In Defence of the Presidents Space Plan

Rand Simberg, space blogger extrordanaire, has a post today where he seems to be critical of the expendable Apollo-type archetecture being developed for NASAs Constellation Project. To avoid registration look here where the wise and most egalitarian Kommisar makes rocket pictures availible even to us prolitarians.

Dr. Simbergs arguments seems to be that going the way of Apollo is not the way to get a working space transportation system working as the expendable portions make spacetravel fail the cost benefit analysis. This is true as far as it goes, but the last attempt by the Govt. to get a working reuseable vehicle left us with 2 wrecked ships and 2 dead crews.....and a system that allegedly costs a comperable ammount to go into LEO than the totally expendable Saturn 5 took to go to the moon.

Lets do the math for a moment.....Again we jump over to Kommisar in full, glorious, political officer mode. To PURCHASE a Space shuttle cost as much as 50 Soyuz model bic disposable space capsuels AND 50 Progress ferry flights. That is, in place of the 5 shuttles, 250 manned space missions could have been launched and 250 other launches could have sent probes, space telescopes, supply missions lunar insertion stages. This doesn't even deal with the fact there have been 114 shuttle missions which depending on how you do the accounting cost 1-1/3 as much to launch as the disposable Saturn 5s. (This doesn't take into account the amoritizing effect a continuous Saturn5 production line would have likely had, (but in fairness govt cost estimates are vaporware in a lot of ways) we'll say 30-50 BIG missions (Skylabs, Mars Directs ect.) Of course Apollo was more expensive than Soyuz, but plans were drawn up to take even Gemini to the moon so these cost estimates may be less far off than thay seem.

Of course this is still not the sort of space program that Dr. Simberg (or I )want. We want space to be opened up to tourists, miners & settlers, after all a frontier is not some place scientists go to look it's where people go to LIVE.

None of these NASA launchers is conducive to someone setting up a launch business, as you have to buy a new rocket each time.

This should not disuade us from exploration as NASA and govt. in general are likely institutionally incapable of producing the sort of craft that are needed.

THE GOVERNMENT DID NOT DEVELOP AND INVENT THE CAR. THEY BUILT THE HIGHWAYS.

Infrastructure, be it a refueling post at L1, a Moon, Cruithne or Mars base or O2 cracking stations on the moon or asteroids are things that this sort of program could do. As for the ships of the future, we've had them on the drawing boards for decades......Look here at what NASA turned down for the Shuttle.....time and time again.

Budget cuts, a need to do everything, pork, and a need to employ unfireable unionised government employees. (UUGEs that is "Oogies") make the development of reuseable launch vehicles less a government job and more the purview of people like Burt Rutan whoes Spaceship One will sit next to the Spirit of St Louis. This is fitting, as neither were government programs.

Let the dynamic entrepenuers and visionaries design the DC3s of tomorrow, let them build their spaceplanes or VTOVL rockets for the govt later but let THEM do it.

An additional reason for the aggressive quick and dirty approach is the specter of those who would spend the money on vote getting programs and let NASA rot. This hangs over our future in space like a sword of Damocles now. It has happened before.We HAD space! We were on the moon! Clarkes 2001 was to be our past of 4 years ago! We could be vacationing at 6 Flags On the Moon!
Instead we have 6 flags...on the moon.

Visionless twits stole our birthright for their vote buying.

Additionally NASA has stymied numerous attempts to start a comercial launch service, and now the same people who are taking the quick and dirty approach to space are getting out of the way of private industry! Indeed they are encouraging them with prizes!

It is easy to imagine the next generation of govt. spacecraft after the Constellation disposables being bought off the shelf from THE SPACESHIP COMPANY or some other private outfit.

In the meantime, use the quickly fielded cheaply developed launchers to put infrastructure in space send people to actual places like the Moons, Mars, NEOs and fan the flames of the space tourist industry. Build a moonbase of discarded tanks and lease it to lunar mining outfits who come in their craft later, have fuel station or moon infrastructure sit as a seed of a space city the way our forts often did in the old west or the Romans encampments before that.

There is one final (albiet tragically unlikely) reason for the heavy lift capability in particular.......Get THIS above the atmosphere. More of my uninformed blather on THAT here :)