The Bewilderness

Threats to the High Frontier

Strategic argumnents on the high frontier have been smothered by the decade of war that exposed the underbelly of the West. Hunkered down in the Muslim world left the United States distracted whilst China built up its confidence and began to dominate its periphery, through the development of "core interests". These have now expanded to the South China Sea and the Senkaku (Diaoyu) islands: an aggressive approach designed to create facts on the ground: a Chinese presence that counteracts the rhetoric of Obama's pivot to the Pacific (described by its security critics in South East Asia as more of a useless pirouette).

China, as yet, is unable to challenge US military dominance in a straight fight. Therefore, they rely on asymmetric skills to leverage their power. The use of hacking, aggression against poorer neighbours and a desire to dominate space. To this end, they have set their sites on establishing a new space race with the United States and developing satellite weapons that could seriously damage America's capability to make war.

More worrying are the cultural differences between China and the West in regards to deterrence. China defines deterrent actions as a form of coercion: designed to compel an opponent to submit through a an escalating strategy of force stopping short of war. The West's traditional vision of deterrence is a chess game: an open strategy designed to avoid compulsion or any form of action: reinforcing the status quo. The potential misunderstanding between a revisionist and a stationary power are clear.

There is no doubt that Chinese dominance of the high frontier would radically alter the international system and undermine the rules based liberal order promoted by the West. Such actions need to be deterred as pre-emption will not be viewed as an order to submit by the United States. 

Reaching beyond the sky

We have the prize: the Google $30,000,000 Lunar Prize, designed to facilitate a return to the Moon. It has stimulated 29 firms to plan and rush for seedcorn money that could propel their ambitions. Any article can quote their goals:

Naveen Jain, an Internet billionaire and a founder of Moon Express, says the company will spend $70 million to $100 million to try to win the Google Lunar X Prize, but could recoup its investment on its first flight. He envisions selling exclusive broadcast rights for video from the Moon, as well as sponsorships, à la Nascar, for companies to put their logos on the lander.

Nor would I stint such entrepreneurs from seeking welcome publicity and a contribution to the meme. The problem is that prizes, start-ups and capital injections do not really give us certainty. Are we really facing the build-up to a critical mass in space activity, leading to an efflorescence of innovation and business models in orbit? Or is this a myth, where reduction in state activity leaves an absence, since private firms are unable to make a sufficient return?

So far, we are shifting to a public-private partnership: state contracts and private sector providers. A halfway house or co-opting new models; the private sector has yet to reach orbit, let alone the moon.

The Space industrial complex

Within the next three years, we will step beyond a government monopoly in spaceflight towards a public/private partnership: NASA financing and commercial contracts with lean operators. Not an ideal outcome but a stepping stone, one hopes, to the privatisation of the space industry. An article from space.com gave some ideas on the development of the semi-national industry (entrepreneurial investments/government contracts).

Phase I: Beyond Powerpoint presentations...

Phase II: Successful launch trials (in 2011), with development and demonstration

Phase III: Profitable contracts from government and private sector customers

Phase IV: Sustainable industry with little or no reliance on government expenditure

I am sceptical about Phase IV: since the seeds of a nascent space-industrial complex are gradually being sown due to the limitations of deficit financing.

The Space industrial complex

Within the next three years, we will step beyond a government monopoly in spaceflight towards a public/private partnership: NASA financing and commercial contracts with lean operators. Not an ideal outcome but a stepping stone, one hopes, to the privatisation of the space industry. An article from space.com gave some ideas on the development of the semi-national industry (entrepreneurial investments/government contracts).

Phase I: Beyond Powerpoint presentations...

Phase II: Successful launch trials (in 2011), with development and demonstration

Phase III: Profitable contracts from government and private sector customers

Phase IV: Sustainable industry with little or no reliance on government expenditure

I am sceptical about Phase IV: since the seeds of a nascent space-industrial complex are gradually being sown due to the limitations of deficit financing.

US space programme grounded through pork

Another question to which the answer is No: taken from the Orlando Sentinel late last year. I make no apologies for resurrecting this artcle some months down the line; indeed there is an argument for ignoring the immediacy of media headlights and choosing subjects with the benefit of hindsight. So what is the question? Can NASA compete with Space X?

Look at the evidence marshalled by the article. Elon Musk has put together his new rocket at a cost of $800,000,000. As the author notes, this is a "rounding error" for NASA. The agency is unable to resolve its issues with bureaucracy and overruns. It does not incentivise its contractors to reduce costs and saps any entrepreneurial drive they may have had to innovate outside of the public teat. No company within the military industrial complex has been willing to take the risks which the new start-ups have embraced. Taking money from NASA has acted as an unofficial non-compete clause stifling the private sector.

Without NASA, could the new space movement have taken off earlier? The answer is vague handwaving. Money and entrepreneurs that embraced the challenge were both required. The internet boom and cultural geekdom seem to have been appropriate perquisites.

Over the past six years, NASA has spent nearly $10 billion on the Ares I rocket and Orion capsule — its own version more or less of what SpaceX has launched — and came up with little more than cost overruns and technical woes. In October, Congress scrapped the Constellation moon program and ordered the agency to start over to design a rocket and capsule capable of taking humans to explore the solar system.

