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For many space advocates, spatial regulation evokes such visions, but any initial settlement can be much more austere. (credit: Bryan Versteeg) |
by Jeff Foust
Monday, November 26, 2018
For decades, space advocates have campaigned for a spatial settlement: human beings living and working permanently beyond the Earth. These visions come in different forms, from the Moon and Mars bases to the spatial colonies chosen by Gerard K. O'Neill more than 40 years ago. But in those decades, these visions remained the same: concepts that remained largely fantasies.
| "It's not just individual things, but the pace at which things are accelerating that accelerates, and I think that's a very exciting factor in all of this," Pittman said. |
These dreams of spatial regulation, however, may be a little closer to reality. Defenders see hope in SpaceX's efforts to reduce launch costs and in Elon Musk's plans to go to Mars as early as the 2020s. Jeff Bezos approaches the same way at Blue Origin, while pursuing a more colonial view of spatial colonization than Musk's on Mars. Even NASA supports the general concept with plans for a "sustainable" return to the moon that will leverage international and commercial capabilities.
"These are not just individual things, but the pace at which things are accelerating that accelerates, and I think it's a very exciting factor in all of this," said Bruce Pittman. , First Vice President of the National Space Society.
Pittman spoke at the NSS Space Settlement Summit, a two-day event held at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles in early November. The purpose of this event was to examine how recent developments could eventually lead to the realization of this long-term vision of spatial colonization.
Not surprisingly, many discussions were devoted to achievements and projects in the field of access to space. One of the panels was entitled "What do we do with 150 tons in orbit?", A reference to the projected payload capacity of the next-generation SpaceX launch system, known at the time of the conference under the name Big Falcon Rocket, or BFR. (Last week, Musk announced, via Twitter of course, that the lower deck of the vehicle would now be called "Super Heavy" and that the upper deck of the "spaceship" would now be called "Spaceship".)
"If you have vehicles that size, 100% usable and worth tens of millions of dollars per flight, I think it will completely transform the way we use space," said Dan Rasky, director from the Space Portal Office to the NASA Research Center in Ames. , during this panel. He compared his impact to the transcontinental railroad, which significantly reduced the time needed to cross the country, reduced costs and improved security. "It was absolutely transformative, and things that seemed crazy before setting up suddenly became commonplace after they were set up. I think we may be on the verge of space.
SpaceX is not alone: other people have talked about the work of Blue Origin, as well as the launch service contract awards launched in October to help fund the development of the new Glenn from Blue Origin, as well the United Launch Alliance Vulcan Centaurs and the Northrop Grumman OmegA rockets. .
"We have been locked in this idea of very difficult and expensive space," Rasky said. "If we see these barriers to entry drop significantly, what could really happen?"
The renewed importance given to returning to the moon has also excited the defenders of the settlements, particularly because of the presence of resources such as ice water. "A propellant on the moon would reduce the cost of transitioning Earth from the lunar surface by three times," said George Sowers, professor of the Space Resources Program at the Colorado School of Mines. "For me, it's the next obvious step."
Sowers called a "super important" directive on space policy (SPD) 1, signed by President Trump last December, calling for a human return to the moon. The wording of this directive, which includes commercial and international partnerships to enable a sustainable lunar return, suggested to participants that unlike the Space Exploration Initiative and the Vision of the Spatial exploration, this time around, would be different.
| "Jim Bridenstine is pretty much the best NASA administrator for what we can expect," said Hopkins. |
"For the first time in a very long time, the administration has developed a coherent and executable strategy that allows it to do something in space that could really work," said Greg Autry, USC professor, member of the NASA Transition Team. Trump Administration after the 2016 elections.
No current member of NASA's management team attended the meeting, but NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine recorded brief remarks at the event. "We share your vision of people living in space permanently and creating a vibrant space economy," he said, before talking about NASA's own exploration projects.
These words were music for the ears of the participants. "Jim Bridenstine is one of NASA's top administrators in terms of our goals we could expect," said Mark Hopkins, chairman of the NSS executive committee.
Everyone was not convinced that this time would be different. "All the right words are there, and execution is essential," said Mark Nall, former director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, co-founder of space robotics company OffWorld. "We had all the right words to define the vision of space exploration: to expand the economic sphere of the Earth to the entire solar system. It should have worked.
Autry was in agreement with these concerns. "I am concerned that no one in NASA's" Suite A "knows how to run his business or has a truly commercial perspective," he said. "I do not see how they will execute the plan that was asked of them."
