Jeff Foust spoke to former Congressman Robert Walker, Trump's space advisor, who presented the skeleton of a Trump administration space policy:
The unstated assumption to the above list is, "we have a space program, here's how we're going to change how it does things." But it misses the point.
Why? Why should the US have humans merely "explore" the entire solar system by the end of the century? To what end beyond exploration for exploration's sake?
Why does the US have a space program? And we're not just talking about NASA here, either. There are satellites operated by the NOAA, USGS, and other agencies, the Air Force provides satellite tracking, and the myriad spy agencies all have their fingers in the pie.
This is not a single coherent space program operating in unison. In fact, such a creature is not even possible. Instead, what America has today is the result of a slow accretion process over decades, where any given agency's or department's budget for the current year is commensurate with its expenditure the previous year.
Simple math and the explosion in the US National Debt over the last eight years dictate that this is a situation that cannot last indefinitely. It will either happen later with a very hard crash, or sooner with a difficult yet absorb-able blow. The election of President Trump presents an opportunity for the "sooner" option.
To do this for space policy, it is possible to both cut the total expenditure on all space-related activities in the federal government, while getting better results.
But to be able to objectively measure whether results are improving or not, they must be measured against some target. Which brings us back to the missing "why".
In his 2011 ISDC Keynote speech, Jeff Greason laid out the differences between goals, strategies, objectives, and tactics, using World War II as an example. In that case, the Goal was the unconditional surrender of Germany and Japan. Strategies included surrounding Germany and cutting off supply lines, and island hopping in the Pacific to cut off Japanese supply lines. Objectives are things like "storm Normandy and hold the beach". Tactics are things like deciding between daytime bombing and nighttime bombing, using tanks or using infantry, that sort of thing.
In that light, something like specifying a Space Launch System right down to the diameter of the rocket doesn't even rise to the level of Tactics. It's only when you've already got the Goal, Strategy, Objectives, and Tactics laid out that you decide what assets are required to perform the task.
And NASA, indeed the entire space industry, has been avoiding clearly stating the Goal behind US human spaceflight for six decades. It really wasn't until Greason's speech that it was actually laid out.
The goal of US human spaceflight is settlement. It's been the goal all along, left half-stated and between the lines in commission report after commission report. It hasn't been stated plainly because nobody (other than Jeff Greason) had the balls to come right out and say it. And they've been afraid to say it because we don't know if we can actually do it. And in turn, we don't know if we can do it because we haven't made a concerted effort, with a goal and strategies and objectives and tactics all laid out.
We knew why the US was involved in space in the 1960s. The US was apparently falling behind the Russians technologically; if they could launch Sputnik to orbit, they can launch a nuke to Washington. Then the Russians launched the first man to orbit and America lost its shit: the Russians were going to take over the whole solar system! The only way to demonstrate American superiority, indeed the superiority of the Free Market economy to Communism, was to do something that the nascent American space program bigwigs thought they could accomplish before 1970 and that the Russians couldn't do in that time frame: get a man to the surface of the moon and back, alive. It was a clear-cut goal with clear strategies and objectives and tactics before the first line was drawn on the Saturn design.
Once the Apollo 11 astronauts came back home alive, the entire "why" of NASA was gone. Ever since then, the goal of settlement has always been there, bubbling under the surface, popping up here as Space Station Freedom and there as the Vision for Space Exploration and so forth. And ever since Apollo 11 it seems like NASA has been mainly about keeping NASA going until they can get to work on the real job.
Knowing why the US is involved in space, knowing that settlement is the ultimate goal, changes what gets done (strategies and objectives) and how it gets done (tactics). And it is only once you get down to that tactical level that you decide whether you really need a rocket that can lift 135 tonnes of payload to orbit all at once, or whether you're better off doing something else with the budget you've got.
Knowing settlement is the goal means we need to develop technologies like nearly-completely enclosed life support systems so settlers can resupply themselves with provisions; and using the centrifuge currently gathering dust in a Japanese warehouse to test whether mammals (mice) can produce healthy offspring in lower or no gravity; and building experimental long-term propellant depots and developing spacecraft refueling technology.
Knowing that the goal is settlement means that you're not just sending humans to Titan to explore. They'd be going there instead to take advantage of literal seas of rocket fuel, and setting up the fuel stop of the outer solar system. Knowing settlement is the goal means we'd be sending people to Phobos not merely to explore but to set up a Mars Orbit refueling station. Knowing settlement is the goal means sending people to our moon to operate and repair the robots that mine water and Titanium. Knowing settlement is the goal means that we'd be sending people to the moons of Jupiter (except Europa, attempt no landing there) to mine them for their mineral wealth.
