The View From 2015: Integrated Space Plan's 100-Year Plan

garyebickford writes: Wired Magazine has posted an article about the new 2015 version of the Integrated Space Plan, updated 14 years after the last version and descended directly from the original 1989 version. The original one was printed in the thousands, distributed by Rockwell, and appeared on walls throughout the space industry. One even hung behind the NASA administrator's desk. The new one is prettier, great for dorm room walls and classrooms, and Integrated Space Analytics, the company behind it, promises to expand their website into an up-to-date, live interactive tool. This is a great new beginning after over 30 years.

Comments

Over 30 years?

[Calydor]

Has it been more than 30 years since 1989 already?

Re:Over 30 years?

[wbr1]

I can haz maths class.

2015-1986 !> 30

Re:Over 30 years?

[wbr1]

Apparently WIRED writers are No Idiot Left Behind grads.

Re:Over 30 years?

[iggymanz]

usually we write !> as =, however I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest even might work there

Re:Over 30 years?

[garyebickford]

My bad - I just plunked in an approximate number. Maybe I could count it as an imperial to metric conversion? :) Or astronomy/physics - it's within an order of magnitude, round up, or something. In Base 8 it's 37 ...

Re:Over 30 years?

[iggymanz]

yikes less than and greater than eaten even with "plain old text" selected, we see the education level of slashdot developers

Re:Over 30 years?

[garyebickford]

This was my bad, due to laziness, not Wired's :)

Re:Over 30 years?

[wbr1]

I lolled

Re:Over 30 years?

[Hognoxious]

You might write "not greater" as "equal", but some of us are aware of a thing called "less than".

Re:Over 30 years?

[iggymanz]

the slashdot code ate my "less than" and "greater than signs" even with plain text selected, "not greater" is the same as "less than or equal"

Re:Over 30 years?

[hattig]

I think this bug was reported originally in 1998. Seriously.

science fiction

[Iamthecheese]

Until NASA's real, actual use-this-money budget comes in 20 year cycles it's just science fiction. Here is a chart of NASA's budget. I'm not going to say whether it's too much or too little in this comment, that's not the point. The big problem is NASA has no idea whether sequestration and budget games, the presidential fad this decade, or party politics is going to increase, eliminate, or do weird things with their budget. Maybe they'll have money for Orion or maybe the President will do away with it with the sweep of a pen. Maybe we can send up ten shuttles a month at a low cost per shuttle. Or maybe we'll have to cut that way, way back until the cost is hard to justify. From Mars to space stations to earth science the fad of the day dictates what NASA is building this year -- and worse, where it's building it.

There have been noises in the direction of stabilizing things and NASA is a fairly popular, if misunderstood, organization. But it's not enough. We need a NASA funding omnibus bill that sets NASA funds, be they generous or miserly, and NASA plans in stone.

Re:science fiction

[DanielRavenNest]

I was one of the contributors to this plan, and one of the big misconceptions is that NASA is the only player in space. In reality, worldwide space industry was $323 billion in 2014, and NASA's $17.6 billion only represented 5.45%. Most of the 1250 active satellites in Earth orbit are commercial ones, and a lot of innovation is happening in that arena. For example, ion thrusters for boosting to synchronous orbit are standard procedure these days, using solar arrays 2.5 times as efficient as the ones powering the Space Station. SpaceX is working on recovering their first stage so it can be used again, while NASA is going backwards on the SLS solid boosters. In the Shuttle era the boosters were 2/3 re-used, on SLS they will be thrown away.

Re:science fiction

[garyebickford]

To Dani's comment, I'll just add that, the day that an asteroid assay is done and proves that the thing is actually more than 1% platinum, or any other of the many proposed ways to make space economically interesting proves out, the land rush will be on. Private investment by institutions today is difficult because many of the business models are speculative, the terrain is unknown, the payout time frame of 10-20 years is way too long for VCs, who want to get paid in five or less. As soon as somebody shows that their business is more than a pipe dream, things will happen fast. But already the angel investors are working about a dozen deals per year in space-related startups. Many of these are for small companies that are already profitable or cash flow positive but don't have the cash to go to the next step. I look forward to when the majority of launches to LEO and beyond are for private commercial purposes.

