Ken Murphy / 1:36 am February 7th, 2010

The space program announcement on Monday was, in my view, status quo shattering.

It engages a lot of risk, but if you look carefully at what it says (as opposed to what the mass media says it says), you will see that it unlocks an enormous realm of opportunity. In my view, the opportunity far outweighs the risks.

When NASA operates the only crewed vehicle to space, then NASA decides who gets to go. NASA’s choice is a select cadre of individuals, highly trained not only in the systems and environment of space, but also in how to keep it together when the crap hits the fan. Taking this training to the private sector will no doubt prove remunerative for many.

From a company perspective, not being able to send the employee you choose because NASA said no rather works against your business decisions. When a company can pay a launch provider to take their chosen employee to an orbital site to do whatever, then a barrier to entry has been removed, making it easier for a company to make the decision to send an employee to orbit to do research or production in space.

By choosing to end NASA’s monopoly on the provision of crewed transport to orbit, the President (via his advisors, Im sure) has made the decision to open space commerce to all of the American enterprise.

The challenge is the provision of transport to orbit. I’ve seen a lot of negative comments regarding whether U.S. industry can step up to the plate and deliver on their potential. Given that Boeing and Lockmart are the legacies of the companies that have built our spacecraft, it seems a bit unreasonable to say that they cannot provide a crewed vehicle for their existing launch vehicles. They may choose not to take that route, but I have a strong feeling that they can in fact do so.

There are folks who say that we shouldn’t rely on the private sector, yet that is what everyone does every day. As I look around my apartment I the only thing that I can think of that is actually government-provided is my clean water. Sure the government has touched pretty much everything in my apartment in some way, shape or form, but for my DVD player I rely on Dynex. For my laptop I use Fujitsu. The bowl with all my pens in it is from Clark of the Navajo. My desk was made by Leopold Co. of Burlington, Ohio. My ride to work is a Volkswagen.

Let’s talk about rides to work for a minute. The shuttle and Soyouz are, right now, the rides to work for those on orbit. The Soyouz has a long track record of getting its passengers home alive. Not spotless, but definitely solid. The Shuttle has had two major stand-downs in the last quarter century, for a hair’s breadth over 20% of that time. In essence, one year in five was non-performing. Imagine if your car could only get you to work four days out of the standard five day work week.

So when people say that only government can provide transportation to orbit, they’re saying that the U.S. is limited to the transportation that NASA provides, when NASA can provide it, and who they say can go. I don’t know about other folks, but I tend to chafe under that kind of diktat.

“Oh, but there’s no business up in space!” cry the nattering nabobs of negativity. As if they have any clue of what business is about. Their lack of imagination should not be my burden.

So what kinds of things are there to do on orbit? My first suggestion would be to scrounge up a copy of the book “Space Industrialization Opportunities“, edited by Jernigan & Pentecost, and then actually read through it. Sure it’s long at 61 pages, and there’re sections that can be skipped over, but reading through it is absolutely eye-opening as far as seeing what kind of research still awaits us.

So there are going to be two initial approaches - a continuation of the existing Mid-Deck Locker (MDL) model, and infrastructure pieces that allow for more crewed work, the orbital equivalent of the lab bench. It’s unknown (or at least, I don’t know) whether the Bigelow facilities will conform to the ISPR standard (which the MDLs fit in), but my guess is that would be the decision of the lessor or the lessee and the terms of the contract.

Microgravity science research is not a make-believe industry. People paid Richard Garriott to take their experiments to orbit. The former SpaceHab (now AstroTech) is doing breakthrough research on orbit. Before Challenger, NASA had a long list of private companies queueing up to send their payloads to orbit. After Challenger, and then catching up with the military payloads, and then the NASA science payloads, and then the runs to Mir, and the private companies could never get back on board. You can’t blame them, they don’t have the capital to keep people on payroll on standby waiting for NASA to take their payload up maybe at some point. Business can’t operate like that, but that is where we have been for the last couple of decades.

And who’s going to provide human crewed transport to orbit in competition with NASA and Energia? That made no business sense, but everyone talked as if that was the way it had to be.

Now we have a different path to not only the ISS, but additional (thank you Mr. Bigelow) destinations on orbit. And Man, in the generic species-wide sense, does not live on science alone. What other things could we be doing in enclosed microgravity environments? I imagine part of the reason that Mr. Cameron wrote such a glowing editorial in support of the changes proposed is that he has his eye on a large hollow three-dimensional space with cameras everywhere, as could be provided by a Bigelow balloon. He could pay a company to take his team and equipment to orbit, and he would be able to film in a way that no one ever has before, although the IMAX films come close. I can also see Hong Kong filmmakers doing away with the wires and filming radical new combat scenes. I don’t know about the Apollo folks, but my generation grewup on Ender’s Game, and I was a huge fan of the Battle Room. Laser Tag in 3-D? You know that’s going to be a popular workout.