And knowing that settlement is the ultimate goal means we wouldn't necessarily be bringing these people back. They would be staying and having children.
And knowing that you're talking about a large-scale migration into the harshest of environments, with lots of experimentation still to do before that is even possible, means accepting losses. It means that Safe Is Not An Option. It means accepting that people are going to die and assets will be lost. It means that all US space activity cannot have a single point of failure on the critical path. The Shuttle fleet became that single point of failure, and twice brought all US human space activity to a screeching halt.
Farmers die on the job. Cops die on the job. Soldiers die on the job. Miners die on the job. Fishermen die on the job. Firefighters die on the job. Stop whining about astronauts. If settling the solar system isn't worth risking a single human life to do it, then it really isn't worth doing and we should just end the whole space program now.
Instead of approaching space from the perspective of randomly exploring in all directions, it's time to start from the Goal and work down through the Strategies, Objectives, and Tactics. Once that is worked out, then one can decide whether the space program is correctly configured to accomplish the necessary tasks and how to most productively change the system.
The strategy Greason offered is similar to island hopping. The idea is to slowly spread outwards, with each destination becoming a propellant production facility that enables spreading even further out. This leverages and complements the work being done by asteroid mining companies (currently two, soon to be many more).
NASA as it is currently constituted cannot, by itself, accomplish the goal. Settlement implies large numbers of people not only traveling to space but staying and raising families, for generations. They can't all be NASA employees.
Nor should they. As it stands, NASA is an agency with a split mandate operating at cross-purposes. It is a cutting-edge research and development agency, creating the newest prototypes of space technology. But it is also an operational agency, forced to use those same prototypes for operational purposes. The Space Shuttle remained an "experimental" vehicle right up to its last flight.
Under the goal of settlement, NASA's role must change dramatically. NASA cannot be wasting its time and resources on routine operations. Instead, it must return to a role that it originally had as NACA and again in the early years of NASA's existence. It must become solely a cutting-edge research and exploration agency, taking on the experimental tasks that are too long-term and expensive for any one member of industry but useful to all. Where once NACA designed airfoils, NASA needs to be developing orbital propellant transfer and storage. And as a purely R&D agency NASA could then focus on things like small satellites and hypersonics.
That means closing down a few operational centers (and transferring some to a new agency, which I'll talk about later), and changing the remainder of them into Federally-Funded Research and Development Centers. Currently the only FFRDC within NASA is the Jet Propulsion Lab, not coincidentally by far the most successful of all NASA centers in terms of technology development and exploration.
And it means changing the way NASA handles exploration, When NASA sends a satellite to orbit, say, Neptune, is it really important that NASA build the rocket? Or that NASA be the one to build the satellite? Or that NASA even own the satellite? What is valuable to NASA for exploration purposes would not be the satellite orbiting Neptune itself, but the data that such a satellite sent back. Instead of building satellites, launching and operating them, NASA really only needs to pay for the data. Whether done through a prize structure or a bounty system or a strict price schedule, the federal government could accomplish a double win by getting the exploration data NASA wants at a fraction of the price while stimulating American industry.
Robert Walker is correct that the private sector must take over the launch and LEO sector. Such regimes are quite evidently well enough understood and characterized - a company which did not exist fifteen years ago is currently delivering supplies to the international space station on a regular basis. And the public-private partnerships are a good idea. There is currently a privately-owned expandable module being tested on the ISS right now, and a private company launching nanosatellites from the ISS as well.
As a bonus, any dollar spent by industry on space is a dollar that doesn't have to come out of the Federal budget. The partnerships that NASA developed with SpaceX and Orbital Sciences over the Obama administration have been one of the few bright spots of the last eight years, and this new procurement method (fixed-price rather than cost-plus) is a process that should be continued.
The downsized and reoriented NASA I proposed above would also have to work closely with industry, doing the basic research too expensive and long-term for any company to afford but useful to and shared with all. But NASA doesn't need to be launching operational rockets, or indeed necessarily launching rockets at all.
However, there is still a place in the federal government for space operations that a streamlined NASA would not be performing. This brings me to James C. Bennett's proposal for the founding of a Space Guard, modeled after the Coast Guard. This is an idea that Vice President Pence and the revitalized National Space Council should look at very closely.
