The Solar System: a proving ground for interstellar spacecraft

The above picture illustrates a small spacecraft attached to a solar sail, as depicted by By Kevin Gill from Nashua, NH, United States ( Solar Sail, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=42599221 ). Such Solar/Laser sails are the only technology currently proposed for travel to other solar systems in a reasonable amount of time and, as of yet, not practicable except on paper.  Of course, such "starchips," as they are known, would have to be much smaller than the spacecraft pictured above and would travel in larger numbers ("think smaller, think way more legs"). Hugh Podmore and I wondered what the advent of such a technology might mean for planetary science within our own solar system.

Late last year I finally published a fun paper that myself and Hugh Podmore, one of Prof. Regina Lee's PhD students, wrote up in the summer of 2017. It was a pure flight of intellectual fancy for which we sought and received no funding. What was the subject, you may ask: what else could you do with the starchip spacecraft that the breakthrough star-shot initiative is working towards in order to advance our knowledge of our own solar system? While some of the possibilities had been detailed in the original paper by Prof. Lubin, his ideas for how the interstellar laser array could be used to explore the solar system go big whereas we wanted to know what could be bought in terms of time and cost for going small instead.

It seems that there is a quite a bit that one could do. But what surprised us most was how quickly such spacecraft could be of use to planetary science, perhaps as early as the mid 2020s, allowing early starchip prototypes to be tested out while doing valuable science.  They could also be a democratizing force by allowing smaller space actors (such as Canada) to participate in a way that hadn't been previously imagined, due to the  relatively low cost of laser propulsion once the pushing station is set up. Finally, if you stop to think about it, there really are a lot of great uses for small, fast spacecraft. In our solar system there are things that are fiendishly difficult to do with a discovery-class NASA mission or that simply don't justify that classification's $500 million price tag. I'll get into all these interesting possibilities just below the cut.

A Small Insight from the 2012 Canadian Space Summit

The team from Concordia shows off their award-winning university-built 3-U cube sat. We heard from this group and many others at the 2012 CSS about the possibilities for exploring our planet and our solar system with small spacecraft not unlike the one pictured above.

A few weeks ago I was participating in the 2012 Canadian Space Summit in London, Ontario (full disclosure: I am on the conference organizing committee). We had a great week full of interesting talks. The highlight speakers were my PhD Advisor, Peter Smith who spoke at the banquet and the last man (and only geologist) to walk on the moon, Harrison Schmitt - the subject of a great deal of media and the host of a separate ticketed lecture.

But one emerging theme is a problem that is particularly acute for Canada - how do we fund space exploration? Even countries with large coffers dedicated to space, like the United States, or Inter-Governmental organizations such as ESA, often run into difficulties with getting their projects funded. As a result, you might be tempted to think that the only way a smaller country like Canada can get their flag into space is by partnering with others and contributing a small piece of a bigger mission.

While this has been a winning strategy, so far, I don't think we need to limit our ambitions here. And neither did a number of presenters at the CSS. We heard several talks on an emerging field: planetary nano-spacecraft or what I might call nano-exploration.

Each according to his gifts: Analogues, A Canadian Contribution

This beautiful image taken by U of T's Tim Barfoot shows the ROC-6 Rover that will be used to simulate a Lunar Rover this summer as part of an Analogue Mission. It is shown here at one of the CSA's 10 Analogue Sites: Lake Orbiter, Devon Island.

How can Canada best contribute to Planetary Science and the development of Space Missions? Should we launch our own superior spacecraft? Develop our own cadre of scintilating supporting scientists? Engineer the finest quality instruments? Well, we do currently do all of these things. But while we do posess high quality in each domain and make valuable contributions to missions, it is unlikely that we will become the largest source of either.

However, there is one domain in which we have a distinct advantage. Ours is a large country with many different environments. These provide excellent places to check-out landed spacecraft equipment and develop techniques to command them. If this testing is done in what we call a "flight-like" manner (that is to say that we force upon ourselves the constraints which would exist were the mission actually occuring on another planet) then we have a special name for the exercise: an Analog Mission.

Such a Mission should have all the necessary simulated pieces in place to mirror an actual mission. These include a realistic instrument platform (i.e. a lander, rover or other spacecraft simulator), realistic instrumentation, realistic communications and a remote mission operations team which works on a schedule that is itself suitably "flight-like."

