By Michael D. Griffin
March 2007
“Prediction is difficult, especially the future,” said quantum physicist Niels Bohr, and no one has since captured the underlying concept quite so cleverly. But having been foolish enough to accept the challenge of speculating upon where the next 50 years will take us in human space exploration, the first question to be answered is, where to begin? What is the global view that can best shape our thinking? It is so very easy to be completely wrong, since a variety of radically different futures in spaceflight can be presumed with equal apparent credibility today.
For example, it might be that, after completing the construction of the International Space Station (ISS) and retiring the Shuttle, the excitement inherent in a new reach outward from low Earth orbit (LEO) will appeal to the next generation, leading to a vigorous, technology-driven program, a plan to reach the surface of Mars by the late 2020’s, and the will to sustain and build upon that early presence. Or, interest in human space exploration could once again be motivated by competition among spacefaring nations, leading to a modern version of the “space race” of the 1960s, producing substantial progress but for reasons unsustainable in the longer term. It could be that the unchecked growth of entitlements, the generational commitment of resources necessary to combat terrorism, and a continued downward trend of interest by American students in mathematics, science, and engineering education, will combine to make the civil space program as we have known it irrelevant to the lives of our grandchildren’s generation. Or the truth could lie in some other direction entirely; maybe human spaceflight in the next 50 years will be dominated by tourism, first suborbital, then orbital, with relatively little in the way of independent government activity.
The one thing of which we can be certain is that in trying to envision the world of 2057, two generations in the future, we will be wrong. We will be wrong in our assumptions about the larger context of world culture and civilization in which space exploration exists, and we will be wrong even in the narrower context that is the subject of our attention here. Even the most cursory review of some of the key events in the development of spaceflight shows the need for great humility by anyone writing an essay on the likely state of space exploration in 2057.
For example, who would have supposed in early 1957 that the Soviet Union, and not the United States, would loft the first artificial satellite into Earth orbit, the first robotic lunar probe, and the first man, into space? And who would ever have predicted that the United States, stung by losses in a competition in which it had not even known it was engaged, would, or even could, respond by carrying out the first lunar landing eight years and two months after declaring the goal? Most then-knowledgeable observers believed that such a feat was unlikely to be achieved much before the end of the 20th Century, if then. Not even the most visionary of hard science fiction authors – Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein – imagined that it could occur as early as 1969. And then, having spent $21 billion (in mid-60s dollars) to develop the transportation system to make such a thing possible, was it even conceivable that such hard-won capability would be utterly discarded within a few years? Who would have imagined it? And yet it happened.
With those thoughts in mind to encourage an appropriate humility, it is nonetheless natural to wonder how we might develop a vision of the future that is the least likely to be terribly wrong. How can we extrapolate today’s world in such a way as to avoid the most outrageously wrong predictions?
Most of the present discussion will focus on the U.S. government civil space program. I will have some comments on the international scene and on the possible role of commercial space, but for much of the next five decades, the U.S. government will be the dominant entity in determining the course of human space exploration. We will, I hope, develop robust international partnerships that will enormously enhance the value of space exploration. And we must do everything possible to provide an accepting environment for commercial space entities, standing down government capability in favor of commercial suppliers whenever it becomes possible to do so. But with that said, the U.S. today is spending more than twice as much on civil space, per capita, as any other nation, and I believe this situation is unlikely to change significantly for some time. Commercial space firms offer great promise but, so far, limited performance. For a while yet, it is the U.S. government, through NASA, that determines the main course of human spaceflight.
Of course, manned spaceflight is broader than exploration, and over the next decades it is to be expected that other entities besides the U.S. government, both commercial and international, will be conducting human spaceflight activities. A spacefaring civilization cannot be the realm only of government employees and government sponsored engineers and scientists, though a bias toward such groups is clearly one attribute of a frontier activity. But if we understand that broader participation is desirable, U.S. human space exploration programs can be conducted so as to encourage, rather than minimize, such. Doing so will, in my opinion, be a key to its survival and prosperity, a point that I will make again in what follows.
But let us now focus our attention on more specific matters. The most straightforward extrapolation is to assume that the future will, on average, be much like the past in regard to key assumptions. Since no aspect of government civil spaceflight is more crucial than the funding allocated to it, let’s consider NASA’s funding history for the last 50 years, and try to make a reasonable yet conservative projection as to what we might receive in the next 50. And then let’s consider what that funding might allow us to do, setting aside unforeseeable political upheavals. To understand where we might go, we must understand where we have been, and I think we need a better understanding of our history than is commonly the case.
Any assessment of historical or projected budgets necessarily must be done in constant, inflation-adjusted dollars. This fact leads inevitably to the question of what inflation index should be used, because long-term assessments are sensitive to that choice. Many choices are possible; the Bureau of Labor Statistics maintains the familiar Consumer Price Index (CPI), applicable to the U.S. economy at large; i.e., the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). However, the CPI is not the best measure of inflation for government spending, primarily because the “market basket” of goods and services applicable to the private and public sectors of the economy are very different. The best use of the CPI in connection with government programs is in the estimation of the constant-dollar “opportunity cost” of government activities to citizens. Government services are purchased by taxpayers with CPI-adjusted tax dollars; money paid in taxes is money not available to consumers to purchase other goods and services.
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) publishes several inflation indices applicable to different portions of the government sector. For government R&D activities, including those at NASA, the OMB prescribes the use of the so-called “GDP (chained) Price Index” (http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2008/sheets/hist10z1.xls). Without delving into the merits and shortcomings of various indices, our discussion of inflation-adjusted NASA funding will employ this index. While fiscal analysis across several decades is sensitive to the choice of inflation index, the present discussion is not significantly influenced by the choice of the GDP chained index vs. other OMB indices.
Unless specifically stated otherwise, all fiscal discussions in this essay are couched in terms of Fiscal 2000 dollars, with inflation adjustments according to the OMB GDP (chained) Price Index.
Figure 1 shows the constant-dollar budget for NASA’s first 50 years, 1959-2008, in Fiscal 2000 dollars, and includes the assumption that the agency will be funded in Fiscal 2008 at the level of the President’s request. Data for other fiscal years is historical. The anomalous funding bump in Fiscal 1977 is due to the inclusion of a fifth “transition quarter” in that year, since in 1976 the fiscal year boundary was shifted from 1 July to 1 October, where it remains today. Major events in NASA’s history – the “Apollo Peak”, the post-Apollo aerospace depression, and the supplemental provided by the Congress in response to the Challenger disaster, are all clearly visible in Fig. 1. (Click on image to see full size.
As seen, NASA today is funded at a constant-dollar level slightly higher than the agency’s historical average. With proposed growth in the President’s budget for Fiscal 2008-12 roughly matching the anticipated rate of inflation over the next several years, agency funding is expected to remain slightly above the 50-year average.
