Kentucky Space

Russia and India Sign Space Accord

Russia and India have signed a pretty interesting accord on future cooperation in manned space activities. This was a high level meeting between Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

The accord paves the way for New Delhi to take a Soyuz seat for one cosmonaut by 2013 and develop its own manned spacecraft by 2015. That detail was provided by Anatoly Perminov, the head of the Russian Space Agency.

Details are still sketchy, but here’s what’s interesting. NASA has no manned program it can offer to allies. We have backed ourselves into a corner such that there is precious little today we can dangle before a trading partner. Saying to a sovereign nation, hey, we can help broker a deal on the Russian Soyuz to send your guys to the International Space Station, well, that somehow doesn’t do the trick, does it?

Clearly Russia has a window here, a very large window of several years, in which Russian space infrastructure will be offered either as a commercial deal or as part of a larger trade package. In the Indian case, that larger package included assistance on nuclear reactors. This may be the time to consider how we can promote the export of our nascent commercial space launch program as part of our own overall international objectives. To do nothing will leave the field wide open to both the Chinese and Russian space programs.

--Jeffrey  Manber

Opening Markets for Space Programs

Washington policy makers have long treated the marketplace of space differently than other American industries. As damaging protectionist walls crumbled around the Detroit auto industry, then aviation, and finally even defense programs, protectionism continued to remain strong for NASA’s space exploration. The Pentagon’s most advanced military systems use components from allies worldwide, not solely from American manufacturers. In aviation, the Boeing 787 Dreamliner outsourced the advanced composite wings to the Japanese and key sections to dozens of foreign plants. So too with Airbus. And US commercial satellites routinely are launched into space on French and Russian rockets.

But the space agencies operated under different rules. NASA and NOAA continue to pursue a nation-first policy, thus ensuring high costs and a fragile industrial base. Why not, for example, use the Ariane 5 vehicle for our own manned and unmanned interests? Why not request proposals for next generation space programs from leading aerospace companies worldwide, while, at the same time, requiring other nations to open their programs to the same international competition. The result would be greater industrial capability, more investment dollars for infrastructure and reduced costs. Instead, we are saddled with $3 billion dollar NOAA satellites and $5 billion dollar space telescopes.

I’ve always felt that the execution of the $100 billion dollar International Space Station was a fossil of Cold War thinking, reflecting none of the lessons learned in the global marketplace. No other product, whether a satellite, passenger aircraft or hybrid car, would boast of being composed of Japanese, Russian, European Union and American hardware selected via international wheeling and dealing, and not from any competitive process. This is not rocket science. Even politicians have come to realize that, within reason, open markets benefit the ingenuity, cost-efficiencies and flexibility of US industry.

The incoming Obama administration could really shake up the space industry by relegating orbital protectionism, like so many other vestiges of the Cold War, as a practice whose time has long come and gone. NASA should be directed to minimize national origin of hardware when planning future programs, and the Department of Commerce should begin discussions ensuring other nations do the same. Not the State Department. Let’s leave politics out of this one and reform ITAR to recognize the reality of a world with ITAR-free satellites. American has remained strong since World War II by promoting open marketplaces—its high time to launch that same philosophy into outer space.

--Jeffrey Manber

India's Google Earth

Dr. G Madhavan Nair, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISR0), has announced plans to compete on the subcontinent with the market created by Google Earth. The project, dubbed “Bhuvan” which is Sanskrit for “Earth”, will use data from the Indian fleet of remote sensing satellites only.

Nair promises that the prototype will be ready in a just a few days, and the ISRO expects to launch the service by March. The data is promised to allow for recording objects down to 10 meters in detail, which would be far more specific and hence commercially useful than Google Earth. Another competitive advantage to Google Earth is that the ISRO plans to update the database every year, rather than the average time of four years for the Google world mapping system.

The system will also allow viewers to see data on different dates, so being planned is a pretty comprehensive database, which will also allow the images to be layered, which would find great applications for farming and flood management.

This may well usher in yet another new space race, with regional governments competing to enjoy the market first tapped by Google. There may well indeed be momentum and incentive, if the Indian project gets going, of combining different remote sensing programs, whether Israel and Canada and India and Brazil into a far more comprehensive and useful tool than that now on the market.

--Jeffrey Manber

NASA and the Economic Crisis

Given the bad economic news, it's time for NASA and the Obama transition team to assume the worst, and consider the possible impact of the credit crisis on space station operations.<

The first warning signs have ready appeared. News has come from Russia that after a four month delay, RKK Energia has received a $100 million dollar loan for its production lines. The loan was delayed, according to Russian government officials, because of the liquidity crisis impacting banks worldwide.

The Russians, by the way, have long used government loans to pay for international commitments for the International Space Station. Back in the mid 1990’s, after much prodding, pushing and complaining, the Russian government finally provided the loans to allow Russian industry to build the core block for ISS, known as the Service Module.

This current loan, provided by the Russian bank Sberbank, will be used for building the next two year’s worth of Progress and Soyuz spacecraft. The terms of the loan are not known. For example, whether it is a two year loan, or a series of commitments. It is apparently part of a financial package worth more than $18 billion from the Kremlin that is scheduled to be used for critical state needs, including defense, aerospace and space companies.

