The Coalition for Deep Space Exploration is an alliance of space industry, businesses and advocacy groups collaborating to reinforce the value and benefits of deep space exploration with the public and our nation's leaders. Their stated goal is to build lasting support for a long term sustainable strategic direction for human space exploration and science ensuring that the United States remains a leader in space science and technology. The coalition is led by Dr. Mary Lynne Dittmar, who serves as president and CEO. A 25 year veteran of the space industry specialising in strategy public engagement in Space Policy, Mary Lynne assumed leadership of the coalition in October of 2015. Prior to this, Dr. Dittmar coordinated research and development and later managed flight operations for the Boeing Company on the International Space Station programme. Later she acted as a special advisor to the NASA astronauts office before her appointment as Boeing’s Chief Scientist for Commercial Utilisation at the ISS. More recently, she was senior policy advisor to the centre for the Advancement of Science in Space which manages the International Space Station National Laboratory. She has also served as a senior advisor to NASA, the Department of Defence and the Federal Aviation Administration.
The Coalition for Deep Space Exploration is an alliance of space industry, businesses and advocacy groups collaborating to reinforce the value and benefits of deep space exploration with the public and our nation's leaders. Their stated goal is to build lasting support for a long term sustainable strategic direction for human space exploration and science ensuring that the United States remains a leader in space science and technology. The coalition is led by Dr. Mary Lynne Dittmar, who serves as president and CEO. A 25 year veteran of the space industry specialising in strategy public engagement in Space Policy, Mary Lynne assumed leadership of the coalition in October of 2015. Prior to this, Dr. Dittmar coordinated research and development and later managed flight operations for the Boeing Company on the International Space Station programme. Later she acted as a special advisor to the NASA astronauts office before her appointment as Boeing’s Chief Scientist for Commercial Utilisation at the ISS. More recently, she was senior policy advisor to the centre for the Advancement of Science in Space which manages the International Space Station National Laboratory. She has also served as a senior advisor to NASA, the Department of Defence and the Federal Aviation Administration.
Chris Wright
The Coalition for deep space exploration is an alliance of space industry, businesses and advocacy groups collaborating to reinforce the value and benefits of deep space exploration with the public and our nation's leaders. Their stated goal is to build lasting support for a long term sustainable strategic direction for human space exploration and science ensuring that the United States remains a leader in space science and technology. The coalition is led by Dr. Mary Lynn ditmar, who serves as president and CEO, a 25 year veteran of the space industry specialising in strategy public engagement in Space Policy, maybe Lin assumed leadership with the coalition in October of 2015. Prior to this, Dr. ditmar coordinated research and development and later managed flight operations for the Boeing Company on the International Space Station programme. Later she acted as a special advisor to the NASA astronauts office before her appointment is Boeing, chief scientist for commercial utilisation at the ISS. More recently, she was senior policy advisor to the centre for the Advancement of Science in space which manages the International Space Station National Laboratory, she has also served as a senior advisor to NASA, the Department of Defence and the Federal Aviation Administration.
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Chris Wright
Dr. Mary Lynne Dittmar. Thank you very much for joining me today. The first thing I wanted to ask you I read something or the mission statement for Coalition for deep space exploration which said it is to reinforce the value and benefits of deep space exploration with the public and with our nation's leaders. Tell me about the challenge that that represents, in particular the parts about communicating your vision to the public, not just to participants in space.
The biggest challenge there is the competition for the public's attention is, you know, part of the part of the media. media outlets have proliferated over the last 20 years, the landscapes completely different than it was 20 years ago. Our attention spans have decreased as a result of this, I'm holding up my iPhone, okay, resist, as I think as a result of sort of just this sort of constant stream of information. So being able to create something that has enough interest and enough longevity, to tell a story that is not easily told in 140 or 280 characters or in a 22nd soundbite. That's really the biggest challenge, right? And it's not just the challenge for space. I mean, it's just it's a general challenge for communications in this day and age. So I think one of the things this is pretty interesting, at least insofar as the space is concerned is that we do get some really good visuals. And there's some awesome visuals that come from space on the science side and the exploration side. But some of the stuff, especially in the last two or three years, on the science side, you know, we've black holes, we have an entirely different view of Jupiter than we did even two years ago. I don't know if you've seen any of those photos, but they're just mind boggling, extraordinary photos that came from the Cassini Saturn. And so I think, so we do get the we get the advantage of those sorts of images. And then of course, when things get launched, people really like smoke and fire come out and back into rocket. And I think that as we move back toward launching American astronauts from American soil, which we'll do begin doing, I think for certain next year, and then after that, at least yearly minimum More often than that, I think that'll that'll help at least for a while, right until people get bored with that. So,
yes, and that mission statement also mentioned the nation's leaders, they also have a great deal on their mind a lot of competition with funds more than anything. And of course, they vary from one to another. Each administration has bright ideas about space, which are rarely the same as the previous one. So how does that affect the challenge of wanting to explore?
