QuantumG's Blog

In a video over at the XCOR Aerospace website, founder Jeff Greason describes, among other things, what human spaceflight should be about and why NASA should be doing it. I believe passionately in the value of humans in space. One of the most overlooked findings on the Augustine committee, I think, was an inquiry into the reasons why this is so. Nobody in Congress could care less why this is so from what I see publicly, but if you don't know why you're doing what you're doing it's very hard to discuss what the best way is to do it. You get science from people being in space. It's a myth that you don't. You know, ask the guys at JPL if they would like to have human beings on some of these targets - they'll tell you "absolutely". But that's not the reason you do it. That's just a benefit you get. You get international good will from doing things in space. Especially if you do it with an international component. You know, ask...

There five important factors for long term human space colonization: Resources - humans need certain kinds of resources to survive and continue a technological civilization: carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, silicon, metals. We also need energy: solar, nuclear, or geothermal. Accessibility - this is what people often mean when you say "gravity well". How much energy does it cost to get there or leave there? Imagine you live on your own personal island. Sure, it's quiet and there's no neighbors to annoy you, but if you don't have fuel for your helicopter or a nice speedboat your economic sphere of influence will be significantly constrained.. much as we are down here on Earth. Radiation Protection - also, down here on Earth, we have an atmosphere that protects us from the harsh solar and galactic cosmic radiation, but just about everywhere else in the solar system we're going to have to make do with a more substantial physical barrier - either th...

There's another approaching train wreck with the Orion Crew Rescue Vehicle, or "lifeboat" as it is starting to be called. For a start, Lockheed Martin is saying it will cost $4.5 billion to develop.. others are saying more like $6 billion and it won't be ready until 2013.. others are saying 2015. For comparison, that's 9 to 12 times as much as SpaceX has spent on everything that they have done. There's no word yet on how much each Orion Lifeboat will actually cost or what it will be launched on. Orbital Sciences has smelled the blood in the water and is attacking . They think they can do it for cheaper.. no word on faster. Back in 2009, Elon Musk stood in front of the Augustine committee and suggested that his company SpaceX could deliver a lifeboat capability shortly after the first few cargo flights were completed.. that would most likely be early 2012. No price was given but it would most certainly be funded under COTS-D and that's only $300 m...

To many advocates of extending the Space Shuttle, the most important thing is jobs. They'll tell you about how the crew at the United Space Alliance are doing such a fantastic job and it would be a shame to lose this national asset. Which is funny because, back in 2004 when the Shuttle retirement decision was made, we were told that the workforce is aging, retiring, and unable to get new blood. However, a rare few who advocate Shuttle extension do so because they strongly appreciate the capability of the Shuttle, and cite Hubble servicing missions as the greatest demonstration of these. I, for one, think this capability can be better served by more cost effective means: building satellites so they are roboticly serviceable to begin with, or the robotic/manned options for Dragon presented by Max Vozoff in March. But it is interesting to think about how one might utilize the orbiters once they retire. The current plans are to ship them to museums and stare at them in wonder...

Buzz Aldrin has been interviewed on his Space Czar commandments and found to support the myth of The Gap. "Meanwhile, I also very strongly suggest that instead of retiring the shuttles [in late 2010] and buying rides with the Russians for five, six, or seven years to get to our $100 billion space station, a highly undesirable situation, we stretch out the flights of the five remaining shuttle orbiters to 2015." Five remaining shuttle orbiters? Really? I simply don't get why people are so set on framing the debate of Shuttle extension as an alternative to buying seats on the Soyuz. As has been said before: the problem isn't boldly going, it is boldly staying . The Shuttle can't do that with its 14 day on-orbit endurance. So even if you keep flying the Shuttle you're still going to have to buy a couple of Soyuz every 6 months to use as lifeboats.. or wait for Orion CRV to be ready.. should be around 2015. I thought Buzz got this and he was only advo...

