La Lune (gouvernmentale) est morte! Vive la Lune (commerciale)!
Ken Murphy / 2:53 am January 29th, 2010
There’s certainly a lot of foofaraw surrounding what may be a significant realignment in how the U.S. government approaches space. While I hesitate to comment before the facts are in, I am allowing myself a bit of cautious optimism that we may finally be on a course where space moves beyond being explored and starts being developed, and eventually settled.
I am a huge fan of the development of cislunar space by the U.S., and I don’t think the government is the right entity to make that happen. It can scout out the terrain, but it is the citizenry who are going to take their capital and start figuring out how to make space useful and profitable, as many already have (q.v. GeoSat industry).
Some say “If you’re going to the Moon, then go to the Moon”, implying that ‘dawdling’ in cislunar space is a waste of time. Others say that space is too expensive for anyone but the government to do it. Some say that there is no money to be made in space. Others that we should just let our tools (i.e. robots) do it for us.
All of which is bunk and nonsense, but that doesn’t stop folks from believing it. I’d like to share a couple of business ideas I had when I was younger and crazier and didn’t know as much about space as I do now. Thing is, they still have merit.
#1: Vacuum spheres
My personal favorite, the basic idea is to create hollow glass spheres in orbit that are ‘filled’ with vacuum. The basic business plan was to arrange access to one of the GASCans (Get Away Special Canisters) that flew in the Shuttle’s payload bay. Whilst on orbit the GASCan would open and vent to space, and then heated collars would pinch off sections of a glass tube, capturing the vacuum inside. The canister would then close, perhaps fill with a protective foam, and then be returned to Earth.
I decided to put my ISU and SGF background to work and got in touch with Grant and Taber over at Paragon SDC. They indicated that Yes, they did know of glasses that would be able to handle being filled with high-purity nothing, and in fact they would be more than happy to build the pinch-collar mechanism described above as well.
While I was working as Program Support for the Goddard NASA Academy back in 2002 we went to a number of the NASA centers, and we got to talk to the folks working on the GASCan program. I used the opportunity to ask a few questions, and found out that there were something like 67 GASCans in the queue. I asked if one paid to fly one’s payload, would that move it up ahead of those GASCans that were getting a free ride from NASA. The answer, not surprisingly, was No. In fact, if a payload came along that NASA felt was scientifically compelling, they could move it to the front of the queue.
So technology-wise we were at a point where this was a viable product, but access to the proper manufacturing environment was particularly constrained and disadvantageous. The marketing and sale of the product was aimed at tapping the auction market to set a price for the few first vacspheres, and then pricing the remainder accordingly. Target markets would be early adopters of unique items. These would, after all, be of limited number for the near/mid-term. Other ideas include doing laser scans to determine what limited stuff there was in the vacuum and certifying them. And it’s the perfect capitalist product - I would be selling nothing for a fair price.
#2: MDL boxes
While the shuttle has always provided limited amounts of payload space for mid-deck locker (MDL) and shuttle drawer rack (SDR) payloads, the supply has been terribly limited, with demand far outstripping it, especially in the early 80s (ramping up of shuttle promises) and late 90s (ramping up of ISS promises). Payloads were often limited to one flight, so if they didn’t work right you were pretty much SOL. They had to be extensively engineered to be push-button, as the astronauts had limited amounts of time to devote to any one box.
So, I wondered, what if the scientists didn’t have to waste their time engineering the payload? What if instead they could lease a pre-built and pre-flown box? They could accelerate the pace of their science (i.e. grad students could get results to gnaw on), and they would have an easier time getting it manifested, as the hardware was already proven through prior flight.
The idea, then, was to quietly go around to different PIs and companies and buy their experiment boxes that were more than likely gathering dust in a storage room. These would be carefully cleaned and then catalogued so that scientists could determine which one would best suit their needs, to be leased (NNN) at a fair price.
The problem came with the manifesting. When the NASA Academy visited KSC, we got a briefing from the folks who loaded experiments into the Shuttle. I inquired as to whether using an already-flown piece of hardware would do anything to accelerate the certification process, a key aspect of the business plan. The answer was that if anything at all was different from the first time it flew, it would have to go through the entire process again.
Confound it!
Ultimately, my preference is to have scientists ’sitting’ at lab benches and running experiments over and over, just like they do here on Earth.
