What will we have accomplished in space by 2033?

There are a lot of things I’m waiting for in the long quest to turn humanity into a spacefaring civilization.  I made a list over four years ago of four things I’m waiting for, and so far we’ve accomplished one.  One is a few years away from being done, one is more than a decade away, and the other, who knows if it will be accomplished.  But I was thinking about all of this the other day, and I wondered what will we likely accomplish in the next decade.  This is what I came up with.

Suborbital tourist flights will probably be finished.

For years, the idea of suborbital tourist flights excited me and I truly thought that – even though the common folk could never afford them – they would excite the public about space.  But it took so long for these companies to get flying, that I figure the industry is DOA.  People will still fly, but instead of the expected hundreds of people a year, it will probably only be dozens.  And the next accident – especially if passengers die – will ground the entire industry.  There will still be suborbital flights for experiments, and maybe once a blue moon they’ll brave the paperwork to have a technician along with the experiments, but I expect by 2033 suborbital tourism will be in the history books.

Private space stations.

One factor against suborbital tourism will be orbital tourism.  Yes, orbital tourism will be 1,000X as expensive as suborbital tourism, but you’ll get a 10,000X greater experience.  And the best place to go for orbital tourism will be a private space station.  Now, the ISS is great, but it’s not a hotel.  It’s a stinky laboratory filled with people doing various experiments.  To really get your space tourism money’s worth, you’d want a purpose-built hotel with large windows to view the Earth and space, and sound-proof cabins to join the 200-mile-high club.

But private space stations won’t just be hotels.  Some could be other laboratories, or even new businesses.  I can easily imagine robotic tugs bringing broken satellites to a space station where astronauts fix and upgrade them before returning them to service. 

Landing on the moon.

The biggest thing that will likely happen in the next decade will be humans returning to the moon.  By 2033 there may only be two or three landings, but they might be from two different programs, which will be fantastic.  And hopefully these won’t just be flags and footprints missions, but ones that start building a permanent presence on the moon. 

Mars?

Unlike what seems to be a majority of space people, I’m not that interested in human exploration of Mars.  Yes, we’ll do it someday, but unlikely in my lifetime.  The main reason, is that I’ve long maintained that while we are 100X better prepared to go to the moon now than we were in the 1960’s, going to Mars is 200X more complicated than going to the moon.  Any rush to get a crewed mission to Mars in the next decade will, in my humble opinion, be doomed to fail.  In fact, a successful, crewed mission to Mars by 2043 is probably overly optimistic.

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So, those are my thoughts.  Do you agree or disagree with them?

Random Story – The broken window

This is just an odd little story from my life.

Many years ago, I moved into my first apartment.  It was this old house that had been split up into five or six apartments, and my apartment was the third floor.  I was excited and wanted to move everything in, but it was July and it felt like 100 degrees.  For my first trip, I didn’t have a fan or anything, but I figured I’d open the windows to get some air movement.  But when I started opening the windows, I found that the landlord had put a fresh coat of paint on the window sills, and they either hadn’t waited for the paint to fully dry before closing them, or they didn’t open them to begin with.  The windows in the living room weren’t that bad and I was able to force them open.  But when I went to force open one of the windows in the kitchen, I was able to get it open, but it jerked so fast that my elbow broke the glass and I got a cut on my arm.  For the rest of the windows, I got a screwdriver and broke the paint seal before carefully opening them.

Not only did I break a window, I found that one window in the hallway had a hole in it from before I moved in.  The next day I had to sign some papers with my landlord company, so I told them about the window with a hole in it from before I moved in, and the one window I accidently broke.  They said they’d have someone around to fix them.

The window in the kitchen wasn’t one pane of glass, but rather nine small panes and one of them was what I broke.  A couple of weeks or a month after I moved in, a guy came out to measure the pane to replace it.  And then nothing happened.

