credit: NASA
Having announced that DIRECT can't cut the mustard and that NASA's Constellation programme is hamstrung by industrial and political decisions I had said that Hyperbola would put forward its own plan for human exploration beyond low Earth orbit
Not wanting to attempt to tackle this nebulous topic in one blog post I am going to start by setting out some parameters and if I can persuade out in-house artists could have some snazzy pictures in the foreseeable future
So for those of you brave enough to click through to the extended section and read my self imposed constraints, feel free to flame away
It would be easy to draw up a plan for manned exploration beyond LEO that paid no heed to costs and schedules but that would be to duck the central issues facing NASA and all the other space agencies
So I will begin by setting out the landscape within which my plan must fit:
*The plan has to fit into expected future NASA budgets, which will increase at or below inflation (with the assumption that manned flight is always a priority)
*The plan has to show demonstrable progress for political reasons in the near term
*The plan has to use existing infrastructure
*The plan does not have a fixed date for the first landing on the Moon or Mars
*The plan will be driven by the scientific objectives set out by scientists
*The plan does not have to use the existing industrial workforce
This last point goes to the heart of the problem with NASA's strategy. It could be said that the political needs for NASA budget approval requires this but I am going to let the free market rein
In part two (don't ask me when) I will address the scientific objectives
For those of you who are wondering what the image in the first section of this blog post is, it is from this NASA history webpage about the early years of Apollo and lunar module landing concepts
*The plan will be driven by the scientific objectives set out by scientists
Thats a setup for failure. By the way, why ?
*The plan does not have to use the existing industrial workforce
No, that is a setup for failure - it won't get funded. No bucks, no Buck Rogers.
I did not say we would not have to use the ENTIRE workforce but what won't happen with my plan is that the needs of one capability, solid rocket boosters, for example, will not skew the vehicle design. It is clear to me from talking to NASA's contractors and its own personnel that keeping the SRB production capability going was a factor in the decision making for Constellation.
On the other comment about scientists and failure. I don't understand that. We are going to the Moon TO DO science. I know that NASA's LAT2 team were told to go back and "do it again" when they came up with the payload requirements they wanted. My view is that while a financially constrained transportation system will never be able to meet all the needs of the scientific community the plan should begin with what science do we want to do, not what industrial workforce coalition can we build to ensure the US Congress doesn't kill the programme.
If using the current workforce isn't a requirement, why is using existing infrastructure?
If something is not a requirement it does not mean you don't use it. It just means you are not obliged to use it. I do intend to use a part of the current workforce and some of the existing infrastructure. Saying you will use existing infrastructure does not mean you have to use all of it. I may choose to use newly available commercially established and operated infrastructure, not on the Cape.
"We are going to the Moon TO DO science"
Again, why ? That really does not excite a lot of people. If you were going with a different goal like, expanding the economic sphere(1) or explicit far-future settlement goal, that would be a different story, because it would eventually have a tangible payoff.
Science is boring to lots of people. Pure academic research is hard to justify for the money involved.
By setting out with underlying assumption that space is only about science we will never get very far.
(1) By expanding the economic sphere i mean _any_ business, be it service industry like tourism or data services, manufacturing , energy, resource extraction or anything else you can think of. Currently our economic sphere reaches as far as geostationary orbits with comm sats.
That is a good point.
I didn't exclude tourism or a second home or even retirement homes by saying we are going to do science.
In declaring my intention to offer an alternative to VSE and DIRECT I had focused on re-imagining the route to the goal that NASA professes but doesn't really follow, and that is having an architecture that is science based.
My argument would be this. To avoid the unobtainium route and sticking to timetables and resource contraints that we know exist today the government funded science mission is one that is realistic, i.e. I am not claiming that Virgin Galactic's customers are ready to pay squillions for a week at Shackleton crater by 2020.
But by government funded I do not mean NASA designed and manufactured vehicles, nor cost plus, nor a guaranteed contract for the "old space" companies.