I realized that some of my commentary can easily be seen as (some rather harsh in some cases) criticisms without expansion or putting up some of MY more ‘out-there’ ideas for discussion. I apologize if anyone feels that’s the case. I’ll explain, (but no excuse) myself by noting I’ve been a Space Advocate/Cadet/Fanboi since forever or almost half a century at least and I’ve actually seen/heard it all. Given the history of Tellurian space travel I’ve had my heart broken so many times at lost promises and horizons I probably should be a lot more cynical than I already am but it appears I’m an optimistic pessimist by nature.
I hold some very strong opinions which are often based on observed reality and how it functions on the “nuts-n-bolts” level and even though I don’t have much of an official education over some Collage courses life has taught me that the ‘experts’ and people with greater knowledge than I, can and will always be humans too with all that implies towards their “opinions” on their own knowledge. On the other hand intimate knowledge of my own failings and short-comings coupled with a life of “very-steep-curve-learning-experience” moments has taught me to always asses my own bias’s and assumptions while leaving the ability to basically pester (in an arguably polite way) afore mentioned experts and knowledgeable people into submission till I get a nice simple explanation of WHY I’m wrong and where my mistakes are rather than being brushed off with a “Trust me I’m an…whatever” (As a career “wrench-turner” I have learned that while those who design and often build a system can be very smart and clever the fact I’ve been in the position FAR too often of trying to perform MY job in a space that would make a gerbil claustrophobic
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On the gripping hand this can make me seem bullheaded and unwilling to forgo some of the more ‘simplistic’ explanations or short-hand descriptions that everyone BUT me understands, and to be fair that’s likely true to an extent. But again personal experience has shown me that reliance on such short-cuts more often than not actually leads to the creation and/or perpetuation of misunderstandings and misinterpretations that can get out of hand very quickly. I do this not out of spite or simply to be argumentative, (my wife says I enjoy being difficult and oppositional to which I reply “Nuh-UH!”) but having a clear and relatively ‘simple’ explanation which has a few ambiguities and places where, through ignorance or malice, it can be misunderstood, mistaken or twisted is of benefit to myself and probably others. Of course it might be better or at least well accepted if I were to learn to do that myself instead of writing short-novels as posts… But where’s the fun in that?
So with that out of the way…
Let me preface the rest of this post by saying it’s long, pretty in-depth and still only the set up for the actual concept/progression. It can be skipped but my preference of course is reading and commenting. However in the interests of TL/DR:
With a ‘start’ no later than the Challenger investigation and aftermath with a rather fundamental change in attitude and focus in both Congress and NASA I feel it’s possible to get a “better” post-Shuttle program once you accept using existing (EELV/STS) systems without a need of a radical change in direction or funding. (It has to go up some but it did OTL first for Return to Flight and then for the ISS) The key is NASA rebuilding Congressional trust AND Congress allowing that trust and backing off from micro-managing NASA for political purposes. Yes I know, borderline ASB but go with it
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Note that while I stick by my suggestion of keeping O’Keefe and going the “EELV/Bean-Counter” route because of the reasons I listed, since fasquadron was nice enough to share his “crazy” idea I might as well share my “semi-perfect” post-Shuttle concept.
Begin novel length, (only slightly kidding) post:
Let me start by saying this would START very shortly after Challenger and require some significant changes in attitude and outlook in a lot of places, (Congress, Administration, NASA management to name a few) because it requires and is wholly based on a concept that has never been seriously considered by most of the afore mentioned groups. (Not without arguably good reasons mind you but it is a rather obvious and necessary first step towards a long range goal but a very large challenge that has yet to be taken up by anyone)
The basic and fundamental premise is simply that THE primary and persistent goal and focus of the United States Space Program is the eventual but inevitable expansion of Humanity off-Earth into the Solar System and beyond. Which may sound somewhat familiar as similar wording IS included in every NASA authorization bill but usually watered down and always unsupported. There is a reason for this and most of it revolves around NASA’s attempts to use any such possible ‘justification’ to seek a vastly increased budget and priority so they may return to the “glory” days of Apollo. Hence even when NASA makes plans to do “it” right by building infrastructure and support in an integrated and self-supporting plan over a long period, (the 90-day plan is a good example of this, one could argue that the IPP post-Apollo was another) the budget was a deal-breaker. Usually because NASA lumped the total cost rather than planning and presenting multiple “programs” with a semi-fixed costing structure which would only ‘surge’ when one step had been completed and its costs dropped to ‘maintenance’ levels and the savings could then be used for peak funding on the next step.
