Ever since manned spaceflight began, a vocal minority has been asking, "Why?" It seems so wasteful--there is no real benefit--there are better things to spend the money on. The carping was somewhat muted around the Apollo timeframe; the inspiration Apollo gave to the whole human race was hard to naysay. Today, however, with constrained government budgets and urgent terrestrial priorities, it is not going too far to say that US human spaceflight is in trouble.
This was recognized by NASA in 2009, when it assembled the "Review of U.S. Human Spaceflight Plans Committee," informally known as the Augustine commission. The committee issued a report entitled "Seeking a Human Spaceflight Program Worthy of a Great Nation." The title suggests the "why" that the committee had in mind: greatness; worthiness. But one must ask: in the face of global shortages of food, energy and water, uncertainty about the Earth's climate, the emergence of pandemic-capable microorganisms, and massive politically-motivated violence, is pursuing a human spaceflight program on the basis of "greatness" justifiable? The committee viewed the spaceflight question in isolation, not in the context of these global issues.
Jeff Greason, CEO of XCor Aerospace and a member of the Augustine panel, helped advance the thinking with his magnificent address at ISDC 2011. He began by proposing a structure for the discussion: goal--strategy--objectives--tactics, terms that one might use in military history. He believes that the goal of U.S. human spaceflight, at the highest level, is "settlement," and he finds this goal embedded in Presidential and NASA pronouncements. With that as a goal, one could develop a strategy, within which are objectives, which are supported by tactics. Merely by suggesting this structure for the debate, Jeff made a major contribution.
But is the U.S. goal for human spaceflight really settlement (of the Moon, Mars, or other bodies)? Since Jeff had to find it "between the lines" of many space policy speeches, that in itself suggests that the goal is tentative--that the nation, the Obama Administration, and NASA are uncommitted to it. And critics have always derided the idea of settlement by saying, "Oh, yes, when we're done ruining this planet we can just move to another one."
Last Wednesday, at the Future Space 2013 conference, the NASA Deputy Administrator and the former chair of the House Science Committee gave us the latest high-level discussion of goals and strategy. One argued that we should pick a goal (location) and go there, developing whatever technology is needed; the other argued that we should work on the technology primarily, and choose appropriate missions that mesh. Neither mentioned "settlement." Neither connected the human spaceflight program to global crises and challenges. The two debaters have widely differing views of where to go and how to get there, but they share a parochial, space-flight-for-its-own-sake viewpoint.
Such myopia is a recipe for the collapse of the program. As Jeff emphasized in his talk, human exploration of Mars is unachievable on government funding alone. There is competition for NASA money; NASA budgets will be level at best, and likely declining, for decades.
The parochial advocacy for human spaceflight contrasts strongly with the non-human-spaceflight part of NASA, which enthusiastically embraces missions of tangible benefit to humanity. NASA spacecraft have made crucial, invaluable contributions to understanding atmospheric chemistry, climate change, meteorology, solar cycles, land use, and disaster monitoring. No knowledgeable person could demean the contributions of these instruments. But the human spaceflight aspect of NASA remains, so far, disconnected from Earth's problems.
Toward the end of Jeff's talk, he opined that commercial activities might fuel the long-term success of human space exploration. Literally fuel--he referred to the idea of propellant being mined commercially and sold to NASA as one of many customers. This, he said, could make the difference between failure due to budget shortfalls, and success. Obviously if NASA were the sole customer, there is no advantage to this approach, but if off-Earth-mined propellants are being purchased by others, the overall cost is lower and the system can be sustainable.
What we're talking about here is an interplanetary economy.
And is there any benefit for the people back on Earth? Well, there could be. Recall that 870 million people are chronically undernourished. 1.5 billion people have no electricity nor clean cooking methods. These basic human needs would be expensive to address, and would require additional resources, particularly energy. Interplanetary mining of propellant and structural materials could make space-generated power an affordable addition to current terrestrial energy production. And this energy production would not pollute the atmosphere, scar the soil, nor create radioactive waste.
Having the goal of "resources for Earth" for U.S. human spaceflight is a unifying theme. No longer would the various components of the space flight program have to be defended tooth and nail against budget competitors; these systems are urgently needed to obtain resources to help the Earth at a time of critical population growth and resource insufficiency.
By the way, if a robust interplanetary economy is established, we get "settlement" for free. It's merely a spinoff of the activities required to keep the infrastructure running. "Settlement" now occurs for a valuable economic purpose--robot repair, teleoperation, whatever--and not merely as an activity for its own sake.
How much of the economic work is done by robots and how much by humans is what Jeff would call a tactic, or even sub-tactic. Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries are eying all-robotic architectures; Shackleton Energy has emphasized human operators. The important thing is for NASA to cooperate with these fledgling industries, helping to develop the technologies they think they need, and assigning its experts to make the interplanetary economy a reality as soon as possible.
Space operations are expensive; those involving humans are more so, and dangerous as well. They can be justified if the goal is to address urgent human needs on Earth. If we do that, the inspiration that humanity will feel will even exceed Apollo. Helping humanity address its resource challenges with economically sustainable space activities is the unifying "why" that we must adopt.
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