Civilian Astronautics

Jun

2016

Our interview with Jeff Greason – Are the major space agencies supporting the development of civilian astronautics?

Space Renaissance International has kicked-off the discussion leading towards its second world congress, mainly targeted to update our analysis of the status of civilization and development of civilian astronautics. Our first reflection is a self-critical one, about the forecast we made during our first congress held in 2011 when we anticipated the kickoff of civilian astronautics that would be catalyzed by space tourism. Following the general expectations, we had no doubt that Virgin Galactic, XCOR or perhaps some other entity would have initiated commercial suborbital flights before 2016. It was a logical perception: space tourism is the only (or at least the first) private initiative that could develop in a self-sustaining manner by selling tickets to private passengers – initially for suborbital flights, then to orbit, to the Moon, and so on. The growing market would work as a positive feedback scenario, decreasing the cost of tickets and boosting the investments for further improvement of technologies.
There is no doubt that the space frontier will be opened by private enterprise and our focus remains on the private sector. But it hasn’t happened so far. The long promised start of commercial suborbital flights did not occur as expected. However, in the meantime, SpaceX has become a key part of the revolution by developing reusable rockets obtaining NASA contracts. Reducing the cost to orbit objectively supports the civilian astronautics development which allows more private enterprises to enter the market. Robert Bigelow is also taking key steps in the area of civilian astronautics with the first experimental inflatable module deployed on the ISS and by working with NASA as well.Jeff Greason, who recently joined the Space Renaissance USA Chapter, says that there is more work to be done between LEO and GEO than what we expect. So attention students, both young and less young specialists, please take good note that: “one thread that people don’t seem to emphasize” said Jeff “is that the number one problem in the space economy right now is … a shortage of labor! There are many, many activities which cannot be conducted economically because there is an insufficient source of labor in the space industry to do the jobs that need doing.”

Q. So, Jeff, let’s start with this quite interesting point. Could you tell us something more about the activities you are talking about?

R. Today, the bulk of activity in space is satellites. Most of the expense of satellites isn’t directly in the launch cost – though indirectly, the constraints of launch being expensive and hard to schedule are a big driver. But satellites have a lot of mechanisms to unfold solar arrays and antennas, and the components which might be quite affordable for a terrestrial application are expensive because they have to withstand a very rough ride on launch, and then last for ten years or more without maintenance or repair. Now imagine there was a facility for doing some very simple assembly work on orbit, and transportation from LEO to GEO. Satellites are very modular – so many transponders, so big an antenna array, so much solar panel. You could send those elements up, plug the modules together, and build quite large satellites ‘by the meter’ so to speak. It would be a simple task for a technician – if only you had technicians. A lot of money has been spent on research to service and repair GEO comsats. If instead you brought them to a technician, again, most of that could be done. And we know there are materials on the Moon of tremendous economic interest – water for propellant for one example. What’s missing isn’t the machines to do the mining and processing; they’re relatively simple and could be launched if there were need. But they need to be set up, maintained, and repaired – a small base could provide that labor, if economic activity were its focus rather than scientific research. Energy harvesting in space is a definite possibility, but again, the requirement to make the entire architecture 100.00% self-assembling is a big driver of cost; it doesn’t take much to plug pieces together.

Q. On the bad side of the news, we observe that Virgin Galactic was forced to build a new SpaceShipTwo after the tragic accident in 2014 and is still on ground, and that XCOR seems to have suspended the Lynx program, in favor of projects that are bringing in revenue.
Is that only due to difficulties in fundraising and finding investors or are we also witnessing a strong resistance by military lobbies and governments to release their control on outer space enabling private commercial ventures? If so, how could SRI’s lobbying action in favor of paradigm changing measures be effective?