My main assertion is that Apollo as a program and paradigm has to be regulated to history as what it was; A panic response to the international and domestic situation at the time that is so unlikely to happen again that it can be discounted from any planning. It was an aberration in both funding and support as well as being an shining of example of what the US could do in an emergency to reach a limited goal in a short time but having no relative bearing or context for an actual long-term, sustainable space effort. Learn to live with that as a basis because it’s obvious that Political leadership has no interest in suggesting or supporting expansive goals that require similarly expansive budgets. (NASA’s recent funding boom if anyone thinks otherwise is not because Congress feels they need to increase the budget but because delayed items and infrastructure repairs can no longer be put off and it it time to pay or shut NASA down) So this is the ‘change’ in NASA management.
The change in the political aspect is more fundamental and therefore probably more important but in general Congress specifically has to take a step back and not use the NASA budget as a way to manipulate funds to go to certain areas while starving others. What needs to happen is that Congress needs to decide and then follow through on that decision that the US Space Program’s “end” goal is to see American’s throughout the Solar System and beyond. Require NASA to construct a plan within a budget and understand it will be a long-term effort with little room for political interference. Once NASA has a plausible plan for the first step, (access and utilization of Low Earth Orbit) that they can agree with they need to trust NASA to do the job and step back into a more purely oversight mode.
Instead Congress has been “teaching NASA a lesson” over the Apollo-1 fire since 1965 and has lost sight (if one admits it wasn’t all about the money in the first place of course) of the reason and justification for this degree of oversight. The direction of vehicle design parameters by-law should never have happened and arguably only came about because the planned “NASA LV” was still in design flux (due to changing requirements that also should not have happened but again this is laid directly at Griffin’s feet) and political pressure to have NASA be open to the possibility of using LRBs instead of SRBs was increasing.
Now while granting there are sound technical reasons to consider LRBs I’ll point out that the SRBs are there, they are known and quantified and available. Like it or not a firm decision to use them had been made so it SHOULD have been possible to resist any political pressure to change now instead of developing the boosters as time and budget allowed. Unfortunately NASA management, (Griffin) decided to try playing the interest groups off each other to get a budget increase and this backfired into not only a firm commitment to use SRBs stated directly in the NASA Authorization Act and an overall budget DECREASE across the board. Keep in mind LRB development and replacement of the SRBs was always planned by NASA but no political will existed to fund that development for obvious reasons. NASA management has to constantly keep themselves aware of and included in the political loop with realistic and plausible planning ready to address concerns but at the same time Congress has to allow NASA the freedom to do the job assigned to them AND trust them to do so by the plan they present.
Historically NASA since its beginnings has played fast and loose with planning and often outright lied to Congress (and the public) about known aspects of those plans and hardware built for those plans in order to ‘preserve’ funding and support. Invariably this does not end well and Congress tends to exact even more ‘revenge’ funding cuts and further oversight on the NASA budget to the point where they now can and do line-item de-fund important systems with no thought or regard to how this effects the current program. Challenger was only the most recent example at the time it happened. NASA at that time actually came-clean on major portions of the program but as they didn’t seem willing to change things short of asking for more funding for a “Shuttle II” program Congress, (who admittedly were not interesting in actually funding the required fixes) gave them a minimum ‘emergency’ funding boost. And then turned around and cut the overall budget again. It was not until the ramp up to the International Space Station that NASA would see funding going up again and once actual construction began the overall budget was cut again. So we’ll grant that some “leaps of faith” are required and happen…
On the public side the majority of the “anti-technology” and specifically “anti-NASA” crowd faded away in the late 70s. More specifically things like Space Colonies as envisioned by O’Neal came into the public awareness and while some seized on opposing things like SPS in general the idea of living and working in space became accepted as possible. In the most basic sense the general public enjoys seeing “space” related things happen. They enjoy pictures and video taken on other planets by robotic means. They also enjoy watching as visible progress is made like as the ISS grew. They are bored stiff by Shuttle missions that simply go up and circle the Earth for a couple of weeks and then return. They yawned when the ‘second’ and subsequent mission left Earth for the Moon, (with the expected ‘spike’ when Apollo 13 became a potential disaster) because that had become ‘routine’ and ‘normal’. Arguably “bad” for PR but in reality you seriously WANT some aspects of space flight to become and remain that way. Why? Because while the public can become interested in specific details, (the trucks, ship, and airplanes the watching, tracking and such are an actual ‘hobby’) in general the day-to-day movement of cargo and people is ignored as a non-interesting detail of how transportation works.
