 |
Image by Flickr user The Boatman |
When we were first developing the technology to go into space, I admit I had some serious doubts. Remember, we’re talking about the very beginning of the 60′s. If you suppose life then was much as it is now, you are sadly mistaken. Let me think: Okay, the telephones weighed five pounds and were permanently affixed to one spot. There was no caller ID, no answering machines, no call waiting, no texting. You had a black and white television (maybe) and three channels. No cable, no satellites, no pocket calculators, no cell phones, and no home computers. And we’re going to the moon. Okey dokey.The Question is: Will we ever have to, once again, take such a death-defying leap in space development to build our first space settlements? But if we wait to think about and plan out the lead; build a bridge over the gap, when does all the planning stop and we start the countdown clocks? To answer, I have commandeered the lens of Seth Godin and personal development blogger Danielle Laporte.
Plan 1: Go Forth with Confidence
There is a lot of discussion going on about space habitation, all sorts of papers and books are published in increasing numbers every year. There are serious discussions about legal issues surrounding property in space and if this dream could ever be profitable. One listen to the people calling in on the Space Show or the comments on popular blogs articles easily show we are in a conceptional design like stage of space settlement.
Seth Godin, rebel fighting against ineffective business world traditions, calls what the space community is doing now thrashing, and it is far from a bad thing:
"So how do you ship [or build a massive object]? Well, first you decide it’s important to ship. If you decide it’s important to ship, you do things in the right order, you do them with rigor. And what you say is the first week of this project is when we’re going to thrash.
Lawyers, CEO come during the first week or don’t come at all. We can thrash all we want at the beginning because we haven’t done, we haven’t laid the foundation, we haven’t ordered the parts, we haven’t built everything. Come at the beginning and then you’re not allowed back in the room. You will not see it again until it’s in the store. You will not see it again until it’s online. You will not see it again until it’s shipped out the door, so you better come at the beginning and thrash a lot.People say this is unrealistic. Well, shipping is unrealistic. It is unrealistic to imagine that three or five or fifty motivated people can make a dent in the universe, but they can. And so the way they do it is by taking the unrealistic act of thrashing at the beginning...[because "the closer we get to shipping the louder the [fear based part of the] brain gets. The more the reasons there are to worry"]". ~Seth Godin's Blog: Transcript of the first Linchpin session.
 |
Image by Flickr user smithfischer |
Pros:
High amount of long term public support; A solid plan will have tons of support behind it Increased Safety Easier to convince investors to invest since most of the risks are mitigated
Cons:
Low amount of short term public support; “We are doing research” doesn't get a lot of people excited Requires dedication; Space Settlement could fizzle out or die after an accident or a long period of solely researching (For example, if we don't launch anything for 5 years, support might die) under this plan Requires time; requires a multi-generational plan - Has to deal with political cycles
Despite our level of activity space , starting a moon base tomorrow would still be a leap of faith. We won't have a successful model to base our moon base off of. Yes, we have the ISS, but I think it is only on the verge of becoming the epic assembly it was always meant to be. We are close, really, really painfully close. But we still have radiation and gravity issues to deal with. The legal issues aren't settled yet.
"...'This better work,' is the thinking of safety, of proven, of beyond blame.Basically, you need to take a risk to do something epic like space habitation. You need to do stuff the might not work. We might need to start companies that end up failing or use regulation that is too loose or too tight. But, these risks are justified because of what we could do.
'This might work,' on the other hand, is the thinking of art, innovation and insight...if you spend all your time on stuff that might work, you'll never need to dream up something that better work, because your art will have paid off long ago." ~Seth Godin's blog: This better work
Pros and Cons of a Leap of Faith
Pros
Doesn't require a multi-generational plan; complete the project in a short burst. Easy to motivate public; they see benefits within their lifetimes Fast Has very few political cycles to deal with
Riskier Less investors; raising capital for leaps of faith can be pulled off, but you at least need a detailed and solid business plan...but those usually have some time of foundation, a proven case on which the risk can be based on
Conclusion
White Hot Truth puts it bluntly, “you need blind faith to build confidence”. Apollo proved that we could visit other worlds, ISS proved we could live in space and both were leaps of faith. This is not a black and white choice - we need both confidence and leaps. However, we must make sure there is a transition between the leap of faith and a proven plan. For example, I feel Apollo would have been so much more successful if the program effectively moved from Kennedy's argument for space into continuing Apollo level funding as a part of a multi-generational plan; as a part of something bigger than beating the Russians based on arguments generated from what was learned in those first moon landings.
I feel, however, that the space community in general relies too much on leaps of faith. Do you think I am insane? Feel free to challenge me in the comments.
We need no great leap of faith. The path forward to permanently opening space including space habitation is very doable and not at all crazy. Progress in the last three years shows us how it will be done.
ReplyDelete- COTS shows us we can make space hardware relatively inexpensively and commercially sustainable,
- Armadillo and Masten helps us believe that a decent-sized lunar lander can be developed for a very reasonable cost,
- The Falcon Heavy is based upon the proven Falcon 9 and so we have good reason to believe that it will work. Since the bulk of FH's development has already been paid in F9's development it will be able to be developed on SpaceX's dime whether NASA helps develop it or not,
- Docking has been proven time and time again. Massing 100 tons in LEO will be fairly easy. This should be sufficient for an Armadillo lunar lander large enough to deliver cargo and later people.
- Centaur upper stages have been demonstrated tint and time again. There is no good reason to believe that SpaceX will fail in it's development of the Raptor cryogenic upper stage. SpaceX needs a cryogenic upper stage for the GEO market. I am not making reusability any requirement for this scenario.
- When Dragon delivers people to the ISS it will have been demonstrated that a cargo craft can also be man-rated. This will help persuade us that a lunar cargo lander can later be man-rated.
- Telerobotics has been demonstrated on Mars and will be in real-time on the ISS via the Robonaut 2. This will help convince us that teleroboitc operations on the Moon is entirely reasonable.
So, nothing so far is any great leap of faith. All of this (except maybe a full-sized lunar lander) is proceeding already for other reasons than eventual colonization. It's likely to proceed regardless.
If NASA got access to the Falcon 9 for $400 million in it's investment then an Armadillo lunar lander and Raptor upper stage would probably cost NASA about the same. So, about only $1.6 billion in development costs. That's peanuts for a cis-lunar transportation system.
Now, once you've got all if these capabilities, the ability to exploit lunar ice and establish a lunar base will be incredibly tempting to the US. All it takes is for either a trip-up of the SLS development or a growing realization that the SLS is an exorbidantly expensive unnecessity. When the SLS gets cancelled, that money will be freed up and the proven COTS-like approaches will be front and center for consideration for major funding.
If funded, the establishment of a telerobotically established lunar polar base will probably be pretty straight forward. ISRU water ice, existing solar power infrastructure - and hence life support production, the intention to stay and so telerobotically digging lunar sleeping quarters (at a minimum), and you've got all the makings for long-duration stays. If you've got water and carbon and nitrogen volatiles (known from LCROSS) in the lunar ice then growing food will be too tempting. Now people are staying on the Moon for at least months thereby reducing the number of flights back and forth.
With a growing base and expanding ice harvesting operations, it will be too tempting to take the next step which could be the separation of iron from regolith using permanent magnets and melting it with solar concentrators (mirrors) and casting into molds to produce equipment parts thereby reducing the need for cargo deliveries. Melt silicone for glass. Deliver decades worth of small chips, cameras and radio equipment and you've got much of what you need for a growing self-sufficient lunar colony,
No single step is a great leap of faith nor particularly expensive.