R. There’s been absolutely no resistance from military lobbies that I have seen – if anything, there is friendly interest in the developments of frequent, reliable, affordable space transportation. The space environment is changing – it is no longer a place where military assets are safe from interference by hostile powers. So the best way to peacefully maintain space as a place for the use of all nations is to make satellites not worthy targets to attack. Making them easy and cheap to replace is an excellent way to do that. So there is a lot of beneficial overlap between commercial and military interests in space.
All space endeavors have, until recently, been very difficult to finance. What’s changed that is that small satellites have shortened the development cycle for commercial satellites so that new applications can be tried and show their economic value – or fail – within a few years, which is the time horizon of interest to institutional investors. The reason I’m working on the business plan at Agile Aero is to try and do the same thing for space vehicles – shorten their development cycle. But until we, or someone, does that, investment in space transportation is going to remain a challenge. That’s why right now the bulk of the investment in that area is from high net worth individuals investing in their own projects – which is a very welcome development, but not enough of a foundation for a healthy industry.

Q. Today, Space Renaissance International is making a qualitative and quantitative step, as we say, towards SRI 2.0. Since the end of 2008, our first years of activities, SRI was mainly a philosophical association, a think tank dedicated to developing the advanced concepts of a space age philosophy and to indicate the main strategic direction for our civilization. Recently , SRI more than doubled its presence on social networks, with almost twenty national Facebook pages world wide. SRI USA was incorporated as a 501(c)4 non profit association by Manuel Perez, with a quite focused strategic plan which includes lobbying the US Congress and collaboration with government agencies. Thus, SRI will now develop political goals and not only philosophical ones, by working with national and international institutions and striving to unify as much as possible the space advocacy movement on a platform of a few shared goals. Each national chapter will be encouraged to develop its own proper plan tuned to the national environment and social climate where they are located.
In such perspective, some questions become relevant for SRI as well as for the broader space advocacy movement from a strategic point of view.
Elon Musk has invested much of his previously accumulated fortune – made by brilliant great inventions, such e.g. PayPal — in his SpaceX enterprise and few other futuristic industrial ventures, e.g. the Tesla electric car and the very high speed vacuum tube train. It appears however evident that, with regards to Richard Branson and other new space entrepreneurs, Musk has something extra that allows him to produce many rockets and to recover from accidents in just a few months. The availability of substantial capital is due to the contracts that NASA is assigning to SpaceX for the use of Falcon 9 rockets and Dragon capsules to serve the ISS. It is likely that this momentum is also attracting further investments to SpaceX which now appears to be a successful corporation.
NASA already named the first four astronauts who will fly on the first U.S. commercial spaceflights in private crew transportation vehicles being built by Boeing and SpaceX, as soon as mid-2017, if all goes well. (Gizmodo).
NASA, by supporting SpaceX with lucrative contracts, is de facto supporting the development of fully reusable launch vehicles which is something that space advocates have been promoting for at least thirty years as the essential key factor for the downsizing of the cost of transportation from Earth to orbit. Consequently, the development of a private commercial space industry and market is being supported as well.
But this is not the only good news. On the other side of Atlantic, ESA’s new director Johann-Dietrich Woerner from the German DLR was selected in 2015. During his first interview, he challenged ESA with a grand goal: to build a first village on the Moon during the 2020-2030 decade! Such strategic address was initially announced in a symposium – Moon 2020-2030 – that was held at ESTEC, in Noordwijk in December 2015. If realized, this would be a key step on a path of settlement of outer space.
How do you see this process? Is NASA supporting the development of civilian astronautics by giving contracts to Elon Musk? Is that within the frame of a strategic plan? Or is it just the basis of a pragmatic orientation, because lower launch costs is however convenient?

R. Talking about “NASA” and “strategic plan” together probably overstates the case. NASA is a collection of dissimilar interests flying in formation. I would love to see an overall strategic plan for NASA but so far I haven’t. Certainly, however, national policymakers and some farsighted people within NASA have seen the value of adding NASA’s demand to commercial and military demand to stimulate the overall launch market – and of course so the taxpayer can derive the benefits of lower prices that come from a more competitive launch industry. It’s been a slow process dating back to the decision in 1986 to withdraw the Space Shuttle from the commercial launch market. Not everyone realizes that all the military launches in the U.S. and all NASA science missions are already launched on commercial rockets and have been for some time. NASA is providing the critical early customer support for SpaceX and ATK rockets by purchasing commercial cargo service to the Space Station and is doing the same for crew transport on Boeing and SpaceX capsules. I think that is all positive. There are some enormous missed opportunities, however. NASA is still spending about $2 billion a year on a large heavy lift booster that will start with 75 ton and eventually lift 125 ton payloads to orbit and fly every other year. That same price would pay to put up over 300 tons per year on the existing commercial market – and if an additional 300 tons per year of launch were purchased, the price would certainly come down. It’s really a mistake to think of this in terms of one provider; thanks to the efforts of both military and NASA launch the U.S. is now the only country with internal competition for launch and that competition is really improving the performance of ALL of the providers.

