Maybe I need to start at the beginning.
There is nothing inherently enobling about space exploration.
The guy who contributed the most to the American space program, the guy who built the Saturn V's, got his start using slave labor to build the V2's that killed 1,500 civilians. The victims weren't collateral damage, they were the targets. V2's were built as terror weapons.
Weather satellites weren't built because meteorologists wanted them, they were built because the air force and the NRO wanted them. Communications satellites were built because the army wanted a wide communications pipe to Europe. Navigation satellites were developed and launched so we could aim our Polaris missiles with greater accuracy. Space exploration and exploitation has always been a national project, tied up with national defense and national prestige. The government is not standing in the way of the commercial use of space, it is the only thing that makes the commercial use of space possible.

I like the "wacky Jacksonian Protestant cult monkeys" line. Mind if I borrow it? :)

You could apply the same criticisms to the settlement of N America. Worse. Yet I would submit that that was ennobling and expanding of the human spirit.

The curse and evil-spirit of our age is stagnation and complacency and self-satisfaction. I'd say that any project of crazy dreams is a kind of antidote.

The curse and evil-spirit of our age is stagnation and complacency and self-satisfaction. I'd say that any project of crazy dreams is a kind of antidote.

Paging Mr. Lenin! Mr. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin!

(I couldn't resist the temptation!)

That's good!

But the evil of Lenin's time was the opposite of stagnation and complacency. More like, "Let's fix these problems right now. Even if we have to send a million obstructionists to the camps!" Mayor Bloomberg was just born too late.

For our time I imagine some starry-eyed dreamer waving a banner and proclaiming "Aspera ad Astra!" And millions of people look up from their computer screens (Where they are probably playing Starcraft) and blink and say, "What's his problem? Mus be one of those crazy Tea-Partiers I heard about."

The commercial space industry has revenues in the tens of billions of dollars per year. Dozens of GEO comsats are built and launched every year. Whole constellations of LEO comsats circle the globe for mobile telephony. Remote sensing satellites provide the data for popular websites such as Google Earth. Commercial launch services are available using a variety of launch vehicles. Whole new launch vehicles were designed and built with private money to serve the commercial market.

The commercial side of the space industry is so coming to dominate that the newest NASA and military comsats (TDRS, WGS, and MUOS) are based on commercial satellite buses, not the other way around. The NRO actually gets the majority of its images (though not the majority of its best images) from commercial remote sensing satellites.

And now the commercial space industry is moving into the field of manned spaceflight. Several companies (Virgin Galactic, XCOR) are offering sub-orbital flights. Boeing and SpaceX are building orbital capsules, and Bigelow is building a commercial space station. Whether these companies succeed or not (I mention only the most credible of the field) remains to be seen, but if they fail others will rise to fill their spots.

If you're dismayed at SpaceX's recent success, get used to the feeling. The next few decades are going to be very disappointing for you.

Mike

Hi Mike-
I am not dismayed, I am skeptical that a profitable market for human spaceflight to & from orbit can exist without government subsidy -- and that is what SpaceX's contract with the U.S. government amounts to.
By swapping an extended ISS lifespan for development of the Ares V, Obama has provided SpaceX with the business it needs to survive, at the cost of a return to the Moon and (potentially) a manned Mars mission.
SpaceX' success is a result of a narrowing, not a widening, of human space ventures.

Terry, I think you are making a mistake by assuming that the dull business of getting stuff into LEO (Low Earth Orbit) is a "narrowing" from the exciting projects like going to the Moon.

The number one thing that's making those cool excursions rare, bordering on close-to-impossible, is the huge cost of getting pounds into orbit. That's the real limiting factor. Everything else is secondary. 95% of the cost of going to the Moon is the cost of getting fuel and Titanium up from Earth's brutal gravity-well into LEO.

So if we want to have those neat things happen, the very best thing we can do is to forget them—forget about the Moon, forget Mars— and concentrate ruthlessly on whatever might lower the cost of getting stuff into orbit.

And frankly, the old paradigm of the inter-twining of Lockheed-Martin/NASA/pork-serving politicians/expeditions to Moon is not going to get us there. Lean and hungry capitalist dreamers just might. There's nothing wrong with using government money to help us get to that place. If it works, do it. The trans-continental railroads started with subsidies. But bye-and-bye they became profitable. And they still are. And all kinds of other things, public and private, became feasible because there were those railroads.

I think you are wrong to imagine that companies like SpaceX can only survive with subsidies. Getting-stuff-to-orbit is becoming a commodity business. If your company could, right now, reliably put stuff into orbit for 90% of what the other guys are charging, you would make a bundle and not need any subsidies. What is interesting is that (I theorize) we seem to be approaching that capitalist take-off moment, seen so many times before, where mass production and free enterprise start reducing prices drastically. If that happens, Mars follows inevitably.

By swapping an extended ISS lifespan for development of the Ares V, Obama has provided SpaceX with the business it needs to survive, at the cost of a return to the Moon and (potentially) a manned Mars mission.

This is not true. The Constellation program had almost no chance of ever putting a human on the moon, and cancelling it was the best thing Obama ever did.

