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Book Review: Moon-Mars Commission Report
The single most prolific spinoff attributable to NASA is not Teflon, Tang, or Velcro. No, it's high-level reports on how to fix NASA. The latest report, written under the authority of a 9-member commission named by President Bush, proposes how to implement NASA's latest orders: complete the Space Station and retire the Shuttle by the end of the decade, return humans to the Moon by 2020, and eventually send humans to Mars.
The Background
The President's proposal, while lacking details, has been greeted with enthusiasm by many aerospace workers, for whom the application of the term "beleaguered" is more than appropriate. What other major industry has lost half its workforce in the last 15 years? (Oh yeah, the airline, IT and telecom industries, who managed about the same attrition rate in only 2 years: evidence of efficiency, or something.) Space scientists have awaited the implementation report with some trepidation: their Hubble servicing mission has already been traded for the uncertain prospect of a robotic mission, and some NASA science missions have already been pushed back by the budget impact of the Moon-Mars mission.
Meanwhile, public opinion has not quite caught fire. Opinion polls taken in January show at best indifference and at worst hostility to the new plan. Greg Klerkx wrote "Perhaps the most disheartening aspect of the explosion of Columbia, other than the human tragedy, was that it changed very few opinions about NASA or NASA's human spaceflight activities. Both should continue, the polls unanimously concluded, but with no more or less vigor than at present." [p. 12, Klerkx 2004]
The Commission, led by longtime government official E.C. Aldridge, also includes four space scientists, a retired Air Force General, a former Congressman, a business and government executive, and the well-known CEO of a high tech firm. Notably, no astronauts or former NASA executives were on the panel.
Contents
Transmittal Letter
Executive Summary
Section I - Introduction: The Space Exploration Vision
Section II - Organizing the US Government for Success
Section III - Building a Robust Space Industry
Section IV - Exploration and Science Agenda
Section V - Inspiring Current and Future Generations
Section VI - Concluding Comments
Appendices
Historical Context
After any disaster or major program failure, commissions are empaneled and they tend to produce two sorts of reports. The first type of report is a failure analysis, including specific prescriptions for recovery. The second is a more broad examination of strategies and goals. This report falls into the second category. While the Aldridge Commission report includes some recommendations that duplicate some previous ones, the new report differs in some important ways from those.
In 1986, the Paine Commission examined how NASA should respond to the Challenger failure. The commission's report in places reads like a primer on space technologies, and proposes specific goals similar to those of the Bush plan: completion of the Space Station, return to the Moon, and a manned mission to Mars. The Paine Commission seems to have felt that the basic problem facing NASA was a lack of a long-term vision and political commitment.
In 1990, the Augustine Commission studied how NASA should respond to a variety of troubling problems on the Shuttle and other programs. This study endorsed space science strongly, while also supporting Space Station. The report focused strongly on workforce issues like morale, attrition and aging. It also noted weaknesses in NASA's executive leadership practices. The report made some specific reform proposals, some of which reappear in the Aldridge report.
The Report
The Aldridge Commission report differs from previous examinations in important ways. First, it has a very limited scope. The Commission did not perform an open-ended study of what NASA ought to do, or how much emphasis to place on astronomy vs planetary science vs human spaceflight. They only studied how to accomplish President Bush's new goals for the space program. Paradoxically, their limited brief resulted in a far more profound proposal to reorganize NASA than previous reports. The range and depth of reforms proposed by this report greatly exceeds those of previous reports.
The top-level recommendations include:
1. Establish a Space Exploration Steering Council, reporting to the President
2. NASA should establish much more private industry participation in space operations, beginning with unmanned launch services
a. Reorganization of NASA HQ
b. Spin off NASA Centers as Federally Funded Research & Development Centers (similar to JPL and the DOE National Labs)
c. NASA should establish 3 new organizations:
+ a technical advisory board, modeled on the Defense Science Board
+ an Independent Cost Estimating organization, modeled on DoD Cost Analysis Improvement Group
+ a research organization, modeled on DARPA and formed from the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts
d. NASA should adopt DoD-style project management methods
3. NASA should identify and begin development of critical technologies
4. Renew and sustain development of a robust space industry
a. NASA should actively solicit ideas from all sources
b. Congress should fund prizes targeting specific missions and technologies, and work on space property rights
5. NASA should pursue international partnerships
6. NASA should consult regularly with scientists and the National Academy of Sciences
7. The space exploration program should be tied into educational programs and public relations
Section I "Introduction: The Space Exploration Vision" presents three basic justifications for the exploration program: The human urge to explore, economic growth, and national security. Three "imperatives for success" are also presented: sustainability, affordability, and credibility. Sustainability is described as being able to sustain both technical momentum and long-term political support for what will be an expensive program. Affordability is described as "go as you can pay," where each milestone is reached through "spiral, evolutionary developments." The report compares the funding to cancer research, where the pace is determined by a political judgment of "annually, how much can we afford?" The report describes credibility as an amalgam of best practices. While the Commission recognized that space exploration is full of risk, NASA must not appear careless or foolish. NASA must embrace both management practices as well as technical ideas regardless of their source.
Analysis
The Commission's Report is itself a model of the practices they exhort NASA to follow. Whether by intention or not, many of the ideas in the report have been the stated position of advocacy groups like the National Space Society and the Mars Society. Some of the reforms have been specifically proposed by previous Commissions.
The biggest problem I wondered about was funding. So far, about $12B has been proposed for this vision. Yet, many of the recommendations seem likely to cost a great deal of money. For example, on p. 23, the report states that much of NASA's infrastructure needs substantial modernization. Elsewhere, technology R&D is addressed by proposing a DARPA model or even the In-Q-Tel Venture Capital firm funded by the CIA. The Pentagon's "System-of-systems" approach is proposed as a model for project architecture. Special attention is given to the need for reliable heavy lift launch capability. In discussing how to pursue international participants, the Joint Strike Fighter program is listed as a model. Each of these areas requires either significant direct investment (infrastructure, heavy lift, R&D) or large bureaucracies to administer complex contracts (system-of-systems, JSF model). There is an unavoidable tension between the need for R&D, "go as you can pay," available funds, and "credibility."
The money issue is partially addressed by proposing tax incentives, privatization and private competition. But competition cannot reduce the amount of honest-to-goodness investment needed to remediate the technology deficit. It can only promote the most efficient approach. We need more R&D, yet private competition is seen as a way to "reduce government investment" (p. 20). The elephant in the room is that aerospace is a highly regulated market with relatively low profit margins. This means that direct reinvestment is fairly low. A glance at a list of the top R&D companies shows that top-tier aerospace companies do not reinvest a lot of their own money.
