Back in the U.S. fresh from the International Astronautical Congress in Glasgow, Scotland, Jerry Grey, a President Emeritus of the International Astronautical Federation himself and current Editor-at-Large of Aerospace America, suggests that what we need now is “a united, global effort for long-term human space exploration using the burgeoning capabilities of all nations to the best possible advantage of our home planet,” (Aerospace America, October, 2008).

This is certainly the right answer and I couldn’t agree more!

Based on the history of NASA and long wave timing, I suggested in 1996 and again in 2006, that around 2013 NASA was likely to morph into (or become part of) an international organization focused on human exploration of the Moon and planets. In fact as I’ve highlighted in this weblog, in 1992 Otto Steinbronn and I (both then with General Dynamics) proposed a specific model — called Interspace — for a truly global space agency. Interspace features both ESA-style and Intelsat-style management structures.

An international Moon Base is definitely in the cards. Click .

As evidence that we (globally) are ready for a “One World” approach to space, Grey cites the 10th anniversary of the “international marvel” known as the International Space Station. ISS partners and participants include the U.S., Russia, Canada, Japan, and the European Space Agency (Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom).

According to Grey, NASA’s efforts to organize the International Lunar Network (ILN) is “another bellwether of global cooperation” in space. In July 2008, representatives of nine countries — including Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea, United Kingdom, and the U.S. — held a meeting at NASA Ames Research Center and agreed to a cooperative approach for lunar exploration.

More evidence supporting a unified, international approach to space is provided by the Asia-Pacific Regional Space Agency founded in 1993 and headquartered in Beijing. APRSA promotes the peaceful use of space technology in the Asia-Pacific region especially for Earth observation, communication satellites, space environment utilization, and space education. In addition to China, a partial list of its participants includes Australia, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Mongolia, Pakistan, Peru, Republic of Korea, Thailand, and Turkey.

Grey laments the fact that “there is as yet no truly unified drive to pursue a multidecade (or better, multicentury) partnership” for human exploration of the solar system. Part of the challenge is that historically speaking, Maslow Windows – ebullient times of Great Explorations and Macro-Engineering Projects — have peaked only during brief intervals separated by 55 to 60 years.

Optimal use of global assets for the exploration of the Universe will require the “kind of leadership exhibited in 1975 by…Roy Gibson” when the European Space Agency was created. With Gibson-style leadership and if we can leverage such experiences as ESA, ISS, ILN, and APRSA, we’ll be able to develop a unified, global, multidecade, Interspace-style approach to space. This will enable us to: 1) optimally open up the planetary worlds to all humankind, 2) coordinate our defense of Earth against space impactors (e.g. asteroids), and 3) develop multidecade plans that are specifically designed to facilitate continuous human expansion into the cosmos even outside Maslow Windows.

The Big Question is what to do after 2010 when the Shuttle is retired? Many ask if it makes sense to rely on a guy like Vladimir Putin for a ride to the Space Station.

For Putin’s violent little adventure in Georgia, President Bush has sought appropriate punishment and Secretary of State Condi Rice has said “There can be no business as usual…” As a result, the President’s major initiative to increase US-Russian collaboration on nuclear energy production is at least temporarily dead in the Senate (Wall Street Journal, 8/23/08). And, although supported by US Senator Bill Nelson (FL), a waiver that would allow the US to buy launch services to ISS from Russia (required because they sell nuclear technology to Iran) must be passed ASAP (e.g., by January) by a reluctant Senate.

One result of the long-term approach used here at 21stCenturyWaves.com, is the realization that as we approach a Maslow Window (coming in 5 - 7 years), international tensions will probably increase; sadly, the last 200 years shows they always have. And in this dynamic international environment, while collaborations with potential geopolitical opponents are usually productive, becoming dependent on them for key space services is not.

But the good news is that SpaceDev of Poway, CA is here to potentially save the day. They want to stack their Dream Chaser piloted spacecraft on an Atlas V launch vehicle — a modernized descendant of the early Atlas, developed by my former company General Dynamics, that launched the first American — John Glenn — into orbit in 1962. (Incidentally, I remember little about my first day on the job in the early 1980s at the Kearney Mesa plant in San Diego, except being given a tour of the Atlas assembly facility. A life-altering experience for a total space guy like myself!)

A view of the spectacular General Dynamics Atlas assembly line in Kearney Mesa (San Diego);
Click .

SpaceDev’s Frank Taylor and Russell Howard reported recently (AIAA-2008-7837) on preliminary trade studies and analysis of this Dream Chaser/Atlas V concept for servicing missions to the Space Station and judge it to be “promising.”

The Atlas V includes a dual-engine cryogenic Centaur upper stage and 2 strap-on Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs). Dream Chaser is always a piloted vehicle with 6 crew on a personnel mission and 1 pilot on a cargo mission, with 4000 to 6000 pound payload capability to ISS. Atlas V can enhance payload capability by using up to 5 SRBs. The need for rapid separation and escape during an abort after launch drives their preference for a no-fairing option (surrounding the DC). The DC/Atlas V combination would launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and could use the Shuttle Landing Facility if necessary.