In an attempt to offer a reasonable, but conservative, vision for government civil space activities, let us assume that NASA continues, in Fiscal 2013 and beyond, to be funded in constant dollars at the average level of the President’s request for Fiscal 2008-12. This is illustrated in Figure 2, with the average out-year budget assumed to be $14.2 billion in Fiscal 2000 dollars. We in the space community will certainly hope for more, but we should not expect less. More properly, we should expect to perform in such a manner – actually delivering a bold, exciting, efficient and effective space program, instead of PowerPoint charts with hopes and dreams – that policymakers do not want to provide less!
The year-to-year budget profile will show some variability, of course, but we should expect considerably more strategic and fiscal stability than was evidenced in the agency’s first few decades. Minor annual variations should not affect the larger picture; on the five- to 15-year cycle of developmental space programs and projects, it is the average level of funding which is the most significant parameter. The total funding received by the agency over a significant period, a decade or more, together with stability of strategic goals, largely determines what can be accomplished.
Figure 3 offers a different view of historical and projected NASA funding for the past and future 50 years. Funding is aggregated by decade, and incorporates the assumption of a stable constant-dollar budget embodied in Figure 2. Figure 4 provides a similar view, with funding aggregated in 15-year intervals and constant inflation-adjusted funding assumed through 2063. This 15-year assessment period is particularly convenient, since essentially all Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and Skylab development and operations are captured within the first 15 years of NASA’s history.
Figures 3 and 4 offer what might be a new perspective for many. From a decadal viewpoint, the “Apollo peak” in NASA funding, regarded by so many as the agency’s halcyon period, is a myth. In truth, NASA received funding well above its historical average level for only five years, 1964-68, followed by a lengthy and debilitating reduction. But when averaged over decadal or fifteen-year time scales, the nation’s civil space program has experienced no particularly noteworthy funding peaks. The highest historical funding period was actually in the decade (or 15-year interval) centered on the early 1990s, not during Apollo. Further, if we assume funding stability in constant dollars as shown in Fig. 2, the total in every subsequent decade will match that of the Apollo development decade, 1959-68. Expressed in a slightly different way, NASA could carry out a complete Apollo-scale effort every 15 years between the present day and the 100th anniversary of Sputnik.
Let us now address another time-honored belief about the Apollo era. When we talk about an “Apollo-scale effort,” it is important to understand that, contrary to conventional wisdom, we are not talking about an agency devoted exclusively to human exploration. The funding record clearly shows that the “Apollo era” was actually quite a lot more than just that.
In the Apollo development decade of 1959-68, human spaceflight received 63% of the budget. Funding specifically for Apollo from its inception in Fiscal 1961 to its completion in Fiscal 1973 was about $105 billion in Fiscal 2000 dollars. If Mercury ($1.9 billion), Gemini ($5.1 billion) and Skylab ($12 billion) are included, the entire human spaceflight program from 1959-73 received about $125 billion, or 61% of the $206 billion allocated to NASA during this period. Little has changed in this regard; today, the President’s Fiscal 2008 budget request assigns 62% of NASA’s funding to human spaceflight.
The list of achievements in both aeronautics and space science from1959-73 is long and impressive. Aeronautical accomplishments of this era include 199 research flights of the three X-15 rocket planes, the development and flight testing of a half-dozen lifting-body designs, groundbreaking work in computational fluid dynamics, development of the supercritical wing and the digital fly-by-wire flight control system, and (in conjunction with the Air Force) major roles in the XB-70 and YF12A programs. The “Apollo era” was a true golden age for aeronautics research, which was allocated 6% of the NASA budget from 1959-68.
In space science the list of accomplishments is, if anything, even more impressive. The “Apollo era” saw dozens of Explorer missions including the Radio Astronomy Explorer and Atmospheric Explorer series; a dozen Pioneer missions including Pioneers 10 and 11 to Jupiter and Saturn; Ranger 1-9; Surveyor 1-7; Mariner 1-10; the Orbiting Solar Observatory, Orbiting Geophysical Observatory, and Orbiting Astronomical Observatory series, as well as most of the money for two Viking missions to Mars, launched in 1975. The TIROS, NIMBUS, and ESSA series pioneered the development of weather satellites. The “Apollo era” was also a golden age for space science, which received 17% of the NASA budget from 1959-68.
About 10% of the 1959-68 budget was devoted to space technology development, including space communications technology, and 4% was devoted to “Other”; i.e., university support and cross-agency activities.
The summary below shows a “then and now” comparison. In contrast to oft-repeated claims, human spaceflight is not growing relative to other portions of the NASA portfolio, and is not “eating everyone’s lunch.”
Category 1959-68 FY08 Request
Human Space Flight 63% 62%
Science 17% 32%
Aeronautics 6% 3%
Comm & Space Tech. 10% 0%
Cross-Agency Supt. 4% 3%
The historical record provides clear evidence that it is possible to have robust, co-existing programs of human exploration, space science, aeronautics, and technology development in a single agency funded at a level essentially the same as we presently receive. So, what might the future offer?
Let us assume for the present discussion that over the long term, manned spaceflight will continue to receive 62% of the NASA budget. Again assuming inflation-adjusted funding at $14.2 billion/year on average, it follows that human spaceflight will be allocated $8.8 billion annually, or $132 billion in each 15-year period, in Fiscal 2000 dollars.
Next, we must recognize that “the future” really does not, and cannot, start until after 2010. Until then, we are engaged in completing a long-standing commitment to the International Space Station, with no other option besides the Space Shuttle to do it. At present funding levels, we cannot afford to develop new human spaceflight systems without the money which becomes available following Shuttle retirement.
Despite the concerns of those – emphatically including myself – who worry about the gap in human spaceflight between the retirement of the Space Shuttle and the availability of the new Constellation systems, Orion and Ares, we must stay on our present course and retire the Shuttle in 2010, if there is to be a future for human spaceflight. The Shuttle offers truly stunning capability, greater than anything we will see for a long time, but the expense of owning and operating it, or any similar system, is simply too great. Any new system, to be successful, must offer a much, much lower fixed cost of ownership. The Space Shuttle was designed to be cost effective at a weekly flight rate, a goal that was never credible, if for no reason other than the fact that the funding for so many payloads to fly on it was never remotely available. And, if there were a predictable requirement for 50-60 government-sponsored payloads to be flown annually, that fact should be treated as a market opportunity for a private, not government, space transportation enterprise. A government human spaceflight system must be designed to be cost effective at the half-dozen or so flights per year that we can expect to fly.
But, if the bad news is that “the future” doesn’t start until after 2010, the good news is, that is only four years away. And in the 45 years thereafter, by the centennial anniversary of Sputnik, we can expect to receive at least as much money as was necessary for Apollo, three times over. And despite the limited funding for Exploration in today’s NASA budget, we will have a bit of a head start, because we’re making considerable progress toward the deployment of Orion and Ares, even while flying out the Shuttle/ISS manifest. So what will we do with this money?