Clara Moskowitz has published an article that tries to dispel a half dozen myths about the new space policy. Rand Simberg published an article back in May which tried to do the same. Whenever I read these articles I tend to see more myth usage than busting. As I've tried to articulate before, there's a lot of misunderstanding of the so-called "Gap" which neither of these articles bust. No discussion of Shuttle retirement makes sense if you don't mention two important things: The Soyuz has always been the vehicle used to rotate crews to the ISS as it has to act as a lifeboat - something the Shuttle can't do with it's 14 day on-orbit endurance. Ares I/Orion was supposed to be ready when the expedition crew size went from 2 to 6. It was clear it wasn't going to be, so NASA bought more seats on Soyuz which upped the required production of Soyuz, which increased the average price per seat. It should be clear, the myth here is that The Gap has mu...

Sen John Glenn (ret) recently made a very well written, very in-depth statement about space policy. Compared to what other retired astronauts have been saying or suggesting, Glenn sounds outright prescient. I would like to address just one part of Glenn's statement. Russian Failure: And what happens if there is a failure of the usually reliable Soyuz? Just a couple of years ago, they had two reentry mishaps that took them over normal G limits and some 400 miles from their intended landing point. A grounded Soyuz would leave us with no access to the ISS. I presume the crew on board would have to come down by the so-called "lifeboat" Soyuz currently docked at the ISS. With no access, could the station even be abandoned, eventually to reenter the atmosphere in uncontrolled pieces, landing wherever? I find this very poor thought out and, compared to the rest of the statement, that is strange. As Glenn says earlier "The Shuttle first flew in late 1981 with its gre...

For a period in 2008 I was working on the OpenCog project. I left the project due to the lack of engineering competency and leadership displayed by the group (not to mention a few personality clashes), but I still think the work of Dr Ben Goertzel, that we were trying to implement, is fundamentally sound. I do, however, wonder how many people actually get what it is all about. There's so many buzzwords and excessive focus on statistics and logic and all those messy details that I think the underlying simplicity of the mechanism isn't being communicated. So here's my attempt. The primary distinction between AGI and more "specialized" AI is the idea that the system should be able to solve problems which are not necessarily formally specified. And this is so important that I'm going to give an example. You are a farmer taking his dog, a chicken and a sack of grain to market and you come across a river. The only way across the river is by a small boat, w...

If you're a space geek like me you've probably had people ask you why we're "wasting money in space", and typically just like that, in the most impolite way possible. The Justifications Spinoffs Most people who ask this question are not talking about unmanned spaceflight. It seems that "science" is more than enough justification for just about any planetary probe, earth monitoring satellite or Mars rover, but human spaceflight is astronauts playing around on the taxpayer's dime. Because of this, I often hear NASA trying to link human spaceflight to science. We're told astronauts on the International Space Station are doing important scientific work, in particular biological study into zero-g protein crystal growth that will lead to cures for fatal diseases, or something. We're supposed to imagine astronauts with (space) test tubes and (space) microscopes floating around doing Important Work which makes the billions and billions of dollars...

This year I attended ISDC in Chicago. I suffered with the US food and the jetlag, but overall it was an enjoyable experience. My tweets of the event can be broken up into a few categories, note that the times are not Chicago timezone :) Airports / Jetlag @jeff_foust I got put on the standby list for the first time ever yesterday. #unitedairlines 10:02 PM May 27th via web I actually managed to get about 8 hours sleep tonight.. yah jetlag! #isdc 11:03 PM May 29th via web @dmasten this trip was my first experience of standby. less painful than I would have thought. 12:06 AM Jun 1st via mobile web @n3ckf who are these mythical people who dont show up to their flight requiring the airline to overbook? 12:58 AM Jun 1st via mobile web I am on the last leg of my epic voyage home. seems kinda fitting to watch Ulysses 31 eps all the way. 10:10 AM Jun 3rd via mobile web Dennys / WiFi Woohoo.. at Dennys. Bless free wifi. ISDC registration in an hour or so. 9:38 PM May 27th via w...