Habitation is a de rigeur requirement of humans in orbit, so there exists any number of opportunities in that domain. From the design of sleeping quarters to the provision of supplies, there are a number of niches for companies to exploit. Final Frontier Beef Jerky seems to have already cornered the market on dried beefstuffs on orbit, but there are lots of other things that go well with the microgravity environment.

What to do in space? Sightseeing is already a favored pastime on the ISS, so I have no doubt it will be popular in that regard amongst a broader audience. Certain adult recreational activities are oft cited, and if you want to do some research in that regard I would point you to the 3-DVD set “The Uranus Experiment” [Link absolutely totally not safe for work or children]. This is an adult film that is absolutely not for amateurs, but does contain the first cinematic instance in microgravity of what is colloquially referred to as the Money Shot. And no, things don’t behave the way they do here on Earth.

There’s actually an interesting story behind the movie. A German adult film company decided to make a science-fiction film sometime in the mid to late 1990s. They toured NASA, but when NASA found out what they wanted to film on the Vomit Comet, they declined to license their services. So the company went to the Russians, who said “You pay us how much? Okay! And you clean up afterwards!” Having flown on Zero-G, I have a great deal of respect for the professionalism of the actors and actresses who performed under unique and difficult circumstances. I’ve already got an idea for “Murphy Straps” to help facilitate the process, perhaps do a licensing agreement with Victoria’s Secret. So is there a market for that sort of stuff? Duh! Because in addition to The Uranus Experiment there is also Rocket Girls, Emmanuelle in Space, Space-Thing and others. Oh, can’t forget Wham! Bam! Thank you Spaceman!

One obvious piece of orbital hardware, part of the “infrastructure” that people talk about, is a Universal Docking Node (UDN). This would allow unlimited modularity of vehicles and modules. Setting universal interface standards is a key way to accelerate cislunar development. Provision of a UDN would more easily allow a private venture to cobble together a couple trans-LEO vehicles, some Bigelow balloons for habitation and storage, and sufficient fuel for a trip to take-your-choice destination. GEO, EML-1, LLO, a visit to an asteroid, maybe park out at L5 for a while to get some preliminary environmental readings. That’s the power of opening space to private interests. It allows for a much greater variety of projects, and more destinations can be explored.

That of course, is not enough to sustain a LEO economy, so let’s consider other ways to add value. One obvious way is post-launch inspection and repair of satellites. The roughest part of the trip for a satellite is the launch through the atmosphere of Earth. Stuff ends up not working right after launch, and being able to inspect and repair satellites may be a key part of the service sector in LEO. There’s also going to need to be an aggregation of materials in LEO for pushes further out. Things like research and development on propellant depots will help to accelerate this process. As will the availability of storage so that longer-term assets can be parked in orbit for a while.

So where would one have facilities in LEO? Given how tough it is to change inclination that deep in the gravity well, facilities are likely to spring up at inclinations of particular utility. Equatorial would provide a fair amount of GEO CommSat traffic that might be interested in a post-launch overhaul. Jon Goff over at the Selenian Boondocks (one of my old haunts) suggested something in the low-40s that would be readily accessible to most inland spaceports, making it of particular interest to the tourist trade. ISS has the benefit of passing over 85% of the land mass of Earth over the course of its orbits, making it an excellent platform for Earth observation. So different markets are going to be available.

Looking further out, the Earth-Moon L-1 point (EML-1) is the next logical destination, as it is indifferent to the LEO inclination. This is not necessarily intuitive, but the best way to think about it is like this - imagine the Earth and Moon in three dimensions, about 240,000 miles (384,000 km) apart. Now draw a line from the center-of-mass of the Earth to center-of-mass of the Moon. Hold that line fixed in 3-D space.

Now drop the Earth and Moon into gravity wells. The Earth’s gravity well is quite deep, the Moon’s a dimple in comparison. Perched about 86% of the way to the Moon along that fixed line is where those gravity wells peak, at EML-1. This is the lowest delta-V launch point in cislunar space to more places than anywhere else.

Now draw a Hohmann ellipse from LEO out to EML-1. This is traditionally done in the plane of orbit of the Moon, but we’re dealing with space, you have to think in three dimensions. Rotate that ellipse around the fixed line, and you have your map of orbits to EML-1, and they basically all cost the same delta-V, which helps to standardize fuel delivery requirements. Polar orbits are the exception, as the Earth is a bit pudgy around the middle and that messes things up a bit.

EML-1 serves as a crossroads in cislunar space, making it a key logistics point. It will also serve as a stockpiling point, enabling missions to the Moon, the asteroids, and even Mars. I would love to be the bartender on that facility.

Cargo and Machinery is going to be heading out to the Moon, eventually you want LOX to head back all the way down to LEO. Hydrogen we really need to be getting from asteroids, but the Moon’s polar deposits can help serve as a stopgap measure to supplement shipments from Earth.

Dropping back down to GEO, one long-term business plan is to provide near-constant Solar power as baseline electricity. It has been noted that we have been beaming Solar power to Earth for decades now, via our communications satellites, so to say that solar power satellites are a flight of fancy is patently false. What is a flight of fancy is to presume that terawatt-scale facilities are going to be launched from the surface of the Earth. That’s just not going to happen. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do space-based Solar power, we just have to consider alternate paths to that end.

