This week the Obama administration proposed the termination of NASA’s Constellation program that targeted a return to the Moon for U.S. astronauts by 2020. After Shuttle retirement later this year (or next), crew transportation to ISS would be provided by hitching rides on Russian Soyuz launch vehicles, and eventually by developing the manned launch capabilities of American space companies — not of NASA.

Will the retirement of the Shuttle trigger a golden age for space for the U.S. and the world? Click .

Obama’s NASA boss, Charles Bolden, has already announced several grants to private space companies, including $ 20 M to to Sierra Nevada Corp. for development of its Dream Chaser crew module (launched on an Atlas V); See “For 2010 — A Dream Chaser Come True?” And $ 6.7 M to United Launch Alliance for an emergency sensing system for Atlas V and Delta IV rockets.

Our purpose here is not to debate the attributes of this paradigm shift — Not surprisingly the traditional NASA types and Congressional reps, especially in Florida and Texas (where unemployment will increase), believe the U.S. is abandoning world leadership in space, while the space commercialism folks receiving subsidies think it’s a victory for the future of space. They both are partly right; time will tell just how much, assuming Obama’s NASA plans are approved by Congress.

But a particularly striking aspect of this future NASA trajectory is the way it supports forecasts made here (and previously) based on long waves in the economy, and associated patterns in technology development and geopolitics. See: “Forecasting the Next 20 Years in Space — State of the Wave, Friday 9/12/08.”

THE TIMEFRAME
For example, in 1996 I forecasted that 2015 to 2025 would be the next major thrust into space:

The decade from 2015 to 2025 will be the analog of the 1960s; i.e., it will involve major activities in technology, engineering, and human exploration. There is every reason to believe that the focus will be on large-scale human operations in space and that they will be spectacular.

And in 2006, I identified 2014 as the likely timeframe when NASA would undergo a significant transformation.

Energy cycle timing and NASA’s birth date (1958) allow us to forecast that the new, international space organization will take shape by 2014 …

The transformation of NASA apparently beginning now is scheduled to culminate by 2016 — near the opening of the 2015 Maslow Window — when a non-NASA, commercial crew vehicle may begin regular deliveries of astronauts to ISS.

INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION
In recent statements, Bolden has described a new style of international cooperation where the U.S. treats its international space partners as “equals” and with “respect.”

Roger Handberg (University of Central Florida) recently compared the multi-year gap between retirement of the Shuttle and onset of commercial crew launchers to the 6-year gap starting in 1975.

The full end of the Apollo program in the form of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in 1975 left the United States grounded until the space shuttle flew in 1981. However, any anxiety about that gap was minimized by awareness that the shuttle was coming, albeit slowly…

Handberg’s recent take on the looming post-Shuttle gap concludes that,

The United States at least temporarily moves from the position of dominant partner to that of dependent. This status will be uncomfortable but doable as a stopgap … one approach may be for the United States to fully opt into international partnerships led by a consortium of states with the US as one partner among others.

What this means is that the US must become comfortable with such close cooperation, as unilateral decisions with no prior consultation with partners will end … a new political arrangement needs to be developed.

Our model for a “new political arrangement” was proposed in 1992 (Cordell, 1992). Interspace is a global organization with ESA-like management structures featuring “equality” among the major international partners and the opportunity for other nations to participate according to their financial and technical capabilities.

In 1996, I forecasted that as we approach the 2015 Maslow Window, “increased parity among space-faring nations might trigger the formation of an international space agency in which the major space powers — USA, ESA, Japan, Russia — share power equally in the planning and management …”

THE PARADIGM SHIFT TRIGGER
Probably the fastest way to produce these profound transformations in U.S. space policy — extensive international cooperation, equality among partners, stimulation of the commercial space launch industry — is to remove NASA from the launch vehicle business, which apparently is Obama’s strategy.

THE WILD CARD
Until recently, most of the world expected the United States to lead an international manned assault on the Moon, which apparently is no longer in the cards with the cancellation of Constellation. Although Bolden assures us (FloridaToday.com, 2/2/10) that “We’re not abandoning human spaceflight by any stretch of the imagination.” He’s referring to Earth-to-LEO human spaceflight, not the Moon. Currently NASA has no specific goals or timetables beyond LEO, although Bolden enthuses that, “What’s exciting is that we’re now going to have a national debate about where we need to be going in terms of space exploration.” — something we’ve been doing repeatedly since the 1980s, and now we’ll do it again!

Removal of NASA from its traditional role as the launcher of astronauts to low Earth orbit and beyond is reminiscent of the mid-1950s, about one long wave ago, during the Cold War before the U.S. achieved dominance in manned space exploration during the 1960s Apollo Maslow Window.

And currently it’s possible to imagine at least 2 scenarios:
I) It’s Sputnik All Over Again — Although the U.S. has been grounded before in its space history (e.g., 1975-81), it has never happened during a crucial time in the run-up to a global Maslow Window as it will now. It’s possible this will encourage another Sputnik-style moment within the next few years when competitors of the U.S. decide to make dramatic, coordinated moves in areas like space energy, lunar colonization, and/or human spaceflight to Mars.
Or…
2) A Grand Alliance for Space — The totally new experience of truly close, equal cooperation among international space partners — including the United States — may trigger a “Grand Alliance for Space” as the world moves toward an Interspace/ESA-style global space organization.

Although we always hope and strive for the most productive, global approach to settlement of the solar system (e.g., Option 2), human history does not support such optimism. The events of the Cold War that gave birth to the 1960s space race plus the story of the international race to the South Pole (during the Peary/Panama Maslow Window), suggest that — when the stakes are high — humans may deceive and seek strategic advantage over a perceived competitor.

Last night I happened to catch John Coleman’s TV show, “Global Warming: The Other Side” on KUSI-TV, an independent TV station here in San Diego. Coleman’s an extremely interesting guy — founder of the Weather Channel, expert TV weatherman (formerly with “Good Morning America” on ABC), an irresistible, effervescent personality.

John Coleman — A resourceful “David” successfully challenging the global warming “Goliath.” Click .

In his hour-long news special (available HERE) Coleman takes aim at some major holes in global warming, and features serious charges that the temperature data on which global warming theories are based has been deliberately altered in the direction of warming.

Computer expert E. Michael Smith and Certified Consulting Meteorologist Joseph D’Aleo discovered extensive manipulation of the temperature data by the U.S. Government’s primary climate center: the National Climate Data Center (NCDC) in Asheville, North Carolina. Smith and D’Aleo found that NOAA manipulated temperature data to give the appearance of warmer temperatures than actually occurred by trimming the number and cherry-picking the location of weather observation stations.

You can see more details in their report HERE.

Recently in the Wall Street Journal (1/14/10), Stanford economist Michael Boshkin observed that “If a CEO issued the kind of distorted figures put out by politicians and scientists, he’d wind up in prison.” As a scientist myself, I am especially saddened to see scientists referred to this way but that’s what Climategate’s all about. For example, Professor Michael Mann, a key figure in Climategate, indicated a private desire to “hide the decline” in global temperatures in recent years, and is currently under investigation by Penn State University. At the same time National Review Online is reporting that the Obama administration has awarded $ 500,000 to Mann as part of their economic stimulus package. So much for job creation and scientific peer review.

