Stopped Clock Alert and A Modest Proposal

You know the saying about a stopped clock being right twice a day? Well, no sooner did I lay into Jeff Bell for his most recent uninformed rant, then he actually produced an article of substantially better quality. There were several minor issues I disagree with him on, but I agree rather strongly with his sentiment that the benefits of "reusing" Shuttle Derived hardware is vastly oversold. As he puts it:

The main justifications for preserving so much 1970s Shuttle technology in Apollo 2.0 are:

1) it will speed up development and therefore reduce the length of the inevitable gap in US manned spaceflights.

2) it will reduce development costs so that the early stages of the program can be carried out in parallel with a continued Shuttle/ISS program.

The problem with these claims is that virtually every Shuttle element has go through a major redesign before it can be used in the new boosters.

Jeff then goes on to show how little of the hardware really gets reused without serious modifications. Now, I would quibble a bit with a few of his points, for instance I do think that ATK might be able to use the SRB for its Shaft without too heavy of modifications, however he does a pretty good job of outlining a lot of the flaws in the "Shuttle Derived = Cheaper" mentality.

But I don't really feel like reviewing his whole article. If you want to hear more about what he said, you'll have to read it yourself this time. Pundrity is fun and all, but I had a few of my own thoughts that I've been mulling over for a while that this article reminded me of.

So, here's what's got me thinking. This Shaft is supposed to be substantially cheaper and better than trying to "man-rate" the Atlas V or Delta IV, is supposed to be a much surer thing than chancing a wait on SpaceX to deliver its Falcon IX, and is supposed to be a lot quicker to develop than a clean-sheet vehicle because it is using mostly off-the-shelf Shuttle Derived hardware.

So why on earth do they need $5B and 5 years to field the darned thing? Let's compare it with the Saturn IB, a vehicle of fairly similar capabilities that was also manrated. The Saturn IB used a first stage that was already mostly developed (it needed to have its engines uprated a bit, similar to the switch from the current Shuttle 4-segment SRB to a 5-segment version. The upper stage was brand new design with a brand new engine (though its development budget was lumped in with the Saturn V, since the Saturn V used it in its upper stages). They went from concept to first orbital flight in 4 years, for an inflation adjusted cost of about $5.6B.

So, with decades of experience, major advances in design and analysis technologies, it still costs about the same to field a simliar launcher, but takes 25% longer? What gives?

Also look at the example of the EELV program. For all of its screwedupedness, they still managed to go from initial studies to flight hardware for two completely new launch vehicle families for about between $1-1.5B of government money, and within about 4 years of when they got funding to actually start the design and production. They had started initial studies something like 2-3 years earlier, but ATK started doing initial studies of the stick more than a year ago too.

Going further, one of ATKs more loud-mouthed employees was boasting that the Stick was going to be so affordable that it would displace the Atlas V and Delta IV as the premier commercial and military launch vehicle in the US. Once again, this makes me wonder. If ATK is going to be allowed to reap the commercial profits from reselling their Stick to commercial satellite companies and to the military, why should the government subsidize their entire development cost? Isn't this patently unfair to companies like SpaceX that actually--gasp--have to compete like real men in the open market? If the Air Force, which is far more important to the nation than NASA ever will be, felt it was safe and reasonable to require both Lockheed and Boeing to put up most of the initial development money in exchange for the right to sell their hardware on the commercial market, why should ATK be any different?

So, here's my modest proposal:

• Cut the CLV budget from a $5B Cost-Plus-Fixed-Fee contract to a $1B Fixed-Rate contract. Have ATK go out and raise the remaing money for their vehicle on their own. If it really is so "Safe, Simple, Soon" as ATK propagandists would lead us to believe, and if their vehicle will be as cost effective and reliable as some of their employees indicate, raising the rest of the money should be quite doable. Boeing and Lockheed did it after all, as will SpaceX be doing so.


• Use $1B of the money freed-up by doing that to have Boeing, Lockheed, and possibly one or two alt.space companies such as SpaceX develop and demonstrate "man-rated" versions of their vehicles.


• Use $750M to fund a traditional aerospace company to develop an on-orbit cryogenic propellant transfer demonstrator. Use another $150M to fund at least two alt.space companies to do the same thing. Use another $100 to fund two $50M prizes, one for on-orbit cryogenic propellant transfer, and one for on-orbit cryogenic propellant storage.


• Mandate that a bare-bones CEV with a fuel load only sufficient for rendezvous and docking with ISS and a deorbit burn weigh no more than 20,000lb. That way it could be launched on either the Stick, the no-solids version of the Atlas V or Delta IV, or the Falcon IX.


• Since this way NASA would be spending $2B less than orginally planned, use that $2B to whipe out a lot of the extra funding they were going to have to request from Congress to expedite the CEV.


• Promise that as of 6 months after the first succesful flight of a man-rated EELV, Stick, or Falcon IX, that NASA will start bidding out contracts on a yearly basis open to all companies with at least one demonstrated launch of a man-rated vehicle of at least 20,000lb LEO capacity. Each year the next year's launches will be competitively awarded on a basis of cost and reliability. This way it is a fair competition between all four providers, and any new entrants can also be allowed to play if they demonstrate that they can fly a succesful launch.

While this idea still isn't perfect, it would at least cost $2B less, and worst-case we'd have at least one or two vehicles capable of launching the CEV come 2010. At best, not only would there be multiple, completely independent launch systems capable of launching the CEV or other high-value payloads, but there would also be the technology on the shelf to do orbital propellant depots, and enough launcher capacity to support them. That would allow NASA to skip developing the HLV, and focus on lunar exploration systems, possibly shaving 3-5 years off of the current return to the moon plan, and allowing for a much more cost-effective, sustainable, and commercially useful transportation architecture.

But most of all, it's fair. Why should Boeing, Lockheed, and SpaceX have to have skin in the game, while ATK gets risk-free billions? If their system is really as wonderful as they claim, why shouldn't they have to put some of their own skin in the game? Why is it only alt.space companies that are expected to take any financial risks in order to reap profits?

Addendum 1: If Boeing and Lockheed man-rate their vehicles, it should change their pricing structure just enough that they can no longer use the Boeing espionage incident as an excuse to avoid having to compete on price (which just so happens to allow them to avoid having to compete against upstarts like SpaceX for EELV launches). The added $10-20M per launch for man-rated hardware might be more then offset by the price reductions they could get by forcing Boeing and Lockheed to compete on price again, especially if this allows SpaceX to compete fairly against them.

