Back From Utah

For those who are wondering, I finally got the thesis wrapped up and submitted for publication on Monday. My final thesis committee member got back from camping, signed the thing off, and after an afternoon of running around, I had the thesis in and all the rest of the paperwork in for graduation. The paper was a lot more solid this time, and a lot more focused. I think I cut the main body back by over 1/3 compared to what I submitted for defense. Unfortunately, I won't be able to publish it on my blog anytime soon, because the Tech Transfer Office wanted to keep it under wraps for at least long enough to file a provisional patent. I'll make sure to put it up here once they're done. Also, I'm planning on continuing the work a bit in my spare time.

As for the paperwork, I'm going to follow-up tomorrow to make sure that they have everything entered in correctly. However, as of Monday they told me that I had everything in, so it looks like I'll be graduating after all. Thanks everyone for your support and encouragement!

[Note: We're back in California now, so you can expect more bloggy goodness in the near future. At least once I've caught up at work, and caught up on sleeping...]

I Wish That Were The Only Problem...

Tankmodeler, a friend and regular here at Selenian Boondocks, mentioned something in a comment to Ken's last post that I think deserves some mention:

[T]he one absolutely key stumbling block is ownership of Lunar mineral rights. No-one is going anywhere unless they know, rock solid, that they will own what they find. If space advocates want to get us off this rock, the single best thing that they can do is lobby their local governments to recognize Lunar property ownership. Once that happens a lot of other things start to happen in very well-known ways.

Now, I'm not saying this to pick on Tankmodeler, but I think this is a common opinion. I also think it's wrong.

First off, while the state of extraterrestrial property rights isn't as solid as one would hope, they're probably good enough. Basically, while property rights aren't formally and intentionally recognized by international law, the law does informally create a regime that is close enough for practical purposes. You can't own a deed to lunar property. But anyone who wants can land hardware there, and do whatever research or resource extraction they want. Anyone who has hardware in space can seek legal redress if someone tries to interfere with their operations. Anyone who harvests materials on the moon still owns them when they land.

Heck, using the exclusion principle, you might even be able to structure a deal that smells rather strongly of real estate. While you couldn't say sell the right to the lunar land underneath a LOX extraction facility, you could sell the facility, and the right to exclude anyone from interfering with it...it ain't perfect, but life is about taking what's possible and running with it.

More importantly, while there is definite room for improvement when it comes to extraterrestrial property rights, there are no real obstacles that couldn't be overcome if there were a sufficiently compelling business case to be made. As Jim Dunstan pointed out a while ago, there used to be all sorts of legal restrictions about oil extraction in the Alaskan wilderness. But, once the technological and economical case for extraction was solidified, the legal restrictions were overcome in short order.

I'm pretty much with Jim. The reason why we don't see lunar mining ventures right now has little to do with legal ambiguities about property rights. It has a lot more to do with the immaturity, unaffordability, and to put it bluntly, non-existence of cislunar transportation systems. And our relatively limited knowledge of lunar resource concentrations, extraction techniques, and the lack of experience with technologies capable of long-term lunar surface operations. I may be biased, but I think it's the transportation architecture and infrastructure immaturity that is the real obstacle. Once you have affordable, reliable, and consistent access to the lunar surface, doing the exploration necessary to get a good handle on the location of useful resource concentrations becomes feasible. Doing the development work of making equipment, spacesuits, and structures that can handle the abusive lunar surface environment also becomes more feasible. Etc.

That isn't to say that we should just ignore space law, or that the situation is perfect. I'm sure there are several space law experts who can offer good suggestions for practical next steps, and things we can do to improve space property rights (Jim? Berin? Jesse?) What I am saying is that I think it's really easy to lull ourselves into thinking that the main thing standing between us and space profits is those meddling socialists in DC and Turtle Bay, as opposed to more mundane things like creating solid business models and building reliable and affordable technology.

I For One Welcome Our New, Scaly Overlords...