Earlier this week Fox News (1/11/10) reported this rather strange headline, “30 Years of Global Cooling Are Coming” according to a “leading scientist” at Germany’s Kiel University. An author of the UN’s IPCC report, Professor Mojib Latif believes we’re in for a “mini ice age.” This is an interesting switch on global warming alarmism, but it suffers from one big problem: No climate model can reliably forecast climate decades ahead.

For those who didn’t already know, this was confirmed by Dr. Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder in a Climategate email, “The fact is we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” In his email, Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section of NCAR, acknowledges privately a key point: In 1998 climate models did not predict the cessation of global warming that has occurred — despite continued increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide — over the last dozen years, and no one can explain why it happened. So climate forecasts decades in the future like Professor Latif’s are simply unreliable.

The decline of global warming politics is what we would expect as we approach an ebullient golden age of prosperity, exploration, and technology known as the 2015 Maslow Window. Polls indicate the public has already moved on. They are eagerly looking forward to prosperity and even a Camelot-style zeitgeist like that of the 1960s and of all other ebullient Maslow Windows of the last 200 years — all the way back to Lewis and Clark.

The New York Times (11/29/09) thinks we are.  According to Louis Uchitelle,

Generation after generation, giant public works projects have altered the American landscape. The Erie Canal and the transcontinental railroad come to mind. So do massive urban sewer and sanitation systems, the Tennessee Valley Authority, rural electrification, the Hoover Dam, the Interstate System, the subway networks in San Francisco and Washington, the Big Dig in Boston … and the list abruptly stops.

For the first time in memory, the nation has no outsize public works project under way.

Actually, the Times’ Superproject data is supportive of  21stCenturyWaves.com’s  Maslow Window model and its relation to Macro-Engineering Projects (MEPs) over the last 200 years – including the early 19th century, near-MEP Erie Canal mentioned by the Times — as well as current MEPs and those anticipated during the 2015 Maslow Window.

1. The 1960s Apollo Maslow Window appears in public works spending data for the last 60 years.
The signature of the long economic wave is visible in the Times‘ graphic of public works spending as a percentage of GDP from the late 1940s to the present; Click HERE.

The rapid rise in spending during the 1960s was enabled by  the major economic boom that triggered the 1960s Maslow Window;  it slammed shut just before 1970 and was followed by a precipitous decline across the 1970s and beyond. Both mirrored the trends of the long wave at those times.  As Uchitelle points out, “the strongest periods of economic growth in America have generally coincided with big outlays for new public works and the transformations they bring once completed.”

The  post-WW II spending boom of the 1950s and late 1940s has not been replicated in the late 1990s and early 2000s.  Instead, the Panic of 2008 and our current great recession appears to be following the pattern of the Panic of 1893 and the great 1890s recession, which, after 1899,  rapidly rebounded into one of the most ebullient decades in U.S. history:  the 1903-1913 Maslow Window.  It featured Theodore Roosevelt’s transformative Panama Canal and the spectacular international races to both the north and south poles.

2.  Over the last 200 years, MEPs tend to cluster in rhythmic, twice-per-century pulses.
In “The Way MEPs Really Work,”  I adopted the definition of an MEP from Eugene Ferguson (1916-2004), a well-known professor of engineering and later history, and a founding member and former president (1977-78) of the Society for the History of Technology  According to Ferguson,

MEPs are: 1) at the state-of-the-art of technology for their time; 2) extremely expensive (at least $ 1 B,  in 2007 USD) and usually large in size; and 3) sometimes practical in purpose, but often they are aimed at satisfying intangible needs of a spiritual or psychological nature and are highly inspiring.

This is a demanding definition that excludes many extraordinary projects like trans-continental railroads or large highway systems because, while expensive and significant, they do not stretch technology.

The rhythmic, twice-per-century pulses of MEPs are visible in Cordell (1996).  Their association with Maslow Windows and regular timing suggests that the next flurry of Superprojects and MEPs will begin near 2015.  So, any “Superproject void” should be short-lived.

3. The Erie Canal was considered by Thomas Jefferson to be “a little short of madness.”

Courtesy of the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester.

Uchitelle correctly identifies the Erie Canal as the key Superproject of early America, although I have been unable to convince myself that it is a true Ferguson-style MEP in the context of other MEPs of the last 200 years (e.g., the Panama Canal or Apollo Saturn V).

The Erie Canal is considered to be the greatest engineering marvel of its day and was often referred to as the 8th Wonder of the World.  Construction began in 1817 and it opened in 1825; the canal featured 18 aqueducts and 83 locks to accommodate the 568 foot rise from Albany to Buffalo.  It led to a population boom in western New York state, caused a drop in transportation costs by more than 90%, and opened up the western Great Lakes area to new settlers. In essence, the canal was a response to the pressures for westward expansion that had been ignited by the Great Exploration of Lewis and Clark earlier in the Maslow Window.

Jefferson’s “madness” quote referred to the canal’s cost: $ 7 M, courtesy of the New York state legislature; that’s about $ 0.1 B in 2007 USD, which is a little low for a true primary MEP. More impressive is its cost expressed as a fraction of GDP: 0.1 %.  That’s large and puts it in the same class as the Panama Canal (Apollo was 0.2 % of GDP); this is the best case for Erie being a Ferguson-style MEP.   However, despite the Erie Canal’s “engineering marvel” reputation, the project leaders were ebullient amateurs, not professional engineers because there were none in the U.S. at that time.  And its key technology advancements were limited to new, efficient techniques for removing tree stumps so the canal could be kept on schedule and within budget. 

The Erie Canal is definitely a Times-style Superproject, but not quite a Ferguson-style MEP.  I view it as transitional between the smaller, but still important, engineering projects of the late 18th century, and the more modern, true MEPs beginning in the mid-19th century Dr. Livingstone-Suez Canal Maslow Window.

4. Construction of the spectacular Golden Gate Bridge from 1932-37 did not end the Great Depression.
Uchitelle’s interest in the history of American superprojects relates to our recovery from the current great recession. 

President Obama has earmarked just $80 billion — a tenth of his stimulus package — for megaprojects, and put off most of that down payment until next year. His focus instead has been on spending hundreds of billions to quickly and visibly repair existing public works, especially highways, and also levees, dams and locks, particularly in the New Orleans area. That’s not a bad thing — those repairs are certainly needed — but it doesn’t create permanent wealth.

By the standards of the past, however, they are not the spectacular feats of engineering and ingenuity that greatly enhance the economy. The Erie Canal was just such a feat …

“Last year at this time we were debating whether we should be concentrating our spending on big projects that, in the long run, add to economic growth,” said John J. Wallis, an economic historian at the University of Maryland. “That debate never got resolved, and the stimulus bill we enacted in February ended up focused instead on quick spending.”

This is consistent with Harvard economics professor Robert Barro who finds that stimulus spending doesn’t work to stimulate the economy; “The available empirical evidence does not support the idea that spending multipliers typically exceed one, and thus spending stimulus programs will likely raise GDP by less than the increase in government spending,” (Wall Street Journal, 10/1/09)

The Golden Gate Bridge is a spectacular Northern California landmark that was built between 1932 and 1937 during the Great Depression  for $ 35 M; that’s about $ 530 M in 2007 USD.  As a fraction of GDP it’s 0.01%, much smaller than the Erie or Panama Canals, but still a sizeable amount of cash.