Q. Whatever the rationales behind this new orientation of the major space agencies, there seems that a new phase is opening in which many new space enterprises, having civilian astronautics in their mission, can hope to get contracts and to work with space agencies in order to develop technologies that will favor the growth of the commercial astronautic industry. There is, not yet, a big private space travelers market, but it is however a serious development vs. the old exploration paradigm. So, in your opinion, which are the themes upon which a new space enterprise may consider working with NASA, while being coherent with its own civilian astronautic mission?

R. I think the real opportunities are ahead of us. For decades, ambitious human spaceflight goals have been discussed by NASA and other space agencies. Expeditions to Mars, bases on the Moon, visits to near-earth asteroids. The private sector is talking seriously about private robotic missions to the Moon, or human missions to Mars orbit, and providing resources from the Moon and near-earth asteroids. The opportunity for NASA and other space agencies is that if they planned such ambitious missions, NOT as the agency that would perform the mission but simply as customers for those missions, leaving most of the execution to private sector firms to do in the most cost-effective manner, then they could actually afford to DO the things we’ve dreamt of. For example I’ve little doubt that a human return to the Moon, even with a permanent base could be done privately for something on the order or $10-$20 billion. No space agency is likely to do that so cheaply, and it is very difficult for the private sector to justify spending that money. But if space agencies really wanted a return to the moon – they can afford it, if they just buy it. And of course the space agencies have relevant expertise – but that expertise can be made available to private actors where there is need. All these efforts feed each other – the more things are being done in space, the easier it is to do more. For example, if there were some kind of transportation node in cislunar space – say at L1 or L2, it would be easy to stage components for a Mars mission from there, eliminating the need for very heavy lift launch beyond what other customers demand. But sadly, there are still too many in national space efforts who view ambitious space goals not as ends to be achieved, but as justifications for ongoing programs that will be funded year after year, with little incentive to reach the goal and move to the next one.

Q. We have always in mind your historical slides presented at the ISDC 2011, when you were talking about the missing 2nd step of the NASA strategic vision: “step 1 = exploration / step 2 = ? / step 3 = settlement”. We at SRI represent step 2 as a coherent plan for a progressive industrial expansion beyond Earth’s atmosphere based on humanist concepts, starting from LEO, recovering and reusing space debris, developing interorbital maneuverability, improving re-entry technologies, then developing infrastructure in the cislunar space, L4 and L5, on the Moon, using Near Earth Asteroids as raw materials and possible habitats.
What is your vision of a coherent plan for colonization of the Geo-Lunar space region?

R. The missing element right now is extraterrestrial sources of propellant. We know they’re out there, we know how to get them, but we haven’t developed those resources. Once we have that, moving from LEO to GEO, or from LEO to destinations beyond LEO, becomes much more cost effective. I personally think we will need humans to maintain and operate some of that equipment, which implies a transportation capability for people as well as cargo and a logistics resupply ability to bring cargo where we need it to be. Whether that material comes from Lunar or asteroidal sources or (as I suspect) from both doesn’t really matter – once we start to disconnect our umbilical to Earth and supply a big part of what we need to do things in space from resources IN space, we’ll be well on our way to a virtuous cycle where more and more of that becomes the norm. Once you start extracting resources, your next need is energy – it takes a lot of energy to extract and process that material. And of course there’s no shortage of demand for energy on Earth either; we’re 10-15 Terawatts short of what it would take to bring the whole world up to a modern standard of living. So the same infrastructure we need to collect industrial quantities of energy from the Sun, in space, for space-based customers can over time extend to supplying our needs here on Earth.