Space & Politics in Canada: Fallout from the 41st General Election

I, like many others, watched a generational sea-change in the politics of Canada last night. As Maclean's Magazine's Colby Cosh aptly put it this morning "Four Parties enter, Two Parties leave." The leftmost of the mainstream parties, the NDP saw huge gains in an "orange wave," bringing them up to official opposition status with 102 seats in the house of commons, more than double their previous high of 43. Meanwhile, the Liberal party - above 50% in popular vote and dynastically described as Canada's "Natural Governing Party" just ten short years ago - fell to third place for the first time in 144 years. But for those of us involved with space the real story is that after a 5-year test drive of conservative minority governments, the electorate has handed over the keys of the country to the Conservatives with a majority likely to last at least until 2015.

LPSC Notebook: A Special Note on Risk Mitigation

In my experience, no federal agency is better at marketing and public relations than is NASA. They have to be. Unlike most of the other divisions of the government, NASA survives on its ability to inspire the nation and to involve them in the exciting work that it does. And while everyone can see the economic sense of keeping air travel safe, building roads and protecting the border, NASA is something of a luxury that a rich country can afford as an investment in its future. If people stop believing in what NASA is doing and supporting it, the agency will disappear or at least contract down to its directly justifiable parts.

How does such an organization deal with risk? Unfortunately, not very well. This is particularly true when it comes to human space flight. This has always been a risky business. Eight astronauts died in the lead-up to the moon landing, all on training missions. It was a different time, with higher stakes and these losses were accepted. The astronauts themselves were test pilots and it was widely known that they understood the risks and took them in stride.

But by the 1980s, I think the agency made a fundamental mistake by changing course and attempting to appeal to taxpayers on a more mundane level. The pre-Challenger posters are still up in some places around the country, describing a shuttle flight as "Going to work in space." Moving the bar like that means that when a fatality happens, it isn't just a tragedy, it is an outrage*.

Knowledge of that kind of a response means that space systems designed today are much more risk-averse than were systems designed back in the 1960s. In many ways that is a good thing, but it also adds enormously to the cost of these systems. There's a reason that repeating Apollo with a return to the moon is economically beyond the ability of NASA to complete within a decade, despite the fact that we have much more knowledge and much better technology than was available in 1961.

Bob Richards' PSERF, March 25, 2011

Bob Richards, a "Space Dragon" who wants to expand the reach of the human race... 

and make a profit doing so!

In his talk last Friday, Bob Richards, a silicon valley space entrepreneur referred to the folks that blog about him. By virtue of this entry in my PSERF handbook, I suppose that now includes me. I cannot admit that I know the man well*, but he is an interesting fellow and his heart seems to be in the right place. For this special speaker, we met in a special location; not in the Biological and Geological Sciences Building, but over in the Ivey school of business. This was an appropriate choice, as Bob's expertise is in the area of space business. His primary goal these days? Expanding the economic sphere of the Earth from Geosynchronous orbit out by a factor of ten to encompass the Moon.

The presentation was free-flowing and Bob stayed afterwards to chat with several of us at the University's Graduate Club. While he spoke without slides, his talk was not unusual fare for PSERF which has attracted interesting speakers of all types, from experts on Space Weaponry through discussions of early cartography and the "inside baseball" story of science-driven space missions. Largely, I'm getting the impression that PSERF exists mainly to expand our concept of what we can do with these planetary science degrees of ours. In that vein, Bob had a great deal to offer us by describing in detail his experience with the emerging field of private space exploration.

Raymond Francis' PSERF, January 28, 2011

Raymond Francis is a doctoral candidate at UWO and part of the CPSX family. While we both wear Iron Rings and he shares my Engineering/Science duality, he is definitely an Engineer at heart.
You can tell from the suit! 

To those of us who live in North America, we are understandably focused on NASA when it comes to the science and exploration of Space. It makes some sense - NASA was one of the first space agencies, it spends more money than any other (and five times more per capita than the next largest agency), and has a very slick marketing machine. Without a doubt, NASA generally sets the tone of the discourse and dominates when it comes to the more visible aspirational projects, such as planetary exploration and human space flight.

But there are other space agencies in the world and many countries that you might never have suspected of hosting a space agency do have one. The reason for this is simple: once you get beyond the aspirational side, exploitation of space makes direct economic sense for nearly every state actor. While the South Africans may not have a direct economic interest in putting a South African on Mars, they do have a deep and valuable interest in being able to predict the weather, create accurate topographic maps and do remote sensing that could allow resource exploitation and management. 

Citius, Altius, Fortius

After last night's closing ceremonies, all I can say is wow. What a finish and what a show. Kudos especially to our Canadian athletes who really finished strongly in the last couple of days with a record haul of medals. You had us worried there for a while! All congradulations aside, however, what I'd like to talk about here in this space today are some of the similarities and parallels between an endeavour like the olympic games and space flight.

