Space Exploration (General)

A project of the United States Rocket Academy

Safe, affordable pressure suits are a critical, enabling technology for commercial spaceflight. Cost reductions are especially important for suborbital spaceflight, where the ticket prices will be about an order of magnitude lower.

Some progress has been made in this area. Orbital Outfitters and the David Clark Company have produced prototype suits for suborbital spaceflight. A new company, Final Frontier Design, recently unveiled its prototype and even held a successful Kickstarter campaign.

This progress, while promising, is not sufficient. David Clark has a great of experience building pressure suits for NASA and the military, dating all the way back to the Bell X-1, but has never delivered a commercial spacesuit. (The company does have a great deal of experience delivering commercial products in other areas, however, especially its highly successful aviation headsets.) The other companies are startups, with a strong commercial orientation, but have not yet delivered a suit that’s actually flown in space.

A healthy industry needs to have multiplier suppliers for critical components like spacesuits. A single source would lead to monopoly pricing and leave the industry vulnerable to single-point failures due to a natural disaster, product recall, or business failure. Two suppliers are better, but a single failure would still put the industry right back in a monopoly situation. For the long-term health of the industry, at least three viable suppliers are preferable.

Right now, most impartial observers would put the number of proven suppliers at about one and a half.

One way to address this problem is a prize for low-cost spacesuit development.

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Written by Astro1 on September 11th, 2012 , Space Medicine and Safety

Toxic Dust and Space Settlement

A recent paper on the Toxicity of Lunar Dust highlights one of the problems that need to be solved for long-term space settlement.

NASA’s been studying the dangers of dust for some time. The primary concern with lunar dust is silicosis, a condition which occurs when fine particles become embedded deep within the alveolar sacs and ducts where oxygen and carbon dioxide gases are exchanged. Other parts of the body may also be affected. The lunar dust is so fine that particles can pass through the capillaries and into the blood stream, making their way to vital organs including the heart, liver, and brain. The body’s immune systems are largely helpless against the dust particles, which are so sharp that white blood cells are destroyed when they attempt to engulf them.

Even if dust is not inhaled, it can still cause skin and eye irritations.

While lunar dust is primarily a mechanical irritant, Martian dust is expected to be both an irritant and a chemical poison. The Martian regolith may be a strong oxidizer comparable to undiluted lye or bleach, capable of burning human skin. Dust storms and static electricity may create hydrogen peroxide that falls to the surface as corrosive snow. If that wasn’t bad enough, the dust has also been found to contain trace amounts of toxic metals including arsenic and hexavalent chromium.

NASA is working on ways to mitigate these hazards. The solution will no doubt involve extreme attention to cleanliness and strict isolation from the lunar/Martian environment. Nevertheless, accidents will still happen from time to time.

As we learn more about the toxicity problem, perhaps it’s time to revisit the question which Princeton professor Gerard K. O’Neill asked in 1969: “Is a planetary surface the right place for an expanding technological civilization?” After examining the problems of energy, gravity, and resources, Dr. O’Neill concluded that artificial structures (very large space stations) were a more logical location for long-term space colonization. His ideas were popularized in the book The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space. Perhaps the Moon and Mars will be developed as mining sites and research bases, while the real settlements are built in free space.

"Stanford Torus" space colony under construction

Written by Astro1 on September 6th, 2012 , Space Medicine and Safety, Space Settlement

“Everybody should go!”

If you ask astronauts and former astronauts for their opinions on the future of space exploration, you will get a wide variety of answers. Indeed, one can fairly say that for every astronaut, there is an equal and opposite astronaut.

The late Dr. Sally Ride was a true American space pioneer. Unlike some astronauts, who fade away after leaving the astronaut corps, she has continued to make valuable contributions in areas ranging from space education to space policy. Her work on the Review of United States Human Space Flight Plans Committee showed keen insights. That’s not to say we always agreed with everything she said, however.

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Written by Astro1 on August 30th, 2012 , Education, Space Exploration (General)

Astronauts Go Spelunking, Too

Yesterday, we reported on Astrobotics and Carnegie Mellon University working to develop robots for proving lava caves on the Moon and Mars.