If You're Going to Be Snarky.....

One of my pet peeves with a lot of other space writers is people who get all snarky and condescending about a topic that they really don't understand. [Note: Before anyone accuses me of hypocracy, I'll admit that I probably do this quite a bit myself.] The latest case in point is Jeff Bell's most recent article.

Now Jeff is an interesting character. He often does make at least one or two valid points in any given article, but then tends to go off flaunting his ignorance. In his latest article, he takes space settlement supporters to task for being "shockingly ignorant about space technology", and for not doing their homework. As he puts it "The first thing you do when you become obsessed with something is study it obsessively, right?"

Jeff actually has a good point. A lot of the people on space fora start out as clueless newbies. I sure did. And due to the glories of the internet, anyone with Google can amuse themselves at the silly things I said as I worked my way up the learning curve. There is in fact a large amount of information that I still don't have completely mastered.

I know a lot about the concepts of orbital mechanics, and have a little bit of an intuitive feel for roughly how things work (thanks to patient people like Henry Spencer and others who've taken the effort to explain such things at length over the years), and I have been able to make some useful extrapolations from that. But writing a trajectory analysis program? Yeah right. Doing any sort of real analysis not based on empirical data created by others who've looked at similar problems? Not yet. As Jeff points out, there is fortunately a lot of that kind of information out there publically available on the net. If you want to know the delta-V required for a trip from LEO to L1, you can get a reasonable number from many locations, so long as you make sure your system is similar to the system the number was calculated for. Calculating that out though for a specific system is completely beyone my skillset.

I also have a decent understanding of the qualitative issues involved in the heat transfer and thermodynamics of a rocket propulsion system. I work with them every day at work. But actually setting up all the equations to do detailed analyses is really something that I'm only now starting to get decent at. Fortunately Pierce and Ian are much sharper in that area, so we complement each other.

Anyhow, I'm rambling.

The problem I have with Jeff is that after making this fairly accurate statement, he then makes the very mistakes he accuses others of. If you're going to be snarky and condescending, make sure you're actually right!

Jeff decided to make his point about how clueless the space settlement crowd is by ripping on this picture, titled "The Ultimate Sandbox":



I have to admit, ever since I first saw this picture a few years ago, I rather liked it. So when I saw Jeff waxing indignant about it, I was mildly amused. In trying to condescend us ignorant space settlement fanatics, one of the four arguments Jeff made was that:

No child could grow normally in the low lunar gravity. Even adult astronauts are carried away on wheelchairs after only 6 months in space (the last American to return from the ISS actually fainted from the stress of normal gravity).

Back in the 1970s, you never saw this misleading and emotive propaganda image. It was clearly understood back then that permanent colonization of the Moon was impossible due to the debilitating effects of low gravity (which had just then been discovered on the early space stations Skylab and Salyut).

The mistake Jeff makes is that in reality, we really have absolutely no data about the long term effects of lunar gravity. We have lots of data about the effects of microgravity (often mistakenly called zero-gravity), but almost no data between there and standard earth gravity.

This may sound like splitting hairs, but it brings up an important point. With data points at only the end points of a curve, you can't say anything about the curvature of that curve. At least not with any confidence. For example, what if you plotted on the X-axis the gravity at which a person was living for an extended duration, and then on the Y-axis could plot some sort of metric that could quantitatively represent the general health of the individual, maybe something like bone mass for instance. If you normalized the Y-axis a bit, you might be able to make a chart like the one shown below. The question is, what should the curve look like between the microgravity data points and the terrestrial gravity data points?



Should it be a straight line? Does the curve have an increasing slope with time, or a decreasing slope with time? Or is it like the one curve that actually has some gravity level yielding a more healthy individual than standard 1g?

The best answer we can honestly give at this point is: we don't know.

The only way we could know for sure what the curvature looks like would be to get data at intermediate points. In statistically designed engineering experiments, it is common to take data at a centerpoint. If you're expecting a more complex curve, you may need to take data at many intermediate points. Only then can you state with any sort of real confidence what the effects of "low gravity" are.

One could reasonably ask what evidence there is to assume that long-term exposure to lunar gravity would be substantially less debilitating than long-term exposure to microgravity. Or, why shouldn't we assume that the curve is either straight, or has positive curvature (ie the curve that starts out nearly horizontal, than curves upward toward the terrestrial data point as it approaches 1g)?

It turns out there actually are some reasons.

While I'm not an expert in the effects of microgravity on human physiology, I have at least tried to study the topic as much as has been reasonably possible. From various sources, including lectures given by experts in the field, it turns out that one of the key effects of microgravity on the human body has to do with fluid distribution. In normal gravity, blood and bodily fluids tend to be pulled downward towards our feet, but in a microgravity environment, those bodily fluids tend to redistribute themselves throughout the body. The result is that the fluid volume in the head increases, and the fluid volume in the feet and legs decreases. Our body doesn't like that. The sensory organs that detect fluid volume in the head misread this increase as being an increase in total fluid volume in the body, triggering diuresis. In other words, you pee. This diuresis continues until the fluid levels in the head return to earth-normal levels. The problem is that by the time they do so, the total fluid volume in your body has been substantially decreased. Your body also has systems that try to keep the concentration of various minerals in your body within certain bounds. If you get too high of a concentration of some materials, your body tries to reject them. Combine the two effects, and not only do you end up decreasing your body fluid volume, but also the total amount of calcium and other minerals that your body will naturally contain.

It's not too surprising when you look at it this way that many of the debilitating symptoms of microgravity exposure are similar to mineral deficiencies (particularly calcium difficiencies). Stuff like osteoporosis, heart problems, muscle and nerve issues. Calcium doesn't just strengthen bones, it is also an important electrolyte that has lots of other functions throughout the body. While calcium loss and fluids loss probably don't explain all of the major health issues caused by microgravity, they do appear to be a significant part of the problem.

Why do I bring this up? Because if many of the worst effects of microgravity are caused by fluids distribution, even a little gravity may go a long way. With rocket propellant tanks, even .01g is more than enough to fairly quickly settle the propellants and force bubbles to the top given sufficient time. Is 0.16g enough to keep your body fluids where they would be in a full 1g environment? I don't know. I imagine it could probably be modeled somehow, but that's beyond my area of expertise.

As a quick digression, there is at least some anecdotal evidence that at least one of the serious health issues with microgravity, insomnia, is not a problem in lunar gravity. I don't have a source on this quote, as it was a while back that it was related to me, but supposedly, at least one of the Apollo astronauts described his sleep in the LEM as some of the most restful he had ever had. Apparently the combination of having a real gravity vector, but one that was much lighter than earth made sleeping in a hammock very comfortable. While that alone doesn't prove that the curve above has negative curvature, it at least provides some support for the potential validity of the hypothesis.