The Constellation program was begun in 2005 and consisted of five major elements: Orion, Ares I, Ares V, the Earth Departure Stage (EDS), and the Altair lunar lander. These elements were so expensive, they couldn't be developed in parallel, only in sequence. And to afford even that, the Space Shuttle had to be retired in 2010 (it wasn't) and the Space Station scuttled after 2015 (it won't be) to pay for it all.

Despite all of that, the Ares I / Orion would not be ready until 2019. Then, and only then, could development start in earnest on Ares V, which would not be complete until 2028. Then, and only then, could development start on EDS & Altair, which would not be complete until 2035.

It would take 30 years of development at $3-5 billion per year before it put the first human on the moon. And that assumes there would be no technical or political setbacks.

Once complete, the Constellation program would provide only two Apollo-like moon missions per year. There would be no money left to develop a lunar base, a manned lunar rover, or a mission to Mars. Two sorties per year to the moon would be all we could afford.

It was a waste of money on a monumental scale, and the program deserved to die. We lost nothing of value when it did.

It was a waste of money on a monumental scale, and the program deserved to die. We lost nothing of value when it did.
Surely you can see that that is opinion, and not fact, Michael? We have given up on a return to the Moon and a Mars mission. That is not nothing (Neil Armstrong believes it is something).

For The United States, the leading space faring nation for nearly half a century, to be without carriage to low Earth orbit and with no human exploration capability to go beyond Earth orbit for an indeterminate time into the future, destines our nation to become one of second or even third rate stature. While the President's plan envisages humans traveling away from Earth and perhaps toward Mars at some time in the future, the lack of developed rockets and spacecraft will assure that ability will not be available for many years.

Without the skill and experience that actual spacecraft operation provides, the USA is far too likely to be on a long downhill slide to mediocrity. America must decide if it wishes to remain a leader in space. If it does, we should institute a program which will give us the very best chance of achieving that goal.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/92035-neil-armstrong-criticizes-obamas-space-plan

"For The United States, the leading space faring nation for nearly half a century, to be without carriage to low Earth orbit and with no human exploration capability to go beyond Earth orbit for an indeterminate time into the future, destines our nation to become one of second or even third rate stature."

Whimper, whimper. So, TURN THAT QUESTION AROUND, Terry. Think. How could we have spent so much, for so long, and now have nothing? How can that be? How can that possibly be? Could it be that the general model of "space" we have been using is flawed? If we were the, ahem, "leading space faring nation for nearly half a century," how come we have nothing now? How can our hands be empty?

Impossible. We have "experience that actual spacecraft operation provides," so of course we must keep on doing whatever we have been doing.,.

Total bullshit. The "State Socialist" model of space exploration doesn't work. The thinking was wrong from the beginning. Turds all the way down. And Armstrong is a captive, a member of the nomenklatura. He's a sort of Gorbachev, sure that communism can be reformed and made to work.

NASA is the Post Office. Once useful, now a money-hole that drains the life out of everything nearby. Get a broom. Kill it. Drag it into the bushes and kill it. Start over.

NASA hiring Russians to get us into space! Egad! Insanity. How can you defend this madness? What could be more perfect symbolism? Two decrepit old commies trying to support each other, staggering along with nothing to show for so many decades and billions squandered. Pfooey. Get the broom.

We have given up on a return to the Moon and a Mars mission.

There was no Mars mission. There never was. It was never in the budget.

And there was no credible chance of a lunar mission. The first lunar mission was to be in 2035, but only if the Shuttle was retired in 2010 (it wasn't) and the Station scuttled in 2015 (it won't be). That drives the first moon landing to the right (later) on the schedule.

Add to that the fact that the Constellation program was so mis-managed that its schedule was moving to the right at a speed greater than a year per year. The landing date was actually receding as time went on.

Constellation was spending $35 billion to develop the Ares I, a launch vehicle that could put 51,000 lbs into low earth orbit (LEO). We already have a launch vehicle that can put 51,000 lbs into LEO. It's called the Delta IV Heavy. It already exists and has flown several times. It requires no development costs.

How much did (past tense) the Delta IV Heavy cost to develop? $500 million. NASA was spending 70 times what Boeing spent to develop an equivalent (but safer) vehicle. That's just insane!

Then there's the Orion capsule. At the time of cancellation, NASA had spent $5.1 billion to get the expendable 4-man LEO-only block 1 Orion to PDR and first drop test (which it failed). Boeing has spent $110 million to get its re-usable 7-man LEO-only CST-100 capsule to PDR and first drop test (which it passed). NASA spent 46 times as much as Boeing for inferior results.

The Ares V would've cost an additional $40 billion, and the EDS and Altair never got far enough past the PowerPoint stage to even be costed.

This monstrosity is the program you're defending: NASA's spending 50-70 times what private companies were spending to develop superior hardware.

Fortunately Obama killed the whole program -- one of the few decent things he ever did. We'll get to the moon and Mars decades sooner because of it.

America must decide if it wishes to remain a leader in space. If it does, we should institute a program which will give us the very best chance of achieving that goal.

That would be Obama's space program.

