In some ways, I’m a tremendous optimist when it comes to spaceflight. I believe, for example, that it should be possible to launch an automated probe to another star within the next 50 years. In other ways, I’m quite pessimistic. I believe, for example, that the current hoo-hah over space tourism and other new forms of space “commerce” (sometimes called Newspace) is not going to be around much longer.
I think that the odds are against it mainly because piloted spaceflight is expensive and difficult. I think that it’s inevitable that, assuming any tourist spacecraft are built, one will fail early on and kill its wealthy passengers. When it does, the fledgling industry will die. A space voyage to low-Earth orbit would be a joyride, not something anyone needs to do. If it becomes recognized that there is a high probability that people will die, then few will want to make the trip. For that matter, when the word gets out that half the people who travel into space spend a week or more being sick, it will discourage many potential customers.
Newspace people like to use the early days of aviation as an analogy, but it doesn’t make sense. Aviation worked because it provided a better way of accomplishing something people wanted done; that is, traveling quickly to and from cities and countries where they had business. Tourist spaceflight won’t do anything similar any time soon.
I separate tourist flights by start-up space companies from tourist flights on Russian Soyuz spacecraft, which have built up a respectable safety record in 40 years of flight. Soyuz spacecraft have three seats and need only two cosmonauts to fly. Through American agents, the cash-strapped Russians have sold the Soyuz third seat several times. This is not too different from politically motivated guest-cosmonaut flights of the 1970s and 1980s, which saw passengers from Bulgaria, Vietnam, Syria, France, Japan, Britain, and other countries riding to Soviets space stations in the third seat. Both served Russian interests.
I’m all for people trying to make a buck. I do have a problem, however, with Newspace people who say NASA should “get out of the way.” NASA is not in their way; the realities of spaceflight and economics are.
I also think that it’s ludicrous when Newspace people want NASA to give them taxpayers’ dollars. This amounts to a subsidy for an activity that’s not in the national interest. Sometimes Newspace companies seem to me like hobby clubs for wealthy people who don’t understand the difficulties of spaceflight or for retired NASA and aerospace industry managers who want to keep busy. I don’t think taxpayers should be called upon to subsidize such a hobby, any more than they should be called upon to subsidize model railroading, knitting, or beer can collecting.
Newspace and the 1970s space colony craze share some features. Folks swept up in the latter wanted to build cities in space at the libration points; the L5 point was particularly attractive to them. “L5 in 1995″ was one of their slogans. This was, of course, unrealistic, though at the time a good many people became very excited about it, and very disdainful if one dared point out that their dream was full of holes. Eventually the dream died, and now some of the same people have taken up Newspace as their new perforated dream.
I especially take umbrage when Newspace people want NASA to give them the money it spends on scientific exploration. Exploration is what space is all about. Solving exploration problems drives technology development. Much more important than that, but harder to quantify, learning new things about the universe is rarely a waste of time. It’s certainly more important than subsidizing a doomed dream.
i believe you are correct that a disaster in the us space tourism industry will end it here but you forget that other countries are gaining on us in this area.i believe we will be surpassed by a number of nations in the near future.even now as the last contracts for the shuttle fleet are ended you would be suprised to learn how much nasa and the subcontractors are actually working on current and upcoming contracts with other nations. and keep in mind many of these nations do not have to sink a huge part of their budget into defence.this allows the areospace industry in these nations to flourish improving their economy at the same time.many do not realise while the us cuts funding for nasa private contracts make up a huge part of the private sector of buisness at the cape.
I’m not thinking of NASA or the established private aerospace companies when I write of Newspace; I’m thinking of folks who want to build inflatable hotels and their own piloted spaceships. Such folks are doing something that is novel, so get more attention than they deserve; kind of like Paris Hilton.
I don’t think that the Shuttle will be going away as soon as all that. The next President is likely to want to change course, since the Bush vision as currently being played out is untenable. International cooperation is the way ahead; the vision is pretty much a U.S.-only affair, which is one reason why it’s untenable.
David,
You bring up a number of issues in your post worth discussing:
I think that it’s inevitable that, assuming any tourist spacecraft are built, one will fail early on and kill its wealthy passengers. When it does, the fledgling industry will die.
I agree that it is inevitable that, at some point, there will be a fatal accident. However, I don’t necessarily agree that it is also inevitable that such an accident would kill off the entire industry (although it could eventually be fatal to the company that built and/or operated the vehicle). Various forms of adventure tourism have weathered accidents and fatalities without disappearing: Into Thin Air, for example, did little to deter people from climbing, or trying to climb, Mount Everest.
Newspace people like to use the early days of aviation as an analogy, but it doesn’t make sense.
As an exact analogy, yes, it’s dangerous to draw too many parallels between early aviation and early commercial spaceflight. But let’s remember that, before aviation became a common form of passenger transportation, one of the few ways for airplane owners to make money was through barnstorming: flying for the sake of flying. Sounds a little bit like space tourism…
I do have a problem, however, with Newspace people who say NASA should “get out of the way.”
I don’t think you’ll hear that too much these days from serious people in the NewSpace industry. That was a more common refrain in the past, when some space advocates perceived NASA (rightly or wrongly) as a barrier to space commercialization, particularly for small entrepreneurial firms. These days, NewSpace companies are more likely to see the space agency as a potential partner or customer—or simply irrelevant to their business plans.
I also think that it’s ludicrous when Newspace people want NASA to give them taxpayers’ dollars. This amounts to a subsidy for an activity that’s not in the national interest.
Well, one would argue that commercial resupply of the International Space Station—one of the few areas where NASA is giving “taxpayers’ dollars” to NewSpace ventures, namely Rocketplane Kistler and SpaceX—is in “the national interest”. (Unless you think that the ISS is not in the national interest, but that’s a very different argument.) Low-cost space access in general is also in the national interest: among other things, it can enable less expensive and more frequent science missions.
Newspace and the 1970s space colony craze share some features.
The big difference between NewSpace and the “L5 in ‘95″ movement is that, in the latter case, there was very little (if any) private investment in ventures that could make space colonies happen. Today, we see companies and their founders invest literally hundreds of millions of dollars to date on efforts to make their dreams come true. Dollars speak much louder than words.
Jeff:
Thanks for your insightful comments. I think that we need to define what Newspace is, and I’d be glad for your input on this definition. I’m thinking of tourism, mainly. Bigelow’s hotel in orbit and the like.
For one thing, I’m not sure how Newspace is different from “Oldspace.” I’m afraid that your comment makes this even more confusing for me. As part of my quest for understanding, I tender the following question: where would you say Spacehab belongs in this? What about Sea Launch?
Barnstorming eventually died out as an industry as the novelty wore off. It’s hard to imagine the novelty of spaceflight ever wearing off, but I’m a rabid space geek. I suppose that normal people might lose interest in time. I don’t think that Everest is a good metaphor for space tourism. For one thing, it’s rather cheaper to climb Everest.
I’m of two minds re: the commercial ISS resupply thing. I don’t think that it’s actually necessary, and I’d prefer it if more established companies were doing the job. Taxpayers deserve to get service from proven companies; it’s not right to gamble with taxpayers’ dollars. On the other hand, it is potentially the right kind of niche for a serious Newspace company or consortium to seek.
By the way, I don’t have a problem with ISS. We need it for space biomedical research to determine whether people can travel to other planets.
You mention Bigelow’s space hotels skeptically. While BA may or may not fail as a business, I think it is important to note that Bigelow himself has said that the modules are not designed to be hotels, but are being designed for multiple purposes, preferably science and research. I would argue that a Biomedical company with some extra cash would probably be more likely to lease a Bigelow module they can customize for their own purposes than to try to use the International Space Station. Just my .02 cents.
Bigelow has said that they would eventually serve as hotels; he is, after all, a hotelier. I think that he has come to recognize that the likelihood that NewSpace companies can deliver customers to his orbiting modules is small. I’ve noted a general climb down in the NewSpace movement over the years; it’s much less giddy than it once was.
Assuming that Bigelow’s modules work out - and the initial test appears to have worked, from what I can tell - then you may be right. It’s still speculative, though. One unmanned flight test does not a biomedical laboratory make.
Incidentally, I keep thinking of Burt Rutan’s comments of a year or so ago, in which he declared (I paraphrase here) that NASA should abandon its plans to go back to the moon and subsidize start-up private space companies (like his) instead. For those who don’t recall, Rutan’s SpaceShip One won the X Prize. I haven’t been able to find the article in which he made those comments, but it caused quite a stir. If someone could point me to it, I’d be grateful.
Also, I want to point out that space tourism is an old idea. I have in my files a colorful brochure on something called “Project Space Voyage” from the late 1980s. They were taking reservations for a tourist spaceflight in 1992. I wonder what became of that?