One problem with trying to actually firmly prove or disprove the hypothesis is that many of these symptoms take a bit of time to manifest themselves. There might be a way to simulate it via various bed-rest analogs like they have done in the past for studying microgravity effects. The timeframe between exposure to microgravity and when the diuresis kicks in is usually on the order of a couple hours, so that's too long to study on a vomit comet or a suborbital ride. Studying it in orbit would require a fairly large centrifuge (much larger than the one planned for ISS). Honestly the best way would probably be to study it on the Moon directly. There's no substitute in the end for research in-situ.

I could say more, but I've probably gone way over-length on this post already.

Bones: "Darnit Jim, it's only an inch deep!"

Howdy all, Ken here.

I hope everyone is still completely stuffed from a bountiful Thanksgiving. We had a gorgeous day here in north Texas, and I had a good time rough-housing with my nephews in their front yard.

I also picked up the newest copy of Ad Astra from the National Space Society. Since I'm sure many of the folks who hang out here in the Selenian Boondocks have no idea who I am, or why Jon has invited me to guest post on his blog, let me give a little background.

In the context of this story I am the VP of the North Texas chapter of NSS. I have organized and led a lot of chapter projects that have been very successful for us (World Space Week, merit badge clinic), and we're slowly gaining respect in the community for our outreach, education and awareness-building work. Through our projects we've talked to thousands of people in the D/FW metroplex about space over the last couple of years. We're so good that we scored the 2007 International Space Development Conference to be hosted here in D/FW. I am serving as the lead co-chair in the organization of that conference, and have a phenomenal team of volunteers preparing what is going to be a huge conference. You can see what kind of fun we have in our chapter gallery

So I am easily labeled as a space activist, someone who is working to help make space and its development a priority for this country. This makes me particularly disheartened by the results of the 2005 NSS Membership Survey which were included in the latest Ad Astra.

Some 1,900 members responded. I don't know how many of the total membership that represents as NSS is still working through some database recovery issues (like sending my Ad Astra to an old address), but it's a fair amount and a sample size that is almost twice the size of your average Gallup Poll sample size.

I was particularly interested by the membership results, which served up a big dollop of indigestion on top of my Thanksgiving repast. 1,787 persons responded to the Chapters question, which asked "Are you currently affiliated with a local chapter?"

7% (125) responded that yes, they were, while a whopping 93% (1,662) said that no they weren't. Of that seven percent who were affiliated with a chapter, a full 65% (81) could not recall the last chapter event they had attended (making their actual chapter affiliation, with separate dues, suspect). 35% (44) had been involved in something over the last year, and only 23% (29) in the last month. So of the overall respondents, only 1.6% had been involved in a chapter activity in the last month and 2.5% in the last year (which includes last month).

Now for the really disappointing part. Of the 93% of respondents who were not affiliated with a chapter, 78% (1,296) said they didn't want to be contacted about chapters either. That's 72.5% of NSS members who don't want to have anything to do with chapters.

This is consistent with the next question on space activism, which asks "Within the past year, have you made any efforts to promote space in your area?", to which 71% of the 1,715 respondents answered no. 29% (497) responded yes. Given the rather small number known to be active, this means there are a lot of what I would call freelancers, folks working outside the organizational benefits of NSS. That number, though, is consistent with the number of respondents to the Chapters question who were either involved or willing to be contacted about being involved.

So as someone who is trying to build my NSS-NT chapter volunteer team to evangelize space in North Texas and develop a great conference in 2007, I have to figure out how to reach out to the freelancers without angering the nearly three-quarters of NSS members who just don't want to hear from me.

This is further reinforced by the next question on Ad Astra, wherein only 100 (6%) of 1,673 respondents said they wanted more chapter and NSS images and information. Compare this with 37% who wanted more space news and 28% who want more space pictures in the magazine.

That's probably why the article I had published over at Ad Astra Online, "Reaching Out to Texas Teens", has been dropped from the article list, and the follow-up story I did on our Boy Scout Space Exploration merit badge project, "Reaching Out to Texas Scouts", never saw the light of day. People aren't interested in the actual community-level work of making our country, and not just NASA, a space-faring nation. And this is within the space community.

Another Falcon I Delay?

I have a few SpaceX related things I wanted to post today. First off, I just read from one source that the Falcon I flight was getting delayed again. It appears that the flight being delayed till February is the second flight (the one launching from Vandenburg maybe?), not the first one. It isn't readily clear from the article how long the first Falcon I flight is being delayed (though obviously it will happen before the February flight), if it is being delayed at all. It also isn't clear if the engine test problem mentioned in the article was the failure a month or two ago, or if it was from the test over the weekend. It may turn out that the Omelek Island launch may still go off this year, but I don't know one way or another.

There isn't any news about this yet on SpaceX's site, but since it's Elon who usually posts such updates, I wouldn't fault him for focusing more on the problem at hand than at keeping us in the peanut-gallery up to date. If anyone has any additional info, I'd be interested to hear it.

[Update (2pm PST): According to Clark Lindsey, the Omelek Island launch is still on for Thanksgiving weekend, the delay was for the second launch, which will be occuring at Vandenburg in February. From other sources, I hear that the reason why it is February and not sooner has more to do with range issues than the rocket. So in other words, due to the previous testing problem (back a month or two ago), the first flight slipped till the end of this month, and the second flight slipped far enough that the next range opportunity was in February. In other words...nothing really has changed from previous.]

An Interesting Thought About Space Markets

On a whim, I was just reading an article on MSN.com, and it got me thinking. The writer, Tamim Ansary, was discussing history's top 9 most underrated inventions. He made the following rather interesting statement about the rotary printing press (emphasis mine):

Johannes Gutenberg invented the flatbed printing press in 1450. His invention remained basically unchanged until 1827. That year the steam-powered rotary printing press was invented, which printed from a single continuous roll of paper. The best flatbed press could print about 125 pages an hour; the new device could do about 18,000. At the time, no one needed that many copies of anything that fast, but invention is the mother of necessity. In 1833, a New Yorker named Benjamin Day decided to print a newspaper so cheap that at least 10,000 people a day could afford it: He would profit on volume. But what could he possibly put in a newspaper that 10,000 people a day would want to read? That's when Day's newspaper, the Daily Sun (and soon a host of imitators), invented ... news.