This included, for some, skepticism about the utility of the gateway, which, according to NASA, is an essential step in bringing humans back to the moon in a sustainable way, but others see it as a distraction for the goal of people lying on the lunar surface. (At a meeting of the National Space Council's User Advisory Group in mid-November, former NASA administrator Mike Griffin said that building a bridge before sending humans back to the surface of the moon was a "stupid architecture".)
"It all boils down to the goal of the bridge, and I do not think it has been clearly articulated," said Nall.
"Personally, I am excited about the gateway if it is used as a test bed for a variety of commercial capabilities," Autry said. "If it becomes this" toll ", as some people call it, where it becomes the only way to access the lunar surface, then it's an obstacle."
| Johnson has pleaded to bring more people from outside the field to help shape the future of space settlement. "Anyone here tonight slept in a hotel designed by Boeing?" Asked he. |
During the event, however, there was a tendency to move to the desired end state, namely populations on the Moon and Mars, as well as settlements in orbit or beyond, hosting thousands of people. . Anthony Longman of Skyframe Research presented in detail an expandable space habitat concept that can reach more than 200 meters radius and shelter thousands of people through a concept called tensegrity structures. Participants asked her a series of technical questions about her design, such as whether there was enough space for cultures to accommodate 8,000 people or just 1,000 people.
Until somebody asks how much it would cost to build. "Oh, it costs," he says, interrupting, as if to recall an unpleasant reality that he had hoped to conceal. A graph, he said, "suggests that the figure is in the tens of billions of dollars, but I do not know for sure."
Even that was too much for an audience that seemed willing to accept the technical challenges of such a structure. "This is probably not correct," he said when audience members asked them if they had heard correctly. "A previous estimate we worked on was about $ 400 billion. I do not really know. "
Initial space installations are unlikely to be as grand or expensive, but may be a collection of modules. At a panel, someone asked what the MVP – minimum viable product in the world of startups – would be for space regulations.
"I like the cylinders. I like the bottles because they are big and spacious, "said Al Globus of San Jose State University. A modular approach, such as a student team developed using Bigelow Aerospace expandable modules, is possible, but not necessarily desirable. "There is a lot to say about modularity, starting from something small and bigger and bigger. It's just that I would not want to live there. They're too small."
Others, however, seemed more willing to embrace a rough existence in a space settlement on the fantasies of space colonies. Karlton Johnson, an Arconic Inc. executive and former Air Force officer, compared this mission to his field deployment, with little comfort at home. "I suppose, and I submit it to you, that it will probably be the case for 90% of the people who will be involved in space operations," he said.
Speaking at a meeting bringing together mostly space professionals and hardcore space advocates, Johnson pleaded for the coming of a greater number of people outside the field to help shape the future of regulation in the space. "Anyone here tonight slept in a hotel designed by Boeing?" Asked he. "In this room, it will be necessary to increase the number of people who have a certain idea of what it means to live in space, knowing that at first the situation will be rather austere. But we want to go from austere to really cool. "
Another challenge to spatial colonization, and another reason for seeking larger audiences, is more fundamental than any technical question: why live in space? Most summit participants would like to live in space one day, but the number of people wishing to do so – as well as their expectations of living conditions, risks and compensation – was a subject largely unexplored at the meeting. .
| "We have to be storytellers," Bolden said. "If we do not all become storytellers, we will lose." |
Globus, who advocated for habitats in the low equatorial terrestrial orbits, providing protection against magnetospheric radiation while avoiding the charged particles of the South Atlantic Anomaly, thinks that the springboard to the space colonies is the accommodation in space. "A hotel in the space has not solved all the problems associated with building a colony," he said.
However, the focus put by this meeting on technical and political issues, and less on the question of whether space colonization is so interesting to the general public, suggests that one of the next steps on the way spatial colonization will not necessarily be a new launcher, a new habitat or even a new habitat. public-private partnership to support the development of these systems. It's a fascinating story about why humans can and should live beyond the Earth.
On the second day of the summit, former NASA administrator Charlie Bolden attended one of the sessions. (He was a speaker at a luncheon for the summit later in the day, although his comments were not specifically devoted to the issue of regulation in space.) When the roundtable briefly swung into the field of general interest, he intervened.
"We have to be storytellers and sometimes in our technical world we think we can just do what we do and everything else will happen," he said. "If we do not all become storytellers, we will lose."
This fascinating story of spatial regulation has not been told yet.
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