Launch, robots, and Investing for a grand future in space

I have very strong feelings about how the US should invest in launch vehicles. So I was surprised to find, going back over the entries in this blog, that I really haven't spoken about launch. This excellent Wall Street Journal editorial was the catalyst. There's a WSJ paywall that might prevent you from reading the editorial, so I'll summarize it here. The authors are former Congressman Robert Walker and space consultant Charles Miller:

1. The heavy-lift Space Launch System is unnecessary, and a waste of taxpayer funding.
2. The nation has funded the development of the Atlas V and Delta IV, and contributed to the development of the Falcon 9; let's maximize the use of those.

Absolutely. Now Senator Richard Shelby, who never fails to point out that he is "the ranking Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee," and who comes from the state where SLS would be developed, is highly defensive of SLS. What a surprise. SLS has also been said to stand for "Senate Launch System."

There's a lot of detail missing in the WSJ piece, so let's probe a little. What missions justified the SLS in the first place? Going to Mars. If you look at the Review of Human Spaceflight Plans Committee report--titled "Seeking a Human Spaceflight Program Worthy of a Great Nation," informally known as the Augustine report-- you see missions beyond low Earth orbit characterized by very large payloads--many tens of tons, much more than current launchers can lift. The report argues,

"No one knows the mass or dimensions of the largest hardware that will be required for future exploration missions, but it will likely be significantly larger than 25 metric tons (mt) in launch mass to low-Earth orbit, which is the capability of current launchers. As the size of the launcher increases, the result is fewer launches and less operational complexity in terms of assembly and/or refueling in space. In short, the net availability of launch capability increases. Combined with considerations of launch availability and on-orbit operations, the Committee finds that exploration would benefit from the availability of a heavy-lift vehicle."

Or in a nutshell, "Obviously we need a bigger launcher."

Obviously? Here's an alternative: using existing launchers, launch PIECES to orbit, and put them together there, using robots. Now the existing launchers get more business--their development costs are amortized, they become more reliable, costs come down.

The Augustine report is silent on the possibility of on-orbit assembly using robots. (Strangely, it extensively analyzes another untried technology, in-space refueling, which significantly enhances the efficiency of the architecture.) The committee may have rejected on-orbit assembly due to its low technology readiness or its development cost--as if the Space Launch System wasn't going to be expensive! Instead, they advocated developing an SLS which has NO other missions, rather than cooperating with industry to develop a highly reliable, dual-use launch infrastructure. And should we note that SpaceX is vigorously pursuing their Falcon Heavy design, which will have a LEO capacity of 53 metric tons?

Let me springboard off the WSJ article to pose a set of principles for a unified investment strategy in the entire launch and space operations infrastructure. And when I say entire, I mean not just NASA's missions, but everyone's: the asteroid miners, the space tourism purveyors, the settlements, the researchers, the space solar power station builders, everyone's infrastructure.

1. Invest heavily in space robotics. The miners need space-hardened robots, as will the on-orbit assembly tasks, as will the in-situ resource utilization projects, as will the GEO servicing missions, as will a robot rescue vehicle to fix JWST when one of its deployment mechanisms doesn't open. There is nearly complete synergy here, and a lot of unsolved problems. DARPA is investing via the Phoenix program, and NASA via the Robotic Refueling Mission on ISS, but these are small potatoes. We need to get serious about this.

2. Invest in very cheap small launchers. Every piece of space hardware needs to be tested in space. There is no substitute. Universities need to be able to launch things more often, to train more students for the grand space future. Launch failures must be tolerated. Range costs must be slashed. We may need to find a place with low population density where high-risk launches are tolerable (Australia comes to mind, but perhaps only because I currently live here.) Small launchers won't have the commercial viability of the big ones, so this is an important Government responsibility.

3. Provide development funds to commercial launch vehicle manufacturers when it makes sense.  DARPA gave SpaceX $20 million to reserve space on Falcon 1 for a couple of payloads. This wasn't because it was DARPA's only option, but because they saw what SpaceX was doing as valuable. If a commercial rocket company needs some funds to enable on-orbit assembly, for instance, that should be considered.