The Space Guard proposal dovetails nicely with Walker's proposal to move Earth science missions from NASA to the NOAA. In a nutshell, the Space Guard (which would be part of the Department of Transportation or the Department of Commerce) would handle all federal space-related operational tasks (as opposed to experimental). It would take over the operational part of NASA. For instance, the Space Guard would operate the launch complex at Kennedy Space Center, but they would not be developing payloads. And the Space Guard would absorb space related activities from other government agencies, taking over most of the satellite tracking from the Air Force (bonus: can be viewed as a reduction in Defense spending without losing any capability), the operation of satellites from the NOAA and USGS and other government agencies.
Establishing a new agency like the Space Guard as a way of streamlining NASA and other agencies allows NASA to concentrate solely on the cutting edge research that can then be shared with US industry. This should save each player in the industry from having to start from scratch and work its way up to operational space hardware.
Probably more importantly, however, it becomes an institution. If the US is serious about an over-riding purpose extending to the end of the century, then that's a project that has to survive 20 more presidential elections and 41 Congressional elections. Since Apollo, every President (with the possible exception of Ford) has introduced some kind of Bold Vision Of The Future Of The Space Program, only to be superseded by the next New Improved Bold Vision.. For any new plan to take hold for more than one or two Presidential terms, NASA must be radically restructured and the Space Guard must become an institution, in the same way the Coast Guard is an institution.
So, as NASA pushes out the edge of the envelope, the Space Guard must fill in behind it with any routine government space operations which are not yet ready or appropriate to be taken over by the private sector. It is appropriate for companies like SpaceX and many more to be launching payloads and soon people to low earth orbit, now that the technology is maturing. Operating the launch complex, not yet. But any purposes the federal government has in space that is operational rather than research oriented and which cannot yet be performed by the private sector (under government contracts) would be handled by the Space Guard rather than NASA.
1. A “commitment to global space leadership” that Walker said would produce the “technology, security and jobs” needed for the United States in the 21st century.This is a good start. However, what's missing from the above?
2. A reinstitution of the National Space Council, headed by the vice president, to oversee all government space efforts to seek efficiencies and eliminate redundancies. The council was last in operation during the presidency of George H.W. Bush.
3. A goal of “human exploration of the solar system by the end of the century,” which Walker said would serve as a “stretch goal” to drive technology developments to a stronger degree than simply a goal of humans to Mars.
4. Shifting NASA budgets to “deep space achievements” rather than Earth science and climate research. Walker said that some, unspecified NASA Earth science missions might be better handled by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, but “there would have to be some budget adjustments” to transfer those missions from NASA to NOAA.
5. Development of small satellite technologies that in particular can provide resiliency for the military, and also develop satellite servicing technologies.
6. Seek world leadership in hypersonics technology, including for military applications.
7. Hand over access to and operations in low Earth orbit to the commercial sector.
8. Start discussions about including more “private and public partners” in operations and financing of the International Space Station, including extending the station’s lifetime. Walker also left open the possibility of including China as one of those new partners.
9. Require that all federal agencies develop plans for how they would use “space assets and space developments” to carry out their missions.
The unstated assumption to the above list is, "we have a space program, here's how we're going to change how it does things." But it misses the point.
Why? Why should the US have humans merely "explore" the entire solar system by the end of the century? To what end beyond exploration for exploration's sake?
Why does the US have a space program? And we're not just talking about NASA here, either. There are satellites operated by the NOAA, USGS, and other agencies, the Air Force provides satellite tracking, and the myriad spy agencies all have their fingers in the pie.
This is not a single coherent space program operating in unison. In fact, such a creature is not even possible. Instead, what America has today is the result of a slow accretion process over decades, where any given agency's or department's budget for the current year is commensurate with its expenditure the previous year.
Simple math and the explosion in the US National Debt over the last eight years dictate that this is a situation that cannot last indefinitely. It will either happen later with a very hard crash, or sooner with a difficult yet absorb-able blow. The election of President Trump presents an opportunity for the "sooner" option.
To do this for space policy, it is possible to both cut the total expenditure on all space-related activities in the federal government, while getting better results.
But to be able to objectively measure whether results are improving or not, they must be measured against some target. Which brings us back to the missing "why".