We look forward to the day when astronauts go cave exploring on other worlds. The European Space Agency already has a program that’s training astronauts in cave exploration in preparation for the isolation and close confines of the International Space Station. CAVES (Cooperative Adventure for Valuing and Exercising human behaviour and performance Skills) trains astronauts to work safely and effectively using crew procedures.

Six astronauts will spend a week learning cave safety and exploration procedures on the Italian island of Sardinia. Then, on September 7, they will venture underground for a six-day mission in a Sardinian cave. Just as on ISS, the astronauts will have a busy research schedule. In this case, looking for new life forms in the largely unexplored caves.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T44jdLESa5w&w=700]

Written by Astro1 on August 29th, 2012 , Space Medicine and Safety

Mars Sample Return or Humans to Mars?

A Mars sample-return mission has long been the holy grail of NASA’s unmanned science program. Given the publicity surrounding the successful landing of the Curiosity Mars Science Laboratory, it isn’t surprising that calls are once again emerging for such a mission, whose cost is estimated at $5 to $10 billion – two to four times the cost of Curiosity.

There is little chane of such a megamission being approved in the current economic environment. That may be just as well. From a space policy viewpoint, the proposed sample-return mission offers a poor return on investment.

The proposed mission would return about one pound of Martian surface material to Earth – a meager bonanza considering the cost.

For that same $5-10 billion, we could send a human expedition to Mars. To get the cost down to that level, it would have to be a one-way mission. Burt Rutan and others have advocated such missions in the past. NASA does not discuss such unconventional concepts publicly, but sources close to the astronaut office tell us there is a great deal of private interest.

The tradeoff, in this case, seems to clearly favor the human expedition. Instead of ounces of Martian rocks in Earthbound laboratories, geologists would have the opportunity to study tons of Martian rocks in situ, while simultaneously establishing a new colony for humanity on another world. All it requires is courage and vision. There’s scant sign of such qualities among the invertebrate political classes of Washington DC, but the real America outside the Beltway hasn’t lost the pioneer spirit. Elon Musk may attempt such a mission sooner than anyone expects. The question is whether NASA can realign itself to assume a supporting role or lapse into irrelevance.

Written by Astro1 on August 19th, 2012 , Space Exploration (General), Space Policy and Management, Space Settlement

New Prediction Technique May Give Advanced Warning of Solar Flares

Researchers at Purdue University have discovered a possible method of predicting solar flares more than a day before they occur.

The prediction method works by measuring differences in gamma-radiation levels from the decay of radioactive materials. Scientists have long believed the rate of decay to be constant, but that view has been challenged by recent findings. A new hypothesis holds that radioactive decay rates are influenced by solar activity, possibly due to variations in solar neutrinos. The solar influence varies with seasonal changes in the Earth’s distance from the sun and is also affected by solar flares.

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Written by Astro1 on August 15th, 2012 , Innovation, Space Medicine and Safety

Nuclear Energy, the Moon, and the Universe

Dennis Wingo has posted an excellent article on nuclear power systems for lunar development.

One problem he fails to address is political opposition to launching nuclear materials into space. Public protests and legal challenges have been a headache for NASA programs like Cassini in the past. They could be a showstopper for commercial ventures in the future. The radioisotope thermoelectric generators, or RTGs, used by Cassini carry a small amount of nuclear fuel compared to the reactors which would be required to power a lunar base. So, it should be expected that environmentalist opposition to launching nuclear reactors would be even stronger.

Yet, that political problem could also represent an opportunity for lunar development.

Nuclear power will be important for lunar bases, which need to operate throughout the two-week lunar night when solar power is not available, but it’s even more important for deep-space missions to the outer solar system. Human missions to Mars are feasible with chemical rockets, but just barely. If humans are to venture beyond Mars, nuclear rockets will be essential.

Launching the large reactors for nuclear thermal rockets (like the NASA concept shown here) will always be a political problem, as long as the reactors contain nuclear fuel. An obvious solution is to launch the reactors without reactor fuel onboard. The engines could then be fueled on orbit with nuclear material from extraterrestrial sources.

The logical source for that nuclear material is the Moon. The presence of uranium on the Moon was detected by the Japanese Kaguya space probe in 2009. Based on our discussions with engineers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, mining uranium on the Moon is an interesting possibility.