#3: Asteroid Data
You don’t have to work for long in the financial field to find out what a Bloomberg terminal is. The basic premise is that Bloomberg provides access to financial data. Even early on it provided vast amounts of information which I can tell you first hand was of huge value to the credit analysis process. Once they started providing loan documents online there was no one who could compete.
The best data is accessed through Bloomberg terminals, which the company leases to financial firms at a not insignificant price per month. The company has also developed tools that leverage the value of the data and allow for unusual analysis. Stop by www.ZeroHedge.com for a taste of what kind of information they can offer.
So what if there were space data that was of particular value and broad application?
Asteroids are the obvious answer. The Minor Planet Center up at Harvard does a great job of providing information about the small bodies of the Solar system, but what if you could provide data on asteroids that you can’t provide from Earth?
The basic idea was to put a payload at the Earth-Moon L-1 point (EML-1 or as I call it, Emily) that would be in a halo orbit around the L-1 point and would spin so as to provide a 360° view of near-Earth space, looking not just starward, but also into our current huge blind-spot, Sunward. Over the course of a month it would effectively map out in three dimensions the population of small bodies down to some arbitrary size, from the Sun out to the Asteroid Belt. Over time the equipment would be upgraded so as to scan out to the Oort Cloud.
The data points to be built would include size, orbit, albedo, shape, spectral maps, and so on. Since the instruments would be outside the atmosphere they can scan in more wavelengths, providing better spectral data about the composition of the objects.
This data would be sold on a subscription basis, a business model I’d been introduced to when I was a fresh-out junior banker in middle-market lending at NatWest Bank working in the Empire State Building. The price of the subscription would depend on the quantity of data desired. What really makes a subscription business work is the fact that the revenues come in up front, and then get recognized over time on the P&L. This means you’re sitting on a large pool of cash that is a liability as Unearned Revenues, which also happens to be sitting in a bank and earning interest for you. This is why you see things like pre-paid laundromat and cafeteria cards - the company gets to earn the interest instead of you.
The big risk here is actually the scientists using the data. I’ve noticed a strong disposition to the meme that knowledge should be free, which is noble but doesn’t put food on the table. So I perceived a very strong likelihood that someone would make the data available on the internet, which means that the purity of the data would have to be corrupted by false data, unique to each subscriber, that would allow any breaches to be traced, and consequences to be enacted on the perpetrator.
Who would be the subscribers? The list is lengthy because I’m looking at global markets and can envision any number of users, from governments and universities to private foundations and companies. Sure it would be great for figuring out which NEOs to prospect, but let’s say you’re one of those scientists who labors under the notion that there are small black holes whizzing around the universe on galactic or cosmic trajectories. If one happened to pass through the Solar system you might be able to prise out perturbations in the planetary orbit data that could provide support for the hypothesis. Such a thing would be stunningly obvious in a time-series of orbits of the small bodies.
A 3-D gravitometric map of the inner Solar system would be of great utility to plotters of low-energy (or weak-stability-boundary) trajectories that you might have heard about, as well as sailors of Solar Sails. Spectral analysis may allow determination of hypothetical parent bodies, which might be traced back to help provide an explanation of what it was that gave us the Asteroid Belt.
The applications of such data are vast, giving it particular value. Since NASA was supposed to be working on some kind of Crew Exploration Vehicle that would go trans-LEO, two obvious destinations for trial sorties would be GEO and EML-1. While at EML-1 I’d pay them to drop off the initial instrument package, having had the opportunity to thoroughly test it post-launch and fix it if necessary.
Again, the idea has merit, but the mechanics haven’t really worked out.
#4: GeoSat Forensics
Once there’s a crewed facility at EML-1, going back and forth to GEO is easy. Much easier than just going from LEO to GEO. This enables the opportunity to start cleaning up GEO and paving the way for larger installations. Imagine if your DISH TV could punch through the rain storm…
Back when I was doing my independent project on Cislunar Infrastructure Architectures for my ISU Master of Space Studies degree while at Boeing Human Space Flight & Exploration division for my internship, I decided to look at just what kind of junk was floating around out at GEO. I dug up a few databases on known GEO objects, cross-correlated them, and them compared that with data on active satellites. Removing those from the dataset left the inactive garbage floating around and generally getting up to no good.