Well, it looks like Rand and Clark and Jeff are too busy blogging about the New Space conference to start synthesizing things yet, so I'll just make some comments on the big news from yesterday. In case you don't read Space Transport News every morning like most of the rest of us, it was announced yesterday that Northrop Grumman is buying out Scaled Composites. Unbeknownst to much of the alt.space world, Northrop has actually owned 40% of Scaled for some time now, possibly several years, so this move isn't quite as surprising to me as to some others.

Now, while some of the comments I've seen about the acquisition seem to "get it" (particularly comments from Nathan and Ferris over on Hobbyspace, and surprisingly enough, Mark Whittington as well), there still seems to be a lot of people who are worried that this will become a case of a "big dinosaur company gobbling up a plucky alt.space mammal." On the contrary, I would argue that not only is this acquisition likely to be a net win for Scaled, but in fact it may be one of the most important events this year for the future of commercial space development. Here's some thoughts on why:

Northrop's Skunkworks
First off, lets talk about why this particular deal is likely going to be win-win for both Northrop Grumman and Scaled Composites. Unlike Lockheed Martin, who has Skunk Works, and Boeing that has Phantom Works, Northrop Grumman really doesn't have an lean-and-mean R&D shop of the same caliber. Scaled comes with a reputation in that area that compares well with Northrop Grumman's competitors' secret projects shops, has the capability of doing important work very quietly, and has a longstanding relationship with Northrop.

With the size of Scaled's existing revenue streams, I wouldn't be surprised if the buyout was worth over $100M. Northrop isn't about to screw with a system that works so well that it's worth that kind of money, especially with how much Northrop would benefit from continuing to run Scaled the way it has been run.

The reality of Scaled is that Burt Rutan is eventually going to retire. Using Esther Dyson's meme of startups being either "toys" or "children", it is apparent that Burt is smart enough to realize that if he runs Scaled like his own personal toy, it won't outlast him. He's taking the probably painful step of letting his child grow up. By taking steps now, there's a good chance that Scaled will continue on long past his retirement as one of the world's premier aviation prototype shops.

I'm sure having a huge infusion of capital won't hurt Burt's aviation or space projects very much either.

Now, there are some real risks involved in such an acquisition process. Things don't always go smoothly, and there are bound to be some clashes of corporate culture even if Northrop tries to take a very liberal approach with Scaled. Things may yet get botched, but if they do, it will be because the execution was botched, not that the deal was a bad idea from the start.

Selling out to "The Man"
One of the comments I've seen many make is that Northrop is just buying Scaled to squash the competition. This meme of big, bad dinosaurs trying to maliciously destroy their mammalian competition needs to die. But this meme is even sillier in this particular case. I mean, what business exactly is Northrop supposed to be protecting by squashing Scaled? In fact, if we're talking about manned suborbital flight, none of the dinosaurs really have much to lose, because none of them are involved in that market.

More to the point, I'm not sure I'd even be worried about things if Boeing or Lockheed were the ones doing the acquisition. There may have been a time in the past where it was in the economic self-interest of some of the "dinosaurs" to squish their "mammal" competitors, but if there ever actually was such a time in the past, it doesn't appear to be the case any more. I mean, it should be an eye opener when the head of Exploration Systems for a dinosaur company is singing the praises of a launch vehicle being developed by one of their competitors. More to the point, and I think this is going to be a theme to be developed over the course of many blog posts in the future, I think that most of the big aerospace companies are starting to see New Space companies not as threats to be beaten, but as opportunities for collaboration. I truly believe that we'll see many examples over the next decade of alt.space and big.space companies working together to achieve things that would've been impossible to achieve alone. Heck, even some small parts of NASA are showing some positive trends in that regard.

Once again, the caveat has to be said that sometimes mammals can be squished accidentally even when the dinosaurs are trying to play nice with them. When you have firms of drastically different size working together like that, things have to be thought through carefully, because there are many ways the collaboration can be screwed up. But even with that caveat, I think that more often then not it is worth the risks to both sides to try and collaborate where common ground can be found.

But more on that at a future date.