So I think we're we've seen changes that have created some degree of whiplash for NASA and in particular, and then some for the industry that that sort of follows that lead that's come that comes from from Pennsylvania Avenue is on the one hand and Pennsylvania Avenue, we have the White House and each administration wants to put its own stamp on what's happening in the Space Programme. Very often they would have put it they want to put a stamp on it that's different than the administration that came before. Sometimes it feels like just because It's different than the one that came before. So you end up with sort of differing targets and different timelines and all the rest of that. And so this certainly is a challenge, right? Because that gets translated through the President's budget request. And then the policy that accompanies that from each administration. That said, Congress has actually been extraordinarily stable with regard to its support for human spaceflight and for space science, and over the last 10 years, in particular, for commerce. I think that there's been by kamrul, meaning both houses of Congress, both the House of Representatives and the Senate, as well as bipartisan, both Democrats and Republicans have been strongly supportive of NASA's programmes. I would argue that they're not supportive enough when it comes to budget. Or perhaps it is that there's a combination of congressional desire to see NASA achieve a great many extraordinary things and the budget, that's according to them does not always kept pace with those ambitions. But that said, Really, since the 2005, what we call in the States, we have NASA authorization acts, which essentially set policy from Congress. And then we have appropriations acts, which are the actual writing of the check and the allocation of money. And the authorization language since 2005, has really been remarkably consistent. So that's now going on 15 years of, of sort of, you know, continuing support for human space exploration kind of going in the same direction, as well as science. And then in the last several years, we've seen some pretty active change from the hill with regard to addressing regulatory barriers and trying to sort of make a better playing field that allows business to have more predictability.
Now, you mentioned commerce and business there. How important is it But space exploration beyond what it achieves for knowledge and inspiration also has some sense of commercial benefits some benefit to private industry.
So we had to go back in time. You know, there's we always have to guard a little bit about revisionist history. I think it's probably the human condition. But it is important to go back and say, during Apollo, and before Apollo, even with the early early science, science missions that came before Apollo, it was always industry that was, you know, developing the spacecraft and building the spacecraft. And, and, and the launch vehicles, right. I mean, they were doing that under contract to the agency, but it's always been that there's been, there have been industries that involved were involved in that, you know, we lose track a little bit sometimes. But under Apollo, there were 400,000 Americans that were engaged in Apollo and a lot of those were in small businesses. That hasn't changed that much in the sense that now that I'm just gonna talk about human space exploration. For a minute, and when we look at the big systems that are being developed by the government to go well beyond Earth orbit, those systems are also supported by a huge supplier chain, which is made up of small businesses, hundreds of them who are not publicly traded. Right. I mean, some of these are but some of them aren't, you know, a lot of them are relatively young firms that have sort of come into it. And they're using those government contracts to sort of improve their not only their business outlook, but allow them to invest more in their own specific technologies that the developing as well, certain people, some of these are the they're the regional hub, right for their areas, which is, you know, awesome. And so, so there's always been this private enterprise aspect of it. But what's changed and it's really what people are mean now when they talk about sort of economic interest in it is that the country Attracting mechanisms that NASA is using now, okay, are partly traditional mechanisms. And then partly, I won't say newer, they actually been around since the 50s. But they're using them more. And so what they do is sort of create public private partnerships. So the government is investing some and then the business is investing some to develop some capabilities, which then are retained by the business as its own asset, right. So from a business owner, okay, what I would say is that they're maximising their portfolio by making use of government investment, okay, in their own money, and then and their money and then they're able to go back and sell those basically those services back to the government. So that's what's changed. And so when you talk about SpaceX, for example, there's a myth that SpaceX has done everything on its own dime, still a lot of stuff on its on its dime in that if it's an investor's Jeff Bezos, Bezos is probably the one that is the real anomaly here because he created a bank called Amazon Okay, and then he withdraws from that bank on a yearly basis. But he too is sort of he's he's after the government contracts, because for those folks government is a customer, right, which is, which is fine. So I think economic benefit is always been there. It's important for it to continue to be there, it doesn't make sense for businesses to operate continually losses. For those publicly traded companies, they get a return value to their shareholders for privately held companies, they very often have to return value to their investors. And so I think it's really important when we start talking about developing markets in space and sustained economic activity in space. There's a lot of hype. But the truth is that just like economic development here on Earth, it takes a long, long time and here on Earth, we don't have to worry about the gravity well.
Well, let's look at that in more detail. In what areas do you see a sustainable future for commercial activity in space? What will probably always remain out of reach to be expected to turn a profit from?
So obviously launch vehicles right? I mean, we just witnessed it the discussion is about so when people talk about quote commercial space close quote right now I put this in quotes because I honestly I'm having to I don't know what the word commercial means anymore in this context. I'm not trying to be difficult. I just I'm just I'm not sure. You're making money. You got revenues returning Okay, then your commercial that's good. The the, I think, I think launch vehicles but because some people like musk and others have sort of led the way and in trying to actually long before him. orbital right, which was Dave Thompson founded it was original is the very first commercial space launch company really.