It’s significant that GGB was financed privately (without any significant expenditures of state or federal money), so it could have stimulated the economy, but in 1938 — almost a decade after the Crash of 1929 that triggered the Great Depression and 6 years after Franklin Roosevelt was elected — U.S. unemployment was still about 14%.  Well-known Keynesian economists George Akerloff and Robert Schiller believe that FDR and Hoover were ineffective. In fact, “Confidence — and the economy itself — was not restored until World War II completely changed the dominant story of people’s lives, transforming the economy,” (Animal Spirits; 2009).

5. Current MEPs, the Panic/Recession of 2008+, and our current recovery suggest that any “Superproject void” will be brief. 
Indeed, the 2015 Maslow Window — a Golden Age of Prosperity, Exploration, and Technology – should not be late, based on the last 200 years of financial panics and great recessions (e.g., the 1890s great recession) that commonly occur in the decade just prior to Maslow Windows.  Plus pre-Maslow Window secondary MEPs — like the Large Hadron Collider and the International Space Station — point to the on-time opening of the 2015 Maslow Window.

The Climategate scandal involves “some of the world’s leading climate scientists working in tandem to block freedom of information requests, blackball dissenting scientists, manipulate the peer-review process, and obscure, destroy or massage inconvenient temperature data — facts that were laid bare by … disclosure of thousands of emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit…” (Wall Street Journal, 12/1/09; B. Stephens).

Climategate connects with prospects for near-term space colonization in at least 3 major ways. One is financial.

Anything that weakens the potential for re-ignition of the major economic boom — actually the greatest global boom ever – that was interrupted by the Panic of 2008, might delay the near-term development of widespread affluence-induced ebullience that has powered each of the spectacular Maslow Windows (e.g., the 1960s Apollo Moon program) over the last 200 years.

One such potential factor is Cap and Trade. “The Heritage Foundation, the Brookings Institution and the National Black Chamber of Commerce all found that the bill will have devastating economic impacts … (including) significant losses in employment and GDP.” Republicans are not shy about characterizing it as “”the largest tax increase — about $ 400 million USD per year — in the history of America.” And according to Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe (WSJ, 11/27/09), in response to a question from him, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson stated it won’t significantly reduce global CO2 emissions.

As countries like the U.S. struggle to recover from the current great recession, major new taxes are considered unwise government policy by most economists. This is especially true in the U.S.’s current deficit situation.

According to former Congressional Budget Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin,

The federal government ran a 2009 deficit of $ 1.4 trillion — the highest since World War II — as spending reached nearly 25% of GDP and total revenues fell below 15% of GDP. Shortfalls like these have not been seen in more than 50 years.

Equally threatening to the next Maslow Window which, based on 200-year timing, should open near 2015 and extend to around 2025, is that there is no relief in sight.

Our national debt is projected to stand at $ 17.1 trillion 10 years from now, or over $ 50,000 per American …

Regarding the potential upswing (characteristic of a Maslow Window), Holtz-Eakin comments that,

The planned deficits will have destructive consequences for both fairness and economic growth … Federal deficits will crowd out domestic investment in physical capital, human capital, and technologies that increase potential GDP and the standard of living.

Mr. Holtz-Eaking concludes that the president’s “policies are the equivalent of steering the economy toward an iceberg.”

The deficits are also taking a political toll as President Obama’s poll numbers decline. According to Karl Rove (WSJ, 11/27/09),

Anger over deficits was picked up in a late October NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll which asked voters if they’d rather boost “the economy even though it may mean larger budget deficits” or keep the “budget deficit down, even though it may mean it will take longer for the economy to recover.” Only 31% chose boosting the economy; 62% wanted to keep the deficit down.

This is consistent with Gallup polls (9/17/09) indicating Obama’s lowest marks on his handling of the deficit; only 38% approved and 58% disapproved.

The good news for Obama’s popularity and the deficit — as well as the 2015 Maslow Window — is that Climategate has weakened the prospects for Cap and Trade. According to Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe (WSJ, 11/27/09),

Cap and Trade is dead … Ninety-five percent of the nails were in the coffin prior to this week. Now they are all in.

The second way Climategate connects with prospects for near-term space colonization is psychological.

Over the years Global Warming has been presented as a near-certain chamber of horrors including sea level rises of 3 feet or more resulting in devastating, global coastal flooding, huge temperature increases of 5 or more degrees producing plant and animal extinctions, increasingly intense hurricanes and extensive ecosystem damage … and on and on. All because humans are commiting the sin of releasing too much carbon into the environment. And we much stop now before it is too late.

Even the wildest claims about the dangers of global warming are routinely trumpeted by much of the media, including that giant Burmese pythons will migrate as far north as San Francisco and take over one-third of the U.S.. I heard the python story on local radio one day in Southern California and was very amused, but not everyone is. For example, many young children — who are much too young to evaluate the political and scientific issues involved — are frightened. One recent survey shows that 1 of 3 children aged 6 to 11 fears that our planet won’t exist when they grow up, and over one half believe that the Earth will be “a very unpleasant place to live.”

The usual solution to global warming fears is an anti-growth, anti-technology message. The “science is settled” so all we can do is dramatically cut back our use of fossil fuels, submit to trillions of dollars of taxes, and end our hopes of increasing prosperity due to crippled economies.

Even before Climategate, the public was not buying it. For example, in 2006 Gallup found that the percentage saying global warming will “pose a serious threat to you or your way of life in your lifetime” was only 35%; 62% thought it would not. And earlier this year, Gallup reported “the highest level of public skepticism about mainstream reporting on global warming seen in more than a decade of Gallup polling on the subject.” The Climategate scandal is likely to accelerate this trend among the public.

A number of scientists have proposed innovative technological approaches to mitigation of global warming if it were to become a serious problem in the 21st century. Perhaps the most interesting examples are from Roger Angel, the discussion in March/April, 2009 issue of Foreign Affairs, and the distinguished Princeton physicist Freeman Dyson.

This trend toward a more positive and realistic approach to climate change — being accelerated now by the revelations of Climategate — is very consistent with historical trajectories of public attitudes at comparable times over the last 200 years. As I pointed out in a previous post:

As we approach the 2015 Maslow Window, two other effects will increasingly come into play: 1) the fact that Maslow Windows are characterized by unusually optimistic (even ebullient) public attitudes, and 2) the increasing global fascination with large, international technology programs and space colonization – expected during the 2015 Maslow Window — will suggest to many around the world that solutions to key global challenges (e.g., the environment, energy) will benefit from space technology and resources.

The third way Climategate connects with prospects for near-term space colonization is through science.

Science is special. It is the only objective way humans have of probing physical reality and learning about the Universe. Scientists collect data about a natural system and then propose a model for how it works. Scientists use the model to make predictions about what should be observed in the real world. Those predictions are checked by observations of the natural system; any deviations from physical reality are used to change the model and thus improve it. Repeatedly using this process — making observations, sharing data, openly discussing issues — can result in a convergence of the model with physical reality.

That’s how it’s supposed to work. But the scientific method can break down, even for major questions. And when it does it shakes the foundations of what we know about the Universe, including potentially the public’s belief in our ability to expand human civilization into the cosmos, or even just to prosper on the Earth.