Most of the next 15 years will be spent re-creating capabilities we once had, and discarded. The next lunar transportation system will offer somewhat more capability than Apollo. It will carry four people to the lunar surface instead of two, and for a minimum duration of a week, rather than a maximum duration of three days. But in all fairness, the capabilities inherent in Orion, Ares I, and Ares V are not qualitatively different than those of Apollo, and certainly are not beyond the evolutionary capability of Apollo-era systems, had we taken that course. But we did not, and the path back out into the solar systems begins, inevitably, with a lengthy effort to develop systems comparable to those we once owned. It will cost us about $85 billion in Fiscal 2000 currency to get to the seventh lunar landing by 2020.
The above assessment is, for many, a bitter pill to swallow. Not only is it depressing for advocates of human exploration to face the fact that so many years will be spent plowing old ground, but there is also the question of why it will take so long. Again, the answer is captured in the funding profile. We are indeed receiving today, in any given 15-year period, the same real-dollar funding as in the 15 years of the Apollo era, but we are not receiving it on the same schedule. The brief, enormous, funding peak of mid-1960s allowed the Apollo systems to be developed and procured in parallel. Today’s systems must be developed serially. And that is why the job will not be done, this time, in eight years. But that is also why we will not incur the disastrous divestiture of talent and technology that occurred in the 15 years after Apollo, between the early ‘70s and the late ‘80s.
In the long run, to return to the Moon or go to Mars and beyond, stability is to be valued more than going in the shortest possible time. As we move forward into our next 50 years, this must be fully understood by both policymakers and the public, or we will forever be answering the question as to why we work so slowly compared to the Apollo generation. Civil space exploration beyond LEO must have the stability in strategy and funding that was lacking the first time around. This will only be provided by policymakers if a clear link is established between predictable results and predictable purpose, strategy, and funding. I believe we will succeed in forging this new paradigm – the opposite of the Apollo “man, Moon, decade” paradigm – but we must devote considerable attention to doing so.
What will be done with the lunar transportation capability that is being developed? By 2020 we will have this capability, and with it choices to make. We can choose between a lunar program devoted to sortie missions, or one devoted to building up a lunar outpost. And we can choose between the level of effort we intend to focus on lunar activities vs. initiating development for Mars missions. In company with other space agencies around the world, we at NASA have focused on an outpost-centered lunar exploration strategy. I believe this will be preferred over a sortie-only strategy for the reasons that it provides a much more effective avenue for international partnership, and because it provides the greatest opportunity to learn on the Moon what we need to know to go to Mars. But, of course, nothing prevents a sortie mission to any location on the Moon that is of sufficient interest to justify the expenditure of funds. So again, let us look at what is fiscally possible.
It is to be hoped and, I believe, expected that the next era of space exploration will be international in scope, in much the same fashion as the development of the International Space Station today. Whatever might be said of the ISS program – and there cannot be much that has been left unsaid – it has pioneered a path to the development of a major international space facility. There are lessons learned in so doing that we will take with us out into the Solar System. These lessons will be the most enduring, and ultimately most valuable, contribution the ISS can make. We will be applying them on Mars, fifty years from now.
The United States is developing the transportation system which will allow access to the lunar surface for the first time in a half-century. This is the highest “barrier to entry” for exploration beyond LEO, one which essentially exhausts the contribution that we can make to a lunar outpost in the next 15 years. If there is to be a lunar presence significantly beyond merely getting there and getting back, if there is to be a human tended outpost, much of the early capability must be developed by international partners. But outpost sustainability, at least in the early years, will largely depend upon Orion and Ares.
I believe that by 2021-22 we will have regained enough experience in lunar spaceflight operations that we will be able to undertake a modest, but sustained and sustainable, program of lunar outpost development and utilization. I will also venture to say that by 2022 the ISS will be definitely behind us. We will have learned from it what we can, but there will come a time when the value of the work being done onboard the facility will be judged not to be worth the cost of sustaining its aging systems, and it will be brought down. I don’t know when this will occur, and I am not sure it is predictable other than in a statistical sense, but I believe that by 2022 or thereabouts it will have happened. And when it does, the resources which have been used for ISS support can be applied to the support of a lunar outpost.
For the sake of argument and nothing more, let us say that in 2022 we will begin a sustained lunar program of exploration and development consisting of three manned missions (two outpost crew rotations and one sortie) and one unmanned cargo mission per year, utilizing three Orion/Ares I vehicles and four Ares V launches. Present projections assume a cargo capacity of six metric tons on a lander carrying four crew members, and twenty metric tons on a cargo lander, at a marginal cost of about $750 million for a human mission and $525 million for a cargo mission. The marginal cost in Fiscal 2000 dollars for this nominal lunar program will thus be about $3 billion.
These marginal costs do not include an allocation of the fixed costs of production and operations which will be assigned to each flight. Let us assume a fixed-cost support base of $1 billion annually, about a third of that for the Shuttle today, equivalent to roughly 6,000 full-time employees at average Fiscal 2000 labor rates. We should all work to make it much less, but this is an appropriately conservative estimate for the present. This yields a sustained lunar program costing no more than $4 billion/year, leaving $4.8 billion annually in the human spaceflight account to be applied to new development priorities.
By the 2020’s we will be well positioned to begin the Mars effort in earnest. The lunar campaign will have stabilized; a human-tended outpost will be well established; we will have extensive long-duration space experience in both zero- and low-gravity conditions, and it will be time to bundle these lessons and move on to Mars – which does not imply that we will bring lunar activities to an end. Quite the contrary; my prediction is that the Moon will prove to be far more interesting, and far more relevant to human affairs, than many today are prepared to believe. But by the early 2020s, it will be time to assign a stable level of support for lunar activities, and set out for Mars.
The development of the Orion/Ares I/Ares V transportation system is being done in a way that provides a substantial capability for subsequent Mars expeditions. In particular, we expect the Orion crew vehicle (or a modest upgrade of it) to provide the primary transportation from Earth to whatever transportation node is used for the assembly of the Mars ship, and to be the reentry vehicle in which the crew returns home at the end of the voyage. The Ares V cargo vehicle will provide, with no more than a half-dozen launches, the 500 metric tons or so which is thought to be necessary for a Mars mission, based on present-day studies. As a perspective on scale, this mass is about 25% greater than that of the completed ISS.
It is difficult to estimate the non-recurring cost of developing a Mars mission that is initiated some 20 or more years in the future, and especially so when a specific mission architecture has not yet been formulated. But reasoned estimates can be made. A small group co-chaired by Skylab and Shuttle astronaut Owen Garriott and me made an attempt to do so in a study conducted for The Planetary Society in 2004. While necessarily omitting many important details, a reasonable approach based on mission mass, consistent with modern cost estimation algorithms, was outlined. It was concluded that, following a decadal hardware development cycle, nine Mars missions could be conducted over a 20-year period for a total cost of approximately $120 billion in Fiscal 2000 dollars, or $6 billion/year, significantly less than we are spending on Shuttle/ISS today. (If this seems low, it should be noted that the development cost of the heavy-lift transportation system is allocated to the earlier lunar program. The Mars program would pay only the marginal cost of transportation.)