One of the most valuable exports from the Moon is going to be mass. Luckily, it’s a lot easier to get stuff into cislunar space from the Moon than the Earth. LOX is the most frequently cited export, and it is one of the easier business cases to close, thanks to its manifold utility and abundant availability on the Moon, just locked up in minerals. LOX/LH is pretty much our best possible chemical propellant combo (unless you want to deal with some really, really nasty stuff), but oxygen represents about 7/8ths of the combined mass. Lifting that from the Earth’s gravity well is hard, and we could be sending more useful mass up instead. That’s why, over the long term, there is even a market for Lunar LOX in LEO.

A byproduct of Lunar oxygen production is slag. This could be exported to serve as radiation shielding for long-term facilities out beyond the Earth’s magnetosphere.

Another possible Lunar export could be the high-mass/low-value added components of a GEO Solar Power Satellite system, such as structural members and cheap and plentiful, if not terribly good, solar cell arrays.

The point is that the only thing you need to be lifting out of the Earth’s gravity well is the kind of high-value-added stuff like electronic components or high-precision parts. Earth is like the Switzerland of cislunar space; its contributions to commerce have to be small-mass/high-value-added items, at least until we can get a space elevator in place.

As capabilities grow on the Moon, more value-added can be brought to bear on the raw resources found there. It’ll start stepping up the value-added chain. Foodstuffs is a good example. It’ll be easier to get foodstuffs from the Moon to LEO, even with a detour to EML-1, than to get it up from the Earth. Not by much, but it’s still a transport advantage. Given the unique terroir of the Moon, it’s not difficult to imagine a trade springing up in specialty food items, akin to the spice trade of yore.

If you’re interested in Lunar commerce, there are a few books I can recommend. First and foremost is Neil Ruzic’s “The Case for Going to the Moon“, written in 1965. Mr. Ruzic was editor and publisher of Industrial Research magazine, so he had a pretty good handle on what industry was all about. Decades have passed and it is still relevant, as Mr. Ruzic understood the roles of things like vacuum and extreme temperatures in industrial processes. If you ever only read one book about Moon business, make it this one.

Another title I would highly recommend would be “The Once and Future Moon” by Dr. Paul Spudis. Dr. Spudis is one of the leading Lunar scientists in the world, and I’ve long considered him something of a Moon mentor. His book lays out a lot of geological background on the Moon, but also talks about how commerce and industry can take advantage of that. He blogs at “The Once and Future Moon” blog, and has, to my surprise, expressed a certain amount of disdain regarding the new policy. I can understand his point. The strategic objective of “Provide the tools and the processes to open up cislunar and translunar space to American enterprise” allows for a lot of interpretation. That’s not the NASA way. They want something like “Go to the South Pole of the Moon, explore, go to Asteroid B612, characterize, go to Phobos, set up base camp.” This makes it easier to design an optimized system, close out all the variables in the parametric models, and run some Monte Carlo simulations to nail down the budget.

However, as nice as those would be to have, that’s not the point of opening space to private industry. We don’t need a transport system optimized for going to the South Pole of the Moon. We need a transport system that allows for multiple destinations, because there’s no surer way to set off a rancorous frenzy in the space community than to assign a particular goal such as the Moon or Mars. I’m a known Moonatic. I have zero interest in Mars, and I don’t see it as THE Goal of our space efforts. That doesn’t mean that I don’t want to help the folks who want to go to Mars to get there (for a fair price). But I’m not going there, so if Mars is set as NASA’s (and by extension the U.S.’s) goal, bypassing the Moon, then I’m being excluded and will react accordingly. This is no different from the resentment felt by Mars Advocates when they see the Moon, what they consider a cul-de-sac, given a priority over their goals. And then there’s the long simmering angst of the asteroid folks, who know that their destinations are the best (and they’re right), but everyone ignores them. There’re also the L-5 colonists, who think the gravity-well-bound-thinkers are ignorant and can’t understand the human cultural potential that could be unleashed by micro-cultures in the different L-5 colonies. (Sort of what the U.S. is supposed to be about with the different cultures in the different states) We also can’t forget those who thought we would be exploring the Jupiter Moons by now.

So while I think I understand Dr. Spudis’ perspective, I have to disagree with his conclusions. I have no doubt that if we set the folks at NASA on, say, optimizing the design of inflatable fuel depots that use straps to transfer propellant, what I call Murphy Bags, then they would blow our minds with their results. By using straps controlled by electric motors, you’re doing away with the need for pumps. And by having multiple electric motors used to tighten the straps, the failure of a couple of them doesn’t negate functionality of the propellant bag (whereas if your pump breaks you’re hosed). How do you best place the restraining guides for the straps so that they don’t tangle? What are the actions/reactions at work during that kind of transfer process? That’s the sort of stuff that the NASA folks eat for breakfast. They have much, much to contribute to where we’re going.

