Making Space Work: 2 Missing Pieces

In "Ad Astra Without NASA," I said that:

"This coming decade has the potential to be the most exciting time in the history of human space travel since the 1970s - maybe ever. All the pieces are there...."

Well, not quite. In fact, there are 2 major pieces missing, and they're affecting America's military as well as its civilian space program. One is cheaper launch technologies. The other is a space industry that doesn't have to depend solely on NASA and other central-planning agencies. This post will examine these missing pieces, offering analysis and links that will bring you up to speed - and maybe, just maybe, change the way you think about our next steps to space.

I Need A Boost

As rocket scientist blogger Rocket Man noted in response to Ad Astra, Without NASA:

"The biggest piece missing is an engine capable of making launch costs affordable.... The sad fact is that no engine available today has the capability to significantly reduce current launch costs to affordable levels."

To get a sense of the scales we're talking about, contemplate the figures in Rand Simberg's The Non-Innovator's Dilemma. Simberg lays out the real costs of the shuttle program and the economic model that makes any similar replacement a losing proposition. NASA, he says, is currently trapped in a model that does not work, and never will.

Fortunately, there's hope. Rocket Man summarizes the key engineering barriers in Reducing Launch Costs. For a more comprehensive tutorial on the subject, David Throop of UTexas recommends JSC Stress Analyst Peter A. Taylor's page: "Why Are Launch Costs So High?"

The barriers seem dauntng, but Jay Manifold offers a cheerful assessment: "...the physics of spaceflight, even that tough climb to low Earth orbit, imposes a barrier less than that of transcontinental airplane flight [in the early decades of airplanes]." Rocket Man isn't so sure, which leads to a further debate with Rand Simberg.

What is certain, is that serious efforts are underway in this area. DARPA's RASCAL program has been described as seeking "a hot rod to space (Hat Tip: HobbySpace.com), and Japan's JAXA also has a new rocket development program aimed at lowering launch costs.

All commentators agree, however, that new technologies, 2-stage vehicles, and building up a mass of repeat space and near-space flights are the keys to success. Now one begins to see why efforts like Rutan's SpaceshipOne / White Knight combination and other private Low Earth Orbit (LEO) vehicles are such good news. They aren't fully orbital - but they can help lay the foundations for something that is, even as DARPA, JAXA, et. al. seek to drive down the cost of conventional rocket technologies.

As the title of Simberg's article suggested, this fits with research to date about the way innovation really works... IF the new, lower-performing LEO options fit a special market need that lets them attract more investment and improve.

Which brings us right up to our next gap.

We Need A Plan... or Twenty

This is where the ongoing debate between Blake "LaughingWolf" Powers and Rand "Transterrestrial Musings" Simberg comes in. For LEOs to progress into the affordable launch technology we need, there has to be a business case for their use that values what they can do, and the lower cost at which they can do it compared to conventional rockets.

• LW: A Business Plan for Space starts by laying out what a business plan is and isn't, what key components look like, and the kinds of questions it needs to answer (useful guidance for business plan writers - or, you could just hire Blake to help). Then he segues into a brief discussion of a couple potential business ideas for space, and the economics involved:

"All commercial space ventures are dependent on the launch industry and launch costs. As long as launch costs remain around $10,000 a pound, very little is viable. Drop it to $1,000 a pound, and interesting things start to happen. Drop it even further, and a whole range of new possibilities opens."

• Rocket Forge adds some key insights in Lessons Learned, and LaughingWolf incorporates that into his thinking.

• LW: Near-Term, Incremental Space Business Development takes these ideas one step further, but it's a bit short on specifics. Which prompts...

• TM: Limiting Markets, in which Simberg wonders if Blake spent too much time at NASA. He adds that "the lucrative applications (if there are any) will be those for which great value can be extracted from small amounts of mass."

• The 2 find agreement again in LW's Space Commercialization: Losing A Harmful Mindset. That post really doesn't get going until its midpoint, though, when it asks the key question:

"Anyone who is serious about getting into space needs to quit looking through the wishful thinking glasses and start looking through the investment glasses. What will it take to get funding?"

• As Ad Astra, Without NASA noted, one of the keys is inescapable: ongoing government involvement. So how can it be deployed productively, in a way that helps catalyze an accompanying space industry instead of paralyzing it? In many ways Laughingwolf's article proposing the end of NASA as we know it really kick-started that whole debate in the blogosphere. Now Making Government Count In Space Commercialization expands on how one might reorganize NASA's R&D efforts, drawing on Blake's experiences with the Space Product Development (SPD) Program. What could that look like, if it were done right? It might look like success.

I'll close with a quote from LaughingWolf's recent Talking at Cross-Terms post:

"The real hope for exploring all the areas of potential research, development, and manufacturing lies in real access to space. It needs someone to win the X-prize, and it needs several competing services. Then, not only can research into the real opportunities for space commerce and manufacturing take off, the rest of us can as well."