And then before them, not a launch company, there was a company called space hab, which a lot of people don't remember which built lockers, big, big, big compartments that flew on board the shuttle and they actually brought on their own customers, right? So these things have been around in bits and pieces for a while. Probably the launch vehicle market is totally saturated at last count, there were 133 launch companies, okay, around the globe, and there clearly is insufficient markets stay more than just a few. So that'll be interesting to see what happens. Going forward. I think some of the things that are going to be pretty interesting and they really need to be proved out in low Earth orbit first and that's, that's, that's what we're that's what NASA has been working on. And I think it's done a good job. We have not yet established a market though. I kind of whenever I hear market and low Earth orbit, I'm like, Where? Okay, there's a market that's the government Okay, as a customer. And there are certainly companies that are flying onboard the International Space Station, which is a great proving ground by the way, indispensable, okay proving ground for this kind of thing. There are companies that are flying on board station that are testing out, r&d, testing out product development, testing out new technologies, without station We'd be okay. Because there, it's absolutely vital that it'd be used for those things, among other things. So personally, manufacturing in space, right, I think is something that we're going to see a lot more of. There are some advantages that are conveyed by very low gravity, or microgravity, for manufacturing certain kinds of materials. There's a lot of folks that are working on additive manufacturing, so call 3d printing here. And also now on Space Station. Being space, which is a coalition member actually has been a pioneer in that area. And they're interested in trying to see if they can extend their technologies to the moon. So for example, or deeper into space using some robotic manufacturing capability. There's some folks that have talked for a long time about you know, using the station or other platforms that might follow the station to do on orbit assembly of satellites. Once you're out of the gravity, well, you're three quarters of the way there right to almost anywhere and so if you can get up okay, past the pole of Earth's gravity, then it's much easier to sort of push off to go wherever else it isn't, you might want to go. So doing some assembly in low Earth orbit, for example, rather than doing it here and then having to hoist it up, right? There's some real advantages to doing that. So I think we'll see that there's some work in biotechnology. And one of the things I think we need to talk about is space is a forcing function for a whole lot of rapid technology development, right? If you want to go into space, live in space, but human beings in space in particular, there are a lot of problems you got to solve. And those problems have direct application on Earth. So we've already learned a lot, for example, about bone loss and muscle degradation from people who have been on orbit for a long period of time. As a matter of fact, it's a great analogue for a lot of muscle wasting diseases and bone loss conditions here on earth. And from that, people have actually used that to sort of amplify their research down here on the ground for drugs and therapeutic interventions that help people with those kinds of things. We're learning things about how the gene expresses itself in low Earth orbit, just beginning to scratch the surface. But that's coming along with an entire revolution in genetic engineering and biotechnology. And so I think there's things that we're going to learn about that that will have direct application here to be in. To be in space, you have to have power, everything you touch, right? You're either collecting energy or you're storing energy, or you're expending energy or you're distributing energy. We everything we touch. There's also issues having to do with energy here, right? And energies in space must be clean, because essentially, it's extremely difficult to manage outputs and byproducts that are toxic. It's not to say that you're not going to have them but it's but the cleaner the better. Clean water. Another huge bottleneck here on Earth increasingly going to be a problem, right? Lots of people trying to figure out okay, from a business point of view, and humanitarian point of view. What are we going to do about that right is the demands on water get higher and higher and higher, and we pollute more and more and more. Okay, how is it we're going to manage that? Well, we need clean water on Earth, we need habitat here we need we need it there, we need habitats that can be basically managed with very little energy output that recycle everything that are, by definition, green. We don't think about space habitats being green, but they got to be as green as they can be. So there's a tonne of things that go on in space, new sensors for science, new sensors for long range, imaging news. I mean, I could sit here all day and do this. But basically, those things that are necessary for us to be able to advance in space, almost every single one of them has a direct application here and lots of them in markets that are extremely lucrative. So when we talk about the market, and we talk about economic development for space, I think we have to keep in mind that some of that's we're in space use, but a lot of it may be first for us right here on Earth.
So on this idea of manufacturing in space, the one thing that puzzles me about this idea of assembly and orbit is presumably the components of the raw material still have to get up there. I fully understand. But if we're on the moon, then when you're actually mining things to work, that's a different thing. But in orbits what really is the advantage at this stage of manufacturing in orbit?
I think some of it is, if you have Well, let me just say, I'll give an example. I'm using a telescope. If, right now we're building the James Webb telescope, which is hopefully be launched sometime in 21, and is the most complex telescope that we've ever launched. There are many friends who worked on the Apollo programme and think that the James Webb is more audacious than the Apollo programme. This thing is humongous. It's got to go up in a very large rocket in order for it to be able to function in space. Okay, it has to have a huge sunshade that sunshade is literally the size of a large scale parking lot. The James Webb therefore has to be built in such a way that it can fit into a rocket fairing. And then once it gets where it's going, it's got to be able to unfold, right? The engineering complexity that's associated with the entire sequence of events that has to occur in order for the James Webb function is extraordinary. I can see where they say that If, on the other hand, I can assemble this thing in orbit, okay. And still Yes, you're right, I still have to carry mass right? It's the same mass I still have to carry mass up okay, but I can carry it in pieces now. All right, and assuming that I can assemble this thing in orbit, then once it's up north arrived, okay, I can put it in a rather low power trajectory, it may take it a few years to get there. Maybe I can use solar electric propulsion. Maybe I can use new nuclear propulsion, maybe I can use there's a lot of different ways I could do it. Okay, but I don't have to have it packed up in a fairing. Okay, there's other ways I can think about doing it. And I can move those pieces either as a whole okay or as pieces and then do robotic assembly out Further, so I'm trading some of the complexity of getting it off the planet. Okay, and having to deploy it out there for still getting it off the planet. Okay, but basically putting it together in low Earth orbit. So that's one example. Now there's a trade, which is that, that depends on the more pieces, okay, the more I can get it into big chunks of pieces, okay, and assemble it there, the better the fewer launches, the better. Because every time I launch I have lost right potential for loss. So there's, these are all engineering trades that get made every step along the way. But I have a lot more flexibility in some ways. If I can just do it and push it to wherever it is. I want it to go as opposed to having to launch it.
Yes. And then when we do get to the moon, and this brings us I guess, to be Artemis programme, once we're talking about robotic activity on the surface of the moon, what is the potential there?