Here are some examples:

1. “The fact is we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” Dr. Kevin Trenberth, National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).
In his email, Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section of NCAR, acknowledges privately a key point: In 1998 climate models did not predict the cessation of global warming that has occurred — despite continued increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide — over the last dozen years, and no one can explain why it happened.

MIT climate scientist Richard Lindzen (WSJ, 11/30/09) points out that articles by climate modelers attrribute “the failure of these models to anticipate the absence of warming for the past dozen years was due to the failure of these models to account for natural internal variability …” like El Nino and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. “Thus even the basis for the weak IPCC argument for anthropogenic climate change (i.e., human-caused warming via CO2) was shown to be false.”

The bottomline is that: 1) modelers are admitting that something other than carbon dioxide can drive global climate change (e.g., natural variability), and 2) because the climate models cannot explain even the current lack of global warming, their predictions for warming 10, 20, or more years into the future are unreliable. And thus while global warming might indeed become a major problem at some point in the future — as astrophysicists assure us it will within a billion years when the Sun’s luminosity predictably increases and evaporates Earth’s oceans — we cannot accurately predict even near-term warmings or coolings with current climate models.

If the scientific method had been operating normally, these and many other secret conversations would have been shared with other scientists and the public in real-time. Instead, sadly we had to wait for Climategate to reveal them and clarify important issues.

2. “Science is not always what scientists do.” J. Allen Hynek (d. 1986), formerly Professor and Chair, Department of Astronomy, Northwestern University.
Scientists are people first and scientists second. They are subject to the same fears, greed, jealousies, ambitions, anger, etc., as anyone else. In fact, scientists are only being scientists when their professional activities conform to the scientific method as sketched above.

Sometimes scientists behave with almost quasi-religious attitudes. Religions are atrractive to the vast majority of people because they involve belief systems and world views that give meaning to life. Plus challenges to their beliefs do not usually disturb the believers because they are based on faith. In essence, while religions may be supported by historical or physical evidence, they are not fundamentally driven by it, as science is.

For example, in August 2009 more than 60 prominent German scientists — including several UN IPCC scientists — declared that global warming has become a “pseudo religion” in an Open Letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel. They noted that rising CO2 has “had no measurable effect” on temperatures and that the “UN IPCC has lost its scientific credibility.”

Sometimes scientists behave more like politicians than scientists. In real democracies the people often vote to make decisions on important issues. In science, voting or authority figures do not determine our picture of physical reality, only data does. Today we especially admire Galileo for standing up to the authority of the 17th century Roman Inquisition and not disavowing his then controversial telescopic observations of the Sun, Moon, and planets. This idea of the primacy of observational data has penetrated deeply into modern life, even beyond the natural sciences. For example, the British economist John Maynard Keynes — father of Keynesian economics — once said, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”

Sadly, the Galileo Principle of the primacy of observational data in science is not reflected in the private emails of Climategate. For example, Professor Phil Jones, who has stepped down temporarily as head of the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia while Climategate is investigated, speaks privately of modifying temperature data sets to “hide the decline” in global temperatures. According to John Lott of FoxNews.com (12/1/09), another CRU professor,

Tim Osborne, discusses in emails how truncating a data series can hide a cooling trend that would otherwise been seen in the results. Professor Mann (of Penn State) sent Professr Osborne an email saying the results he is sending shouldn’t be shown to others because the results support critics of global warming. Time after time the discussions refer to hiding or destroying data.

When ideology trumps science, some scientists act like politicians. They secretly modify data to conform to their party-line beliefs. I am not surprised that some scientists are dishonest; they are regular people and that’s to be expected. My concern is the way the scientific method has been deliberately ignored for many years by many scientists around the world, who definitely know better. This, including the destruction of the original temperature data sets by Climategate scientists, has obscured our view of the details of real global climate change. And certainly, as Professor Lindzen points out, “Claims that climate change is accelerating are bizarre.”

3. Is science dying?
As a planetary scientist who’s worked in the aerospace industry and in academia, and has been thrilled by the idea of space colonization since a very young age, my major concern is what Climategate means for science. Daniel Henninger in the Wall Street Journal recently asserted (12/3/09) that “science is dying.” Henninger continues,

I don’t think most scientists appreciate what has hit them … For years, global warming and its advocates have been the public face of hard science. The public was told repeatedly that something called ‘the scientific community’ had affirmed the science beneath this inquiry … Global warming enlisted the collective reputation of science. Because ’science’ said so, all the world was about to undertake a vast reordering of human behavior at almost unimaginable financial cost. Hard science, alongside medicine, was one of the few things left accorded automatic stature and respect by most untrained lay persons.

But because of the Climategate scandal — an “epochal event” — the public’s view of science is about to change.

The average person reading accounts of the East Anglia emails will conclude that hard science has become just another faction, as politicized and “messy” as, say gender studies … If the new ethos is that “close-enough” science is now sufficient to achieve political goals, serious scientists should be under no illusion that politicians will press-gang them into service for future agendas. Everyone working in science, no matter what their politics, has a stake in cleaning up the mess revealed by the East Anglia emails. Science is on the credibility bubble. If it pops, centuries of what we understand to be the role of science go with it.

For some, global warming politics and ideology are all that matter; you can recognize them by their lack of interest in the details of climate science and their attempts to ignore or divert attention from the science-related content of Climategate.

Science should be quite different from politics in both methods and goals, and certainly needs to move farther away from politics so that the scientific method can flouish again. As long as politics and ideology dominate science — as they have in the climate change field — we can never know what really exists in the Universe and how it works.

If the universities and governments affected by Climategate take appropriate action against those who stifled the free and open discussion of scientific data and issues in Climategate, the essence of science and even science’s public image can recover.

In a best-case scenario, Climategate could ironically help stimulate the New Space Age by strengthening our global financial picture, helping people everywhere regain a positive, even ebullient feeling about the future, promoting 1960s-style pro-technology, prosperous attitudes, and reaffirming that science is indeed a reliable tool for expansion of human civilization from a vibrant Earth into the cosmos.

If the last 200 years of Maslow Windows are any guide, that’s what we should expect will happen.

George Friedman’s Stratfor, a private intelligence corporation, provides first-rate geopolitical and technological analyses and forecasts that I quote often in this blog and elsewhere. His recent book, The Next 100 Years, has interesting parallels with forecasts made here, partly because of his long-range perspective. For example,

So we will see … until about 2070, a period of dramatic economic growth, accompanied by social transformation.

This sounds much like a Maslow Window to me although we believe that it will continue through much of the 2070s. (However, I don’t believe in quibbling over a few years when you’re comparing forecasts for the latter part of the 21st century!)

The Ares 1-X launch points to the human future in space. Click .

However, in Stratfor’s recent analysis (10/28/09) on “Ares and the Future of Manned Spaceflight” there are key statements that appear inconsistent with our experience of great explorations and major technology programs of the last 200 years, including current global trends. For example,

A manned space program is an enormous investment … With billions being poured into the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan … and the economic crisis still being felt, whether the Constellation program and its $ 100 billion price tag makes sense is a serious one even without taking into account the lack of a scientific or popular consensus for returning to the Moon.

