What is needed is a total policy of tipping everything NASA does in the direction of re-usability and sustainability, exactly the opposite of the “Old NASA”, which initiated the program to build the “Giant Expendable Lems” that I warned about in 2005.

If a government-sponsored program can use private fuel transport to orbit, and employ re-usable lunar ferries and lunar propellant depots in Low lunar orbit and on the surface, along with early ISRU technology development, it will make it much easier for any following commercial enterprize to take off like the railroad you mention.

Very early robotic tests of ISRU equipment would be justified to speed up the use of local materials once human crews land. It will take multiple cycles of build and test before we get reliably working extraction and purification equipment.

I agree with Spudis that the “flexible path” should focus on buildng the transport infrastructure which will let us go everywhere we want. I do think that Luna will be more important this century for mining and commerce, and Mars, assuming we reach it with humans, will be more important for settlement. Once we can easily and cheaply move thousands of tons of material around the solar system, Luna can be easily colonized.

Remember that the lunar rocks and crust are still extremely dry; it is just regolith at the poles that has the volatiles. On Mars, there are demonstrably millions of cubic miles of water and other volatiles at many locations.

As far as public support, if you want to inspire, you have to do something inspiring. Almost nothing we have done since Apollo fits that description, even though Apollo is the last thing we want to emulate.

In response to Dave, I want to say that my musings about the sugar daddy (possibly) named Google were my own and not voiced by anyone else. I was just trying to extrapolate from Bob Wegeng’s comments and figure out what the analogue of the Great Northern Railroad might be. In principle I agree with all of your “plurals” (plural customers, plural markets, plural companies), but I do think that in real life there tends to be one bellwether that leads the flock.

Don, you’d probably have a great argument with Paul. Maybe you already have. Anyway, I think the opinion of several participants there (e.g., Clive Neal, the chair of LEAG) was that NASA could get a pretty good bang for its buck by pledging to support the emerging markets of, on and for the moon — thereby allowing companies to gain a toehold. This is also what James (#2 commenter above) seems to be saying.

The end of my post reflects a reality that, even if we should be making plans for a new paradigm, nevertheless there is a big shoe that needs to drop before we can really evaluate where we are right now. If Obama and Congress really do cough up the $3 billion that the Augustine Commission recommended, that would (optimistically) buy more time for a smooth transition to the new paradigm. I don’t think that anyone actually expects that to happen, though.

Have you read my critique of the NRC report “The Scientific Context for Exploration of the Moon?” The real question is how should the nation/NASA prioritize a limited budget to get the most bang for the buck? And remember the first “A” in NASA when you contemplate the answer. Using limited funds to study the Moon should be of lowest priority, in my opinion, compared to all the other goals and objectives NASA should be pursuing. Cheers

Good summary of the meeting. The person who mentioned that “50-50″ are actually good polling numbers was Mark Robinson of Arizona State Univ. NASA has never seen those as good numbers; they want everyone to love them. I think that is a quixotic quest — most are at best indifferent to space. As I mentioned, that’s an asset, not a liability.

The good news is that the discussion turned to true sustainability – which means economic sustainability. The bad news is that they seemed to conclude that they’ve got to wait for one single sugar daddy to somehow pay for a private, economically-sustainable equivalent to Apollo. And that is equally wrong.

The railroad succeeded because it had a wide variety of customers. And they picked up more customers for each mile they went – earning money long before it was complete. It’s not the sugar daddy that’s as important as the demonstrated reliability of the technology, and, the known existence of customers – plural.

Talking to space entrepreneurs over the years their most important need is customers; followed by money. Technology is no higher than 4th on the list, with third being non-technical factors related to ITAR/liability/insurance/regulations, etc. etc.

Within the commercial space initiatives effort inside of NASA the proposed emphasis is on: creating industries, each of which by definition has more than one player; helping to create markets (again, plural) by seeding demand with whatever funds can be obtained; real R&D where technology is either truly needed still, or at least, has not been demonstrated yet in a sustainable manner; and partnering with companies (again, plural) in a way that requires them to have true skin in the game and doesn’t cover all of their costs.

The intent is to focus on those handful of items that are real game-changers, that really make a difference, and then ollowing the above type of paradigm. These would include:
- focusing on commercial development of RLVs;
- focusing on dramatically increasing the flight rate and reliability of those RLVs, starting with the new suborbital RLVs.
- expand the markets available, with as many customer classes as possible;
- demonstrate in-space servicing, starting with refueling, in a sustainable manner; which means: probably robotically; storables first; LOX second; cryos like methane and hydrogen, when required.
- support non-technical government initiatives, such as: ITAR reform, launch vouchers, loan guarantees, etc.

After all; it’s kinda hard to pontificate on the moon if we still don’t have sustainable space operations to and from LEO, and sustainable space operations LEO and beyond; now, does it?

NASA, working with other government space agencies, going through