Liquidity Events and "The Netscape Moment"
The last point I want to make about this deal, and the one that I think will be by far its most important impact, is what it means for investment in this industry. Investors typically don't risk large amounts of money investing in startups with the intention to just hold the resulting stock indefinitely. As one investor put it, if they wanted dividends, they'd buy utilities, not invest in startups. What investors want is a realistic exit strategy--basically an exit strategy is some way that down the road they can get their money back out with a severalfold increase. Since most of these startups are privately held companies, in order for investors to be able to "exit", there has to be some sort of "liquidity event." Due to both SEC restrictions, and the typical form of resulting stock agreements for privately held companies, it is very hard to actually sell stock held in a privately held company. In order to easily convert that stock back into liquid assets, the easiest way is if the company's stock becomes public. Which leads to the two main types of liquidity events that I've heard discussed for alt.space type companies: acquisitions by publicly held companies, and IPOs. Acquisitions being by far the most likely type of liquidity event for most alt.space companies.

Basically, as I understand it, when a private company gets bought out by a publicly traded company, the publicly traded company will usually buy the startup out using stock instead of cash. If an investor owns 10% of the privately held company after money, he'd get 10% of the stock in the public company doing the acquisition. That investor can then turn around and sell those stock to get his money back out to reinvest in other projects. [Note: if Steven or any other of the more investment savvy people are reading this and would like to provide clarification, I'd love to have your comments].

What this transaction shows investors is that there really is a realistic exit strategy for successful alt.space firms. When investors start realizing that they can put money into a promising alt.space startup, and that if all goes reasonably well the company has a good chance of getting bought up by a big, publicly traded aerospace company a few years down the road, you'll start seeing more investors willing to make the plunge. When people start seeing that it really is possible for them to turn a small fortune into a bigger one in this industry (instead of the other way around as the joke usually goes), you'll start seeing a lot more of them becoming interested. As it is, without valid examples of good exit strategies in and industry, its hard to attract much investment even if you have a rock solid business case and a top-notch team.

Now, I think this particular deal isn't like our industry's "Netscape Moment", I think we're definitely getting closer. I also doubt that this acquisition is going to lead in the immediate near term to wholesale buyouts of alt.space companies by big.space companies. However, I wouldn't be surprised to find out several years down the road that this event led to several big.space companies starting to make small strategic investments in the more promising alt.space companies, opening the door for future acquisitions.

So, if a couple of months or years down the road you hear about XCOR or Masten or Armadillo or even SpaceX "selling out to The Man", it might be worth reserving judgment for a while. You never know what might come of it.

Thesis Update: The Continuing Story Continues...

It's been a while since I posted anything, and I figured it was time to give an update. After the defense on the 3rd, I spent most of the next week pretty much rewriting my whole paper, and redoing one of the key experiments. Although it was a lot more rework than I expected, it was definitely worth it--the thesis is a lot more solid, and a lot more concise. I think I cut the main body of the thesis down to about 80 pages, with about 40 pages of appendices. I made the prints on the nice paper, and now have all but one signature needed. Unfortunately, the last committee member is out of town until Monday (and has been out of town almost the whole time since my thesis defense), so I'm pretty much stuck waiting around until he gets back. The annoying thing is that he may very well have some feedback he wants me to incorporate, so I might be stuck around here even longer. It's kind of amusing how one-week trips to Utah tend to turn into month long trips when it's my family.

Unfortunately this delay means two things. First, I'm not going to be walking at graduation. After missing almost a full month of work, I really can't afford another big road trip in only a few weeks. Second, this also means I won't be able to make it to the Small Sat Conference that week either. With how much we need to get done at work between now and October, I can't really justify taking any more time off until after the X-Prize Cup. But once that's all over, I'll try and find a conference I can go to for all those who chipped in money so I could go to ISDC. I haven't forgotten you all, just have had to change plans several times.

Anyhow, hopefully on Monday I'll be able to post the last words of this whole thesis saga. Until then, the continuing story continues...

Astronomy on the Moon?

by guest blogger Ken

Dan Lester is back, and with a vengeance. Mr. Lester works at UT Austin and has a strong interest in IR astronomy. He really wants an instrument in free-space (SAFIR), and is convinced that there are few astronomical applications that are better served by being on the Moon than in Free Space. Part of the issue is that it has been often proposed that IR telescopes be placed in the everdark craters at the Lunar poles, providing free cryogenic temperatures to the instruments. So there are competing architectures at play.