4. Tolerate failure. NASA killed 14 astronauts on two Shuttle failures due to "underlying weaknesses, revealed in NASAʼs organization and history, that can pave the way to catastrophic failure". How many NASA managers were fired? Zero. How long were the hiatuses in Shuttle flights? About two years each time. It would be unacceptable for the government, following a fatal accident on a commercial launch, to be more severe on the company than it has been on itself. The government issues licenses to the commercial launch people, and will tend to be very severe on companies to prove how safety conscious it is. Bureaucrats have to be closely watched to ensure they do not become an impediment to progress.

In fifty years, we can have settlers on Mars kept healthy by indigenous resources; producing fuel from lunar ice to help get them back and forth; getting completely clean energy on Earth from space solar power stations; harvesting asteroids to facilitate those projects; and generating MONEY from all of this to make it self-sustaining. This is the grand possibility, and we need to invest wisely to make it happen.

Off-Earth mining: get the business case right

I think that The Economist is a great magazine. Their insights, objectivity and priorities have always impressed me. But in their recent article on off-Earth mining, I think they got it completely wrong.

The problem is, they're thinking in the short term, and on a small scale. It surely does not make sense to mine asteroids to make some pathetically small increase to consumption of resources on Earth. I believe that 345 tons of platinum are produced annually on Earth; how can asteroid mining possibly make a dent in that? (actually platinum is easy to dent...)

The materials are worth much more if they STAY IN SPACE. I made this point in a recent post; let's look at some numbers.

The cheapest ride nowadays is the Falcon 9. It will put about 8,000 kilograms into low Earth orbit for $59 million. That's $7,300 a kilogram. If you want to go on to geosynchronous orbit, where all the money is made, multiply that by 3 or 4. Let's say $20,000 a kilogram to GEO: that's only about 40% of the spot price of platinum ($54587.485 a kilo recently) but lumps of platinum aren't very useful in orbit. Instead let's compare that to the spot price of ALUMINUM, which is actually useful in space for things like structure: aluminum (99.5% minimum purity, LME spot price, CIF UK ports) is going for about $2000 a metric ton. That means $1 a kilo--so the cost to launch aluminum girders to GEO is 20,000 times greater than the cost of the materials. 

Thus, using off-Earth-mined materials presents a new value proposition: cost avoidance. That was probably obvious; but the case only closes if someone wants to build large things in space ("large" meaning "requires enough material to justify the infrastructure cost of off-Earth mining and processing.")

In 100 years, we should be well along toward colonizing Mars, using large domes to contain breathable atmospheres, enable agriculture, and keep habitable temperatures. The transportation system in the solar system should consist of trips between orbiting fuel depots. At the same time, and using the same technologies, power on Earth and Mars should be produced by completely clean solar energy captured in orbit and beamed to the surface.

All these projects need structural materials. Nothing fancy, just strong enough to hold together in space (maybe a little better than that for the Martian surface). Even sintered dirt might do. In that large-scale vision, off-Earth mining makes complete sense.

So the asteroid miners, Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries, are making long-term plays. They are trying to capture the market decades in the future. We are so used to thinking only to the next budget cycle or next election that we've forgotten what it means to plan for the truly long term. Or at least The Economist has.

It's getting blurry

Add vision impairment to the list of issues confronting dreams of long-duration human spaceflight.

A meeting of the mines

Here Down Under, we're about to hold a forum on off-Earth mining . My boss has gotten some great publicity for the forum.

Off-Earth mining is the very epitome of New Space. It is far more likely to be conducted by robots than by human astronauts. It is far more likely to be conducted by private concerns than by governments. It will require extensive cooperation to get all of the technology, financing and facilities to make it happen.

As some have suggested, off-Earth mining might not make sense if you're going to bring the products back to Earth. Diamonds? They're artificially inflated anyway. Platinum? What for? Helium-3? Do we really have a way to use it economically even if there was an unlimited supply?