If uranium mining on the Moon turns out to be feasible, it could be very important to lunar development. More important, perhaps, than platinum-group metals, which have received far more attention. Platinum-group metals are generally discussed in the context of terrestrial applications, such as fuel cells for electric cars. Although promising, the use of lunar materials for terrestrial applications faces serious challenges and competition from terrestrial sources and substitute materials. Mining uranium for use in space (or on the lunar surface) does not face the same stiff competition, especially if political factors make it impossible to launch nuclear materials from the surface of the Earth.

A more speculative use for lunar uranium might be fueling large nuclear reactors in Earth orbit that beam power back to Earth by microwave or laser beam. Orbiting power plants, while perhaps not cost-competitive with ground-based power, might become necessary if environmental opposition continues to block construction of new nuclear plants on Earth while global-warming concerns limit the use of fossil fuels.

More data on lunar uranium deposits is certainly warranted and should be a priority for future reconnaissance missions.

Water ice will likely be the first mineral to be economically extracted from the Moon (if current estimates of its availability are verified by future missions), but uranium might turn out to be more important in the long term. At some point, lunar ice deposits will start to diminish, and with a growing lunar population, it will no longer make economic sense to export water – a development anticipated by Robert Heinlein in his classic novel The Moon is a Harsh Mistress – but uranium deposits might last a lot longer. The Moon could serve as the nuclear fuel depot that provides the key to the solar system.

Written by Astro1 on August 15th, 2012 , Innovation, Space Exploration (General)

Curious Statistics

The team that built NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity are being hailed as geniuses, because the landing worked.

If the landing hadn’t worked, they would be treated like dogs.

Both are unfair. The judgment is based on a single data point.

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Written by Astro1 on August 8th, 2012 , Space Exploration (General)

The Price of Curiosity

Curiosity, it is said, kills cats.

NASA’s new Mars Science Laboratory may be the size of a small car and equipped with a laser, but we doubt it will harm any felines.

Curiosity‘s $2.5-billion price tag has done significant damage to NASA’s Mars science budget, however, and may well doom any further Mars rovers for the foreseeable future.

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Written by Astro1 on August 7th, 2012 , Space Exploration (General)

Roving Disney World

After 1000 days on Mars, the Spirit rover has covered an area smaller than Disney World, according to Brent Garry, a research scientist at the Planetary Science Institute, as reported in Air and Space magazine.

The rover’s total trek covers the distance from the park’s main entrance to Space Mountain – which most Disney visitors manage before noon.

This comparison should be brought up whenever the unmanned space mafia starts to opine on the supposed greater efficiency robots. Garry does not mention that obvious conclusion, which is perhaps too politically incorrect for the polite circles in which planetary scientists move.

We don’t have any research grants, so we can afford to speak heresy. In the long run, we believe, human exploration will win out. That’s because the debate is generally framed in the wrong terms. It’s not really man versus machine — no one has seriously proposed sending an explorer in his skivvies. It’s man working together with machines — the best of both worlds — that will win out.

Written by Astro1 on July 26th, 2012 , Space Exploration (General)

The Great Debate

Dennis Wingo has published an interesting, thoughtful, and well-written piece on lunar economic development. Unfortunately, it’s marred by a false premise.

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Written by Astro1 on July 25th, 2012 , Space Exploration (General)

Citizen Astronaut Training

Astronaut training requires a diverse range of training techniques – classroom work, simulation, and practical exercises.

Flight simulation allows an astronaut candidate to previsualize an entire mission. With motion-based simulators, he can even experience some of the movement. Thanks to Moore’s Law, flight simulators are becoming better and cheaper all the time.

Simulators have certain limitations, however, which will never be overcome by advances in technology. A crew member in a simulator, however sophisticated, knows he is in a simulator. Simulation cannot reproduce the human factors – the excitement, stress, and risk – of actual spaceflight.

The United States Rocket Academy uses aircraft to reproduce some of those factors which are absent in the simulator. This video shows a typical training flight using aerobatic airplanes, with citizen-astronaut candidates Maureen Adams and Lt. Col. Steve Heck (USAF-ret.).

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBlvjFm9VLs&w=700]

Written by Astro1 on June 30th, 2012 , Citizens in Space, Space Medicine and Safety

A Penny for Your Thoughts

Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist who has become one of the best informal educators in the nation – possibly the best, when it comes to space science.