Some of these are obvious. When you ask a kid what they'd like to be wheb they grow up, chances are that athlete and astronaut would both appear high on the list of most popular aspirations. As well, they both create great spectacle and highlight incredible human stories. No matter which one you are talking about, a veritable army of dedicated people, toiling for years, are necessary to pull the whole thing off.

Also, like the olympics, spaceflight will yield the highest returns if it is not the sole province of a single nation, or even a small few. It needs to be a truly international experience. Greater and greater collaboration across borders is occurring, but the flag on your passport still matters enormously. This is perhaps one of the greatest promises of commercial spaceflight, which may eventually open up this frontier to people from all nations.

So, could there be an echo to Jacques Rogge's traditional line from last night "I call upon the youth of the world to gather in four years..." for our endeavour?

While you ponder that, think about this: on a deeper level, both the Olympics and Spaceflight are expressions of our civic pride and are funded largely through the public purse. As such, both are run at what is essentially a loss. Today VANOC will reveal its balance sheet, and it's not expected to be good. The City of Vancouver has certainly paid a price for the honour of hosting the games. Many residents fought against the bid and boycotted the celebrations that took place. Likewise, the expenditure on NASA sometimes stirs a similar response. Kritoph Klover perhaps put it best in his song "Others Standing by" from the album "To Touch the Stars:"

'Why would you go there?' they say
'There's nothing up there anyways
We could use the money here
Don't you know that life's to dear?'

Neither hosting the winter games nor exploring are cheap endeavours. The obvious monetary returns in terms of new technologies (memory foam, anyone?) and sporting facilities can be hard to quantify exactly, and never cover the cost. So why do we bother with either?

I think it comes down to our nature as human beings. We all aspire to be more then we are. Life is not just the search for a just and comfortable existence. We need to believe in our ability, as a species to grow beyond what we are. To test the limits of what we can do. It's a big part of what made us the creatures we are today, and it is also key to our long term survival. That's worth a few dollars every four years. So, as the olympic motto says: Faster, Higher, Stronger! Or as Klover answers:

'We'll send the best from Earth
To find out what it's worth.'

Reviewing the Reviewers – A Commentary on the Augustine Report

The much awaited report by the panel tasked by US President Obama to provide a Review of the U.S. Human Space Flight program will have to wait a few more weeks. However, a 12-page summary is already available (you can read it for yourself here: http://www.nasa.gov/offices/hsf/home/index.html). The reaction to the report seems mixed and spans the gamut from describing the options presented as too expansive, just right or too conservative. Some of this is described here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/16/science/space/16nasa.html?hpw or for a slightly more detailed version try http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0909/15augustine/.

There do appear to be a few things that are widely agreed on. The first is that no matter what we do, there will be a gap in the ability of the United States to transport personnel to orbit. Since the committee is assuming a baseline additional two year slip in the Ares-1 program, if it is selected, this gap would be of order seven years. Second, under the current budget, the time required to obtain sufficient heavy lift capability to return to the Moon stretches out a very long way into the future, and may not even be ultimately feasible. Thirdly, de-orbiting the ISS in 2016 potentially poses a significant risk to US international participation in future space endeavours.

However, the current baseline is achievable without these delays with a modest increase in NASA’s budget from the current $17.6 billion to around $21 billion. That level of increased funding would also permit other options for exploration as well. Whether that money is forthcoming is yet to be seen. The house committee on Science and Technology seems enthusiastic enough; however, NASA’s long term budget was cut earlier this year by the democrats and expected additional funding from the Bush administration for the original Constellation program in 2004 never arrived. So whether these moneys will be provided are anyone’s guess.

Let's delve a little more deeply into the summary report itself. The meat of the report is table 4-1 which describes five different ways forward some with several sub options. The first is the program as-is, the second extends the life of the ISS out to 2020 and replaces flights to LEO with a commercial option. However, if that $3-4 billion is added, additional options become available. These can be used to increase the rapidity of the Ares program (Option 3) to put it back on track, extend the ISS life with a commercial options while doing the same (4A) or closing the gap in human space flight by recertifying the shuttle out to 2015 (4B). Additionally, and most excitingly, option 5 moves past the paradigm of heading first to the moon by considering various ways in which the current program and technology can be leveraged to expand NASA’s role beyond earth orbit and into free space.