That’s all good. But the difficulty of Energia in procuring its desperately needed loan should be a warning shot to NASA and all of us who have embraced the commercialisation of space operations. Consider NASA’s COTS program, which paves the way for private companies to handle ISS cargo operations. How doable are the financial projections of the three bidders? What happens if the liquidity crunch prevents them from carrying out their routine business?

There’s no reason to reconsider COTS. But incoming NASA officials need to anticipate a financial market that will not be receptive to extending credit as in the past, and what this means for ISS. This financial storm has already taken down some pretty major players in developed consumer markets. Now is the time for the governmental members of ISS to consider—and anticipate--the impact of the economic crisis on companies meeting their ISS obligations.

--Jeffrey Manber

Buran to Live Again?

A strange series of stories have seeped out of the Russian press, suggesting that Russian space officials are seriously considering starting up the Buran space shuttle program, now that NASA’s space shuttle is being readied for retirement. The Buran was the Soviet response to the space shuttle, a magnificent flying machine that took off on the back of the Energyia booster rocket and landed like an airplane. It flew only once, on November 15^th, 1988, and was then scuttled for lack of funds.

Given that this week was the 20^th anniversary of the one and only flight, it explains the spate of stories. The Buran had two advantages over the NASA shuttle. The vehicle could be flown unmanned, and it had some thruster jets that would allow a second try if the first return failed for some reason. What is shared with the NASA vehicle was a lack of purpose. Why bother with a vehicle of this sort when the Russians had the perfectly dependable Soyuz and the Proton and the cargo Progress vehicles?

One answer was apparently provided by Magomet Talboev one of the pilots who test-flew the shuttle without going into orbit. Talboev was quoted as offering the following bizarre rationale for the program.

'The Energia-Buran programme was started to get the capability to attack the United States, just like the shuttle was able to attack the USSR. We also wanted to take the Skylab space station from orbit. Buran was supposed to put it in its cargo bay and deliver it back to Earth for studies,' Tolboev said.

Well, taking seriously for the moment Talboev’s silly statement, we sure fooled the Russians by screwing up and allowing Skylab to crash back to the earth in 1979, rather than being boosted higher. This happened because the space shuttle fleet was years late, and we had abandoned all other means to boost our only space station. They sure must have been surprised when they launched their space station snatcher, only to find out there was nothing to snatch.

The reemergence of a Russian space effort that can pay its own way is a welcome development. I also understand the frustration felt by so many in the Russian space community towards the hard road of the past several decades. Let’s toast the Buran — but lets get on with serious discussions and not wistful nostalgia.

Jeffrey Manber

It's About India, Only India

History was made on Wednesday when India launched the Chandrayaan-1 destined for a fly-by of the Moon.

The rocket and the satellite are home-grown, and it cements India’s reputation for having the finest, most robust, unmanned space program. The satellite is expected to reach the Moon in 15 days, beginning a two year, $80 million dollar mapping of the mineral and chemical composition of the lunar surface.

Analysts are pointing to a new space race, this one involving the Asian economic powerhouses, from China to Japan to South Korea, all of which are developing their own space programs. But the motivation is not solely to stay with their geographical neighbors; rather it has, I think, a lot to do with something far more primordial.

I remember the story of the French prime minister visiting Jimmy Carter. Carter held in his hand some of our advanced resolution shots of a political hot zone. When the prime minister asked to take a look, Carter refused. The Prime Minister left the Oval Office furious, found out the technology was no longer that unique, and thus was born SPOT Image, the French remote sensing system.

Our policy makers never seem to understand that technology never pauses in  its development and its de-centralization.

India is not investing in a lunar probe because of China or Japan or America. Maybe the politicians, but not the people. 

They do so for the same true reason we did decades ago: because they can, and if you can forget all the politics for one brief moment, isn’t that wonderful?

--Jeffrey

ISS as Military Platform

An interesting data point on space activities took place a few weeks ago. The Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko snapped hundreds of images of the Georgian-Russian conflict zone during ISS overpasses of the region, according to NASA.

Robert Block, the space reporter for the Orlando Sentinel, alerted me to this situation and subsequently wrote a story. Cosmonauts Photos of Georgia Spur Inquiry

Certainly there is little military value from the use of commercial digital cameras from hundreds of miles away from the field of action. But testing is testing, and thinking through low-cost innovative means to gather information is a long-term process.

During the build-up to space station Freedom, NASA tried to get the Air Force interested in using the space station as an observation post, but no one within the Pentagon was interested.

More than likely it was probably nothing more than a bit of curiosity on the part of Russian space officials, to see the field on their own. At least, lets hope. We certainly don't need the conflicts on earth to spread onto an international facility such as the space station.

Jeffrey

Asteroid Mining Workshop

Everyone around here is still basking in the excitement of our asteroid mining workshop, which brought together some of the most talented experts.

The goal was zen-simplistic. To bring together experts from mining, asteroids, engineering, business and policy in order to explore the challenges and the possible paths to mining materials from asteroids and maybe the moon.