Another obvious book choice, and of much more recent vintage is “The Moon: Resources, Future Development, and Settlement“. Lots of good stuff in there on Lunar industries. A little more hardcore is “The Lunar Base Handbook“, and beyond that is the first ISU Summer Session Project, the “International Lunar Initiative Organization“, which contains the best discourse I’ve found on Lunar Medicine. There’s over 2000 pages of densely packed info in those three. Other good titles include “Moonrush” and “Return to the Moon“.

Given how extensively these questions have been examined over the past few decades, it amazes me that there is so much ignorance being displayed in the comments and responses around the blogosphere. It’s almost as if there is a national schizophrenia at work regarding space activities. No one ever really supports space activities that much. Public polls show that time and again. Were that not the case then NASA would have no problem getting funding from Congress each year, and certainly at a higher level than 0.5 - 0.7% of the regular budget. Yet those who follow the process can tell you it is a fight year after year. But have the media trumpet that “The Moon program is dead!” and people start coming out of the woodwork.

There are also the logical disconnects. Some people point to the cancellation of the Orion capsule as the end of trans-LEO human spaceflight. Never mind that Space Adventures has already sold one Lunar free-return trajectory visit to the Moon (they need two for the flight). It is claimed that it could be ready by 2014, and yet the vehicle on which it would ride won’t be ready for another 4-5 years. The original Vision for Space Exploration (VSE) (pdf) called for the Orion to have its first test flight in 2010 and operational by 2014. Here we are in 2010 about 4 years from test flight.

I can remember back to the heady days of 2004, when various space companies were proposing solutions for the CEV during the Concept Exploration & Refinement (CE&R) stage of the process. This was in line with what the VSE had proposed, and which had also stated, and I quote:

“NASA does not plan to develop new launch vehicle capabilities except where critical NASA needs - such as heavy lift - are not met by commercial or military systems.” [p. 15]

Which brings us to another topic - that of heavy lift. There is a widespread and ingrained belief in the space community that a heavy-lift launch vehicle (HLLV) is required to do anything in space. My guess is that it stems from the “economics for engineers” analysis which demonstrates that the best way to scale down the cost of a kilo to orbit is to scale up the volume launched on any one vehicle, thereby distributing the fixed and variable costs amongst a greater number of kilos. Which is a fine analysis as far as it goes, but bears little relationship to the actual existing market of space launch vehicles.

There is a vehicle that can take heavy payloads to orbit, the Energia rocket. The Russians looked at the global market and saw that there was no demand for that volume of mass to orbit in one shot, and so don’t manufacture the rocket for the marketplace. And apparently the NASA version, Ares V, won’t be ready until the late 2020s. If all of your budget is being sucked into the design and manufacture of the rocket, then what can you afford to put on top? This particular path of logic seems to assume that there will be NASA budget increases in the future to pay for the equipment to ride on top. I question that assumption.

What became the Ares rockets were proposed back in 2004 at about the same time that the CE&R studies were being reviewed. I know this because I have an ATK marketing DVD for the shuttle-derived rockets and the files on it are dated August 2004. But it wasn’t part of the CE&R process, even if it was marketed as Safe, Simple & Soon. My guess is that it was because the SS&S rockets were a solution to a requirement that NASA didn’t have, that of “develop[ing] new launch vehicle capabilities”.

So what did we get? A new rocket development program and not a trans-LEO CEV. NASA was supposed to be out of the launch business and back into the exploration business, but here we are five years later and it’ll be nigh on a decade before NASA can get us into LEO, and another decade still until the Ares V allows us to go trans-LEO. And private industry is supposed to wait on that before we’re ready to develop space? I think some folks are really, seriously underestimating the capabilities that exist in the U.S. Do I think the private sector can get us back to the Moon in less than two decades? Heck yes!

By refocusing NASA’s capabilities on accelerating the development of the tools necessary for cislunar, Lunar, and translunar space, we can ensure that it happens a lot faster.

I’m excited by this new direction. Especially because as an investor I can put some capital into the industry and, if I do it carefully, profit from where we are now going. That excites me a whole lot more than watching a cadre of select government employees planting a flag on [pick your celestial destination]. I want human spaceflight to be a growth industry for our economy, not a government program delimited one.

The U.S. is desperately in need of industries and trades that will lead to economic growth. We have no choice,as we are leveraging our existing future to an unsustainable level. Space is a domain in which the United States has a competitive advantage. We need to exploit that advantage, to the ends of providing energy and resources so that we can start remediating the damage we do to our own planet to get those things.

This new direction opens the door to more than just NASA to achieve those ends. Therefore I applaud the President’s choices, and look forward to American enterprise taking us into space.

Ken Murphy / 2:53 am January 29th, 2010

There’s certainly a lot of foofaraw surrounding what may be a significant realignment in how the U.S. government approaches space. While I hesitate to comment before the facts are in, I am allowing myself a bit of cautious optimism that we may finally be on a course where space moves beyond being explored and starts being developed, and eventually settled.