That winter, I noticed when I sat in the living room that a draft came the hallway window with a hole in it.  To seal it off I cut the side out of a cereal box and taped it over the hole.  Sometime in early spring, one of the landlords was looking at the house, and saw my taped over hole and figured that wasn’t a good look for the property since it was on the side facing the street, so somebody came out and replaced the hallway window.  So the window that was broken when I moved in was finally fixed, it just took about eight months. 

As to the kitchen window, I think when the guy fixed the hallway window, I pointed out the kitchen window, and he came back one day to remove the shards from the broken pane and measure it to get the right size.  And then nothing happened.

I only stayed in that apartment for a year, but I had broken a window on the day I moved in, told the landlord about it the next day, had it measured to be replaced, twice, but it was still broken the day I moved out.  Fortunately, I wasn’t billed for any repairs.  In the following years, I had two other apartments in the same general area, but I never went through that company again. 

A way to decrease the number of satellites?

This idea began while I was thinking of CubeSats.  On one hand, it’s great that our technology has gotten to the point when so much function can be fit into so small a space, but on the other hand I worry about orbits being filled with thousands of small, difficult to detect objects.  So I wondered about a, sort of CubeSat mothership.  The idea would be to have a larger satellite that would handle power, propulsion, and communication, but there would be attachment points for twenty or so CubeSat approximate instruments.  And if one of these fails, or if it was just a test of some system and the company wants to test something new, a spacecraft – crewed or robotic – could visit and remove the old and replace it with a new one.  As a benefit, the old one could even be returned to the ground for study. 

Not all CubeSats would end up on these motherships: they’d work great for Earth observation, not so much for testing new propulsion systems.  Also, I read that CubeSats have an average lifetime of a little over a year, which is good enough for some projects, but does seem short for someone with a passing interest in the industry. 

So I had this idea that was filed away in my brain for a year or more, but I remembered it one day and expanded it into my idea of an everything space station.  The ESSs, would be mass produced and I could see hundreds of them in orbit.  These would consist of four modules that would be launched on two rockets and dock in orbit.  Two of the modules would basically be the CubeSat mothership idea, just bigger.  There would be telescoping arms with attachment points and power/data jacks for twenty or more instrument packages.  This would be connected to a command module that would handle all the power and communications.  The third module would be a basic living space for four people.  The last module would have two docking ports and an airlock. 

How I imagine this would work, is you find some clear orbit, and you’d put twenty or so ESSs into this orbit, evenly spaced.  And instead of launching twenty Earth observation satellites, and twenty telecommunication satellites, and twenty whatever satellites into this orbit, you’d just attach the instrument packages to the twenty ESSs.  Instead of 400 satellites in whatever orbits, you’d have twenty in a well-defined orbit.  And you could have twenty more ESSs in a different orbital plane at a different altitude to give better coverage of the Earth.  And you could have normal satellites filling in whatever gaps there are.

But wouldn’t having hundreds of crewed space stations just make things more difficult?  Well, they’re not permanently crewed.  I was thinking they may only be crewed for one week every year.  A cargo craft would launch and dock, and then a crewed craft would launch and dock.  The crew would go in and do any maintenance or repair/replace any damaged instrument packages.  And once they’re done, instead of returning to Earth, the cargo and crew craft would just boost into a slightly higher orbit and wait for the next ESS to come into position and then dock with them and repeat the process for however long their supplies last. 

In addition to all the Earth observation and telecommunication packages, each ESS could have telescopes and other instruments on the outside.  And some could be set up for long-term experiments inside.  Some of these could be crystal growths or whatever, but you could even run the life support in the crew area for a week, then turn it off for a week, then turn it back on, and just see how many cycles your life support can go through.  That’s a random bit of data that might lead to something interesting, but there’s no other way to really get it.  I do think these ESSs would, not only reduce the number of satellites in orbit without decreasing the benefits of satellites, but would also give plenty of space for interesting and weird experiments that could never be done on permanently crewed space stations.