It's hard to say, um, and that's, you know, so it's like one of these questions you never want to ask somebody whenever you Bring them in, they go well, it's complicated. Instead of saying, well, it's complicated, I'll just say it's hard to say. And the reason for that is what everyone points to on the moon is the presence of volatile water specifically. And yes, we have discovered that there is frozen water on the moon. We don't know exactly what its configuration is, we don't know exactly what its density is or where the odds are pretty good that you're going to find the most of it at the bottom of craters where those craters bottoms have never seen the sun there 300 Kelvin below, maybe. And so the only way to get machinery to operate down there is to put a nuclear reactor down there, small RPGs Okay, or something, but you're gonna have to have something that's a continual sustained heat source. And you may or may not be able to run power down there, right? Not until you warm it up. So you got to put that Down there first doormen up, then you've got to get the machinery down there to harvest it, okay, dig it out, do whatever means there, we're going to be able to be able to do it. And then once we have it back to where robots are humans, okay can be taking a really good look at it, then we got to figure out what does it take to separate? Okay, that water from the soil from the regolith of the men, then we have to do the separation, then once it's separated, we have to break water into its constituent parts, okay, oxygen, hydrogen, to be able to start to get to the point where we can use fuel, then we can figure out how we store the fuel, and so on and on and on. The point is there's a very simplistic kind of perception about this right that we're just going to go there and put robots on robots on the moon. They're going to go get the water, we're going to make oxygen. Okay, and, and hydrogen and then we're going to have rocket fuel and they're going to be refuelling rockets. Yeah. Yes. Okay. But we're talking a long way off with a lot of steps and a tremendous amount of investment. Okay? That's going to be necessary to be able to All this.
So going back a little, I'm very interested in your time at Boeing, you had all sorts of fascinating roles there, including handling flight operations in relation to the International Space Station. So I'm interested in your experience of how state and private sector work together, where the frictions are, how you make it work as a partnership.
So I also have the advantage of having, you know, started a couple of businesses myself, and so I've seen it from like, the only place I have not been as I have not, although I've been advising the government for years, I have not actually taken a government badge at any point is not because it just hasn't been right timing or rate setting or but the but I will say that is if I if I put on my businesswomen hat right. Especially if I'm an entrepreneurial firm or a small firm and I'm really trying to bootstrap up a new and promising technology one that may have a lot of value, okay for either just pure commercial work in space, or I may have application for exploration or science or any of those things. Right? I am I'm going to be very interest And government is a partner and the government is an investor. But otherwise, frankly, I'm on the government and my wife. And so those strings that have to come Okay, along with all kinds of contracts, okay, we even if you're these sort of open sorts of contracts, that's important because there is a congress that writes the checks and it has oversight authority, and there's a responsibility to, to steward the taxpayer funds. And so I have to understand that as a business on the other hand, okay, I don't want the government to be engaged in my day to day activities. This is one of the big struggles with with building government systems, okay, that any business person will tell you, the bane of the existence has ever had, right. It's all the ever had that's imposed by having to basically meet all of the government Acquisition Regulations, okay. And a lot, they're standing armies of people. That's all they do, guys, they basically is your compliance for these things. So especially if I'm a small business owner, I want whatever approach is going to give Give me the cleanest way through that, right, that does not require me to make tremendous investments in my auditing system or my reporting system or my compliance system, because that's just overhead, right? So I can get paid for that. It's not like I can't get paid for that. But it's still, it's still really sort of impacts my ability to be able to move in a very nimble way. So the sorts of tensions that you tend to see both in very large companies, okay, and in very small companies. All right, has to do with the fact that everyone would like to be nimble, okay, everyone to like to be able to respond to environmental changes, okay, make judgments about what makes sense from from a strategic business planning point of view. When do I need to pivot sometimes on a dime, right? I don't do a lot of that. But sometimes I need to be able to pivot on a dime. And when you're engaged with the government, okay, when the government is basically funding you as well as acting as a customer, there absolutely are tensions there. There are also constraints on the use of government facilities. So the space station is an international facility that, you know, came together through 16 partner nations. Okay. And, and, and there are constraints, okay, on operations inside that space station. So let's talk about space station. There are constraints inside that, you know, I had people coming to me back when I was doing mission operations. So we were just beginning to really kind of mission planning, mostly we were concerned at that point building assembling it, but we were just starting to do mission planning on some of the payloads issues, right. And we had people who just wanted to come and do all kinds of very interesting things. And we had to go Yeah, no, because a it was a government facility and you're just not going to be able to do some of those things. believe that your imagination not gonna be able to do some of those things on board a government facility. Okay, but also the government's been doing business in such a such a way for a long, long period of time and when you're a company and you start pushing the edge like guys, I need to be able to do promotionals for my products, okay. A US government astronaut, okay. cannot participate in a promotional for commercial projects. So if I'm going to be filming there or I'm going to use the station in some way to sort of promote it, there guidelines I have to operate inside if I'm a purely purely commercial interest and I'm really looking at markets being on the government, that's very frustrating to me, okay, or potentially very frustrating to me. So there are those kinds of things there's also safety reviews, which are have often been very frustrating to some folks, right? Because Because the agency is concerned about making sure that both the vehicle and the people okay are safe. So you have an I don't envy the safety guys their jobs, okay. Especially when there's new stuff that happens. new ideas, new operations, well, what do I judge that against straight which my baseline for making a decision about how that fits or doesn't? So again, from a business point of view, well, I'm just trying to fly my thing on board the space station and now you put me through yet another safety review because I've just changed mine design. I get it but time money right. So these are sort of the moment the places where there tends to be sort of ongoing friction. And it's very difficult to imagine how you're really going to get out of that. I think NASA has tried, especially with station. They came out in July with new policies for commercial use of the station. I think they're trying to move.
And there have been some really forward leaning people, especially on the space station programme, that have been trying to get some things done in so many ways. But it is it is attention and I think it's going to continue. What do
you think NASA learned from Apollo in terms of how to make partnerships work?