On the other hand, off-Earth mining is the very best approach for building large structures that DON'T come back to Earth. If you need structural materials for large geosynchronous platforms, or perhaps solar power stations--bringing the structural materials from the Moon or asteroids will avoid the huge costs of launching them from Earth. At some rate of consumption, the equation favors off-Earth sources.

The technologies for off-Earth mining will be synergistic with robotic on-orbit servicing, and robotic assembly of large objects on orbit. They will also benefit from the work now going on to automate mining operations on Earth.

This is an exciting field for new engineers to enter.

Getting to Mars without getting sick

We don't talk about human spaceflight too much on this blog. But I couldn't resist weighing in on this discussion on BBC about the merits of centrifuges for inducing artificial gravity . Get it? Weighing in?

To some, it's "obvious" that creating a centrifugally-induced artificial gravitational field will mitigate the health effects of weightlessness. To others, maybe not so obvious. The BBC article itself talks about "theories" of how this could benefit long-duration space travelers.

About 50% of all astronauts get space sickness. One of the most comprehensive and comprehensible accounts is in the marvelous "Packing For Mars" by Mary Roach. And these are ASTRONAUTS. But more worrisome is the bone mass loss that seems inevitable in zero-g. Roach tells us that you might be able to exercise your way around much bone loss, as Commander Peggy Whitson did on her first ISS trip. But this increases oxygen and food consumption--is that really a good thing?

Perhaps a centrifuge is the answer. But how many hours a day in the artificial gravity of a centrifuge would be enough to mitigate health effects? How much difference might it make that the gravitational field at the astronaut's head is different from the one at her feet? That's called the "tidal force," by the way--a change in field over a relatively short distance.

The most important experiment ever conceived for the International Space Station was the centrifuge experiment. It hasn't been done, for whatever reason. Until it is done, one of the greatest risks of a long space voyage (the other being radiation damage) is still not understood.

How to refuel a satellite

The Spacecraft Servicing Capabilities Office of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center has organized a series of tests to show how a satellite can be refueled with robotics tools. The chief tool is Dextre, a multi-armed robot built in Canada and attached to the end of the Canadarm on the International Space Station. A five-day experiment showing how to remove the "gas cap" has made the news in Canada.

One thing to notice about these experiments: both the tools, and the simulated satellite, are firmly attached to the ISS. There are no dynamics in the problem, i.e., things aren't moving around relative to each other. That is a critical requirement for complex, dexterous manipulation.

In a real situation, where a space "gas truck" wanted to refuel a free-flying satellite, how would the dynamics be taken out of the problem? Most likely by joining the two together, using robot arms to make the connection rigid and firm. Fortunately, we've known how to do that since 2008.

Another advance for commercial space operations

Today's news feed from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics reports:

"NASA, Bigelow Reach An Agreement On Inflatable Space Habitat.

"Space News (1/8, Leone, Subscription Publication) reports, 'NASA and Bigelow Aerospace have reached an agreement that could pave the way for attaching a Bigelow-built inflatable space habitat to the international space station, a NASA spokesman said.' NASA spokesperson Trent Perrotto said a deal was signed last month, but revealed little else to the publication other than a formal announcement is coming. The article notes 'Bigelow and NASA have been discussing an inflatable addition to the space station for years.'"

Bigelow Aerospace  is the creation of Robert Bigelow, founder of the Budget Suites hotel chain. Like Elon Musk's SpaceX, Bigelow Aerospace is privately funded. And it's a small world: SpaceX is Bigelow's exclusive launch provider.  

The inflatable habitat technology was originally developed by NASA. The history of Bigelow in Wikipedia gives an excellent explanation of the design enhancements they've made, and the applications they are targeting. Often it's thought that the goal is space tourism--which is an enduring legend consistent with the fact that the founder is a hotelier. But the goals are much broader, as the NASA-Bigelow agreement shows.

Here's a NASA image of the ISS configuration with the Bigelow inflatable module attached:

As we've said before, New Space is going to be more about companies and less about governments.