The Outstretched Empty Hand of American Space Efforts

I had a dream the other night. I was in China, riding on a train. The train pulled into a station and I got off to take a break. In the lobby was a magazine advertising a major U.S. University and its academic programs. Across the page from the advertisement was a picture of a painting. The impressionistic painting showed a statue in a snowstorm of an American with an out stretched empty hand. The title of the painting was “American Efforts in Space, the Outstretched Empty Hand.”

I awoke from this dream and realized that the outstretched empty hand is a perfect metaphor for American human space efforts. How many times have we stretched out our hand with human spaceflight to open the space frontier and come up empty handed? From the fall of Apollo to the debris field of Texas and the quandary over the fate of ISS and its predecessors we cannot seem to get our act together or develop a vision for our space efforts.

It is not as if visions (which in the biblical definition means a sense of purpose) do not exist. Indeed from the images and work of Von Braun, Bonestell, and Disney to the Gene Roddenberry world of Star Trek we have had visions of what the future could be like in space. All of these visions have the common thread that PEOPLE are involved, not just robots. The difficulty is that there is a serious disconnect between the visionaries view of the future and the implementation plan of our national space policy.

A lot of people, both inside and outside of NASA realize the above. However, there seems to be confusion about how to rectify the situation. In the coming days Senator John McCain will hold hearings about the future of NASA where he in his honest way will seek to find answers to the question of “what is the future of our national space program”. Mr. O’Keefe will give testimony about what he (and by proxy the Bush administration) sees what the future will be. Mr. Rick Tumlinson and Dr. Robert Zubrin will do the same and knowing Rick and Bob the themes will be private enterprise and Mars respectively. However, all of the testimony as well as Mr. McCain’s question will miss what the real point, which is why we have a national space program. What must follow why if we are to not result in the outstretched empty hand.

For the American populace the why is almost self evident and has been illustrated and promoted by the pioneers (including television) above. For space to be worth the effort and national treasure the answer to why must be “to benefit mankind here on the earth”. Star Trek makes the argument in an almost backhanded manner. How many times did Kirk or Picard speak about how space eliminated poverty, disease, and provided opportunity for a richer life for all humans? This was also a fundamental premise of Disney, Von Braun, Ley, and the other pioneers of the factual (as opposed to our love of warp drives) development of the space frontier by humans. The difference today, and the Apollo and ISS programs are illustrative of this, is that the development of the space frontier has been separated from the scientific interest in space.

Up through the 1960’s the inherent assumption about our future in space was that this development would be of dramatic and permanent benefit to the earth and that people, lots of people would be involved, both on earth and in space. Indeed, president Kennedy himself cast the Apollo program as being “an important first step in the conquest of space”. However, the Apollo program is where the shift began from a real space program to what we have today. Dr. Von Braun argued passionately yet unsuccessfully for the Earth Rendezvous method of going to the Moon that presumed that we would build a modular space station in Earth orbit. This station would be used to assemble the Lunar vehicle that would then fly from Earth orbit to the Moon. Von Braun argued that by utilizing the Lunar Orbit Rendezvous method we would be left without any meaningful infrastructure in space to carry on after the initial landings were made. This decision is what turned the Apollo program into flags and footprints and resulted in the outstretched empty hand in the first space age.

In an effort to salvage Apollo Von Braun and NASA, with considerable congressional support developed the concept of the Apollo Applications program. I urge Senator McCain and all who are interested to read the document “The Space Program in the Post Apollo Period“, A Report of the President’s Science Advisory Committee, prepared by the Joint Space Panels and published by the White House in February 1967. It is instructive to read their recommendations and see how far we have diverged from them, back then as well as today. Here are their five recommendations that have as a fundamental precept the why of space exploration.

1. A limited but important extension of Apollo to exploit our anticipated capability to explore the Moon.
2. A strongly upgraded program of early unmanned exploration of the nearby planets on a scale of time and effort consistent with the requirements for planning future manned expeditions.
3. A program of technology development and qualification of man for long duration space flight in anticipation of manned planetary exploration.
4. The vigorous exploitation (by all appropriate agencies of Government) of space applications for national security and the social and economic well-being of the Nation.
5. The exploitation of our capability to carry out complex technical operations in near Earth orbit (and the Moon) for the advance of science, particularly astronomy.