Here, Stratfor ignores significant international momentum for a manned Moon program, as well as “early ebullience” in many countries — including Panama, Japan, India, Brazil, China, and South Korea — signaling our rapid approach to the 2015 Maslow Window.

More fundamentally, Stratfor seems unaware of our current position in the long wave. We are just beginning to recover from a great recession similar to those that have occurred within a decade of the opening of every Maslow Window of the last 200 years (except for the 1960s Apollo Maslow Window).

Within a few years, as we recover and re-enter the “greatest economic boom ever,” that was postponed in late 2007 by a financial panic, history shows we’ll enter a Golden Age of Prosperity, Exploration, and Technology, much like we did in the early 1900s. Back then the U.S. was recovering from the Panic of 1893 and the 1890s great recession, which blossomed into arguably America’s most ebullient Maslow Window. It’s unprecendented, transformational events included the opening of the Panama Canal and Peary’s expedition to the North Pole, as well as perhaps the most ebullient U.S. president of all time: Theodore Roosevelt.

No Maslow Window has ever opened late or been diminished by any financial panic or great recession that preceded it. All indicators show the 2015 Maslow Window is on schedule.

Stratfor also seems a little unsure about the importance of humans in space. As the Shuttle retires,

the implications of a nationally controlled U.S. manned access — though it is certainly noteworthy that the second nation to put a man into space and the first to put a man on the Moon will be without it for the first time since then — are not necessarily of immediate strategic concern.

This would have been like saying in 1957 that the implications of the Soviets orbiting a small satellite called Sputnik — while certainly surprising and noteworthy — do not pose a direct threat to the West and are not necessarily of immediate strategic concern. All it did, of course, was set off the Cold War space race, revitalize education in the U.S., and result in the first human landing on the Moon 12 years later. In response to the U.S. being grounded and increasing international interests in the Moon, something similar may happen again, which Stratfor seems to admit further down,

Without forward progress in this regard, countries like China … will begin to refine their understanding of manned spaceflight and reduce the U.S. lead in this area.

Stratfor also seems unclear about the timing and magnitude of future manned spaceflight.

The question is not if humans will return to space in a meaningful way after the ISS is retired, but when. When that will be, or if meaningful investment in manned spaceflight over the course of the next decade will ultimately be decisive or not, probably will remain unclear in the near future.

Global trends over the last 200 years — including current international space program developments — strongly suggest the 2015 Maslow Window will feature unprecedented, transformative activities in manned spaceflight, including international Moon exploration, space-based solar power, and/or manned interplanetary missions possibly including Mars.

Based on an extrapolation of MEP trends over the last 200 years, including the costs of recent and current secondary MEPs, large space programs between now and 2025 will cost in the range of $ 1 T to 3 T (in 2007 USD).

Aerospace America (October, 2009), a publication of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, asks an interesting question this month — one that goes to the core of NASA’s as well as humanity’s future: Is human spaceflight optional?

Is near-term space colonization almost inevitable? Click .

There are many responses to this question.

For example, the European Space agency affirms that,

Space activities help to define nations and their place in the world. Countries that explore space are envied as frontier nations with cultural vigour and leading technologies. The number of countries involved in space exploration is growing steadily and we are entering a new era of historic significance, in which we will extend human presence beyond Earth’s orbit, both physically and culturally.

The Global Exploration Strategy is key to unlocking humanity’s future in space. With increasing intent and determination, our partners plan to return to the Moon and beyond with the goal of sustained and ultimately self-sufficient human presence beyond Earth. It is an enormous challenge that no single nation can undertake on its own. We must do it together.

So for ESA, it sounds like the answer to the question is: Spaceflight is not optional because Europe associates human spaceflight with societal “greatness” through expanding the boundaries of science, technology, and industry by extending human presence and culture to the Moon and beyond. And “entering a new era of historic significance” sounds very much like approaching the 2015 Maslow Window.

The Space Foundation recently made the case for an operational International Space Station at least through 2020. Although ISS construction should be completed in 2010,

The U.S. is considering wrapping up its ISS involvement in 2015 and letting the $ 100 billion orbiting laboratory re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere and burn up in 2016. The ISS is both the largest and most collaborative human-made object ever to orbit the Earth. Fifteen countries are involved in the project … ISS education programs have reached more than 31 million U.S. students.

Elliot Pulham, Space Foundation CEO, is also concerned about potential negative perceptions of U.S. leadership, reliability, and commitment to large-scale space initiatives. Just before the last U.S. presidential election, MIT suggested that the U.S. and other potential Mars-faring countries should use ISS out to 2020 to develop microgravity countermeasures for long-duration interplanetary missions. So for the Space Foundation, human spaceflight is not optional, and its most dynamic, international symbol is ISS.

21stCenturyWaves.com has previously highlighted the revealing, multi-decade history of the space station program in the context of the long wave. For example, one of the most charismatic presidents in U.S. history, Ronald Reagan, was unable to make the station materialize within a decade of its proposal (1984), because of the lack of societal “ebullience” in the years near the Crash of 1987. Later, the station was nearly canceled by the U.S. Congress but benefited from the end of the Cold War and Bill Clinton’s internationalization of the program. In the U.S., the ISS continued “under the radar” for years. (For details please see The Shocking Truth About the Father of the Space Station.”)

As we approach the 2015 Maslow Window, it’s very likely that the American public will develop more enthusiasm for the project. It would be the supreme anti-ebullient irony for the U.S. to terminate ISS just at the moment the world is entering the next Golden Age of Prosperity, Exploration, and Technology. That’s why it’s unlikely to happen.

Like ESA, Buzz Aldrin is convinced of the viability of the Moon and Mars as sites for human outposts and settlements. Last week he advocated that the U.S. forego any Moon races — which the U.S. won back in 1969 — and instead foster a global approach to lunar exploration and colonization featuring the Lunar Infrastructure Development Corporation. According to Buzz, the LIDC

will pool the financial, technical, and human resources of its member nations to build the lunar communication, navigation and transportation systems needed for human exploration of the Moon. It would be a public/private global partnership … (that) will enable a sustainable human presence on the Moon that will be accessible to all the nations on the Earth.

Similar to Interspace, a concept for a global space organization proposed by Otto Steinbronn and myself in the early 1990s, LIDC will allow any nation on Earth to participate in Moon exploration by the purchase of corporate shares at whatever budget level is convenient for them.

Concerned that manned exploration of Mars was being neglected or deemphasized, Aldrin earlier proposed an ambitious U.S.-led human Mars exploration program featuring one-way human missions to Mars; i.e., the Mars astronauts would become colonists. The Russians have recently proposed joint manned missions to Mars with the U.S. and others.

The Augustine recommendations as described in Aerospace America are basically a series of options for the U.S. future in space that suffer from a lack of funding. “The clear message was that if NASA’s budget stays at historic levels, U.S. astronauts have little chance of ever leaving LEO.”

21stCenturyWaves.com brings a unique perspective to this issue based on the great explorations and macro-engineering projects of the Maslow Windows back to Lewis and Clark.

Here are five forecasts based on the lessons of the last 200 years, including recent global trends:

1. NASA Funding Will Increase. Because of healthy international competition and interests in lunar exploration, it’s likely — even in the short term (~2010) — that NASA funding will increase to a level enabling human spaceflight beyond LEO. If the 1960s Apollo Maslow Window experience is any guide, funding will recede as a serious issue as we approach 2015.

