In this op-ed piece in SpaceNews, Elliot Pulham announces his Space Foundation's release of their report "Pioneering: Sustaining US Leadership in Space." Does that sound like the official subtitle of the Augustine report? "A Human Spaceflight Program Worthy of a Great Nation." But the SF report's focus is more about how to reorganize NASA than about the technical aspects of going to the asteroids or Mars. It recommends that NASA concentrate on pioneering as a single unifying theme, and suggests some subsidiary measures (such as amending the Space Act) to support that theme.
In a sense, the SF report reinforces what XCOR CEO Jeff Greason, a member of the Augustine Commission, said in his ISDC 2011 talk at Huntsville. Greason called the motivation "settlement," while Pulham calls it pioneering.
Is there any difference? I think there is. You can be a pioneer if you go somewhere and never go back there. Settlement is not like that--the settlers need logistical support (even with in-situ resource utilization, no doubt.) The Space Foundation's definition of pioneering sounds like the precursor to settlement:
"The Space Foundation defines 'pioneering' as: 1. being among those who first enter a region to open it for use and development by others; and 2. being one of a group that builds and prepares infrastructure precursors, in advance of others. It is a term that is used throughout this report to describe the ideal focus for NASA. The Pioneering Doctrine has four phases: access, exploration, utilization, and transition."
Greason's talk also teaches us how to recognize when the "vision thing" has been done correctly. He says you need to think in this order: GOAL--STRATEGY--OBJECTIVES--TACTICS. We need to look for that clarity of thought, for instance when the NASA Administrator claims that we're "poised for tomorrow's progress." Despite its claim of providing a strategy, the SF report is nothing but tactics, mostly organizational ones. Certainly there's no goal: the report intentionally eschews establishing where the pioneering effort should land.
And sadly, there is nothing approaching Greason's G-S-O-T pyramid coming out of NASA. The contention in this USA Today op-ed piece that the Administration's support of commercial space "has been a considerable success" should not fool us into thinking there's a strategy. Commercial companies like SpaceX are simply filling a vacuum.
One of the most important aspects of a pioneering program is how to pay for it. Greason made a compelling case that we'll never afford settlements if we rely on a government-only program. The SF report encourages continuing commercialization, but only as a means of shedding distractions. Today, NASA supports commercial spaceflight--yet at the same time, it is developing the pork-barrel Senate Launch System, which undermines the commercial business. And right now, commercial spaceflight looks more like a stop-gap measure--"let's not have to rely on the Russians to get to ISS." That's not a worthy goal nor a strategy, and it is completely disconnected from pioneering and settlement.
Instead, what we need is a true public-private partnership. If a company fields space robots that can assemble spacecraft on orbit, NASA needs to give serious consideration to including them in a pioneering program--without worrying about its own budget. If a company finds a way to produce propellant on the Moon, NASA again needs to make that part of their program--and make sure that company is adequately compensated.
After Columbus' voyages, Spain didn't come to the New World for the science; they came for the gold. I'll give Professor Reynolds, author of the USA Today article, the final word:
"With free markets, you don't have to convince government bureaucrats and
Congressional appropriators that your idea is a good one -- you just
have to convince customers and investors. And though government
bureaucrats and Congressional appropriators are deathly afraid of
failure for political reasons, entrepreneurs succeed by courting -- and,
sometimes, learning from -- failure. That's something government
programs can't do."
