Why Does Each New Administration Change Space Policy?

Earlier this year, President Obama announced his decision to stop the Orion/Constellation Program--just after a successful test flight of the new Orion rocket—and also to stop America's Return to the Moon in order to cut Federal spending. This decision reversed the space initiatives of the Bush Administration. In his April 15, 2010 speech, President Obama amended his earlier space policy. Apparently, Lockheed Martin in Colorado--the company building the new Orion rocket--used its political clout to save local jobs and its contract with NASA. The president re-instated the Orion/Constellation Program to serve as a "Space Station Crew Emergency Vehicle" and perhaps eventually for a human mission to a NEO--Near Earth Orbit--asteroid as well as some other nebulous goals.

The new policy protects Lockheed Martin and job security for many NASA employees with the exception of the Astronaut Corps. In spite of their impressive achievement record of the last fifty years, the astronauts and the people who train them and provide their mission control may soon be filing for unemployment. Many of the people who want to see human settlements in space are unhappy with the new policy, except for a small group of private, commercial space companies like Space-X and their Falcon 9 which recently became among the first private rocket to make orbit. The news media usually--and fortunately--ignores this fledgling industry. These companies have big dreams for the commercial exploitation of space resources, especially those on the Moon. They also have realistic engineering, feasible flight-testing, and limited budgets that require accountability and eventually success. What they are short on is venture capital.

President Obama’s new space policy removes NASA as a competitor to COTS--Commercial Orbital Transportation Services--for these private, commercial space companies, especially to Low Earth Orbit. Getting to LEO reliably, safely and cheaply is the financial key to opening the Space Frontier to human settlement because if you want to go beyond Earth's orbital space, one half of the cost of your flight is spent getting to LEO. We do live at the bottom of a deep gravity well. Obviously, what is needed halfway to your destination anywhere in the Solar System is a depot in LEO with a human crew flying in formation with a propellant storage unit, which Boeing Company already has on the drawing board. Add to the LEO depot a satellite repair facility and OMVs--Orbital Maneuvering Vehicles, commonly known as space tugs that can be telepiloted from the depot through the Van Allen Radiation Belts to retrieve malfunctioning communication satellites from Geosynchronous Earth Orbit--and you significantly reduce the expensive insurance rates for launching com sats. Now we are talking money.

What private, commercial space companies need to build ground-to-space rockets and a depot in LEO--besides the absence of a government-funded competitor--are either tax breaks, such as tax credits, or guaranteed markets. One such market is flying radioactive waste from nuclear facilities in the U.S. beyond Earth's orbital space to SPOS--Solar Polar Orbital Storage. That would be a win/win for the Earth's biosphere now and reasonably priced transport to human settlements in space in the future. Develop reliable, regenerative life support systems--we already have good ideas how to do this--and we are ready to settle the Moon. Astronauts could dust off their resumes and go back to work. The space tourists would follow on their heels.

Note: For more information on SPOS, watch for my next blog.