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In recent months, the executive secretary of the National Space Council, Scott Pace, has worked assiduously behind the scenes to develop a formal space policy for the Trump administration. In a rare interview, published Monday in Scientific American, Pace elaborated on some of the policy decisions he has been helping to make.
In the interview, Pace explained why the Trump administration has chosen to focus on the Moon first for human exploration while relegating Mars to becoming a "horizon goal," effectively putting human missions to the Red Planet decades into the future. Mars was too ambitious, Pace said, and such a goal would have precluded meaningful involvement from the burgeoning US commercial sector as well as international partners. Specific plans for how NASA will return to the Moon should become more concrete within the next year, he added.
In response to a question about privately developed, heavy-lift boosters, the executive secretary also reiterated his skepticism that such "commercial" rockets developed by Blue Origin and SpaceX could compete with the government's Space Launch System rocket, which is likely to make its maiden flight in 2020. "Heavy-lift rockets are strategic national assets, like aircraft carriers," Pace said. "There are some people who have talked about buying heavy-lift as a service as opposed to owning and operating, in which case the government would, of course, have to continue to own the intellectual properties so it wasn't hostage to any one contractor. One could imagine this but, in general, building a heavy-lift rocket is no more 'commercial' than building an aircraft carrier with private contractors would be."
I thought flying non-reusable pork rockets was about the money, not strategy. SpaceX is set to launch Falcon Heavy for the first time no earlier than December 29. It will have over 90% of the low Earth orbit capacity as the initial version of the SLS (63.8 metric tons vs. 70).
Previously: Maiden Flight of the Space Launch System Delayed to 2019
First SLS Mission Will be Unmanned
Commercial Space Companies Want More Money From NASA
U.S. Air Force Will Eventually Launch Using SpaceX's Reused Rockets
(Score: 4, Informative) by khallow on Wednesday November 08 2017, @11:15PM (1 child)
The reason why is that there isn't a goal of the US that requires the SLS in any form. The far cheaper costs of commercial launch means that it's better to shoehorn spacecraft and other mission payloads onto commercial launchers rather than develop a specialized launcher that via its development and fixed costs, pulls immense funding away from such missions and still costs more per launch.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 09 2017, @09:53AM
This. Basically, you need to get something back. We need to see some plan for profit in value of substance, capability, or knowledge which would be attained as consequence of lifting more mass in one go up from the bottom of our gravity well. First, we have to know the answers to these questions:
Are we going to sustain our business in space for foreseeable future? In other words, will we need to place equipment and/or humans up in the Earth's orbit and/or other celestial bodies?
If yes, can we cut our costs and losses doing that, by investing into space-located space equipment construction industry?
If yes, can we cut our costs and losses doing that, by investing into space-located raw materials (and perhaps recyclable refuse and leftovers) retrieval and processing?
If yes to either of last two, do we need nearby human placement and oversight at sites where these actions will take place?
If yes to that last one, do we need permanent settlements to support that human presence?
If we do all that, will it still be cost effective for our initial goals and primary needs related to space? It seems that without rising demand for space-originated materials or services at adequate price points, this whole chain will not be able to support itself. It would be naive to think that any human extraterrestrial settlement within Solar system would become completely self-sufficient anytime soon, so any aspiring settlement must produce value for the Earth to be able to sustain itself through trade, and it means that they have to have something for bargaining. Before that something is determined, there is no proper and sane incentive for establishing them.