I believe, for example, that the current hoo-hah over space tourism and other new forms of space “commerce” (sometimes called Newspace) is not going to be around much longer
Actually, I believe it is the sort of skepticism about the substance of NewSpace that you display that will not be around much longer. It is silly to compare the money and technical sophistication involved in today’s projects with the paper studies of the 1970s.
As we speak, the Genesis 1 prototype space habitat from Bigelow Aerospace is in orbit and another one will launch later this month. I don’t remember L5 putting anything into orbit.
Jeff speaks of hundreds of millions of dollars involved in today’s commercial spaceflight projects but the level may in fact reach well past a billion dollars as Burt Rutan has claimed.
Robert Bigelow alone has committed more than $400M to private space habitat development. The COTS companies are raising upwards of $500M in private capital to match the NASA commitment. SpaceX had already spent around $100M range before it won the COTS contract. Virgin Galactic has over $200M dedicated to the SpaceShipTwo project. Jeff Bezos is secretive but his Blue Origin project budget must exceed a hundred million dollars. Smaller NewSpace companies like SpaceDev and XCOR are carrying out sophisticated technology projects and have reached profitability.
I also think that it’s ludicrous when Newspace people want NASA to give them taxpayers’ dollars.
It would be ludicrous if that’s what they were doing but it is not. Since the 1980s there has been a major effort in the space advocacy movement to push NASA to try a commercial services approach to technology development rather than trying to do it all in house. That is, it should put out a request for contracts for, say, delivery of X amount of cargo to low earth orbit for Y amount of money without specifying exactly what type of vehicle must be used. If no company can supply such a service, then fine, the agency could continue its usual approach. But if private companies come forth to do such jobs at much lower costs, they will save NASA money that can be applied to leading edge projects.
The COTS (Commercial Orbital Transportation System) demo is the first time NASA has tried this in a serious way. COTS differs drastically from the standard NASA/Aerospace industry procurement practices:
1) It employs fixed price contracts rather than the usual cost-plus arrangement in which a contractor is guaranteed a profit as a percentage of total project cost. Cost-plus pushes companies towards the most expensive solution to every problem. Furthermore, monitoring of such contracts requires legions of auditors at both NASA and the companies, resulting in the generation of mountains of red tape.
2) The COTS money is only paid out in increments as milestones are met. If a milestone is not met, then no more funding will be provided.
3) As mentioned above, the companies must raise equivalent amounts of private capital.
4) The COTS funding is at least a factor of 10 or 20 below the cost of developing Ares 1. If one or both firms succeed, not only NASA but the entire space industry will greatly benefit from significantly lower cost access to space.
Outside of the COTS type of service arrangement or the usual SBIR tech projects, I don’t know of any NewSpace company simply asking for money from NASA. Certainly the companies developing space tourism vehicles are not asking for such funding.
With regard to space tourism and safety, if you attended any of the NewSpace oriented conferences you would hear one presentation and panel discussion after another dealing with safety issues and the various insurance and regulatory challenges involved in creating this new industry.
Yes, if there is a serious accident in the early days of the industry it will be a tough blow. Though parachuting, mountain climbing, scuba diving, and other adventure endeavors result in a significant number of deaths every year, the spotlight on spaceflight makes it more susceptible to suffocating regulation if an early accident occurs. (If the first accident happens five years into commercial operations, it will probably be a back page item.) I’ll note that the FAA is already deeply involved in the test permit and operational licensing of commercial spaceflight vehicles.
The space tourism projects use fully reusable vehicles that can be test flown many times before any paying passenger takes a seat in one. This obviously doesn’t guarantee that there will be no accident but it does mean that the sort of transportation system used differs fundamentally from the expendable rocket approach that defines spaceflight to most people.
As far as the size of the space tourism market is concerned, we won’t have to speculate much longer. Early signs are quite good. Virgin Galactic, for example, has already sold out its flights for the first couple of years. It’s true that space tourism doesn’t involved simply getting people from point A to B as with airlines. However, tourism worldwide is a multi-trillion dollar industry and much of it involves obtaining an “experience” rather than achieving a practical task. I think many people will find spaceflight more exciting and attractive than any of the adventure tourism experiences available today, and these are very popular and lucrative.
Finally, I will express some disappointment that you and too many other space historians and aerospace analysts prefer to sit back and make grand judgments and condemnations of what is happening in NewSpace rather than actually going out and observing directly what is happening. Your comments seem based mostly on the occasional article in the popular press that you happen to come across. Have you, for example, ever visited a NewSpace company, or gone to an X PRIZE Cup event, or attended a conference sponsored by an organization like the Space Access Society or Space Frontier Foundation? All of the issues you raise have been discussed ad infinitum for over a decade at such meetings. There is a SFF meeting in July in DC. Why not come and offer up your questions and doubts on NewSpace activities? People there love to discuss and argue about these topics. I think you will find it an informative and enjoyable experience.
Dear Mr Portree
I can appreciate your comments on this new industry. Because it is so new and untested, it is natural to be sceptical. But let us look at the facts:
- At least 100 people have paid up to $200,000 to take a sub-orbital spaceflight.
- Successful (not retired) business people have invested not only many hundreds of millions of dollars, but have staked their company’s reputation on it.
- Space Agencies agree that the most lucrative use of Space is Space Tourism, but have no agenda to carry it out since it is not in the interests of any agency.
- Market research shows people percieve spaceflight to be less risky than other adventure tourism activities - such as climbing.
- Market research shows that the potential effects of disorientation caused by the spaceflight would not affect their decision to fly.
The conclusion is that there are people who want to go into space and their are companies who can provide that service. This is the foundation of a very successful industry.
David:
You say, “Barnstorming eventually died out as an industry as the novelty wore off.” True, but not mainly because it was around a long time. Again, as others have pointed out scuba, sky diving, etc are still popular after generations. The reason why barnstorming died was not the length of time it existed, but the fact that safe commercial aviation became common place for the average guy and there was no more “gee whiz” reaction and/or sense of constant danger associated with the airplane. The same thing will happen to suborbital flights as a joyride when economical suborbital passenger and package delivery between any two points on the globe (with travel times of just a couple of hours) occurs. Richard Branson has already stated that such point-to-point commercial travel is one of his primary goals. He is a man who does not just put out a “colorful brochure” as did the ’80s company to which you referred. He puts his money where his mouth is.
David,
I think that we need to define what Newspace is, and I’d be glad for your input on this definition.
There’s no widely held definition of NewSpace, as others have noted. I’ve tended to use the term personally to include any entrepreneurial firm in the space transportation, spacecraft, space applications, or related fields that are doing something outside the current paradigm for space companies: going after new markets, utilizing new technologies, etc. A vague definition, I know. The Space Frontier Foundation, which can claim credit, I believe, for coining the term, counts 81 NewSpace companies and organizations that are quite diverse.
Is SPACEHAB (yes, they really do spell their name in all caps) a NewSpace company? Prior to this year I would have said no, since they were primarily a NASA contractor, providing modules and related services for Shuttle/ISS. With the shuttle program winding down, though, they’re reinventing the company to focus on supporting commercial utilization of the ISS: a new (and untried and risky, to be certain) market, making the company less like a government contractor and more like its newer entrepreneurial brethren.
Is Sea Launch a NewSpace company? SeaLaunch is an unusual, perhaps unique, venture. Given its multinational nature, it has to rely exclusively on commercial customers (although I’m sure they wouldn’t mind selling launches to the US government). But, they’re focusing on a relatively mature market: the launch of commercial GEO communications satellites. So, a borderline case, but if you consider then NewSpace, you probably have to count ILS and even Arianespace as NewSpace as well, which to many would look odd.
’m of two minds re: the commercial ISS resupply thing. I don’t think that it’s actually necessary, and I’d prefer it if more established companies were doing the job.
Well, NASA thinks some sort of resupply option is needed once the shuttle is retired in 2010, and it’s difficult for existing and planned options (Progress, ATV, HTV) to fill the gap. In a presentation last month Bill Gerstenmaier said there’s at least a 48.8 tonne shortfall in resupply between FY2010 and 2015 that needs to be filled. “More established” companies were free to bid on COTS, and can bid again when the actual procurement of services follows in a few years.
Jeff and others have covered these points well. However, I would add that the most unrealistic thing the L-5 movement did was use NASA’s schedule and cost projections for the Space Shuttle as a reliable basis for planning. “L-5 in ‘95″ was a reasonable projection if you believed NASA’s flight rate and cost projections circa 1975!
In contrast, the healthy skepticism of the New Space movement toward current NASA projections (The Ares being the latest example…) is a sign of their realism.
Bigelow has said that they would eventually serve as hotels; he is, after all, a hotelier.
