THE SPACE ELEPHANT MEETS THE GAZELLE

Vanguard PAC ^ | 8/25/2005 | Rod D. Martin

[rdmartinjd]

How many problems does it take for “one of the most sophisticated systems ever produced by man” to become just another white elephant?

A lot of people have been asking that about the Space Shuttle lately. But the Space Shuttle’s downward spiral started long, long ago. In fact, it started in the Nixon Administration.

In the days of triumph which were Apollo, NASA -- still capable of bold vision -- laid out a plan to explore and settle the Solar System. Among its more prominent features were a series of follow-on Moon missions which more resembled Lewis and Clark (or even John Smith) than the “space shots” of the 1960s. A Mars mission was on tap for the early 1980s, and an entire infrastructure was planned for near-Earth space, tasked with constructing spacecraft, facilitating private industry and supporting genuine settlement. Barron Hilton even proposed expanding his hotel chain to orbit and to the surface of the Moon itself.

To make all of this fly, NASA knew it needed to get beyond expendable rockets and tiny capsules. They needed the heavy-lift capability of the Saturn V, but they needed it in a reusable form. And they needed to make spaceflight truly routine: an airline, not a crap-shoot.

And so the Space Shuttle was born. But not the Shuttle we know.

Richard Nixon and Congressional Democrats had very different ideas for the future. Quickly shelved were plans to make America’s enormous investment in space pay off: in fact, three whole Apollo missions for which the equipment had been built -- all that was needed was the fuel -- were cancelled, their rockets spread around the country as museum pieces. Space went overnight from “the way of the future” to a budgetary “necessary evil”.

And so it has been ever since.

Before it was a white elephant, the Shuttle became a camel: “a horse designed by committee.” And as feature after feature got compromised away, it went from truly revolutionary to somewhat adequate to barely competent. Key among its stated requirements was to launch every two weeks. At closer to once every three months when NASA’s lucky (and on no vaguely predictable schedule), the “Space Transportation System” which didn’t even get color computer monitors until two years ago saw its all-important cost per pound to orbit, well, skyrocket; and what remained of America’s space dreams crashed like Challenger and Columbia.

This is the way of government planning, no different from Soviet steel mills or the equally botched Space Station. And the Space Elephant is finally meeting its gazelle: the free market.

Two weeks ago, Arlington, VA-based Space Adventures announced it will commence tourist flights to the Moon. They won’t land, but two passengers -- paying $100 million each -- and one cosmonaut will soon fly around the Moon, the first humans to do so in three decades. To put that in perspective -- and remember, Space Adventures plans to make a profit -- the Apollo program cost $235 billion; and one Space Shuttle launch -- to low Earth orbit -- costs around $1 billion and turns no profit at all.

And if that weren’t enough, how about going to that Space Hilton? Sir Richard Branson, Paul Allen and Burt Rutan will get you there, on Virgin Atlantic Airlines’ new division, Virgin Galactic. The team has already proven its mettle by winning the Ansari X Prize, $10 million for building and flying a fully-private space plane twice in two weeks last year. Branson’s plans are bigger, with regularly scheduled service to space planned for 2007. Despite an initial ticket price of $100,000, all of Virgin’s planned flights have already sold out.

So who needs NASA? Certainly government has an essential role in space (one George Bush has articulated very well), from Lewis and Clark-style expeditions to developing vital technologies -- like scramjets -- with military application. And over time, as in the Old West, that need will surely grow.

But it’s long past time that the routine stuff -- the lion’s share of NASA’s budget -- got passed to a deregulated, empowered private sector. As with the Post Office’s decision in the 1920s to contract out airmail delivery, such an arrangement will spark an explosion of new technologies, new industries, and in our time, a new frontier.

But most of all, it will get government out of the way, in this case of the future. White elephants have no business flying. But mankind does, all the way to the stars.

Copyright: Rod D. Martin, 25 August 2005.

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-- Rod D. Martin is Founder and Chairman of Vanguard PAC . A former policy director to Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Special Counsel to PayPal.com Founder Peter Thiel, he is a member of the Board of Governors of the Council for National Policy, a Vice President of the National Federation of Republican Assemblies (NFRA), and editor and co-author of Thank You President Bush, the definitive handbook to the second term.

[WestVirginiaRebel]

This is the reason space travel didn't take off as an industry the way the airplane and the automobile did. If GM had been run by the government, we'd still be driving hand-cranked cars.

[thegreatbeast]

This article issues a lot of smoke but I'll wait to see if there is any fire generated.

[Names Ash Housewares]

The free market is a solution. I am a member of the X-Prize foundation, I support it fully. But only now is the technology available to private industry making it possible to catch up to what NASA was doing 45 years ago. That "elephant" does things that nothing else can do right now. And there is still a job to finish before she is retired. NASA gets beat up sometimes for decisions made 30 years ago, sure NASA is accountable but how long do we blame NASA for those well intentioned mistakes decades ago? Flying shuttle and performing those missions are the only way to learn what works and what doesnt. We learn by doing, by flying. And yes private industry uses that data, they dont have to relearn everything NASA has already learned.