The second issue that troubled me is the applicability of the models they proposed. JPL, the National Labs, various DoD organizations and methods, the X Prize, and other examples are listed as models for various reforms of NASA. This raises some questions. First, are these models applicable? No evidence is presented to indicate that the Commission considered whether different organizations with different goals, constraints, missions, and sizes can use a given model successfully. The proposal to spin off most NASA centers as FFRDCs seems quite radical. Would any commercial firm spin off everything except a design team? Is this what the Aldridge Commission proposes of NASA? How many NASA employees would be left, and in which disciplines? Can the JPL model be applied well to other NASA centers? Would the centers work together better or worse? Would there be limits to how many centers a given contractor would be permitted to operate? I suspect it's much easier to designate JPL as a model than it is to enact in the real world. Do the security and procurement scandals at some DOE labs give us anything to worry about? What about the need for the National Labs to chase proposals in light of funding cuts? Does that make organizations more market oriented and relevant, or does it simply waste the time of researchers?
Finally, the Commission's report failed to address the biggest political problem our human spaceflight program faces: a lack of relevancy to ordinary people. The transmittal letter to the President states that the Commission's web site received over 6,000 written inputs, and that public comments were 7:1 in favor of the new vision. This is of course not a scientific survey, rather it is a self-selected and rather small sample of people who are presumably interested in space exploration. Elsewhere in the report, supportive public testimony is cherry-picked without context or attribution. In one case, I recognized a quote that, taken out of context, sounds much more supportive of a government monopoly on human space travel than the speaker probably meant: "We all wanted to go" (p. 13) was characterized as an expression of the deep and broad effect that the Apollo program had on Americans. I believe this was Tony Tether, Director of DARPA. The full quote was: "What NASA seemed to forget was that then, we all wanted to go," Tether told commissioners. "We were forgotten about." But if NASA can find a way for American citizens to take the baby steps that would eventually allow them to reach the moon - or even just space - themselves, it would do wonders for the space agency's support, he added. "If you can do that, you will have a constituency that you don't have today," Tether said. The longer quote is here.
These anecdotes do not invalidate the report, but I do wonder if the Commission is overselling the enthusiasm that the public will have for this program. Section I, and the report's title, endorse the "inspiration, education, and innovation" arguments for space travel that have so far failed to garner support for a more expansive space vision. One brief mention was made of space tourism and of making NASA an engine of the economy (p. 20). There are hints at the relevance problem sprinkled throughout the report, but public support is more or less presumed, not demonstrated.
What's Good:
If your attitude about NASA reorg proposals is "wake me if it's a big deal," then this is your wakeup call. The Aldridge Commission Report proposes the most profound and far-reaching reorganization of NASA since its founding.
To a larger degree than I would have expected from this board, the proposals are strongly market- and business-oriented. I presume this is the implicit desire of President Bush (MBA, former CEO) and possibly NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe (an accountant).
The report is written in an engaging, enthusiastic style.
What's Bad:
Where's the Beef? "Go as you can pay" does not seem like an adequate response to an agency that has faced aging infrastructure and workers for more than 14 years (see Augustine report). Increased funding and profit margins might address many issues better than bureaucratic realignments or spinoffs. There is no discussion of how to value intangibles like scientific discovery and inspiration, yet tangible values are of prime concern to contractors. NASA's credibility is discussed only in terms of competency, not based on perceived relevancy to the public.
What's Missing:
There is no consideration of potential disadvantages of the various proposals. Supporters of space science may find the report dismissive of their priorities and concerns. There is no critical evaluation of the benefits of space program investments vs direct investments in education, science and technology.
This report is remarkably thin on supplementary materials: there are 13 pp of appendices. More is available on the Commission's web site.
Refs:
[Klerkx 2004]: "Lost In Space: The Fall of NASA and the Dream of a New Space Age," Greg Klerkx, 2004. ISBN 0375421505
[Paine 1986]: http://history.nasa.gov/painerep/cover.htm
[Augustine 1990]: http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/augustin e/racfup1.htm
[Aldridge 2004]: http://www.moontomars.org
The reviewer is an aerospace engineer with experience in human spaceflight engineering and operations, commercial satellite development and operations, and scientific satellite development and operations. No current relationship to NASA, and no significant interests in companies with an interest in this proposal.
You can download A Journey to Inspire, Innovate and Discover from moontomars.org. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page. Thanks to everyone who takes the time to contribute.
This is an amazingly thorough review - thanks "code_rage"! And you've hit on exactly the point that disturbs me a bit too - if this is all so great, why aren't we planning to spend a lot more money on it, rather than just continuing in the same-old ho-hum manner in space? Perhaps the commissioners felt that was out of their scope, but that seem to be the substance of Kerry's
complaint too - if we're serious about this, lets spend some real money on it!
My thoughts from a couple of days before the report came out are up on sciscoop - I think the report does adopt a lot of the "O'Neill" vision of space. Maybe it's our job to make sure the money really comes through now.
Energy: time to change the picture.
...given so little detail?
Just my $0.02.
Hmmm.
explore options to create a university-based virtual space academy" for
:)
training the next generation technical work force.
This may be my favorite part. Itll will be difficult to replace the upcoming flood of retirements with so few students majoring in aerospace engineering (emphasis on space) these days. Giving NASA an academy from which to draw potential engineers, astronauts, and technicians would give it a pool of driven young minds.
Can the Starfleet Academy be far behind?
"Open the pod by doors, Hal" > "I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave" sudo "Open the pod bay doors, Hal" > alright
So this is just a way of setting up a new venue for outsourcing American jobs.
Seriously though, it's so good to know that this administration has gotten over that whole "expand the base of human knowledge, explore new worlds to benefit everyone" sort of namby-pamby liberalism and have their priority straight. I suggest we core the moon of all of it's cheese and on to Mars to drill/mine/rip out whatever is valuable there!
Am I the only one who's a bit frightened by the concept of Space Property rights? We all knew it was coming of course, but why not something more akin to our handling of the oceans as international waters? Sure, let private corporations control asteroids, artificial satellites and other space debris but keep space itself free for general use by all, or by some international body.
1) A national lottery. Opportunity and Spirit cost (individually) $400 million. A nationwide lottery would be able to raise this much money, and would excite people. They would know that their money is going to put something on another planet.