Here’s what Robert Bigelow himself had to say on the issue in April at the National Space Symposium, based on (self-serving reference alert!) an article I wrote:
Bigelow has said he would be happy to lease a module to a company planning a space hotel (he specifically mentioned Virgin Galactic in one talk), but he’s not interested in running orbital hotels himself.
I think that he has come to recognize that the likelihood that NewSpace companies can deliver customers to his orbiting modules is small.
Yet he has been in discussions with a number of companies about procuring flight services; he signed an LOI with Rocketplane Kistler earlier this year about purchasing flights when/if RpK starting flying its K-1 vehicle commercially.
I’ve noted a general climb down in the NewSpace movement over the years; it’s much less giddy than it once was.
I don’t know if the level of giddiness has gone down in the last few years. If it has, it may be because the giddiness has been replaced with more focused attention not just on the technology, but on the business aspects. They may not be giddy, but many of them are optimistic about their near-term prospects.
People dismissed air travel (and train travel) in similarly disparaging terms when these new modes of transportation - to new destinations - were just emerging. This historian clearly hasn’t read very much history. You can bury your head back in the sand now, David.
I think we’ve already established that aviation history doesn’t have much to do with NewSpace, Keith. Please take a moment to read the interesting and useful posts others have taken time to write. For now, thanks for illustrating the disdain with which people who critique NewSpace are not infrequently greeted.
In reading over these replies, I’m struck by the number of “promises” involved. For example, Jeff cites an letter of intent between Kistler and Bigelow. Neither has actually delivered on the service he promises to offer. To me, that makes this agreement between them less than impressive.
That said, I was impressed with Genesis 1. Genesis 1 is based on NASA’s old Transhab, which fell afoul of politics and federal regs in 2000. Has NASA shown any interest in using Genesis 1 as Transhab was intended to be used - as a crew module for ISS and missions to L points and Mars?
I’m also struck by how little money is being spent on all this. A billion dollars - or even $2 billion - spread over 81 companies? That’s not really that much investment.
I have in fact spoken with some NewSpace people. The guys at Liftport regaled me with news on their plans. They were very friendly and helpful, and seemed quite enthusiastic and innovative. We gave them some attention here at Earth & Sky; I did a script on the principles behind the space elevator for Earth & Sky radio. Six months later, they closed down. Perhaps they are a bad example, however.
How much is enthusiasm for NewSpace based on discouragement over NASA’s seeming lack of progress? When I spoke with people about this a decade ago, that seemed to be what it was all about.
How much profit has NewSpace generated to date?
Part of my caution about NewSpace is based on my belief that it threatens to distract from serious space exploration. It could reinforce in people the notion that space is supposed to generate tangible, direct, monetary profits, when in fact it can’t really do that. I don’t want people to come to believe that, if space exploration doesn’t make money, then it’s not worth doing.
I’ve talked with NewSpace people who say exactly that. Not top-level investors, but people on the periphery, like Keith. One person with whom I discussed all this told me that life on Mars didn’t matter unless it could generate profits. He mentioned selling martian life as food on Earth.
You pick the quotes that substantiate your point of view and then try and hoist it up as being fact. Anything to the contrary (facts, history etc.) is simply ignored. As for the brevity of my comments - why should I waste time on lots of words when you have already decided to ignore them?
What is rather hilarious is your preoccupation as to what NASA thinks about this. Who cares? This is non-NASA money and non-NASA activities.
Keith, you’re not contributing to this discussion. This is not about me, or you, it’s about NewSpace. If you have something substantive to contribute to this discussion, as others have done, please do. Please read the other comments to get a sense of what is substantive and useful.
As Jeff’s comments made clear, some NewSpace people see NASA as a potential partner. Others don’t see it as anything special. NASA is, I hope you realize, a potential customer for NewSpace companies.
But I didn’t actually say that NASA should be a customer for NewSpace companies. Read my initial blog posting. On the contrary, I said that I thought that NASA should buy services from proven companies, not start-ups. That’s a blanket statement; some NewSpace companies may have credentials that make them worth a try. In general, though, I don’t think it’s reasonable for government agencies to gamble taxpayers’ dollars outside of special programs that aim to foster new technologies and the like.
Tsk tsk David YOU are the one who needs to read the comments! Breaking news -
Planned jet to take tourists into space, AP
http://www.al.com/newsflash/international/index.ssf?/base/international-23/118176276917200.xml&storylist=international
“European aerospace company EADS on Wednesday unveiled a model of a jet designed to take tourists into space, rocketing paying passengers to weightlessness at more than 62 miles above the Earth.EADS Astrium said it hoped the space jet — which looks much like a conventional aircraft although it is outfitted with rocket engines — will be operational by next year, with the first flight scheduled for 2012. Tickets are expected to cost $199,000-$265,000, said the company, which displayed a full-scale model in Paris.”
How can this be David? Yet another company using non-NASA, private capital for one of those pointless space tourism ventures you are so dismissive of! Gee, everyone (except you) must really be stupid to throw money at these things, eh?
That’s a useful enough contribution, Keith, that I’ll excuse your pre-teen tone. I got that about 10 minutes ago, but hadn’t had time to do anything with it. You saved me the trouble.
Would you call this NewSpace? EADS has been around for a while. They’re an established company. It’s as if Boeing or Lockmart had unveiled a spaceliner model . It might not lead to anything - not every unveiled model does - but it’s a very interesting development anyway.
I wonder - might the established companies in the U.S. get into the market now? If so, then that really is something to get excited about.
On the other hand, if you support NewSpace, then the big guys getting into the mix can’t be welcome news. They can invest real money and absorb more setbacks.
Could this be the real intent of this announcement? That is, to kill the upstarts by stealing away potential investors? I’m willing to accept that EADS is sincere, but in the big real world things are not always as they seem.
Incidentally, we’ve received two interesting pingbacks to this post. They are listed at the bottom of this page. I encourage everyone to go have a look. I think that the Athonares pingback makes a good point when it notes that spaceflight is not like aviation because it offers something that has never been offered before. It’s not just a new way of going old places faster - it’s a way of going to a new place, with its own potential benefits.
David you’ve clearly been caught making a big error and you are now splitting hairs and dodging the issue when confronted with facts.
David you’ve clearly been caught making a big error and you are now splitting hairs and dodging the issue when confronted with facts.
David now bans people who take issue with his claims. Oh well.
(Sigh) David doesn’t handle opinions that differ from his own very well …
Do you have an opinion relevant to the discussion (which is about NewSpace) that you’d like to contribute, Banned from Posting? I’m open to any and all opinions relevant to the matter at hand. I can’t guarantee that I’ll agree with all of them, however. If that constitutes “not handling opinions that differ from my own very well,” I’m guilty as charged.
> I don’t think that Everest is a good metaphor for space tourism. For one thing, it’s rather cheaper to climb Everest.
Actually, climbing Everest is at least in the same order of magnitude cost-wise:
http://www.nolimitsclimbing.com/survival.htm
Climbing Everest is costly — not just in terms of life. The monetary cost of climbing Everest is usually quoted at $65,000. But when National Geographic asked Eric Simonson, the co-owner of International Mountain Guides, about hidden costs, he came up with a price tag of more than $200,000. Simonson, who has reached the top seven times himself, said the costs range from $25,000 per person in permits and fees to $8,000 for yaks. The cost did not even include individual climbing equipment.
David, you’d have more credibility if you didn’t censor comments that disagree with you. You are obviously capable of engaging the contrary comments, since you have (though not necessarily convincingly). It doesn’t help your cause to censor (i.e., delete) them.
Rand:
I have deleted no postings in this discussion. In the past I’ve deleted obvious spam - ads for medications, for example - but no such comments have arrived so far. Can you clarify?
With all due respect, it might be best to do a little research before making such skeptical statements about the NewSpace movement.
The largest amount of your skepticism seemed to be directed at Bigelow. I can see being skeptical about companies that have produced no more than neat illustrations and snazzy animations, but Bigelow’s the one who has at least gotten something in orbit.
Your arguments stem from two falsehoods: That Bigelow is in the space tourism business and is receiving taxpayer dollars.
Bigelow himself has said emphatically that he isn’t in the space hotel business. He may have built up his fortune through hotels, but that doesn’t mean he’s going into the space hotel business. ITT once owned the Sheraton hotels, but I don’t think many thought that when ITT systems were used on the GPS satellite, the satellites would be used to track who was stealing towels from Sheraton rooms.
In addition, Bigelow has managed to put one module in space and will do more without a single taxpayer dollar. He doesn’t get any money from NASA… If anything, he’s given money to NASA after purchasing their Transhab concept.