We were lead by Dr. John Lewis, author of more books than I have fingers. His knowledge of asteroids is poetic, he can recite attributes of each asteroid like a real estate agent depicting an exotic vacation property in Italy. This asteroid has a certain gravity field, this one has platinum, this is why the moon has Helium 3 from the solar winds, but the meteorites.

Supporting Lewis in the technical arena was a diverse group including Brad Blair and Ed McCullough. Mike Duke was there to promote lunar mining and the arguments were passionate. Representing the legal and the business were Jim Dunstan and Larry Austin.

Other voices included Bob Twiggs, who brought a perspective of both education and engineering, and Neville Marzwell whose lead a number of fascinating technical projects.

All told there were some 18 of us, lead by Kris Kimel, who pushed us on to really, really consider what it will take to launch a commercial space mining venture.

We did as Kimel asked, much to our own surprise and delight.

And Andy Mead wrote a nice piece in the Lexington Herald-Leader.

Jeffrey

Image: Dawn Mission Page. Credit: McREL

Celebrating Reformers Like Tom Whitehead

I learned with sadness that my friend and colleague, Clay (Tom) Whitehead passed away on July 23^rd at his home in Northern Virginia. Tom was a passionate believer in opening space as a normal industry, and will best be remembered pushing through Open Skies, which busted open the AT&T monopoly on communication satellites.

Obituaries in the Washington Post and New York Times failed to mention that Tom also served as chairman of PanAmSat, before the company went public. It was there that I served as an assistant to him, and enjoyed very much his wry sense of humor in the face of the never-ending, never easy battle to change the status quo in the space business.

As director of the White House Office of Telecommunications Policy from 1970 to 1974,  under the Nixon Administration, Tom forced through changes which allowed any company to launch its own domestic satellite. That’s something we all take for granted now, but until then only Ma Bell, or AT&T, controlled the commercial satellite business.

His political views were almost libertarian. When I worked with Tom he held a strong distrust of those in power and believed that competition was best for media and telecommunications.  His actions lead to the rapid growth of the cable business, as companies could launch their own satellites, develop their own content and lower the cost of data transmission.

Open Sky also resulted in the growth of the private launch business and the spectacular growth of communication satellites.

Glenn Garvin, writing in the Miami Herald, wrote that “you probably never heard of Tom Whitehead.” Garvin writes that without Tom and Open Skies, “you'd never would have seen Tony Soprano carry out a hit, or cheered or booed Bill O'Reilly or Keith Olbermann. You quite possibly never would have dialed a number on a cellphone or logged onto the Internet.”

It’s easy to speak of reform in the space business, far harder to accomplish. Tom was a rare individual who took his passionate beliefs in the free market and created a better system for all of us to enjoy.

Jeffrey

China's Olympic Space Race

Commercial space pioneer Jeffrey Manber is an adviser to Kentucky Space. Find all of Jeffrey's posts under his name in the category cloud, lower right side of the Kentucky Space blog.

I was one of the estimated four billion viewers who watched the opening Olympic ceremonies. What struck me was the graceful and seamless integration of the long Chinese history of technology innovations, whether gunpowder, paper, movable type or the 15th century maritime explorations of Zheng He, with the great promise of China's future. And that future includes space exploration.

In one sense I was disappointed by the frequent references to China's space program during the event. For too long politicians of all spacefaring nations have used space exploration as a tool for advancing more fuzzy ideals such as political prestige or national pride. I've always felt that events like the Olympics should be about sports. And sending humans into space is about exploration. But maybe that's why I'm not a politician.

I'm more optimistic than many about the Chinese however. I believe that Beijing leaders require even space to meet certain economic valuations, as is true with all new industries in modern China. By that I mean it is fully expected that their Long March rockets will take significant market share in the launch market, and domestic satellite manufacture will grab a good part of the high-margin satellite communication business.

Looking further outward, Chinese officials I met with this April in Beijing stressed that their lunar program is hinged on the pragmatic value of lunar mining and other practical results. An indication of Chinese intent can be found aboard the Chang'E-1, the Chinese satellite now orbiting the Moon. One sensor crammed onboard the tiny satellite is a monitoring device for Helium-3, which, if mined on the moon and returned to the Earth, would be worth millions in energy dollars.

Far fetched? Not for Chinese political leaders planning decades out to satisfy the more than a billion Chinese consumers hunger for a middle-class life.

It worries me that we in the United Stats seem to have transferred our competitive juices from the "Soviets" and the Cold War space race to fears of a new space race with China. Why am I worried? Because we are running the wrong race with China. We are still thinking in terms of political prestige and they are thinking in terms of market share.

If I'm wrong, then fine, the Chinese are spending hundreds of millions for strategic concerns and political prestige. But if I'm right, than Washington has a bigger problem. Because the same country that has re-written the rules of manufacture on everything from computers to washing machines to cell phones is about, I believe, to do the same for satellites and deep space exploration.

That's the message I took away from the opening Olympic ceremony.

Let the real Race begin.

Jeffrey