MarsBlog.net

Costly astronauts wield too much clout

Posted on July 31st, 2003 under Uncategorized. Comments Off

NASA is considering landing the orbiters at Edwards instead of KSC, in order to avoid another reentry breakup dumping debris over populated areas.

Posted on July 31st, 2003 under Columbia Accident. Comments Off

China and Russia, in hit at U.S., urge space arms ban

Yeah, I’m sure they’re doing it out of global altruism, too.

“We are ready to take on such a commitment immediately as long as the leading space powers join in a moratorium,” he said.

Hey, it’s like a Kyoto for space! “Yup, you betcha, just as soon as them American cowboys sign up to it first, we’ll be all over this treaty.”

Ah, but this part is a real gem:

Proponents of a pact, which include many European and nearly all developing countries, say it is vital to ensure that the 1967 treaty banning weapons of mass destruction in outer space is not undermined.

With the U.S. withdrawal last year from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty with the old Soviet Union, they argue there is no reliable legal pact barring countries from using space for military purposes.

So…we have a treaty barring weapons in space, but we can’t be sure that that treaty is worth the paper it’s written on, so we need…another treaty?

Right. Okay.

And note the clever (or stupid, take your pick) misrepresentation of what is being discussed here. The last sentence implies that the 1967 Outer Space Treaty bans military activity in space, generically, when it does no such thing:

Article IV

States Parties to the Treaty undertake not to place in orbit around the Earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction, install such weapons on celestial bodies, or station such weapons in outer space in any other manner.

The Moon and other celestial bodies shall be used by all States Parties to the Treaty exclusively for peaceful purposes. The establishment of military bases, installations and fortifications, the testing of any type of weapons and the conduct of military maneuvers on celestial bodies shall be forbidden. The use of military personnel for scientific research or for any other peaceful purposes shall not be prohibited. The use of any equipment or facility necessary for peaceful exploration of the Moon and other celestial bodies shall also not be prohibited

Now, if the Russians and Chinese wish to deorbit their military surveillance, navigation, and communications satellites, and ban such things in the future, as part of this new treaty they desire, well, that would suggest that they are serious about banning “military activity” in space. Otherwise, it’s just another whining attempt to undermine our NMD program.

Posted on July 31st, 2003 under Chinese Space, Luddism, Russian Space, Space Policy. Comments Off

Ah, yes, the old “Space Exploration Takes Food From The Mouths of Children” meme bobs up again: House Votes More for Nuclear Space Flight than Earth Cleanup.

Markey told House colleagues that the amendment struck the necessary balance: “our exploration of the stars and our preservation of the Earth.”

Bull. It was simply an attempt to starve the project by a couple of Representatives (Markey D-MA and Bass R-NH) who don’t have the guts to try and kill it outright — why else specifically target Prometheus for this raid? And even though their amendment was (thankfully) voted down, the spin is in: ‘Superfund is being starved of cash to pay for Prometheus!’

The $279 billion the House has voted for Prometheus is in line with the Bush administration’s request, and represents a 133 percent increase over the program’s 2003 appropriations. This figure includes $186 million for the Nuclear Systems Initiative and $93 million for a first flight mission–known as the Jupiter Icy Moon Orbiter (JIMO).

The increase is taken completely out of its context in the program’s schedule. Could it be that that 133% increase is required this year for planned activities, or that the FY2003 funding was so much less because the program only started in January and consisted of preliminary studies?

Taking $115 million out of the initiative and allocating it to the Superfund program, Markey said, would give Prometheus a 31 percent increase and afford Superfund a nine percent increase over 2003 levels.

Well now, this is an interesting inversion of the usual budgetary propaganda theme…it used to be that increases were called “cuts”, now we have a cut being described as an “increase”.

Indeed it is an increase, in absolute dollars, but it may be a completely meaningless increase for being so small. Again, this totally ignores what amount of money is right at this time for what the program is intended to accomplish. This is what I am getting at when I accuse them of attempting to kill Prometheus. Starving it now will mean either a bigger budget item next time around to fund an acceleration of development (making it an even easier target for raiding), or a perpetual stringing along at starvation levels resulting in its eventual cancellation for lack of progress.

“It is an issue of priorities,” Bass added. “The moons of Jupiter are going nowhere, but the people who live around these Superfund sites are people that are affected and potentially affected by this issue every single day.”

