International: Reports
Endorsements Coming In for Obama's Space Plan
"President Obama’s new plan for NASA, released February 1st, is endorsed by bipartisan groups representing governors, former legislators, astronauts, and former NASA senior managers and a half dozen editorial boards." See the Commercial Space Federation's links to all and the good news for commercial space.
"The Growth of Global Space Capabilities"
Pace's testimony was given to the House Committee on Science & Technology on Nov 18, 2009. A summary statement included this paragraph.
" The U.S. is facing a generational transition away from the period represented by the Space Shuttle that is just as profound as the transition from Apollo was. We are facing a transition not just of hardware and contracts, but also of leadership and values. NASA will be cooperating more with commercial and international partners than ever before. The nation will need to compete and cooperate in space as never before. The transition is upon us at home and abroad, just as we see that others are not delaying their entries into space. The question before us is simple. What will this nation do?"
New Course for Space Exploration Promotes Private Firms | WSJ
The Obama administration appears to be charting a new course for U.S. space exploration by promoting use of private companies to transport astronauts and ramping up international cooperation.
Review of Human Spaceflight Plans Committee - Final Report | NASA
Here's the options agenda to support heated discussions over the next few days and weeks by NASA and the Obama administration. Commercial space seems to be baselined.
Sustainable Utilization of the ISS Beyond 2015 | IAC 2009
"This International Astronautical Congress (IAC) session summary addresses the significant and unique value of the International Space Station (ISS), with growing potential to deliver future benefits beyond 2015, in areas such as: biotechnology and life sciences; Earth imaging; engineering research and technology; materials science; and various commercial applications. Presenters also considered how enhanced management of operations costs can maximize ISS productivity."
Chairs: Paul Eckert, Boeing (Human Space Endeavours Symposium); Helmut Luttman, EADS Astrium (Space Operations Symposium)
Rapporteur: Rachid Amekrane, EADS Astrium (Human Space Endeavours Symposium)
Humans to Mars: Logical Step or Dangerous Distraction? | AIAA Space 2009
"This paper examines post-Apollo proposals for human exploration of Mars and assesses their failure to win enduring political and public support. There are lessons to be learned that are applicable to current exploration efforts. Foremost among them is that the path to solar system exploration that has dominated the space community's thinking since the 1950s may not be a logical or politically feasible approach for the 21st century. The paper proposes that human exploration of the Moon and Mars should be decoupled and treated as separate ventures with each justified by its own merits and pursued at its own pace." Good arguments are made for this viewpoint which include the role of commercial space and public benefits.
Lunar Science: Window to the Past and Stepping Stone to the Future | NLSI
This recent white paper sent to the Augustine Panel by NASA describes how "the NLSI will bring together scientists and engineers from the academic community and NASA Centers to advance lunar science, support both human and robotic missions to the Moon, train the next generation of lunar scientists and communicate the excitement of this scientific exploration to the public." The Google Lunar X-prize announced in Sept '07 has galvanized the emerging entrepreneurial space community. Nineteen international teams are registered and this will inevitably spur development of a commercial lunar industry. NASA is having policy discussions focused on allowing NASA to buy services including payload transport to the Moon from these companies once reliable capabilities are demonstrated. NLSI is pursuing options to contribute small science payloads to private missions to the Moon". Stay tuned.
Approaches to Future Space Cooperation & Competition in a Globalizing World | NAP
"The Planning Committee for the Workshop on U.S. Civil Space Policy (Space Studies Board of National Acad. of Sciences)...organized a public workshop (Nov '08) to review past and present cooperation, coordination, and competition mechanisms for space and earth science research and space exploration; identify significant lessons learned, and discuss how those lessons could best be applied in the future particularly in the areas of cooperation and collaboration." Sixty U.S. and non-U.S. participants represented government, academia, and industry in the areas of: civil and commercial space, science and technology policy, international relations and space history. This workshop was held as the global economic collapse began and provides an excellent foundation for understanding the opportunities and challenges in commercial space. It also includes two first-class invited papers.
Global Space Exploration 2025: Europe's Propsectives for Partnerships
“Space exploration is an emblematic domain of space activities where traditionally only established space powers have been active. However, new actors are demonstrating great interest in it, principally for international prestige reasons, with an increasing number making ambitious plans. Complementing national endeavours, international cooperation has become a central element of most countries’ exploration strategy, since the costs of doing it alone are so great. Europe’s development into a fully fledged actor in space exploration requires a shared assessment of the future challenges, threats and opportunities with which it will be confronted in order to derive the best options for cooperation to lead and anticipate rather than follow and endure change.”
Arianespace and the ISS?
Arianespace, an international commercial space company has provided input to the Obama Administration’s NASA Transition Team for their involvement in providing cargo transport and related services to the International Space Station (ISS). Since up to now only NASA STS and Russian spacecraft have been used to transport people and cargo to the ISS, Arianespace’s interest in doing so too presents a new challenge. NASA has awarded contracts to two US companies, SpaceX and Orbital Sciences to function as commercial entities in this market. Might the ESA or the EU (10 European countries have shares in Arianespace) begin to share transport costs to the ISS at least for non-US payloads and crew and look at Arianespace as a good alternative?
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