There is a decent new online interview where you can see Bigelow say this for himself: http://www.space.com/spacenews/spacenewstv/index.php?video_id=060607SNTV_Bigelow_pt1
Skepticism is a good thing, but it needs to be based on facts. You can’t be skeptical about something based on something that is not true.
Mankind will not have failed if it tried to conquer space and didn’t succeed. It will have failed if it didn’t try.
Neil:
I had heard lower figures; more like that $65K you mention. But isn’t even $200K less than space tourists are likely to have to pay for any but the shortest dip into space? Me, I’d want at least a week in orbit, just in case I spent the first week being sick every time I turned my head or saw Earth at an unexpected place outside the window. That will certainly cost me more than $200K.
There’s another aspect to this we haven’t touched upon too much. Space tourism is supposed to lead to more ambitious private spaceflight. Moon mines and such. The tourism thing is just the thin edge of the wedge. Or do I have that wrong?
John:
I hadn’t been thinking of Bigelow in particular. If anyone, I was thinking of Rutan, who has been vocal in his criticisms of NASA.
Bigelow didn’t put the module in space; the Russians did. His company built the module based on a NASA design. This is not all that amazing, really; lots of people have built satellites on their own dime and had governments launch them. Amateur radio fans, for example. I think this launch generates excitement among some folks because of what it stands for, more than what it is.
Does Genesis 1 say anything about whether Bigelow can make a profit by selling these modules? I don’t know. With all due respect, neither do you. The Genesis 1 flight certainly seems to have generated a lot of excitement about the possibilities. I think, however, that it’s merely acknowledging reality to say that it’s too early to see NewSpace as the wave of the future. A lot of things can happen to prevent it from being so; from where I sit, it’s far from a done deal. I suppose that’s my overriding point.
Re: Rand’s posting at 7:11pm on 13 Jun.
There are two posts of yours, one at 4:12 and one at 4:53, which seem to answer a posting made by someone named Keith. Where did the posts you’re responding to go? Based on your responses, you feel that they aren’t contributing to the discussion. The other entry from ‘banned from posting’ (Keith?) does not appear to be spam-related.
Incidentally, I keep thinking of Burt Rutan’s comments of a year or so ago, in which he declared (I paraphrase here) that NASA should abandon its plans to go back to the moon and subsidize start-up private space companies (like his) instead.
Could you give us a citation on that, because that sounds very uncharacteristic of him. Most of the time he advocates that NASA should spend their money on technology development and simply procure launch services as needed commercially.
Bigelow didn’t put the module in space; the Russians did. His company built the module based on a NASA design.
That’s a rather big accusation to be making. I assume you have some evidence to offer that Bigelow’s module is substantially of NASA design? Or is also just bullshit like the space hotel thing?
David, I can’t speak to two deleted posts, because I don’t reload your page every few seconds, but I saw an earlier post by Keith Cowing that is no longer posted, despite the fact that you seem to be responding to it. I can only conclude that you a) have a blog posting system that intermittently and randomly deletes posts that you haven’t seen, or b) that you have problems recollecting which posts you’ve deleted, or 3) you consider critiques by Keith Cowing spam, or 4)…well, for the sake of civility, let’s not go there.
Frankly, I’m a little flabbergasted (if I were a Brit, I’d be gobsmacked).
I’m not sure why those postings went away; we do have a spamblocker set up, and it does occasionally catch legitimate posts. I hadn’t noticed that Keith’s comments didn’t post. Let me check into it.
Why would I reply to postings I deleted? Your posting is inflammatory. But I won’t delete it.
As for the “bull—-” post, I’m not sure whether I should keep that or not. Foul language has no place here.
That Bigelow’s Genesis 1 is based on NASA’s Transhab is common knowledge. Bill Schneider, who led the engineering directorate at Johnson Space Center, spearheaded Transhab development, then moved over to Bigelow as a consultant. I’ve been in touch with him about Transhab and some of the Mars plans based on it.
I’m currently seeking a link to the Rutan comments I mentioned; they created quite a stir a year or so ago, so I’m surprised that no one has responded to my earlier comment seeking the citation.
Oh, where to begin. I detect a great deal of hostility towards non-national (i.e. non-NASA) efforts, especially private initiative ones like the L5ers. This is rather discouraging, as it clearly biases Mr. Portree against the agenda of NewSpacers (note the spelling, it’s one of those post-modern i-this, e-that mash-up words).
Trying to divine Mr. Portree’s overall agenda, I checked the titles of recent posts and topic titles. I see a preponderance of astronomy-related stuff, but the space topic does have a fair mix of human spaceflight stuff, so I’ll take a stab at things.
I must disagree with Mr. Portree’s first goal, that of an automated probe to a nearby star. While nice in concept, it doesn’t really do a whole lot in getting us off of this planet and is really little more than an expensive exercise in intellectual curiosity. And I also disagree with his first premise, that the fooforaw surrounding NewSpace will soon fade. If anything, it is likely to grow as more and more people realize that the goal of bringing the realm of cislunar and Lunar space even more fully into Earth’s economic sphere, to tap energy and material resources, as well as unique laboratory environments for investigations in biomedical research and materials science development, is one that is doable.
This is a goal worthy of the American spirit, to develop this new frontier in ways that improve our lot here on Earth for the benefit of all humanity. Effectively unlimited (from our current perspective) resources in the asteroids, effectively unlimited power in the Sun. This cannot be done with robots. It can be done with humans and their tools. (one of which is robots)
There are many paths to these ends. Commercial orbital flights from the Russians seems to be okay, but commercial suborbital flights in the U.S. will, quite literally crash and burn. Whether this measures Mr. Portree’s esteem of the capability of American merchants, or reflects a bias towards a close state/corporate structure (which he derides in U.S. corporates), or perhaps reflects a belief that a suborbital flight is not as noble as an orbital trip, and therefore ignoble in its attempt, it is not clear.
A lot of folks in the NewSpace field don’t want NASA out of the way. They just don’t want NASA to get in the way. An example - I put up a satellite in a halo orbit at EML-1 which slowly collects data on NEOs, especially Sunward, and then sell that data to interested parties around the world.
Two overriding risks:
a) some egghead posts his subscription data online. I can address this risk.
b) NASA decides to put up their own satellite and give away the information. This is illegal under current law, but when has that ever stopped NASA? And it’s not like I have infinite capital to sue them, either.
So the project doesn’t get done, and everyone is poorer, information wise. By contrast, NewSpace is proceeding in many ways as if NASA doesn’t exist (except as a knowledge pool to draw from). There are huge pools of liquidity sloshing around the world looking for a place to settle. As NewSpace increases its achievements with industry built hardware, the capital will increasingly flow its way.
NewSpace is an opportunity that this nation badly needs right now, and space is one arena where this nation still has something of a commercial competitive advantage, as recognized by John Marburger of OSTP, and many others. More and more of us ‘non-space’ types (I’m a banker, personally) are seeing these unique opportunities and starting to put money there. I have my Masten SpaceCan, do you?
You’ll now find all of Keith’s postings in all their sophmoric glory. Our software tagged his posts as spam; not sure yet what criteria was used. As I said earlier, I only block ads for medicines and the like; I just blocked one for Costa Rica real estate.
Now that that matter is dealt with, can we have a sensible discussion? I’ve raised a number of important questions, and for my trouble I’ve been called a liar by ignorant people. This is not too surprising; I referred to the reception dissenters receive in this latest space religion. As I mentioned, it’s not too different from the reception folks who doubted “L5 in 1995″ received back in the 1970s and 1980s.
Early on, we received some useful, sensible posts by people who something useful to say - can we get back to that?
Please review my comments - if you can shed some light on the questions I’ve raised, then I’d be grateful. Even if you can’t, your opinion is worthwhile. But please keep it civil, don’t use foul language, and think a bit before you post.
Why would I reply to postings I deleted?
I don’t have psychic powers, David. All I know is that I saw Keith’s post, and I saw (and still see) your reply to it, but his is no longer there. What’s your explanation for this strange phenomenon?
Your posting is inflammatory. But I won’t delete it.
Well, isn’t that nice.
Thanks.
I guess.
Should I take a screen shot just in case?
Ken:
Rather than trying to “divine my agenda,” why don’t you have a look at my original post and my comments? They pretty much sum it up.
I don’t have an agenda, lest it be to educate people about spaceflight. And, my goodness, people obviously need it.
The difficulty with relying on NewsPace for important services is - and I’ve said it several times here already - NeWspace is not proven.
Russian space tourism is based on 40-year-old technology. It’s an extension of the “third seat” policy they’ve used since the 1970s. Nothing special about it, except now they use it to generate cash. It works because Soyuz has been around for 40 years. NewSpace doesn’t have that advantage.