I really like how he put that: invention is the mother of neccessity.

A lot of poor business decisions and practices have been made during the history of the development of commercial space. It shouldn't be too surprising, especially since many of the people running commercial space programs are typically brilliant engineers with little practical business experience. One of the most common marketing errors that gets harped on is what is called the "if you build it, they will come" mentality. Basically, some people use that kind of thinking as an excuse to avoid actually trying to identify potential customers.

However, Tamim had a very valid point (one that was also made in The Rocket Company): new inventions lead to new needs. While we can sometimes predict how people might use a new capability, and thus get at least a starting guess at what the demand might be, you can never really tell in advance what will really happen when that new capability hits the market. The guy who invented the rotary printing press probably had no idea about the concept of mass market newspapers. He was just trying to make a more efficient press. The market he received was probably more than an order of magnitude more business than would have been predicted based upon previous models of printing demand. Could he have predicted that exact response in advance? Probably not. Did he need to try and justify the investment using more predictable demand? Probably.

The point here isn't that trying to find out potential customers is a waste of time. Far from it. The point here is that any sufficiently improved capability will create demand that didn't exist before. The key trick here seems to be to find a way to predict at least some of that new demand, and then find ways to bring that new demand it into existance fast enough that you can benefit from it. So, basic market research is still quite important in a new market like the commercial space transportation market, however actively trying to create new markets that use those new capabilities may be the real critical difference between a succesful space transportation venture, and a repeat of the failures of the past.

They Just Don't Make Nukes the Way They Used To, Do They?

In a reply to my last post, Mark claims that he "pretty much nuked this one over on my own blog." Man, they sure don't make nukes the way the used to....

Mark says:

Jon ends this section with a very oft repeated line that people have used over the years when they doubt the bad intentions of tyrannies. I think that the history of the current government in China should give one pause before ridiculing the idea that it might break treaties when convenient.

I don't doubt that China might have bad intentions. What I do doubt is that they're stupid enough to act on those bad intentions when the costs would obviously far outweigh the benefits. I couldn't care less about the "intentions" of dictators, so long as they lack the capability to act on them. As I pointed quite clearly, if China broke this particular treaty, they would be putting billions of dollars of existing assets at risk, not to mention commiting a blatant and premeditated act of war upon the US if it were dumb enough to murder alt.spacers.

If China murdered a bunch of US citizens in a case where they were obviously the aggressors, do you think for a second that the US wouldn't retaliate, or at least sanction some sort of retaliation? Do you honestly think that China is so freaking stupid that they would do something like that? And for what? A chunk of rock that they probably couldn't even get any economic benefit out of during a shooting war?

I don't worry about their intentions because I know that they fully understand how stupid it would be to act upon them.

In any case, Jon's citing of the Outer Space Treaty does not address the scenario. The Outer Space Treaty applies to national states, not to private entities. The Chinese would not, under the treaty, be able to restrict access to the Moon by--say--a NASA expedition. But the treaty is silent about private entities. So, the Chinese giving the boot to Lunacorp (or pick your favorite name) may be aggressive and bad, but it would not be illegal under the Outer Space Treaty.

Actually Mark is wrong here, but that's just par for the course. If he actually bothered to read a little about this treaty, he would see that private entities are treated as subsets of the state under which they operate. China has no right to prevent Lunacorp for instance from landing on the moon. If they took force against Lunacorp, it would be an act of war against the US. How dense is Mark? How desparate is he to find some straw he can grasp to justify a stupid and irrational space transportation architecture?

That's an interesting scenario, an alt.space company proposing to wage war against the largest nation state on Earth. Let us suppose that a private company actually decides to threaten China's space assets. China would be quite within its rights to call that piracy and terrorism, proving its point that such a company should not be allowed to operate on the Moon or even exist. It would demand that whatever country that company was incorporated in should seize it's assets and arrest it's corporate officers. If that country failed to do so, China's position would be that said country would be aiding and abetting piracy and terrorism and that China would therefore be free to act accordingly.

Oh, threatening to murder citizens of another country is kosher, but even hinting that such an action might have negative results for China is terrorism? Maybe in Mark's wingbat world. No, placing a military base on the Moon in the first place would be illegal, using it to threaten others would be more so. Acting upon that threat would be an act of war. Reminding China that were it to commit an act of war, and a violation of the treaty it's supposedly trying to defend, would result in them no longer being protected by said treaty isn't terrorism.

As for Sun Tzu, let me assure Jon and all that I have read the book. Believe me, despite what Jon and others have said, the establishment of a Chinese base on the Moon would be a classic Sun Tzu tactic. Can anyone imagine any sane person running a private company proposing to engage in a military confrontation without the support of another nation state with the military power to prevail? I think not. China would thus be able to, in effect, own the Moon without fighting.

And can anyone imagine China trying to start a shooting war with the US over a private company trying to land on the Moon? Private US companies are still made of US citizens. If they are acting legally, and are attacked illegally by China, that would be murder, and an act of war against the US.

Now, if the private company were dumb enough to actually attack China's space assets first, he might have a point. But since the private company is within its rights to land on the Moon in the first place, they would probably call China's bluff and remind them that any action they take would be an act of War. I ask again, does Mark seriously think China is dumb enough to risk so much for so little?

Why I'm Not Quaking In My Boots: Part II

I specifically mentioned in Part I of this post that I'd be discussing the illegitimate options (ie illegal options) that China could take if it wanted to "take over the moon" or at least prevent others from visiting there. The basic point I think you'll quickly see is that none of these simplistic and ameteurish ideas are even remotely workable, realistic, or rational. In other words, I'm still not quaking in my boots.

UN Fig-Leaf Approach
After claiming that my previous post (which I already stated was only going to discuss above-board and legal ways that China could try to claim the Moon) shows that I'm ignorant about military tactics, Mark provides this rather bizarre little scenario:

Allow me to present a scenario. The United States follows the suggestions of Jon, Rand, and others and stops the NASA return to the Moon. About 2020 the Chinese land a manned expedition and declares that they will now, under the authority of the UN, serve as stewards of the moon and its resources to make certain that certain entities do not "exploit them" and deny them to the peoples of the world, the common heritage of whom they are.

The Chinese build up a small base at the lunar south pole. However, let us say that a plucky alt.space firm decides to ignore the Chinese announcement and, having solved the problem of manned space flight to the Moon, lands a ship at the lunar north pole.