2. Space Activities during the 2015 Maslow Window Will be at the $ 1 T to 3 T level (2007 USD). This is based on MEP funding trends from previous Maslow Windows and the costs of current “secondary” MEPs.

3. NASA will Adjust to Increasing International Cooperation and Programs Beyond LEO. In 2013 NASA will be one long wave old and will likely become a member of a global space organization like Aldrin’s LIDC or our Interspace concept. This organization might help the world avoid a costly replay of the Cold War Sputnik-style space race.

4. During the Next Maslow Window, a Manned Mars Program May Occur Simultaneously With the International Moon Program… depending on global ebullience and funding levels. But based on previous Maslow Window durations, the 2015 Window will probably close before 2025 — not enough time for a Mars program to directly follow Moon exploration.

5. Human Spaceflight Is Not Really Optional. Probably the most powerful message of the last 200 years is that great explorations and monumental engineering projects are a product of two things: the laws of economics and human curiosity.

How Exploration and Technology Booms Really Work

While humans in general are hard-wired to want to go exploring as much as possible, in the modern world the only time they can is when economic pressures are reduced during the twice-per-century, unparalleled economic booms that trigger Maslow Windows. During this affluence-induced “ebullience”, many in society are catapulted to higher levels in Maslow’s hierarchy where their momentarily expanded world views make new exploring and massive building seem not just intriguing, but almost irresistible. This “ebullience” is an enhanced form of the “animal spirits” of Keynes and more recently Akerlof and Shiller, and the “irrational exhuberance” of Greenspan. The timing of the Maslow Windows is based on long waves in the economy as first described by Kondratieff (i.e., the K-Wave) and more recently Stewart (energy cycles), Strauss and Howe (generational cycles), and others.

This theory rests fundamentally on the three pillars of Maslow, Kondratieff, and Keynes, including modern extensions of their work, and is supported by global trends and key events described in this blog and elsewhere. Maslow Window Theory shows why — every 55-60 years — humans get momentarily swept away by extraordinary explorations and technology projects. However, they are still constrained by geographical and technological knowledge of their day, and there is a discernable sequence to both.

For example, Napoleon’s adventures and embryonic “manifest destiny” pressures made Lewis and Clark’s explorations of strategic importance. One long wave later the secrets of equatorial Africa became the focus for European exploration. In the early 20th century, because North America and central Africa had been probed, the only exciting places left were the North and South poles. And in the 1960s, the development of rockets made the Moon possible. None of these great explorations was entirely rational — they were the product of “ebullience” — but a logical sequence is seen: Each target for great exploration is a new geographical site of great interest that is less accessible than the previous one, but reachable with existing knowledge and technology.

So in a human sense, space is not optional because it — like all the great explorations over the last 200 years — is a product of unusual prosperity and human nature. As we approach 2015, growing ebullience around the globe will make major space and technology programs irresistible.

The only ways to stop space are: 1) to stop prosperity by interrupting the long booms that trigger Maslow Windows twice each century OR, 2) to change human nature.

Despite numerous well-known economic and military crises over the last 200 years, neither has ever occurred.

Thanks to UK space expert and longtime Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society Stephen Ashworth for his comments about future space activities and Maslow Windows on his website, which I highly recommend (both the website and the comments!), by the way. He does an excellent job introducing the Maslow Window concept and indicating a few concerns.

Are happy days almost here again? A cheering, rain-soaked New York City crowd watches Neil Armstrong take his first step on the Moon in 1969. Click
Photo: Bettmann/Corbis

Let me borrow a few of his quotes here …

My own knowledge of recent history is not good enough to judge whether a cycle of roughly 56 years is in operation. And when people start saying that they have a sure-fire method of predicting the future of a highly complex system — whether the climate, or society; whether in an ostensibly scientific manner or through decoding secret messages in the Bible or the works of Nostradamus — my bullshit indicators start twitching.

Yet it is certainly conceivable that an overall cyclic pulsation in economic conditions — a two-generation business cycle — may be modulating the conditions for great scientific and exploration projects in a non-random way, allowing approximate forecasts to be made. And there is no bogus claim of certainty being made here — while great explorations may be imminent, we are also warned that the opportunity created by the newly favourable conditions could be squandered.

Actually, I don’t know much about Nostradamus except what I’ve seen on the History Channel! And I’m still not sure how he made his predictions. However, I discovered the Maslow Window by accident. I read a couple of books in 1992 that introduced and documented the 56 year energy cycle (one by Swiss physicist Theodore Modis), realized it was like a K-wave, and was impressed with the economic, technology, and societal parameters it was correlated with. So just for fun I checked to see if 1969 — culmination of the Apollo decade — was an energy peak. Of course it was, so I realized then that I’d have to check out everything back to Lewis and Clark to be sure it wasn’t real.

That’s when I noticed the Great Exploration/Macro-Engineering Project (MEP)/Major War clusters that line up with upswings and peaks in the long wave. (I should mention that the political scientists had already created a large literature on wars and the long wave, although I didn’t know anything about it yet in the mid-1990s. And Modis hinted at an MEP-long wave link, although I didn’t remember that until I noticed them preferentially popping up near long wave upswings and peaks over the last 200 years.)

So this is really a thoroughly empirical approach.

The theoretical part started when I tried to imagine how long business cycles could enable the clusters. It’s clear why the expensive MEPs would be favored by a large economic boom, but less so why Great Explorations would, until you connect a large, twice-per-century economic boom (part of the two-generation business cycle) with Maslow’s hierarchy. (Incidentally, before Apollo, the Great Explorations — e.g., Peary/Amundsen polar expeditions — were separate from the MEPs; e.g., Panama Canal.) This is the most likely time when large numbers of people in society will ascend Maslow’s hierarchy and momentarily be riveted by Apollo-style exploration and technology. But after the long wave peaks and begins to descend, this affluence-induced “ebullience” rapidly heads south; i.e., the “Maslow Window” collapses. Incidentally, that’s why we have 3 real Saturn V launch vehicles in museums today. In addition, Joshua Goldstein and others see major “peak” wars as interactive with the long wave, so they fit the broad pattern too.

This theory is certainly not perfect and cannot explain everything over the last 200 years. (And it doesn’t try to as you’ll see below.) As with anything involving real history about real humans and nations, there are always exceptions. But nevertheless, it does hang together rather well and points tantalizingly toward the 2015 Maslow Window and what’s in store for us!

More from Stephen Ashworth…

The difficulty I have with this theory is that Dr Cordell allows only about two decades of favourable conditions per century, in two “Maslow windows” 56 years apart.

The globalisation of the past half-millennium did not take place in scattered decade-long windows of opportunity, but was and had to be a continuous process over those centuries. Similarly, the multi-globalisation of the future will need to be a sustained effort. Certainly, there may be sudden leaps ahead, followed by long periods of relatively slow consolidation of the gains so spectacularly acquired.

Actually the 1960s Apollo Maslow Window itself (not counting the post-WW II long boom leading up to it) was even shorter than a decade; e.g., although Sputnik went up in 1957, Apollo didn’t really get going until 1961 and public support for it was already slipping by 1966. The length of the 2015 Maslow Window will probably be determined by how soon the expected mid-2020s major war begins. If it’s early (<2020) we could lose most of the Mars/Moon program, instead of only the last part of it as we did with Apollo in the late 1960s.

