The White House statement following the successful test launch of the Orion spacecraft is telling. Yes, it may look like a piece of transcendent technology [potentially] aiming for Mars but it’s really about growing American jobs, or at least, that’s how the White House explains it. According to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director John P. Holdren:
“With today’s successful test launch and recovery of the Orion spacecraft, NASA has taken an important step towards the goal of human exploration of the solar system. Support from private-sector aerospace partners for the Orion effort – as well as for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program to develop safe, reliable, and cost-effective access to and from space – reflects the Administration’s commitment to create jobs, bolster the American economy, and build the strongest commercial space industry in the world.”
It’s not quite “One small step for man…”. In fact, it reminds me of Obama’s speech on military action against Islamic State that outlined the rationale for bombing – then segued somewhat surprisingly to talk of the improving outlook for US jobs and the economy.
Orion rising over Earth
A human trip to Mars based on the Orion spacecraft picks where NASA left off in the early 1970s when it considered building a Reusable Nuclear Shuttle, as the next step after the moon mission. But a renewed conquest of space today has to be balanced against terrestrial domestic concerns. The Apollo moon launch occurred when the US still had an industrial economy and it drew fire from community leaders and civil rights activists who questioned the priorities of the US government in sending people to the moon while many of its own citizens lived in poverty.
Today the US doesn’t have a primarily industrial economy: it’s an information and services economy undergoing great change. It leaves many people questioning where their livelihood will come from. The NASA statement on the Orion launch shows that, if nothing else, the Obama Administration ‘gets’ public anxiety in this matter.
Orion capsule parachutes deployed.
It also shows an understanding that a significantly different space-economy will have to emerge to support future efforts towards Mars. Also, the idea of opening space exploration through privatization is consistent with the role of the US government in opening past frontiers such as the West, the sea, the air, and the internet.
To imagine a better future, you have to entertain some sort of utopian vision. This notion comes to mind reading about the debate between David Graeber and Peter Thiel. If there is one lesson from the past it’s that utopias are doomed to failure. But another lesson emerging today (if Thiel, Graeber, and Stephenson – and a bunch of others are right) seems to be that utopian visions are needed to point the way to great things.
One of my favorite lines from the New York Times’ take on the debate is on what entrepreneur Peter Thiel saw as the roots of the innovation stagnation:
[He saw] a loss of nerve and sclerotic bureaucracies. He cited the anarchist slogan “Act as if you are already free,” and praised initiatives like SpaceX, the private space technology company started by his fellow PayPal founder, Elon Musk.
The innovation stagnation has occurred in a time that has lacked utopian idealism, a time when the market capitalism triumphed, and quite clearly triumphed over the imagination of non-market dreamers. To get a sense of this change in mindset in past decades, read this description of Cold War utopias from an exhibit at the Victoria and Albert Museum on Cold War design.
The late 1960s saw the last surge of utopian thinking in the 20th century. Visionaries on both sides of the Cold War envisaged new ways of living.
Radical design groups in the West, with names and images like rock bands, used architecture to challenge social conformity. In the Eastern Bloc, a new generation brought a cosmic sensibility to design.
Many of the most startling schemes reworked Cold War technologies. Inflatable buildings, geodesic domes and electronic media, once conscripted for military use, were now re-imagined as tools for nomadic life or instruments to liberate mind and body.
Do we still think like that? A good amount of the Graeber-Thiel debate has focused on what has gone wrong in recent years, allowing this malaise to take hold in the developed world. Whatever the cause, these days the West, under geo-economic threat from China and geopolitical threat from Russia and the jihadists,
NASA artist rendering of a Bernal Sphere
is exiting a kind of strategic vacuum it has been in since the end of the Cold War. If the imaginations and livelihoods of people in countries like the US, France, Italy and the UK are to be vital in shaping the future, risk must be embraced again to accomplish Big Things.
We might be seeing it occur – just now. And the catalyst won’t just be the ideas of Graeber, et al but geopolitical pressure, which had a huge role in Cold War thinking. As an example, look at NASA’s recent decision to outsource its low earth orbit delivery systems: NASA has been unable to articulate a Big Goal for years. The agency has been beset by bureaucratic inaction and the whims of congress for decades. The cancellation of the Space Shuttle program forced the US to rely entirely on the Russians – yes, those Russians – for rocket engines to get US satellites to space, while US astronauts had rely on Russian vehicles to get to the International Space Station.
In turn, NASA has selected Boeing and SpaceX to deliver astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station. The dual contracts are “a throwback to an earlier era when the US used large space and defense contracts as a way to seed entire industries.” If all goes well and this business of rocket has been effectively put in private hands NASA can “focus on an even more ambitious mission – sending humans to Mars.”
From NASA’s announcement:
The contracts include at least one crewed flight test per company with at least one NASA astronaut aboard to verify the fully integrated rocket and spacecraft system can launch, maneuver in orbit, and dock to the space station, as well as validate all its systems perform as expected.
In other words, NASA, in awarding the contracts, is accepting risk because of the urgency imposed on it by Russia. This is significant, because arguably, what has been missing since the market-triumphed over the US, following the end of the Cold War, has been an acceptance of risk in exchange in pursuing a payoff for undertaking Big Things.
Here is how Stephenson describes the tendency to avoid risk in his famous essay:
In the legal environment that has developed around publicly traded corporations, managers are strongly discouraged from shouldering any risks that they know about—or, in the opinion of some future jury, should have known about—even if they have a hunch that the gamble might pay off in the long run. There is no such thing as “long run” in industries driven by the next quarterly report.
