“I’m not one to go pointing my finger when I radiate more heat than light.”
–Rush “Presto” from the album “Presto.”
The conversations concerning the human spaceflight policy continue to be more about heat than light. This was mentioned recently in “This Week in Space” with Miles O’Brien in an interview with Andy Chaikin. Andy said something similar – there is a lot of heat and very little light regarding the conversations surrounding the space policy. What does this mean, and how do we move forward to implement a meaningful and affordable approach to human spaceflight?
Because I mostly write about space from a leadership standpoint, I’ll use that perspective again today. Some of what I’m going to offer is quite obvious; however, as Scott Eblin pointed out recently, what doesn’t get said doesn’t get heard. Therefore, I’m going to err on the side of redundancy and state the obvious. What should we as leaders in the space community do to start generating light instead of heat?
1. Focus on the solution instead of the problem. For this, we need to be mindful of our near-term goal, which I offer here: Attain the approval from Congress of a sustainable plan for human spaceflight. Work with Congress and key stakeholders to build a plan. Factor into it whatever is necessary to gain approval and for the plan to be sustainable, realizing that such an approach must encompass technical, budgetary, workforce, and political realities. I see all those who argue ad naseum over the rationale behind a particular approach over another as focusing on the problem rather than the solution. It’s time for the leadership to take the best elements from the President’s proposed space policy and build a plan that will gain the approval of Congress. It’s a simple as that, and it’s as hard as that.
2. Build coalitions instead of adversaries. Much of the heat surrounding the conversation concerning the future for human spaceflight policy attempts to posture into two camps – either you are for the President’s space policy, or you are against it, with each side attempting to belittle the other. To listen to some of the conversation, there is no middle ground – it’s all or nothing. Nothing could be further from the truth. The way forward is something in between. The role of leadership is to find the path to that middle ground so that we can reach out and build the coalitions with all the key stakeholders necessary to craft a credible way forward for human spaceflight. There are no winners or losers here – there is the future of human spaceflight, and that’s it.
3. Seek results instead of blame. There are quite a few, mostly on the outside, who seek to lay blame with one aspect or another for the current situation in human spaceflight: it’s NASA’s fault, it’s former Constellation program manager Jeff Hanley’s fault, it’s Congress’s fault, it’s the President’s fault… and so on. Who’s to blame is completely irrelevant to moving forward. Instead, the role of leadership is to build alignment around a unifying vision, and define the actions necessary to achieve the results desired. There is no need for the blame game here at all.
Focusing on the problems, dividing into opposing camps, and seeking blame are the signs of heat. Instead, reach for the light: focus on the solution, build coalitions, and seek results.
What have I missed? What else do you see as the role of leadership to drive towards the light?
First Congress should strongly agree with the President in supporting the development of private commercial manned access to orbit.
However, they should also agree to help develop a sustainable– non-government– market for these emerging companies by helping to promote space tourism through a space lotto system. There’s no doubt in my mind that there are hundreds of millions of Americans and billions of non-Americans who would be willing to spend a few dollars every year for a chance to travel into space. Combine this with the thousands of wealthy individuals on the planet who also would like to travel into space then we have a real and substantial manned space market for private space launch companies.
Secondly, the president needs to agree with Congress that we have to start building a heavy lift vehicle right now. I prefer the Boeing shuttle derived concept since it not only gives us a heavy lift vehicle when using 5-segment SRBs, it also gives us a people shuttle without the SRBs that could be used by NASA, the military, and private industry.
Third, we need to continue to operate the space shuttle until space capsules or space planes being developed by private industry are ready to fly. The Space Shuttle could even be used to deploy Bigelow space stations. NASA could lease these space stations out to private space flight companies to test their manned spaceflight architectures. Bigelow, of course, would have the advantage of having their space stations NASA tested which would be great advertising for their potential space tourist customers.
And, finally, the President and Congress need to commit this nation to establishing a permanent base at one of the lunar poles in order to exploit the Moon’s hydrogen and oxygen resources so that we can dramatically reduce the cost of space travel within cislunar space. The President could argue that he opposed the Constellation Apollo redux program but he now favors a lunar base program since such a facility would help to reduce the cost of space travel and enhance Americas emerging space tourism market.
The pieces to add to this would be (1) budgetary: what is the run-out cost and how does that fit within a budget profile that at best may keep pace with inflation; (2) workforce: how much of the work is government versus private sector, and how do we transition the workforce appropriately; and (3) political: what’s in the game for key congressional districts that will attain approval now, and how do we ensure bipartisan support down the road. Thanks for the comment.