Secondly, Maslow Window theory does not really focus on globalization. Based on the last 200 years, it applies mainly to 3 things: Great Explorations, MEPs, and major wars; i.e., focused, large-scale endeavors that generate intense international interest. In fact, as I mentioned in the 1996 Space Policy paper (in the Articles), a lot of technology and science research proceeds consistently without much long wave modulation. To the extent that international cooperation and commercial relations expand and develop during Maslow Windows, globalization would be enhanced, but not limited to Maslow Windows.

More key Ashworth comments…

If each euphoric window of opportunity is only a decade long, then no groundbreaking government programme will in such a short time be able to create the conditions for steady progress during the following relatively depressed decades. The 1970s saw not only no further progress in lunar access, but even the loss of the limited access that did exist.

He’s really identified the problem with Apollo and its interaction with the 1960s Maslow Window very succinctly! The Windows do close abruptly and terminate great explorations and large engineering programs. For example, the ebullience of the early 20th century polar expeditions and “Panama fever” was as intense as Apollo but was quickly terminated by WW I. Likewise, government support for the amazing central Africa explorations of Dr. Livingstone – he’d previously returned to London as a major hero — was rapidly cut off, much in the style of his brothers-in-exploration, the Apollo astronauts, just past the peak of their wave, 2 long waves later.

A subtle, but important point is that funding limitations do not fundamentally cause great explorations and MEPs to die, it’s because of a lack of ebullience. As the long wave descends and contractions occur, it’s the perception of falling behind by many people that understandably weakens ebullience, not the lack of funding. This is demonstrated by our current situation in the U.S.; You could run the greatest space program of all time on part of the $ 787 B Stimulus bill that was passed earlier this year — and some suggest that a small part of it should be returned to fund NASA — but during this great recession, a time of deep anti-ebullience, there is little public interest to do so.

Ashworth concludes…

If Dr Cordell and his co-workers are right, the period 2015-2025 could see doubled and tripled government space budgets, with multiple manned landings on the Moon and even Mars. But by the same token, the late 2020s and 2030s will see retreat and retrenchment, with events on Earth dominated by economic depression and war. A new conspiracy theory will emerge: astronauts never really landed on Mars at all!

Therefore the hope that manned exploration can leap ahead in a renewed age of Camelot is ultimately an illusion. It may indeed — but if it does, it will quickly fall behind again, with the loss of most of the capabilities gained during the decade of ebullient expansion.

I agree with Stephen’s assessment of the positive effects of the next Maslow Window but do not think the aftermath will be as bleak as he suggests. For example, although we no longer have a Saturn V and haven’t returned to Moon in 40 years, the U.S. and others have gained much human space-ops experience in the Shuttle and the ISS, plus we’re seeing the birth of the private space tourism industry, and we are the recipients of a genuinely multi-polar space world — unlike where we left off in the 1960s.

Two more things:
1) To counter the negative effects of declining Maslow Windows, we (globally) should strive to achieve a largely self-sufficient presence on the Moon or Mars (as suggested recently by Buzz Aldrin and others) during the 2015 Maslow Window. This will avoid another crippling ~40 year interval (1972 to now) when we are trapped in Earth orbit and deprived the pleasures of solar system settlement.
And…
2) It was not an accident (and shouldn’t have been a surprise) that the Cold War space race began, as well as ended, the way it did. It’s been happening basically the same way for 200 years — all the way back to Lewis and Clark. The real power in learning these lessons is that we can begin to plan around these long waves, instead of being completely surprised by them.

We need a global, unified, multi-decade approach to human exploration and settlement of the solar system. And with knowledge of how Maslow Windows have operated in the past, we should be able to either moderate the long waves themselves, or at least reduce their effects on human expansion into the cosmos.

Much like Tom Cruise, in the popular 1986 movie “Top Gun” — who insisted, “I feel the need … the need for speed” — current manned Mars mission planners are echoing his famous quote. And the way to do that during the 2015 Maslow Window timeframe (~ 2015 to 2025) is with nukes.

Tom Cruise had the right idea about traveling to Mars in his wildly popular 1986 movie “Top Gun.” Click .

According to Bill Emrich (Smithsonian’s Air & Space, 9/09; Michael Klesius) of NASA/MSFC in Huntsville, “Missions to Mars will almost certainly require propulsion systems with performance levels exceeding that of today’s best chemical engines.”

The motivations include shorter Earth-Mars travel times (and thus reduced space-related hazards like radiation for crews), reduced vehicle weights in LEO (lower Earth launch costs), and increased mission safety and flexibility by broadening launch windows and reducing the need for aerobraking. Regarding the risks of chemical interplanetary vehicles with aerobraking at Mars, Emrich warns, “I’d love to go to Mars, but not on that ship … You’re going down to just a few thousand feet above the surface. It would be a very scary ride … Very little room for error … You get one crack at it.”

You can get a feel for the potential thrills of interplanetary aerobraking by renting the 1984 movie “2010” (A.C. Clarke’s sequel to 2001) and watching Roy Scheider endure the approach to Jupiter.

Although not baselined in either Wernher von Braun’s initial engineering sketch of Martian expeditions in 1953, or in the currently envisioned Ares infrastructure, a nuclear upper stage was seriously considered as an option for the chemical Saturn V upper stage which launched astronauts to the Moon in 1969. Because of system requirements that greatly exceed those for the Moon, future expeditions to Mars will probably use nuclear propulsion.

In NASA’s first serious engineering study of humans to Mars, the 1960s EMPIRE study — Early Manned Planetary-Interplanetary Roundtrip Expeditions — nuclear propulsion was found to be “most important” for human missions to Mars. For example, according to Krafft Ehricke (in January, 1963), who led the General Dynamics, Astronautics (San Diego) EMPIRE studies, a 1975 manned mission to Mars “is in the realm of realistic technological planning; the most critical technical item is the nuclear engine.” The schedule for nuclear rocket development was included as a “classified” addendum (which is not included in my copy!), as you might expect at the zenith of the Cold War. Ehricke assumed a nuclear engine specific impulse (Isp) near 850 s (double that of the Shuttle Main Engines), with an operational lifetime up to 20 hr, and ready restart capability. General Dynamics’ prelim analysis indicated a total program cost (1965-75) of $ 18.5 B, — which puts it near the Apollo ballpark — of which about $ 2 B ($ 13.5 B in 2007 USD) was for the nuclear engine. Given improved materials technology, better computer simulation capability, and significant experience with nuclear systems, the development cost should be much less today.

In 1987, Stanley Borowsky of NASA Lewis Research Center (now Glenn) reviewed nuclear propulsion technology in the context of manned planetary missions (NASA TM 101354). He concluded that “convenient interplanetary travel will require the development of advanced nuclear propulsion systems…” with high thrust, large power to weight ratios, and high Isp. Nuclear Thermal Rocket (NTR) technology is particularly favored — where a nuclear reactor heats propellant and creates thrust — because it is the only nuclear rocket system that has been built and tested. Project Rover, the first nuclear rocket project, began in 1955 (before NASA existed) at Los Alamos and became part of NASA’s NERVA (Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application) program in 1960. Before its cancellation in 1973, NERVA had 20 successful tests in Nevada; its highlights included engine endurance (60 min at 1100 MW), high power operation (5000 MW for Phoebus-2A reactor), and reusability (XE-P system was restarted 24 times). However, time ran out before a flight-rated nuclear engine could be tested.