Allocating an across-the-board 30% reserve at this stage puts the cost of a 30-year Mars exploration program at $156 billion in Fiscal 2000 dollars. Of this, approximately $70 billion consists of development cost, with reserve. If $4.8 billion/year is available in the human spaceflight account, then the Mars mission development cycle will require about 15 years. Thus, if we begin development work in 2021, we will be able to touch down on the Martian surface in about 2037, with follow-on missions every 26 months thereafter for the next two decades.
So there we have it, at least for the U.S. civil space program. At present levels of real-dollar funding, by 2057 we can celebrate the 35th anniversary of a lunar base, which will be growing in capability at the rate of 30 metric tons per year, even without assuming any International Partner contribution to logistics, which I believe is overly conservative.
We can celebrate the 100th Sputnik anniversary in conjunction with the 20th anniversary of the first human Mars landing. And we can do all of these things even with what I would consider the pessimistic assumption that we receive no more money, in constant dollars, than we do today. Indeed, there should be money available for missions to interesting Near-Earth Objects, a separate challenge which we will come to understand offers huge opportunities for those seeking to develop a spacefaring civilization.
That’s what I see ahead for the American space program. What about the rest of the world? Both Russia and China have domestic human spaceflight capability today; indeed, the ISS program would be in very difficult straits without Russian crew and cargo services. Other nations or alliances – Europe, Japan, India, Brazil, others – could develop similar capability within a few years of a decision to do so. For advanced nations today, possessing the capability for human spaceflight to LEO is a political, not a technical, decision. But going beyond LEO, to the Moon, is a problem of a different order. And yet, the Moon is a necessary first step outward for any nation seeking a spacefaring future. So let us look at the resources required to pursue such a future.
The development phase of Apollo required about $80-85 billion in Fiscal 2000 currency, about the same as we predict will be required to redevelop similar capabilities. Constellation systems will, as stated earlier, offer substantially more performance than Apollo, but it does seem as if an effort of approximately this magnitude is necessary, no matter what. There is an inherent “knee” of the cost vs. performance curve; it takes a lot of effort to get to the Moon, after which additional capability can be added at somewhat less marginal cost.
So let’s assume a minimum required effort of about $80 billion is required to develop a basic lunar capability. In the U.S., at approximate average aerospace labor rates for Fiscal 2000, this is equivalent to an effort of roughly 600,000 man-years, or 40,000 people for 15 years. Other nations will likely operate in a somewhat “leaner” fashion than is characteristic of the U.S. aerospace culture; I will always remember Max Faget’s comment to me that “we could have done Apollo with a lot fewer people, but we couldn’t have done it with any more.” But it remains likely that an effort similar to Apollo will be required for any nation or society attempting to reach the Moon for the first time, provided it has access to the necessary industrial base and an adequate workforce.
Many nations or alliances can, as a matter of political choice, decide to mount such an effort. Europe has a population 50% greater than that of the U.S., yet spends on a per-capita basis only about a fifth of what we spend on space. A future European generation could choose to do otherwise. India has a middle class population equal in size to the entire U.S. population, and produces engineering graduates equal to the best anywhere. Chinese space agency representatives have remarked publicly that, today, some 200,000 engineers and technicians are engaged in space-related work. And of course Russia could begin the development of a lunar transportation system today, essentially at its discretion, given its existing spaceflight capability and the recent and continuing flow of energy money into that country.
By the mid-to-late 2020’s, at the latest, several nations will have the independent capability to reach the Moon, and will be doing so. My hope is that the various programs can be bent more toward a cooperative than a competitive agenda. I believe that nations will find it to be in their interests to cooperate in lunar exploration and development, as they do in Antarctica today. But it will also be true that each nation to develop key elements of space infrastructure, especially transportation but also navigation and communications assets, will be unlikely to set them aside in favor of reliance on others. For the next generation, maybe as much as two decades, the U.S. may well be the only nation capable of reaching the Moon on its own. But much beyond that, and I suspect that we’ll be there with others. The Moon will be within the grasp of a significant number of advanced nations. It will be the next big leap, a voyage to Mars, where international cooperation is a requirement, rather than an option.
What will be the role of commercial space entities in human exploration? By “commercial space,” I mean space business enterprises which develop a marketable capability while dealing at “arms length” with the government; i.e., largely without the financial backing and close government supervision which has historically characterized the space industry. The government will, at least initially, still be the major customer for such enterprises. Whether or not an enterprise is part of the commercial space arena depends not on the identity of its customers, but on the nature of its interactions with that customer.
I expect that the role of commercial space in human space exploration will be significant, and possibly transforming, over the next five decades and beyond. We at NASA are presently engaged in an effort to determine whether it is possible for a commercial firm to develop orbital space transportation capabilities without the close supervision of the government. The latter approach, through what are commonly known as “prime contracts” with industry, has been the traditional approach over the last five decades for state-of-the-art projects in the defense and aerospace industry. It produces successful outcomes with reasonable certainty and at great expense.
I believe it is obvious to most that, if a desired product lies within the state of the art, it can be provided with substantially greater efficiency by the commercial sector than by the government. There is little comparative data obtained under controlled conditions to support this claim or to estimate the efficiency factor involved. But, to me, the limited data and my own experience points to an efficiency factor of three to seven in favor of the commercial sector. Whatever the factor, the likely cost benefit to the government of commercial procurement of space goods and services, once it is possible, cannot and will not be ignored. But, again, the crucial assumption is that the intended product lies well within the state of the art. When this assumption cannot be met, close government involvement will continue to be required. Commercial firms simply cannot be successful if engaged in a research upon whose success their revenue depends.
Some have opined that the scale and difficulty of spaceflight is such that it will remain an inherently governmental enterprise for the foreseeable future. I do not share this view. For me, the question is more properly “when,” not “if,” the state of the art in astronautics will permit a private enterprise to develop a successful orbital transportation capability without the direct support – and the accompanying onerous and expensive oversight – of a government prime contract.
We at NASA are attempting to determine whether this date has in fact arrived. By providing “seed money” in the form of Space Act Agreements for two Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) entities, we hope to stimulate the attainment of entrepreneurial commercial space transportation. If such capability is successfully demonstrated, we can then procure such services in a manner more characteristic of the economy at large than is the usual case in the government-driven aerospace sector. We at NASA are prepared to stand down government systems as and when commercial capability becomes available.
Whether or not the specific COTS initiative is successful, the commercial space business model will eventually become so. A long-term government sponsored space exploration program carries with it the implicit demand for many tons of cargo logistics and crew transport, offering a stable and tempting market niche for industry. Some enterprises will be surely successful in their attempts to service this market, and from there commercial space activity will bloom. In addition to transportation, space exploration implies the need for communications, navigation, power systems, and other support infrastructure. These requirements will be targeted by specific firms as services to be provided commercially, rather than by government.
