A couple of weeks ago, I sat down with John Logsdon, Professor Emeritus of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University, in advance of his participation in a panel discussing the role of science in the coming age of space exploration. Logsdon is perhaps the world's foremost expert on space policy, and he shared his thoughts on NASA's shuttle succession plans, the roles of science and exploration in space-based activities, and what he sees as Planetary Resource's real end-game. What follows is the first of two installments.
Wired: So what exactly is space policy?
Logsdon: Space policy is the set of principles and decisions that decides what goes on with our activities in space, most clearly manifested in budget allocations. But it’s not only budget allocations – for example, the congressional prohibition against any cooperation with China is a form of space policy. There’s a congressman from Virginia who chairs NASA’s appropriation subcommittee named Frank Wolf, and he’s written it into the NASA bills. He doesn’t like China’s human rights record, but the leverage he has is NASA. Another example is what the Department of Defense has done in adapting the policy of what it would take to qualify to launch national security payloads. Right now there’s an exclusive deal with the United Launch Alliance, but this change opens the window for SpaceX in particular, and also other companies.
Wired: We’re currently in the middle of a transition from the Space Shuttle to…something else. How does this gap in NASA’s human spaceflight capability compare with other moments in the agency’s past?
Logsdon: After the last lunar flight, in December of 1972, there were only two more human flights until the shuttle started in 1981, so it was a nine-year gap. There was an explicit acceptance of a gap in human spaceflight while we developed a new system, and that’s parallel to now, it’s just that the government is not in total control of developing that new system. NASA recently announced that the commercial crew system, which would use private spacecraft to get people to the space station, might be ready to start testing in 2015, so it will theoretically be a shorter gap than before the Shuttle.
Wired: What’s the current manned spaceflight agenda for NASA?
Logsdon: It’s totally confused, and there are lots of components to that. Between now and at least 2020, the destination for humans is the space station. We’re currently buying seats to the space station from the Russians, and Congress in its final days passed a extension to the policy that allows for that arrangement. There’s a bill called the Iran, North Korea, and Syria Non-Proliferation Act, which forbids the US from dealing with these countries, but there’s an exception written in so that NASA can buy seats from Russia. That exception has been extended until 2020. It’s a hedge against the possibility that none of the commercial crew providers will be successful.
In parallel, NASA is developing a heavy lift rocket called the Space Launch System and a crew capsule called Orion without any real consensus on what is going to be done with it. The official policy says that the first launch without people will happen in 2017 and then the next launch with a crew will go into lunar orbit in 2021. That four-year gap that’s almost totally budget driven, in that there’s just not enough money to do a mission in between.
Going into lunar orbit would be a repetition of what we did in 1968, so there’s not much enthusiasm about that. Cooking in the wings is the idea of instead going to the earth moon L2 point, and connected to that is the idea of going out and grabbing a small asteroid and leaving it there, so there’s something there for another crew to explore.
There’s total uncertainty about the reality of what will happen in human spaceflight, post-space station, and also uncertainty about how long the station will operate.
Wired: It seems like one of the primary challenges in deciding long-term space policy is the different time horizons of space programs and political cycles. Just as one administration’s agenda is gaining momentum, they’re out of office and the next President offers new thoughts – there’s just not time to see proposals through.
Logsdon: That’s right, though on the other hand, the shuttle operated for 30 years without too much upheaval. It’s just that this journey now of deciding how best to replace it makes for a particularly tumultuous period. Now that there’s the opportunity for change, this is the time when all of the conflict would come out into the open.
Wired: Where does science fit into NASA’s goals?
Logsdon: The program that NASA carries out is not an integrated program. The science part of the program is separately managed, has its own centers, has a pretty well organized scientific community as both advocate and client, and has in a sense a life of its own separate form human spaceflight.
Recently, I’ve compared the science program as a whole to a python trying to strangle a big pig, and that pig is the James Webb Space Telescope. Getting that completed and successfully launched and operating if proving to be a big challenge, and I think that has cast a shadow over the whole space science enterprise and any ambitious future planning.
Wired: Private space companies are clearly changing the economics of launching payloads to orbit, but the path is less clear when it comes to true exploration. Do you think private spaceflight will play a key role in our exploration of the universe?
Logsdon: I think they will follow, not lead, and that’s how most exploration has worked throughout history. The government funds the pioneering expeditions, and they find gold or spices or fertile land or whatever, and then commerce follows. There’s not much profit motive in that first manned mission to Mars. I’m not sure there’s any profit motivation in sending humans to Mars, period.
Wired: Companies like SpaceX are all about lowering the cost of launch, and companies like Virgin Galactic are interested in space tourism. Recently, the Planetary Resources company proposed a different type of private involvement in space, and that is resource acquisition. What do you make of that approach?
Logsdon: There is no doubt that asteroids are resource rich bodies. There’s plenty of doubt about whether anybody can do anything about it. Planetary Resources says that’s what they’re after, but it’s a bit of a shell game in my opinion. If you listen to them closely, they say their only goal is being able to extract valuable resources from asteroids, and that’s what everybody hooks onto. But then they say, that’s decades away, and what we’re really doing now is planning to launch, hopefully with government sponsorship, little telescopes to find the asteroids. At this first stage, it’s very shrewd marketing of hardware to government, basically.
Wired: When do you think we will see humans on Mars?
Logsdon: Sometime between 2035-2050, or never.
To be continued...