At the Case for Mars IV Conference in 1990, three EG&G Idaho scientists under contract to the U.S. Department of Energy concluded that “the propulsion system likely to meet all mission requirements (for human exploration of Mars) is the Nuclear Thermal Rocket.” They emphasize the performance advantages of NTR versus chemical systems,

For a transfer of 250 days, the initial mass in Earth orbit (IMEO) for a cryogenic chemical system with an aerobrake is about 325 metric tons and about 1,000 metric tons without it. For the same mission, an NTR with an Isp of 950 seconds (an updated NERVA design) would require about 250 metric tons IMEO without aerobraking. This would be even less with aerobraking.

Although they do not quote a cost estimate, the EG&G scientists estimate that an initial NTR would require 5 – 8 years of development.

As we approach the 2015 Maslow Window, when human spaceflight to Mars is seriously contemplated, current Mars mission planners again feel the need for speed. NASA’s Emrich is studying nuclear systems that could cut the Earth-to-Mars travel times in half relative to chemical propulsion. His project, the Nuclear Thermal Rocket Element Environment Simulator or NTREES at NASA Marshall, will subject potential nuclear rocket components to the extreme temepratures they will have to survive during in-space reactor operations.

The world’s “first clown to go into orbit” lifted off yesterday morning (GMT) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. While some cynics might insist that other “clowns” have already been in orbit — and they shall remain nameless here — this was the first professional clown to actually do it.

Canadian billionaire Guy Laliberte is the 7th private space tourist and the 1st real clown to reach orbit. Click .

Guy Laliberte, the founder of Cirque du Soleil paid the Russians $ 35 M for a Soyuz ride to the International Space Station; he plans to give a space-worthy performance that will be streamed on the internet.

According to the BBC, Mr. Laliberte is different than anyone ever to visit orbit,

I’m an artistic person and a creator. I’m not a scientific. I’m not an engineer. Life has given me some qualities, some assets and I have built up a team of very creative people around the world. With those people I think we’ll present something that is originally creative and hopefully will have the result of sensitising people toward the situation of water in the world.

On October 9, Laliberte’s 2-hour “poetical social” performance from high above everything, will feature contributions from links to 14 cities around the world.

This is a seminal event in the expansion of human cvilization and culture into the cosmos. Although the cause celebre is the need for clean water for people everywhere, equally striking is the performance in orbit by a famous, professional entertainer.

Hopefully the 2015 Maslow Window will allow more artists to perform in space. However, in the short term — after Shuttle retirement in 2010 or 2011 — there may be few Soyuz tourist seats available as they are taken by professional astronauts on their way to work in space.

On Sundays I usually take a quick tour of the New York Times OpEd section to see if they have any interesting long-term insights. Today I was intrigued by two celebrated columnists who happen to be on the same page (12): Frank Rich on “Obama at the Precipice” about the threat of Afghanistan to Obama’s presidency, and Thomas Friedman on “The New Sputnik” about China going green.

Did China just launch its 21st century version of Sputnik, the first artificial satellite that was in 1957 “the shock of the century”? Click

I’m always encouraged when I see major journalists attempting to play the “long wave” analysis game, even if they don’t call it that. And we definitely have two of them here. But the end result is often questionable. For example, I can’t see a significant parallel with a green China and Sputnik, although Friedman does. And, although many folks are fascinated with proposed parallels between Afghanistan and Vietnam, Rich’s explanation isn’t very convincing to me. So I give them an “A” for their creative approach, but have to give them a “C-” for their analysis. Here’s why.

21stCenturyWaves.com explains the clearly observed, twice-per-century major clusters of great explorations (e.g., Lewis and Clark), macro-engineering projects (e.g., Panama Canal), and major wars (e.g., World War I) as fundamentally driven by long waves in the economy — essentially a 56-year long business cycle — that is documented back almost 200 years.

This is a powerful idea that offers us scientific predictability for the next 20+ years of major exploration, engineering, and military events, based on patterns in macroeconomic data and historical trends over the last 200+ years. The basic idea is that many major events in society are being enabled and/or encouraged by our position in the 55-60 year long wave.

Rich seems excited about this idea. For example, “Analogies between Vietnam and Afghanistan are the rage these days.” Referring to the “hawkish young President Kennedy wrestling with Vietnam during his first months in office. … The remarkable parallels to 2009 became clear last week…” And as Gordon Goldstein — author of Lessons in Disaster, the new “must-read book” for Obama — recently said to Rich, “it’s ‘eerie’ how closely even these political maneuvers track those of half a century ago, when JFK was weighing whether to send combat troops to Vietnam.”

And yet Rich uses the long wave idea in a casual way. One problem is that 2009 minus 56 (the approximate length of the long wave) is 1953 — several years before John F. Kennedy became president. This date suggests there might be interesting parallels between 2009 and the Korean War, a conflict that involved the United Nations and others in a proxy war that was part of the larger Cold War; it ended in 1953.

Even a year or two makes a difference in the long wave’s influence on society. For example, in July, 2007, the world was still experiencing the “greatest boom ever,” which was only months before the Panic of 2008. This reminds us that JFK became president as the 1960 economic boom was taking off — certainly a far cry from the experience of Obama who was greeted by the Panic of 2008 and a great recession. Not to mention that no Vietnamese soldier ever directly attacked New York City. While there might eventually be political dangers for Obama in Afghanistan, parallels between the context and events of Vietnam and Afghanistan are exaggerated.

Friedman, in “The New Sputnik,” is a little better with his arithmetic, but less convincing with his analysis. Sputnik’s surprise launch was in 1957 (remember that 2009 – 56 = 1953) which is only 4 years off; about 1/2 the error of Rich. However, Friedman equates Sputnik with China’s recent energy direction, “I believe the Chinese decision to go green is the 21st-century equivalent of the Soviet Union’s 1957 launch of Sputnik — the world’s first Earth-orbiting satellite.” Friedman refers to China’s decision to invest in solar energy, wind power, and batteries so they can exploit future global markets in these areas.

I think the challenge that China presents to the West in these technologies will increase global competition and thus have a net positive effect. However, I see little relation of this to Sputnik, as Friedman essentially admits, “Unfortunately we’re still not racing. It’s like Sputnik went up and we think it’s just a shooting star.”

In 1957, nobody had to explain the symbolic, technological, and military threat of Sputnik to the West. Sputnik changed the world and launched the first Space Age that culminated in an American on the Moon in 1969.

Unless we are able to channel global interests in lunar bases and the commercial development of space into a “Grand Alliance for Space,” we may be forced to re-live a Sputnik-like event near 2013 when possibly a China-led consortium announces their program for the aggressive exploration and colonization of space, including the ultimate “green” technology: space-based solar power collectors that provide inexhaustible, clean energy to Earth to meet the 24/7 demands of economic growth everywhere on Earth.

Now that’s a Sputnik-like event that everyone would recognize.