Beyond the Shuttle

Tech Central Station ^ | 02/05/2003 | Gregory Benford

[537 Votes]

Max Hunter had the original Single Stage To Orbit vision, which was to build a giant traffic cone out of composite graphite, stuff it with kerosene and liquid oxygen, put a cluster of conventional rocket thrusters underneath, and blast off.

We keep on trying something different, however: multiple staging, solid strap-on boosters, tow ropes, mid-air refueling, wings, hydrogen-oxygen fuel, scramjets, giant factories to achieve scales of economy. And did I forget, helicopter rotors?

I am convinced that this level of blindness on the part of the entire aerospace community (exception Hunter, Stine, and me) is because God doesn't want us to go into space yet. If you're an atheist, substitute 'Advanced Alien Civilization with Stealth Mother Ship in Orbit' for God. But same thing. There's no way that six billion human beings could be more aversive to the simple, direct approach. Their minds must be clouded by something.

[supercat]

The problem is you can't have your spacemen in the gym 24 hours a day, or they won't get any real work done.

True, but I'd think that a couple hours daily of real gravity-simulating exercise would probably do a lot to prevent the problems of zero-G from setting in. Running the exercises at over 1G might help even more. For that matter, what about using the treadmill (if spinning on its own) as sleeping quarters?

BTW, yes I was thinking of 2001...

[Arkie2]

Exploiting helium 3 and water on the moon, finding life on Mars or one of the moons of Jupiter, looking for other planetary systems with water based atmospheres: there are many worthwhile projects to undertake that would eventually require men but could be done better initially by unmanned probes.

[Stefan Stackhouse]

Another part of the space infrastructure that is needed are "space taxis," "space tugboats," and "space trucks." Once human or cargo payloads have been boosted into low earth orbit, the zero-g vacuum envrionment means that people and cargo could be hauled around by space vehicles that are NOT aerodynamic. They would stay in space all the time, and be designed solely for transport outside of earth's atmosphere.

There is already a good example of what I am talking about. Consider the differences between the Apollo command module and the LEM. The LEM had to be shrouded on the Saturn to boost it into earth orbit, otherwise it could never have made it into space. Once in space, however, it worked just fine for transport to the lunar surface & back, because it was operating in the vacuum of space. But it could have never returned to earth. On the other hand, if the command module has been designed to do it all -- including the lunar landing & return mission -- it would have had to be so large that the spacecraft would have been impossible to ever even get off the ground. That is close to the problem we have with the shuttle -- it is designed to not only get the passengers into space and return them, but also haul up stuff for them to work on while in space (and often bring it back) -- stuff that could just as well have already been up there and stay up there.

If a space transportation system as I have described existed, then you could have both the rotating space stations with their artifical gravity as Arthur C Clarke first invisioned, and also zero-g facilities like the present ISS. Astronauts could be ferried back & forth between the two, on a daily basis if necessary. We could get to the point where nobody needed to work in a zero-g environment for more than 8-12 hours out of every 24, or maybe even less often. With a little experimentation the optimal balance could be found that would allow people to stay and work in space for years with no harmful effect to their health.

[boris]

I doubt that Americans will be moved to doubt our military, just because an advanced spacecraft fell out of a clear blue sky."

First flew in 1981. Advanced.

Like a beater 1981 Chevy, I guess.

--Boris

[bvw]

That's it! We need classy macho RIMS on the Shuttle wheels. the world's biggest baddest bass amp, and neon-lighted wheel wells. That's what the brave astronauts want. To "word up" in style!

[jackbill]

Certianly a resuable vehicle has (in theory anyhow) a cost advantage. Perhaps the next shuttle should be a lighter manned vehicle with less cargo capacity, and a giant simple lifting body for cargo. Separate the manned part from the cargo part.

To your last sentence, exactly! The Russians just sent up an unmanned re-supply vehicle, which successfully docked with the International Space Station. I don't know what ultimately happens to the vehicle, but it sure is a lot simpler than the Shuttle.