Ooh, another hoary old argument. “We’ve got to solve all our problems here on Earth before we can explore space!”. Funny that no matter how many trillions of dollars we spend on those problems, they only seem to get worse. At least money spent on NASA has some positive results, in exactly those areas the Prometheus project is initially intended to serve: robotic probes to the outer planets.

Posted on July 31st, 2003 under Luddism. Comments Off

Our old luddite friend Bruce Gagnon says he was detained in the Louisville airport for discussing “bombs and contamination” on a cellphone.

Yawn. May indeed be true, but it’s funny how this same story is told the same way by so many leftie activists…”The Man detained me and questioned me about my activities, but I reminded him of my Constitutional rights (the ones I approve of, mind you) and stared him down with steely-eyed grassroots resolve!”

Here’s a micro-fisking of the rest of the content:
1. “Exponential” escalation? You do know what that means, right? Where are all those fissionables going to be coming from?
2. Yes — perhaps they have learned something in the past fifty years. We’re also better at communicating today, and better informed, and less blindly trusting of the government than we were in the 1950′s and early 1960′s (and more likely to sue at the drop of a hat)…it’s hard to imagine that kind of hanky-panky happening now. And even if that isn’t enough, don’t you have faith in the abilities of organizations like yours to expose the truth and keep the labs in line? If you have so little faith in the efficacy of your efforts, why bother?
3. “All”? Really? “Each” one? So, what nefarious militaristic purpose do the MERs serve? And does this mean that Biff and Sandy just prototype killbots sent to the Red Planet for field endurance testing?

Posted on July 31st, 2003 under Luddism. Comments Off

I finally managed to read the last few pages of The Smithsonian Book of Mars, which I started reading back in April (I’ve been busy). It’s a great book, covering the major planetary geology and climatology topics and reviewing the robotic exploration of the planet up to today.

Coincidentally, I received on the same day an advance copy of William Hartmann’s A Traveller’s Guide to Mars. I’ve only had a chance to flip through it, but already it looks like what I have been searching for for quite some time. Hartmann approaches the surface geology and geography of Mars as one might a foreign country, presenting the sights and attraction of the various regions of the planet. What seems unique about this book is the ground-level perspective he uses — the look and feel of the book (I can’t yet speak for the content) make you feel like you are right down near the surface features he is describing, rather than floating high above. Interestingly, the book includes a number of paintings by the author from this “on the ground” perspective…one would think a coffee-table book of such art, if scientifically accurate and photorealistic, would be a big seller.

I look forward to reading it.

Posted on July 30th, 2003 under Space Science. Comments: 2

New Map of Water Ice on Mars

Interesting, but how does the map scale translate to something meaningful? The article didn’t seem to be much help in this regard.

Posted on July 28th, 2003 under Space Science. Comments Off

For all the abuse I heaped on him back in September for his “Wild West on Mars” comments, astronomer Martin Rees actually gets it, I suspect. In this article in Foreign Policy, he speculates on who should be the “mans” in a manned space program, what they should be doing, and why. Though he inevitably plugs robots over humans, he does see a place for humans in space, but in the forms of private adventures and tourism rather than multilateral leviathans sucking at the government teat while claiming to do science for science’s sake (okay, maybe I overstate his position, but you get the point).

Should China succeed at a lunar landing, it would be a leap forward for the Chinese people, but nothing more than a throwback as manned space flight goes. Multilateral efforts, symbolized by the International Space Station, have perhaps also had their day (in no small part because of bureaucratic inertia; exploration by committee can be a drag on progress). The kind of vibrant program I wish to see, taking us to the moon and beyond?with Mars the ultimate destination?will require two big changes: The cost of space travel must decrease, and travelers should venture into space on behalf of themselves or private consortia, rather than nations.

(emphasis added) Wow. And just ten months ago, he was worried about the “Wild West model” prevailing on Mars. I’m starting to think that that earlier article didn’t adequately represent Mr. Rees’ views.

My prototype for a future astronaut is neither a civilian NASA employee nor a military test pilot, but someone in the mold of Steve Fossett, the wealthy serial adventurer who, after several expensive failures, finally managed a solo round-the-world balloon flight in 2002. Fossett obviously craves dangerous challenges?he is now attempting to beat the altitude record for gliders?and is willing to risk his life in pursuit of adventure. As temperament goes, he clearly has the right stuff. And as affiliation goes, he also has the right stuff. Paying his own way, he doesn?t represent a nation; he represents humanity.