I am a huge fan of the development of cislunar space by the U.S., and I don’t think the government is the right entity to make that happen. It can scout out the terrain, but it is the citizenry who are going to take their capital and start figuring out how to make space useful and profitable, as many already have (q.v. GeoSat industry).

Some say “If you’re going to the Moon, then go to the Moon”, implying that ‘dawdling’ in cislunar space is a waste of time. Others say that space is too expensive for anyone but the government to do it. Some say that there is no money to be made in space. Others that we should just let our tools (i.e. robots) do it for us.

All of which is bunk and nonsense, but that doesn’t stop folks from believing it. I’d like to share a couple of business ideas I had when I was younger and crazier and didn’t know as much about space as I do now. Thing is, they still have merit.

#1: Vacuum spheres

My personal favorite, the basic idea is to create hollow glass spheres in orbit that are ‘filled’ with vacuum. The basic business plan was to arrange access to one of the GASCans (Get Away Special Canisters) that flew in the Shuttle’s payload bay. Whilst on orbit the GASCan would open and vent to space, and then heated collars would pinch off sections of a glass tube, capturing the vacuum inside. The canister would then close, perhaps fill with a protective foam, and then be returned to Earth.

I decided to put my ISU and SGF background to work and got in touch with Grant and Taber over at Paragon SDC. They indicated that Yes, they did know of glasses that would be able to handle being filled with high-purity nothing, and in fact they would be more than happy to build the pinch-collar mechanism described above as well.

While I was working as Program Support for the Goddard NASA Academy back in 2002 we went to a number of the NASA centers, and we got to talk to the folks working on the GASCan program. I used the opportunity to ask a few questions, and found out that there were something like 67 GASCans in the queue. I asked if one paid to fly one’s payload, would that move it up ahead of those GASCans that were getting a free ride from NASA. The answer, not surprisingly, was No. In fact, if a payload came along that NASA felt was scientifically compelling, they could move it to the front of the queue.

So technology-wise we were at a point where this was a viable product, but access to the proper manufacturing environment was particularly constrained and disadvantageous. The marketing and sale of the product was aimed at tapping the auction market to set a price for the few first vacspheres, and then pricing the remainder accordingly. Target markets would be early adopters of unique items. These would, after all, be of limited number for the near/mid-term. Other ideas include doing laser scans to determine what limited stuff there was in the vacuum and certifying them. And it’s the perfect capitalist product - I would be selling nothing for a fair price.

#2: MDL boxes

While the shuttle has always provided limited amounts of payload space for mid-deck locker (MDL) and shuttle drawer rack (SDR) payloads, the supply has been terribly limited, with demand far outstripping it, especially in the early 80s (ramping up of shuttle promises) and late 90s (ramping up of ISS promises). Payloads were often limited to one flight, so if they didn’t work right you were pretty much SOL. They had to be extensively engineered to be push-button, as the astronauts had limited amounts of time to devote to any one box.

So, I wondered, what if the scientists didn’t have to waste their time engineering the payload? What if instead they could lease a pre-built and pre-flown box? They could accelerate the pace of their science (i.e. grad students could get results to gnaw on), and they would have an easier time getting it manifested, as the hardware was already proven through prior flight.

The idea, then, was to quietly go around to different PIs and companies and buy their experiment boxes that were more than likely gathering dust in a storage room. These would be carefully cleaned and then catalogued so that scientists could determine which one would best suit their needs, to be leased (NNN) at a fair price.

The problem came with the manifesting. When the NASA Academy visited KSC, we got a briefing from the folks who loaded experiments into the Shuttle. I inquired as to whether using an already-flown piece of hardware would do anything to accelerate the certification process, a key aspect of the business plan. The answer was that if anything at all was different from the first time it flew, it would have to go through the entire process again.

Confound it!

Ultimately, my preference is to have scientists ’sitting’ at lab benches and running experiments over and over, just like they do here on Earth.

#3: Asteroid Data

You don’t have to work for long in the financial field to find out what a Bloomberg terminal is. The basic premise is that Bloomberg provides access to financial data. Even early on it provided vast amounts of information which I can tell you first hand was of huge value to the credit analysis process. Once they started providing loan documents online there was no one who could compete.

The best data is accessed through Bloomberg terminals, which the company leases to financial firms at a not insignificant price per month. The company has also developed tools that leverage the value of the data and allow for unusual analysis. Stop by www.ZeroHedge.com for a taste of what kind of information they can offer.

So what if there were space data that was of particular value and broad application?

Asteroids are the obvious answer. The Minor Planet Center up at Harvard does a great job of providing information about the small bodies of the Solar system, but what if you could provide data on asteroids that you can’t provide from Earth?

The basic idea was to put a payload at the Earth-Moon L-1 point (EML-1 or as I call it, Emily) that would be in a halo orbit around the L-1 point and would spin so as to provide a 360° view of near-Earth space, looking not just starward, but also into our current huge blind-spot, Sunward. Over the course of a month it would effectively map out in three dimensions the population of small bodies down to some arbitrary size, from the Sun out to the Asteroid Belt. Over time the equipment would be upgraded so as to scan out to the Oort Cloud.