That expertise does not necessarily carry over into other fields, such as politics, however. Dr. Tyson’s call for doubling the size of NASA’s budget to 1% of Federal spending, which inspired a public petition, was naive at best.

Making “percent of Federal spending” a figure of merit for any agency, including NASA, is a flawed idea. Space programs should be funded (or not funded) on their own merits, on the basis of an entitlement.

No other Federal program is funded on a “percentage” basis. To ask that NASA be funded on such a basis suggests that its budget level cannot be supported on its merits, which is a dangerous thing for NASA’s supporters to suggest. It would be even more dangerous if the idea of percentage entitlements caught on. There are probably 200 special-interest groups that would suggest their program should have 1% of the Federal budget, most of them with far more political clout than NASA. There’s no way NASA would come out on top.

That would be true even if times were good economically, but times are not good. To suggest doubling the size of NASA’s budget in today’s economic climate suggests that Dr. Tyson is out of touch politically.

It wouldn’t be the first time he has appeared out of touch. In 2004, Dr. Tyson was one of the members of the Aldridge Commission on space policy, which declared that human spaceflight would “remain the providence [sic] of government” – in a report issued shortly after SpaceShip One became the first private craft to be piloted into space.

In fairness, Dr. Tyson may not have fully read the entire report and realized what he was signing. Others apparently did not. Dr. Paul Spudis, a lunar scientist and another member of the Commission, has defended that statement, saying it only applied to human spaceflight beyond Earth orbit. The text of the written document does not support that claim, however.

A more fundamental question might be why astrophysicists and planetary scientists are asked to decide policy on human spaceflight. This seems to come from the popular misconception that spacecraft are developed by “rocket scientists.” But, of course, spacecraft are not developed by scientists. They are developed by engineers. We don’t expect geologists to design trucks or be experts on trucking policy. We don’t expect oceanographers to know how to design ships or run a shipping line. And we don’t ask meteorologists to design a jet fighter or run the Air Force. Why, then, do we expect astronomers and planetary scientists to be experts on what sort of human spaceflight capabilities the United States should develop?

Written by Astro1 on June 29th, 2012 , Space Exploration (General)

The Value of Innovation

The Apple iPhone, which was launched five years ago, has generated $150 billion in total revenue for Apple, according to a report by Strategiv Analytics as reported by Appleinsider.com.

That figure may not surprise you. By now, most people are used to hearing superlatives about Apple’s iPhone business.

The success of the iPhone has been so spectacular that most people forget that it was not always assured. In fact, many business analysts did not believe Apple could succeed in the smartphone market. Microsoft President Steve Balmer famously declared, on stage at a public conference, that it was “impossible for Apple to get any significant market share.”

People were especially skeptical about the iPhone’s radical touchscreen design. Touchscreens existed long before the iPhone, but they simply didn’t work very well. The iPhone completely redefined what a smartphone could do, and what users expected from a smartphone.

That’s innovation, as practiced in Silicon Valley. Then we have human spaceflight, where innovation is almost a dirty word.

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Written by Astro1 on June 28th, 2012 , Innovation, Space Exploration (General)

On Chinese “Firsts”

China has once again amazed the world. It appears the world is easily amazed.

First, there was the exaggerated praise heaped on China for successfully docking with a space station (duplicating a feat the United States and Soviet Union accomplished decades ago).

Now, China has astounded journalists with a record-breaking submersible dive to the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

Except, the dive didn’t break any records. The reported depth (7,015 meters) is only about two-thirds of the depth James Cameron reached in his self-funded dive a few weeks ago (which is the greatest depth any human being can reach). It’s also two-thirds of the depth which Jacques Picard and US Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh reached in 1960. Apparently, the Chinese weren’t diving the deepest part of the trench.

Still, the fact that the populous largest nation almost managed to equal a feat accomplished by a private citizen is considered a sign of “global leadership.” (Does that make James Cameron a global leader?)

This lack of perspective is embarrassing. If this continues, we may find ourselves about how China has made history by landing on the Moon – about a decade or so after US commercial space companies and 60 years after Apollo.

