Lunar Supremacy and Lunacy

"The manned moon shot, like the war on terror, is an example of the inferiority of the political allocation of resources. In their choices of projects, political leaders do not seem to display a high degree of rationality, or at least their rationality seems distinctly below what common sense or even a small amount of thought might produce. The reason for this is that they have power to implement what they think is right or want without having personally to face the full measure of the consequences. They do not directly face the market test, which is this: Will consumers fork over their hard-earned money for the product? Politicians have a higher chance of implementing hare-brained schemes based on false theories. And if they can con the public, the degree of rationality falls even more steeply."

The entire essay is worth reading.

Those who have been following the discussion here re: state investments in spaceports - that last bit should be particularly of reference.

This Space Project Wants Your Feedback

Readers:

I have been contacted by the group at the website, www.tasha9503.com. Check it out. Here are 17 questions/feedback that they have wanted information on. I think its best left to readers of the blog to respond to this group re their plan to launch an 80 unit condo project throughout the galaxy. Here are the comments/questions I just received that you might want to opine on for the project creators. Keep in mind, the 17 questions/comments were in response to my comments.

1) I found your site in a google search engine "Space" (this refers to how they found Professor L).
2) Yes we are for real.
3) Why did you send me an http:// to a assurance company (no idea what this is, probably an electronic glitch).
4) The technical drawings were produced with the AutoCAD 2002 and 2004 program in .dwg.
and yes we are serious
5) financing
6) We would like to be open for rental in 2015, but that will take six successful launches.
7) Every negative comment received so far has given us all challenges to salve and so helped us design a condo that can and will work (disregarding the plasma core) telling us why we can't makes us prove we can.
8) Every physics and engineering problem has been solved by other before us and we just collected there answers.
9) Business and financial questions will be the slowing movement we must push against.
10) Have you a problem with living inside an 80m x 20m hollow cylindrical magnet?
11) Do you foresee problems with the operations of computers inside an 80m x 20m hollow cylindrical spinning magnet?
12) Do you have information regarding the size and strength a magnet must be to deflect and collect the magnetically charged plasma that we must deal with when we move beyond the Earths Magnetosphere?
13) Is there a an engineering situation you feel we have over looked or not addressed @ tasha9503?
14) Is there a physics question you feel we have over looked or not addressed @ tasha9503
15) You profusely apologize for sounding negative but have not yet pointed to any reason we can not build the initial condo to be used as a hotel resort.
16) You have not yet requested any information, that might alleviate the fears you found out side the box.
17) The site shows our immediate plans and our long term goals, but it has not gone into the details of how we plan to salve the problems other were stopped at. you have not even pointed out a spot where people stopped.

Space Cynic readers, check out their website and post your feedback and comments.

Final Thoughts on SmallSat 2006

The 20th annual SmallSat meeting in Logan, Utah was attended by roughly 800 people representing industry (from Boeing on down), academia (both faculty and students), US government (USAF, USN, DOD, and NASA) and a number of foreign interests. The 3-1/2 days of talks included presentations by the NASA Administrator, the recently retired commanding general of USAF Space Command, and the head of ESA. There were more than 60 commercial exhibitors and 15 university/student exhibits.

My various random conclusions and reinforced biases from the meeting are:

(1) The military is the elephant in the room and is heavily represented at SmallSat.
(2) Both DOD and NASA are sincerely interested in seeing launch costs go down with frequent launch availability.
(3) Some creative people in the government are seeding various projects to encourage #2 within their operating constraints.
(4) There is a current surplus of launch capability: If launch costs were to be cut in half today, launch demand would change very little if at all.
(5) Current trends in technology favor smaller, special purpose satellites which drive down willingness to pay high launch costs. Who wants to pay $1 million to launch a $50 thousand satellite? That encourages waiting for a free ride on a multisatellite launch for many missions.
(6) The very smallest (picosat) payloads are primarily academic with the mix of military and commercial increasing as payload size increases. Academic payloads are less time sensitive in some regards, but academic careers can be deeply affected by prolonged launch delays.
(7) Several papers suggest there is a market for launchers of 1-10 Kg satellites with launch costs of perhaps $40K/Kg by trading time for cost notwithstanding #6.
(8) Cost per unit mass is an appropriate metric for multisatellite launchers, but cost per launch is a better metric for the smallest end of the mass spectrum.
(9) There is an alt.space industry. It attends SmallSat. This alt.space industry and its members work the system. The various space advocacy groups tend to whine about that which they don't have rather than go out and get it. They are nevertheless worth inclusion because they occasionally create some interesting ideas and are seen as the go-to guys by the media even though BS filtering is inadequate.
(10) I would pay dearly for a system in my car that would switch my cell phone into a satellite link if the phone couldn't locate usable cell towers. Cell coverage in the boondocks is spotty, and there are boondocks between Logan, Utah and the rest of civilization.

Administrator Griffin at Small Sat Speaks on COTS:

I am at the Small Sat Conference in Logan, Utah and heard the Griffin speech on Monday. I was with Leonard David who also heard the speech and then wrote the article that has been selectively quoted widely on the net and in discussion groups. The link to the space.com story is at the bottom of this post. Evidently there is resentment that he referred to many entrepreneurial businesses as having their existence based solely on viewgraphs. Let me tell the rest of the story right here.

Griffin repeated many times that he believed in the private sector to be successful and he repeated over and over again that he was gambling a half of billion tax payer dollars on COTS. He was very hopeful that the companies would be successful and that this seed investment would indeed payoff. Again, in response to a question form the audience, he repeated this many times. Leonard reported this accurately it in his article. Note the following which is the entire piece Leonard wrote on this subject:

"COTS: gambling NASA’s money
Griffin said he considered himself as "one of the change agents" in turning to the talents of entrepreneurial space firms. This Friday, NASA will unveil its strategy with private space companies to provide commercial orbital transportation services, better known as COTS. A half billion dollars over the next four years is being applied by NASA as seed money to prime the pump for COTS.

"I have a lot of hope if we can get an existence proof in place of cheaper space transportation at any level," Griffin said, that it will then serve as a driver on market prices to get the cost of access to space down.

"I’m using the first market that NASA has ever had as the anchor market and that market is space station resupply," Griffin explained. "I’m very much hoping that the entrepreneurial space firms, some of them at any rate, can step up to the challenge."

But the NASA administrator also said that situation is not a given.

"There have been some entrepreneurial space successes, but by and large I think it’s only fair to point out that most of space entrepreneurship exists on viewgraphs," Griffin said.

"The time is right that if there is some NASA money on the table … some of these entrepreneurs can step up," Griffin concluded.

End

Now, maybe Griffin's choice re the comment on viewgraphs was inappropriate, I am not writing this note to defend Griffin or what he said. However, if we can all step outside the particular agenda we care about and share and see us as the steward of public money being held accountable for how we spend it, with Congress ready to pounce on us for the slightest misdeed, what do you do? Invest wisely or throw money at companies that have yet to build anything, have marginal or poor business plans and maybe management, have never bent metal, etc. Being a steward of public money, if the position is taken seriously, implies a pretty high standard of stewardship, like a trust fiduciary. That is why banks with trust departments are normally quite conservative with how a user might want to use the money in a trust they manage.

Here at Small Sat, there are lots of new space companies bending metal, working solid business plans, going after a defined market with a customer, even if it’s the Air Force, DARPA, the feds, etc. Of course not all here are like that but a good many are. They have financing, they have sales and a positive cash flow, a market and clearly are and will continue manufacturing product and bending metal. They have seasoned management, they know business, markets, finance, etc. They have business plans that are not vaporware. They do not live by Power Points alone. In fact, when they show a Power Point in their booth, etc, its to support their actual business which is underway. Its not rhetoric or PR without substance. This is a very different group of businesses from what we may normally think of when talking about or considering alt.space or new space. In fact, I am not sure that these companies would consider themselves being new space or alt.space. I don't know, I've not asked many of them that question but those I have asked do seem to classify themselves as alt.space businesses.