Q. From our humanist point of view, the overdue change of paradigm – from space exploration to space settlement – a few key areas of scientific research should have an high priority. If it is foreseen that the number of civilian passengers and settlers will increase in space, especially beyond the protective Van Allen Belt, the issues of protection from cosmic radiations and artificial gravity should be addressed, in order the migrants will not be subject to fundamental physiological changes in a few years. These type of research should be better developed by public money, as well as scientific research for a single stage to orbit vehicle, and exobiology, selecting the best vegetables to be cultivated in space, for food and for oxygen regeneration. Do you think a lobbying action may have a chance to orient governments and agencies in such a direction?

R. I hope so, but I’m not counting on it. The idea that the goal of government action in space shouldn’t be to visit it, but to develop it as an economic arena and frontier for human settlement is one that has been growing slowly and not always steadily. Clearly, that is not yet motivating our investments in space research because these problems remain unsolved. It is unpardonable neglect of our research priorities that more than 50 years in to the space age, we still have NO idea what the long term health implications of 1/6 or 1/3 gravity are on human beings. If national space agencies have a purpose, this is the kind of problem they should be solving. And again, how they solve it matters. If they think it’s too expensive – then put out a contract to buy that data. A lot of smart people have been thinking of cheap ways to get that data – surely there is SOME price at which NASA or ESA could afford to answer this question.

[English language editing by Arthur Woods]

OTHER LANGUAGES VERSIONS OF THIS ARTICLE:

version française, grâce à Catherine Laplace-Buhle

Join the Space Renaissance!

2016 is seeing an incredible growth of the SRI presence on the social media, Facebook mainly.

Do you believe in the space renaissance? Then Join the Space Renaissance!

If your country does not have a national SRI chapter already, you can register as a member of Space Renaissance International, here:

https://spacerenaissance.space/build-sri-with-us/membership-2/membership/.

If you like to keep on receiving our analysis, newsletters and updates about our initiatives, please subscribe to the SRI newsletter here:

https://spacerenaissance.space/build-sri-with-us/space-renaissance-newsletter-registration/.

If you have already subscribed once, there is no need to subscribe again.

Oct

2015

“The Martian”, a movie and a book still to be written

SRI NEWSLETTER – OCTOBER 20^th 2015 – by A. V. Autino

There’s never time to write and comment on everything worthy of comment, however “The Martian” (in Italian, “Il sopravvissuto”) gives me the opportunity to put on paper some concepts very central to my space activist sensitivity.

First of all, I will say that I would like very much to see an exploration mission to Mars, and I could also say that I’d like to have seen it some years ago, and now to be witness to its initial settlements. This is a first point of discussion: many will say that the technologies are not mature enough. I would reply that technologies to go to the Moon simply didn’t exist in 1961, when President Kennedy challenged NASA to reach our natural satellite within ten years. So please let’s not listen too much to the ones who make things even more difficult than they are, in order to “raise the price” of their supply.

Having said that, I have to say that the book written by Andy Weir is much better than the movie, from the point of view of the novel: we listen to Mark Watney, his desperation, his hopes, his continuous reasoning on the practical problems he does his best to solve, by his skills of as an astronaut and botanist. And, most of all, the book is a manifesto of the human initiative, and capacity to never give up. The book also gives us the measure of how much Mars needs to be explored, in order to understand the conditions in which the first settlers will find themselves. This is something that the movie doesn’t convey, or, if it does, in a reduced measure.

Coming to the policy aspects, the book and the movie were released just before NASA was presenting its budget to the Congress. At the same time, NASA announced the discovery of liquid water flowing on Mars, albeit seasonally. The mission statement of NASA is space exploration and it is entirely appropriate to justify an agency’s proposed budget by highlighting achievements that demonstrate the mission is being accomplished. They have done so repeatedly and with savvy marketing capability: chapeau! (said without irony :-). The message is quite clear, and it is repeated several times during the movie: the goal is to do exploration missions, and always to bring the explorers back to home, on Earth.