Written by Astro1 on June 26th, 2012 , Space Exploration (General)

Historic replicas: aircraft and spacecraft

The Messerschmitt 262 Replica Project has created five close copies of the world’s first jet fighter. We lost track of the project a few years ago. It appears to have turned out well. The Collings Foundation has acquired one of the replicas, which it’s showing at air shows, and you’ll be able to buy flight time from the Foundation in the near future.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SBAhNb1Y4w&w=700]

We had the opportunity to sit in the (amazingly cramped) cockpit of the Me-262 replica a few years ago, followed by a private demonstration. It is an amazing aircraft.

Back around the turn of the 21st Century, XCOR Aerospace played with the idea of building a replica of the rocket-power Me-163. A German foundation did build an unpowered glider version, though.

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Written by Astro1 on June 19th, 2012 , Space Exploration (General)

Cray Computers and Space Exploration

A homebrew computer hacker named Chris Fenton has built a working 1/10-scale Cray-1A computer replica which is binary-compatible and cycle-accurate to the original.

The project was hard because Chris not only wanted the replica to perform like the original, he wanted it to look like the original. He was also working on a budget and didn’t have many thousands of dollars to throw around. If you just want to run Cray code, there’s a DOS-based Cray emulator you can download.

The irony here is that the Cray was once promoted as “the machine that will change the world” while microcomputers like the Altair 8800 and Apple I were dismissed as toys. Yet, it was the microcomputer that changed the world, and now, the Cray computer has been (quite literally!) reduced to a toy.

Today, the “experts” in Congress tell was that the Space Launch System is the rocket that will save space exploration; suborbital rockets like SpaceShip Two, Lynx, and XAero are toys.

Those who fail to learn the lessons of history can still run for Congress.

Written by Astro1 on June 17th, 2012 , Electronics, Innovation, Space Exploration (General)

X-37 and Tiangong

By coincidence, the US Air Force X-37B orbital test vehicle has returned to Earth on the same day China launched the first crew to its Tiangong-1 space station.

Expect the news media to make much of both events.

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Written by Astro1 on June 16th, 2012 , Space Exploration (General)

Defining exploration

One of the primary goals of Citizens in Space is to promote citizen space exploration. Therefore, it seems appropriate for us to define what we mean by space exploration.

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Written by Astro1 on June 15th, 2012 , Space Exploration (General)

Buddy ops for deep-space missions

Wired has an article on an Apollo lunar orbit rescue concept from 1965.

The idea was to have a specially outfitted Apollo Command Service Module, with a single pilot, standing by on the launch pad. If something went wrong with the ship in lunar orbit, the rescue ship would be launched.

The problem with the concept is obvious. The crew in lunar orbit would likely run out of oxygen before the rescue ship arrived. Because of that limitation, as well as the cost, the rescue project was never pursued. Apollo was left with no rescue capability in lunar orbit.

The Orion “Apollo on Steroids” architecture, pursued during the George W. Bush Administration, had the same safety vulnerabilities as Apollo, plus one additional failure mode. Instead of leaving a command module pilot in lunar orbit, the Orion architecture proposed to have all the astronauts descend to the surface, leaving the command module on autopilot for several weeks. At the end of their lunar stay, the astronauts would return to the Orion command service module and ask the computer to “open the pod bay doors,” as Arthur C. Clarke famously put it.

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Written by Astro1 on June 13th, 2012 , Innovation, Space Exploration (General), Space Medicine and Safety

A vehicle or an industry?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIUL_qUJUOo&w=700]

Charles Lindbergh was one of the great heroes of American aviation. His flight captured the public imagination and added momentum to the nascent movement for long-distance air travel.

The specific technology Lindbergh used for his flight – a high-wing single-engine monoplane with a huge fuel tank – had little direct effect on aviation, however. It was the development of reliable multiengine transport planes like the Douglas DC-3 that opened up the trans-Atlantic airways to passenger travel.

The United States government played a role in the development of commercial aviation that was as important as Lindbergh’s – not by developing airplanes or operating airlines, but by creating incentives such as the Kelly Air Mail Act and establishing the National Advisory Council on Aviation to do basic aeronautical research. So, while Lindbergh’s airplane was a single-purpose point design with little effect on future aircraft designs, that didn’t really matter. Government policies ensured that were hundreds of other entrepreneurs developing airplanes for a wide variety of purposes.