Having heard Griffin's remarks in person, I am convinced he sincerely wants COTS to be successfully and hopes that the companies getting the money evolve into serious private sector space companies. That is why his priming the pump with a half billion of seed capital. In fact, he mentioned he hoped private companies even those other than the COTS winners become successful.

The rest of his speech dealt with small sats given this is the conference at which he was speaking but it was through the Q&A where the good information was revealed. He is clearly pressured by Congress and the Administration to see the VSE through to completion. He claims he makes hard choices on how to use limited funds and lots of needs for these funds so he does take from here and there to fund the priorities he was hired to complete: The JWST and the VSE. Thus, programs suffer, including education. In fact it was the area of education that was most controversial here at Small Sat given his very plain language that NASA has no funds and will not support educational programs, and its not NASA's job to do that.

This brings to mind the recent developments with the State of New Mexico and the report it received from its financial advisors re their spaceport plans. According to the news in the main Albuquerque newspaper, the spaceport plan is not an investment but a project and business development program for the two companies involved, T/Space and Virgin. So what did New Mexico do? They fired the investment firm. Shoot the messenger, don't address the problem. Well, like Griffin, New Mexico administration is the steward of their public money. How do they best server their tax payers and meet the standards of a fiduciary responsibility? Is it by shooting the messenger or dealing with the problem to come up with workable solutions to produce a different and credible outcome? I don't have sufficient information on this subject to render a real opinion and I don't rely on newspaper articles but like Griffin, the Governor and the New Mexico legislature is responsible for the proper use of New Mexico public money. I think it will be interesting to see how the New Mexico situation develops.

I know the Griffin comments will be controversial. They certainly were at Small Sat. Those supporting education were totally pissed. Those wanting more science missions were totally pissed and frustrated. Everyone seemed to think Griffin could do more than what he said he was able to do regarding spreading the money around. But the bottom line is this is how Griffin sees his position and role at NASA so this is the reality he is going to deal with and we are going to have live with while he is administrator.

I was ready to ask a question about his seeing the Space Frontier Foundation White Paper and his thoughts on it and its impact on him and NASA Administration. They cut the questions off without calling on several of us and he was whisked out due to a demanding schedule. There was no mingling with him or following him to ask him the question in private so to speak. In contrast, the Director General of ESA spoke this morning, has been here at the conference most of the week and is widely available to mingle and talk with us. General (ret) Lord of Space Command was the key note on Tuesday and was widely available to mingle with us all, having lunch with us, etc. In fact, I believe Gen. Lord will soon be a guest on The Space Show as it is now being structured. Watch Space Show newsletters for information on this as General Lord has much to say that will interest us all.

I believe this is a fair report on the Griffin speech at Small Sat and the reaction to it. Leonard David did a good job of reporting. I hope you all read his article which is linked at the bottom of this email. Check it out at:
http://space.com/news/060815_griffin_smallsat.html

Shoot the Messenger

Well, for those who haven't been following along on the little debate on the merits (or lack thereof) of Government investment in spaceports, here's a little update on the happenings in New Mexico.

Apparently, not liking the advice given to them by their hired investment advisors (Fort Washington Investment Advisors), the State Investment Council of New Mexico chose to instead terminate their relationship citing a "divergence of interests".

In plainspeak, a divergence of interests appears to mean that they didn't like it when FWIA told them that the decision to put $20m into t/space (and their consideration of another $20m into Virgin Galactic) was not sound investment but rather an economic development program. For space boosters, this is a no go.

Off with their heads, so to speak.

Congratulations to STS-CXXI

Just a slightly belated congratulations to the crew of STS-CXXI, which boldly sailed to ISS on July IV, MMVI, with a crew of VII on a mission lasting XII days, XVIII hourss, XXXVII minutes, and LIV seconds.

Just another shining example of what western civilisation can do, and why we are ultimately superior to those "other" people who have adopted the concept of "0" and the arabic numbering system.

Because, after all, the aborigines couldn't go to the moon, and the Aztecs apparently never thought about going to space.

Or something like that.