I believe that the future for U.S. civil space exploration that I have outlined here can be attained with the resources that will be available to NASA by means of conventional government appropriations and acquisition strategies. But I also believe that this is just about as much as we can achieve with those resources, unless we can effect real changes in our methods of doing business. If we want to do more, if we want a richer future, if we are unsatisfied by the relatively modest program of inner solar system exploration I have envisioned here, there must be a change in how we go about it. Embracing the possibilities inherent in commercial space transactions is one such method.
What else do we have to do to bring about this future? Most of what we need to accomplish the goals set forth here has already been discussed, implicitly or explicitly, in connection with budgetary issues, but it may be helpful to concentrate some attention on the matter.
The most important factor for future success is stability in purpose, strategy, requirements, and funding. Apollo funding was unstable in both directions. The huge rate of early growth allowed the Apollo goal to be met; the abrupt cessation of funding as the goal drew within sight produced strategic damage that remains unto the present day.
To be successful, program managers (whether in government or industry) need stability. Additionally, they need the knowledge that there will be such stability; defensive planning is inherently wasteful.
Stability of purpose, a result of agreement upon priorities, is as important as funding stability. Managers must have reasonable and effective control of what is done with the resources – people, money, and time – entrusted to them. If funding is in fact stable, then additional money will not be available to solve problems which are, inevitably, encountered in any state-of-the-art development program. Managers must have the latitude to sacrifice or defer lower priority efforts in order to protect more important ones. This in turn requires, at a minimum, broad agreement on what those priorities are. When this cannot be obtained, every programmatic overrun and every minor budget variation produces divisive political infighting over what will be sacrificed, and what will not. A common result is that nothing is sacrificed and all programmatic content is preserved, but at a slower pace. This produces an inherent inefficiency in the execution of all programs, resulting in more overruns, etc., in a degenerating spiral. It is difficult, and hugely wasteful, to carry out a program in such an environment.
There is another aspect of stability that is equally crucial to bring about the future outlined here. It involves, once again, a lesson to be gained from the past. This is the absolute necessity of fully utilizing the systems we develop, at huge expense, rather than discarding them in favor of something which is appealing because it is new. This aspect of stability has had a direct impact on NASA’s ability to maintain stability of both purpose and funding for decades.
We must treat our space systems as we have always treated our airplanes. Successful aircraft designs, from general aviation airplanes to the highest-performance military fighters, are evolved, upgraded, and used for decades. Just as with DC-3s, B-52s, and many other aircraft, we need to understand that Orion and Ares will be flown by the grandkids of the first astronauts who take them into space. We simply cannot again afford the strategic distraction, the wasted money, the squandered talent, and the lost time of building a new human spaceflight system, and then using it for only sixteen missions.
Once again, a look at the budgetary history provides a sobering lesson for the future, a sobering view of “what might have been.” Let’s recycle to the early 1970s, a time of budgetary starvation for NASA, a time when we did not yet have the Space Shuttle, but did still have the Apollo systems – the Saturn I-B and Saturn V, the Apollo command/service modules (CSM), the lunar lander, and the Skylab system. All of these things were in existence in 1973, having been created in that seminal first 15 years of our agency’s history.
Make no mistake; these systems were far from perfect. They were expensive to develop and expensive to operate. Our parents and grandparents, metaphorically speaking, did not really know quite what they were doing when they set out to accept President Kennedy’s challenge to go to the Moon. They learned as they went along. But what they eventually built worked, and worked well. And it could have kept working at a price we could afford.
Let’s look at some recurring costs in dollars then and now. All costs include both hardware and mission operations, and are at the high end of the range of possibilities, because they take no advantage of stable rates of production. Fiscal 2000 costs are approximate, obtained by inflating programs in the aggregate, rather than tracking and inflating separate expenditures of real-year dollars.
Element Real-Year $ M FY 2000 $ M
Apollo CSM 50 160
Apollo Lunar Module 120 400
Apollo Lunar Mission 720 2400
Saturn I-B 35 120
Saturn V 325 1100
Skylab Cluster 275 925
Let’s assume that we had kept flying with the systems we had at the time, that we had continued to execute two manned Apollo lunar missions every year, as was done in 1971-72. This would have cost about $4.8 billion annually in Fiscal 2000 dollars.
Further, let us assume that we had established a continuing program of space station activities in Earth orbit, built on the Apollo CSM, Saturn I-B, and Skylab systems. Four crew rotation launches per year, plus a new Skylab cluster every five years to augment or replace existing modules, would have cost about $1.5 billion/year. This entire program of six manned flights per year, two of them to the Moon, would have cost about $6.3 billion annually in Fiscal 2000 dollars. The average annual NASA budget in the 15 difficult years from 1974-88 was $10.5 billion; with 60% of it allocated to human spaceflight, there would have been sufficient funding to continue a stable program of lunar exploration as well as the development of Earth orbital infrastructure. I suggest that this would have been a better strategic alternative than the choices that were in fact made, almost 40 years ago.
After a time, as NASA budgets once again improved, we would have begun to concentrate our lunar activity around an outpost, and we would have used cargo missions to emplace the outpost equipment. A modified Apollo Lunar Module descent stage, with extra fuel and cargo replacing the ascent stage, could have been used for the purpose. The Saturn V could deliver two such vehicles with a single launch. So, over time, we could have built up an early lunar outpost, or smaller ones at different places of interest. By the present day, using what we had with minimal modifications – and I will remind us all that the Soyuz systems of that era are still flying – we would have a vast store of experience and a significant amount of lunar infrastructure. When the civil space budget eventually improved, as it did, we would have been well positioned to begin development of a Mars mission. And in the meantime, without doubt, we would have continued to modify, refine, and incrementally improve the old Apollo designs, to the point where they would have provided greatly enhanced effectiveness by the present day.
If we had done all this, we would be on Mars today, not writing about it as a subject for “the next 50 years.” We would have decades of experience operating long-duration space systems in Earth orbit, and similar decades of experience in exploring and learning to utilize the Moon. This essay on “the next 50 years” would be quite different than the one I am offering here. I think most of us will agree that it would have been a better one.
Now, nothing is as easy as planning in hindsight, nor as permanent as a lost opportunity. I offer the “alternative history” above not to throw stones at policymakers long departed from the scene, but to inform future decisions. If we ignore these lessons, we will surely repeat them.
The vision of the next 50 years in space that I have outlined here is not a flight of fancy. It does not require a course change from present understandings, nor does it require extensive development of costly new technology. It is a logical, incremental, stable, sustainable plan that can be executed with realistically attainable budgets. For these reasons, I believe that it will be done, and done as envisioned here. We really can celebrate the 100th anniversary of Sputnik with the 20th anniversary of the first human landing on Mars. It is up to us to make it so.