The why for space exploration is best laid out in 4. above: “for national security and the social and economic well-being of the Nation”. This is what has been lost to the space program and it began and ends with science being the all consuming reason for having a space program that now the core value at NASA.

By the early 1970’s and the lack of follow through by congress and the president on the recommendations of the President’s Science Advisory Committee NASA shifted gears to justify their budget and programs in terms of scientific return. If you read the post Apollo records of conferences and papers the change in emphasis is clear. This is also when the academic peer review process was formalized for the unmanned space program that put scientific value as the primary criterion for missions and made the project scientist the principal investigator for unmanned missions. This led to a shift to the new and uninvestigated phenomena in space and a shift from the 10% of the budget for unmanned missions in 1967 to the one third to one half share today. This is the reason that the Lunar Observer lost out to the Mars Observer mission. This is also the reason that, as a response, many private space advocacy groups came up with the Lunar Prospector mission. The name of this mission was specifically chosen in order to emphasize that prospecting for minerals is important to space development.

First this is NOT an attack on science, only on relative priorities assigned to science at NASA and throughout the federal government’s non defense space activities. Indeed space science has contributed to the social well-being of the nation, if for no other reason, the beautiful pictures that the Hubble telescope has produced. Space certainly contributes to the national security of the nation as has been demonstrated by the success of the GPS program and a plethora of other national defense space programs. Even the economic and social well-being has been enhanced by communications satellites, Direct TV, XM Radio, and other commercial services. However, as the favorite buzz words of the defense department illustrate, we have not had a transformation, or a revolution, in our lives as a result of the above recommendations and indeed very few of them have been truly addressed. It is quite evident at NASA in that we have an Office of Space Science as a core enterprise but no Office for Space Development.

Today in the defense department we hear a lot about the need for transformational capabilities and for revolutionary change. The same is true in NASA and the rest of the U.S. government’s approach to space. Again the International Space Station (ISS) is the poster child for both the problem and the opportunity. ISS, originally, Freedom was conceived as a permanent facility in space in many ways conforming with the Joint Panel’s recommendations above. The space station as Reagan envisioned was originally conceived as a waypoint in space, where a large hanger would be used for assembling Lunar and Mars bound spacecraft. It would be used for technology development and research into long term manned spaceflight. It would also have been used for microgravity research. This is what president Reagan introduced to the nation in 1984. What we have now is a pale shadow of that great idea.

The station was fought over in congress with the majority democrats taking money from the program at many crucial points. NASA, in response continually morphed the rational for the station toward a science oriented station in order to build congressional support. Finally, after all of the boiling down it became president Clinton’s way of getting around Jesse Helm’s foreign relation’s committee’s blocking of money going to the Russian government and for some microgravity and long duration humans in space research. Even most of this was stripped away when Dan Goldin, facing huge overruns and a skeptical congress, took all of the money from microgravity research, leaving almost nothing left of the long duration human research. When the microgravity research community protested, many leaders were forced into leaving. Tragically, recent reports from competent scientific authorities question the methodology of NASA’s long duration human spaceflight research effort.

This all brings us to today and the question of what and or why. We need to re-establish the development of space as a core value of national space policy. Science is wonderful and goes hand in hand with development but without a development as a core value of national space policy Senator McCain’s committee and hearings will all go the way of all of the other tree killing efforts, the outstretched empty hand.

Today you hear a lot of congress people and others in space advocacy such as Dr. Zubrin making the claim that ISS is just the U.S. going around in circles and is irrelevant to what the real goal should be which is Mars. Nothing could be farther from the truth. ISS is the jumping off point to Mars and the Moon and the rest of the solar system. ISS is a triumph of manned spaceflight in its construction and operation. Where it has a failing grade is in utilization. This can change. The simple fact is that we have a space station and we can turn it into that waypoint to the solar system that Von Braun, Disney, and the early visionaries meant it to be. From spacecraft construction to astronomy to human spaceflight testing ISS can be all that we dreamed it could be way back when. The how then becomes the question.

Rick Tumlinson and the Space Frontier Foundation has pushed for years for the private development of space. The problem with this approach is that private enterprise, and more importantly space finance, when it comes to space is very skeptical. This is where Senator McCain and his committee and the Congress can help to enable the future. Here are four points that will make ISS into a waypoint and space in general into an economic engine rather than a playground for a couple of rich guys and government employees.