In his 2011 ISDC Keynote speech, Jeff Greason laid out the differences between goals, strategies, objectives, and tactics, using World War II as an example. In that case, the Goal was the unconditional surrender of Germany and Japan. Strategies included surrounding Germany and cutting off supply lines, and island hopping in the Pacific to cut off Japanese supply lines. Objectives are things like "storm Normandy and hold the beach". Tactics are things like deciding between daytime bombing and nighttime bombing, using tanks or using infantry, that sort of thing.
In that light, something like specifying a Space Launch System right down to the diameter of the rocket doesn't even rise to the level of Tactics. It's only when you've already got the Goal, Strategy, Objectives, and Tactics laid out that you decide what assets are required to perform the task.
And NASA, indeed the entire space industry, has been avoiding clearly stating the Goal behind US human spaceflight for six decades. It really wasn't until Greason's speech that it was actually laid out.
The goal of US human spaceflight is settlement. It's been the goal all along, left half-stated and between the lines in commission report after commission report. It hasn't been stated plainly because nobody (other than Jeff Greason) had the balls to come right out and say it. And they've been afraid to say it because we don't know if we can actually do it. And in turn, we don't know if we can do it because we haven't made a concerted effort, with a goal and strategies and objectives and tactics all laid out.
We knew why the US was involved in space in the 1960s. The US was apparently falling behind the Russians technologically; if they could launch Sputnik to orbit, they can launch a nuke to Washington. Then the Russians launched the first man to orbit and America lost its shit: the Russians were going to take over the whole solar system! The only way to demonstrate American superiority, indeed the superiority of the Free Market economy to Communism, was to do something that the nascent American space program bigwigs thought they could accomplish before 1970 and that the Russians couldn't do in that time frame: get a man to the surface of the moon and back, alive. It was a clear-cut goal with clear strategies and objectives and tactics before the first line was drawn on the Saturn design.
Once the Apollo 11 astronauts came back home alive, the entire "why" of NASA was gone. Ever since then, the goal of settlement has always been there, bubbling under the surface, popping up here as Space Station Freedom and there as the Vision for Space Exploration and so forth. And ever since Apollo 11 it seems like NASA has been mainly about keeping NASA going until they can get to work on the real job.
Knowing why the US is involved in space, knowing that settlement is the ultimate goal, changes what gets done (strategies and objectives) and how it gets done (tactics). And it is only once you get down to that tactical level that you decide whether you really need a rocket that can lift 135 tonnes of payload to orbit all at once, or whether you're better off doing something else with the budget you've got.
Knowing settlement is the goal means we need to develop technologies like nearly-completely enclosed life support systems so settlers can resupply themselves with provisions; and using the centrifuge currently gathering dust in a Japanese warehouse to test whether mammals (mice) can produce healthy offspring in lower or no gravity; and building experimental long-term propellant depots and developing spacecraft refueling technology.
And knowing that settlement is the ultimate goal means we wouldn't necessarily be bringing these people back. They would be staying and having children.
And knowing that you're talking about a large-scale migration into the harshest of environments, with lots of experimentation still to do before that is even possible, means accepting losses. It means that Safe Is Not An Option. It means accepting that people are going to die and assets will be lost. It means that all US space activity cannot have a single point of failure on the critical path. The Shuttle fleet became that single point of failure, and twice brought all US human space activity to a screeching halt.
Farmers die on the job. Cops die on the job. Soldiers die on the job. Miners die on the job. Fishermen die on the job. Firefighters die on the job. Stop whining about astronauts. If settling the solar system isn't worth risking a single human life to do it, then it really isn't worth doing and we should just end the whole space program now.
Instead of approaching space from the perspective of randomly exploring in all directions, it's time to start from the Goal and work down through the Strategies, Objectives, and Tactics. Once that is worked out, then one can decide whether the space program is correctly configured to accomplish the necessary tasks and how to most productively change the system.
The strategy Greason offered is similar to island hopping. The idea is to slowly spread outwards, with each destination becoming a propellant production facility that enables spreading even further out. This leverages and complements the work being done by asteroid mining companies (currently two, soon to be many more).
NASA as it is currently constituted cannot, by itself, accomplish the goal. Settlement implies large numbers of people not only traveling to space but staying and raising families, for generations. They can't all be NASA employees.
Nor should they. As it stands, NASA is an agency with a split mandate operating at cross-purposes. It is a cutting-edge research and development agency, creating the newest prototypes of space technology. But it is also an operational agency, forced to use those same prototypes for operational purposes. The Space Shuttle remained an "experimental" vehicle right up to its last flight.