NewspaCe is not that different from the old L5 craze. Sure, there are companies now, and some of them are legitimate companies, and some have some money. But behind both is an ideology that doesn’t take into account reality as we know it. That ideology is full of catch-phrases about opportunity and leadership and frontiers. It doesn’t acknowledge that space is hard and that we don’t even know if people can live out there.
The assumption in NewspacE is that private enterprise can do space better than NASA can. It’s part of the ideology. But private enterprise has not demonstrated this. Period.
Could it be that NASA is really doing a great job, and that things go wrong sometimes because space is hard? (That and the fact that NASA has a small budget, given its high profile and the tasks it is called upon to implement.)
NewSpace people seem to think that private enterprise can do anything it wants; the fact is, it operates under even more strictures than government. It has to turn a profit.
I don’t have a problem with people spending their money on NEwspace or anything else. It’s their money. But I do have a problem with Newspace people who deride NASA. NASA explores space; NewSpace doesn’t. Exploration is what space is about; it’s the only thing beyond LEO that we know works.
I suppose that if I have any ideology, it’s the ideology of exploration. I personal don’t believe that space is El Dorado. We won’t find the Seven Cities of Cibola or the Fountain of Youth in space. I don’t have much use for the conquistador model of space; I don’t think it acknowledges the realities of space, as I’ve said. I adhere to the Charles Darwin model. We explore, we learn new things, they reshape our world.
Here’s the link to the Bigelow Aerospace website:
http://www.bigelowaerospace.com/
Bigelow itself tells the media that it is working toward eventual space hotels. A simple Google search reveals many, many instances of this, often in articles by highly credible, highly professional space writers. Why this should be a problem for some of the people posting comments here mystifies me. What’s wrong with space hotels?
I sometimes wonder if there wouldn’t be a market for space hospitals. That was one of the space applications folks used to tout, but I haven’t seen it mentioned for a while. It went the way of a whole lot of other applications, I guess - like protein crystal growth. Of course, space is tough on the human body, so maybe any cures space could offer would be worse than the disease.
Incidentally, Bigelow’s front-page claim that it “is the only private company with a spacecraft currently in orbit, the Genesis I” is utterly false. There are lots of private satellites in orbit, both U.S. and foreign. What about Iridium (which went bankrupt - must’ve been NASA’s fault). As I wrote before, launching Genesis 1 is cool, but it’s not that different from a lot of other private payloads launched on government rockets. Looking over the website, I sense a great deal of hype.
> assuming any tourist spacecraft are built, one will fail early on and kill its wealthy passengers.
> If it becomes recognized that there is a high probability that people will die, then few will want to make the trip.
First of all, one failure does not equate to a “high probability of failure.” You need to review your high school statistics.
Second, you are making the classic mistake of assuming everyone thinks the same way you do. If you look around, you’ll find lots of people who participate in activities where they have a high probability of injury or death. Two hundred Americans are killed by horses every year. That doesn’t stop people from riding horses. NASA has never had amy shortage of astronaut applicants. You might not be willing to take risks to go into space, but there are obviously lots of people who are.
> Newspace people like to use the early days of aviation as an analogy,
> but it doesn’t make sense. Aviation worked because it provided a better
> way of accomplishing something people wanted done; that is, traveling
> quickly to and from cities and countries where they had business.
Have you read aviation history? Aviation did not start out carrying businessmen to and from cities. It began as sport aviation, then became a military technology, then a means of carrying mail, and then, finally, a way for businessmen to travel between cities.
> NASA is not in their way; the realities of spaceflight and economics are.
Please state what laws of “economics” you think are in the way.
The late Dr. Max Hunter used to say that anyone who thought cheap access to space was impossible either didn’t understand the rocket equation or didn’t know how much rocket propellant cost.
> the money it spends on scientific exploration. Exploration is what space is all about.
If you look up “exploration” in the dictionary, its definition is not limited to science — or to government agencies. Pete Conrad said, “Bouncing around on the Moon was a blast. Everyone should go!”
Do you think the NACA was wrong to promote the growth of American aviation in the 1930’s?
Should they have spent all their money sending a few NACA aeronauts on expensive junkets to explore Hawaii and Tahiti?
If exploration is a good thing, what’s wrong with helping to make it possible for large numbers of Americans to explore space — as the NACA helped make it possible for large numbers of Americans to fly?
You sneer at private enterprise as “hobby clubs” — then you tell us space should be nothing more than an expensive hobby for government scientists?
In that case, David, why should private enterprise subsidize that hobby? (You do know where taxes come from, right?) I see you’ve written a book on NASA’s many plans to send (very, very few) humans to Mars (at very great expensive.) That certainly qualifies as an expensive hobby.
Do you think a few government employees deserve multibillion-dollar subsidies for junkets to Mars, while the taxpayers get nothing but the opportunity to pick up the check? Please explain why.
>> Incidentally, I keep thinking of Burt Rutan’s comments of a year or so ago, in which he declared (I paraphrase here) that NASA should abandon its plans to
>> go back to the moon and subsidize start-up private space companies (like his) instead.
> Could you give us a citation on that, because that sounds very uncharacteristic of him
There’s a kernel of truth in David’s statement, Christine, but only a kernel.
What Burt really said was that NASA should abandon its plans to go back to the Moon *and go someplace it hadn’t been before* — like Mars.
How David torques that around to “subsidize start-up private space companies” is a mystery.
One possibility — NASA Ames is working with Virgin Galactic to study the possibility of using Burt’s SpaceShip Two to train astronauts. Maybe that’s what got David’s knickers in a twist. (Heaven forbid NASA should buy commercial services at the market rate to train their astronauts before they fly off to Mars!
In regard to your “bullshit” comment — if David is that thin-skinned, I hope he doesn’t spend any time around JSC. Anyone in Texas knows “bullshit” isn’t foul language, it’s a technical term. And if he ever meets any ex-military pilot astronauts, he’ll probably suffer an attack of apoplexy.
My, this post has certainly generated a lot of interest.
“It doesn’t acknowledge that space is hard and that we don’t even know if people can live out there.”
Space is hard. However, it is only rocket science. The really tough part about rocket science has already been figured out 45 years ago by guys with slide rules. The equations are all well known. The characteristics of the exosphere are pretty much mapped out. Humanity has decades of experience building and launching stuff into orbit.
What has been missing for the last several decades, however, are the lessons learned a century ago by Henry Ford; rockets today are basically built the same way they were 40 years ago, handcrafted in small quantities, rather than being churned out on large assembly lines. Rocket engines are really not any more complex than jet engines, and there is no reason why producing them should cost orders of magnitude more, other than the small quantities in production.
We do know that people can live in low Earth orbit for months at a time. As for further out, well, let’s find out. We know what some of the potential problems are - in particular the hazard of radiation outside of Earth’s magnetic field. Unfortunately for the last several decades NASA *hasn’t* been doing that exploration, contenting themselves with low Earth orbit.
“NASA explores space; NewSpace doesn’t. Exploration is what space is about; it’s the only thing beyond LEO that we know works.”
I think that this is at the core of the disagreement you are having with some of the NewSpace people. This statement basically says that outer space belongs to NASA, and that the only conceivable purpose to go out there is exploration for exploration’s sake.
Well, exploration for exploration’s sake is fine, but if that is *all* there is, then there is no purpose in doing the exploration in the first place. Lewis and Clark’s expedition would have been utterly meaningless if it wasn’t followed up by hordes of people. Exploration is done to provide a map for others to follow, and if there are no others following then one might as well have not made the map at all.
And, who says that NASA has to do all of it? Why can’t NASA put out a contract for, say, a 1-meter resolution map of the moon? Then, rather than having to design and build and launch and operate all the necessary hardware, NASA could simply purchase the data as it becomes available. If NASA is to be doing the stuff on the outer edge of the envelope, then fine, but for stuff that is well within that edge they could be contracting for services, as in the COTS program.
You say that you adhere to the Charles Darwin model. Well, isn’t a key part of that model competition between multiple strategies? That’s what NewSpace represents, dozens (for now) of companies each trying out their own business model, each trying to find and fill a niche in the economic ecosystem outside the earth’s atmosphere. In contrast, NASA is more like a Galapagos turtle, cut off from the rest of the world and evolving in isolation - and, as the top of the food chain in that isolated ecosystem, its evolution is very slow indeed. It no longer needs to compete and adapt, so it doesn’t.
There are 81 companies listed on that Space Frontier website to which Jeff Foust linked, and most of them are going to fail. It isn’t because they are on some Quixotic quest, but rather simply the nature of business: most new businesses fail. We are at a point now, however, where more new space businesses are starting up faster than the existing ones fail. And, some of them will succeed. They are filling up every conceivable niche in the space economy. Only a fraction of them are concentrating on achieving manned orbital spaceflight; instead, some are concentrating on launching CubeSats, others on providing test facilities for other space companies, others on developing rocket engines, others are working on new spacesuits, others are working on robotics, some are working on completely-enclosed life support systems, and on and on and on.