I had heard on various blogs that Elon Musk mentioned the integration of the launch escape system into the Dragon capsule again on the teleconference. I had heard that he even mentioned that using those same engines the Dragon could one day land like Soyuz does... on land. But only today did I actually hear what he said myself, and I think he said a lot more than was reported. The Falcon 9 flight 1 teleconference [some weird echo at the beginning] 36m34s in: "Really the significant development item is the launch escape system. I think we've got a very exciting architecture, a new architecture, that hasn't been done before for a launch escape system - which is to build the launch escape engines into the side wall of the capsule. So instead of having sort of this tractor tower that gets discarded about half way through launch, you have these built-in escape engines that are always with you all the way through orbit. And so you have launch escape for a much l...

In 18 months time it is almost a law of nature that computer power will double. The same (with a smaller number of months) is true for DNA sequencing, and many other technologies follow exponential development curves. Why? To many of us it seems like magic, but there's a lot of work that goes into achieving these modern miracles. In 18 months time a new chip manufacturing technology will be available because years ago engineers started working on it. Other engineers are now working on the technology which will be used 18 months later. Some future technology which isn't even envisioned yet will build on the work of these technologies that have come before. When we peg dates to them, this is a Technology Roadmap. So, when some people talk about the NASA robotic exploration program being a success because it only develops technology as necessary to complete a mission, it ignores the primary driving factor of robotic capabilities: that law of computer power doubling every 18 m...

The effect of prolonged radiation exposure on the human body is one of the potential show stoppers of long term human spaceflight. Yesterday we heard Zubrin present his traditional "don't worry about it" speech and another speaker refer to his reasoning as "the numbers game". By this, he meant that no-one in the audience is going to check those numbers so Zubrin can say whatever he wants. I think this speaker was missing the point. Let's look at what Bob was actually saying. Zubrin's Assumptions Six month transit times to Mars are available every 2 years Radiation exposure on the Mars surface is negligible due to the availability of dirt for shielding Solar radiation in deep space can be shielded against, so galactic cosmic radiation is all that matters The GCR dose in LEO is about half that of deep space. It's about 55% Mars crews would consist of 5 people The ISS will continue to be crewed permanently by 7 people Under these assumptions...

This morning Bob Zubrin will be arguing the case for Mars Direct over the NASA future direction. This is what I'd really like to be able to talk to him about but probably won't get a chance to. [About an hour after I wrote this post a friend of mine decided it would be hilarious to introduce me to Bob Zubrin and then run away. I started the conversation by saying that I thought he had too many strong, stupid and offensive opinions, but rather than punch me in the face or walk away he suggested we discuss our differences. And so we did.. for about 2 hours. He agreed with many of these points but insisted that new NASA administration won't actually be doing any of the stuff they say they will.. we'll see.] There's a lot of common ground between the two plans but all the focus is, of course, on the differences. Dr Zubrin can't be happy that NASA is doing work that supports his plan, only being appointed the Space Czar will do. Common Ground "Mars as...

In an earlier post I described a system for generating zero-g in the laboratory and how this might be used to generate a standard gravity on-orbit and for deep space missions. Today, Narayanan Ramachandran of NASA-Marshall gave a talk at ISDC and I had the opportunity to ask him a few revealing questions. As I expected, there is few technical problems with operating a system such as this in space. Superconducting magnets of sufficient size to levitate a human exist and, although they cost a lot for laboratory use, they are chump change for a human spaceflight program. The power requirements are not excessive for the advanced solar power systems NASA is planning to bring online over the next few years, or for the in-space nuclear power systems that may become available eventually. There was also some discussion about how much gravity humans need to maintain healthy bones, which was the primary motivation for the technology. Not for the first time I'm tempted to look up suppli...