Under the goal of settlement, NASA's role must change dramatically. NASA cannot be wasting its time and resources on routine operations. Instead, it must return to a role that it originally had as NACA and again in the early years of NASA's existence. It must become solely a cutting-edge research and exploration agency, taking on the experimental tasks that are too long-term and expensive for any one member of industry but useful to all. Where once NACA designed airfoils, NASA needs to be developing orbital propellant transfer and storage. And as a purely R&D agency NASA could then focus on things like small satellites and hypersonics.
That means closing down a few operational centers (and transferring some to a new agency, which I'll talk about later), and changing the remainder of them into Federally-Funded Research and Development Centers. Currently the only FFRDC within NASA is the Jet Propulsion Lab, not coincidentally by far the most successful of all NASA centers in terms of technology development and exploration.
And it means changing the way NASA handles exploration, When NASA sends a satellite to orbit, say, Neptune, is it really important that NASA build the rocket? Or that NASA be the one to build the satellite? Or that NASA even own the satellite? What is valuable to NASA for exploration purposes would not be the satellite orbiting Neptune itself, but the data that such a satellite sent back. Instead of building satellites, launching and operating them, NASA really only needs to pay for the data. Whether done through a prize structure or a bounty system or a strict price schedule, the federal government could accomplish a double win by getting the exploration data NASA wants at a fraction of the price while stimulating American industry.
Robert Walker is correct that the private sector must take over the launch and LEO sector. Such regimes are quite evidently well enough understood and characterized - a company which did not exist fifteen years ago is currently delivering supplies to the international space station on a regular basis. And the public-private partnerships are a good idea. There is currently a privately-owned expandable module being tested on the ISS right now, and a private company launching nanosatellites from the ISS as well.
As a bonus, any dollar spent by industry on space is a dollar that doesn't have to come out of the Federal budget. The partnerships that NASA developed with SpaceX and Orbital Sciences over the Obama administration have been one of the few bright spots of the last eight years, and this new procurement method (fixed-price rather than cost-plus) is a process that should be continued.
The downsized and reoriented NASA I proposed above would also have to work closely with industry, doing the basic research too expensive and long-term for any company to afford but useful to and shared with all. But NASA doesn't need to be launching operational rockets, or indeed necessarily launching rockets at all.
However, there is still a place in the federal government for space operations that a streamlined NASA would not be performing. This brings me to James C. Bennett's proposal for the founding of a Space Guard, modeled after the Coast Guard. This is an idea that Vice President Pence and the revitalized National Space Council should look at very closely.
The Space Guard proposal dovetails nicely with Walker's proposal to move Earth science missions from NASA to the NOAA. In a nutshell, the Space Guard (which would be part of the Department of Transportation or the Department of Commerce) would handle all federal space-related operational tasks (as opposed to experimental). It would take over the operational part of NASA. For instance, the Space Guard would operate the launch complex at Kennedy Space Center, but they would not be developing payloads. And the Space Guard would absorb space related activities from other government agencies, taking over most of the satellite tracking from the Air Force (bonus: can be viewed as a reduction in Defense spending without losing any capability), the operation of satellites from the NOAA and USGS and other government agencies.
Establishing a new agency like the Space Guard as a way of streamlining NASA and other agencies allows NASA to concentrate solely on the cutting edge research that can then be shared with US industry. This should save each player in the industry from having to start from scratch and work its way up to operational space hardware.
Probably more importantly, however, it becomes an institution. If the US is serious about an over-riding purpose extending to the end of the century, then that's a project that has to survive 20 more presidential elections and 41 Congressional elections. Since Apollo, every President (with the possible exception of Ford) has introduced some kind of Bold Vision Of The Future Of The Space Program, only to be superseded by the next New Improved Bold Vision.. For any new plan to take hold for more than one or two Presidential terms, NASA must be radically restructured and the Space Guard must become an institution, in the same way the Coast Guard is an institution.
So, as NASA pushes out the edge of the envelope, the Space Guard must fill in behind it with any routine government space operations which are not yet ready or appropriate to be taken over by the private sector. It is appropriate for companies like SpaceX and many more to be launching payloads and soon people to low earth orbit, now that the technology is maturing. Operating the launch complex, not yet. But any purposes the federal government has in space that is operational rather than research oriented and which cannot yet be performed by the private sector (under government contracts) would be handled by the Space Guard rather than NASA.
No comments:
Post a Comment