-- Michael D. Griffin is administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Mr. Griffin's article is to be commended for not only what it says about the future of human space exploration, but also for what it implies about the squandered past. His article is confirmation finally that the Space Shuttle program has been nothing short of an unmitigated disaster for the Human Space Exploration activities of this country over the past 3 decades. The consequence is that most people of my generation may not live long enough to witness a human set foot on Mars. What a pity! I suppose there is a lesson somewhere here for both nations and individuals.
Posted by: Lakshmi Kantha | March 14, 2007 at 06:40 PM
Orio and Ares are a duplication , fifty years later of Apollo and saturn and they will produce the same outcome. A few flights, end of money and another fifty years stop of space development.
The reason?
Very simple , they represent a wrong strategy in space planning.
They are earth-based, meaning we are at the bottom of a gravity well and every pound out of here is extremely costly and limited to really allow space to be developed by private enterprise like the american frontier. We must change completely our approach by turning to a space based space program and capability, utilizing resources already in space and from there develop the Moon or mars capability.
Asteroid deflection technology, exostructures built in space, mineral transformation capability with nanotech, robotics development, those are the technologies to develop and build a space based approach .
Such approach can save 90% of future costs and 70% of time in our next missions to the Moon nad mars and at the same time assure the creation of an affordable space transportation and infrastrucural system.
Posted by: gigigavi | March 14, 2007 at 08:48 PM
Griffin should admit we never went to the moon and it was fake. At least there are better studios to film it this time.
Posted by: David Moon | March 14, 2007 at 09:56 PM
What Mike needs to understand is that he in his position at NASA is setting the pace, the cost, and the direction of NASA's exploration plans for the next 30 years just as surely as James Fletcher did in 1970 with the Shuttle.
With that, Mike is putting into place a plan that is extremely similar to the one that he put in place in 1992 as the head of exploration at the time and the great fear is that the results will be the same, when in 2008 if the presidency changes hands, there will be other priorities, much like in 1993.
If Mike is able to get enough contracts going to set in stone the direction of Ares 1/Orion, NASA will be saddled with yet another expensive manned spaceflight system that will consume a vast proportion of the resources of the agency. Saying that the Ares V only costs $750 per human mission is just as disingenous as saying that the marginal cost of a Shuttle mission was only $100 million dollars. Mike you know that this is a dodge and yet you continue forward with it.
Mars? Forget Mars, we will never go to the Moon with this direction and fixed cost structure. Already your internal teams at the centers are cutting back on the capabilities of the lunar outpost and have eliminated your cargo missions that were in the ESAS report. We are rapidlly headed toward the failed First Lunar Outpost design which is not much more than what ISS is today, a base without the funds to use it, a base with no purpose, no money, and no future. I guess we can continue on to Mars from that auspicious start.
You won't listen to this reply, you have thrown people out of your office for telling you this so there is little chance that you will listen to an anonymous (but informed on what is going on) reply. That the reply is anonymous is merely symptomatic of the fear that any voice other than your own is persecuted and run out of the agency.
The only ray of light is that you will be gone in a couple of years and since the Ares V won't be under development then, maybe a rational program to get us back to the Moon can be constructed that is cost effective as well as capable.
In 2004 the president of the United States announced the Vision for Space Exploration. In the time since then you have managed to remove the vision from the VSE. Space is to important to our future to end up with that fate.
Posted by: Anonymous Space Lurker | March 14, 2007 at 11:12 PM
"Stability of purpose, a result of agreement upon priorities, is as important as funding stability."
Why ignore the past 50 years of U.S. civil space history and defy the nature of democracy? Why project level funding 50 years into the future and use that as a basis for planning? Why insist on revisiting and reliving the same failed Apollo and SEI technical and political strategies? Why give up a narrow political window to get actual human space exploration hardware underway before 2008? For the sake of reinventing the EELV wheel? Why not learn from the unstable past and develop a human space exploration plan that is flexible and sustainable over multiple elections?
Pathetic...
Posted by: anonymous | March 14, 2007 at 11:50 PM
This article is a hoot.
sort of paraphrasing "Cant predict the next fifty years, but gee the last 30 sure look pretty constant and if we go back to the Moon the next 20 will look about the same way."
30 plus 20 equals 50.
50 years after Orville and Wilbur was 1953. Human spaceflight on a zillion more dollars spent by the federal government has made about 1/20th the progress aviation made.
why? The Agency Mike heads.
Robert G. Oler
Posted by: Robert G. Oler | March 14, 2007 at 11:51 PM
Robert Oler Is a known moron and liar. Ignore anything he posts.
Posted by: Anon | March 15, 2007 at 03:16 AM
Mr. Oler claims that he is a F-14 pilot and that his wife also flies the same jet. Liar liar pants on fire.
Posted by: Tom Kat | March 15, 2007 at 03:20 AM
The development of commercial space, which is bound to go into unpredictable directions, is the wild card of any attempt to forecast the "next fifty years" in space.
Posted by: MarkWhittington | March 15, 2007 at 07:53 AM
Mike Griffin has given a detailed account of where NASA came from and clearly describes the path on which he has firmly set NASA. Setting foot on Mars in 2037 is disappointingly late, yet the key point is that it can be done within highly conservative assumptions. This is a great baseline from which rational discussion can begin; now all we have to do is work to make that date sooner, later won't matter to most of us :)
Posted by: cIclops | March 15, 2007 at 08:54 AM
Micro-Gravity Flight Operations Using Parabolic Aircraft
NASA Administrator Mike Griffin states “once commercial technologies are developed, NASA will stand down”.
Dr. Peter Diamandis, CEO ZERO-Gravity Corporation and operator of G-Force One, the first commercial parabolic aircraft is a visionary with dreams of spaceflight he turns into reality. His powers of persuasion and ability to generate investors are second to none. Few men are his equal at understanding, promoting and delivering real results in the personal spaceflight industry. The reality however is that dreams do not always make good business sense and as Diamandis readily admits, ZERO-G generates costs at twice the rate it generates revenue. Thankfully, ZERO-G investors are tolerant believers and continue to fund the company.
Financially speaking, based on the costs of operation (before the additional $10 million investment when flight costs were not fixed but incremental), the company would have to fly over fifty trips a year to break even. With new fixed costs to cover a dedicated airplane, as opposed to an "only pay for it when you use it airplane", the break even number of flights per year triples with seat prices at the $3000 level. This means ZERO-G must fly 150 flights a year, a far cry from the 27 flights it flew in 2005.
What ZERO-G needs is a contract from NASA to fly two flights a week training astronauts and conducting micro-gravity experiments to qualify hardware for on-orbit flight operations. The switch to ZERO-G can be justified by transferring the existing NASA micro-gravity budget and flights operated by NASA DC-9 aircraft to commercially proven ZERO-G aircraft.
The $2.5 million revenue generated by transferring NASA funds to ZERO-G will give a life sustaining boost to commercial parabolic flight operations much like the U.S. Postal Service did for the fledgling airline business in the 1920's by offering airmail contracts when passengers were scarce.