Not much. And that's nothing against the agency. They they learned how to make partnerships work with businesses, and they certainly learned how to make partnerships work with states, interestingly enough across the country. They learn how to make partnership work, I think in some ways with with Congress, but let's not not forget, Apollo was a peacetime version, it was a proxy war. And it was fought. And I put that, again in quotes. It was a competition that took place, making use of ballistic missile technology that was repurposed, okay, and, you know, put human beings on the top of these things, right, and then made them bigger and better and put human beings on top of those. And the purpose of this thing was technological, ideological, public relations, geopolitical competition with the Russian system, not just the country, right, but really the system. And in an effort to demonstrate that one system was better than the other for the purposes of what was happening then which was a global struggle, right for dominance. And in to see it in any other light, right. And this is frankly, something that annoys me all here. People say, well, the Apollo programme ended because it was not economically sustainable. No, the Apollo programme ended. It was never intended to be economically sustainable. Nobody ever even considered economic sustainability. Okay, it ended because it met its policy objective. Okay. And once it had done that, then the whole reason for it to continue except for people inside the agency and others who were like, then not caught up in space exploration, which was awesome. But the reason the policy reason for it right, had ended. And so now it was okay, we'll continue in space exploration, but let's get this thing back in the box. That's the goal of it, right. I mean, that was why so it's interesting now sort of, listen, listen, people sort of say, Well, it wasn't economics to samples like guys. It was never designed to be. It was designed to mean a purpose. And it meant that purpose brilliantly stunningly, I mean, especially if you look back. If you have the chance or haven't seen it, Apollo 11, which is a masterpiece of that film. they slow down the launch, okay of the Apollo 11 and you can literally See the irregularities in the rivets and the engine bells, okay of these huge engines and you look at that and realise this is human beings coming together to do something that was actually almost technically beyond their reach, right. And the fact that the fact that happened is still extraordinary to me.
And though as you say it was never intended to be economically sustainable, it's often argued that it did have great benefits in the consumer world. And the classic example during the Apollo era would be the Apollo Guidance Computer and be influenced on subsequent computing. So would you agree with that?
Absolutely. agree that and that story is fascinating, right? So that the integrated circuit was actually being developed before the guy in his computer, MIT Draper labs and and it got, you know, they needed Okay, that capability for the Guidance Computer and they took it up and so ended up in the Minuteman missile on this thing's proliferated like crazy during that period of time. And as everyone started to use it, then the came down. And eventually we ended up in Silicon Valley. Now that's a very short version of the story. But, but a true one, the guys, the folks that were involved in sort of developing that and advancing that didn't migrate to Silicon Valley and did start little companies like Intel and others, right, which eventually led us to again, it wasn't picking up my phone, right. So yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's, that's one of the most interesting stories that came out of that era. But we have tonnes of things that have come out of that, right. There's imaging capabilities that were developed for Apollo, which then later Okay, over many years, and sort of evolved to have tremendous uses. I mean, both in in science, also military applications, but also biomedical applications, right. A lot of the sensors that were stuck on astronauts to monitor heartbeats, okay, as they were launching and respiration and all the rest of that, that later found its way into medical technology was drawn from very early work there but then found its way back. There's it's almost hard to not if you look at it from that point of view, it's not It was hard to not see those loops get closed. And of course, without that work that got done, we wouldn't have the commercial launch sector today that we have, right? I mean, all of that the computational power that was developed in order to be able to do it was minimal, right, much less than my phone. Okay, that got us to the moon and, and got us back then gave rise to a lot of work. And as those computational cost came down, and that technology migrated out into the private sector, and then you started to get the advent of, of these new technologies that then turn around. So there's a there's a very virtuous cycle here, from government investment development, ad systems, right and then eventually migration of some of these into the marketplace. And then eventually those things come together and then get folded back in and so you have to have a long view, you have to be able to see it over decades. Which is why I say things like there's not yet a market in space. I really want to see it happen in low Earth orbit first. I think it's gonna take a lot longer on the moon that a lot of people wanted to see but that's okay. Economic Development here and technology. Development here takes decades to we just don't think about it that way.
It's interesting at this point about markets and space, I think brings us to something that Jim bridenstine said quite recently about pushing for NASA to be a buyer of services rather than hardware. And to be able to choose from a range of suppliers who could offer the same service not just to them but to everybody else. So two things come from that, firstly, I'll be there yet. And secondly, where do we go from here because evolution you spoke of where does it go from here?