Dan Lester and Giulio Varsi have a compelling article over at The Space Review entitled "Destinations for exploration: more than just rocks?", which calls for a re-examination of where we want to conduct our astronomical sciences. He makes a lot of good points, most of which I agree with, though as usual I don't entirely agree with his conclusions, though in this case it is because I don't think the authors take the argument far enough.

The authors open with the entirely reasonable question of whether the architecture that is being developed to implement the VSE is going to enable the capabilities to build, maintain and oversee facilities in free space as well? Both Jon and I are clearly both in favor of such a thing, and even the CBO Report called orbital construction something that NASA is just pushing into the future with the ESAS architecture. Or as I noted in the referenced post:

The report also makes the very salient point that for future NASA MARS missions the mass in LEO requirements have ranged from 470-1500mt. So once NASA is done with the Moon they STILL have to face the task of on-orbit assembly to meet their "next" objective (which the report also notes was not a requirement set in the VSE - these guys really did try to lay out all the facts and be impartial). All NASA's doing with ESAS is pushing the learning curve farther into the future. Penny wise, pound foolish is an old folk wisdom that comes to mind.

Or as the authors note in the article:

On the one hand, NASA plans to have us travel vast distances to Mars while, on the other hand, it seems willing to abandon the very in-space construction and maintenance capabilities [learned from ISS and Hubble (and I would note some shuttle flights)] that may be necessary precursors to such long voyages.

They decry the lithocentrism of most space exploration and note that the vacuum of free space is the perfect reflection of the new Information Age. Wait, maybe I said that wrong. They think that operating outside of gravity wells reflects the free flow of electrons around the world in the Information Age. Or something like that. They question the marketability and feasibility of ISRU, though they do note that it would affect in-space operations, which NASA is abandoning, so they're losing their justifications for going to the Moon to do ISRU in the first place. Good point.

I disagree, though, with their contention that most of the science objectives can be achieved robotically. A lot of folks smarter than me also think that humans have to go out with the robots to achieve maximum benefit from each. The authors do note that the Earth-Moon Lagrange points are connected to the Sun-Earth Lagrange points by low-energy trajectories, meaning that instruments like the JWST could be 'kicked' back to a facility at an EML point for servicing,a la Hubble, making it an enabling job site. I'm 100% in agreement, and have said the same thing many times, such as in my "Why Mars Again?" post where I noted:

From EML-1 we have an on-ramp to the Interplantary Superhighways which connect all of the lagrange points of the Solar system. We can have platforms out at the Sun-Jupiter L-2 point that periodically return to EML-1 for servicing and upgrade. We can have Asteroid Belt watchers at Sun-Mars L-1 and L-2 showing us the lay of the land there. We can have a communications platform at the Sun-Venus L-4 or L-5 point to provide communications around the Sun to Mars when its occulted. We can have Sun watchers at the Sun-Mercury L-2 point (okay, those might not be coming back). The point is that we can have a robust program of monitoring our near-space environment for threats, that can be upgraded as we learn more, and in a relatively simple and low-fuel-cost way.

The authors note a recent article in the Society of Logistical Engineers journal Logistics Spectrum. I think they are talking about this article here. (alternate site). It's by some familiar names, but does make a number of very good points, such as:
-the Moon is 20 times further than any logistics support of a remote base on Earth
-Over 70% of the energy is getting over the first 200 miles from Earth
-They see 5 emerging enabling technologies:
*autonomous rendezvous & docking
*new autonomous payload transfer system
*new s/c2s/c cryogenic propellant tank transfer system
*autonomous propellant tank tapping system
*autonomous lunar payload offload system
-they propose staging at MEO and EML1. The system they suggest will initially transfer 800kg to the Lunar surface directly, 4x that if refueled at EML1, and 10x that if refueled in MEO and EML1.
-the development cost of a significant new launch capability represents at least 100 launches of existing EELVs and many years of Lunar transport operations
-they then go on to talk about PPPs and that sort of thing.