Not by chance, the end of the movie is quite different from the end of the book. The last lines of the book are taken from the board logbook, Mission Day 687. Mark questions why such a significant amount of money was spent to rescue him, one only person, instead of abandoning him on Mars’ surface. Beyond the humanitarian rationales, he mentions “progress, science and the interplanetary future that we dream since centuries”. The last scenes of the movie show us Mark, considering a green, small plant spontaneously growing among stones on Earth and, subsequently, giving an education to young candidate explorers, illustrating the very hard conditions of space. The subliminal message seems very clear to me: let’s continue to empower trained explorers to go to Mars, while the rest of us remain “safe” (so to say) on Earth. During the credits, we listen to the announcement of NASA about next exploration mission, reiterating the concept: the goal is to bring the explorers back to home, to Earth. So, even “ordinary” viewers of the movie, fully unaware of any space policy, could ask: but why are we going there, if we don’t want to stay, and to settle on another planet for human benefit? To address that question, I’d like to submit few reflections those who promote Mars colonization and spacefaring civilization.

First, are we sure that, in 2030, should the only space strategy remain exploration, we will have resources and funds to re-purpose an Apollo-style program to Mars? Considering the social, economical and environmental situations that could be logically anticipated, considering that likely in 2030 we will be 9 or 10 billions people on Earth, I have many doubts. Only expanding our industrial development beyond the limits of our mother planet we can hope to revert the global crisis, and to ignite the greatest economic and cultural revolution of all times. So, why should we just keep on exploring, and not to start expanding? And, talking about expansion, what are the logical first steps? Industrializing the geo-lunar space region, of course, the so called Greater Earth, including the Earth’s orbit, the Moon, the Lagrange Points and the Near Earth Asteroids crossing in or near such area.

Rick Tumlinson recently wrote an article, titled “How we go to Mars”. This is a good approach to the matter. Nobody wants to discuss whether to go or not to go to Mars. The questions are: with which resources, with what support by people, by public money or by private effort? And, could it be a program forwarded by one only country, or would it be an international cooperation program? My opinion is that we won’t be able to reach Mars in 2030, nor later, if a serious expansion program is not well rooted and in progress. Rick answers the question “why” thusly: to improve science and to expand civilization. And he discusses several possible ways, through the Moon or directly, just to explore or to settle and remain. The extent to which the world is in crisis may be perceived differently, depending on whether one lives east or west of the Atlantic. Maybe many more alternatives seem to be possible, from one’s particular vantage point. I would say that, being the current global expenditure around $1,7 trillions/year, for opposing global terrorism and feeding different conflicts, and the expenditure for space just $25 billions, if the world remains closed we can only expect such a quite immature balance to get worse. Any space exploration mission will be more uncertain, unsafe and insufficiently supported.

Having said that, we can still see the problem in different ways. We could criticize the NASA strategy, still oriented only to space exploration and closed to space expansion and industrialization. But I am afraid that would be an old method, based on opposition, instead of collaboration. In parallel, we can however cautiously applaud the new ESA’s strategy, that includes a quite interesting Moon program, for the years 2020 – 2030, including the building of a first lunar village. Some of the Tumlinson’s questions are ruling, of course: who should finance space exploration, and who should finance space expansion? May we simply split the problem, as apparently the US administration tried to do: exploration by governments, by public money, and industrialization by private ventures? It is not that simple. Such an approach could simply lead to half the agency’s budget, and leave few courageous entrepreneurs fighting alone for the benefit of humanity. Is that correct?

I don’t think so. I believe we should move a few percent of the public expenditure toward the support the civilian astronautic industry. This does not preclude continuation of militaristic (defense) systems; such an high cultural maturity cannot be achieved in few months, nor years. But, considering that civilization is exposed to an incredibly high risk of implosion, if we don’t relaunch the global economy by bootstrapping the space revolution, could the military expenditure be reduced from $1.7 billion to $1.6 billion?

Can we imagine what we could do, should the space budget grow from the current $25 billion/year to $125 billion? We could develop the exploration of Mars, and the expansion into the Greater Earth, accelerating the decrease of the cost to orbit, building infrastructures at L4 and L5, on the Moon, and begin mining Asteroids. The civilian astronautic industry would be boosted, many companies founded, space tourism will take off (literally!), and the global crisis will could be overcome. Missions to Mars will move from a space yard located in L5, and not from Earth: that will be quite different book, with all my respect and appreciation to Andy Weir, and movie.