Key remaining issues include achieving human-rating for the Atlas V and aerodynamic controllability of the integrated vehicle. Possible development schedules were not discussed in the AIAA paper and neither was cost, although it is likely to be considerable.

But with a little luck, for 2010, it’s potentially a Dream Chaser come true!

That’s Aviation Week & Space Technology’s quote of MIT’s Maria Zuber during her testimony before the House Science and Technology Committee hearing July 30 on NASA’s first 50 years. She was apparently responding to John Glenn’s assertion that a Moon base is not the best way to Mars. Along with the robotic vs. humans debate, the Moon vs. Mars thing has to be the oldest, most time-consuming argument in the history of NASA, and it’s apparently being revived.

Her comment does not appear in prepared testimony and apparently is in response to the committee, but with apologies to Dr. Zuber, let me take it out of context and depersonalize it from her because I have no idea what she meant, plus she does actively support NASA’s Vision for Space Exploration (VSE). But many others have used language like this before regarding humans to the Moon and Mars, and here are a few “translations”:

1) “It really will take a lot more study…because we like to do studies.” Excuse me, but how much is enough? Let’s see, we have the recent VSE Exploration Systems Architecture report (2005), The President’s Moon, Mars, and Beyond (Aldridge) Commission (2004) — of which Dr. Zuber was a member, and the U.S. Space Policy (2004) — the OECD Space 2030 document (2004), the Stafford Report (1991), the NASA 90 Day study (1989), the Ride Report (1987), the National Commission on Space (1986), not to mention all the Case For Mars volumes, and the NASA Lunar Base & Space Activities of the 21st Century reports, plus all the myriads of other important engineering and policy studies since the 1960s, …it doesn’t end!

People who are good at studies always want to do more (myself included!). I suspect we don’t need more studies of what we need to do, but maybe we need more people reading the studies that have been done!

2) “It really will take a lot more study…because more study is sometimes the best way to avoid taking any action…” Paralysis by analysis folks are often opposed to the program anyway. Enough said.

3) “It really will take a lot more study… because we’re just not ready, the risks are too great.” Balancing risk with costs and benefits is a key aspect of planning for any space initiative, but reducing the risk to zero is impossible and unnecessary. I have a copy of the Final Summary Report for the NASA EMPIRE program (manned Mars) by General Dynamics, Astronautics (San Diego), “Preliminary schedule analysis strongly indicates that a 1975 (manned) mission…to Mars is in the realm of realistic technological planning...” It was 1963 — 6 years before the Moon landing — and Krafft Ehricke, Bill Strobl, and the other authors of the document calculated we were nearly ready to go to Mars.

4) “It really will take a lot more study…because otherwise we might make a mistake.” Of course we will, no matter what. For example, the Apollo program did not leave us with a space architecture to enable human expansion into the cosmos and it cost billions of dollars. Does that mean we shouldn’t have done it? Of course not. President Kennedy’s spectacular vision of human spaceflight to the Moon provided a global demonstration of the West’s stunning technological capability, its economic strength, and the value of freedom. Plus, along the way some fun science was done.

Speaking in 1990 of manned Mars missions, former NASA Administrator Thomas Paine confessed, “I think we should do it sooner than later…one of the great glories of the Apollo program was that we only had 8 years to do it. Believe me if we had 16…we would have used every week of that time…”

Our current challenge is the near-term opening of the 2015 Maslow Window (which may open closer to 2013). The well-meaning voices of “…a lot more study…” may make it hard for America to avoid another Cold-War Sputnik-like surprise. One way to avoid that is for the U.S. to conceptualize and fund the best version of its Moon/Mars program by involving as many international space partners as possible, now during planning, and later in operations.

Buzz Aldrin, the 2nd man on the Moon, is right. The Telegraph.co.uk (6/29/08) reports he’s publicly warning that unless we invest now in the future of space, we will “surrender leadership of space exploration to Russia and China,” for the rest of the century.

In fact, as I have shown (see Cordell, 1996 and 2006), long-term economic and social trends point to the next international Apollo-style race to space starting near 2013 - 2015, this time involving possibly China and others. This would create huge opportunities for science and math instruction, much like the President Kennedy’s Apollo Moon program did in the 1960s. And this time, it would happen simultaneously with the retirements of massive numbers of baby boomers in key engineering and related fields.

But what if we’re are not prepared? In that case we may experience a replay of the Sputnik shock of 1957, and attempt a crash program in education and space technology to catch up.

Buzz thinks it’s “abysmal” that, in NASA’s 50th anniversary year and after spending $ 100 B on International Space Station, “…we can’t get our own astronauts to our space station without relying on the Russians,” because of Shuttle’s planned retirement in 2010.

He wonders why commercial alternatives that might have taken U.S. astronauts to ISS between 2010 and 2015 were not adequately funded. These are the crucial five years just prior to the opening of the spectacular 2015 Maslow Window, when crewed access to space will be important.