It's an interesting article, and a nice find. That an article on Lunar Logistics would appear in a trade journal does kind of support the notion that the giggle factor is starting to go away a bit regarding private space efforts. The amount of cost associated with establishing the depot chain is one of the key drivers in getting ISRU established early.

Which brings us to the NRC report on "The Scientific Context for Exploration of the Moon". I had some commentary on the draft version of the NRC report last year, and the final version fleshes it out pretty thoroughly. Notably, Daniel Lester is one of the committee members who prepared the report, and his influence can be found in chapter six - Observations and Science Potentially Enabled by the VSE. The idea of astronomy from the Moon is an old one, in part because of the obvious differences from the traditional terrestrial scopes: lack of atmosphere, less seismic activity, extreme cold/sensitivity during night viewing. Physics Today had a pro/con debate last year on Build astronomical observatories on the Moon? between Mr. Lester and Paul Lowman Jr at Goddard. Dr. Lowman is one of the lecturers at the NASA Academy, and I still have his handouts somewhere in a back corner of the Lunar Library. The debate raises a lot of really good points, and I think Dr. Lowman makes some good points about the laser reflectometers left by the Apollo astronauts are still returning readable signals to the McDonald Observatory (with which Dr. Lester is associated in the NRC report), calling into question the severity of the levitating dust issue. But the whole question of astronomy is really just a side argument in the much larger context of science from the moon versus science from free space.

My personal feelings are that we know how to build on rock. We've done a lot of it here on Earth, and pretty much everything we've learned to do here will be even better on the Moon. The wild cards are free space instruments. The Hubble isn't an interferometer. Dr. Lester admits in the Physics Today artice that "Design studies of formation flying...make astronomers optimistic that precision fringe tracking for such large-baseline free-space interferometry is achievable." Okay, but we do know now how to build on rock, and do interferometry on rock. Not that we shouldn't develop the capability for more sophisticated free-space observations, but my conservative side says let's start with what we know, and build going forward. I will note the efforts of ESA's Cluster suite of instruments, which is building lessons-learned in formation flying. A good start, but we're still pretty darn close to the starting line in that regard.

My preference is for things like a slow sky survey from each of the Lunar poles, radio scopes on the far side, and maybe some others at different locations. For free-space I'd like to see more small-body searching scopes, first pointing sunward, and then outward. This is part of the reason that I differ with Dr. Lester. My interests are local both temporally and spatially. I have much more interest in the small bodies of the Solar system than in things like galaxies 14Bn light years away in time and space. Dr. Lester is interested in the cosmological stuff and fundamental research in that field. This skews our perceptions of what sorts of instrumentation are necessary/likely/possible. Dr. Lester sees scopes at SEL-2 looking into the depths of the Universe. I see scopes at EML1, SEL1, SEL2, SVL4, SVL5, SML2, SML3, SML4, SML5, SJL1, SJL2, and so on looking at the small bodies and characterizing them, watching the Oort Cloud and Kuiper Belt for disturbances and incomings.

Stuff that is relevant now for the kinds of things humans want to do in the near future. Fundamental research is important. Let me repeat that so that everyone understands that I understand. Fundamental research is important. We should never completely stop doing it. Nevertheless there are a variety of compelling priorities and we have to be careful how we allocate resources to achieve the greatest number of goals. I think that Solar system studies are more relevant to the implementation of things like the VSE, and should therefore have priority over instrumentation not dedicated to Solar system studies. I also want free-space instruments, just of a different sort, spread over a larger number of alithic destinations. That's what I meant when I said I didn't think the authors took their argument far enough. Because with the right plan of attack we can all get most of what we want.

They're spot on about EML1, a location that more and more folks are realizing is an absolutely phenomenal phenomenon, and I maintain that we are truly blessed to have an on-ramp to the Interplanetary Superhighways (IPS) so close to home. No other Solar planet can make that claim by anywhere close to what we have. I've said before that if there was one thing that could sway me (an atheist) towards some kind of intelligent design, it would be the closeness of our Moon (essentially a double planet system, some maintain) and the gravitational warps that give rise to the saddleback of EML1.