Stephenson’s argument about risk would be familiar to any investor. Greater risk is linked to greater future reward. But something about the triumph of corporations has driven that logic from executive decision-making for non-market ventures. (Yes, Wall Street showed a zeal for risk before the financial crisis) From Stephenson’s same essay:
Innovation can’t happen without accepting the risk that it might fail. The vast and radical innovations of the mid-20th century took place in a world that, in retrospect, looks insanely dangerous and unstable…Competition between the Western democracies and the communist powers obliged the former to push their scientists and engineers to the limits of what they could imagine and supplied a sort of safety net in the event that their initial efforts did not pay off. A grizzled NASA veteran once told me that the Apollo moon landings were communism’s greatest achievement.
And so today, we have NASA under pressure. And it’s responding. Scott Hubbard, ex-director of the NASA Ames Research Center says that with this decision, along with NASA decision to outsource other commercial transportation, the US has ‘”bet the farm’ on companies filling the gap left by the Space Shuttle’s retirement.
The decision to hand over the low earth orbit launches and transportation to Boeing and SpaceX marks an important step, he says.
“I believe this new approach is America’s “secret weapon” in what some have described as a space race with China. And, as far as I can tell, while the rest of the world is still stuck in a nearly government-only mode, NASA, with the support of the Obama administration, is letting loose the creativity of American know-how.”
“As with the early 20th century airmail routes that helped stimulate aviation, NASA’s commercial programs are now the anchor tenants in the government transfer of space services to the private sector. This in turn will enable a robust new business enterprise and allow NASA to focus on Mars — the ultimate target for exploration.”
The US government is once again opening frontiers, in other words. And as any historian would tell you, opening frontiers is fraught with risk. But the risk it entails also brings rewards. It was the geopolitical nudge from Russia that set off this change within NASA. But NASA’s acceptance of risk would not have been out of place during the historical Cold War. Embracing that risk will allow the organization to achieve escape velocity from its own bureaucratic gravity-field. And what incentive do Boeing and SpaceX have to get the job done, aside from continued funding? The invisible force called: ‘Your country is counting on you.’
But in order to see a time when commercial space services are robust and NASA is focused on its proper role, (‘Explore Deep Space’, as Hubbard says) one needs the utopian vision of the future, a time in which people book trips to low earth orbit somewhat like they booked trips on the Concorde. Hard to imagine? Depends of where you sit. If you’re a business analyst trying to work out the costs and profits, it may seem daunting. If you’re thinking like you’re already free, bringing “wild fantasies to reality” is not so hard to imagine.
NASA mentions Russia by name in the press release, which announces the selection of Boeing and SpaceX to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station. The plan includes a test run for each of the companies.
Says NASA administrator Charlie Bolden… “We are one step closer to launching our astronauts from US soil on American spacecraft and ending the nation’s sole reliance on Russia by 2017. Turning over low-Earth orbit transportation to private industry will also allow NASA to focus on an even more ambitious mission – sending humans to Mars.”
A couple things. First, there is some urgency about the plan to certify the companies as contractors, driven by the geopolitical situation with Russia, which has cutting off sales to the US in response to US sanctions over Moscow’s actions in Crimea and Ukraine.
The second point is key.
“The companies will own and operate the crew transportation systems and be able to sell human space transportation services to other customers in addition to NASA, thereby reducing the costs for all customers,” the press release states.
The goal of “opening up” the market of space travel to the private sector has been around since the original space race. If these companies can meet the requirements – and in time – then a wider dividend may be gained. The question is the quality of the rockets and space capsules. Also, SpaceX’s inclusion adds some competitive juice to US government contracting for space – which can’t be bad.
3D printing in space is the kind of new application of a novel technology that could open up a fresh chapter in both space and manufacturing. It reduces the supply chain to almost nothing, making it self-contained in a way that serves the International Space Station and other orbitals. The practical, real [out-of-this-world] uses will answer a fundamental question that has been asked of 3D printing in recent years: What’s it good for?
Niki Werkheiser, 3D Print project manager at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center said the technology has already been tested in zero-G and there are several examples of the kind of tools it could produce on the ISS, where it will arrive later this month.
Will 3D printing in space go together like chocolate and peanut butter? If so, they combination could expand the capabilities of space missions, including to Mars.
“The end result could be far less reliance on resupply from Earth, leading to cheaper and more efficient missions to faraway destinations such as Mars.”
So file this under the better, stronger, faster department. It may point the way to new applications. Because in recent years, looking at our intake of consumer goods, it’s not immediately clear what 3D printing would replace. Part of that reason, is that we just haven’t thought of it yet. Once the gadget, the technology, the need become apparent, 3D printing can fill the gap and form the market. But it’s entirely possible that what 3D printing allows will spur new products we haven’t thought of yet. Again, space could be a valuable testing ground for Earth because space capsules, like far-off islands, are isolated places with sometimes very specific needs. From Space.com:
“I remember when the tip broke off a tool during a mission,” said NASA astronaut T.J. Creamer, who lived aboard the space station from December 2009 to June 2010. “I had to wait for the next shuttle to come up to bring me a new one. Now, rather than wait for a resupply ship to bring me a new tool, in the future, I could just print it.”
And rather than a supply rocket, it could just as easily be a container ship sailing the seas. Or a truck crossing a continent. Thinking of today’s news, however, I imagine in a time of renewed sanctions, certain countries will also have every impetus to harness the power of 3D printing to make up for imports they can no longer acquire. Just a thought. In any case, watch this area.
The Cold War Daily 