——————
As an aside, I maintain the Space Blogroll, a list of all the space-/astronomy-/rocketry-related blogs that I can find. I just added your blog to the blogroll; including yours there are now 186 blogs on the blogroll. If you would like to add the Space Blogroll to your sidebar, you can find the necessary code for that here. If you don’t want to add the space blogroll, that’s ok too, you’re on the blogroll regardless.
I also run the Space Feeds aggregator, which brings together the 20 most recent space blog posts from over 120 blogs (including this one), the 20 most recent news stories from three dozen space news sites, astronomy picture of the day, NASA TV, astronomy podcasts, and loads of space-related links. You might find it a useful tool.
“David, you’d have more credibility if you didn’t censor comments that disagree with you.”
Uh, Rand, haven’t you blocked posters from your website whom you disagree with? I’ve noticed that conservative posts on your blog that include scat references (usually from Mr. Puckett) get no response from you, but you’ve banned at least two people from posting on your blog because, as you say, they’re annoying and offensive.
Is this a pot/kettle situation?
David,
you said something very telling. You said,
“Part of my caution about NewSpace is based on my belief that it threatens to distract from serious space exploration. It could reinforce in people the notion that space is supposed to generate tangible, direct, monetary profits, when in fact it can’t really do that. I don’t want people to come to believe that, if space exploration doesn’t make money, then it’s not worth doing. ”
I fully understand that. However, I’d argue 2 things. First, as Ed Wright was effectively saying, exploration is not the same thing as science. It is one form of exploration. Much like the pongsats that JP aerospace does for school kids - many send up marshmellows to see what happens to them when you expose them to the rigors of high altitude flight - would this really be characterized true scientific discovery? Something similiar is what Masten is going to do with their SodaSats.
But more fundementally then that, what NewSpace is focused on isn’t exploration - its colonization. Thats why the money making part is so important - whether we like capitalism or not, right now, it is the bedrock that is our global society. Adam Smith (or rather, the concepts he discovered) isn’t going to die anytime soon, and hoping that we can overcome the drive towards “It has to make money” within society before we can colonize space means we will be stuck on earth for a long time to come. And thats the key point - the complaint that NewSpace (and people who support NewSpace) has against Nasa isn’t whether or not it should subsidize NewSpace - its whether or not it should be focused on colonization, or whether it should be focused on scientific exploration. Because the current mis-mash that Nasa is right now really isn’t serving anyones interests. The USA needs to decide on whether it wants Nasa in the equivelent of a national lab, a true national lab, with no regaurds to a true extention of humanity in space, or whether it is to facilitate the expansion of humanity into space. Because the a decision for the later means that there will be risks, and more importantly, there will be failures - I don’t know the exact number, but how many new businesses fail in the first year? In the first 5 years? There really isn’t any way to get around that being replicated in space colonization, since commerce is large part of the underpinnings of society. So yes, there would be quite a few things that are a gamble. Scientific study works differenetly - you don’t want those kinds of failures, and infact, as a rule, you really don’t want people doing unnecassarily duplication of effort (which is quite common in business).
So that decision really has to be made, and the sooner we make it, the happier everyone will be. For me, my vote is colonization.
Despite David’s claims I am still unable to post here - under my own name or from my (main) home IP - and it is not cookies on my browswer or a cache that needs clearing … how curious that only I am affected, David
“Incidentally, Bigelow’s front-page claim that it “is the only private company with a spacecraft currently in orbit, the Genesis I” is utterly false. There are lots of private satellites in orbit, both U.S. and foreign. What about Iridium(?)”
Wasn’t Iridium publically traded? How many satellites are owned by private companies versus publically traded one? Does anyone know? I’m not saying Bigelow isn’t stretching the truth, I just am offering a possible explanation for the statement.
Also, while I haven’t been swayed by many of Mr. Portree’s arguments, I am glad he is offering a skeptics perspective. We need more of that. I suspect that there is a lot of “groupthink and satisficing” in this field.
“Despite David’s claims I am still unable to post here - under my own name or from my (main)”
I tried posting on NASAWatch. There doesn’t seem to be a posting function. Or am I merely missing the spot where readers can post on NASAWatch? Where can I find it?
These two quotes from John Jackson above are completly untrue:
“Your arguments stem from two falsehoods: That Bigelow is in the space tourism business and is receiving taxpayer dollars.”
“In addition, Bigelow has managed to put one module in space and will do more without a single taxpayer dollar. He doesn’t get any money from NASA… If anything, he’s given money to NASA after purchasing their Transhab concept.”
Bigelow has received lots of NASA money…i.e. tax payer money and NASA engineering support since he bopught the NASA Transhab patent rights to use the inflatable technology.
Bigelow had NASA IPA’s (Inter Personel Agreements) for 4 people, the former NASA Transhab engineers…and are still civil servants not to mention he has had NASA engineering support since he bought those patent rights. Bgelow was paying half their salary…NASA was paying the other half per the IPA. In addition NASA/JSC engineering services were used on a as needed basis via the IPA for other NASA resources. That has been going on for more than 5 years.
The Genesis core structure was initially designed by NASA engineers as is the Genesis II core structure.
And as mentioned by you David P…..Bigelow launched on a Russian Denpr and really did nothing more than launch a really simple payload/satellite.
In addition Bigelow has many times in the past talked about his ’space hotel’….only this past year has he been ‘promoting’ the Bigelow inflatable destination as being a ‘for’ rent destination to be used by some entity. Anyone who has followed or knows Bigelow knows he changes his mind about what he is doing….or going to do…or how much it is going to cost…etc…each year. This is the same guy who has in the past had plans to build a “100 person moon crusier” which is why he originally started Bigelow Aerospace with his quoted mantra of “All I need to build anything is a construction manager…an accountant and a few lawyers…” (actually Bigelow will need a lot more than that….like a short education in physics…and space flight):
http://www.space.com/sciencefiction/bigelow_tourism.html
http://spacefellowship.com/News/?p=1035
And with that ‘mantra’ is why the 54 plus people he had at his Bigelow Houston facility have all either quit or been fired….most have quit….and these were the people who have actual human spaceflight experience…which is why Bigelow put a facility in Houston near NASA/JSC.
If you look at Bigelow’s webpage with a picture of the Houston facility people….they are all gone with the exception of the security guards.
And Bigelow can’t get anyone to work in his Houston facility…his reputation proceeds him.
It’s pretty simple to fly…simple satellites…to do human spaceflight….only 3 countries, Russia, USA and recently China have done it and at an expense of billions of dollars.
Don’t get me wrong…I am all for commercialization….private space flight….it’s just not as simple as it seems and when you read the media and ’stories’ from these new space ventures and over simplification of these adventures…well…proof is in the puddin. We’ll see.
To continue on the Bigelow ‘business plan’ he announced this year…that he is planning on getting 50 to 60 countries/GOVERNMENTS to be interested in flyinng an astronaut to his ‘destination’ to do science all for his projected cost to each individual of $15 million for 4 weeks is in my mind a joke. First for ~ $20 million you can possibly fly to the ISS for 10 days….where’s that line of ‘countries/governments’ who want to fly for that price tag?
Second….what is a Bigelow ‘astronuat’ goping to do on a Bigelow module?? I hope he/she can carry 4 weeks of experiments/payloads etc in a knap sack since that is about as much room a crewed launch vehicle is going to be able to provide cargo wise.
And even if an un-manned cargo vehicle were to be procurred…the launch rate for both to support a Bigelow ‘destination’ is not only unheard of but would be cost prohibitive….manned launcehs every 4 weeks….cargo launches say every few months…?? better boost that ticket cost a few more million.
Meaning….the ISS Lab and other International Partner’s modules were planned…designed and built over a period of years…for planned experiments/research.
Bigelow’s ‘plan’ to have a generic destination does not seem worth a $15 million expenditure for any country/government to go do what in space??
I think I would stick with the ‘hotel’ scenario.
Other wise those goverment’s might be having a few coups from their own people on why they are spending $15 mil to go fly a person in space to go blow bubbles…
Jason:
1. Gee, I wonder what that email address under “contact us” on NASA Watch is for …
2. My point has to do with Portree denying that he removed my posts (which had suddenly disappeared) and then saying that I am not banned when indeed I have to use a proxy service - and cannot use my own name - in order to cause text to appear on this page.
signed - the banned poster
David;
A couple of ‘points’ to the mix :o)
Bigelow and Space Hotels: Mr. Bigelow himself has stated (VERY firmly, I sense he’s getting a bit agitated over the same articles you’ve seen :o) that Bigelow will NOT be in the ’space-hotel’ business, but that he will gladly lease or sell modules to those who wish to build one.