2) A reality TV show about astronaut candidates. This long-running series, run by one of the major networks, would give a human face and personality to space flight. I'm not talking about people being voted off or anything stupid like that, but an unvarnished look at how astronauts are trained and selected. NASA could get the license from a network and make a few million bucks and improve its image.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
Of course, it didn't happen. It turns out that just hoisting enough life-support for a person for a few days into orbit costs more than most people earn in their lifetimes. The benefits of going to the moon, building the space station, and other manned ventures have turned out to be in two areas:
* Spinoff technologies
* Psychological side-effects
That is, none of the actual benefits of space travel have come from the space part, more from the preparation and the coolness factor. The real practical advantages have all come from unmanned craft, mostly communication satellites.
So, why don't we get more excited and/or spend more money on terrestrial exploration? There is better mapping of Venus than there is of the ocean floor these days.
I'm not trying to denigrate anybody's dreams or anything, and I recognize the value of science for its own sake, but maybe blowing another $100 billion on a one-time put-a-guy-on-Mars mission isn't really a good idea. Let's try to find some more practical way to spend our budget surplus (*cough*). How about curing diseases, for example? Bill Gates has personally increased the funding for research in diseases like malaria by a significant factor; why can't our government fund this kind of stuff more?
Pardon my grumblings....I'm just disillusioned in my old age. (where's my space ship, dammit! :)
Have you read my blog lately?
Simple mistake.
Finally, the Commission's report failed to address the biggest political problem our human spaceflight program faces: a lack of relevancy to ordinary people
As if the airplane was immediately relevant to everyone the day after the wright brothers had a successfull flight?
"spiral evolutionary development"?? D'OH!
Also, about costs... may I point out the following:
Mars lander that Jose'd itself into the surface: ~100 million dollars.
Mars lander that did NOT Jose itself, and that sent back kick ass pictures: ~1 billion dollars (Viking).
Do it right or don't do it at all!
stuff |
how many great chemists are making perfume? how many great physicist are working for nike? how many brilliant electronic engineers are making elmo dolls? how many billionares are buying yaghts?
If only they were all working on advancing technology; only working on how to make things better, finding better uses for things, doing important research...instead of making the things we've convinced ourselves are important.
You're thinking the author?
This code_rage person not only read the report and not only understood it well enough to summarize it, but well enough to clearly and concisely express damn near everything insightful, informative, and interesting possible about every section of it.
So the only thing left for any of us to do is scrounge at the bottom of the (+1, Funny) barrel. Code_rage, you utter bastard!
First, there is no money to fund a moon program. When asked at a recent discussion on the subject if the military would fund such a venture, the DARPA fund manager simply said "no". He didn't qualify it even with an extra comment. It became quite obvious that there is no funding mandate for another moon landing despite rhetoric.
Secondly, the public must weigh the value of going someplace we have already been against funding new work on the frontiers of quantum physics, nanotech, biotech, computing, etc. I find it hard to believe that a moon landing would benefit the public or the scientific community more than a breakthrough in nanotech, for example. The public should be funding science on the frontiers of discovery, not on the explored trails.
In any case I don't know why this topic merits serious discussion any more - regardless of the projections for the costs, it is clear that the government has no plan for providing anywhere near the funds for even the most modest proposal.
"Try long-range weapons and a pack of rabid lawyers."
Before you can attack anyone you need to find them. Finding someone who doesn't want to be found in a cube of space a billion miles on a side is, shall we say, not very easy.
The Nutrition Facts of TANG. So glad to hear it's still available.
Anyone seen my jagged little pill?
You didn't need that freedom consumer 718736. Freedom and privacy only lead to piracy. We're going to keep a close eye on you.
The public has turned into a funding arm for aerospace contractors at just the time when they should be figuring out how to make things work in the private sector.
Biotech, proteinomics, genomics, nanotech, clean energy, computing, photonics, networking, etc etc etc are all areas that can provide direct benefits to mankind now and pose more unanswered questions for basic science.
We'll only care about space after the invasion. PS Great article
It sounds an awful lot like NASA is becoming less like an area for developing new technologies and more like some kind of regulation agency for spaceflight. That analogy doesn't quite give NASA all the credit they deserve, but it does sound like they are stepping down from more mundane tasks and focusing on some of the more ambitious projects.
Personally I think that is a pretty good way of handling human expansion into space. The public will get to know about everything out there, and then private industry can start to fill in the cracks. I'm not sure how well this will work in the short term, but it definately sounds like a good long term plan.
Look at the bottom of every page on spaceref.com's site: There are links to "Absinthe - Generic Viagra - Cialis - Hammocks - Cuban Cigars Humidors - Absinth - Sildenafil Citrate Salvia Divinorum - Salvia - Buy Salvia Divinorum - Free Samples - Xenical - Shopping"...
You only use 2% of your DNA
As the old saying suggests, "If the answer to a question begins, 'The government...', the question was asked in front of the wrong people."
Space is the remaining frontier and the issue of 'costs' in this context denotes the very problem at the core of the issue - Government is the last resort in everything and should only be done when a society cannot do something for itself.
The evidence on non-public funding being inadequate to perpetuate technologies that will make space travel/habitation viable isn't conclusive. Rather, the evidence of government monopoly on space exploration outright blocking the privatization of space exploration is rather conclusive and obvious, IMHO.
Mod me troll, if you must, I can't help it.
I'm in favor of a strong military, but this is justa gravy train for contractors. Most of this stuff serves no purpose other than to raise the stock price of TRW or Boeing.
What we really need to do, instead of trying to get a man to Mars right away, is lower launch costs. Really. We know we can get a person to Mars. But unless we think a tourist excursion is what we need, we really shouldn't be blowing this kind of money (ok, the kind of money it would *actually* cost, not what has been budgeted) on it.
We need to lower launch costs. Plain and simple. It is quite possible; it's just *incredibly* difficult work. A reusable space plane which doesn't have the shuttle's size (nor its tiles!!), reusable booster rockets or cheaper disposables, etc, are all technically possible. It's just going to take a lot of money and time. There are no shortcuts.
We also need to be spending more on ways to get unmanned payload to space cheaply. Anyone else for bringing back HARP, spending more on light gas guns, coil guns, rail guns, ram accelerators, and some of the other ballistic-launch methods to get a payload high enough that a small rocket can take it into orbit? Anyone for spending more money on research for advanced ion drives, magnetodynamic tethers, etc, to help craft get into higher orbits and even out of orbit? Anyone for spending more money on researching fusion drives, antimatter-catalyzed microfission/microfusion, and nuclear salt water rockets?
There is so much out there that can *help* the space industry, instead of being a distraction. Let's make the trip affordable first!
You know when it's okay to shout fire in a crowded theatre? When it's on fire.