The Chinese tell the alt.spacers to get themselves away from the Moon as they have not filled out the proper paperwork (which is long, complicated, and impossible for anyone the Chinese do not want on the Moon to comply with.) Fail to leave and a ground to ground missile will take your space vehicle out. Then you will die.

Sensation on Earth. A protest is filed at the UN. China, Russia, and France veto the protest in the Security Council.

The plucky alt.spacers have to pack up and leave. China owns the Moon defacto, though not dejure.

The problem Mark is overlooking is that there's no legitimate way China can do this without violating the very treaty that he claims they would be upholding.

Now that I've actually read a bit of the OST (test available here), I think my case is even firmer that such a move by China would be blatantly illegal under the OST. Here are a few relevant quotes from the treaty (which China has ratified):

Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall be free for exploration and use by all States without discrimination of any kind, on a basis of equality and in accordance with international law, and there shall be free access to all areas of celestial bodies.

This means that any nation trying to restrict the access of any other nation to outer space or celestial bodies such as the Moon would be in blatant violation of this treaty.

Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.

A Chinese-only military base on the Moon used to prevent other nations from being able to freely use and explore the Moon would be illegal under this treaty. Now, if they allowed the US, Europe, and other UN peacekeeper nations to also use that base, they might be able to get away with having it there, but do you really think that a base that has US, Canadian, British, and other western peacekeepers there is really going to allow them to use aggressive military force against unarmed civilians?

The Moon and other celestial bodies shall be used by all States Parties to the Treaty exclusively for peaceful purposes. The establishment of military bases, installations and fortifications, the testing of any type of weapons and the conduct of military maneuvers on celestial bodies shall be forbidden.

Ahem?

Anyhow, it's quite obvious that Mark's scenario would be blatantly illegal under the very treaty it is trying to protect.

"But so what?" Mark will probably say. "Isn't China an "Evil Communist Dictatorship" (TM)? "Are you really naive enough to trust a dictator"? "Haven't you learned anything from [insert favorite false-historical-analogy here]?!?"

Blatantly Illegal Force
So, realizing that there is no legitimate and legal way China can block others from using the Moon, let's talk about if they try to do so by main force. So, somehow China manages to miraculously create a huge base on the Lunar South Pole with a bunch of missles, both ground-to-ground and anti-spacecraft, before NASA or any private entity can get there (cause those Evil Com-yoo-nists are so much smarter, competent, and wise than us poor helpless Capitalists, dontyaknow). Plucky alt.spacer company Harriman Industries with it's reusable translunar tugs and landers shows up in orbit around the Moon. Chinese officer contacts them and gives some BS about how China is enforcing the OST to prevent any Evil Capitalist Running-Dogs from exploiting and raping our Precious Bodily Fl....erm....Nearest Celestial Neighbor.

What is the poor alt.spacer to do? Doesn't China hold all the cards on the Moon?

No. Not by a long shot.

In such a situation, I imagine that Harriman Industries would contact the Chinese government, with something along the following lines:

From: Harriman Industries, Inc.
To: Chinese Embassy

To whom it may concern,
We are delighted to hear that you have taken on such an honorable and noble task as enforcing Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies. What a noble document indeed! We at Harriman Industries understand the importance of guaranteeing space to the free use of all nations, and the importance of non-interference with the property of other nations. In recent years nations such as your own, that of the United States, and others have put literally billions of dollars into satellites and other economically valuable entities in space. Without the concept of non-interference, what would the world be like?

You have such lovely satellites, it sure would be tragic if something were to happen to them...

Anyhow, we will be landing at the coordinates given to the UN under auspices of the treaty, and will be setting up a base to aid in the exploration and utilization of local resources. We look forward to peaceful cooperation in the future with you and your nation.

Sincerely, your friends in the peaceful development of space,

D. Harriman

What Mark completely overlooked in his shallowly-reasoned scenario is that even if China has a toehold on the Moon, it still has most of its valuable economic assets either in orbit around the Earth, or on Earth itself. The very laws that China would have to break in order to use force to prevent others from accessing the Moon are the very laws that China relies on to protect its economic assets in space. Is it really dumb enough to try setting a precidence that allows other nations to interfere with its property at will? At that point, they have to start asking themselves. Is preventing others from accessing the moon really worth losing all of my Earth orbital assets?

Speaking of military tactics and strategy, I wonder if Mark has ever read Sun Tzu:

The highest realization of warfare is to attack the enemy's plans; next is to attack their alliances; next to attack their army; and the lowest to attack their fortified cities.

For this reason attaining one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the pinnacle of excellence. [Defeating] the enemy's army without fighting is the true pinnacle of excellence.

Why I'm Not Quaking In My Boots: Part I

There's been a lot of discussion recently, and plenty of silly fearmongering about a Reuter's article claiming that China is going to send a man to the moon by 2017. I'm not going to spend too much time talking about the merits of the article. Well, other than to say that an translation from a report by what many consider to be a Chinese tabloid, quoting a scientist involved in China's robotic lunar exploration program, who has been seriously misquoted in the past, as unnoficially saying that China wants to put a man on the Moon by 2017 seems to leave me just a wee bit skeptical.

However, even if they really do plan on putting a man on the moon by then, I feel that it's hardly the matter of alarm, or any sort of legimitate justification for a wasteful repeat of the 60's Moon Race. Mark on the other hand seems to disagree:

I'm sorry, but I would rather not have to fight a war in order to get back to the Moon. I want us there first, even if it is just a dozen government employees at first, to make sure that others will be able to follow.

There was also this little gem:

Abolish NASA, stop all public space exploration, and one might eventually see private space explorers reach the Moon. But in my opinion they are likely to find the Chinese there waiting to greet them with a no tresspassing sign. Then it will not matter how clever those future entrepeneurs are. The Chinese, socialists that they are, will have the guns.

This fearmongering seems so unrealistic, nutty, paranoid, and tin-foil-hattish, that I barely know where to start. But being the long-winded fellow that I am, I'll bring up a few brief points.

The Legitimate Route
First, let's discuss a little about the current state of space proprety law, and how one might go about establishing the functional equivalence of a "claim" on a given piece of space property. We can discuss less legitimate methods later, and why I think they aren't any more workable, but let's start with the basics.

[Caveat: You should probably verify what I'm about to say with a bona fide space law expert, like Wayne White, James Dunstan, Rosanna Sattler, or one of the other many contributors over at grokspace.com before taking any of this as gospel truth. I'll do my best to rehash and summarize my understanding of what they presented, but at that link you should be able to get access to the real deal.]