So I think we're getting there for low Earth orbit right and, and there's a great paper I'll refer you to which I'm blocking the name Have a look it up on my phone, but it's got it was by Ralph coordinar and accordion or was Eisenhower's device for the war ministry and then became a head of GE. And in 1961, he wrote a paper on basically the commercial, private enterprise aspect of space exploration. And this is written at the same time as Eisenhower in the same way Era Eisenhower written Crossfire and speech right and warned against the military industrial complex sort of taking over things. And cordina really believed that very strongly, he was arguing that it's going to it's clear, and it's not a fact he has these three diagrams, which are just extremely prescient, this thing was written in 61, published in 61. And he has these three diagrams where he shows that, okay, the initial government work, right, and we've gone to me and we're going to the moon, we understand that, but essentially, the initial government exploration work is going to be around low Earth orbit. And then that technology will sort of eventually be transferred to the private sector, and then government can leave that and it's going to go out to the next places, and he had posited the Moon, Mars and Venus, right, and then go beyond. But his idea was that this would take decades, and that what it would require was for the government to get out there first and sort of develop these capabilities and then for them to migrate to the private sector which would iterate on them and refine them and advance those technologies. Right. And then it Move behind the government and take that spot. And so you can think about these things as sort of a series of circles, concentric circles, right moving out. And that's kind of how it's going. It's, it is amazing to go back and look at that paper. I use it when I teach classes up on the on the hill. That is, that's where we are now. So we're at the point where government is we have a station, which you know, remains the government facility, but we're bringing in other interests there and then moving moving away from providing Launch Services and launch and launching crew, right? Which is a huge thing, right for NASA to be able to say, okay, you know, we're going to entrust that to other entities. We're going to, we're going to play there, we're going to be there with him. But we're going to entrust that to other agencies and we're going to turn our focus out toward the next step which is going back to them in and developing a station there. Okay, like a little, everybody calls it sort of a combination to station a spaceship of the gateway, right? And then using that to do a whole whole lot of things, right. I mean scientific measurements do sorties to the service practices docking practice refuelling practice, we don't even know what all to sort of eventually prepare us to go beyond that. And then we assume that there will be people that are coming behind that. So we're going to use some launchers that are coming onto the market to sort of help supply that. One thing I try to remind people sometimes it costs us a little less than $2 billion a year to do logistics and supply services to the space station which is 230 miles up. Now we're going to put people on the moon, okay, we want to leave them there on a more or less sustained basis over time, okay, and we're going to put a gateway there and stuff that's 230,000 miles up. So the traffic model and the logistics model and the resupply model is significantly different, right and if and commercial providers doing Going to Leo are still going to be about $2 billion a year. So what are we talking about? Like, you know, going to the moon? Well, absolutely, we have to continue to push these boundaries. But for a while, we're going to have to have those government systems, okay, that are basically supporting all that. And then the idea would be that as more and more capabilities Come on, hopefully costs come down, we'll see. Okay, stuffs an expensive proposition, then you would have, you would have government than pushing out again, right, toward Mars. So, in Mars, the distance from here to the moon is 230,000 miles, the distance from here to Mars is 100 and 40 million miles. They're really not even remotely comparable, right? So a whole other set of issues that emerge, and there is no business case for going to Mars. There's just no business case for going to Mars. There's really not a business case for going to the moon yet. So yeah, it'll be a while before we have that sort of being owned or taken over by private industry decades and decades, if ever, I mean, Mars is a long, long way with a lot of problems.
One of the things that we wanted to ask you about was evolution of funding during the Apollo era resolved, ultimately NASA and tax dollars which were going out to private contractors, but if you look today SpaceX has venture capitalists on its board, both it and Blue Origin are backed by billionaires, Virgin Galactic through a circuitous route has been listed on the New York Stock Exchange. So what do you think of that? And how all of that this evolution of funding affects space?
So for those of us that have been really interested in sort of seeing the the rise of private enterprise in parallel with but separate from the space agency and government funding, all of these are just very exciting developments, right? Because what they're suggesting is that there may actually be economic development capability in space, there may actually be business cases to be made in space. For me, the launch the launch thing is, is sort of obvious. I mean, I'm not saying it's not hard and it's not challenging and it is difficult to run businesses with the costs that are associated with that. Sometimes I'll try and minimise it at all. But what I am saying is that for me, what's what really starts to get exciting is when you start to think about other than launch, right, what else? And that that's the great unknown is The Undiscovered Country. Shakespeare, right? It's just it's very unclear. We got some ideas. But it's unclear, okay, what those things are going to be? How do you really close a business case? investors who come into space, there's an old joke, right, which is how do you make a small fortune in space? You start with the large one, right? And that's true, because the costs are so tremendous rate of trying to operate in this environment that will kill you any one of 15 ways. So So how you actually go about doing that the fact that we now have investors that are coming to the table that are putting money not only to the launch companies but putting money into some of these companies that are talking about manufacturing and like doing new manufacturing capabilities, and, and the other thing that's really exciting is to watch the teaming going on between emerging companies and established companies who are now saying, Okay, look, we have these capabilities, you have those capabilities. Let's get together. That By the way, my prediction is you will see more and more and more of that. And we insidiously we've been promoting that since day one, right. I mean, it's just like we're all about that sort of enabling that investors that are coming to the table and doing this or taking a gamble all investors gamble The thing that really sort of purses one set of investors from another though really is their window. How long am I willing to wait okay for return on investment. Now you have some call social philanthropic investors. But let's be clear, the majority of people are not social philanthropic investors. The sort of traditional window for return on investment used to be three to five years, right? Even for a startup, maybe five to seven years. I mean, we know in space, if you're not willing to write it out for at least a decade, don't put your money on the table. It'd be my advice. Right? And It's, it's going to continue to be that way. So that sort of puts the onus on companies to think about, again, what's the portfolio, right? If it's just about the space application? Wow. Right. I mean, I have some awful investors also understanding investors with very long investment windows who are extremely well heeled, okay? And who I can trust to sort of stay in the game for a long period of time. So it's a little more helpful if you have both on ramps and off ramps for those investors. And if you can talk meaningfully about other applications that are revenue generating, okay for those investors, so that's what gets people sort of thinking about. Alright, so how do I think about what it is that I'm trying to develop an offer, what other applications are there? What are adjacent markets? And, and so I think if I'm an investor, and I've certainly counselled plenty of them over the years, if I'm an investor, you know, I'm looking for drivers saying on ramp I was saying off ramp, you know, if I let it ride. Okay, what are my additional terms and conditions related to returns? That's a decision I can make at some point. What other potential is there? You know, obvious things like who controls IP, you know, mean all the rest of that. But, but but I think that the thing that's made all this possible is the migration of these technologies, which were pioneered by the government into the private sector, and then the market doing what it does, you know, basically iterating on those driving down costs further trying to figure out how to minimise overhead trying to drive innovation, right. That's what's making all this possible. And so the more that crank turns, okay, then the more I'm hoping we're going to see. And that's, that's what's really exciting about this right now, I've been through three of these about one a decade. This time, it feels different.