The data points to be built would include size, orbit, albedo, shape, spectral maps, and so on. Since the instruments would be outside the atmosphere they can scan in more wavelengths, providing better spectral data about the composition of the objects.

This data would be sold on a subscription basis, a business model I’d been introduced to when I was a fresh-out junior banker in middle-market lending at NatWest Bank working in the Empire State Building. The price of the subscription would depend on the quantity of data desired. What really makes a subscription business work is the fact that the revenues come in up front, and then get recognized over time on the P&L. This means you’re sitting on a large pool of cash that is a liability as Unearned Revenues, which also happens to be sitting in a bank and earning interest for you. This is why you see things like pre-paid laundromat and cafeteria cards - the company gets to earn the interest instead of you.

The big risk here is actually the scientists using the data. I’ve noticed a strong disposition to the meme that knowledge should be free, which is noble but doesn’t put food on the table. So I perceived a very strong likelihood that someone would make the data available on the internet, which means that the purity of the data would have to be corrupted by false data, unique to each subscriber, that would allow any breaches to be traced, and consequences to be enacted on the perpetrator.

Who would be the subscribers? The list is lengthy because I’m looking at global markets and can envision any number of users, from governments and universities to private foundations and companies. Sure it would be great for figuring out which NEOs to prospect, but let’s say you’re one of those scientists who labors under the notion that there are small black holes whizzing around the universe on galactic or cosmic trajectories. If one happened to pass through the Solar system you might be able to prise out perturbations in the planetary orbit data that could provide support for the hypothesis. Such a thing would be stunningly obvious in a time-series of orbits of the small bodies.

A 3-D gravitometric map of the inner Solar system would be of great utility to plotters of low-energy (or weak-stability-boundary) trajectories that you might have heard about, as well as sailors of Solar Sails. Spectral analysis may allow determination of hypothetical parent bodies, which might be traced back to help provide an explanation of what it was that gave us the Asteroid Belt.

The applications of such data are vast, giving it particular value. Since NASA was supposed to be working on some kind of Crew Exploration Vehicle that would go trans-LEO, two obvious destinations for trial sorties would be GEO and EML-1. While at EML-1 I’d pay them to drop off the initial instrument package, having had the opportunity to thoroughly test it post-launch and fix it if necessary.

Again, the idea has merit, but the mechanics haven’t really worked out.

#4: GeoSat Forensics

Once there’s a crewed facility at EML-1, going back and forth to GEO is easy. Much easier than just going from LEO to GEO. This enables the opportunity to start cleaning up GEO and paving the way for larger installations. Imagine if your DISH TV could punch through the rain storm…

Back when I was doing my independent project on Cislunar Infrastructure Architectures for my ISU Master of Space Studies degree while at Boeing Human Space Flight & Exploration division for my internship, I decided to look at just what kind of junk was floating around out at GEO. I dug up a few databases on known GEO objects, cross-correlated them, and them compared that with data on active satellites. Removing those from the dataset left the inactive garbage floating around and generally getting up to no good.

I identified over 600 metric tonnes of scrap. That’s a lot of materiél, so salvage is one opportunity, but what I wanted was the forensics data on the materials exposure to the GEO environment; each one being, in essence, a mini-LDEF. Knowledge of how those materials ‘age’ over time at GEO will provide valuable insight on how to build better satellites for the Geo environment. Better satellites provide more value to the purchaser, increasing market demand. So the forensic data certainly has value, and by removing it from GEO up to EML-1 you’re giving the folks at the Emily facility something to do. And then the pieces can be cobbled together to serve other purposes. It also turns out there are a lot of Russian kick stages up there whose rocket motors run on Silane (SiH4), a potential future Lunar export, which begs the question could they be refurbished?

We’re just not there yet.

#5: Emily Freeflyers

One of the neat things about EML-1 is that you’re at a location in cislunar space where you can do a lot of neat things with gravity. Here, the premise is that microgravity science and production is best done away from crewed facilities to minimize the micro-g jitters induced in the structure of the station (and by extension the experiment boxes attached to it) by astronauts bumping into things. Also, you want your experiment to be as close to the CoG of the station as possible, or next best along the vector of flight of the CoG. So microgravity science on stations like the ISS is not as easy as some would have you believe.

Taking advantage of our knowledge of low-energy trajectories we can design a trajectory that makes several orbits around the Moon and then returns to EML-1. This means it is not difficult to launch and retrieve freeflyer platforms (leased from yours truly) that house experiments and production runs, and the trajectory can be customized to provide for different periods of free flight. This is where the golden age of microgravity science and materials will begin.

We’re even further away from this idea.

#6: Monocoque Modular Transport

If there could be designed a common interface for the Atlas V, Delta IV, Ariane V and Falcon IX, then the vehicle that rides as the payload would be indifferent to the launch vehicle. This not only allows for greater launch flexibility, but also enables a blossoming of manufacturers of the vehicles on top. This is where the market best serves us, as different manufacturers would offer different models of transport, and over time the customers would determine which were the best ones.

