Breakpoints

Context:

1. Jonathan Goff @ Selenial Boondocks wrote on 8/16/2005: Some Constructive Suggestions for NASA
2. Dan Schrimpsher @ Space Pragmatism added to the ideas the following day
   
3. Clark Lindsey @ HobbySpace - RLV News mentioned both articles
4. Rand Simberg @ Transterrestrial Musings picked up the discussion and added to it
5. During the ensuing discussion Paul Dietz made a couple of great comments:

"... Delivering propellant in disposable tanks doesn't preclude the possibility of transfering that propellant to other tanks.... "

and

"... I was saying that disposable tanks can be used to carry up propellant for transfer to a different set of reusable tanks (for example, those inside a space tug or lunar landing vehicle.)

We might even imagine launching the propellant in a different chemical form and converting it to fuels in space (water converted to hydrogen and oxygen, for example); the launch tank wouldn't need to be capable of holding cryogens. ..."

Which correlates to my own thought process so closely, it's scary.

Here's how I got there:

1. I run a small software services company, CE Dev, which specializes in helping small and medium sized companies customize, integrate, deploy and support Open Source applications (such as Moodle, OpenCMS, Mambo, etc)
2. We're primarily a services firm, which in this economy scares the bejeezus out of me
   
3. To help us switch to a more balanced product/services mix I went to ISDC 2005 this spring to see if a small agile software company can find a spot in the nascent alt.space sector
4. Alas, to my great disappointment, conversations with many participants made it clear that there is no business case for such a venture; the reasons are many and varied and are beyond the scope of this blog
5. It took a few days to realize, however, that the overall picture emerging from the conference had a hole in it:
• There are plenty of companies working on the sub-orbital launch segment and it's exploitation
  
• There are fewer, but still enough companies working on the orbital launch and it's exploitation
• There are even companies (Bigelow) working on building destinations for the orbital launch sector
• Beyond that was the province of mission-oriented government agencies (NASA, RosKosmos, ESA, JAXA, etc.)
• But nobody was looking at the overall space transportation architecture from an economic development point of view (except Mike Mealling, who put together a great theoretical foundation for such an effort)
  

Here's what I mean by that last comment:

1. The goal of space development efforts is to create a thriving, self-sustaining economy in space
2. "Flags & Footprints" missions are not relevant to this goal at this stage - they were phenominally important in getting us to this point, but they no longer help in getting us closer to my stated goal
   
3. Being basically a capitalist pig :-) I strongly believe that the economic motive is the only thing that will get us to that goal
4. Transportation has always been a critical component of every expansion/economic development period in human history (starting with Roman roads, sailing ships, railroads, aircraft); it only stands to reason that in an environment as challenging as space, a transportation infrastructure is a critical component of overall economic success
5. Looked at it that way, I realized that "mission-oriented" transportation architectures, however efficient, will not work well enough to support the economic engine
6. What's needed is a modular, flexible, extensible, standards-based architecture

Such an architecture will allow competition between vendors to rapidly improve quality and efficiency of operations and lower unit costs. Such an architecture will allow companies to specialize in solving specific, smaller problems, instead of trying to solve all the world's technical problems all at once - increasing the probability of success. Such an architecture will allow venture funds to "get" the sector, and move in aggressively to support it.

Having come to these conclusions, I started thinking about one specific architecture by examining transportation architectures in other environments and mapping them and their components on to the Earth-Moon-Mars economic system. I started by asking a simple question: How did my car make its way from a factory in Japan to my doorstep in New Jersey. Certainly it didn't leave the factory floor with enough buoyancy to cross the ocean or enough fuel to drive from there to here. Instead, it relied on a transportation infrastructure consisting of:

• trucks
• fuel generation and distribution systems
• roads
• port facilities/transshipment points
  
• ships
• trains

The next questions was: how would these components map on to the Earth-Moon-Mars economic system?

Here's one such possibility:

1. Earth Surface - LEO Lift
2. LEO Space Port(s)
3. LEO Space Port - Destination Space Port Transfer (L-points, Moon, Mars, etc)
   
4. Destination Space Port(s)
5. Last Mile Transport (similar to #1 above, but at the destination)

What does such an approach give us that "mission-oriented" architectures don't?

1. We don't need to make a car that can swim the ocean
2. We don't need to make a car that carries enough fuel to get from Japan to New Jersey
3. We don't need to put the 10,000 miles of wear and tear on the car before it gets to its assigned area of operation
4. A truck company can specialize in building trucks
5. A shipbuilder can specialize in building ships
6. A train builder can specialize in building locomotives and freight cars
   
7. A shipping line can specialize in running large quantities of cargo across long distance, using multiple modes (air, land & sea)
   
8. A fuel company can specialize in creating, distributing, storing and disbursing fuel to multiple kinds of consumers

That last one sounds like a lot of fun......... more later.