The space shuttle isn't a 'safe' technology. In fact space travel itself is dangerous. Astronauts must know their line of work has it's risks and they accept this much as firefighters, police, and military personal accept the risks in their chosen professions. So why limit the shuttle to the ISS (ie: let hubble die) because it's risky? DUH! That hasn't changed since the first astronaut climbed atop a redstone. The shuttles will have to be replaced by something else, and that something won't be any safer. (It may be cheaper to use, carry more payload, be more available, etc., but it WON'T be any safer). We've lost fewer astronauts to space accidents then the miltary has lost test pilots (not to mention fighter pilot trainees) and we havn't canceled the airforce (yet). Maybe fewer people would want to become astronauts (outside the military) if the REAL risks were made clearer, but I doubt we would have a shortage of personal.
Keep the shuttles flying as long as needed. Develop a replacement (a good one, and keep poltics and pork out of the process).
I'm surprised that the miltary sees no value in a moon base. The scientific values are sure there. Building a long term base on the moon will serve to develop the technology to go to Mars. But until the red planet has been thoughly expolored by robots, there won't be any need for man to go there in person.
Going to Mars is important. It is, if nothing else, a proof of concept - going to Mars is orders of magnitude more difficult than going to the Moon. It requires better propulsion, better equipment, more efficiency and the planning and execution to see a group of people through a multi-year mission to another planet and back. If we can go to Mars, we can (with minimal additional scaling effects) go anywhere in the Solar System. This (other than scientific research) is the purpose of going to Mars, no more and no less.
"What's so great about that?" you might ask. If you want it in one word, that word is "Mining". Consider: in a nickel-iron asteroid, there is an amount of metal roughly equivalent to the metal mined in the course of human history. Not to mention rare heavy metals - Iridium, Osmium, Platinum - things that are scarce on earth but relatively more abundant in asteroids. A mining operation of that scale is more than lucrative - it also presents a way to attain necessary raw materials without tearing open the surface of our own planet.
But, yeah, mostly, it's the money. Money is the key - and I don't mean "having enough money to do these things". What I mean is opportunities for profit in space. Space travel currently costs a lot - I maintain that this is due to lack of expertise. If there is a sufficient profit motive in space, companies will find ways to do things cheaper and faster and, arguably, better (not being a terrible believer in an unregulated market, this last point is debatable). Prove that we can go get to the money, and people will go get it.
Which brings me to my last point - spending philosophy. A lot of people decry spending on the space program, arguing that the greatest benefits have come from near-Earth satellites and such; and besides, they say, aren't there better things to spend the money on? This is true, in a sense. But, I, for one, would rather spend another billion dollars on the space program, on research and development, than on a new B2 bomber that doesn't work the way it should and whose role as a long-range strategic bomber was obviated by the end of the Cold War. Finding a more worthy cause - education, health care, welfare - does not eliminate the need to spend on less worthy causes. The point is, we don't know yet what we might find worthy in space. It is a money sink until we find that. I think it is worth examining - with plans like reuseable launch vehicles and space elevators and Lagrange-point stations, we have a number of ways to lower the financial barriers to space.
I am not generally one to talk so, but I think we have a responsibility to future generations and to our own sense of intellectual completeness to reach into space. The cost will be mitigated over time. The benefits could be grand. The investment will surely be prohibitive. The continued and future examination and implementation of space travel depend on a long-term view of the investment, a willingness to look for opportunities, and a certain modicum of childlike wonder and hope. Space is great. It's just hard to get to right now.
Vincent Galliard, Precinct 9 -- "Minding the gap since 1996"
"Stimulate economic development" is a code word for "spend money in my Congressional district". And "Federally Funded Research and Development Centers" aren't organizations tightly focused on single goals.
That "executive summary" addresses all the wrong stuff. It doesn't mention cost, schedule, or basic approach. It's all about organizational structure. That's not how Apollo was done.
It also says very little about NASA's thirty years of failures to build a new launch vehicle. Those bozos can't even replace the existing Shuttle. Not for lack of money, either. In the past 30 years, NASA has spent more money than it did from 1960 to 1974, with far less to show for it. Keeping all those "centers" going costs billions.
DARPA, by comparison, is tiny. DARPA itself is a few hundred people. They buy and evaluate; they do nothing in house. There are no "DARPA centers" chewing up billions in overhead.
Don't forget air. I like to breathe.
Food is easy. Try packing all of the water and air you will use for the next 9 months in a small suitcase...
Both of these consumables can be recycled slightly (water more than O2) but there will still be loss because we have not come close to building a closed loop environmental support system that is ready for space or small enough to make it up there. A closed-loop water system is close enough to reality that some of it could be applied here, but a closed-loop system for breathing is not going to be flying anytime soon (these involve things like growing plants to convert CO2 to O2, which increases the volume and weight of the spacecraft significantly.)
A body at rest consumes about 0.3L of O2 per minute. That is 432L per day of metabolic consumption and 116000L over nine months. Using 3000psi composite cylinders (larger, but lighter and we are weight-restricted here) you are looking at about 1.5 tons of weight for gas storage with no reserve and with no allowance for regulation or distribution of the O2. If the astronauts were actually going to do more than lie very still for nine months then your O2 budget goes up.
For water the problem is both easier and harder. It is easier because we have actually made good progress on small, lightweight water recycling systems, and it is harder because each litre of water lost carries a significant cost in terms of weight. An average person consumes 2L of water per day, so you would need 540L for your nine-month mission. We will start by saying that your water needs for cooling and other uses can be handled by non-recoverable losses in the recycling system. Now, if your water recycling system is 80% efficient you will still need to lug up 250 pounds of water and another hundred pounds of container and piping.
Now we are talking about 2 tons of consumables per astronaut, assuming the astronauts do nothing more than lie in their chairs and watch TV for nine months...
BTW, the grandparent came up with three years because for a Mars trip there are two options, short stay or long stay. For your short trip the astronauts would have a couple of weeks on the surface before they would have to leave so that their return transfer orbit would be able to catch up to the earth. The other option is to keep the astronauts on the surface for a year and meet up with earth after both planets have cicled around and are close enough for a transfer orbit. The grandparent poster was also assuming a more fuel-efficient transfer to Mars using a Hohmann transfer orbit, which takes 8.5 months.
No one gets a "three month" stay on Mars, at least not if they want to return to Earth. It is either weeks or a year. Any other option requires a lot (and I do mean A LOT) of fuel to catch up with the Earth.
It seems as if our biggest hurdle that we have to jump at this point is a new propulsion technology. Rockets are very limiting, in more than one way.