Let's all hope Michael Griffin at NASA supports the transfer of NASA funds for micro-gravity flight operations technology to ZERO Gravity Corporation, a proven commercial provider as is mandated by Congress.
It is the right thing to do.
Posted by: Glen Gates | March 15, 2007 at 09:40 AM
In hindsight it appears that the space shuttle program was a gravy train for contractors, which delayed the next phase of space exploration and cost fourteen lives.
Posted by: Gary Samano | March 15, 2007 at 11:56 AM
The biggest mistake Nasa ever made was scraping the Saturn five for the shuttle. remember sky lab? How big it was? Now imagin 5 or six sky labs being launched and linked together. we could have had a bigger and better space atation in one year...six launches. Low earth orbit? The staurn fives second stage alone could do that[ remember the link up with the russians or the trips to sky lab? The Saturn five was the one launch system that never had a faliure even in testing. Mass production would have driven down the cost of space launches. Instead our so called space truck [shuttle] has to be rebuilt after every space shot. No imagine a Mars ship made up of modules the size of sky lab. Link 8 together and another two filled with fuel and we might have been standing on Mars ten years ago. Just because it's old doesn't mean it has no use. Rember the DC3 still flying still working after 70 years. Or the B-52 that will still be flying when it is 100 years old! Perhaps Nasa should just dig out The Saturn Fives blue prints? Or is the rumor they were all destroyed in order to getr the shuttle thru congress true?
Posted by: davids | March 15, 2007 at 12:34 PM
At least Griffin admits that the shuttle was an economic failure. It's costs are far too high. Unfortunately, I feel that Griffin is marching down a similar path with Ares I, Ares V, and Orion. I just don't see how these combined programs will result in needing fewer people than the shuttle program currently requires.
Posted by: Jeff Findley | March 15, 2007 at 01:35 PM
To answer the "Saturn V blueprint" question: we have enough info to generally build them, but have basically lost all the "redlines" (final changes) that made it work. That, with the costs and delays of reestablishing and certifying new development, testing and manufacturing, makes recreating Saturn problematic.
I tend to agree with the approach of adapting the Shuttle stuff we have, but I think we've lost the advantage of doing that by using such highly modified components and configurations as we're now doing. See http://www.directlauncher.com/ and http://www.teamvisioninc.com/services-consulting-space-exploration-optimization.htm .
Posted by: Greg Zsidisin | March 15, 2007 at 02:34 PM
Glen Gates | March 15, 2007 at 09:40 AM
The fact that Griffin more or less wont do what you suggest speaks volumes of his dedication to commercial space.
IE it is non existant.
Robert
Posted by: Robert G. Oler | March 15, 2007 at 03:16 PM
There was a variant of the Shuttle derived system presented by former Lockheed Martin and Saturn development team veteran David Christensen.
This system was truly shuttle derived and would have had a clear path with great commonality between the systems all the way from ISS crew rotation to the Mars launcher.
The folks at headquarters and MSFC never let the design make it to Mike's desk.
Posted by: Dennis Ray Wingo | March 15, 2007 at 06:25 PM
I do not think that looking to the Apollo Era is the right historical analogy. We are about where Portugal and China were in the early 15th century regarding Ocean travel. However, it is Spain that developed the New World and did so with riches derived from the new regions themselves. The Netherlands, France and England enter the competition to cut into the new stream of wealth that is changing the balance of power in Europe. International competition in Europe drives that relatively backward region to Modernize before the rest of the World. thus, a whole new situation at the Global level emerges in terms of the balance of wealth and power. China was the technology leader and could have done it first, but did not, thus history as we know it.
So, I ask Michael Griffith why he cannot envision a growing and expansive space program that pays for itself, at least for the R and D to develop new technology? I see a new space race involving the Moon that includes a series of true space transportation breakthroughs.
Don't ask what it will cost to get to the Moon or Mars as an end in itself? Ask what we will be doing on the Moon and how the balance of payments will work out. What wealth will be generated, by and for whom as we increase payload capacity and efficiency? What were the competitive economics that produced the Clipper ship, and then took us to the steamship era? Why don't we use nuclear power for commercial shipping even today, long after the Navy has mastered that technology?
I think that the Moon will become important 40-50 years after the Earth masters fusion energy, there is no more oil to burn for energy production and coal is being phased out due to environmental concerns. Then we will want to be able to mix Deuterium from the oceans of Earth with the Helium-3 that the solar wind deposits on the Moon to produce the ideal Fusion Reactor fuel mix. When the Moon is akin to the Persian Gulf of today in the energy economy - when riches beckon those who would develop and settle the Moon- then one will see the kind of effort that goes into transporting coal and oil today pouring into space travel.
The 50 year projection offered to us by NASA today will look timid indeed at that point, but how about the interim?
NASA's job should be to identify and remove the bottlenecks in the development of space technology of today and set the stage to move to the next generation of capabilities. I think in the chemical rocket era, the bottleneck is the cost of getting supplies of LOX to LEO to refuel Chemical rockets. As long as it takes 90% of your fuel to get to LEO, you can't do much when you have arrived. Add refueling capability in LEO and everything else gets easier. LOX is key since it is 80% of the burden of rocket fuel by weight. It cuts into payload capacity to carry more than is needed to reach orbit and SSTO is not a reasonable goal until one has an in space refueling capability.
The Moon has a much less daunting gravity well than the Earth. At one sixth the gravity of Earth. lifting LOX off the Lunar surface and delivering it to Earth LEO makes sense. The Moon is actually oxygen rich, with lots of oxide ores. What it lacks is hydrogen to turn that resource into water and a readily available power source to enable one to extract oxygen from the rocks. These are tough by manageable problems-worthy challenges. However, success would be richly rewarded.
What will drive the development of the Moon prior to fusion reactors on Earth needing Helium-3 will be the demand for oxygen in LEO. This will be "paid for" in a gas trade of hydrogen from Earth for Moon oxygen, a gas trade system.
With chemical rocket fuel, water production and oxygen production infrastructure in place, then Space Tourism to orbiting hotels and underground hotels on the Moon become acheivable economic challenges.
How do you build a massive space structure? Not bit by bit with a lot of spacewalks, the way NASA built ISS. You do it by sending up sections that are complete and usable on arrival, like Skylab, but can be linked together. Where do you build this structure? Not on Earth, or in LEO. You build it where you have some gravity to hold tools in place and can create a good working environment without space suits but can keep workers protected from cosmic radiation. In the end, one wants to be able to lift sections 5 or 6 times the size of what you can lift from Earth in a single shot as a unit to orbit, and then take it to Earth LEO or GTO.
In short, you need a workshop at about 1/6th the gravity of Earth, with lots of metallic and silicate raw materials locally available. Such a site is to be found on the Moon. Space hotel sized space stations will be assembled in underground lunar chambers in 1/6th G by workers six times as strong as they would be on Earth.