I am not opposed entirely to manned space missions, but since a human life, especially from among the best and brightest, is sacred, we should be a bit more selective in what we send them up for. As for the ISS, perhaps it would have been more practical to develop a smaller vehicle to transport humans to and from it. The vehicles that were/are initially used to transport parts of the ISS should have been designed to become a part of the ISS. That's what I call efficiency.

I don't want to take my time to do the analysis since others are being paid to do just that. But I strongly suspect that the probablity of bringing a human being back from space is inversely proportional to the size of the vehicle. The Shuttle is just too damned big to be safe.

As for the last mission of Columbia, I believe that the "experiments" that were carried out were not worth the dollars, much less the lives of the seven astronauts. Yes, you may say that we have to transport people back and forth between earth and the ISS, now that we have the ISS, but how in the hell do you justify a half billion dollars to study spiders?

And before you start flaming, let me say that just before retiring from an aerospace company I was involved in a contract with the Naval Research Lab to conduct a "space experiment" on the Shuttle. It involved superconductivity. There was absolutely no way that the device would act differently in space than it did in our laboratory, but NRL spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to shoot it up into space - and they confirmed my analysis. And the astronauts received acclaim. But I feel that they were risking their lives for nothing, unless they were simply satisfied with just being in space.

[jackbill]

A friend at NASA's Marshall Space flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama told me today that all his engineer friends were working on their resumes. After the Challenger disaster, NASA dithered for 2.5 years before using the shuttle again. How long this time?

If you recall, many of the "contractors" were laid off after the Challenger accident. However, not one federal government worker at NASA was laid off (RIF'd). What did they do during that 2 1/2 years? Obviously, those who were involved with the booster rockets were monitoring the developments at Thiokol. But what were all of the other NASA folks doing?

Bottom line, if there is a delay in launches of future Shuttles, I doubt that any - ANY - government workers will be affected. Contractor employees will be though.

That's just how it works with "government jobs".

[Valin]

Bump

[RightWhale]

Their minds must be clouded by something.

The committees. You know what happens with committees. The one person who really knows how to get the job done has to sit and listen to a bunch of other people with other agendas. Then he gets outvoted. It comes down to committees because the funding comes from somewhere else not under the control of the one person. Program administrators then take over. They, too, don't know how to get the job done, but they sure know how to administer the project. The one person who knows how to get the job done sometimes is allowed to get the job done, but usually gets marginalized and eventually wanders off before he is booted out. So there's the project, and there's the funding, and the original objective will not be accomplished.

[Illbay]

NASA is the entire reason we've gotten nowhere in space exploration, and until they are locked down, and their brain-trust dispersed to private industry, we will continue farting around with silly Near-Earth Orbit ventures that are pointless save to spend government money in influential states like California, Texas and Florida.

When's the last time you found yourself in awe of our exploits in space? I mean, really?

The whole program has become mainly a vehicle for expressions of multi-culturalism (every year we get someone who is the "first" of his her color/nationality/ethnicity/religion/social set to fly into "space.")

There are no plans to return to the moon, none to Mars, none to look at commercial exploitation of the asteroid belt, e.g.

Space exploration is as dead as our latest Shuttle crew, and it will remain that way until someone figures out how to make a solid buck from it, and governments (including and especially the U.N.) get out of the way.

[Liberal Classic]

When's the last time you found yourself in awe of our exploits in space? I mean, really?

Trying to give an honest answer, when I saw the Hubble Deep Field I was struck with awe. Then again, that might not qualify as our exploits. My layman's opinion is that Hubble has been good publicity and good science.

However, more to your point, I would agree that the national space program has stagnated somewhat. Even if you consider the moon landings a publicity stunt, which I do not entirely, the unity of purpose that nasa had during the Apollo program seems like a totally different NASA to me than the one of today.

It's kind of a chicken and egg scenario, in which NASA has no concrete goal to work towards so there is no solid support, but NASA doesn't receive the support nationally because to does not have one, over-riding goal which everyone understands. That's one thing the moon landings had that today's NASA doesn't, the public perception of doing something concrete.