Re:science fiction

[KeensMustard]

Interesting. I was under the impression that robotic mining of asteroids are still several orders of magnitude away from being profitable - but then I have never seen any detailed economic modelling on the proposal. Have you got access to this modelling?

Re:science fiction

[jeffb (2.718)]

That would be great, but based on the papers I've seen (here, for example), "1% platinum" is high by at least two orders of magnitude -- that would be 10000 ppm; actual estimates are closer to 100 ppm, and that's for the very richest of precious-metal-rich asteroids. Am I missing more recent analyses?

Re:science fiction

[garyebickford]

There are two copies actively engaged. The one that AFAIK is farthest ahead is Planetary Resources. I think their investors include James Cameron and Tom Hanks. :) I quote from their page on Asteroid Composition:

"One of Planetary Resources targets is an X-type asteroid, and may have more platinum that has ever been mined on Earth to date."

I recall that the head of PR was asked if bringing so much platinum back to Earth would crash the market, and he said he expected it. He thought they could make money at $10 to $100 per ounce (the present price is around $1300 per ounce). Platinum is especially interesting because it is a hugely useful industrial metal but its application has been minimal because of the cost. The catalytic converter in your care probably has an infinitesimal amount of Platinum. If it were cheaper, it could even be used to build catalytic converters for coal fired power plants! So this one item could improve industrial efficiencies and reduce pollution, improving the standard of living on Earth.

PR's first testbed launch is in space now - Arkyd testbed platform launched in July. They're still developing the technology.

PR is also looking strongly at the H2O market. Water in space is valuable as the raw material to make hydrogen for rocket engines. SInce the cost of shipping from Earth is presently on the order of $20,000 per pound, retrieving it in space from the Moon or an asteroid could be very profitable, and would reduce costs.

There is a communications satellite owned by IntelSat that failed some time ago. It was determined that the cause of the failure was that a thermal blanket popped loose on one end, probably due to a fastener failure, and draped across the solar panels. So that $150 million satellite has been moved to a 'graveyard' parking orbit. But if a small robotic satellite could get to it, pull the blanket back away and stick it down with some glue or something, that satellite would be ready to go. That's a trip worth at least $10 million.

These are just a few examples.

Re:science fiction

[Applehu Akbar]

"...one of the big misconceptions is that NASA is the only player in space."

Just look at the amazing proliferation of ISS cargo run providers we are seeing today.

Re:science fiction

[garyebickford]

Sigh. "copies" => "companies". And the other one to mention is Deep Space Industries. There are some others as well.

Re:science fiction

[garyebickford]

I haven't looked into this recently. This is a good example why it's difficult to get traditional investment entities like VCs to invest in these highly speculative ventures - nobody really knows what's out there. Platinum is fun to talk about, but IMHO the markets for in-space re-fueling, satellite maintenance, possibly space tourism, a robotic lunar research facility (prototype self-constructing system), and similar more mundane aspects have higher near-term probabilities.

OTOH, platinum on Earth is extremely problematical. It's a horrible environmental mess, it's a horrible human mess with workers one step above slaves, direct mining takes huge amounts of ore to make a few grams of platinum. (I think more is produced as a by-product of copper smelting.) A high grade platinum source may be less than 0.5 ppm. 2010 production was 245 tonnes. Potential global demand at $10 per ounce may well be more than 1000 times that.

Part of the theoretical justification for platinum in asteroids is that, as a very dense metal, nearly all of it on Earth has sunk into the core. But many asteroids appear to be the remnants of proto-planets (proto-dwarf-planets?) that partially differentiated concentrating the heaviest elements toward their core, similarly to Earth, then were broken apart in collisions. We know that many asteroids are mostly nickel-iron (which in the long run will also be quite valuable as raw material for space manufacturing), and as such _should_ have platinum in veins, in solution with the iron, and/or in chunks from the deepest part of those cores.