The Chinese have a great opportunity to win the return to the Moon. To do that, according to Buzz, all they have to do is, “…fly around the Moon and back…” In fact, just landing a Chinese astronaut on the Moon for a day, “…and he’d be a national hero.”

“We can do wonderful science on the Moon, and wonderful commercial things. Then we can pack up and move on to Mars.” Buzz will share these ideas with both McCain and Obama to guarantee NASA is funded to greet the future as a leader.

I had the pleasure, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, of meeting and getting to know Buzz when he visited us at General Dynamics in San Diego and also at Case for Mars Conferences. If he isn’t your all-time favorite astronaut, or at least one of them, he should be!

According to Kishore Mahbubani, formerly Singapore’s ambassador to the United Nations and currently a dean at the National University of Singapore, “…the West assumes it is the source of the solutions to the world’s key problems…In fact, however, the West is also a major source of these problems.” (Foreign Affairs, May/June, 2008.)

Of particular concern to those of us here at 21st Century Waves, Mahbubani insists that, “…the West has become the most powerful force preventing the emergence of a new wave of history…” But one doesn’t have to buy into his often entertaining and sometimes hyperbolic rhetoric to agree that, “The West has to learn to share power and responsibility for the management of global issues with the rest of the world.”

Around 1990, Otto Steinbronn and I, while at General Dynamics in San Diego, decided to try to imagine what a truly global space organization might look like. Otto had spent 12 years in Germany with the European Space Agency (ESA) as their Spacelab Engineering Manager, and I had just assembled a large team (including Asian and European companies) to support our Mars/Lunar work with NASA. The result appeared in Space Policy, “Interspace — Design for an International Space Agency,” (Nov, 1992). It appears likely that an Interspace-style organization will appear before 2015. (See The Forecasts)

Although our model seems complex it had only 3 key features:
1) Power would be shared equally among the 5 key players: Russia, Europe, Japan, and the U.S. (See Fig. 1); today we might add China. The non-core nations would select a country to represent them.
2) The main Interspace Organization would consist of 9 regional organizations that coordinate operations from Earth (Interlaunch) and LEO (Interorb) all the way eventually to Mars (Intermars); See Fig. 2.
3) Global space assets would be focused on Interspace programs that are developed and run using management structures like Intelsat or ESA. If there are many participants (e.g., lunar surface activities) the Intelsat-style organization is used (Fig. 3), but if there were only a few (e.g., for the interplanetary transportation system) the natural choice is the ESA-style of Fig. 4.

We felt the location of the Interspace Headquarters was of great symbolic and practical importance, and should be outside the 4 core countries. Although Singapore was an attractive finalist (along with Bangalore and Nairobi), we felt that Rio de Janeiro was ideal. Even back then, Otto and I didn’t want to be considered “the worst of the West”…

The intersection of projected trajectories for the world’s current and future space powers suggests there will be a major international event just prior to the opening of the next Maslow Window (near 2015). The Nominal Model timelines (see Forecasts page) suggest this will occur near 2013 (Sputnik year 1957 + 56) and will have an impact on the U.S. and world comparable to Sputnik’s launch in 1957.

One likely model is that an international consortium of space powers (ICSP) – possibly led by China – will announce their comprehensive plan for the large-scale colonization and utilization of space, probably including the Moon and possibly Mars. In addition to lunar settlements and orbiting solar power stations, their agenda might include plans for LEO and lunar hotels. Moon hotels are hardly a new idea; the Shimizu Corporation (Tokyo) had impressive designs over 20 years ago when we had meetings with them in connection with a NASA rfp at General Dynamics space headquarters in San Diego. Interestingly, despite their sophisticated concepts, Shimizu did not feature their space projects on their website before and I am unable to find any mention of them now.

Based on the current interest levels and cooperation capabilities of many countries, this ICSP scenario seems very reasonable. For example, both Japan and the U.S. have announced plans to send people back to the Moon within 12 years, and China (possibly in cooperation with Russia) wants to establish a lunar base shortly thereafter. India also has lunar ambitions. And Russia, through its American broker Space Adventures, already offers private citizens their own personal trip around the Moon (for a hefty fee). Russia also claims to be ahead in a “race to Mars” that they expect to win by 2025.

Several countries recently signed the “Global Exploration Strategy” (GES), including Australia, Canada, China, ESA, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Russia, Ukraine, the U.K., and the U.S.. This strategy focuses on why we are returning to the Moon and what we envision doing there, with special emphasis on a comprehensive set of reasons for robotic and human exploration of the Moon. The GES is clearly only the beginning of a new style of international cooperation in space. Indeed, in his recent column in Aerospace America, Editor-at-Large Jerry Grey concludes that, “…despite the current ISS (International Space Station) concerns, there is no doubt that the internationalization of space is enjoying a new period of ascendancy.”(February, 2008).

So in a world plagued by international conflict, economic uncertainty, and natural disasters, major space programs featuring international cooperation are increasingly popular. This is what we would expect during a period of early ebullience as we approach the 2015 Maslow Window. Upcoming Wave Guide 5 posts will comment on events and trends about space powers from around the world and measure their progress relative to the forecasts of 21stCenturyWaves.com.