From the space property law discussion we had at the Return to the Moon conference last July, the key to establishing the exclusive right to use a given piece of lunar property is the "non-interference" portion of the OST. The OST explicity precludes the right for any country to make territorial claims on the Moon. The only legitimate way a country could get around this would be through this clause. The clause states that spacecraft (and presumably hardware or people) put into space by a given country may not be interfered with by any other country. For example, if the US orbits a geostationary satellite, another country like Canada couldn't legally do any of the following to it:

• Use a tug to move it


• Intentionally cause it any damage (and if they accidentally damaged it they would be liable)


• Put another satellite up that blocks the comsat from being able to get solar power


• Put another satellite between the comsat and its intended market thereby blocking it off

I'm sure you could think up other examples, but that's just to get the general idea out there. Now if you look at say one of the Apollo lunar landers, or Lunokhod landers, similar rules would apply. You wouldn't be allowed to do anything that could reasonably damage them, nobody other than the US government could move them. In fact, a reasonable stance would be to not even touch them if you don't have explicity approval from the owner.

Ok, with that little bit of background, let's look at a couple of other related ideas. The moon is a dusty environment, and that dust is abrasive, and potentially damaging. Activities that kick dust onto existing equipment of other nations would probably be precluded under the "non-interference" clause we just discussed. When you land a spacecraft, or drive a rover, it'll kick up dust for a certain distance. Fortunately, since the Moon has no real atmosphere, and all dust travels in a ballistic trajectory, it's probably quite probable that some physics based legal guidlines will evolve over time for how close you can land a given ship or drive a given rover to someone else's stuff, depending on the intervening terrain.

Gaming The System With Robotic Landers
This appears, at least on the surface, a way that a nefarious group could block others from being able to land on large swaths of the Moon would be to carpet that area with a bunch of tiny landers, spaced close enough to not allow any other landing sites. If say the minimal safe landing distance was determined to be 500m, you'd "only" need a couple dozen to maybe a couple hundred of these things to completely block off even one decent sized polar crater/peak of eternal light region. You would land them say 525m away from each other in a grid (if you landed them less than 500m apart, and they were still functional, you'd be undermining your claim that you need at least a 500m spacing, now wouldn't you?), probably hexagonally arranged.

However, if you just landed a bunch of dumb landers that weren't designed to do anything after they landed, it might be tougher to get a court to actually accept your claim (AIUI, courts don't like people trying to blatantly game the system like this. In such a situation, you'd probably have to show how landing nearby would actually cause you real damage in order to get them to side with you). So, now you're talking landers that have to have at least something on them that does something after landing. Say telescopes, transonders, landing lights, scientific equipment, something. So now you have to land dozens or hundreds of these things to cover even one tiny fraction of just one interesting part of the Moon.

Even if you did manage to land all of those succesfully, even that wouldn't be good enough. All someone else would need to do would be land far enough away from them to not "interfere", and then drive in and use the land between them. The first commercial manned missions might even do the Chinese a favor, and put up fences around each of these landers with "Beware Landers are Property of Chinese Government" signs, and padlocked gates (they'd then give the padlocks to the Chinese government for safe keeping).

Seriously, this just wouldn't work. Let's look at something more realistic: manned facilities.

Homesteading as a Route to Staking a Claim
A much more realistic, and thorough way to use the non-interference rule to stake the equivalence of a claim would be to build a substantial manned settlement or unmanned outpost. You'd probably place landing spots far away from the main hardware, with solar cells and radiators also placed a bit away from the main traffic routes. With of course some improved roads and simple power lines linking everything together. Add in some radio repeaters/landing transponders, some lights strategically placed, and all the roads, sheds, and other outbuildings for even a tiny settlement, and you could quickly block off several square kilometers. In fact, this would likely be the way people seriously approach lunar property rights. If you look at it in this light, it appears that current space law actually favors the equivalence of "homesteading", which IMO is a very good thing. Actually requiring people to make improvements to a given chunk of real estate before they can exlude others from it is a good thing. It keeps those who aren't really able to use the land away, and awards those who actually take enough effort do do things for real.

Going back to the evil dictatorship bit, once again this approach is utterly impractical because in order to block off even just the valuable parts of the moon, you'd have to improve thousands of square kilometers of the lunar surface. This would imply thousands of people on the luanr surface. Does Mark seriously believe that the Chinese space program (that has to date only flown three astronauts over the course of several years) is somehow going to put thousands of people on the lunar surface and millions of tons of hardware there between now and when a private space company could get there? The idea seems laughable to say the least.

They might, just might, get a tiny outpost planted by then, but nothing substantial enough to allow them to legitimately block others. In fact, such an outpost would probably be a welcomed trading partner and additional customer for other private settlements and private space transportation companies.

Anyhow, someone might be able to use this info to come up with a better way that some nefarious group could legitimately block others from landing on the Moon, but at least I'm convinced that none of those approaches are practical. Next post on this topic, I'll discuss some of the other, less legitimate ways a dictatorship could go about it, and why I think they wouldn't work either.

I Probably Shouldn't Respond, But....

Our favorite cranky curmudgeon, Mark Whittington decided to do a little trolling the other day. I know I really shouldn't allow myself to be baited so easily, but I've got a little time on my hands this morning, and I haven't done a good fisking in at least a few weeks.

Well, I actually do care if you get into space, especially if you share my values about Western Civilization. The purpose of the space program is not to get me and mine a trip to Club Moon but to spread human civilization beyond the Earth. If I get to go, fine. If not, sad for me but it doesn't matter in the large scale scheme of things.

Human civilization by any reasonable definition of the term is not going to be spread beyond earth by this program. At most a few dozen civil servants are going to go camp out on the moon for a few months at a time. The techniques and technologies that are truly neccessary to do what Mark says he wants to see (spreading human civilization beyond the Earth) are being intentionally ignored by the current ESAS architecture. The companies that had contracts developing these technologies have for the most part had their contracts canceled explicitly since they are developing techniques that would make those HLVs that NASA has such a fetish for unneccessary.

But he's right, NASA isn't around to give us all a vacation in space. It isn't here for our entertainment. What it should be here for (if it should be here at all) is to help promote the commercial development of space. That is the only way that "Western Civilization" is going to spread beyond the Earth. It isn't going to happen on ultra-expensive, low-flight-rate, government run and operated vehicles. It will only happen when commercial companies are routinely traveling about inside cislunar space, and some companies are making money doing things on the lunar surface, in orbit, and beyond.