I’ve got my own idea for a modular transport architecture I call the caplet design. The vehicle is stripped down to its base function - keeping X number of people alive for Y amount of time in space and takes the form of a caplet like you find in your medicine cabinet. Everything else is bolted on. The launch vehicle takes it to orbit, where a tug takes it to a station. If it’s just a taxi run, you bolt on a heat shield and deorbit package and send it on its way. If it’s going trans-LEO you bolt on a propulsion package (available in 2, 4, 6, 8 & 10 km/s delta-V options). If it’s going to EML-1 you strap on a 4 km/s thruster and you’re on your way. If you’re at EML-1 and you’re heading down to the Lunar surface you bolt on a set of lander legs, and a 6 km/s dV propulsion will get you there (anywhere on the Moon 24/7) and back. If you’re heading down to GEO you bolt on some manipulator arms and a cargo rack, and IIRC a 4 km/s dV propulsion package would get you there and back. 4 km/s dV would also get you back down to LEO (any inclination: equatorial, Kennedy, ISS, whatever) without aerobraking.

These are all ideas that would create value and jobs. The more that cislunar space is opened up to entrepreneurs, the more they’ll be able to put their capital at risk to try out their ideas and pave the way for others to follow.

So, instead of fearing what commercialization might bring, we should also consider the many possibilities that would be enabled by the development of cislunar space.

I’m as anxious to get to our Moon as the next guy. My ambition is to be administrator of the first real Moonbase. I’ve got the Lunar Library; there’s not a Gen Xer that knows more about the Moon than I do (which is why I threw my hat into the ring for the position of Director of the NASA Lunar Science Institute, and I’m still waiting for my rejection letter). There are people who know more about specific aspects of our Moon, but when it comes to overall knowledge there’s no competition from my peers since they all caught the Mars bug (Mars is, after all, the obvious next permanent human civilization in Earth-similar conditions).

As for me…I would be perfectly content to die on the Moon and have my body contribute to the extension of Earth’s biosphere beyond our home planet.

But I also recognize that if we’re to become space-faring, and not just space visiting, we have to put in place the pieces that allow us to do so. I’m a banker, I recognize the time-value of money, the quickest place in space for value to be cultivated over the next 10-15 years is in cislunar space. Once we get out to and set up at EML-1 we can go anywhere, which is the point.

Not just to the Moon, nor Mars, but everywhere.

La Lune est Morte! Vive notre Lune!

Ken Murphy / 4:44 pm January 23rd, 2010

Howdy everyone! I know I’ve been a bit quiet of late, but this has been a season of many changes, and I’ve been occupied with lots of things.

I’m most proud of NSS-NT’s Santa Space Toy Drive, which dropped off three large (18″x18″x18″) boxes of toys at the WFAA Santa’s Helpers Toy Drive in downtown Dallas. NSS of North Texas this year collected over 70 toys, books, puzzles, games, action figures, DVDs and more, all with a strong space theme. The big toy this year was the Space Train Station 100-piece wooden train set, donated by the chapter treasurer.

Seriously! How cool is this?

This is our fifth year for the Santa Space Toy Drive, and the quality of the toys we’re finding is getting better every year. The philosophy underlying the project is that disadvantaged children are probably the least likely to get space related toys. Statistics tells us that the next Robert Goddard or Albert Einstein can come from anywhere, so it is important to encourage space interest in all demographics, not just the privileged ones that can afford fancy museum admissions and planetarium tickets. Consequently, our chapter makes sure that at least here in North Texas there are kids who are getting the space toys they need to start them on a path to a brighter future. And on a more selfish note it gets our chapter name on the ‘Thank You’ list at their website.

This is but one of our projects in the community. We also just wrapped up a space book drive for the Frontiers of Flight Museum at Love Field in Dallas. The supply of space picture books in their children’s reading area is in constant need of replenishment, as they’re the most popular ones and receive the most destructive punishment from overuse. Or walking out the door in someone’s purse or backpack, which the museum always warns us of when we drop off another box of books.

The philosophy underlying this project is that this is an easy way to get space stuff in front of the eyeballs of lots of youngsters. Chapter members are always scouring library book sales and used bookstores to find inexpensive copies to donate. As with the toy drive, we’re trying to encourage an overall interest in human space exploration in our community. From a chapter interest perspective we make sure that all the books are marked with a phrase that prominently features the NSS-NT name and a link to the NSS website.

The last success that NSS-NT had this year was our Science Fair Scholarship. For the past several years I’ve been a volunteer judge at the Dallas Regional Science & Engineering Fair, and it is a tremendous experience. One that I encourage for all the readers out there with hard science degrees. Or quasi-hard science in the case of my Master of Space Studies. We do get a solid grounding in advanced stuff (from telecomm communications to orbital mechanics, the rocket equation to Cepheid variables), but that’s not the focus of the degree.