It would be better for America if NASA's millions were redirected towards tax cuts, like every other obese pork ridden agency. Then we may get out into the solar system.

A positive aspect for 2012

The tests for SpaceShipTwo, the Virgin Galactic suborbital prototype, are exceeding expectations. The commercial enterprise is on schedule for 2012.

"At your own risk": and we can't be sued either

With a commercial private space industry comes all of the paraphernalia of modern law, dogging the steps of a potential industry. We have come to the stage where the government write rules on what might be, and politicians have to protect entrepreneurs from overzealous bureaucrats. But, of course, politicians get their targets wrong.

Senator Carlos Uresti has filed Senate Bill 115, also known as the "Space Flight Liability" bill.  It would protect private space flight companies from being sued if passengers on board are injured or killed.  Uresti says if he would have waited to file the bill until the next legislative session in two years, that could be too late.

Why should private space companies not be sued if their passengers are injured or killed. The usual method of protection is developing appropriate insurance policies. This bill would prevent private companies and insurers from assessing or pricing the risk correctly, whilst negligent companies could enjoy immunity from the service of suit.

If you can't beat them, buy them

It was always too much to hope that a commercial space launch facility in private hands would not be co-opted by government. The combination of private money, Silicon Valley cool and waving the flag for private enterprise was a tempting morsel for the Obama administration.

The Washington Post is describing the test launch of the Falcon 9 in those juicy terms beloved of lobbyists, earmarks and boondoggles "in a major test for the commercial space industry". A successful test flight does not define a major industry, but ramping up the rhetoric on government/private sector contractual partnerships and supporting the international space station will lead to another suckler of the taxpayer's teat (the more nascent the better). 

Such rhetoric warns us of the dangers that NASA poses in stifling innovation and commercial markets in space. Why develop alternative services when the government becomes your sole and very important customer? The moral of the story is: if you can't beat them, buy them.

NASA's safety by numbers assists stillbirth

As the shuttle programme winds down, political pressures have forced NASA to extend a hand to the nascent commercial space launch industry. Private sector operators will be given the opportunity to bid for contracts and transport astronauts or supplies to the International Space Station. Yet, after publishing their requirements, NASA came under heavy criticism for trying to replicate their engineering culture of triplicate within the new companies:

Still, commercial space proponents said the initial draft demonstrates the resistance of some NASA officials to the types of dramatic changes in oversight necessary to create a thriving commercial sector. "The document runs a mind-numbing 260 pages of densely spaced requirements," Hale wrote.

"Most disappointing, on pages 7 to 11 is a table of 74 additional requirements documents which must be followed, in whole or in part. Taken all together, there are thousands of requirement statements referenced in this document," he added. "And for every one NASA will require a potential commercial space flight provider to document, prove, and verify with massive amounts of paperwork and/or electronic forms. This, folks is the old way of doing business. This is one of the major reasons why spaceflight is as costly as it is."

McAlister countered those assertions, saying the space agency is striving "to maximize safety and reliability" without burdening commercial firms with unnecessary requirements that lead to higher development and operations costs.

Given NASA's drawbacks in safety over the years, one can be charitable or sceptical over the level of detail required from a commercial spacecraft provider. Moreover, we do not have a successful company providing a reliable service in the private sector. Yet, one wonders if NASA requires the Russians to provide a similar level of data under their agreements of did that dour race answer "Nyet". 

Whatever the motives behind NASA, one senses that the customer is acting as regulator: a conflict of interest open to abuse.

Putting a Manx on the Moon without subsidy

Who would have thought that one of the centres for the new space industry was the Isle of Man. An unprepossessing island in the Irish Sea, outside the boundaries of Europe and one of the few well-regulated, low-tax jurisdictions remaining on the planet. Why would anyone ever want to site business there?

Art Dula, chief executive officer of Excalibur Almaz Limited, the Isle of Man based space tourism company focused on returning to the moon, said: "The Isle of Man is the leading venue for the world's growing commercial space industry.

"Regulatory and insurance support from the Isle of Man Government for orbital space tourism has been a great help to our business."

The Manx nation has now been rated as the fifth most likely to land a man on the Moon, ahead of those dynamic innovators, the European Union.

As Jim Bennett has noted before, European co-operation remains a crock for harnessing entrepreneurial activities within Newspace:

Mr Bennett, president of Wyoming Aerospace LLC, added: "You don't need astronauts to have a successful space programme. The New Space environment now offers British entrepreneurs, financiers and scientists to take a seat at the main table on their own terms."

He added: "Britain has networks of close ties, experiences and mutual trust not just in one direction but in three: Europe, the USA and the Commonwealth.

"It should seek to maintain its existing productive ties with Europe, exploit the ease of business between the US and Britain to develop New Space entrepreneurship, and enhance its co-operation with the often-underestimated capabilities of Canada, Australia, and India."

Pointless in attracting the attention of the UK space agency.Or the subsidy junkies currently masquerading at the forefront of the UK 'commercial' private sector space industry:

Certainly, it’s easy to imagine a conservative-minded bank getting cold feet over the risk of investing in so much unproven technology and a novel business plan. [Sir Martin]Sweeting argues that the funding he received got the company ‘over the hump’ and into a state where it could exploit a growing market.

It is also possible to imagine a UK space agency pouring vast amounts of taxpayer money down a black hole.