Just an idea.

Moon landing sale!

If everything goes as planned, then on Tuesday, April 25th, ispace’s Hakuto-R Mission 1 will land on the moon.  If successful, ispace will become only the fourth entity to successfully land a craft on the moon.  They will follow in the footsteps of the Soviet Union’s Luna 9 in February 1966, the US’s Surveyor 1 in June 1966, and China’s Chang’e 3 in December 2013.  The big difference between this lander and previous ones, is that it will be a private company doing it.

I am a big supporter of lunar exploration, so to mark this latest attempt, I will have a sale on two of my ebooks.  From Monday April 24th, through Friday April 28th, you will be able to grab my collection of essays The Moon Before Mars: Why returning to the moon makes more sense than rushing off to Mars, and my collection of stories all set on the moon A Cabin Under a Cloudy Sea and other stories for just the price of a click. 

Wishing ispace the best of luck.

Thoughts on Starship

I don’t really care. 

Don’t get me wrong, Starship is a technological marvel and all the engineers and technicians who worked on it should be applauded.  My issue with it is just burnout from waiting.  I know designing rockets is hard, but I’m just tired of hearing about some great rocket that “should fly next year,” only to wait five or six years before it finally flies.

In the rocket community, you’ll often hear about “Paper Rockets.” These are rockets that are designed, but for one reason or another – they often can’t raise the money – are never built and remain designs on paper.  Starship is not a paper rocket, but it’s in a second category of “Built But Not Flown Rockets.” Once it does fly, it will move into a third category that I call “Promise Rockets.” A lot of people will be passing out from excitement when Starship launches, but I’ll be like, “Yes, that’s nice, but can it actually fulfill all the promises made about it?” I won’t become excited until Starship moves into the fourth category of “Functional Rockets.” This will happen once it starts regularly carrying cargo to space.  What exactly that point is, I don’t know.  Probably something like ten, fully successful missions launched within a year.  Once that happens, I’ll be overjoyed with Starship.

For a bit of clarification, I consider the Falcon 9 a Functional Rocket, but the Falcon Heavy is still a Promise Rocket.  (As of this posting, it has flown five times in just over five years.  If it ever flies six times in a year, I’ll consider it Functional.)  Other Functional Rockets are the Atlas V, the Ariane 5, the H-IIA, etc.  They don’t fly six or ten times a year, but they weren’t built to do that.  I guess in that sense, the SLS is also a functional rocket, since they only promised to fly it once every year or so, but it’s not a rocket I care for. 

So I hope they get all the data they need from this test flight, and that they quickly turn this built rocket into a Functional Rocket.  But until they do, I won’t get too excited. 

Random Story – Three quick stories

These are just odd little stories from my life.

#1

Years ago, I lived in a town with a big Mexican population.  And one day in mid-April or so, I was walking around the town and I saw a sign for “5 de Mayo.” For a few seconds in my head, I wondered, What the hell is five de Mayo?

#2

Many years ago, there was some issue with our landline.  A technician came out and fixed the problem, but we needed a new phone.  Well, he did have an old rotary phone in his truck, I think it might have been the last one he had, since most people had moved on to phones with buttons.  And my parents had dealt with rotary phones for decades so they were fine with it.

Well, some years later, some Amish started moving into our area.  And one thing about the Amish is that they can use phones, they just can’t have a phoneline to their house.  So if they needed to call someone, they went over to a neighbor and ask to use their phone.  My parents let it be known that the Amish could use our phone.  With the older Amish, there weren’t any issues.  But one day some younger Amish came over to use the phone and they had never seen a rotary one before.  Our phone was so old, the Amish didn’t know how to use it.  It was shortly after that my parents upgraded to a basic, cordless phone.