Right, but what's interesting, I completely see the commercial case for something like payload delivery, but if you are an investor in SpaceX, as many venture capitalists are, this is a common With a stated ambition to go to Mars, which, as you just said, has no commercial case. So that's not something you can put in an endless spreadsheet. Is it? How do you get people on board with such a huge ambition?
Right? Well, I can't speak for the investors because I don't I mean, I know a couple of them. But I have never sat down and said exactly what was your decision making process associated with us? You know, one of the things that they were certainly interested in was he was going to try to make reusability work. He's making it work technically. Okay, for those vehicles for the Falcon nine for the Falcon Heavy, whether he has made it work on the business and yet, we're not going to know for a long time, right? Because you have invested money that's continuing to come in, okay, you're seeing those things being able to be demonstrated, but there are costs associated with reusability. And, and so the question about reusability has always been close the business case on it, right. So, and I have no idea. I'm serious. insight into that if I'm an investor though, and somebody is saying to me Look, I'm going to make rockets reusable, I'm going to drive down the cost of transportation by driving down the cost of transportation, I'm going to grab more and more of the terrestrial market okay in the low Earth orbit market and then geo market which of course is trying to do then I see a path to revenues right now if this guy also okay is interested in taking some percentage of those revenues and put them back into his company, which he's doing okay to basically try to figure out how it is that he's going to get to Mars. I can just speak for myself, show me the path to revenues. Okay, show me my entrance rent my on ramps, show me my off ramp. Okay, show me how it is that I'm going to be able to recoup investment from that. And then if you want to do this other stuff up over here, you know what, that's fine. Okay, but from an investor point of view, all right, I really sort of need to see those things. And so that's and I would say that anybody that any business, okay, and so that that's the that's the path forward right and, and, and I think he has investors also Who, who, who believe in him, right, as a as a as a person. just you know, as an entrepreneur, and so and that's broad. I mean, that's certainly been in best investment also to him. But you know whether in the end that'll sort of all be successful. I don't know. He's, you know, he's, he's done well, but the technology development to date. And so I think we're just going to have to wait and see, right, what happens with the rest of it.
One of the things I wanted to ask you about you served on the National Research Council Committee on human spaceflight, what were your conclusions on the necessity for human spaceflight, as opposed to all of the other wonderful things we can do without humans being involved?
So that turned out to be one of the points that we had, maybe your most intense debates on, there were several intense debate points, because it was a group of extremely accomplished individuals with very strong points of view, and also a really multidisciplinary group, which was, I think, one of the great strengths of that committee, right. You had economists and scientists and people just from all over kind of all over in terms of professional background and their debate about it right? Does it make sense given the costs of doing human spaceflight versus the costs of doing robotics? But the thing is, if you look below the surface, what you find out is that and there been several scientists that have said this robotics people like Steve Squires, and some others who have who have said, who was involved in the Mars programme, and others, who said, I can build a robot with as much AI as I can get into it at this particular time, and I can give it the most complex set of sensors that can possibly give it Okay, and I can give it as much mobility as I can possibly get back. The ability of that robot to get into a novel environment and make discoveries is nothing compared to the ability of the human being to get into that environment and make discoveries. Our central nervous systems are wired for novelty, it's how we learn. Okay, so we literally start in the crib. Okay, if you watch children alerting to new sounds and alerting to news sites, I wish I could say anything. Okay, what you see is this very rapid response okay to those kinds of novel stimuli coming in, and we retain that capability with an ever increasing neural net if you want to think about our brains that way, okay, through our lifespan unless disease takes us over. And so the ability of human beings especially once they reach a certain age to make sense of novel environments that are really really kind of rich in in stimuli, so are so outstrips that of any machine that week per week on the surface, okay? The opportunity to do discovery, okay to learn new things to do science to push the boundaries of exploration, there literally is no comparison. So when you start doing a cost comparison, right, what you have to say is alright, well how much time would I have to have that robot on that service? Okay to return science other than the thing that's very specifically designed for which you can do really well versus putting human being on that surface and not designing it for any particular surface to say Okay, look, raft answer it. These sorts of questions, but another way anything else you see? So there's great stories about jack Schmitt being on the surface of geologists right being on the surface of the moon and having to see this orange drop, which then turned into a sea of grey, right, which then turned out to be this huge discovery, okay, about probably how the moon was formed, we're still having that discussion, the fact that we're still having that discussion, okay. All these years later, when the robot have seen it, well, you would have had to have known to tell him to go look forward drop, right. So the cost comparisons that get done a lot, don't take these things into account. They don't take the differences in capability into account. It is absolutely true that you prepare a robot to go scuttle around the surface of the moon give me much less than it is to build the systems that prepare a human being to do that, but what the outcome measures are. I don't know we need to think really carefully about that, right? Because my guess is they're going to be significantly different for the robot than they are for the Now that's not to put robots down. Okay, there are things for which robots are uniquely suited. I'm not going to send a robot out to the outer reaches of the solar system to do a flight By have the outermost object that we've ever been able to send a robot go do that. And we're gonna put a human being out there, right? So all those things that we're learning, okay about the solar system right now, as a result of our robotic explorers, they're extraordinary. I wouldn't trade him for the world. So these things work together really, really well. And that's how I think we need to think about it. So that's where we got to was, you know, it's this combination of unique capabilities in the human in the robot, okay, in increasing advantage. And then we talked about how are these things blended? How do they actually become physically blended at some point, which we actually have a couple of sentences about in this thing, which is an interesting question, where Who are we going to be in another 20 3040 years? Who are robots going to be in another 20 3040 years? Don't know. But we should be continuing to think about that and be opportunistic. Okay, as we sort of see these things develop. The last thing I'm going to say about that is, we did a lot of different we looked at exploration Science and we looked at spin offs, you know, kind of biotech, that's kind of a bad word for but you know, advances that come from the space programmes, we did all of that. In the end, what we did was we said, You know what, one, there's an aspirational aspect to this. And this is now just Mary Lynn talking. If we ever put human beings on Mars, which may not be within my lifetime, I certainly hope it is. and human beings are basically walking around the surface of Mars looking for signs of ancient life. If you don't think that's going to be riveting.