Bottom line: Bigelow is going to be putting up ‘real-estate’ and leasing it to people who wish to go into space. He figures his ‘main’ business to be leasing module space to those nations that want to accomplish things in space but can’t or don’t have the finances to build their own space program from the ground up.
Is he going to make money on this? No idea, though if you think it through, the idea of space ‘real-estate’ makes a lot of sense in that many of the efforts to find (other) profitable ventures in space have been hampered by lack of destinations or facilities in orbit to meet the needs of various experimenters.
(You mentioned Protein Crystals? At the last SmallSat conference, microgravity experiments were a specific topic. It turns out that in order to grow GOOD Protein Crystals it takes from 48 hours to sometimes up to a week for the proteins to fully crystallize. This is impossible on platforms such as the ISS due to simple things like people moving around in the modules to orbital correction thrusters firing. Individual Bigelow modules in higher orbits could host such experiments as well as providing a ‘basis’ for small scale production facilities.)
If I may point out, the ‘fact’ that the Bigelow modules are based on the NASA TransHab module is well known since Bigelow HIRED most of the NASA people who developed and worked on TransHab before it was line-item canceled by Congress. NASA itself was so ‘impressed’ with the results of the TransHab studies and tests that they planned on adding TransHab modules onto the ISS, even going so far as to plan on adding TransHab material ‘blankets’ to the already existing ‘hard’ modules for debris and radiation protection!
In spite of this enthusiasm, TransHab was specifically singled out for cancellation by Congress. The only ‘reason’ found, (having watched the process) was despite being unable to match ANY of the ‘functions’ of the TransHab module, Boeing told the Congressional committee that they could build ‘normal’ modules for the same price. (This was of course patently untrue because the modules Boeing WAS building were more expensive and this price didn’t/hasn’t changed)
So while ‘tax-payer’ dollars went towards developing the basic TransHab design, the caretakers of those self-same taxpayer dollars basically ‘threw-away’ all that money on a lesser capable and more expensive design. That Bigelow picked up and commercialized something taxpayers paid to R&D, is something to be celebrated in my opinion :o)
On profits from space activities:
While it may sadden some, the plain truth is “Exploration” for the sake of “Exploration” is very rare, and most often only practices by societies and cultures that have large amounts of ‘expendable’ monetary assets.
The majority of ‘exploration’ is done with at least some eye towards “possible” profitability. While the focus of “NewSpace” on commercialization may seem ‘worrisome’ to you, I see it as a sign of maturity from the more ‘heady’ days of the L5 movement.
Space Tourism and beyond:
To ‘caveat’ off that last bit, you say that you’re reminded by “NewSpace” of the ‘previous’ rush from the ‘70s. (“L5 by ‘95” eh? My favorite is/was “Lunar Mine by ‘99” personally :o) you ‘missed’ a step; the Boom/Bust of the ‘90s. The main ‘differences’ that I see between the ‘steps’ from there to here is thus. In the ‘70s, no one really ‘cared’ about the money, or really the technology beyond was what ‘written’ in the ‘bibles’ of the times. Huge amounts of money would be ‘invested’ in building up a huge space infrastructure to build Space Colonies which would ‘profit’ by building huge space Solar Power Satellites which would beam down cheap and plentiful power to all. No one looked at the needed ‘seed’ for this process; the ‘assumption’ was it would just ‘come-along’ that someone would be willing to just ‘do’ it for some reason.
Such didn’t happen so the grandiose plans that all depended on some basically flawed assumptions faded.
Then came the ‘90s and the focus was more on ‘technology’ but with at least a ‘nod’ towards financing. Everyone ‘knew’ the market for cheap access to space was ‘there’ and that all they needed was “THE” vehicle and investors would beat a path to their door. Space flight was seen as ‘simple, easy, and cheap’ being ONLY expensive because “NASA doesn’t know what it’s doing” or “Big Aerospace LIKES it that way” and that all one needed to do was use this technology, or this vehicle design, or this system, and space flight would open up and the money would flow in.
No one seemed to take into account that while NASA and others might not be doing it perfectly right, they weren’t totally stupid either. So financing fell short, companies went out of business, and the grand movement into space slowed to a crawl.
Now we have what many of the ‘in-folks’ like to call “NewSpace,” (as opposed to ‘alt.space’ from which they came :o) where the ‘visions’ are often not as grandiose, the business plans a lot more solid and the enthusiasm somewhat tempered with the need to stay grounded in reality more often.
Will “NewSpace” succeed where the other visions ‘failed’? That remains to be seen.
One thing that is NOT new is all these have had their rather ‘vocal’ disciples that are willing to take the ‘ideas’ of the moment and RUN with them, decrying as a heretic any who dare point out flaws or assumptions that might interfere with ‘the’ great plan.
This is what you seem to be ‘worried’ about in the above post. And while there might be cause for ‘concern’ given some of the more ‘vocal’ members, you must be willing to look beyond, and beneath, the hype to what is really going on.
The ‘hype’ over Space Tourism does tend towards the ‘hype’ end of the scale, but over and over again the actual numbers work out to be rather large. Given the right circumstances. Current prices and ‘plans’ make space tourism look like a game only the rich and bored will be able to play and this MAY even be true, but even THAT segment of the ‘tourism’ market is enough to support such things as trips to the top of Mount Everest, or down the Titanic’s grave. So the ‘idea’ that some people may pay $200,000.00 dollars for a 30 minute rocket ride, (with a week or so of ‘vacation’ uhm, er.. that is… I mean ‘training’ thrown in) shouldn’t seem that far out of a way to spend money.
Currently most of the Space Tourism talk is centered on Suborbital hops, specifically a type I call, Suborbital: Up & Down. (S:U&D) Which probably is going to be most closely ‘associated’ with the Barnstorming of the early aviation period, and like that time period is going to eventually ‘sort’ itself into a market model of getting the most people up to ‘space’ and back down with a minimum of turn-around time for the vehicle as possible.
There is usually a ‘leap’ between that idea for suborbital Space Tourism, to Orbital: Space Tourism (O:ST) based on the same general ‘model’ for ‘tourism. You spend a week at a (resort) Training facility, fly to orbit and spend a week in space, and then return to the (resort) Training facility for another week. Of course this requires someplace in orbit for you to stay. The ISS is ‘nice’ in a government sort of way, but not the ‘preferred’ destination if you have ANY other choice. (Note however that Antarctic and Arctic government and private research stations have hosted ‘tourists’ in a similar fashion as the ISS has been used so THAT model is also valid)
This then is ‘part’ of what Bigelow is looking towards by offering the ‘other’ destination that most O:ST studies have show would increase demand.
SpaceCowboy points out that there is a distinct lack of a ‘waiting’ list to use the ISS even for nations that have astronauts but lack a ‘space program’ and he’s correct, as far as that thought goes. Which in this case in no where near far enough to ‘notice’ that the Russian space program has much broader knowledge of this ‘market’ than the United States and has in fact ‘exploited’ this for their own purposes during the days of the Soviet Union. There is a ‘simple’ explanation for both the lack of commercial or private ‘customers’ for using the ISS: it is ill-equipped to handle more personnel, or even to provide for the basic needs of commercial research. The ISS Lab and other International Partner’s modules are far to ‘generic’ and of limited value beyond certain experiments, not to mention as noted above most microgravity experiments require much higher ‘control’ over the facility they would be in than can be accommodated by the ISS. This is both a ‘fundamental’ flaw in the ISS design, but also its main ‘purpose’ of trying to be everything to everyone who might use it.
But as a last point let me bring up a ‘missed’ step between the transition from Space Ship One and Lunar Vacation Resorts :o)
Between S:U&D and O:ST there lies another ‘market’ that IS also being discussed and planned even though your hard pressed to find it in the more ‘flashy’ articles and websites for “NewSpace.”
Suborbital: Point To Point travel, (S:P2P) is being discussed because THAT has been shown to be a potentially huge market that may even surpass the possible number for space tourism itself. The ‘idea’ is not new, Federal Express did a study in the mid-70s of using a ‘commercial’ version of the Space Shuttle, (using the NASA supplied ‘turn-around-and-operations costs) which showed a Space Shuttle without the solid boosters and flying only suborbital to Asia or Australia could be made profitable. (Very profitable according to the study)
The fact that you can cut the almost 20 hour trip to Australia to less than 2 hours, or possibly deliver a package anywhere on the globe in less than 2 hours has been proven to be quite a popular idea, both for business where time can be money, and for people who would be willing to pay more for a ticket to save time.