Actually only about a third of the workforce will be on the Moon. Most of it will still be on Earth operating levers and joysticks that manipulate robotic arms and remotely operated production tools of various types. At the speed of light the command to do something will get to the Moon in under 2 seconds and the Earth based worker will be able to see what happened in about 3 seconds. That is an acceptable response lag for a worker trained to be used to it.
Earth and the Moon could be complementary bases for the development of a space faring organization that is willing to reinvest the profits of space based economic activity into the development of new capability and pay its own way to greatness.
Begging for investment funds from a national government with changing priorities is not the way to sustainable growth of a
pioneering organization with a vision to acheive. You must generate investment capital yourself by serving client agencies and paying customers. Then you invest in your vision while seizing opportunities as they arise. An entreprenurial spirit is what is needed.
Government funding will periodically offer one time investment funds to achieve particular ends, or capabilities, and that is a special opportunity. However, a government is unlikely to commit to 30 years of level funding, come what may, come what might-for good and obvious reasons.
Posted by: John M Wilkes | March 15, 2007 at 10:03 PM
In 1956 Robert W. Bussard designed and tested a nuclear fission thermal rocket. In 1972 the government finally stopped the program. This same American genius now claims to have all the science done for practical fusion power and as well as fusion rockets. Bussard claims that the fusion rocket will take 15 years and cost 7 billion dollars. But that is nothing compared to the 5 trillion dollar world energy production market. Bussard estimates that licensing fees alone for his fusion power generation retrofit device will be on the order of 200 billion per year. Developing the fusion rocket is what NASA should be doing now, then in twenty years, we might actually have it.
Posted by: Tony Rusi | March 16, 2007 at 11:13 AM
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this is my first comment on this very intesting blog and, first of all, I wish to suggest a few changes to the blog's layout
the text on both sides is too little and difficult to read with common screens/LCD resolutions
a bigger font-size with less large columns may be better
the space saved resizing the sides' columns should be used for a larger central text to avoid a very long scroll with large posts like the Griffin's article
the central text's font is good and readable but a further step in the font-size may be better (especially for frequent readers)
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Posted by: Gaetano Marano - Italy | March 16, 2007 at 09:21 PM
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I think that ALL predictions of the future (in space and on earth) from space agencies' chiefs, futurologists and sci-fi writers lacks a VERY IMPORTANT (and completely unknown) parameter (on the to of hundreds other unknown variables) that is the (real) evolution of the ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE in the next 20+ years
so far, also the best researches have completely missed the promise of "smart computers" and "human-like androids" and similar goals appear very away to be real, but... (probably) the computing power is already (or pretty close to be) sufficient to build an "artificial brain" and the human-brain-like software may be written in a few years when we will know everything about how the human mind works (that may happen soon)
it's clear that, launch a "smart" Mars probe able to "think" and "take decisions" is VERY MUCH different (and better) that send on Mars (and beyond) some "advanced-radio-control-toys" like the excellent (but stupid) Spirit and Opportunity that need a month of study to send the right data to (safely) move them of a few meters!
then, the mother of all questions is: "how much smart will be the smartest computers/robots available in the next 20, 30, 50 years?"
we can't have that answer to-day ...but (I feel) we will have it soon... maybe, many years BEFORE the first manned Mars mission will start to be planned... :)
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Posted by: Gaetano Marano - Italy | March 16, 2007 at 10:27 PM
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Greg,
I agree 200% about the use of ready available, cheap and man-rated (TRUE) Shuttle-derived hardware to save LOTS of billion$$$ and (at least) 3-5 years over the current ESAS plan
however, about the (well advertised, but recent) Direct launcher and TeamVision plan, I suggest you to read this Universe Today Forums' thread:
http://www.bautforum.com/showthread.php?t=51646
and this post:
http://www.bautforum.com/showpost.php?p=937768&postcount=522
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Posted by: Gaetano Marano - Italy | March 16, 2007 at 10:47 PM
The fear that I have is that as the administration changes in 2008, the goals will change as well. I fear that it will be more popular to cut the NASA budget instead of allowing the allocation of freed up funds.
"The shuttle program was born in 1968 as a design concept. In 1969, Richard Nixon formed a task force to look at the proposal seriously. The shuttle program was supposed to reduce launch costs from $1000 a pound (1968 dollars) using the Saturn V launch system to $50 a pound ($684.36 in 2005 dollars). Of course, after everything is said and done, the shuttle currently costs about $1461.17 (using 1968 dollars) a pound. Yet the shuttle program gave NASA (and, by extension, the world) a vehicle with which to learn about space construction and also gain much experience in building things that are fully upgradeable." (http://spacebull.com/index.php?blog=1&cat=18&page=1&paged=2 Article entitled, "Space Shuttle and Criticism of the Space Shuttle Program")
I do feel that, despite all this, the shuttle should have been shelved until technology improved. My understanding is, however, that Apollo was abandonded more for safety reasons (Apollo I and Apollo XIII) than anything else. Therefore, I can understand why NASA would have taken the shuttle route. A different spacecraft would help distance the agency from the mission deaths of Apollo. To clarify: what would have happened if an Apollo failure had stranded a crew in Lunar orbit, or prevented a course correction? The effects would have been disasterous.
Posted by: Screech | March 19, 2007 at 04:17 PM
I work on the shuttle and I have found this article by Dr. Griffin to be far more informative of what goals NASA is seeking then any other media presentation or article before. He's quite realistic about what we have and what we can do. I know many of you want the latest, greatest, newest thing out there, but we can't afford to change our program every 5 years. You use what works. That's what the Russians have done and that's what we should be doing. The goal is to get to the moon and stay there. You use what works and worry about the new gee whiz technology another time. I would quit criticizing NASA, especially since none of you have ever launched anything into orbit, let alone to the moon. They are the experts and have "been there, done that". The man is the right man to lead NASA at this time and it's about time we had a real rocket scientist running the show. His selection by President Bush showed just how serious the President takes our space program. The President could have selected some political hack like Clinton did, but instead chose someone that is actually qualified and will get the job done. As I said before, use what works.
Be safe and be well.
Posted by: Random63 | March 24, 2007 at 06:56 AM
I believe that this approach needs an alternative.
Up to now the entire space program has been planned on an Earth based approach, meaning high costs and small payloads to let us out of a deep gravity well to go other gravity wells like the Moon and Mars.
We must think in a different way and try a space based approach, that don't requires the gravity wells limitations.
Such approach would require a NEO interception and deflection in a convenient cyclical orbit such as in the Earth-Moon trajectory.
Once in Earth proximity with a simple mission we could equip the asteroid with a station utilizing the affordable Astrohab system and have a practically free spaceship to the Moon and back.
With such infrastructure in space any mission will only require a shuttle form Earth to the station and back and the same from the Moon, slashing all costs and allowing a permanent presence in our satellite.
The same approach could be followed for Mars and further on.
If we analyse carefully costs and schedule with such approach we could save , in the next 50 years , about 90% of money and 70 % of time compared to the more traditional earth based approach.
Posted by: giorgio gaviraghi | April 02, 2007 at 01:50 PM