spacecraft. It
would be used for technology development and research into long
term manned spaceflight. It would also have been used for
microgravity research. This is what president Reagan introduced
to the nation in 1984. What we have now is a pale shadow of that
great idea.
The station was fought over in congress with the majority
democrats taking money from the program at many crucial points.
NASA, in response continually morphed the rational for the
station toward a science oriented station in order to build
congressional support. Finally, after all of the boiling down it
became president Clinton's way of getting around Jesse Helm's
foreign relation's committee's blocking of money going to the
Russian government and for some microgravity and long duration
humans in space research. Even most of this was stripped away
when Dan Goldin, facing huge overruns and a skeptical congress,
took all of the money from microgravity research, leaving almost
nothing left of the long duration human research. When the
microgravity research community protested, many leaders were
forced into leaving. Tragically, recent reports from competent
scientific authorities question the methodology of NASA's long
duration human spaceflight research effort.
This all brings us to today and the question of what and or why.
We need to re-establish the development of space as a core value
of national space policy. Science is wonderful and goes hand in
hand with development but without a development as a core value
of national space policy Senator McCain's committee and hearings
will all go the way of all of the other tree killing efforts, the
outstretched empty hand.
Today you hear a lot of congress people and others in space
advocacy such as Dr. Zubrin making the claim that ISS is just the
U.S. going around in circles and is irrelevant to what the real
goal should be which is Mars. Nothing could be farther from the
truth. ISS is the jumping off point to Mars and the Moon and the
rest of the solar system. ISS is a triumph of manned spaceflight
in its construction and operation. Where it has a failing grade
is in utilization. This can change. The simple fact is that we
have a space station and we can turn it into that waypoint to the
solar system that Von Braun, Disney, and the early visionaries
meant it to be. From spacecraft construction to astronomy to
human spaceflight testing ISS can be all that we dreamed it could
be way back when. The how then becomes the question.
Rick Tumlinson and the Space Frontier Foundation has pushed for
years for the private development of space. The problem with this
approach is that private enterprise, and more importantly space
finance, when it comes to space is very skeptical. This is where
Senator McCain and his committee and the Congress can help to
enable the future. Here are four points that will make ISS into a
waypoint and space in general into an economic engine rather than
a playground for a couple of rich guys and government employees.
1. Enact a version of Dana Rohrabacher's "Zero G Zero Tax"
legislation.
2. Make ISS and American commercial space stations an ITAR
free zone.
3. Pass other legislation that enables the rapid licensing
of suborbital and orbital tourists vehicles.
4. Pass a Public/Private partnership law similar to the
ESA rules to lower the risk and provide incentives to
entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Walt Anderson
and others yet to come.
The Zero G Zero Tax (ZGZT) legislation would be similar to the
current embargo on taxes on Internet commerce that did so much to
power the economic miracle of the 1990's. It was a good idea when
originally introduced and still is. When scored by the joint
taxation committee a few years ago its ten year impact on the
treasury was estimated at $1 Billion dollars. Since commercial
space covered by the act had zero revenue at the time that means
that over five billion dollars in commercial space activity was
estimated to be generated. The bill died because offsets were
required but it should be obvious that with zero revenue going to
five billion revenue there should be benefits to the nation
beyond the mere corporate taxes involved.
Making ISS an ITAR free zone would greatly simplify the process
of getting payloads to an international space station inhabited
by several different nations, all of which are covered by the
current ITAR rules. This is a huge thing and far more important
than can be simply described here.
The "permission to fly" campaign started by the Space Frontier
Foundation should be taken up by the government. In our post 9/11
world it is extremely difficult to get permission to launch
people into space from U.S. soil for joyrides. Make this easier.
Also, put in indemnification that covers these companies when
people inevitably die during these adventures. Treat it the same
way as people who climb mount Everest.
ESA today has a great rule that provides matching funding from
ESA member states through ESA to the country where the economic
activity occurs. That is if I start a commercial space company
and invest $20M dollars in this activity ESA, through their
advisory committees and national governments will match that
amount dollar for dollar. This is an incredible way to help
reduce risk for commercial space efforts.
This all comes back to the question of why? For science? For
glory and national prestige? For the well-being of the nation?
Well all of the above actually. Today we face some incredible
problems in terms of our energy future. We simply cannot
completely move to the use of fuel cells and the hydrogen economy
without space. From the Platinum Group Metals (PGM) that make up
the cells to the technology for efficient hydrogen production,
space plays a central role. There are not enough PGM's on the
earth to enable the hydrogen economy and the technology
development in power systems and maybe even solar power
satellites can help to deliver the power that we need for our
future. Fusion, that ultimate power source for efficient space
propulsion can be used for efficient power production on the
earth.
The larger reason for why is that space is as important today as
the national railroad, the Panama Canal, and the interstate
highway system has been over the last two centuries. The U.S. and
our national space policy has the ability to transcend the
problems that face the world today for our energy future and
resources to help bring the rest of the world to the same level
of affluence that environmentalists say is impossible. Recently
the World Wildlife Federation proclaimed that we would need two
extra Earth's to raise China and the rest of the world to an
American level of affluence. Well as Dr. John Lewis has pointed
out in his book "Mining the Sky", there are hundreds of thousands
of worlds just waiting to be developed as well as the major
planets, and dozens of Moons. I would recommend that Mr. McCain
ask Dr. Lewis to testify as well as Dr. Bill Boynton, also from
the University of Arizona who can tell you how much water really
exists on Mars.
We have a space station. Lets use it. We have the Delta IV and
the Atlas V. Lets use them to send heavy payloads to ISS. We even
have a Space Shuttle, an aging yet remarkable system. I am going
to go against all of my advocate friends and advocate a second
generation Shuttle to replace the current three remaining
shuttles that can meet the criterion laid down by NASA for the
Assured Access to Station program. A clean sheet design taking
advantage of over twenty years of operational experience would be
a much better and cost effective solution that would fulfill all
of the Orbital Space Plane requirements as well as the Assured
access program. Implement all of the upgrades and operational
changes recommended by various committees over the years and you
could build a very nice STS II that would be able to be semi-mass
produced and later mated to a flyback booster, resulting in a
fully reusable system. Boeing, in the form of the old Rockwell
Downey, the Shuttle's original builder, has done some good work
in this area.
We have a tremendous future in space if we just shake loose the
shackles of the last thirty years of post Apollo hand wringing.
If we do not do this successfully we will certainly end up as the
Portugal of the 22nd century and enable the construction of the
statue memorializing the outstretched empty hand.