This division of labor between government and private enterprise, which worked so well in the development of American aviation, was abandoned at the beginning of the Space Age. In its place came a new model, advocated by rocket pioneers like Dr. Wernher von Braun and adopted by Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, in which NASA abandoned the supporting role of its predecessor agency and assumed the role of the new Lindbergh.

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Written by Astro1 on June 11th, 2012 , Space Exploration (General)

“The most capable US launch vehicle”

This drawing, which appeared last year in a NASA presentation on the Congressionally mandated Space Launch System, says it all.

The Space Launch System is obviously far more capable than any other launch vehicle because it’s larger, right?

We can imagine a similar drawing produced by the US Army Air Forces during World War II:

The DC-3 (known in military circles as the C-47 Skytrain) was a tiny airplane by modern standards, smaller than many of today’s commuter jets. At the start of World War II, it was already considered too small and outdated by the military brass. Hence, the need for an aircraft like the Hughes H-4 Hercules.

Yet, it was the C-47, not the Hercules, that did the heavy lifting all throughout the war, and General Dwight Eisenhower named the C-47 as one of the four machines that won the war in Europe.

C-47s carried VIPs and paratroopers, spare parts, ammunition, and construction equipment. They carried pierced steel plate for their own runways. They carried horses and cattle, generators and gasoline. They carried complete fighter planes with the wings removed for transport. With the aid of the C-47, the United States built a string of air bases stretching all the way across the Pacific.

The Hughes H-4 Hercules, better known as the Spruce Goose, never even made it into the air by the end of the war. So, which was the more capable aircraft?

Of course, the difference between the XCOR Lynx and Masten XA 1.0 (on the far left side of the drawing) and the Space Launch System (on the right side) is more than size alone.

The Lynx and Masten XA 1.0 aren’t even orbital vehicles. The difference in performance between a suborbital vehicle and an orbital system is enormous, like the difference between an Apple II and a Cray supercomputer. We can imagine that drawing, too. And yet, it was the Apple II and its successors that ultimately proved to be the more capable computers. Mainframe supercomputers had an enormous head start but microcomputers ultimately won because of the power of exponential growth, which favors technologies that have short development cycles and can evolve faster.

We recently visited the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California and saw a Cray 1 computer on display. It’s an impressive machine. It’s iconic appearance looks high tech even today, and it’s almost as powerful as the iPhone we used to take its picture.

That’s evolution in action. The suborbital vehicles of today are the space-transportation equivalent of the Apple II, laughably underpowered compared to giant mainframes like NASA’s Space Launch System, but they will drive down cost and open up space in ways we can barely imagine today.

Yes, we’ve said this before, and yes, we’re starting to sound like a broken record, but we will keep on saying it, because some things need to be said again and again, with fierce conviction.

Written by Astro1 on June 6th, 2012 , Commercial Space (General), Space Exploration (General)

Orbital assembly and capability-building

It’s often said that NASA needs to develop a superheavy lift rocket, such as the Congressionally-mandated Space Launch System, to avoid orbital assembly costs.

An unspoken (and unproven) assumption is that orbital assembly costs will exceed the development costs of a new rocket.

Assuming that assumption is actually true, there’s another question that planners should ask themselves: “Do we believe it will never be necessary to do orbital assembly, of anything?”

If the answer is “No, we will need to do orbital assembly someday,” then the amount of money we spend on orbital assembly now should properly be considered a research-and-development expense, which is helping to build capabilities for future missions.

If the answer is “We will never need to do orbital assembly,” well, that’s pretty depressing, because it implies we will never have anything in space larger than what we can launch on a single vehicle. In other words, a dead-end space program. Does anyone really want to go that route?

But wait a minute, you might ask, didn’t we already learn how to do orbital assembly with the International Space Station? Well, yes, we learned how to do orbital assembly, but we certainly didn’t learn how to do orbital assembly well (cheaply and efficiently).

The question then becomes, is it reasonable to spend money now developing capabilities for future missions that haven’t been approved yet? To do “undirected technology development,” as former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin once put it? That’s a reasonable question. Some would argue that advanced technology development is what NASA’s all about, but others would disagree. On the other hand, “undirected technology development” is pretty much what NASA’s doing with the Space Launch System, which has no defined missions at the moment. The difference is that the capabilities we develop by learning to do cheap, efficient orbital assembly will be useful forever, while a superheavy lift rocket will only be useful until the payloads outgrow the rocket (as they inevitably will).