In the first stages of free-space astronomical instrument architecture development, you would want to use EML1 to give the instruments a last go-over before deploying them onto the IPS to their respective stations:
Sun-watchers at SEL1 (I think the most important suite of instrumentation)
Deep-space watchers at SEL2
Relay stations at the Venus Equilaterals (SVL4 & 5)
Forwarding of asteroid belt watch instrumentation to the SML1 Marsport (for forward deployment to SML2, 3, 4 & 5)
Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud watchers at SJL2 and SSL2
Sun-watcher at SMercL2
and so forth. A comprehensive suite of instruments that addresses everyone's interests.

What will happen is that as more and more instruments deploy, a regular stream of returning instruments will be coming in for servicing, upgrade & refueling. So you're developing an economy of technical services for a really robust program of data collection. My goal is to do it commercially, while providing both security and scientific benefits.

I am happy to see more constituencies looking at the EML1 option. The fact that it gives 24/7 access to the entire surface of the Moon for about the same dV (about 2.52 km/s) is of partiular interest to me. We can do sorties to anywhere we want to go from EML1 once we get a fuel depot established. Which plays into the whole development of ISRU as a priority thing so that we can start shipping LOX at least from the Moon.

I'm currently reading through "The Modern Moon" by Charles Woods, and his comprehensive overview of the face of the Moon identifies a number of compelling destinations for sorties. Reading this book, and the NRC report on the science rationales for the Moon, really make clear that there is a lot of really solid science to do right here in our backyard. Science that also feeds into my commercial goals for cislunar space, and science that helps answer planetary security questions. I can't believe we're letting ourselves wait so long to get back there.

Thesis Progress and Jimmy Bloggin

Well, the long hard thesis slog continues. I'm just finished analyzing data from one of the main experiments that I had to redo as part of the thesis revision. In this experiment, I measure the magnitude of the impedance of the coupled piezoelectric/nozzle system at a whole bunch of different frequencies, and then compare that frequency response against what my model predicts. I've made several improvements since last time including using a digital camera to catch both voltages and the frequency from the oscilliscopes instead of trying to pick an average value and write it down. I'm also taking more data points at more frequencies. This should give me a better curve, and better data on the experimental error. It also helps that I stumbled across the fact that I've been using the wrong data from the wrong type of piezoceramic for the past few years. I thought I had bought Pz-28's from Ferroperm, when in reality I had bought Pz-26s. Both materials are hard PZT type ceramics with low dielectric and mechanical losses, but the Pz-26 material is slightly stiffer, and has a few minor differences.

The response curve this time around was a lot closer to what was expected, and by varying some of the material properties around within the tolerances given by the manufacturer, I was able to get this good of a matchup:

Much better than last time. Now that I've got this working, the next step is to tie it all together. Of course, the fact that I came down with something nasty today is going to help...

On the happy side, it's been wonderful to have my family back. I still don't get to spend too much time with them (except on the 4th and 5th), but it's so much better having them here than hundreds of miles away. Here's a picture of James, who figured out how to crawl this week:

NASA's new plan for talking at us, part II

by guest blogger Ken

Next up is the Message Architecture that has been developed to guide the Office of Strategic Communications in conveying the message of NASA. The VSE lays out its fundamental goal, which is "to advance U.S. scientific, security and economic interests through a robust space exploration program."

The architecture is shown as a pyramid, with the Core Message at the peak of the pyramid, underlain by Key Messages, which are supported by Mission Specific Messages addressing Exploration, Science, Space Operations, and Aeronautics Research. All of this is supported at the base by the Cross-Cutting Functions of Education, Commercial, International, and Management Excellence.

The next chart then puts this pyramid on a base called The Space Economy. To the side they invert a slightly larger pyramid, wherein the broad base constitutes the General Public, who are aligned with the Core Message of NASA. Narrowing down as a funnel are the specific audiences aligned with the Key Messages, Mission Specific Messages, and Cross-Cutting Functions. At the peak of the inverted pyramid are the Elite, who are aligned with The Space Economy.

I don't know about you, but I think I want to be one of the Elite, especially given that I'm an economics guy. I can't wait to see what the Elite are to get out of this new architecture.

The Core Message chosen is "NASA explores for answers that power our future." Clearly a message constructed by committee, let's see how they got there.

