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.