Anyhow, moving right along, Mark then does some interesting fact twisting:

Jon Goff, who once famously boasted that his company would have a CNN crew to cover the NASA return to the Moon landing, has some more complaints:

It's interesting how a fun little jest about us at MSS probably being able to land a CNN crew on the Moon before NASA gets back there has now been hyped up to a "boast". As though any serious person would have taken that comment to be a serious promise of what we think MSS will be doing fifteen years from now. We do intend to do lunar landers at some point if we can figure out the suborbital RLV first (since a lunar lander is really not too much more sophisticated than a VTVL suborbital RLV), but when or if that actually happens is dependent on how well this first vehicle goes, what we can do with the various intermediate markets between now and then, etc.

All that said, I still wouldn't mind carrying out that boast. Just so long as there's someone back on Earth filming Mark's reaction for me.

Well, goodness, where does one start? Let's leave aside the insults against those of us who have not drunk the alt.space koolaid. Those really demonstrate the poverty of the libertarian anarchist argument.

In case Mark couldn't tell, those insults were meant as what is sometimes called "humor". They weren't intended as substantiative arguments, or a replacement thereof. And more importantly, I wasn't so much insulting those who haven't drunk the alt.space koolaid as those who had drunk the NASA koolaid.

The fact of the matter is, no matter what scenario one can imagine, most people alive on this planet will not travel into space, no more than most people in Europe in the 17th and 18th Century traveled to the Americas. Put that fantasy out of your mind.

Of course most people won't be travelling to space, even if it becomes no more difficult than traveling to Europe. Most people on this planet haven't and won't leave their nation of origin. Most just don't want to. However for those subset of people that do want to leave Earth and visit or settle places out in space, it would be nice if it were even an option. I would be overjoyed with NASA if they even were able to help as small a fraction of the US population get to the moon as the fraction of Europeans who had been to America by the end of the 17th or 18th century. But as I keep pointing out, this architecture won't even lead to that much.

A sound space policy--and I think that NASA's plan to return to the Moon is part of it--will open up the high frontier of space to a lot of people with the will and the ability to take advantage of the opportunity. It may not mean that you or I will be toasting the fiftieth Apollo Day at Tranquility Base. But it will mean that some people alive today might.

How? Waving hands doth not make it so. How exactly will ESAS help "open the high frontier" so a "lot of people" can "take advantage of the opportunity"? Why should I care if they do, if those "some people alive today" end up being just another couple dozen NASA employees? Why is that worth celebrating at all? If the current space policy actually lead to even say 10,000 people settling cislunar space over the next 20 years, it would be awesome. But the reality is that if ESAS leads to even a dozen people settling on the moon by 2025, I'd be amazed.

The reason why those evil big gummit employees need to go is that they will take care of the hard, exacting, and expensive task of exploration. Eventually there will be some kind of base, around which the next wave of space travelers, the entrepeneurs, will gather to form the first lunar settlement. The third wave will be the tourists, in my opinion.

The basic exploration actually needed as a precursor to settlement only has to be expensive if one is trying to get the program to double as a space-nerd welfare scheme. More importantly, much of the exploration and development that is most needed to make lunar settlements and cislunar economies a reality are being actively ignored by NASA at the moment, and will be further ignored as the costs of the Shaft, the Continual Employment Vehicle, and the *ahem* "Longfellow" start overruning their budgets.

The reality is that NASA is now cutting funding to research being done on anything related to on-orbit assembly, zero-g cryogen storage and transfer, and anything else that might make it unneccessary to employ thousands of ATK and BLoMart employees in several states to build and launch the Longfellow. They care more about pandering to special interests and padding the pockets of connected companies than they do about helping mature the technologies needed for civilization to "spread beyond Earth". Now, this isn't 100% fair. Brant Sponberg, and his team with Innovative Partnerships are fighting the good fight to try and get at least some crumbs for developing these techologies. I really aplaud Brant and his team for what they're doing. It should be obvious however where NASA's and Congress's real priorities lie. While Brant is struggling to get authorization (and money) to offer prizes more than a piddling $250k for helping foster some of these critical technologies, NASA is planning on spending $20-25B over the next several years in developing their own launchers.

It'll be great if NASA gets authorization to offer larger prizes, and especially if they can get a few million to back the Lunar Lander Analog prize for example. I would applaud that as an excellent use of NASA money. That still doesn't mean that I'll support or condone wasting billions on pork just because NASA did the right thing with a few million.

Anyhow, barring a sea-change at NASA, it looks like several exploration/settlement technical milestones are going to be done entirely (or almost entirely) by those darn unrealistic alt.space companies:

• The first succesful transfer of cryogenic propellants on orbit


• The first reusable lunar transfer vehicle


• The first LEO propellant depot


• The first reusable lunar lander


• The first production level lunar ISRU propellant plant


• The first permanent off-world settlement


• The first offworld settlement with more than 20 people


• The first private individual (as opposed to civil servant) on another world


• The first child born and raised off of earth


• The first lunar platinum extraction facility


• The first spacesuit that can survive use on the moon for more than a few weeks at a time without serious overhauls

And very possibly:

• The next person on the surface of the moon


• The next object of any sort on the surface of the moon

And my personal favorites:

• The first CNN crew on the surface of the moon


• The first me on the surface of the moon

Settling the Moon or any place else in space without a government presence is a fantasy. There is no incentive for all of those alt.space firms, which have not boosted so much as an ant into low Earth orbit, not to mention the Moon as of yet. The cost/benefit ratio is just too great to manage for a private firm at this time.

Well, first off Mark is wrong. Orbital Sciences was originally privately funded when they developed their Pegasus. They've boosted many billion ants worth into orbit. There's also that Falcon I sitting on the pad out in Kwajelein that's about to put paid to his silly cooment. He is right though that with how expensive NASA does things, the cost/benefit ratio is way too high to justify doing anything on the moon (not even sending government employees there). We'll just have to change that. Making technology more capable and less expensive is something that the private sector (as opposed to the public sector) is quite good at.

Sure, you probably won't see any near-term private company that tries to sell a business plan that involves going directly to the moon and setting up a colony there. Or if you do, they won't get funded. What you will see is private companies incrementally developing the technologies, techniques, and markets needed to get there. You'll first see private orbital and suborbital flight over the next few years. Then you'll see the start of orbital tourism, private microgravity research (in private facilities), private on-orbit assembly and servicing. By the time the CEV is ready, you may well see private spacecraft flying on a semi-regular basis. And long before Longfellow is ready, you'll see private joy-rides around the moon, private tugs delivering on-orbit assembled satellites to GEO, and other similar ventures. You may even see a few tourist expeditions to the old Apollo landing sites before NASA astronauts ever tread again on the lunar surface.