SPACE, NOT WAR!

The World Congress “Space, Not War!” (https://www.spacenotwar.org/) in preparation for 2016, will propose to the world public opinion the only real alternative to involution of civilization constrained within the boundaries of a physically and philosophically closed world.

This Call for Papers (https://www.spacenotwar.org/call_for_papers.php), still evolving, will be soon opened to abstracts submission.

It is already possible to express interest for the congress, using this Pre-Registration form (https://www.spacenotwar.org/congress_pre-registration.php)

[English review by Susan Singer]

download pdf version here: The Martian, a movie, and a book, still to be written

Sep

2015

MIGRATION AND EXPANSION – EARTHLINGS LOOKING FOR OTHER WORLDS

SRI NEWSLETTER – SEPTEMBER 11^th 2015 – by Adriano V. Autino

As always, I avoid commenting on hot news, on the the emotional wave of media images. I do this so as to not confuse myself with those who profit from the death of innocent children to gain visibility. However, my reflections aim to a higher and wider horizon, and a week more or less cannot change the substance.

On the exodus of almost biblical proportions of Middle Eastern peoples escaping massacres by wars and by ISIS, I do not pretend to be neutral and above. God forbid: I could no longer call myself a humanist, if I did. So I state now my conception of a world open, friendly and free, in all its meanings and directions, incoming, outgoing, and especially upwards, through the interface between our Earth and the Cosmos. I therefore welcome not only the position of the German government, probably dictated not only by humanitarianism, but also and much more the decision of those German citizens who put gifts and aids in their car, and went on to take in refugees. This is definitely the Europe that I like. But it’s already been said by many, and I do not intend to waste your time by repeating what has been already read and heard.

The matter is not, in fact, to decide whether to open or close the door to the refugees, because it would be like trying to stem a tsunami bare handed. The real point is: what are we doing, while we welcome the refugees (which I hope), or close them off? I’ll explain. Those who want to erect walls speculate on the fear of some potentially negative effects of mass immigration. Some of these effects can not be denied, however. I contend that such effects would be the same even in the case of closure. What causes them is not, in fact, the actual movement of migrants from their unfortunate countries to these (so far) less unfortunate countries of Europe. The real danger is the strong tides of possible cultural involution that the ongoing extensive social phenomena can contribute to determine. In other words, the social fear, both by migrants and by residents of destination countries, is the real destabilizing agent, which can retract the civic consciousness of centuries in a few seasons. The social fear affects both the people “invaded” by migrants and populations locked within neo-medieval physical and mental walls.

So the real problem is, what we, the so-called advanced societies, do in order to maintain and improve the level of culture and civil advance hard-won during the industrial era, thanks to the sacrifices of our fathers and grandfathers, who threw the blood, sweat, tears and brain synapses in the factories, in the fields, in the research laboratories? I know this probably sounds a little rhetorical and “twentieth centuried,” but please see it with “today eyes”. The real threat is that the intellectual and business vanguard born from the industrial revolutions at some point may throw in the towel and surrender before the tide of violence, of war and neo-feudal vulgarity and arrogance boarding at all levels. If that happens, the genocidal regime of ISIS, and all it represents, in terms of absolute primitivism and destruction of civilization, will have won. Why? Because the so-called advanced societies will not have been able to offer anything to young people, leaving them adrift, prey to the forces of evil and destruction.

