LOOKING THROUGH NASA'S CRYSTAL BALL: What comes next, after the ISS mess is sorted out? Leonard David takes a look at NASA's plans for the future, from a strategic plan put together by HEDS.

• Near-term Plans, 2000-2005 -- Commercial Development, Space Shuttle 7- to 14-day mission duration, International Space Station 30- to 90-day missions
  • Shuttle operations privatization
  • Shuttle upgrades (until a replacement system is available)
  • Space Shuttle, ISS, and expendable launchers are foundations for utilization and commercialization of Earth orbit
  • "As the Space Station develops, NASA will open the facility aggressively to commercial use." (Note the structure of that sentence...hmm.)
  • Encouragement of entrepreneurs and scientists to use the station for "Pathfinder" projects "to bring business concepts to reality".
  • HEDS Enterprise to partner with industry and organizations to develop and demonstrate new technologies (Would those be "critical technologies", "enabling technologies", or "emerging technologies"?)

• Mid-term Plans, 2006-2011 -- Extending human reach beyond low-Earth orbit, 100-day mission duration
  
  
  
  • Continuation of the beyond-Earth-orbit exploration begun during Apollo
    
  • 100-day class missions to Earth-moon and Earth-sun libration points, where new space telescopes and exploration "infrastructures" (very, very small buildings?) could be set up
    
  • Further exploration of the lunar surface
    
  • Accumulation of experience, which would reduce risk and cost of the more ambitious follow-on missions
    
  • Development of commercial resource utilization on the Moon and ISRU support of operations on other planets (Mars, perhaps? Oops, no, we can't say that specifically, can we?)
    
  • Establishment of space-based and lunar "infrastructures" (!) to support space commercialization and thereby future exploration plans
    

• Long-term Plans, 2012-2015 -- Extending human reach beyond Earth orbit, 500- to 1000-day mission duration
  
  
  
  • Exploration of martian surface via robots, to support "integrated human/robotic missions" to the planet (though the focus here appears to be on martian geoscience, rather than establishing a permanent presence on the planet)
    
  • Possible exploration and commercial exploitation of asteroids between Earth and Jupiter, by robotic probes and/or humans
    
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• Beyond -- Mission duration, 2000-day and longer
  
  
  
  • Possible human missions to Ganymede and Titan later in the century, based on knowledge and infrastructure developed during earlier missions.
    

  Well, it's ambitious. A few slides further into the presentation, there is a "strategic roadmap" which gives a little more detail as to how these plans might be carried out.

  One subtle detail that catches my eye is the definition of the "phases" based on mission duration. It sneaks in the idea that human presence elsewhere in the solar system will be on a temporary, rotating basis -- or, more to the point, it ignores permanent settlement. To me, this reflects a bias in favor of continuing the "professional astronaut class" mentality, by which space is to be the exclusive domain of highly-trained NASA professionals: "You can't go there yourself, but you can watch and cheer as our heroes race, Phoebus-like, across the heavens and back to Earth again."

  To be fair, there are numerous references in the document to research that will "enable humans to live and work permanently in space", but the plans themselves don't seem to reflect this. Even the strategic roadmap for this research reflects a mission-oriented rather than permanent settlement bias -- for example, the research into technologies that "enable humans to work in space or on other planets -- independent of Earth-provided logistics -- for extended periods" (emphasis mine)...but not permanently.

  On the other hand, there are a number of heartening items in the document. For example, the plan for complete transition of ISS to a "customer-driven commercial operation", and the numerous calls for commercial participation, commercial development, and the use of commercially-provided infrastructure and services to support future undertakings. Indeed, there is an entire section on commercial development of space (note the logo in the upper right corner of the slides in this section...very clever). In this section are proposals to streamline commercial access to ISS, allow docking of commercial modules and payloads to the station, and the development of a fully-commercial infrastructure co-orbiting with the ISS and using it "primarily as a service center". A glaring omission here is space tourism, but nothing in the text seems to preclude it as one of the potential "commercial activities" -- an explicit mention of tourism would have been a plus, though.

  Posted by T.L. James on July 19, 2002 11:59 AM