First up is what NASA does - 'explores for answers', in space, in science, and in aeronautics. Why does it matter? Because it 'powers our future' and saves lives, improves lives, inspires students, stimulates economy, and protects planet.

What is Future? It is Inspiration + Innovation + Discovery, like the three corners of a triangle (or pyramid). In each instance, NASA powers the element, such as powering Innovation that creates new jobs, new markets, and new technologies. These are then expanded upon for the Core Message to the general public. In the case of Innovation:
-Space exploration has contributed to over a thousand new technologies that improve and save lives every day - advanced breast cancer imaging systems, heart pumps, biohazard detectors, LASIK eye surgery, and water filtration systems are just a few that benefited from NASA's work.
-Space Exploration will enable us to develop new technologies such as hydrogen fuel cells that may help meet our energy needs on Earth.
-NASA research enables safer, more environmentally friendly, and more efficient air travel...

For the elevator speech, this is digested down into:
NASA exploration powers innovation that creates new jobs, new markets, and new technologies that improve and save lives everyday in every community. Quieter and cleaner aircraft, advanced breast cancer screening, heart pumps, biohazard detectors, and LASIK eye surgery all benefited from NASA's work.

Why Explore? Because exploration powers inspiration, innovation, and discovery. Which as we already know from prior slides equals Future.

Finally we get to my area of interest - The Space Economy (a/k/a The Elites). Slide 47 notes the new competitive context for The Space Economy.
-New competitive landscape is Global Economy
-Innovation and competitiveness are the keys to economic growth and improved quality of life.
-NASA uniquely positioned to be a primary driver of innovation and competitiveness.
"The Space Economy provides a platform for expressing NASA's role and relevance in this new competitive landscape to key target audiences."

This is actually an area where I can see NASA doing a lot of good. My personal preference would be to see NASA taking the lead in establishing things like universal interfaces that everyone could design to so that we could have much more inter-operability of on-orbit elements provided by global competitors. This would allow a Universal Docking Node to mate up with European cargo ATVs, Bigelow Nautiluses, Russian Paroms, SpaceX Dragons, Chinese station elements, and whatever else folks decide to come up with.

I also think that NASA needs to do a better job communicating the technology they do have that's gathering dust in the vaults. This might be through a project working with trade groups from a variety of industries to search through the files for technologies of interest to that trade group. This could then be published as a handbook to be distributed to members of each particular trade group.

Part of the problem is that NASA has subcontracted out a lot of the Technology Transfer functions, such as the distribution of information. To minimize expenses on the contract the best thing to do is staff sufficiently to handle incoming requests, but minimize the expensive outreach function. That's just a rational economic response in a shareholder-driven economy. It also means that unless someone happens to stumble upon a particular technology they are unlikely to find out about it.

So what is The Space Economy? It is defined as "The full range of activities and the use of resources that create and provide value and benefits to human beings in the course of exploring, understanding and utilizing space", with examples being:
Infrastructure - Space ops, suppliers, contractors
Applications - GPS, weather, climate, defense, imagery
Transactions - Finance, medicine, communications
Commerce - Tourism, services, logistical support

I guess that suppliers and contractors could be considered infrastructure, but I think I'd rather classify them as Partners. I see Infrastructure as thinks like Launch facilities, Transport vehicles, On-Orbit assets, and Communications. For Applications I'd also add things like Materials sciences and Space weather. The overall Space Economy certainly includes a lot more than what is listed.

So how does NASA establish 'thought leadership' on the theme of The Space Economy?
-Develop economic models for space leadership
-Develop economic indicators and impact analysis to bring specificity to The Space Economy theme
-These can lead to a de facto rebranding of NASA in terms of releveance and benefits for our target audiences.

Which goes back to my lament of the prior post that a Lack of Current Context is what underlies a lot of NASA's current perception problems. One economic model for space leadership would be for NASA to decide to use existing U.S. lauchers for their transport needs. The CE&R reports showed that it was possible, and what could be better for the economy than having industry crank up the production lines and put people to work building Atlas 5 and Delta IV launch vehicles, as well as crew and cargo vehicles to put on top?