1. Enact a version of Dana Rohrabacher’s “Zero G Zero Tax” legislation.
2. Make ISS and American commercial space stations an ITAR free zone.
3. Pass other legislation that enables the rapid licensing of suborbital and orbital tourists vehicles.
4. Pass a Public/Private partnership law similar to the ESA rules to lower the risk and provide incentives to entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Walt Anderson and others yet to come.

The Zero G Zero Tax (ZGZT) legislation would be similar to the current embargo on taxes on Internet commerce that did so much to power the economic miracle of the 1990’s. It was a good idea when originally introduced and still is. When scored by the joint taxation committee a few years ago its ten year impact on the treasury was estimated at $1 Billion dollars. Since commercial space covered by the act had zero revenue at the time that means that over five billion dollars in commercial space activity was estimated to be generated. The bill died because offsets were required but it should be obvious that with zero revenue going to five billion revenue there should be benefits to the nation beyond the mere corporate taxes involved.

Making ISS an ITAR free zone would greatly simplify the process of getting payloads to an international space station inhabited by several different nations, all of which are covered by the current ITAR rules. This is a huge thing and far more important than can be simply described here.

The “permission to fly” campaign started by the Space Frontier Foundation should be taken up by the government. In our post 9/11 world it is extremely difficult to get permission to launch people into space from U.S. soil for joyrides. Make this easier. Also, put in indemnification that covers these companies when people inevitably die during these adventures. Treat it the same way as people who climb mount Everest.

ESA today has a great rule that provides matching funding from ESA member states through ESA to the country where the economic activity occurs. That is if I start a commercial space company and invest $20M dollars in this activity ESA, through their advisory committees and national governments will match that amount dollar for dollar. This is an incredible way to help reduce risk for commercial space efforts.

This all comes back to the question of why? For science? For glory and national prestige? For the well-being of the nation? Well all of the above actually. Today we face some incredible problems in terms of our energy future. We simply cannot completely move to the use of fuel cells and the hydrogen economy without space. From the Platinum Group Metals (PGM) that make up the cells to the technology for efficient hydrogen production, space plays a central role. There are not enough PGM’s on the earth to enable the hydrogen economy and the technology development in power systems and maybe even solar power satellites can help to deliver the power that we need for our future. Fusion, that ultimate power source for efficient space propulsion can be used for efficient power production on the earth.

The larger reason for why is that space is as important today as the national railroad, the Panama Canal, and the interstate highway system has been over the last two centuries. The U.S. and our national space policy has the ability to transcend the problems that face the world today for our energy future and resources to help bring the rest of the world to the same level of affluence that environmentalists say is impossible. Recently the World Wildlife Federation proclaimed that we would need two extra Earth’s to raise China and the rest of the world to an American level of affluence. Well as Dr. John Lewis has pointed out in his book “Mining the Sky”, there are hundreds of thousands of worlds just waiting to be developed as well as the major planets, and dozens of Moons. I would recommend that Mr. McCain ask Dr. Lewis to testify as well as Dr. Bill Boynton, also from the University of Arizona who can tell you how much water really exists on Mars.

We have a space station. Lets use it. We have the Delta IV and the Atlas V. Lets use them to send heavy payloads to ISS. We even have a Space Shuttle, an aging yet remarkable system. I am going to go against all of my advocate friends and advocate a second generation Shuttle to replace the current three remaining shuttles that can meet the criterion laid down by NASA for the Assured Access to Station program. A clean sheet design taking advantage of over twenty years of operational experience would be a much better and cost effective solution that would fulfill all of the Orbital Space Plane requirements as well as the Assured access program. Implement all of the upgrades and operational changes recommended by various committees over the years and you could build a very nice STS II that would be able to be semi-mass produced and later mated to a flyback booster, resulting in a fully reusable system. Boeing, in the form of the old Rockwell Downey, the Shuttle’s original builder, has done some good work in this area.

We have a tremendous future in space if we just shake loose the shackles of the last thirty years of post Apollo hand wringing. If we do not do this successfully we will certainly end up as the Portugal of the 22nd century and enable the construction of the statue memorializing the outstretched empty hand.