I identified over 600 metric tonnes of scrap. That’s a lot of materiél, so salvage is one opportunity, but what I wanted was the forensics data on the materials exposure to the GEO environment; each one being, in essence, a mini-LDEF. Knowledge of how those materials ‘age’ over time at GEO will provide valuable insight on how to build better satellites for the Geo environment. Better satellites provide more value to the purchaser, increasing market demand. So the forensic data certainly has value, and by removing it from GEO up to EML-1 you’re giving the folks at the Emily facility something to do. And then the pieces can be cobbled together to serve other purposes. It also turns out there are a lot of Russian kick stages up there whose rocket motors run on Silane (SiH4), a potential future Lunar export, which begs the question could they be refurbished?
We’re just not there yet.
#5: Emily Freeflyers
One of the neat things about EML-1 is that you’re at a location in cislunar space where you can do a lot of neat things with gravity. Here, the premise is that microgravity science and production is best done away from crewed facilities to minimize the micro-g jitters induced in the structure of the station (and by extension the experiment boxes attached to it) by astronauts bumping into things. Also, you want your experiment to be as close to the CoG of the station as possible, or next best along the vector of flight of the CoG. So microgravity science on stations like the ISS is not as easy as some would have you believe.
Taking advantage of our knowledge of low-energy trajectories we can design a trajectory that makes several orbits around the Moon and then returns to EML-1. This means it is not difficult to launch and retrieve freeflyer platforms (leased from yours truly) that house experiments and production runs, and the trajectory can be customized to provide for different periods of free flight. This is where the golden age of microgravity science and materials will begin.
We’re even further away from this idea.
#6: Monocoque Modular Transport
If there could be designed a common interface for the Atlas V, Delta IV, Ariane V and Falcon IX, then the vehicle that rides as the payload would be indifferent to the launch vehicle. This not only allows for greater launch flexibility, but also enables a blossoming of manufacturers of the vehicles on top. This is where the market best serves us, as different manufacturers would offer different models of transport, and over time the customers would determine which were the best ones.
I’ve got my own idea for a modular transport architecture I call the caplet design. The vehicle is stripped down to its base function - keeping X number of people alive for Y amount of time in space and takes the form of a caplet like you find in your medicine cabinet. Everything else is bolted on. The launch vehicle takes it to orbit, where a tug takes it to a station. If it’s just a taxi run, you bolt on a heat shield and deorbit package and send it on its way. If it’s going trans-LEO you bolt on a propulsion package (available in 2, 4, 6, 8 & 10 km/s delta-V options). If it’s going to EML-1 you strap on a 4 km/s thruster and you’re on your way. If you’re at EML-1 and you’re heading down to the Lunar surface you bolt on a set of lander legs, and a 6 km/s dV propulsion will get you there (anywhere on the Moon 24/7) and back. If you’re heading down to GEO you bolt on some manipulator arms and a cargo rack, and IIRC a 4 km/s dV propulsion package would get you there and back. 4 km/s dV would also get you back down to LEO (any inclination: equatorial, Kennedy, ISS, whatever) without aerobraking.
These are all ideas that would create value and jobs. The more that cislunar space is opened up to entrepreneurs, the more they’ll be able to put their capital at risk to try out their ideas and pave the way for others to follow.
So, instead of fearing what commercialization might bring, we should also consider the many possibilities that would be enabled by the development of cislunar space.
I’m as anxious to get to our Moon as the next guy. My ambition is to be administrator of the first real Moonbase. I’ve got the Lunar Library; there’s not a Gen Xer that knows more about the Moon than I do (which is why I threw my hat into the ring for the position of Director of the NASA Lunar Science Institute, and I’m still waiting for my rejection letter). There are people who know more about specific aspects of our Moon, but when it comes to overall knowledge there’s no competition from my peers since they all caught the Mars bug (Mars is, after all, the obvious next permanent human civilization in Earth-similar conditions).
As for me…I would be perfectly content to die on the Moon and have my body contribute to the extension of Earth’s biosphere beyond our home planet.
But I also recognize that if we’re to become space-faring, and not just space visiting, we have to put in place the pieces that allow us to do so. I’m a banker, I recognize the time-value of money, the quickest place in space for value to be cultivated over the next 10-15 years is in cislunar space. Once we get out to and set up at EML-1 we can go anywhere, which is the point.
Not just to the Moon, nor Mars, but everywhere.
La Lune est Morte! Vive notre Lune!