The fact that a Mars mission was never in the budget does not mean that there never was a Mars mission, Michael. They do not budget for 2030 or later. The Ares V was intended to give us the capability of manned missions beyond LEO (as well as other things). By canceling the program, we have lost future capability. Your statement that it never would have worked anyway is an opinion you share with Obama. I do not know whether Ares would have been successful or not, but I do know that SpaceX is not going to take us to the Moon or Mars.
And I still do not understand how a private contractor depending on the ISS for a market is supposed to herald a new age of private enterprise in space. The market for manned orbital flight is non-existent outside of the wasteful projects you deride NASA for undertaking.
It is not reasonable to assume that because government cannot open the space frontier, private enterprise can. Planetary Resources inc's plans are more interesting than SpaceX's plans because PRI hopes to make money by exploiting natural resources, not the government. I don't have a lot of hope for PRI because the investors may run out of money or get bored before they see a return, but at least they are planning on creating wealth.

"I do know that SpaceX is not going to take us to the Moon or Mars. " Red Herring argument, no one expects them to. What they and similar companies will do is solve the biggest problem for ANYONE who wants to get to Mars. (Whether governments, Elon Musk, or the LDS church.) And that's the prodigious expense of getting all the poundage into orbit. Until that can be reduced, ANY Mars or Moon or asteroid expedition will be a boondoggle.

Ares V was a cargo lift vehicle. It was an attempt to solve the same problem. But a NASA/Boeing partnership was the wrong medicine. That approach is guaranteed to be too expensive.

The ISS is a boondoggle because the work it does is not worth the huge cost. But almost all that cost is the cost of getting stuff, and people, into orbit.

And "getting us to Mars" is the wrong mind-set. Our goal should be getting people living in space. Presumably in various sorts of orbital bases or habitats or shanty-towns. They should be growing food--agriculture in space would be far more productive than on earth, once you got set-up.

Then we would have the right kind of foundation from which to go out and explore the universe.

There is a similar situation with research in the Antarctic. If MIT wants to do research there, do they load a ship with everything needed, and set sail from Boston? Absurd.

What they do is fly in comfort to our permanent base at MacMurdo. Where there are bedrooms, chow-halls, a bowling ally.... plus lots of scientific and exploration equipment on hand. And, most important, permanent support staff, who know just how to work in those conditions, and can teach new-comers. And can maintain smaller research sites, and get scientists to and from them.

You know, John, until I started following this thread I was against NASA operating manned space missions :). Any space activity requires a large investment. Four reasons a nation might make this investment are national defense, scientific advancement, practical applications, and national prestige. There are, of course, overlapping areas between these categories. In the early stages of the Gulf War and the Iraq War, the Defense Dept. took over much of the available commercial satellite bandwidth (plus some civvy NOAA recon stuff).
You can put the space activities of a country into one or more of the four categories. In the U.S, if we leave aside national defense (since we are talking about civilian use of space), we have scientific advancement, practical application, and national prestige. NASA, with its partners at JPL and elsewhere, does very well at scientific advancement. The unmanned missions to the inner and outer solar system have revolutionized planetary astronomy. Over budget and over deadline, of course, but compared to what similar program? No one else is doing it as well.
In the practical applications category we can put the "big three" of communications, navigational, and meteorological satellites. These provide services that cannot be provided other than from orbit, and they are a mature technology. They are money makers, and it is not surprising that economic forces have generated private industries that fabricate, place in orbit, and manage these systems.
Michael is right, there has been a revolution in both building lower cost satellites and getting them in orbit. In the 90's, for example, the European Space Agency (ESA) decided to build a light-to-medium-payload rocket called the Vega to take advantage of what it saw as an emerging market for smaller nations to launch their own satellites. By the time the first Vega launched earlier this year, the array of launch choices had expanded so greatly that Vega can only survive if ESA member nations agree to subsidize it.
It is difficult to put manned space missions in any category other than national prestige. Space tourism to the ISS (seats sold by the Russians) ran over 20 million USD. How deep is that market? We aren't talking about Rodenberrys's wagon train to the stars, here.
Here is how I look at it: the Apollo missions were successful due to unique historical circumstances. With chemical rockets we will not see reductions of orders of magnitude in the cost to deliver a human to LEO and beyond, regardless of whether it is being done by government or private enterprise. What we need to become a truly spacefaring nation is not a privatized rocket fleet. What we need is to become so wealthy that the high cost of putting humans in orbit will small relative to the size of the economy.

"Space tourism to the ISS (seats sold by the Russians) ran over 20 million USD. How deep is that market?"

Not deep. But you seem to assume that the numbers will be static. Why? Are we in an age of stability, where things don't change much? Has invention stopped?

"What we need is to become so wealthy that the high cost of putting humans in orbit will small relative to the size of the economy. "

We are pretty much there. You just don't "see" it, because you are trapped in an old mental model. We are at a point where successful businessmen build space companies as a sort of hobby business or second career! This is a stunning revolution. And you just take it for granted, and act as if it were nothing.

And worse, you don't seem to see that our wealth is growing. Compounding. Even in this dismal time our economy is slowly growing. The fortunes of the next generation will be bigger, and will do even more exciting things.