Energy, Space, and getting around Pournelle's Iron Law

The Iraqi War continues, but we don't do anything about the underlying causes of the war, which is our dependence on the Middle East for vital resources. If we were independent of Middle Eastern Oil, the Arab world would have to develop a real economy, learn to make things and sell them, and in general live with the rest of the world, instead of supporting people with too much time and too much money. They might actually learn to extract the oil themselves, which would require that they develop some actual capabilities other than bomb making and persuading young people to blow themselves up and kill policemen, or sit on the floor learning the Koran, or turning out Wahhabi preachers.

Yes, I know, it's a bit more complicated than that, and there exist within the Arab culture some normal middle class people (middle class: those who possess the goods of fortune in moderation; democracy: rule by the middle class -- Aristotle). But the enormous prices the West pays for the oil distorts everything, and forces us to pay far more attention to the Middle East than we should be.

And, as I said in A Step Farther Out about 30 years ago now, the key to energy independence is to exploit the resources of space: energy and material resources. About 90% of the resources easily available to humanity are no on the Earth at all. Easily exploited: once you have decent reusable ships for going to orbit and returning (energy cost for a pound to orbit is about the same as energy cost to fly a pound from Los Angeles to Sydney) it's about as easy to mine the Moon as to mine the sea floor. Of course that requires using Lunar resources to bring Lunar resources to Earth, but there are plenty up there. It's all been studied in vast detail. Just that no one cares much, and we have NASA to stifle any actual attempt to do anything with space.

But we could. We could have space solar power satellites. We could have Moon bases. We could have Lunar colonies, mines and energy farms on the Moon; indeed we could have had all those NOW had we not put NASA in charge. NASA's goal is to employ its standing army. Once that goal is accomplished it can do things, some spectacular, but Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy applies at NASA in spades with big casino. Those whose interests are in furthering the organization rather than its goals always get in charge of any bureaucracy, but at NASA they have control almost as tight as their counterparts in education.

I said back in A Step Farther Out that there were three great examples of the futility of vast centralized bureaucracies: the Soviet system of agriculture, the American System of Education, and NASA. One of those has crumbled, and while the Ukraine has not returned to its pre-Stalin status as the breadbasket of Europe, production is higher than under Communism. There is no longer one big central Soviet system of agriculture. In America, though, the education establishment, and NASA/Aerospace Industry are even more centralized and accomplish even less than when I first wrote all that.

The remedy is simple and we all know it. We could break NASA's iron hold on the future of the human race in a decade, and it wouldn't cost as much as we currently hand over to NASA to employ the standing army. Indeed, we could continue to hand NASA the money for its jobs program. My total program would cost less than $200 Billion Dollars over a ten year or so period. This sounds like a lot of money, but it's not when you're already spending Trillions per year.

In all cases, no money to be paid to anyone until the prize is won, other than trivial administrative costs for a skeleton staff that can verify that the prize conditions have been met. A couple of million a year to NSF and the National Academy of Sciences would take care of that.

To the first American company to put not fewer than 31 Americans on the Moon and keep them there continuously for a period of three years and one day, $10 billion. To the second American company to meet that condition, $5 billion. To the third, $3 billion.

Note that it is highly likely but not certain that in establishing the Moon Base one or more companies would develop low cost ways to access orbit. To be sure of that, though:

To the first American company to put three humans in orbit and return them safely to Earth 18 times in one year using the same spacecraft (90% of the entire system other than fuel to be identical; multiple stages allowed but each stage must be recoverable; the 90% applies to the system as a whole), $5 billion dollars. "Put in orbit" is defined as completing three orbits of the Earth. For the second American company to do so, $3 billion. To the third, $1 billion.

To the first American company to deliver to Earth continuously for one year at least 250 Megawatts of electric power deliverable to the standard power grid, $10 billion. To the second, $5 billion. To the third, $2 billion.

Prizes defeat the Iron Law by remaining goal oriented. There is nothing to guarantee that once the prize is won, the bureaucrats won't take over the winning organization; indeed they very well may do so; but meanwhile the goal has been achieved. And who knows, once an outfit wins such a prize, there may be some more spark left in it. Organizations don't have to decay into bureaucracies, although they usually do when the goal focus is gone.

X projects are by definition under 4 years in duration and have a simply defined set of goals. Their whole purpose is to build the project, test it, and disband: to defeat the Iron Law by not forming a bureaucracy in the first place. There is no permanent organization, there is only a goal.

I can think of a dozen such projects off the top of my head, but the easiest way to do this is to give each of the armed services a small budget to develop their own wish list, and ruthlessly reject any schemes that are not real x projects.

Continue DC/X to built the SSX that Hunter, Graham, and Pournelle sold to the National Space Council in 1989: a 600,000 pound GLOW VTOL rocket with the goals of: Savable; Reusable; Higher; Faster in that order. The notion was to determine the best mass fraction we could achieve with that weight of vehicle. It would need 12 to 16 engines, and developing the plumbing and control for ganging that many engines would be one of the major accomplishments. It would fly incrementally, as did DC/X, with evaluation after each flight. Build three tail numbers as with nearly all true X projects. The cost would be in the order of $5 billion, which is high but much of that is due to the cost of running government-sponsored programs; the costs include some measures for training the design and construction team since we seem to have lost all the old X project people.

I am sure the Two Stages to Orbit, and the Horizontal Landing advocates can describe their own favorite project for about the same amount, and I'd be in favor of funding that too; but these should be done by the individual Services, or a command, not as a central DARPA projects; although I'd settle for DARPA as the sponsor if the alternative is not doing it.

As I said, I can think of other X Programs off the top of my head, as can many of you, and as can many in the space development community.

The entire package above, both X Projects and Prizes, would cost some $100 billion over a period of 6 to ten years, and it would change the world far more profoundly than the Iraq War will. It would bypass the bureaucracies, and by example perhaps show how other great measures could be achieved. The cost is trivial: that is, if the prizes are won we can cheer because what we are doing at present won't get us those benefits for those prices; and if the prizes are not won, the cost is very low to nil since no one is subsidized for spinning wheels.

(We also have mail on this; actually the mail got me in the mood to write the above.)

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The Iraqi War continues, but we don't do anything about the underlying causes of the war, which is our dependence on the Middle East for vital resources.

This opening line is fundamentally wrong. We have trade with many areas of the world, some providing resources we do not have in sufficient quantity here, without it leading to war. Notice that no one is fighting near the North Sea Oil Fields.

The underlying cause of middle east warfare is not oil (that's just wy people give a rats behind beyond altruism), it is autocratic governments coupled with suicidal Islam. This explains the fighting and distress that occurs in or because of Syria, Sudan, Somalia, etc. where there is no oil.

The answer is one of two things, instilling democratic principles and human rights (Christianity wouldn't hurt) or complete pacification through brutal defeat of the peoples and culture.

Iraq is all about attempting the first, before falling back on the second.

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