Sure, they're doing things, even a lot of different things, even scientifically valuable things. However, there is a disconnect between what NASA is doing and the relevance those projects have on the life of the average person. Even if the moon landings were little better than a publicity stunt to shame the Soviets, that was something people could easily wrap their brains around. Everyone knew why we were doing, as it had direct connections to the Cold War.

So, in my layman's opinion, this is what NASA lacks today. People understand that NASA is doing things with our tax dollars, but there isn't an easily identifible thing it does that people can recognise, other than the shuttle. Now that the shuttle has had another catestrophic failure, this draws serious doubts into NASA's whole mission. I do not mean to lessen the sacrifice that the crew made when I say this, but maybe this will be a good thing for NASA in the long run.

I would wholeheartedly agree that private industry needs to be involved, and that until there is the potential for profit making space exploration will be limited. But at the moment, NASA is the big governmental program which is charting these new territories, as the opportunity costs for space travel are still too high in the private sector for anything other than manned probes. But, if we are going to have this federal program, what should it be doing? Watching spiders float about in a confused fashion?

What I think NASA could be doing ties in as neatly with national policy as the moon landings did with military technology, and that is energy policy. Energy policy is on everybody's minds, as much or more than the Cold War was in the late 50s early 60s.

In short what I think NASA should be doing is applying themselves towards one large and critical national problem, that of energy policy. I am speaking specifically about solar power satellites in geostationary orbit which beam down power in microwave frequencies. Though it is often said that our economy runs on oil, I would be more inclined to say our economy runs on electricity. We just use combustion for some specific things, but electricity is in every engine that is not powered by steam.

If NASA applied itself towards helping produce electricity, it is a tangible goal when the common man can easily understand. Not because the common man needs a dumbed down NASA, just the opposite. Rather it is something that everybody needs, which is to say energy. It gives them a reason to develop mineral resources near earth orbit, and a roadmap for jumpstarting private investment in the area. Energy production has a profit motive which the "pure" sciences to not. It also provides an alternative to nuclear enery generation even though I happen to support nuclear power, because uranium is a limited resource as with fossil fuels.

This is my layman's idea on how to make a buck from space exploration.

[Liberal Classic]

Typo alert: ...as the opportunity costs for space travel are still too high in the private sector for anything other than unmanned probes.

And now to distract you from my typograpical errors, the Hubble Deep Field:

[allhands]

Is their anybody at NASA who would still go up in a shuttle today? I heard that it's anywhere 1-75 or 1-150 chance of loss each flight. If it yes that lets fly! if it's no than lets hire some one who will. Todays thinking is that risk must not be managed or bet against, just avoided at all cost! Going to space must be risky and we must keep going back and winning more than we lose!

[Brett66]

The large space colonies woul be really cool, but we're going to have to be a strong spacefairing nation to even have a rationale to build those. We'll need large mining capacity on the moon and asteroids with extremely cheap methods of transport in the inner solar system. I could envision the rationale being the same as what started cities along rivers. You're right next to a crucial spot where a lot of material passes through, so why not build a way-station at that point to accomodate the transfer of these materials and make money off of it. It might end up that L1 could be the big "hot spot" of space development with L5 reserved for outbound payloads to the outer solar system.

[Liberal Classic]

Yes, I agree that there are a lot prerequisites that need to be met before we get anywhere near ready to build space habitats. It boils down to economic incentive, and frankly I do not believe that government areospace contracting provides enough profit motive. An important part of any economic incentive perhaps, but NASA and the DOD by themselves are not going to propel us into space. There needs to be some sort of "gold rush" or other motivation that spurs private industry into action.

Don't misunderstand me, I love NASA and have fond memories of watching the moon landing as a child. I think they are important player in a national space program, but I fear they have lost their focus. What is needed is some sort of over-riding goal or need that will prove to the American taxpayer why we are spending vast amounts of money on it. I don't think that there is one thing that has captivated our national attention with regards to the space program since the moon landings. The moon landings themselves may not have had much economic impact, but in terms of moral and national defense I believe they were vital.