When we leave our body still and idle for a long time, it is very easy that some disease will arise. In a culturally stagnant social context social ills develop and, if the context is the globalized world, diseases are global. It will not be the erection of walls, to be anyway overwhelmed, that will cure diseases, indeed: the closed world stale air can only worsen the condition of patients. The great migration is a reaction to great social ills: extreme poverty, bloody dictatorships, stagnant and abominable bureaucracies. People sets off in search of new worlds … Closing the doors and remained bounded in a rotting immobility will be useless. And, the ones who believed they had done enough welcoming in the refugees, would be making a mistake just as glaring! Accepting the migrants and remaining inert it would mean giving up any projects and to be submerged. We urgently need to restart the cultural progress, to open the world, a clear commitment to space, providing us with a more scientific and humanistic governance, and less corrupt, short-sighted, opportunistic and degrowther in facts. There is an urgent and indispensable need to defy civil unrest on the planet by exponentially increasing our design effort, aiming high, expanding the androsphere in space, building villages on the moon, constructing rotating O’Neill cities at Lagrange points, triggering new industrial development, all of which the free and peaceful civilization is in dire need. And no, Mr. Putin and Mr. Obama, the world today will not understand why the “powers” should feel the need for a military confrontation between themselves, triggered with the help of useful idiots like the Ukrainian aspirant tyrant or the unfading Syrian despot! The only understandable and sustainable use of force today is to unite and remove butchers, tyrants and despots.Much more important, however, is to bring the industrial revolution to the countries involved in the Arab Spring movement and in all countries striving for democracy. And what is the only ground on which a new industrial development can now be developed, especially in light of the recent vertical crisis of the BRICS countries? I know I’m repeating myself, but it can never be said enough: the only ground is outside the earthling ground! The geo-lunar industrialization, space tourism, spaceports, low cost vehicles to transport passengers into space, the use of lunar and asteroidal raw materials, the creation of millions of new jobs both on Earth and in space! The globalized world of today no longer offers to its seven and a half billion people, any possibility of low-cost expansion: unavoidable then that the people looking for peace, development and democracy are oriented to migration. While the so-called advanced nations fall into an endless spiral of increasingly devastating conflict. The only possible way is to expand upwards, to start to exploit the incalculable resources of our Solar System. Then the youth will have a very worthwhile perspective, from which to study and engage. And the future will continue to exist, in spite of the Sorcerer’s Apprentices who fomented the birth of ISIS.On October 7, 2015, at the Politecnico of Torino (Italy), the conference “The fledgling industry of civilian space flight” https://www.spacerenaissance.it/eventi/la-nascente-industria-del-volo-spaziale-civile/will discuss these issues.

This Call for Papers (https://www.spacenotwar.org/call_for_papers.php), still evolving, will be soon opened to abstracts submission.

[English review by Susan Singer]

download this article in pdf format

Mar

2014

The development of Civilian Astronautics promises to create massive new employment, and enable definitive and permanent exit from global crisis – by A. Autino, R. Russo, P. Collins

We at SPACE RENAISSANCE have a few clear and simple concepts, of which one is: THERE IS NO GROWTH WITHOUT INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT – and without growth our civilization will die. The only way to really re-start economic growth, beyond merely short-term remedies, is to boot-strap the new era of human expansion beyond the Earth’s atmosphere, by accelerating the development of low-cost space travel. We therefore propose a strongly positive strategy, aiming upwards towards this clear goal. In the present recession, many investors are keeping their money uninvested, while “waiting for better times”. But this is worse than useless: the withdrawal of such funds from circulation reduces economic activity, making the possibility of economic revival weaker and weaker. To avoid this awful scenario, the only way is to create new fields for economic growth. The most promising new industrial opportunity is to finally trigger the new industrial revolution of civilian astronautics, which can quickly reverse the crisis, re-starting an era of double-digit growth in the developed countries as well as in the recently emerging countries, thereby creating millions of new high-level and middle-class jobs, both in space and on Earth. How is this to be done? The key step, which can open a true cornucopia of virtually unlimited future development, is investing in “space tourism”, that is, passenger space travel services, starting with sub-orbital flights. This is a very low-cost new approach to space development, which will supply popular services to the general public, and open new fields for investment with unlimited potential for further growth – through large-scale orbital industries leading on to lunar economic development and beyond. The first phase of these new industries should be supported by governments with friendly fiscal policies, as governments do for other selected industries. A pool of investment funds should also be created, specifically targeted to stimulate development of civilian astronautics in its many aspects.

Download the whole newsletter here: SRI_Newsletter_04032014 The development of Civilian Astronautics promises to create massive new employment, and enable definitive and permanent exit from global crisis

by A. Autino, R. Russo, P. Collins