One argument against asteroid platinum mining is the purported cost. However the negative cost estimates I've seen assume a full Earth->asteroid->Earth travel cycle, which is incorrect. If I were building a system, it would be launched once, then operated and maintained in space for 15 years at least. I would try to do as much refining at the asteroid as feasible, and return the concentrate or pure material to LEO (possibly via multiple intermediate steps), where it could be brought back piggy-backed on another return vehicle. Returning need not take anything like as much resources - fuel or anything - as launching. (A Falcon 9 launch involves about $300K of fuel but $10 million for the first stage hardware, used once.)

Some of the numbers and discussion here.

Re:science fiction

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, your precious world-wide space industry is mostly sending unmanned radios into Earth orbit. How this scales to your sci-fi delusions is a mystery.

Good luck to you and your fellow Space Nutters, but you and I both know nothing will happen. Ever. It's over, Danny boy, your childhood dreams are as dead and buried as the Space Age and the Concorde.

Re:science fiction

[DanielRavenNest]

Right now, the best cost for getting stuff to GEO transfer orbit is ~$5000/kg. That includes propellant to complete getting to GEO, which is the desired destination. Hauling loads of asteroid rock to Earth orbit, and processing them for propellant could generate about 100 tons a year, thus worth $500 million/year, with 40-100 tons of starter equipment, and an additional 100 tons/year for each 20 tons more equipment (mainly more ore tugs to fetch rock faster). The trick is to do it at low enough cost to make a profit, but it's not orders of magnitude away, it's roughly profitable with reasonable development costs.

Re:science fiction

[DanielRavenNest]

1% is too high, 100 ppm is the correct number for a "good" metals-rich asteroid. However, most of the value in an asteroid is the bulk materials. A ton of metallic asteroid is worth at least $5 million if turned into something useful in high orbit, because that how much it costs to deliver *anything* to that orbit today. the PM content is 100 grams, worth ~$3,200. Anyone who thinks PM is the reason to mine asteroids hasn't talked to a mining geologist about ore values.

Re:science fiction

[garyebickford]

I tend to agree, though IANA planetary geologist. Folks tend to forget the value of things like nickel-iron, which could become one of the primary materials for constructing machines in space. It may well be that simple in-space products such as water and its constituents hydrogen and oxygen will become the largest economic activity for some time. Platinum is attractive in part because of the "Gold syndrome" - "OMG it's like GOLD! And it's just laying around out there, ins SPACE!" It does get people's attention. And I hope it's true - the entire space development industry or community or whatever is going to change forever with the first "killer app".

Regardless of the fun, I expect that an entire branch of metallurgy and materials engineering will arise around the use of nickel-iron and other available materials. Where many materials processes on Earth are based on liquid-phase chemistry, I expect that space materials processing will be much more based on solar (thermal and electric) powered vapor-phase methods, with additive manufacturing for actual components. Earth has some advantages - gravity, atmosphere, large amounts of water for solvent chemistry and cooling, etc. Space has different advantages.

For those who aren't familiar, some of the best types of steel, and other iron alloys, are basically nickel + steel + other things - see Iron Nickel Alloy.) I am not sure of the abundance of Aluminum in asteroids, but it's quite possible that the abundance of nickel steel in space may actually result in space-built hardware being made of these steels and steel-like alloys. Steel is traditionally iron + carbon, but the actual amount of carbon is on the order of 0.02% to 2%. The definition 's not that simple, but suffice it to say that nickel-iron alloys are valuable resources in space, though unprofitable for shipment down to Earth.

Re:science fiction

[DerekLyons]

To Dani's comment, I'll just add that, the day that an asteroid assay is done and proves that the thing is actually more than 1% platinum, or any other of the many proposed ways to make space economically interesting proves out, the land rush will be on.

There is no mineral or resource valuable enough that you wouldn't got broke bringing it back to Earth - even if it were stacked in neat little ingots so you wouldn't have to refine it, just open the hatch and shovel it in. None. Zip. Zero. Nada.

First Stop Fighting

[Anonymous Coward]

First stop spending trillions of dollars fighting and killing brown people just because you don't believe in their religion and/or they have lots of oil.

no point

[Anonymous Coward]

If I'm not going to be here in 100 years, what do I give a shit about making a 100 year plan?