1. The amount of heat that they generate.
2. Fuel consumption. A significant amount of the overall weight and mass on space shuttles have been devoted to carrying fuel.
3. They tend to blow up.
4. They are relatively slow. If we ever plan to leave our solar system, we are going to need much faster propulsion systems.
We need something that requires little fuel, is not unnecessarily dangerous to launch, and will propel us much faster than todays systems. We just don't have the technology for a propulsion system such as this yet. Maybe we should worry about obtaining technology such as this before we send our astronauts to their doom.
Listen to my experimental-industrial-techno!
Whats the deal with everyone saying we don't have the tech to go to Mars? They tech has existed since the early 70's. You do not need advanced hab modules or rockets, simple computers (LINUX or HAL, take your pick) work fine, and you don't need some crazy spinning gravity inducing spaceship to get you there. The origional plan was for an Apollo-type pod and LIM to be used with an additional cargo container for water and food. The simple profile had 1.5 years out, a 2-6month stay, and a 1.5 year return. Its not rocket science people. OK so it is. But the fact remains it is not hard to go to Mars. The point of giong to Mars should be the development of all the new tech to make the journey and stay more confortable and profitable. Which is the real reason we should be going, profit. When people came to the US, they had to make money for their investors back in UK or Spain to pay off their journey. Mars should be the same. Send the poeople there sponsored by compaines like Lockheed and Boeing and have them do research to make their companies money. I volenteer to be one of these people, but my wife is going to be pissed.
I stole this sig.
If we're building new space industries we clearly don't want just government money on it. But as you say, the current spending plan gives little money to the new initiative before 2010: why not get more of that money up front and get this thing moving a lot sooner? If the money is paying for services a competitive environment instead of cost-plus contracts, it'll only help. After all, even Elon Musk is getting both government and private contracts for his services.
Energy: time to change the picture.
How can I truthfully write "no text" when that itself is text?
I should point out mhmealling has some good commentary of his own here.
Energy: time to change the picture.
Considering how wacked the world is, what's the point of going there, other than to say We Were Here? We might as well I suppose, considering that we probably won't be around in a century. Take a look at this site and you'll get the idea. This world is in GREAT hands ;-)
Projects like these are more subjective, but lets face it, Boeing and Lockheed lobby hard for this gravy - these open-ended projects are where they really make their bank.
NASA has simply outlived its usefulness as an agency. There are a few projects that by international agreement still need to be continued for a number of years (such as the completion of the ISS), but I would not cry too much if Congress simply pulled the plug altogether.
/. readers would be familiar with. The NASA that exists today is not the same sort of agency that existed back during the Apollo program.
Some aspects of this proposal are valid, such as spinning off the research agencies. I could see the creation of a "Department of Science" or some other federal bureaucracy that would oversee national research laboratories, including much of the NSF programs (Like the Antarctic research bases), leftover items from NASA such as JPL or Ames, and include other scientific projects that are generally "Big Science" that take so much capital to put together that it really makes sense to fund them with federal dollars due to legitimate return on their value. A restructuring of the NSF would also have value on its own as well. A restructuring like this would even allow other areas of research to be created that currently aren't being done.
When I think of NASA, I think of a bunch of cool looking guys (and a few cool women) dressed up in spacesuits going to places that nobody has ever gone before. For over 30 years NASA has done nothing even resembling this idea, so it is no wonder that a bunch of greying astronauts (no matter how fit they are) with stuck-up elitist attitudes have absolutely no connection with ordinary Americans like myself. I happen to know personnally (I've been in his home and done things with his kids... now raising kids of their own) one of the Apollo astronauts, and boy did he have a bunch of fun stories including his own recollections of Yuri Gregarian, not to mention Neil Armstrong and others I'm sure
I am a solid supporter of further space exploration. I feel we, as a species, need to get off this rock and move on throughout this universe. NASA, rather than helping out in moving this idea forward like they did in the 1960's, they are now a major obsticle keeping people from going into space. The longer NASA continues to exist as an agency, the longer and harder it will be for my kids and grandkids to get into space themselves. If this is a P.R. perception that NASA needs to change for both myself and within NASA as well, so be it. I wish it would simply go away because we no longer need the agency.
I do think that a civilian-based space exploration agency of some sort should exist, and perhaps something should be done to preserve the Astronaut corp, but there is so much more to NASA than astronauts that this minor part of the agency could be kept running for almost nothing compared to what it is currently taking to run the agency. When the main Astronaut corp office is in LEO rather than in Houston, Texas, I might give those guys a little more respect. Unfortunately I think the USAF will have a military base in space well before NASA gets its act together.
huh!!
why do they have to wait??
Don't they have a tolkein in your centauri?!!?
Someone mentioned ion drives.
These are definitely more efficient than conventional liquid fueled rockets, and even more than the fission rockets we tested in the 60s, but they are not an attractive choice for manned spaceships.
It would take a LONG time for an ion-drive equipped ship to reach escape velocity. You would need to bring along life support supplies for the weeks or months it would take a ship to just get away from the Earth. Also, they would be exposed to solar flares and such during this time.
A more refined fission rocket, which might be less efficient than an ion drive, but would have sufficient thrust to get a rocket to escape velocity and on its way fairly quickly, would be the way to go.
Eventually, we'll have access to fusion drives and such, but even then they'd probably be paired with higher-thrust rockets for gross maneuvers. The low-thrust high-efficiency drives would be used for constant accelleration and deacceleration in between orbital insertion / departure burns.
Orion style bomb-drives are a possibility, but they'd have major political problems. Maybe for emergencies.
Regarding point 4:
One engineering hurdle we'll have to address on almost all advanced propulsion systems is waste heat.
If you have a nuclear reactor, you'll need to drag along great big radiators.
Stefan Jones
I wonder if that's what the commission is talking about when they say that they think private companies could do a better job. The governments had their chance and they've proven that all they can do is spin their wheels and waste money. Maybe it's better left to private industry.
NASA works primarily because it is government. Yes, it always has the chance to be swayed from one political side to the other (slightly). NASA, though is also one of the few (only?) institutions of the government that has actually returned more money to the economy than it has taken. The thought of slice and dice on NASA is chilling. NASA provides (or provided) a strong platform for bringing initial research from the point of being non-viable in a business sense to a viable and even necessary understanding for businesses.
Take a look at most business today, especially corporations. How far down the road are the looking for a return on investment before they are willing to spend their capital on anything? Not even 4 years in most cases. There are a few exceptions, but normally limited to the pharmaceutical companies. Even most investment funds are geared to a year by year investment strategy, and they have one of the longest look ahead time frames for any product on the market.