But you will note that this idea gets little ‘press’ either from the regular ‘pundits’of neither “NewSpace” nor the regular media Strange but there it is, I suspect though that the ‘reasons’ are varied but boil down to this: The more vocal proponets of “NewSpace” are looking from Space Ship One, to Orbit, then Outward. Continuing the ‘grand’ vision of mankind moving out-bound towards the stars, (I don’t have enough time in my life at the moment to actually sit down and really write about it, but someday you should ask me about why I’m ‘miffed’ that there hasn’t been a “Case For Venus” written :o) and not worrying about the ‘piddly’ stuff like the steps in-between.
Nothing really ‘wrong’ with that either, as long as there are folks who will ‘question’ the ‘wisdom’ of the prophets while encouraging the people to keep going. That way when the ‘movement’ misses that “Next Big Thing” step and the vision starts to fade, someone will be there to make sure our feet still hit the NEXT step towards that goal and though stumbling a bit, the dream doesn’t fall.
Randy Campbell
David, the minefield you stepped into is the *enormous* accumulation of frustration and impatience among space enthusiasts. It’s the legacy of 50 years that began with a 15-year sprint, from Sputnik through Apollo — and then slowed down dramatically. How many times have you heard the plaintive “all we’ve done since 1972 is go around in circles in LEO”..? That attitude only makes sense against a background of high expectations: that the 1957-1972 pace of “firsts” should and could have continued, that Clarke & Kubrick’s “2001″ was straightforward extrapolation: the intervening years should have delivered a frequent Pan Am shuttle to an orbital Hilton, while government programs kept pushing the envelope: a bustling moonbase at Clavius, capability for a manned expedition to the Jovian system, etc. And, as both cause and consequence, space should have remained front and center in public attention the whole time.
If that’s your assumption, and you look around in 2007 and see so much less, then the next step is to look for scapegoats: who derailed the history we were promised? (Start the search on E Street SW.) And the step after that is to designate a savior — let’s call it alt.space or New Space — and transfer all the high expectations to that. This process is aided by another legacy, that of the broad shift from faith in government in when New Spacethe 1950s and early 1960s to disillusionment — and since Reagan’s 1980s, new faith in entrepreneurial capitalism. Space isn’t hard and expensive — we’ve just been going at it the wrong way! Lean mean entrepreneurs will surely succeed where a fickle public and stodgy NASA and stingy Congress have let us down!
It’s heady stuff, and much more fun than the alternative: making the effort to understand the unique historical moment and Cold War anxieties that really set the pace in 1957-1972 (and then moved on, leaving space fans at the head of a much-diminished parade)… to understand what actually happens as a technology proceeds from spectacular “firsts” to cost-effective routine, and why it doesn’t always happen (got that flying car or family submarine yet?)… and to understand that most of the challenges facing expansion of space activity actually have little to do with the Great Public vs. Private Smackdown that has occupied so much mindspace in recent years.
I don’t agree with you that New Space is a “doomed dream.” It may well succeed — but inevitably more slowly than its more passionate fans expect, because it’s operating in an economic environment that really is a lot tougher than that of early aviation. Those who understand that will watch (or participate) with patience. Those who don’t… well, when New Space lets them down, another savior is bound to come along.
Randy, point to point suborbital transport with any conceivable vehicle sounds very doubtful from an economic perspective, but using the space shuttle - even with the lower projected costs of the 70’s - is simply insane.
To the poster above who talked about Bigelow: are you really saying that 53 people left
or were fired? Wouldn’t we have heard more about that? Having said that I do remember someone quiting his job at budget suites for similar reasons.
As I understand it, gov sell the idea to industry.
Industry improves design (see patents)
http://assignments.uspto.gov/assignments/q?db=pat&qt=asns&reel=&frame=&pat=&pub=&asnr=&asnri=&asne=&asnei=&asns=bigelow aerospace
http://assignments.uspto.gov/assignments/q?db=pat&qt=asns&reel=&frame=&pat=&pub=&asnr=&asnri=&asne=&asnei=&asns=spacedev
Idea works, people make money, and pay taxes.
Some background, in case anyone is interested. I used to work at JSC. I was JSC historian for a little over two years, before I left to freelance. I have worked for JSC and NASA Headquarters either on-site or on various contracts since 1992. I have a contract with NASA Headquarters now, and I’m still in touch with a lot of JSC folks. I’m currently writing three books on spaceflight history; the one for NASA HQ, plus two for commercial publishers.
You can also visit my homepage, where there’s a link to my personal blog
http://members.aol.com/dsfportree/dsfp.htm
Keith Cowing of the NASAWatch blog has posted a shrill commentary on my blog post. It’s the equivalent of soaping my windows, and doesn’t do him credit. Keith doesn’t like me too much. He’s been posting here as Banned from Posting, claiming that I block his postings, but they’re all here. Anyway, I recommend NASAWatch as a source of interesting rumors and innuendo.
Some of the comments responding to his NASAWatch posting are interesting. A couple make the mistake of assuming spaceflight is just like past transportation modes. There’s one with a bunch of “it will never fly”-type quotes, for example. But it seems to me that falling back on that stuff shows a lack of vision. Space is different from the Earth, and needs to be confronted on its own terms. One can’t just say, “We’ll do it the way we did trains.”
I’d heard similar things about Bigelow. I wonder, why has no one commented on Bigelow’s support for UFO research? He’s into tracking mysterious aircraft. Has an institute of some sort. The NewSpace folks don’t generally mention that too much, as best I can tell.
People make money in or from space all the time. Satellite TV and radio, for example. The thing about NewSpace is, from what I can tell, most of them are trying to make money in untenable ways.
Space colonization is fine, but we don’t know if it’s even possible. We’re right at the very beginning of our push into space. For more on colonization and exploration, please see my post “Saving Spaceflight”. It’s still open for comments.
> “NASA explores space; NewSpace doesn’t. Exploration is what space is about; it’s the only thing beyond LEO that we know works.”
You’re a space historian, but you don’t know of anything that works beyond LEO that isn’t NASA?
There are lots of satellites working beyond LEO right now, David. Very few of them are owned or operated by NASA.
All of NASA’s deep space probes are launched on private rockets. NASA’s own space transportation system is no longer capable of launching payloads beyond LEO.
The Clementine lunar probe was built and operated by DoD, not NASA — and it worked, David.
As for your statement that NewSpace doesn’t explore space, that’s just snobbish nonsense.
The dictionary defines exploration as “travel for the purpose of discovery.” It does not say “only scientific discovery” or “only travel by government employees on expensive junkets.”
Note the keyword: “travel.” A person sitting in a missile control room watching pictures on a teevee screen is not an explorer because he is not travelling.
When Mike Melvill flew into space on SpaceShip One, he was exploring space.
Within the next decades, thousands of Americans will explore space. Only a few of them will work for NASA.
I’ve had similar discussions with friends in NASA. When someone does a blood draw on ISS, are they exploring space? Maybe, since ideally that will lead to humans venturing beyond low-Earth orbit or longer and longer voyages. I generally say that exploration is going someplace where no one has gone before. Melvill went where Alan Shepard went in 1961.
For now, though, I’m trying to understand the psychology of the rabid NewSpace fans who’ve been posting here the past couple of days, apparently drawn by Keith’s post on his blog. I had very similar contacts with the old L5ers. How many of you were involved in the L5 craze? I guess what I’m trying to understand is, are you L5ers who’ve moved on to NewSpace, or are you even aware of the L5 thing?
There might be an article in this. Or at least a new blog post.
> I generally say that exploration is going someplace where no one has gone before. Melvill went where Alan Shepard went in 1961.
The way that I usually think of things is that ideally government-funded exploration (whether by NASA or Lewis & Clark) pushes the boundaries outwards, while private activity fills them in and solidifies the base for future government-led pushes outward. To stretch an analogy, the supplies and equipment used by Lewis & Clark probably weren’t all produced by the US government, but purchased from private vendors.
Also, even though I disagree with a number of your points, I have to say that many of the commenters in this thread are being far too confrontational.
David,
Just looking through the bio’s of the leaders of the movement you will find many of the older ones were L5ers who simply infected another generation with their fantasy.
Some samples from the Space Frontier Foundation bio page.
“Robin Snelson
“Her L5 Society pin holds the record for near space travel to 80,000 feet on JP Aerospace Away 26 high altitude balloon flight.”
Rick Tumlinson
“Mr. Tumlinson worked for noted scientist Gerard K. O’Neill at the Space Studies Institute, founded the New York L-5 Society” “He also helped pass the Space Settlement Act of 1988, testified before President Reagan’s National Commission on Space, and was a founding trustee of the X-Prize.”
Which explains their fanatical response and why it’s a waste trying to reason with them Its like trying to reason with a UFO nut that the government doesn’t have aliens stashed in an underground hanger.
Actually an article tracing the threads of the L5ers and their fantasy on space policy would be very interesting.