I just spent several enjoyable hours browsing NASA’s website and I am impressed with the breadth and depth of their work. We tend to think of NASA as being mostly about the Space Shuttle, and now the Moon and Mars, but they are doing work in fields such as nanotechnology, personal aircraft, ramjets & scramjets, and lots of other fundamental research–my links are just a small sampling.
I read the transcript of the public rollout of NASA’s new Moon and Mars work, and the new NASA administrator, Michael Griffin made it clear that NASA’s new efforts will not take away any money from NASA’s other scientific research and I think that is wise. The only question I have is whether they are doing everything they can to get those ideas into commercial enterprises. How many billions of dollars of intellectual property are currently locked up in their laboratories?
As for the Moon and Mars plan, from reading what little public data is available, it is clear that their proposal rests on a fundamental underlying assumption, which is the use of Apollo-style rockets as the mechanism of transport. The implications of this assumption spread far and wide; the lunar lander’s design is clearly inextricably intertwined with the rocket which will launch it.
So what happens when that fundamental assumption is replaced? Who knows! It will be interesting to find out. That lander could clearly be launched from a space elevator, but if it wasn’t constrained by the underlying assumption, it might built very differently, much bigger, but what else? Perhaps, it should also be scrapped, as maybe the first logical step to the Moon should be to build a lunar space elevator. Otherwise, at the pace of NASA’s current vision, it will take a long while to fill the Moon up with fun things. I do believe that going to the Moon first is a great place to start, a 384,000 km warmup lap for further explorations.
The best reason to build a space elevator is not just that it is cheaper than NASA’s current plan, but that it will make Space accessible to all of us. NASA’s budget is $16 billion, only 5% of the cost of Katrina cleanup, and yet they still have to fight for this money. I believe people would be willing to spend much greater sums on space (10x NASA’s current budget) if they could see the benefits.
That is why space tourism and other commercial enterprises need to become more important over time and NASA needs to figure out what it’s role is. It isn’t relevant yet with NASA’s current plan because for the next 13 years and more, they will build and deploy everything with little room for independent companies to participate. Once we have a space elevator, it becomes possible for Hilton to put up a hotel, then we will need to answer the question of what NASA’s role should be in designing and certifying it?
I have no problem with NASA pursuing their mission to the moon. We don’t know that the space elevator will work – we think we do but that’s not enough to build a mission on.
It could be that NASA is taking seriously their role in R+D and exploration, leaving the exploitation of cis-lunar space to the commercial organizations.
I am not a SME of course but I’m not sure why the earth-moon portion of the vehicle could not be lofted aboard an SE. The operators need to make sure the bus is compatible of course but that should be engineering not anything impossible.
Once we have a space elevator, it becomes possible for Hilton to put up a hotel, then we will need to answer the question of what NASA’s role should be in designing and certifying it?
None. We have a federal agency that does a fine job of certifying aerospace vehicles – let the FAA do the job, with appropriate advice from NASA.