Since the moon landings there hasn't been one thing that everyone can easily conceptualize as to *why* we are up there in orbit. Most people recognize the value of the pure sciences but pure science doesn't galvanize the public to the same extent that the Cold War did. I think that the Shuttle plays an important role in post-Cold War space exploration, but it has become and end to itself not quite the means to an end it was promised to be. Likewise with the space station formerly known as Freedom, ISS. In my opinion ISS has been a bigger boondoggle than the Shuttle, since the Shuttle has multiple applications, including military missions. I have always thought that having the space station when we also have the Shuttle is like building a cabin in the woods when we also have a Winnebago. It costs a lot of money just to drive the RV out to the cabin. Are what we're doing at the cabin things we cannot do in the RV? Do we really need more long-term studies on the negative effects of weightlessness?

The precusor to mining initiatives must come from private industry. We have to crawl before we can walk, and we must have some incentive to take those first steps like a parent coaxing a toddler to take those first uneasy steps. I know we're going to skin our knees. But without some tangible motivation, will we ever want to try again after we lose more astronauts?

What is that motivation going to be? The last century had the Cold War. I don't really want the same situation to occur, though I see the possibility of another space race with the Chinese. Military applications are a perfectly valid motivation for development of new technologies, and space exporation is no exception to this. However, a Cold War II will be a very dangerous thing, and I would hate to think of another "missle crisis" happening with some foreign power who is, dare I say it, less sane than Nikita Kruschev. I'd rather that the motivation comes from an economic expansion rather than a military expansion.

An economic solution to the problem must come from a significant economic need, it must be for a reason everyone can understand, and everyone must be able to invest in it, and likewise everyone must be able to reap benefits from it. The colonization of the New World fit this bill, as did the colonization of the American West. Also, precursor technologies enabled the expansion to occur. In these cases, population pressure caused them to be economically viable. I am not suggestion that population pressure alone will enable space colonization, what I am saying is precursor technologies must be developed to first to solve present problems.

What is one far-reaching concern these days which has almost the impact of the Cold War? My answer would be energy policy. Energy police has almost, if not equal national security interest as does the military. Often, energy police and military policy overlap. However, energy police also has direct impact on the daily lives of us all, and it has a peaceful component as well.

A lot has been written on this topic by authors more authoritative than me, but in short I am talking about microwave power satellites. Solar power has great potential, but its major drawback is that the source of enery (the sun) is obscured by the atmosphere and planet Earth itself. There is that pesky nighttime, clouds, that ocean of air that reduces the efficiency of solar power. The greenies don't seem to care about the inefficiencies of solar power, though they recongnize its potential. The solution to the problem of solar power is to collect it from geostationary orbit where there are no clouds and available sunlight 23 hours per day and transmit the energy to the earth in a wavelength that isn't affected by the atmosphere.

I believe solar power satellites can solve our enery problems, and help us wean ourselves from foreign oil. People say our economy runs on oil, but I don't really believe this. I believe our society runs on electricity, and that oil is a secondary fuel used to augment the creation of mechanical energy and the production of electrical power. I do not believe this would destroy the petrochemical industry, either, because petrochemicals make such valuable and useful chemical feedstocks for plastics, machine oils, and so on. Seems rather wasteful to burn it all as fuel.

What I think NASA needs to do is apply itself to the solution of national energy problems. This will do several valuable things to the American people as well as to NASA. It will give NASA a goal of national importance. There will be no question as to why NASA is spending vast amounts of money. It gives NASA a tangible and achievable goal. It gives NASA a definitive direction and focus. And ultimately it will ultimately provide energy to us all, a general benefit. It will be developing an industry will be able to leverage the profit motive to achieve its goals. And in the long run, it will develop the precursor technologies needed as a stepping stone to space exploration.

This is my plan. Vote for me. :)

(gotta get back to work)