Sure, there will be government involvement, but it'll probably end up being NASA renting private facilities on the moon rather than the other way around.

Abolish NASA, stop all public space exploration, and one might eventually see private space explorers reach the Moon. But in my opinion they are likely to find the Chinese there waiting to greet them with a no tresspassing sign. Then it will not matter how clever those future entrepeneurs are.

Ah, the Red Scare. It's kind of amusing that on-orbit assembly is oh-so impossible for us Americans, and even the thought of a private US firm being able to put a CNN crew on the surface of the moon before NASA is heresy. However the Chinese make some small rumor about sending people to the moon, and it is a serious threat. Mark should note that Chinese government-run lunar program will probably take the same route that Russia was planning on taking: on-orbit assembly of modular spacecraft from smaller launch vehicles. Somehow in Mark's world those darned socialists are smarter than us American capitalists....funny that a self-avowed capitalist has so much more faith in government and central planning than he does in the market. It seems he has more faith in the power of communism than even the communists do. Most of them are smart enough to realize how much bullox communism is, and are trying to shed it in favor of some form of capitalism as fast as they can.

Yeah, the Chinese may get there with a few dozen employees and setup a small base. They might even do so before private enterprise gets there. And when private companies get there, they'll land a couple miles over and setup their own facilities. As will another company, and another, and another. They probably won't mind having another trading partner out there. The important thing to remember is that due to the OST that China signed, they can't claim land there any more than we can. They can only exclude others from interfering with their stuff that they bring there. The moon has the surface area of Africa. Do you really think that a dozen Chinese guys are really going to be able to fence the whole thing off before private enterprise gets there?

The Chinese, socialists that they are, will have the guns.

And private companies, Americans that they are, will also have guns. I'm not sure what Mark's point is.

Anyhow, that's all I have for now. I hope this little fisking shed at least some light to go with all the heat.

Some Thoughts on the SpaceX Complaint

There's been a lot of coverage on various space blogs recently about SpaceX's antitrust lawsuit versus Boeing and Lockheed Martin. I may take some time later to discuss some of my thoughts about the case itself, I just wanted to comment on a common complaint I've been hearing in the alt.space community about the lawsuit. In its basic form the complaint goes something like "why is SpaceX wasting so much time and money on a lawsuit when they haven't even flown their first vehicle yet", usually followed up or accompanying a statement about how they should "stick to rocket development". Maybe by rebutting this argument I'm really just knocking down a strawman, but I think there's an important point to be made here.

The problem with this complaint is that in my opinion, it shows a lot of ignorance about business. Trying to just focus on the technical development, without taking care of the marketting side of the business is a recipe for business failure. The EELV launch business is a decent sized potential market, especially for a company with low overhead like SpaceX. Letting Boeing and Lockheed strongarm them out of that market for the next 6+ years would be rather asinine. What good would it do SpaceX to develop the Falcon IX only to find that one of the main existing customers has been locked into an exclusive contract with their competitor? And taking the case up now, before the merger has been consumated will be substantially easier than trying to break through the monopoly once it is truly a monopoly.

The other silly thing about this argument is thinking that SpaceX isn't focusing on getting Falcon I flying. It's not like the ~120 engineers at SpaceX have all abandoned Omelek Island and McGregor Ranch to don wingtips, three-piece suits, and briefcases to take on the big boys. They aren' the ones doing the legal footwork. They're still working away testing engines, and getting the Falcon I ready for flight (as well as getting the Falcon IX first stage ready for hold-down testing early next year). Elon hired one of the top lawfirms in the nation to handle the legal issues, explicitly so the engineers could focus on engineering. That's one of the nice things about being a multimillionaire--you can afford to pay for enough people to work on multiple parts of a project at the same time.

So to me, I really can't see any good reason why Elon shouldn't be doing this. He has a lot to lose by not pursuing the case, quite a bit to gain if he wins, and not much to lose for trying. While I'm not sure how I feel about how they're going about the actual legal approach to this problem (I'm an engineer, not a lawyer), I can at least say that it is probably wise for SpaceX to ignore the peanut gallery and focus on both the vehicle and the market for it.

Couldn't Have Said it Better Myself

Sorry for the long hiatus on blog posting. I do have a lot I want to blog about, but between a case of bloggers cramp, and how busy I've been at work with engine and vehicle work, I haven't had much chance to write.

However, I wanted to draw attention to a very profound point made over on Space Pragmatism the other day regarding ESAS. Dan says:

Unlike many of my private space industry brothers, I don't think [ESAS] is doomed to failure already. I think they could get to space, and with the right leadership (and I mean in the White House not in Griffin's seat) they could build colonies and launch Americans to Mars.

So why am I not jumping for joy and waving my arms? The problem is, it doesn't get me and my wife to space. That, of course, is my ultimate goal. Like Ron "Tater Salad" White said about being a dog lover:

I a dog lover. Actually I love my dog. I don't give a crap
about your dog.

Well, just the same for me. I want to go to space. I don't give a crap if you go to space. (I wouldn't mind the company, so come on up). But the best way to get me to space is to get everybody to space.

It's kind of amusing hearing people defend the ESAS project saying that it will get America back on the moon. No, it won't get America back on the moon. It'll get a few employees of the US government back to the moon, but most Americans have never gone to the moon a first time, let alone talk about "going back" to the moon.

And that's the real problem with this architecture. It really does nothing to help hasten the day when Dan, or his wife, or I, or any other normal Joe for that matter, will have a chance to visit or live on the moon. If commercial lunar access becomes a reality, it will become so in spite of ESAS, not becuase of it.

Now, I don't mind having to use some of my own ingenuity to help develop commercial space. It's just a cryin' shame seeing billions of our money going each year to allowing some aging hipsters to live out their Star Trek fantasies by proxy all over again as NASA builds its "Continual Employment Vehicle". And the ironic thing is that these NASA-fanboys are often the same guys who whine about entitlements and social programs. They're all welfare-queens as far as I'm concerned.

If NASA should exist at all, it should not be to give rocket nerds their jollies at everyone else's expense. It should be actually helping promote the private space industry, for the benefit of all. Maybe they should be doing stuff more like what the old NACA used to do--research on useful topics, industry promotion, stuff like that. Not just channeling billions to bloated contractors for a program that only benefits a couple of space voyeurs.

Ok, spleen's all vented. I feel better now.