To quote a General from an episode of “Men Into Space” when asked by a VIP how one can make Space Flight ‘routine’ replies;
"You have to make it routine, it has to become routine. That’s how it becomes normal. It’s a job and you treated like one.”
A major issue all around is the idea that people have to be excited by all aspects of space travel if they are excited by it at all which it totally false. If you are taking the “job” seriously HOW you get to space is totally unimportant compared to what you do when you get there. Of course the quandary here is that if getting to and from space becomes routine by direct correlation so too will most tasks accomplished there as well. Which means vast amounts of important work will be little acknowledged outside the fields directly affected by that work. Which btw means congratulations you just got SERIOUS about space instead of just dabbling to generate spectacles for the masses.
What the public WILL take note of is construction, assembly and a growing near-Earth infrastructure. Maybe not as much as watching the first man to step on the Moon but likely about average for the second and later missions. Because it is evidence of a growing capability and promise and the will to pursue both. Which in their head the public can then easily adapt to the idea that space travel may come to them, be something they may one day achieve. And that is exactly what you want because at that point they will begin to push the government and private sectors to move towards fulfilling that need. (For any budding Space Tourism entrepreneur who might read this, congratulations and your welcome but the main reason “Space Tourism” hasn’t taken off yet is simply that to the majority of people it isn’t “real” and won’t be till it IS real and they feel that it has a high chance of being something they can participate in and it meets their interests, priorities, and economics. This hasn’t happened yet)
Whew, so now the preliminaries are out of the way what does all this mean in context?
(I’m long winded? But we knew that
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It fundamentally changes the focus and both short and long term goals of the US Space Program. It is actually the Holy Grail of advocates though they never see it due to the timeframe and pace, (assuming a start around 1986 by the time the “Shuttle” retires (assuming in a ‘general way’ that still happens TTL) in 2011 the US still has not gone back to the Moon and Mars is still decades away at best) which when using Apollo as a comparison is glacial. Keep in mind that if you actually compare the two in only a couple of years more, (12 for Apollo, 17 for this to 2011) you will have in place with this the means and infrastructure to support not just a return to the Moon but the ability to deploy multiple mission in the same year and likely at the same time along with the ability to build up and support one or more outposts on the surface. And you never need more than the EELV’s and the STS itself. (With some modifications of course)
It is the difference between rushing to plant more flags and footprints on the Moon, (or even Mars as was the focus of Constellation) with a high likelihood of repeated cancelation and the slow steady build up to go anywhere in the Solar System at any time you want. It does ‘look’ like you spend 20 more years going “around in circles” but since the key point is to ensure every flight does something towards building up and expanding capability without chasing the chimera of the next “big” program or spectacle that will bring back Apollo, (if I seem to harp on this it is only because when one looks at NASA “planning” from the end of Apollo the analogy of trying to recreate Apollo and a Cargo Cult, {
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult} mentality are quite apparent and as disturbing) into the ground over and over again.
The reason the proposed ‘changes’ are so fundamental is because it requires that all parties be invested in the long term goal but also do not feel compelled to either suggest or support large leaps over steady progress. One would think that after almost 50 years of overt and vehement rejection of “Mars”, (arguably even returning to the Moon if we’re honest but keep in mind NASA can’t seem to NOT link doing anything beyond LEO with going to Mars) as a goal NASA would get the hint. Similarly over the same time period the language and rhetoric content of space legislation dealing with NASA had only gotten more grandiose and expressive while actual support has been steady and firm in its marked lack of actual support that Congressional positions are quite clear. In return for admitting that they can’t control the situation forever and assure support for a plausible, steady and above all affordable plan NASA has to agree to keep themselves in check and actually put aside their “main” goals, (keep manned space flight going by launching astronauts with every payload) in order to plan and achieve an optimal mix of operations using available and only marginally modified available systems. In the agreement is that once a sufficient and sustainable Earth orbital infrastructure is in place and sufficient time and resources are available NASA will be allowed to go back to the Moon but Mars will at that point NOT be the immediate and major goal. Focus on Cis-Lunar space first.
Given the historic paradigm of Apollo there is no way this isn’t going to play well with everyone but also given that the Apollo paradigm is in fact one of the major issues and a proven way to NOT do a sustainable program I can actually deal with their disappointment. Too much focus on single and isolated aspects of an actually long term effective overall plan is what got us here “today” in the first place and simply put we need to either decide to get serious or forget the whole thing because what we’re doing is obviously not working.
So onto the “concept” post...
Randy