Or, let the “gentlemen adventurers” push the boundaries, and let the tourists follow them.

Another great observation, in line with my own thinking on the subject:

When nations send people to space, space disasters become national traumas?and nations lose some of their will to explore. By contrast, were a private adventurer like Fossett to come to a sad end in space, we would mourn a brave and resourceful man, but his death would not be considered a catastrophe on the scale of the Columbia or Challenger accidents. Nor would it provoke nearly as much hand-wringing. It would be seen for what it was: a personal tragedy. To reach Mars and points beyond will require a certain ruthlessness of spirit, and swashbuckling individuals possess this quality much more than civilized nations do.

Of course, he does conclude by expressing the same mixture of hope and concern that he did in the earlier article:

Still, while I am optimistic about the ability of private enterprise to colonize the moon and lead us to Mars, I am less sanguine about what space pioneers will do once they establish a presence there. Will they be as scrupulous in preserving the natural environment as, say, the governments involved in the Antarctic project have been? Or will they simply exploit the planets they conquer, much as was done to the American West? Ultimately, how we get there is less important than what we do when we arrive.

Which sounds like a reasonable (if somewhat overblown) concern, rather than the handwringing worry that came through in the previous article.

I think this guy is on our side.

Posted on July 27th, 2003 under Space Policy. Comments: 1

I was doing some research today and stumbled across this nutshell history of the Saturn 1B. It’s galling to realize that, not only could we have gone to the Moon two more times before Apollo ended, or had one more lunar landing and another Skylab, but for the misguided quest for trivial budget “savings”, but we also could have had a bigger, better, already “man-rated” launcher all this time.

Even as it prepared to fly the first Saturn 1B, NASA was taking actions that threatened the future of this potentially versatile launch vehicle. The agency had begun to study Saturn 1B/Centaur designs in 1964 for post-Apollo missions. The three-stage rocket would have been used for a proposed Voyager Mars landing mission in 1971, for advanced Mariner planetary missions, and for launching geosynchronous weather and communication satellites. The detailed design called for the 120 inch diameter Centaur stage to be totally enclosed by a 260 inch diameter, 57-foot-long shroud that would also have enclosed the payload. Saturn 1B/Centaur would have been able to propel 13,400 pounds to Earth escape velocity or 33,500 pounds to low earth orbit.

Not a bad payload, considering the alternatives then available. It wasn’t until 1997, with the Titan 4B, that the Titan series surpassed it. And how much money did the government (NASA and/or DoD) spend over the intervening thirty years to gradually, painstakingly increase Titan’s payload? And how many Titans did they lose along the way, with how many billions of dollars of lost space assets?

The U.S. Air Force Titan 3C program took flight during 1965, adding more pressure to Saturn 1B. The Air Force claimed that each Titan 3C launch would only cost $9 million, compared to $18 million for Saturn 1B. This was an apples-and-oranges comparison, however, because Saturn 1B was a man-rated booster with more payload capability. Saturn launch costs could, conceivably, be reduced for unmanned missions.

Not to mention (oops, I already did) the fact that the payload capability was already greater than Titan 3C’s 29,000lbs, which it took thirty-two years and umpteen billion dollars to ramp up to. Yeah, amortize that.
And don’t forget there were two perfectly good launch complexes at CCAS, sitting there waiting to be used for Saturn IB launches which never came — thus eliminating the need to upgrade or rebuild the Titan facilities for each new variant.

In addition, as time would show, Saturn was more robust than Titan, with built-in abort capabilities that Titan lacked. NASA excluded Titan from its long-range mission planning in May 1965. Its judgment seemed validated when two Titan 3C missions failed by year’s end.

Well, some sensible thinking by NASA. Too bad they weren’t more aggressive in pushing back against the USAF and Titan. Else, we might have had larger, more capable planetary probes through the 1970′s and 1980′s. Or the ability to send a short-notice mission to Skylab (whether manned or remote controlled) to reboost it for later use by Shuttle or make a controlled deorbit. Or the luxury, in our current predicament, of a second form of manned space access and ISS resupply.

After nearly forty years of production and incremental improvement, the Saturn IB could have become cheaper, more reliable, and more capable (much as the Shuttle External Tank has done in the past twenty-five years). We wouldn’t be wasting taxpayer money on multiple EELV designs, of which only the three-booster Delta IV Heavy and the Atlas V 551 can duplicate its capabilities.

Posted on July 24th, 2003 under Space Policy. Comments: 2