I see the same private interests peeking up here as I see in almost all other privatization, schools, parks, roads, etc. The failure of this view is to recognize that by their very nature, all businesses must make a profit, and that means to the exclusion of all things perceived profitless (or not profitable enough). Our space program would have never happened if that had been the view (profit), and more than likely many things from tennis shoes to microwave ovens would either not exist yet or never exist. (Yeah, I know theoretically, all things in time will exist, but realistically, from a profit motive standpoint, most things will not exist, as the profit motive is not strong enough and even a societies available consumption is finite in nature. Basic supply and demand says no (or not enough) demand, no need for a supply.)
One of the problems with advanced cutting edge/bleeding edge research (like the moon missions) is that you have to throw tons of money away to get the advances. But as has been shown time and again (moon shots, Internet, Christopher Columbus, Marco Polo, ), the benefits can be unmistakably life altering. This is something that most businesses are not good at, and in the hands of businesses would slow to a trickle.
IMO, NASA should be returned to its prior years of glory. I say glory because as a nation we glorified it. We stood as a people behind its mission. The bully pulpet of the president was strongly behind it. It was advertised and promoted. If anything should be outsourced, perhaps that would be the best start. We do so well promoting our drug using abusive sports heroes, but we fail to promote that which is essentially most valuable to us as a society, even as a race.
InnerWeb
Freud might say that Intelligent Design is religion's ID.
Better yet, just pay another country to do it. Pay India for the software. Pay France for the rockets. Pay Canadia for the robotic arms. Pay China for the electronics. NASA should be an consumer, not a producer.
I worked at JSC through a subcontractor between my degrees.. let me say that most of the technical work seemed to be done by subcontractor personnel.. most of the civil servants I encountered were busy climbing the ladder to micromanage everything.. this is a generalization, mostly from what I saw working there for a few years.
dont get me wrong; I am a space advocate. I think it is one of the most noble undertakings of the human race. But NASA has left a bad taste in my mouth (at least my experience at JSC) and I eagerly await privitized space without the regulation of NASA... Im waiting on plans for the moon base, and as others have noted, launch costs are prohibitive.
The way NASA blows through the money they have at the end of the fiscal year... its like expensive toy shopping.. "use all your budget money! congress wont give us the same budget next year if they see that we dont use it this year".. NASA likes to penalize subcontractors for being underbudget just as much as overbudget. It would just make sense to me to move the money to projects that are overbudget (and this is not to say projects should go overbudget knowing that hopefully some project goes underbudget) rather that blowing it on things that just arent necessary to make it look good on paper to the NASA monitors...
Regarding the academy idea, there is already a braindrain seperated by age gap.. The outgoing older management that probably worked in the good ol' days of space seem to be only replaced by younger managers.. no tech transfer to the younger generation, just management skills.
You can pick up a lot in school, but experience with technical people means so much more, especially when the funding and public popularity of the good ol' days isnt there.
Basically, we are haveing to start form the ground up again. We have newer technology, but its still in its infancy and no real funds to develop them. All the old tech for launch vehicles (however wasteful) has virtually been lost with retirees.
An academy would be a great idea, but just as you have to sell the idea of space to the public, you have to sell it to engineers/technicians as well... Money is always a motivator and the aerospace industry isnt as lucrative as other engineering industries (I guess given the number of unemployed engineers, anything is better than nothing). If the subcontractors are doing most of the tech works, its the subs that need the academy pool, but if the contracts dont have the money to support the salaries there is no need for personnel.
my $0.02
Seriously man, contact NASA. I'm not a big Reality TV Fan, but I think I would watch somthing like this. It's a very good idea.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
I agree civilian based exploration is the future. But that is still some time in the future. For now NASA is still our best option and they shouldn't be abandoned until we can say with all honestly that the private sector does a better job.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
What if our history dictated everyone flying around in huge "Hindenburg" like aircraft, would there be any innovation in the Aerospace industry?
Or instead of individual cars everyone was fixated on a limited number of grand double decker transports that only professional drivers could handle?
The point I'm trying to get at is why don't we make small solid technologies rather than huge technologies? Why rockets with huge payloads? Why not something more like the X-Prize?
Part of what seems to be killing NASA and the space industry is the view that only a certain type of technologies will work in space. I'm not sure how to change it but would more modular technologies be more fitting? Smaller payloads, more spacecraft, longer reaching technologies?
Just my two cents. It just seems exploration is always a dangerous when you don't have redundancy. Christopher Columbus at least could build another raft but our explorers run the risk of death by oxygen deprivation or burning up in the atmosphere because we only have a few spacecraft that costs billions of dollars. Doesn't make sense to me.
Even if it takes 50-100 years a few solid designs would be more interesting to me rather than these barely flying monoliths.
"Don't fear death... fear not living..." -me
The US is outsourcing everything else, what's wrong with space? Contract the russians, they have the best heavy lift capabilities,rusting away, and they got engineers hanging around who will work for a lot less, and they are living where it costs less to live, so it's affordable NOW. Stop subsidising right and left coast extreme cost of living, and stoip spending space money to keep doofuses in meetings in washington and houston and flying around on junkets. It cost millions of dollars inside any random US bureaucracy just to TALK about something, let alone actually *do it*, and even then the political careerists make the decisions-not any smart guys who are actual engineers. Accept that space exploration is riskier than most fields, and get on with it, at greatly reduced cost,by funding the best deal out there. At medium to large scale that is the russians, at small scale that is the US (and a few others) private sector as evidenced by the X-prise entrants, and turn loose the private sector. Look at them not allowing team armadillo to get proper peroxide fuel, all that is is bureaucratic crap, OF COURSE space exploration will be RISKY. Who cares? Certainly not the people who WANT TO DO IT. I got a lot of respect for the actual NASA workers who are able to pull off ANYTHING successful dealing with the crap they have to deal with.
...phooie. Bureaucracy and entrenched weenieness and "not designed here so we can't use it" syndrome is as much a hindrance as any of the legitimate technological problems, and you will keep getting that as long as "space" is run by the US congress and career appointed insider good ole boy plutocrats, same as every other agency is now run. Ain't a true statesman or visionary in the whole dang flock of 'em, IMO.
If it was happening today, will and orville wright couldn't fly, first they would need a waiver from the interior department because they might disturb dune grass, then a million dollar permit from the EPA to make sure they didn't dribble any "coal oil" on the wetlands, then the military would stamp TOP FREEKING SEEKRIT on any of their work and steal it from them, then this paper then that permit and
The only way to make space exploration appeal to the general masses is the same way Atlantic crossings developed, whether it be by boat, Zepplin, or aircraft.