Its a building block process. People forget that, they will bash shuttle but forget how much that has been learned. Private industry must rely on this information to be successful as well. Humans only learned to fly 100 years ago. How far we have come in such a short time is astonishing. And shuttle is part of that legacy as surely as the next vehicles will be. Was she perfect? Did she live up to the expectations? No. Did we know that at the time? No. And the new vehicles private or government build will teach us new lessons too. And they will not be perfect either. Its part of the process. Shuttle is not an elephant. Shuttle is a vehicle of exploration. We have built precious few crewed space vehicles so far, but we have learned much both good and bad. There was no other way to learn but by doing.

[carumba]

Before it was a white elephant, the Shuttle became a camel

It certainly wasn't a Lucky Strike.

[Fitzcarraldo]

Even a log floating down a river has utility.

[benjaminjjones]

Bump for later read, it's getting to be nap time for me.

Thanks for the space posting, keep it up, great picture of the SRB's.

Just don't put me on any space bump list, as I prefer picking the posts I want to read when I get responses to a comment.

Actually witnessed one of those great beasties lift off from a bridge in FL near the Space Center. What a frigging sight (and sound) experience! Thats what I call Rock'n'Roll!

It was the best part of a spring fling college trip, almost 1/4 of a century ago!

Standing on that causeway and seeing a shuttle blast off was the best part of spending 18 hours in a dinky car on the way to FL.

I gotta say, it almost gave me a woodie!

Another age-pointer, I saw Neil Armstrong step foot LIVE on the moon at a very young age (I told my pop to make sure he woke me up) while we were on vacation in France. We had to go to some French lady's house in our jammies 'cause it was something like 3am there and she had the only TV that would pick it up.

I did read a funny thing on Drudge today however.

Something to the effect that after the Rolling Stone's Keith Richard's death, his liver is so in-destructive, that it will replace the Space Shuttle's exterior tiles, LOL!

Mine's currently in the testing phase...

Cheers!

[FierceDraka]

Cheers indeed! LOL Sounds like you had a few last night, bud! LOL

[FierceDraka]

Indeed. Lots of people rag on NASA these days (mea culpa).

But you're absolutely right. The private space upstarts have full access to everything the NASA boys have learned over the last 40 or so years.

Not many people know this, but most of the science that NASA has accumulated is available to the public. My dad's company is an aerosapce contractor, and Dad sometimes gives me stacks of Nasa science review magazines to go over for new stuff.

Personally, I'd like to see nuclear powered ion-drive spacecraft augmented by solar sail, with plasma shielding to keep cosmic rays out.

[Uncle Fud]

Shuttle is a vehicle of exploration.

Aw c'mon. I have tremendous respect for the shuttle crews, but at best what they have been doing for the last twenty years has been developing engineering techniques, not "exploration".

The one shuttle mission which really contributed to our knowledge of the universe was the Hubble repair.

[Androcles]

Any views on how effective the plasma shielding is?

[Names Ash Housewares]

Exploration takes many forms. Learning how to function in space is exploration. We cant go any farther until we figure those things out. Shuttle has contributed to that. Shuttle has only gone to low earth orbit this is true, and it may not be sexy, but it is the work that we had to do to learn how to do. Not to mention shuttle has deployed interplanetary space probes, and served hubble many times. Not to mention all the earth science shuttle has performed as well. Shuttle radar mapping, ozone monitoring, learing how to build a space station is important, those are critical construction techniques we are perfecting.
Not to mention all the lessons shuttle has taught us about ourselves. Our failngs are important lessons. That is all exploration to me, because it is learning. Apollo taught us we can do what we dream when there is a fire under our butts. Shuttle taught us never to give up and be in the game for the long haul no matter what. And hard lessons were learned. Right now it is likely that shuttle derived technology will be used in the next crewed launch vehicles. The Shuttle main engines, SRB's, ET, also the shuttle support infrastructure, all that will save time and money because we have it already. Building blocks. Another rung in the ladder on the way up.
Exploration is not just planting flags or footprints on new lands. It is also exploring our own human failings and resolve to press on. IMHO.

[FierceDraka]

Any views on how effective the plasma shielding is?

I haven't been able to find anything recent on it. But the magnetic fields that contain the plasma have been shown to be capable of deflecting charged particles away from the protected region.

Magnetic Radiation Shielding: An Idea Whose Time Has Returned? (link pops in new window)

[Androcles]

Way cool - thanks for the link!
Cheers,
Androcles

[seawolf101]

[rdmartinjd]

As you can see from my article -- which explicitly endorses the President's Jan. 2004 space initiative -- I am in no way suggesting that there's no role for government in space; nor am I suggesting that the Shuttle doesn't have a job to complete. However, we are now at a point where the market can work wonders, as your foundation has so impressively proved. And indeed, I doubt you just a bit when you say that only government could have done these things until now: I agree up to a point, but I also suspect that much of the inability of the private sector to compete has been a result of overregulation, which has prevented even a rudimentary private space sector from forming until very recently.

In any case, that's not really the point, and I'm sure you and I would mostly agree on mostly everything. The real point is that central planning -- regardless of whether it was necessary -- destroyed a Space Shuttle program (and the Space Station program as well) which could have done truly amazing things, far beyond anything the existing program will ever, ever do. It is an object lesson more than a complaint, and a tremendous endorsement of the better way you and your foundation represent.