Written by Astro1 on May 24th, 2012 , Space Exploration (General)

SpaceX, Military Space Plane, and the Yellow Peril

There is considerable concern in the halls of Congress about the Chinese space program. Many legislators, such as Rep. Frank Wolfe (R-VA) fear that China may be catching up and about to surpass the United States.

The reasons for that concern (which verges on panic in some quarters) are a bit beyond our ken. The Chinese space program is just now approaching (at a rather slow rate) milestones the US and Soviet Union achieved more than 30 years ago. Its Shenzhou capsule is not an original development but based on imported Soyuz technology. It is, more over, a program with no useful military applications. Using Shenzhou, China might be abel to build a small space station or possibly even pull off a Moon landing, at very great expense, but those are things the United States did long ago.

From a national-security viewpoint, China’s other space program should be of greater concern. The Shelong, or Divine Dragon, spaceplane project was leaked to the press in 2007. Very little is known about the project, apart from one photograph that shows a test article (possibly subscale) being carried beneath the fuselage of a Chinese bomber.

It’s possible Divine Dragon might be nothing more than an experimental test vehicle, like the USAF X-37. It’s also possible that Divine Dragon might be much more.

During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union had military manned space programs that ran in parallel with the civilian programs. The primary focus of the US program was the X-20 DynaSoar. The Soviet equivalent was the MiG-105 Spiral, whose aerodynamic configuration inspired NASA’s HL-20 and Sierra Nevada’s Dreamchaser. The MiG-105 example is especially relevant.

One of the most important missions envisioned for the MiG-105 was anti-surface warfare. For that mission, MiG-105 spaceplanes would operate in hunter/killer pairs. One spaceplane would travel slightly ahead of the other, in the same orbit, using a powerful radar to locate US carriers. The hunter would transmit the targeting information to the second spaceplane, which would then kill the target with a large missile.

Had the MiG-105 been fully developed and successfully deployed, it would have changed the balance of power at sea. The global strike capability provided by such a spaceplane would make aircraft carriers obsolete, just as carriers made battleships obsolete in the 1930’s. Fortunately of the US, the Soviet design relied on a first-stage concept with a very advanced high-speed air-breathing engine. Such an engine was science fiction at the time and would be extremely challenging even today. Nor was it necessary – a more conventional rocket-powered first stage could have been chosen, and the MiG-105 spaceplane itself was a very sound concept even if its booster was overly ambitious. The United States dodged a bullet because the Soviet Union made a poor design choice.

The United States cannot count on dodging every bullet, however. It is quite possible that China has something similar to MiG-105 in mind – having the capability to sink US carriers, at will, anywhere in the world would be of obvious interest to the Chinese military – and we can’t necessarily count on China making the same bad design choices as the Soviet Union.

We find it puzzling that China hawks like Rep. Wolfe are making such a big deal about Shenzhou while ignoring Divine Dragon. Of course, they have access to classified intelligence which we do not. Perhaps the CIA is telling them that Divine Dragon is not a threat or has been discontinued. Given the number of CIA intelligence failures in the past, however, that is not something we would want to bet the nation’s future on. Prudence would seem to call for a stronger response, including revitalizing the US Military Space Plane project, which has been moribund for years due to lack of funding. (Note: we are talking about the operational Military Space Plane, not the experimental X-37.)

We’re also puzzled why Rep. Wolfe has used Shenzhou as a justification for taking money away from NASA’s commercial space development programs and giving it to Orion and the proposed Space Launch System. If Shenzhou is a threat to US interests and security, as Wolfe believes, companies like SpaceX would seem to be the best hope for countering it. Chinese space leaders have expressed open concern about SpaceX’s launch prices, which they do not believe they can meet. They are not alone. Executives of the European launch Arianespace has expressed similar concerns privately. Some believe that Arianespace could be out of business within four years.

Military leaders know that the best strategy is not to throw strength against strength, but strength against weakness. The commercial private sector is a strength America has which Communist China cannot match. It would be a puzzling choice if Congressional leaders like Rep. Wolfe chose to ignore that asymmetrical advantage.

Written by Astro1 on May 16th, 2012 , Space Exploration (General), SpaceX

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