Initially, governments (kings/queens) paid for journeys across the oceans. Once these 'Public' ventures accomplished something like building a settlement and proving the voyage to be relatively safe, wealthy upper class commissioned their own private voyages.
The more voyages that occured, the larger the vessels; the larger the vessels, the cheaper the individuals cost; the cheaper the individual cost, the more the general masses can take part. As the number of tourists increase, the more the need for accomodation at the destination; the more accomodation, the more workers to support it...
This all leads to the eventual construction of Disneyworld. So why not kickstart the whole thing by packing up EuroDisney and put it on the moon.
The concern for building crews for long voyages is that between the confined space (traumatic to primates), the long term and the need to succeed (failure is not an option), the West seems to have decided collectively that only a well-balanced, dedicated and well adjusted crew could "make it" for several years.
To which I say, Balls.
Here's why. Buddhist meditation is all ANYONE needs to spend multiple years comfortably stowed away like living cargo, despite all fear, pain and unexpected influences (short of a meteorite through the head). Meditation can be done anywhere and costs nothing (particularly, calories, oxygen). Furthermore, it is a process which adds to the strength of the meditator.
I suppose that the Pentagon and others may balk at sending astronauts on a mission with orders to "meditate when you get stressed out" on the grounds that religion and science are *not* to be mixed. Not to mention, do you think prince dubya would want to send anything other than christians up there if he could? "God" forbid they get to mars and radio back, "God exists, and he's not a christian".
Sure, most of us Slashdotters would volunteer our lives for a one-way trip. All things considered, it seems obvious to me (with only about 6 months experience of research in meditation) that ANYONE properly guided in meditation could not only make the long cold confined trip, but also make it *comfortably*, quietly, and lose nothing of their dedication to teh mission.
Are you listening, NASA?
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
Whereas, I would argue that NASA doesn't work because it is government.
I think you've demonstrated your complete lack of understanding about how market based systems work. Technologies do not just "appear" in the public sector because a company got around to creating it, there's an economic drive between companies to outperform one another, to create the widget with more features, to tap the untapped desires of customers.
The airplane was developed by private citizens, as well as the telephone, the radio... and we allow the free markets to get a hold of these devices, and tweak the heck out of them. Bad reception? well our brand has a better antenna design, so it's clearer... Well, ours runs on fewer batteries, ours is lighter to carry, etc etc. That's innovation driven by the desires of the customers, and its led to better materials science, better chemistry, better everything.
If you let government be the filter through which all spaceflight must occur, then you have added such a layer of regulation you might as well just shoot yourself in the foot for another 40 years. Heck, John Romero's Armadillo Aerospace has to get environmental burn rate permissions just to run a test flight of his rocket out in the middle of nowhere... now how is the private industry supposed to be creative when they have to deal with government crap like that?
One thing I've learned over the years is that a business should stick to its core competencies. Trying to branch out into other fields, even related fields, fails more often than succeeds. If Lockheed and Boeing stick to defense contracts and Big Iron, it will work for them. Let other companies rise up to do the related space work.
Nyekulturniy... Proudly confusing readers and editors since 1981!
Everyone bashing nasa in replies to this review should take a moment to grep the kernel source and notice that a lot of code has been submitted and maintained by nasa employees. The beowulf code also originated from nasa employees, among other significant contributions to the linux community.
When you see that Carli Fiorina is one of the authors of this report, do you really believe they took the best and brightest to write this aimless and irrelevant POS ? Some people don't think so. Getting advice from somebody who has led one of the most dastardly industrial reorganization is not a good omen for how NASA should change.
Give me a rocket and a space capsule with enough food and air. I would go land on the surface even if there wasn't much of a chance of coming back. If you got a few dozen people to do the same thing shelters could be built and a community started on the surface of Mars. I am sure there would be many other people that would be fighting for a chance to go. Just tell me where to sign that I wouldn't hold NASA/the government responsible for my death.
It seems to me that the Aldridge Commission report is just taking the next logical step in carving up NASA, considering how much NASA had ignored the strategic survival plans from the two prior commissions.
After all, if in 1986 they tell you that you had a car accident due to your drinking, then in 1990 they tell you your driving is still terrible, then we can only conclude that when you have another inept DUI accident in 2002 that it's time to restrict your driving to "work only".
NASA has proven itself to be a poor repository of space vision. And we can see with increasing clarity that it is also a poor place to put your technological hopes for SSTO, solar power stations, lunar and asteroid mining, and overall Human habitation in space.
I can't blame NASA for all of this, however; we must also point at the money-fickle Congress. NASA has earned good marks with the thing they were allowed to pursue in good faith and budgeting, that being the interplanetary probes. We may as well relegate them to that so they can (to borrow that hated modern phrase) "concentrate on their core competency". I'd leap for actual joy if NASA was reduced to a "National Space Exploration Administration", which would design equipment, build probes, contract to have them launched, and then manage and track them with the DSN.
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
Perhaps the intention is to emulate the practices that the DoD is trying to use to fix their space problems. But these practices have had limited implementation so far, and its not clear that they actually help at all. Besides, having seen first-hand how many DoD space programs (including some of extreme national importance) are run, I'm not sure that the DoD is necessarily the best model to be following. I won't even get into how idiotic the whole "systems-of-systems" buzzword/fad is.
As an aside, I wonder if one of the reasons for the commission's recommendation to spin off the NASA centers into FFRDCs is Aldridge's experience as the president of a space-focused FFRDC (The Aerospace Corporation).
It was a project in the 50s for "gun launch" delivery system. Not to be confused with the ongoing HAARP.
The Planets belong to whoever can secure and colonize them. That means America.
"We need to lower launch costs"
/. users) are so fond of. Give me a break. Your post makes me think of the failures of rule by the masses; mostly uninformed, sometimes sensational and based more on desire rather than rational need or deep understanding.
That's like saying about AIDS spreading in third world nations, "we need to stop people from dying." Is there anyone who doesn't know that launch costs are expensive? That flow of multimillion dollar bills for getting satellites into orbit is kinda hard to miss.
The rest of your post is just stating the obvious. You say that researching new propulsion tech is hard and expensive. Wow, great insight there. Then you go on to rattle off a list of exotic methods as if they form some panacea to the cost issue. They're mostly based on sound concepts, but all of them are very far from actual employment (except perhaps a fission engine) and throwing a billion dollars at each one isn't going to turn them from engineering daydreams into working spacecraft any time soon. "Hey, here's a way of making energy cheap and clean; use fusion!" Well sir, that's a bit easier said than done.