I’ve also attended a few of the award luncheons, and many of the students receive special awards from various organizations that provide their own judges. After seeing projects like “Growing Plants in Lunar Regolith” and a design for a space habitat I thought to myself “Hmm, why doesn’t NSS-NT underwrite a scholarship?” Then we’d get our name in all of the program books and stuff, and a lot more eyeballs will have seen the words National Space Society of North Texas.

I’m quite proud to announce that this year our chapter raised $200 to award at the upcoming Science Fair in February. Some lucky and unexpecting youngster is going to find themselves $200 further along the road to paying for college and hopefully a technical and/or space degree, all by virtue of having done an outstanding project that addresses NSS’s goals of advancing human exploration, development, and settlement of outer space.

And that closes out what turned out to be a very active year for space in North Texas. The cycles continue to turn, and so we of course have projects coming up for the the new year, including a chapter field trip to the newly remodeled Noble Planetarium in Fort Worth, putting together a real-space track (if they’ll have us) for the upcoming ConDFW, having a display table at the Sally Ride talk at the UT Arlington Maverick Speakers Series, and judging the Science Fair. The best way to keep up is our Facebook page, or sign up for notices from the North Texas Space Calendar at our Yahoo! Groups page.

So if you thought space clubs were all old folks pontificating about back in the day and blowhards arguing about the right way to do things then, well, yeah, you’d be mostly right, but it’s also about reaching out into the community to convey the message of how important space and the space industry is to the future of not just the United States, but the whole world. There are many ways to accomplish this, and not all ways are right for every community.

Building support in society for space ventures is not going to be an easy task. There are a lot of assumptions that need to be challenged, and folks aren’t always happy when that happens. One example of someone unhappy with space advocates is Dwayne Day, who at The Space Review recently published an article entitled “Space fetishism: space activism’s obsession with technological and ideological saviors” in which he gives the back of his hand to some of the obsessive-compulsive behaviors in which very intelligent people often engage (which, admittedly, can be terribly annoying and counterproductive). Or ‘fetishes’, as he describes them, thereby casting (unfairly, IMNSHO) an aura of ‘people not to be associated with‘ on the space activist community.

Which is a shame, because a lot of us ’space activists’ are working hard to show that the space industry in all its myriad facets is a viable one that deserves more attention given its potential for value creation. Given all of the value extraction that has been going on in the U.S. (and elsewhere) over the last three decades, finding new sources of value creation is a fundamental economic priority. The space industry can be a strong component of that value creation, but people need to be educated on what that entails.

With that in mind, at the last Board of Directors‘ meeting of the National Space Society (where I serve as the Region 3 Representative and try to keep the Board focused on chapters) a succession plan was formalized (subject to certain conditions) wherein I would end up serving as the NSS Vice-President of Public Affairs (pro tem) in 2010 until the Fall elections, at which point they’ll hopefully find a real PR guy.

I don’t necessarily seek out these kinds of positions, but if asked to serve, and I feel the challenge is adequate, I usually will. That’s how I ended up chairing an ISDC, and why I’ve been the NSS-NT chapter president for a couple of years now. I’m actually looking forward to taking on the Board of Governors and trying to get them to drive membership numbers up. I’m not looking forward to the press releases, but I’ve been assured of support in that area. I also have oversight of some of the standing committees, including a lot of the internet stuff. Which means I need to find a replacement NSS Blog webmaster, since the last one got in a pissing match with Keith Cowing over at NASAWatch and decided -you know what, I’m a volunteer, I don’t need this crap- and left to pursue other interests. A perfect example of why managing volunteers is way more difficult than managing employees. I know, I had a key chapter member dis-associate himself from the preparations for the 2007 ISDC because he disagreed with the way I was running things as co-chair, which was a crippling blow, but not fatal thankfully.

My first assignment as VP of Public Affairs is to try to find a Chairperson for the Public Relations Committee. I was able to wrangle a six-week timeframe since I’m going to be in Strasbourg in less than a month and I’ve still got some work to do for that event. Like a paper and a 15-minute presentation. Still, if anyone knows anyone who might be interested in doing public relations for the National Space Society please have them get in touch with me.

So if new articles are a bit infrequent at the moment, it’s not because I’ve abandoned the website. I’m just up to my eyeballs in space stuff.

EVA / 2:11 pm December 22nd, 2009

From Russia, we welcome Team Selenokhod to EVA Interviews: The Business of the new Space Age™ in the fourth of this series of Lunar Editions. As one of the most recent entrants in the Google Lunar X Prize competition, Team Selenokhod looks to build on Russia’s early lunar robotic successes of the 1970 Lunokhod-1 and 1973 Lunokhod-2 remote-controlled rovers in their efforts to win the prize. I’m excited to have Nikolay Dzis-Voynarovskiy, the CEO of Team Selenkhod, join us to discuss their team and activities to date.

 

EVA:       Thank you so much, Nikolay, for participating in the Lunar Editions of EVA Interviews: The Business of the new Space Age™! Can you please tell us more about the formation of your team? How was your decision made to compete and what do you (and your team) hope to get out of your involvement? How is it going so far?

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