While the job of the panel was simply to list alternatives on which the White House and Congress will ultimately decide – and Dr. Augustine refused to endorse any one option – I suspect that the committee’s heart belongs mainly to option 5. They talk about how it would be possible to achieve firsts in free space at a rate of about one per year, visiting lagrange points, earth crossing asteroids and the moons of Mars without the kind of funding increase that a full Mars mission would require. These are, in other words, the types of missions that inspire people to go into science and engineering and dream of being astronauts.

I think that this is the kind of program that I can get behind. The moon, while it might be interesting and worthy of more research is a place we’ve already been. Building a base there is a laudable goal, but can wait. Either way, it does seem clear that NASA’s future lies outside of Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Hence, the committee also highlights supporting a commercial presence in LEO for all options except the program of record.

Former Administrator Griffin has spoken out against this proposal by stating that the commercial space industry is still nascent and has a long way to go before it can provide safe, effective transport to LEO. He’s right – but not because of a lack of technology or ingenuity, but for lack of a bankable reason to develop that capability. Thus in the same way that the airline industry grew thanks to subsidies for air mail delivery, challenging private industry to take up the transport of crew to LEO and the ISS would spur forward the development of this capacity quickly.

Ultimately, this change could be the greatest benefit of a slightly redesigned program. By commercializing LEO, launch costs could be reduced and the space industry stimulated. This would pay dividends to any space travel initiatives, and holds out the possibility of eventual affordable commercial flights to LEO for ordinary citizens. Once individuals have had that experience, I doubt that support for further expansion into space will be hard to come by.

As I’ve said in the past, ultimately what it comes down to is a question of purpose for NASA. They can move progressively onward and upward, ceding the ground where they have sown the seeds of development to private industry. Or, they can fall back and get out of crewed spaceflight, concentrating their resources on cheaper robotic exploration. Or they can do nothing and continue the current trajectory of chipping slowly away at the agency until only enough funding remains to keep the engineers and scientists employed and the lights on in the NASA centers.

We can and should do better. So I’ll be watching the full report and the reaction to it closely. For as difficult as it might be to change horses in mid stream, it’s more dangerous still to risk all that the agency has built over the last fifty years in planning for the future. I think the Augustine panel understands that and I think there's a good case for optimism going forward at this point.

Sunk Cost

When I was in engineering school, one of our courses was called “engineering economics.” Presumably, this was meant to help us should we quickly become managers, as so many other U of T engineers had. One of the most interesting concepts presented was the importance of a sunk cost. Specifically, that any sunk cost was worthless and that we should resist the siren’s song of trying to use something just because it was costly when ignoring it would be cheaper. The classic example was the construction of a $10 billion nuclear power plant. If on the day of its completion power could be generated more cheaply from other existing sources letting the plant fall into disrepair was the responsible option.

However, when talking about unique deployed space hardware it’s hard to make that same choice. On the one hand, continued support eats up funding that could be used to forge ahead in other areas. On the other, shuttering a program before its senescence could leave vital or unique science undone which may cost more to do later on. An excellent case is the Lunar Seismic Network, deployed by the Apollo astronauts, which was deactivated for budgetary reasons in the 1970s. The amount of money required for that project to continue was minuscule compared to what we are considering spending in order to put seismometers back on the moon.

So what then to do with the International Space Station? NASA has revealed its plans to deorbit the orbiting laboratory in 2016 shortly after it is completed. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/12/AR2009071201977.html?hpid=topnews ) I must admit that I have never been an enthusiastic fan of the station. The $100 billion or so spent on its construction by the United States alone always seemed to me to be money better put to more targeted uses. However, now that it has been nearly completed it seems a shame to see it removed even if its utility to the Moon-Mars program is tangential at best. Not to mention that even if it became a desirable asset once again, it would be unlikely to be rebuilt given the time and the expense required.

Instead of looking at the station as a sunk cost or even a liability, perhaps NASA could view their orbiting platform as an opportunity? After all, it is a unique asset which might even be able to fund itself or become a net revenue stream, given the right uses. Perhaps an auction could be arranged – I’m sure that private enterprise might be interested in a unique research environment, manufacturing facility or even a hotel of sorts. Perhaps it would eventually give Virgin Galactic or a similar company a destination. The Russian Space Agency often takes paying tourists on board their spacecraft, so there is a market for that out there, at the very least.

The only sticking point I could see would be that whoever were to take over the property would need to be responsible for orbit maintenance. Certainly, an uncontrolled de-orbiting or a collision in LEO is undesirable. Perhaps the best plan would be a long-term lease. In that way, at worst, NASA will simply move out its plans for de-orbiting and at best provide effective technology transfer, improve its bottom line, and help the human race to take a first step off the surface of the planet outside of direct governmental action. If it proves profitable for either partner, we could be in for some exciting times!