No "rushin' " on this plan!

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Clearly they're not taking into account a new administration cancelling the previous one's big NASA project so they can 1. save money and 2. deny them a Kennedy moment years down the road.

Re:No "rushin' " on this plan!

[garyebickford]

One of the biggest changes in focus between the old plan and the new one is the de-emphasis on "NASA does all". As the online version of the Plan evolves, this will continue to change. I can't say when the commercial space budget will exceed NASA's, but it will be happen if all goes well. This may be a terrible example, but it kinda fits - Thomas Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark to explore and map the Louisiana Purchase, and continue on to the Pacific Ocean, to learn what might be learned.
Per this article, Jefferson originally asked for $2500 from Congress, but ultimately the cost was closer to $50,000, a 20 to 1 cost overrun that outdoes any modern overrun.

Lewis and Clark took two years and were actually given up for dead. But today, I can drive approximately the same route in three days. The point is that IMHO we are on the cusp of the transition from pure government financed exploration to the first 'trappers and hunters' going out to see what they could make of an opportunity. So either NASA will become less and less important and cease exploring, or more likely, will continue to transition their activities in support of the next phase.

NASA has been doing some very cool things to support commercial space entities and save money in the process - despite the less-than-sane meanderings of congressional politics. A case in point - the President's Commercial Crew Program 2017 budget, presently in negotiations in Washington, is being cut by $300 million, necessitating that NASA spend $600 additional million to buy launch services from Russia and delaying a return to US manned launches by four years.

(According to this inflation calculator, that $50,000 was equivalent to $1,027,500 today.)

5 Year Plan

[Baldrson]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

I guess the main difference is the morons who did this 100 year plan aren't controlling a government.

Re:5 Year Plan

[garyebickford]

The big difference between the 1989 Plan and this one is that from the beginning this Plan is intended to incorporate the fact of some 40 national space programs (Ecuador and Kenya both have nascent space programs), and that the path to space is no longer a single plan but a herd - for lack of a better word - of different entities with different goals, motivations and theories, but some common goals. Many entities want a lunar outpost for various kinds of research, including research on requirements for a future permanent habitation. There is strong disagreement on almost every aspect of that project. Nobody can say for certain that the first outpost will done by one government, international group of governments, commercial entities, or a combination thereof.

But some things are obviously true. The project will require various items, including a reliable contained space with air and other necessities of life, protection from cosmic rays, a way to produce food and recycle wastes as soon as possible, communications, various tools and materials for construction, maintenance, research, etc., probably some robotics to do the initial construction before we send people - and of course, a launch system to get the packages to the location. I tend to include the economic, financial, and political requirements as well. All of these pieces can be defined with projected costs, development times, and other aspects including their second-order requirements (what technical capability must be ready to put robots on the Moon?). And then we can connect the pieces up in various ways as a precedence graph - somewhat simpler than what Google Maps does to figure out your best route - to determine one or more 'best' routes based on criteria of cost, time, difficulty, probability of failure, etc.

So that's the new Plan - a comprehensive online tool for generating precedence graphs based on the various relations between elements. If the Raptor methane engine is required for the Falcon Heavy, and the schedule for the Raptor gets pushed, then so also does Falcon Heavy, and thus all the planned flight schedules, and thus all of the business or government activities that depend on them. The 2015 ISP poster is just a snapshot, limited by space, time, resources, and a lack of information. In today's world of space development, there are many, many different significant projects and so many different 'critical paths' - but the common goal is to get us, and Earth Life, into space and off the planet.

Re:5 Year Plan

[hattig]

So it's really like a vertical Gantt chart of space related technological developments, where a delay* high up the chart could cascade down the chart tenfold (at least that seems to be what happens in reality).

* That delay is usually caused by cost cutting. The eventual price paid of the cost cutting is often 10x the savings from the cost cutting.

But you could make an online version of this chart, where you can change the completion dates to fit your own beliefs, and see how far into the future we can push things.