SAVING "CONSTELLATION"
Rickcosmos
contact the
Chairmen and Ranking Members of House and Senate Budget Committees
suppling
email addresses.Further, I recommended that they contact Shelby of
Alabama and
Nelson of Florida, as well as, their senators and congressman. I
suggested that they
visit comsat-ak.blogspot.com for "Mission Statement" which might give
them ideas
as to what to say in emails. I have other ideas and would like to hear
yours. I'm
a member of your group. Quid pro Quo: How about joining: "Cosmic
Trinity" at: groups.
google.com/group/rickcosmos-eclectic and NASA_Ares at Facebook or
Twitter.
Does the group or any members want to work with me on CONSTELLATION
Project?
Al Globus
that the new space policy is much, much better.
Here's why: (from my blog http://alspolitics.blogspot.com/2010/02/obamas-brilliant-space-policy.htmlhttp://alspolitics.blogspot.com/2010/02/obamas-brilliant-space-policy.html)
Prologue: I want to build space settlements. I want Life to grow
outward from this beautiful but tiny planet and fill the solar system.
This is technically feasible but incredibly difficult (for engineers,
that's the fun part).
Yesterday's space program was all about putting a very small number of
people on the Moon entirely at enormous government expense. It wasn't
doing much for space settlement. For space settlement, we need to put
huge numbers of people in space mostly at their own expense. The key
is much, much better transportation from Earth to space because today
it costs thousands of dollars per pound and the failure rate is a
percent or two. Yet another expensive government owned transportation
system, as we were developing, can't deliver. We need better
technology, a private sector human-rated launch industry so people can
buy a ticket with their own money, and, above all, much higher launch
volume. Today, the whole world launches less than 100 times per year.
At that rate we'll never settle space.
In Paths to Space Settlement I identified three near term projects
that would develop most of the technology and infrastructure necessary
to settle the solar system: space tourism, space solar power, and
planetary defense. President Obama's new space policy takes a big step
for all three.
Much of President Obama's new space policy, about $2 billion/year, is
to develop better Earth to orbit transportation and, especially,
develop private sector companies to take people into orbit. After a
year of ramping up, the budget provides $1.4 billion per year to help
private firms develop human-rated launchers and successful companies
will have a core tenant flying government astronauts to the
International Space Station (ISS). But the real payoff isn't flying to
the ISS, it's space tourism. In “Researching the Space Tourism
Market,” Crouch estimates that at $100,000/flight about 400,000 people
will want to go a year. Even with a 100 person vehicle, and the
largest today carries 10, that would pay for 4,000 launches a year.
There are many surveys supporting traffic at similar levels and higher
if the price comes down. Furthermore, Bigelow Aerospace has launched
two small space hotel prototypes and plans to launch a full sized
system in a couple of years, but there will be no customers without a
private sector vehicle to bring them there. President Obama's new
space policy may be just the ticket.
The other big potential market for launch is space solar power (SSP)
-- gathering solar energy in huge satellites with wireless power
transmission to Earth. For SSP to supply 1/3 of today's energy needs
would require approximately 125,000 launches of a heavy lift vehicle
capable of taking 500 tons to orbit (the largest vehicle today can
lift perhaps 40 tons). President Obama's budget allocates almost $600
million/year to develop heavy lift launch technology. SSP development
is not part of the new program, the policy's biggest deficiency, but
vehicle development won't start for a few years giving SSP advocates
time to make the case for SSP-related requirements.
President Obama's policy also quintuples NASA's planetary defense
budget, from $4 million to $20 million. This will not only help find
asteroids in time to deflect them before hitting Earth, but locate
most of the larger near-earth asteroids which will tell us where the
materials we need for space settlement are. For example, one of the
key problems in orbital settlement development is access to sufficient
materials as millions of tons of radiation shielding and structure are
needed. Building an orbital settlement co-located with an asteroid
solves this problem very nicely.
The new budget also ramps up to $3 billion/year to develop and
demonstrate new space technology, including fuel depots, life support,
and space resource utilization, which will help when the time comes to
build space settlements.
President Obama's policy does a lot of other sensible things. For
example, the old policy, after spending something like $100 billion to
develop the ISS, planned to destroy it five years after completion and
had very few plans to actually use it. The new policy extends the
ISS's life and provides funds to actually use the ISS for America's
benefit. The new policy also increases Earth observation funding
substantially so we can understand what is happening to Earth and
perhaps avoid creating serous problems.
President Obama's space policy abandons "Apollo on Steroids," the
third attempt to recreate the glory of the brilliant 1960s era program
by going back to the Moon and on to Mars. Apollo was great. It ended
35 years ago. Get over it. We don't need "Apollo on Steroids," we need
a program that benefits the people of Earth and lets millions of us go
to space on their own dime. I doubt that Obama read Paths to Space
Settlement before creating his space policy, but he might as well
have. Brilliant!
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If we had gotten serious about space solar power (SSP) in the 1970s
it's quite likely that we would not be in the global warming and
energy pickle we find ourselves in today. Let's make sure we're not
saying the same thing in 2040.
For details see: http://www.nss.org/settlement/ssp/
Al Globus
http://alglobus.net
Views expressed in this email are only my opinions and are not the
position of any organization I'm familiar with.
G B Leatherwood
Just for the record, Globus may have missed a thing or two or perhaps misstated something, but I agree with everything he said. Space tourism and space based solar power are two of the things I've been interested in and writing about for nearly 10 years, especially following the lead of Prof. Patrick Collins who wrote his Ph. D. paper on the economics of space tourism years ago. The sad thing is that we're not much nearer now than we were then, but progress has been made, especially with Bigelow's structures not only on the drawing boards but actually orbiting the planet.
Serious efforts are also being made in private industry with SBSP, although most people still don't know what is being done.
Bottom line: No, we don't need "Apollo on Steroids" and I choose not to support any effort to keep Constellation going.
G B Leatherwood
Al Globus
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In a late 2004 talk, Rutan made the following predictions:
1) Within 5 years 3,000 tourists will have been to space -- this did not happen.
2) Within 15 years sub-orbital tourism will be affordable, and 50,000 people will have flown.
3) Within 15 years the first, expensive orbital tourist flights will have happened.
4) Within 25 years orbital tourism will be affordable.
There have been a lot of wild claims in this business, but Rutan may know what he's talking about. His privately financed SpaceShip One was piloted into space three times in 2004, and Rutan has a contract with Virgin Galactic to build a true sub-orbital tourist vehicle.
G B Leatherwood
GBL
Al Globus
Rev. David Buth
Excellent! Thanx!
> Also, see my article "Space Based Solar Power--the PowerSat Way" in *Space
> Future Journal* <http://www.spacefuture.com> dated 5 August 2009. These
--
"The Earth Isn't Sick, She's Pregnant!"
Rev. David Buth
Hi Al, everyone...
I agree. The two key technologies I'd like to see addressed explicitly are:
1) the Levy-French plasma radiation shield.
2) an all Lunar Resources rocket burning LOX and Aluminum.
Rev. David Buth
I wouldn't want to try and fly that thing.
I like many others agree with the cancellation. You can find my reasons
here if you're interested:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=149635&id=261623074175&ref=mf
Just read the captions in the Constellation section of the Album.