In the end you're just trolling for karma in the great game of Slashdot. You state something pseudo-insightful (to a relatively uninformed audience), sprinkle about some "know-it-all" terms then close with a cheeky liberal appeal that the moderators (who of course are also typical
Here's an idealized timeline:
2005 - designing the CEV
2010 - testing CEV, moon probes, ISS finished
2015 - CEV routinely services ISS, 1st CEV to the moon and back.
2020 - Moon base has been established, mining and manufacturing experiments, Mars probes
2025 - O2, water and metal mined on moon.
2030 - Mars ship launches - modified Zubrin plan using Lunar O2, small nuclear reactors for power. O2 tanks being made on the moon.
2035 - After three successful missions, President calls for a permanent Mars base.
2045 - Mars Base launches - several robotic and finally a crewed mission of "colonists" - six carefully picked scientists who will stay for 5 years.
Here's a more interesting timeline:
2005 - designing the CEV, XPrise awarded to Scaled Composites.
2010 - 3rd disaster grounds shuttle, CEV not ready yet, ISS not finished, Scaled Composites tourist service is wildly popular - space enthusiasts use lotteries to get a chance to go.
2015 - CEV finally flying to ISS, way over budget, warnings that various compromises make it less safe than hoped. Moon resource probes operating. ISS declared complete, but lots of failing components. Scaled Composites testing 2nd generation tour ships for ultra-high speed terrestrial transport and 2nd stage micro-launch.
2020 - CEV missions to moon, permanent base delayed by funding and safety issues. TeleRobotic probes doing lunar mining & manufacturing experiments. Private micro-robot launched by Scaled Composites survives impact on moon, sends back video showing Adidas logo.
2025 Lunar base finally established, lunar robots depositing ultra-large array telescope on far side. ISS closed, will transfer to lunar orbit as emergency base. Mars resource probe launched (fails - too many corners cut). "Open Source" lunar micro-robots attempting duplication of NASA robotic mining/manufacturing methods on the cheap.
2030 Lunar mining and manufacturing done by teleoperated robots, exploration done by humans. Mars resource explorer finds ice. Mars ship designed - controversy over nuclear reactor. Scaled Composites launches its first true orbital excursion. Open source microbots building "Open Base 1" - teleoperated mining and mini-manufacturing facility - aim to make bigger robots and O2 tanks and half of a lunar launch vehicle.
2035 Mars ship components being launched - mix of human/telerobot assembly - no nuclear reactor. O2 and O2 tanks manufactured on Moon - O2 launch craft availability delays Mars launch. Open Lunatic Society announces competitive lunar O2 supply and crude launcher availability. (NASA ignores them after citing "safety concerns"). OLS reacts by announcing their own Mars mission. Scaled Composites launches first lunar orbit excursion, contracting with OLS for return O2.
2040 - Mars mission returns - a success, lots of good science. OLS launches Open Mars Probe, renames itself Open Space Lunatics, starts telerobotic assembly of Mars ship in lunar orbit. SC transports 1st guests to tiny Lunar Hilton - mostly constructed from OSL tanks by OSL telerobots, finished by a human SC crew. OSL holds a lottery to send a member with first tourists. OSL reveals he'll be staying on moon, working with telerobots on an OSL manned base adjacent to Hilton.
2045 Second NASA Mars mission. OSL moon base has crew of 6 humans, 500 telerobots. OSL -SC Mars mission launches with crew of 3 and a small therm-ionic nuclear reactor using lunar radioactives, plan to stay 3 years, partially by scavenging equipment left by NASA - no way home, depend on follow-up OLS mission! OSL launches robotic re-supply mission 2 years later.
2050 NASA announces official Mars colonization plan, launches 3rd Mars expedition with crew of 5. OSL-SC send crew of 7 to Mars later that year. One of original crew and four of new crew will stay on Mars permanently. OSL martian manufacturing turning out storage tanks, fuel and O2 for return ship. Martian farm supplies food for five. Lunar OSL base has 20 permanent staff, turning out heavy components to minimize earth launch costs. Earth launch costs by SC are down to $200/kg, but they mainly carry passengers and small cargoes. Space elevator finally under construction.
As long as you mean small in terms of population and infrastructure then I agree with you. Antarctica is definitely not small in area, though. It also does have a tourism industry if you do want to go there, and think it's fair to say that Antarctica is much more hospitable than the Moon or Mars. (I know I'm nitpicking.)
It wouldn't take that much to change Antarctica from it's natural state, but the biggest irony is that its environment is (arguably) changing as a direct result of people who live in a relative minority of geographic locations around Earth... most not even on the same side of the planet.
It'd certainly be possible to completely mess up other planets by only touching a minor part of them, too. That's exactly why NASA goes to such great lengths to steralise spacecraft that go near places like Europa.
I guess whether or not a minority of private citizens should have a right to take the resources and change the state of somewhere like Mars or the asteroids overnight, after it's taken billions of years for them to get to where it is, is a separate issue. Personally I think we should be very careful before allowing it to happen. In a sense, though, short term profit at the expense of unreplacable resources is what spearheads colonisation in traditional western society. Going to the "new world" to terrorise and rob from existing civilisations is just one example throughout history.
I do think that it's premature to assume that private colonisation of these places won't create problems just because it'd take a long time to populate the entire surface. Once economies of scale got going in what is comparatively a small area of the Earth's surface, it didn't take that long to start having global negative consequences on the environment involving everyone and everything that either lives/exists in it or will in the future. Once the technology is available and cheap enough, I don't see any real reason why a minority of privateers won't start abusing all of the resources around the Solar System at the longer term expense. With the exception of a few token government-related expiditions, the people who would quickly destroy as much as possible in exchange for fast money are likely to be the first through the door.
Then perhaps a little private industry co operation "multi sourcing". If it was just one part, perhaps another company someplace else could have made it. I don't know but it seems possible. I guess my main thought is to use an international distributed effort, whomever can do the job best for the best price gets that piece of it. I'd just like to see politics and governmental bureaucracies stripped out of the efforts as much as possible is all.
the 'golden rule': he who has the gold, makes the rules.
is there somebody that can persaude red china to step up its human space program?
And what you claim is truly important... are you not merely indicating what you have convinced yourself is important?
Nike, Tickle-Me-Elmo (DIE!!), and modern yachts, are all the beneficiaries of space research's new materials. Perfume might be as well (does NASA do research on emulsions?). Don't underestimate how far the benefits of space research can reach.