Interestingly, when I went to put in the link to the CE&R reports, my bookmark was broken. I guess the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate doesn't want you seeing them and comparing them ESAS. Luckily I found a link elsewhere.

Last up is the Outreach Strategies. This is where the fun begins, as NASA is also headed into the one-year run-up to their 50th anniversary on October 1st, 2008. This offers lots of opportunities to get the new strategic message out. This includes a website overhaul, a Gala event in D.C. in Oct. 2008, Lectures series, Future Forums, commemorative goodies, and so forth.

I'm sort of interested in the Future Forums. These would be day-long conferences in key cities to discuss the role of innovation (technology R&D) in promoting/sustaining economic development. It looks like I would be excluded, as I'm not part of the target audience of local entrepreneurial, technology and academic communities as well as elected officials. I'm just a poor old banker. They would also conduct school visits, media interviews, editorial boards and meetings with elected officials. I am certainly in favor of NASA conducting many, many more school visits, and not just in 'target' cities likes St. Louis or Albany.

The list of existing Strategic Alliances on slide 57 is particularly interesting - Google, Yahoo, Honeywell, Office Max, World Book, Berazy, Internet Archive, Disney, and Discovery. That's quite a line-up. Hopefully we'll be seeing the NASA name a lot more over the next year or so.

There's other stuff as well, like the Web 2.0 redesign, and metrics for gauging response to the messages. Overall, I have to admit that I'm a bit underwhelmed. The message seems a bit too 'constructed', and the use of the word 'powers' makes me think of Solar power satellites. Which, in all honesty I wouldn't mind NASA doing a little bit of R&D in, perhaps in conjunction with the DoD.

Then, of course, NASA has to go shoot itself in the foot with the closure of the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts, or NIAC, which was also noted over on Space Politics. It seems to me that if the message one is trying to get across is developing innovation, why shut down things like your Institute for Advanced Concepts? Well, because we don't need any advanced concepts until ESAS is done. Then we can start thinking about what to do with this National Space Transportation Architecture. Even though launching spacecraft is not really what the public sees NASA doing. They do like the technology, though, even if the 'spinoff' has to be, shall we say, stretched a little. As noted over on NASAWatch.

So how successful is this new marketing concept likely to be? I can't really say. I only got a B- in international marketing, so I'm not terribly good at modern marketing philosophy. I do know that the Core Message doesn't really speak to me, but as noted I see myself more along the lines of The Elite, tied in to the space economy. My vision of The Space Economy,though, has little involvement on the part of NASA, as everyone else will have forged ahead using the tools at hand while NASA wrestles with their super-duper ESAS tool. International space tourism is unlikely to have much interaction with NASA, except to the extent necessary, since that'll be going through those crafty capitalists, the Russians. Small, entrpreneurial efforts are springing up around the support services, like Paragon, NASTAR, and Wyle Labs. Orbital Outfitters is looking to do the space suits. There's all kinds of activity going on, much of it in response to NASA's ongoing lack of providing leadership in the space field. So it's difficult for me to see NASA being the Leader going forward in unlocking space for the U.S.

Not Out Of The Woods

So, I defended my thesis today. And "passed with qualifications", which means that they had some things they wanted me to fix before they'd sign off on it. Unfortunately, the qualifications include basically rewriting much of the thesis, and then coming back to re-defend it sometime soon. Oh, and did I mention that the absolute hard deadline for having the thesis defended, approved, and submitted for binding is the 20th?

...so, don't expect to hear from me for a while.

[Update: I just heard back from my thesis advisor. It turns out that I have a whole week less to make all the changes then I thought. The department needs the final draft by the 13th in order to get all the signatures and get everything off to the library for the final deadline. So, I only have a week and a half. The good news however, is that because of that, they're dropping the requirement for me to redefend. I just need to make all the changes soon enough that I can get it to all my committee members and have them reread it and actually sign off on it by the 13th. Which means I've really only got a couple of days to rewrite a 175pg paper...]

[Update2: In reality, even though the deadline is moved up, this isn't really that much worse than I expected. "Pass with qualifications" is by far the most common result, I just had a few more changes necessary than I had originally thought.]