Obama's space policy speech

NASA hasn't had a clear mission for manned spaceflight since landing on the moon 40 years ago. With his speech today at the Kennedy Space Center, President Obama made the boldest move to get it back on on track since President Kennedy sent us to the moon in the first place.

While it may lack the ring of Kennedy's "let's go to the moon before the end of this decade," Obama's "We've been there before. There's a lot more to explore" for the first time puts the country on a sustainable course beyond low Earth orbit.

The shuttle has been flying in circles for almost 30 years. Nothing in the works at NASA would have done any better. We have to do better than that, Obama told the crowd of space workers and dignitaries.

"Nobody is more committed to manned spaceflight, to human exploration of space than I am. But we've got to do it in a smart way. And we can't just can't keep on doing the same old things that we've been doing and thinking that somehow is going to get us to where we want to go."

Key to doing it smart, said Obama, is tapping private industry to handle routine access to low Earth orbit, while NASA works the big problems: developing new propulsion technologies, working on a heavy lift vehicle (to the tune of $3 billion), and sending robotic probes around the solar system. Overall budget increase for NASA over the next five years: $6 billion.

Obama's speech represents the clearest support for private space flight possible. Obama even opened his speech with mention of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket now on pad 40 undergoing final checkouts before its planned maiden voyage next month.

"By buying the services of space transportation rather than the vehicles themselves, we can continue to ensure rigorous safety standards are met, but we will also accelerate the pace of innovations as companies, from young startups to established leaders, compete to design and build and launch new means of carrying people and materials out of our atmosphere."

That's great news for anyone who wants to see space become a place to do business on a regular basis, and not just a government program, as Obama as much as pointed out.

"We will actually reach space faster and more often under this new plan, in ways that will help us improve our technological capacity and lower our costs, which are both essential for the long term sustainability of space flight."

Now it's up to private space companies such as SpaceX, the linchpins of Obama's new plan, to demonstrate the right stuff. A successful launch by the Falcon 9 next month will go a long way in that direction.

Elon Musk on NASA's new direction

President Obama is set to address the nation on his new direction for space exploration any minute now. Meanwhile, this just in from Space Exploration Technologies CEO Elon Musk on what it could mean. Heady stuff, and I think he's got it exactly right.

At Long Last, an Inspiring Future for Space Exploration

The Apollo Moon landing was one of humanity’s greatest achievements. Millennia from now, when the vast majority of the 20th century is reduced to a few footnotes known only to erudite scholars of history, they will still remember that was when we first set foot upon a heavenly body. It was a mere 66 years after the first powered airplane flight by the Wright brothers.

In the 41 years that have passed since 1969, we have yet to surpass that achievement in human spaceflight. Since then, our capability has actually declined considerably and to a degree that would yield shocked disbelief from anyone in that era. By now, we were supposed to have a base on the Moon, perhaps even on Mars, and have sent humans traveling on great odysseys to the outer planets. Instead, we have been confined to low Earth orbit and even that ends this year with the retirement of the Space Shuttle.

In 2003, following the Columbia accident, President Bush began development of a system to replace the Shuttle, called the Ares I rocket and Orion spacecraft. It is important to note that this too would only have been able to reach low Earth orbit. Many in the media mistakenly assumed it was capable of reaching the Moon. As is not unusual with large government programs, the schedule slipped by several years and costs ballooned by tens of billions.

By the time President Obama cancelled Ares I/Orion earlier this year, the schedule had already slipped five years to 2017 and completing development would have required another $50 billion. Moreover, the cost per flight, inclusive of overhead, was estimated to be at least $1.5 billion compared to the $1 billion of Shuttle, despite carrying only four people to Shuttle’s seven and almost no cargo.

The President quite reasonably concluded that spending $50 billion to develop a vehicle that would cost 50% more to operate, but carry 50% less payload was perhaps not the best possible use of funds. To quote a member of the Augustine Commission, which was convened by the President to analyze Ares/Orion, “If Santa Claus brought us the system tomorrow, fully developed, and the budget didn’t change, our next action would have to be to cancel it,” because we can’t afford the annual operating costs.

Cancellation was therefore simply a matter of time and thankfully we have a President with the political courage to do the right thing sooner rather than later. We can ill afford the expense of an “Apollo on steroids”, as a former NASA Administrator referred to the Ares/Orion program. A lesser President might have waited until after the upcoming election cycle, not caring that billions more dollars would be wasted. It was disappointing to see how many in Congress did not possess this courage. One senator in particular was determined to achieve a new altitude record in hypocrisy, claiming that the public option was bad in healthcare, but good in space!

Thankfully, as a result of funds freed up by this cancellation, there is now hope for a bright future in space exploration. The new plan is to harness our nation’s unparalleled system of free enterprise (as we have done in all other modes of transport), to create far more reliable and affordable rockets. Handing over Earth orbit transport to American commercial companies, overseen of course by NASA and the FAA, will free up the NASA resources necessary to develop interplanetary transport technologies. This is critically important if we are to reach Mars, the next giant leap in human exploration of the Universe.

Today, the President will articulate an ambitious and exciting new plan that will alter our destiny as a species. I believe this address could be as important as President Kennedy’s 1962 speech at Rice University. For the first time since Apollo, our country will have a plan for space exploration that inspires and excites all who look to the stars. Even more important, it will work.

--Elon--

Lunar payloads for sale

The Google Lunar XPRIZE team Astrobotic has been busy. President David Gump has tipped me off that with the details of its lunar-rover-in-progress being finalized, the team is now soliciting ideas for commercial payloads.

A total of 240 pounds of payload is up for sale. At $700,000 a pound, it won't be cheap, but Gump says 11 pounds are already accounted for in the form of the cremated remains of people of who want to be buried in space. Ideas for other payloads include systems for detecting water, producing oxygen, and prospecting for buried lava tubes suitable for conversion into habitats.

The Google Lunar XPRIZE is the brainchild of Peter Diamandis, who founded the Ansari XPRIZE for the first manned space flight, which Scaled Composites won in 2004. Now 20 teams from around the world are competing for a $30 million purse for the first to land a privately funded rover on the moon before 2015.

Astrobotic seems to have what it takes to pull it off: Raytheon (a major defense contractor) and Carnegie Mellon University as partners, and the mad genius of Red Whittaker (whose team won the DARPA Urban Challenge robot car race in 2007) as chief technical officer.

The team plans to land at the Apollo 11 site, which hasn't been seen up close since Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin departed the surface of the moon in 1969. Mission planners hope that stereo cameras on the rover will reveal the site all its magnificent desolation for the first time in more than 40 years.