Too many times I have read the claim that with the retirement of the Space Shuttle this year NASA will be "hitching rides with the Russians" to the International Space Station. A number of writers have taken it upon themselves to stress that Shuttle retirement was a decision made by the Bush administration, not by the Obama administration, and although this is true I think it is really beside the point. It has always been the plan to fly expedition members to the ISS on the Soyuz. That was the deal, the Shuttle builds the station and the Soyuz rotates the crew. Since late 2000, that's exactly what the Soyuz has done, and a permanent human presence has been maintained on the ISS. Every time the Shuttle flies to the ISS it is for a visit , of no more than 10 days as that is the limit of on-orbit endurance of the Shuttle. If the shuttle wasn't retiring this year the missions they would be doing would be resupply - and maybe some more experimental hardware install...

Planetary protection is something for which, I think, a broad base of support exists. It has many facets: earth monitoring solar monitoring potentially hazardous NEO monitoring basic science for the understanding of the sun and asteroid/comet composition high performance computer simulation and prediction of solar and NEO threats technology development and demonstration for the purposeful diversion of NEO threats harnessing of solar power utilization of extraterrestrial resources; and eventual migration of polluting industry off-earth. Quite a number of these are best done using robotic tools, satellites for example, but some of them are what we could call "exploration" and can be done most effectively, in terms of time, with human missions – and time matters. Every day we don’t have a good understanding of NEO composition, for example, we’re in danger of incorrectly characterizing those threats. When we start recognizing that external threats to the earth are r...

A common plot device in science fiction like Star Trek that allows crew to walk around in full gravity on spaceships is Gravity Plating . The idea is simply that the ship is plated with some magical technology that dramatically decreases the strain on the show's special effects budget :) Having just this technology would have a major effect on NASA's future long duration missions asteroids, Mars and beyond, not to mention stays on the International Space Station. Serious discussions of artificial gravity generation today are based on the concept of rotating the habitation module. Either a big torus like in 2001 A Space Odyssey, Mission To Mars, Red Planet, and Babylon 5 or, more practical, using a long tether between the habitat and a counterweight, say the expended trans-mars injection stage. Both options are incredibly difficult to do and dangerous. As such, their discussion in NASA circles has been virtually taboo for decades. Which is why recently, while thinking...

Scott "Doc" Horowitz recently [1] published a rant on The Mars Society, and among the stupidity was this gem: The COTS providers (Orbital and SpaceX) were awarded firm fixed price contracts totaling $3.5B to deliver approximately 40MT of cargo to the ISS. This, plus the $500M already invested in COTS, results in a cost of $100,000/kilo ($45,000/lb) to deliver cargo to ISS. If the Ares I/Orion were flown at a similar rate (6 flights/year) the fully-burdened government cost for delivering cargo to ISS would be about $70,000/kilo ($32,000/lb)! Totally ignoring that there was no cargo block for Orion, what about the estimated $35B to $40B that Ares I + Orion is expected to cost? How about adding that in? It's just like how Zubrin claims that NASA's budget today is the same as it was during Apollo [2].. by cherry picking 13 years from the Apollo period [3] (and in some retellings the 90s too) and then defining "the same" as 21% more. [4] You'd think...

…. and have been since 2004 when the Ansari X-Prize was won and nothing happened . 5.5 years and counting. It’d be nice if this supposed “race” would heat up a little. It really does seem that everyone assumes Virgin Galactic / Scaled Composites is so far ahead that they can never be caught.. despite all the evidence to the contrary . Did you happen to catch the Armadillo Aerospace yearly video: This is last year’s video: Did you think the same thing as me: “That’s it?” Rocket Racing League. Methane/LOX engines for NASA. Lunar Lander Challenge. So the only new thing is the low altitude hops. (Speaking of which, break the DC-X altitude record of 3.14km already!) At Space Access, after the grumblings about being trumped on the LLC, Carmack made the pledge that this year they’ll be doing something new. Here’s hoping it involves *people*. And while I’m being critical.. which, I know, I do too much.. What’s next for Masten? More hops? Can we count on you...