#3

I used to see ads for this store, but they only seemed to be “Great prices on items,” types of ads, and I had no idea what this store actually sold.  Well, one day I took a detour or something, and as I went down this road I rarely traveled, I saw one of these stores.  So a week or so later, I was bored one afternoon so I went to see what they sold.  They basically sold everything, from computers to refrigerators. 

I don’t know how long I was there before an employee came up and asked if I needed any help.  I said I was just looking, and went on my way.  But instead of letting me go on my way, this guy followed me around the store and popped in like every two minutes to ask if he could help me.  Like, I stopped for ten seconds to look at this eight-foot TV, and he shows up and starts going on with the price.  I say I can’t afford it, he goes on about payment plans.  I say I’m moving in a few months, he says they can store it for me until my new place is set up.  He did not take no for an answer, to the point, he even “went to his manager” to get me a 15% discount on the TV. 

After the second or third time he came up to me, I wondered, Can he not take a clue?  It was almost funny.  But when he’s giving me a business card with his name, and the manager’s name, and how this special discount would only hold for the next few days, I knew I had to go.  If he had just let me look, I probably would have stayed in the store looking around for another ten or fifteen minutes.  And I probably would have bought a … candy bar, or something.  But I left that store, and never went back.

A Space Junk Prize

 Some months ago, I wrote a post – A fun idea for a moon mission – about a robotic lunar program I would fund if I had billions to burn and wanted to help advance humans into becoming a spacefaring civilization.  The idea would be to 3D print bricks with actual lunar regolith to see how strong they would be.  I was thinking about this recently, and I wondered what other space missions I would fund – if I had billions to burn – to help humans in space.  What I came up with was the J-Prize, I guess, for space junk removal.

This would start with three small satellites, probably launched on an Electron rocket.  The first would be your basic cube sat, the second would be a larger cube sat, but with a solar panel sticking out so it would be odd shaped, and the third satellite would remain attached to the kick stage to help simulate a more massive satellite.  These would be put into slightly different orbits, but which are pretty much guaranteed to decay in the five-to-six-year range.  What exactly these satellites would do, I’d leave that to whoever builds them, probably schools or universities that I would give a free ride to orbit to.  There would be the understanding that these satellites would be given one year to function, but after that they would become targets for deorbiting tech demonstrations.  So they might function for the full five years, or get deorbited right after one year in orbit. 

The tech demonstrations would have three tiers.  The first tier would be to just inspect the satellites.  To that end, there would be symbols, or code phrases put on each.  Prelaunch photos of them would be blurred, and everyone who knows what they are would have to sign NDAs, so to get these codes you’d have to actually fly to these satellites.  And there might be two or three on each satellite, each worth X dollars.  For the third satellite, they might be big and easy to spot, but for the cube sat, they might just be a centimeter in size, so the imaging satellite would have to fly real close to be able to make it out.  So, unlike the other tiers which would pay out more for the larger satellites, for the first tier you’d make the most imaging the smallest.

The second tier would pay if you manage to deorbit the satellite early.  This could be accomplished by attaching some sort of drag, or attaching a small rocket to push it out of orbit, whatever.  The third tier would be if they manage to return the satellite intact to Earth. 

I have no idea what the exact prize amounts would be, but I’d say that the second tier would be more than enough to refund the cost of manufacturing the deorbiting satellite and launching it.  And, there would be bonus prizes.  Like, if a company successfully deorbits one of the test satellites, then for the next ten years they’d get $1 million for each piece of space junk they deorbit.  But if a company didn’t succeed with one of these test satellites, but they do succeed with some other junk within the next ten years, they’d get $500 thousand, or something.  Because the whole idea of this is to try to incentivize companies into finding ways to clean up space junk.  As such, I wondered if there should be a penalty if they damage a satellite and create space junk, but that would scare people off.  And that’s why these test satellites would be put into such short-lived orbits. 

So that’s my idea.  I’ll have to see what other ideas I can come up with to help humanity to become spacefaring, just in case I somehow become a billionaire and need some way to spend that money.