And it sends a lot of signals, it sends signals about what we aspire to be, it sends signals about what human beings can be it can it sends signals about what we can do when we work together, because that's absolutely going to be International. Okay? It sends signals to people who don't necessarily wish us well, of what it is that we're capable of doing. If we put our minds to it. In other words, going to do that going to do this thing sort of makes Better. I mean, it inspires the next generation, it gets people saying, I want to do that it gets, I mean, all of those things. And as a committee, we came to that, you know, this sort of aspirational aspect of just pushing the boundaries, to do something extraordinary and audacious. And then I think the the other thing we thought about is, what are the opportunity costs if we don't do it? What are we if we pull back from it? What message are we giving ourselves as a civilization and it's okay, we're not going to go over that next hill. And so both of those things, really, really played into our final positions on this.
And is there anything you wanted to say about the Deep Space coalition itself about what you've achieved today?
The coalition has grown tremendously. It started with five companies when I came into it, it's at 70. Now, the thing I'm proudest of is we were really expanding the scope to address exploration site And commerce, we have a number of entrepreneurial firms. We have a number of firms that support science missions as well as the exploration mission. So we have a whole bunch of small businesses on a small business owner and developer, so I have a warm spot. It's not like I don't love the big companies I do. But I have a warm spot for for small businesses and the nimbleness and the zeal that they bring to all of us. I mean, their dedication and passion is just extraordinary. It's really I mean, I am inspired by it. But I think the thing I like the best about what we've done is we don't spin these programmes. We're very clearly supportive of the national programmes and national investment in even the big programmes, which have their challenges and development. And they're, you know, yeah, I mean, absolutely. But without those without that backbone, then a lot of this other stuff wouldn't really be happening. And I think we've done a good job at it. We need more, but I think we've done a good job at that conveying that it's sort of getting people to stop Thinking about that. And then the other thing that I really love is sort of watching those businesses come together and start to, you know, meet each other and network and start thinking about how they can do business together. And we've really strongly promoted this old space versus new space thing I think is destructive. And so we've really permitted some guys businesses business, right, if I am trying to go achieve some stuff, because as part of my strategic plan for business, and I see a path to revenues, okay, and a path and a path to things that are good for the nation and good for the world, and, you know, mean, all those other things that I would love to see a line hard to do, but I would love to see it online. Right. And it makes sense for me to team with a company that's relatively new, but uh, wow, has these interesting capabilities over here. I really don't need ideology in a way. Yes, it's tough enough, okay to work in this business. Alright, I want to facilitate a business friendly environment, okay, that allows people to be able to come together and start to get past all that and we've stood from that we've stood for that for day one. And I think that that I think Making progress there. So I'm really I'm really pleased about that.
Do you interact with China with developments in private industry in the space sector? There
is a coalition we don't and I've had some interactions with them basically through some programmes that the academies have been involved in. And some, although I'm still in a Space Studies board for the National Academies, and, and so I have through that, and then I have there are businesses that are in the coalition that have done business, have done business with China, as you know, there's a lot of restrictions in in concern now because of the trade issues that are that are impacting all of us. But it's really interesting to watch that programme programmes actually, their their science stuff is really extraordinary. They have a number of Institute's that are state funded, that are basically developing all that with regard to the commercial sector. I have some concerns. They have bought into some commercial companies and not quite disclosed They are or what it is that they're doing. And I'm not trying to paint with a really broad brush, but it's something that's happened more than once now. And and that's of some concern, right? Because there that's happening in spite of the fact that we know that there are these restrictions and concerns. And if you're not being straightforward, if you may be doing all this through a shell company, okay, then you have an agenda. And so I think there's some issues having to do with that. There's also issues having to do with technology, and IP protection, which is, you know, very poor. And so I have warned, I had warned a couple of small companies who are involved in the coalition who are looking at the chengdong, the new space station for China, and they're basically throwing out the lock on that saying, Come on, come off. And I'm like, Look, you know, you have to make decisions about this for yourself, but I would be very concerned make sure you know, you better have your IP locked down somehow. Because this is support tradition and in sort of protection there. So so I have Those sorts of cautions. And on the other hand on the also on the initial Research Council Committee, we basically said, Look, if we're going to go to Mars, it's pretty much going to take everything and we and everyone.
Great. Well, that has been wonderful. Thank you so much for sparing the time to do this. Thank you for taking the time. I appreciate it. This has been a Euromoney audio production created by Chris Wright and Chris hunt.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai