by James Dunstan & Berin Szoka* (PDF) Originally published in Forbes.com on December 17, 2009
As world leaders meet in Copenhagen to consider drastic carbon emission restrictions that could require large-scale de-industrialization, experts gathered last week just outside Washington, D.C. to discuss another environmental problem: Space junk.[1] Unlike with climate change, there’s no difference of scientific opinion about this problem—orbital debris counts increased 13% in 2009 alone, with the catalog of tracked objects swelling to 20,000, and estimates of over 300,000 objects in total; most too small to see and all racing around the Earth at over 17,500 miles per hour. Those are speeding bullets, some the size of school buses, and all capable of knocking out a satellite or manned vehicle.
At stake are much more than the $200 billion a year satellite and launch industries and jobs that depend on them. Satellites connect the remotest locations in the world; guide us down unfamiliar roads; allow Internet users to view their homes from space; discourage war by making it impossible to hide armies on another country’s borders; are utterly indispensable to American troops in the field; and play a critical role in monitoring climate change and other environmental problems. Orbital debris could block all these benefits for centuries, and prevent us from developing clean energy sources like space solar power satellites, exploring our Solar System and some day making humanity a multi-planetary civilization capable of surviving true climatic catastrophes.
The engineering wizards who have fueled the Information Revolution through the use of satellites as communications and information-gathering tools also overlooked the pollution they were causing. They operated under the “Big Sky” theory: Space is so vast, you don’t have to worry about cleaning up after yourself. They were wrong. Just last February, two satellites collided for the first time, creating over 1,500 new pieces of junk. Many experts believe we are nearing the “tipping point” where these collisions will cascade, making many orbits unusable.
But the problem can be solved. Thus far, governments have simply tried to mandate “mitigation” of debris-creation. But just as some warn about “runaway warming,” we know that mitigation alone will not solve the debris problem. The answer lies in “remediation”: removing just five large objects per year could prevent a chain reaction. If governments attempt to clean up this mess themselves, the cost could run into the trillions—rivaling even some proposed climate change solutions.
Former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin used to refer to commercial alternatives to NASA’s Ares rockets as “Paper Rockets,” but commercial vehicles like Atlas V, Delta IV and Falcon 1 are quite real and available today, while Ares 1 and 5 are grossly over-budget and way behind-schedule:
NASA should buy commercial space services whenever possible from NewSpace companies like SpaceX, Virgin Galactic and Bigelow Aerospace. The Commercial Spaceflight Revolution is happening now!
In our ongoing “Privacy Solutions Series” we have been outlining various user-empowerment or user “self-help” tools that allow Internet users to better protect their privacy online. These tools and methods form an important part of a layered approach that we believe offers a more effective alternative to government-mandated regulation of online privacy. [See entries 1, 2, 3, 4] In this installment, we will be exploring CCleaner, a free Windows-based tool created by UK-based software developer Piriform that scrubs you computer’s hard drive and cleans its registry. We’ll describe how CCleaner helps you destroy data and protect your private information.
Whenever you move files to the recycling bin and subsequently purge the recycling bin, the affected files remain on your computer. In other words, deleting files from the recycling bin does not remove them from the computer. The reason for this is important and, in many ways, beneficial. In some respects, many computer file systems work like an old library catalog system. A file is like a catalog card and contains the reference to the actual place on the hard drive where the information contained in the file is stored. When a user deletes a file, the computer does not actually clean all the affected hard drive space. Instead, to extend the analogy, the computer simply removes the card catalog entry that points to the hard drive space where the file is contained and frees up this space for new files. The reason this is usually beneficial is that cleaning the hard drive space occupied by a file can take a while. If you want evidence of this, look no further than the length of time required to reformat a hard drive (reformatting a hard drive actually clears the disk’s contents). The practical implication of the way hard drives work is that when you delete an important memo from your computer, it is not actually gone. Similarly, when you clear your browsing history, it is not gone. The bottom line is that an individual who can access your hard drive (a thief, the government, etc.) could view many or all of the files you deleted.
The solution to this problem is to ensure that when a file is deleted, the space on the hard drive occupied by that file is not simply flagged as available space but is entirely rewritten with unintelligible data. One of the best programs for accomplishing this is CCleaner (which formerly stood for “Crap Cleaner”!)
Virgil once famously claimed ownership of the sun to demonstrate the absurdity of serious assertions made by a number of charlatans to ownership of lunar territory (Dennis Hope) or the entire Eros asteroid (Greg Nemitz). Virgil’s point was “to show how ridiculous a property rights system in outer space would be if it were to be based solely on claim unsubstantiated by any actual possession.”
I’m looking forward to reading Virgil’s book–and to writing a proper review. For now, I’ll just say that I think Virgil and I see eye-to-eye on three key premises (something of a rarity among space lawyers on the ultra-contentious issue of property rights):
The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 prohibits nations from appropriating territory in space and also prohibits individuals from asserting any territorial claims (generally accepted) except to a narrowly-limited area under actual use (not accepted by all space lawyers).
The Outer Space Treaty, properly understood, does not bar claims to ownership of movable objects such as extracted resources or even (if they can be moved in a meaningful way) entire asteroids or comets.
Securing such property rights is essential to the economic development of space.
Here are a few choice excerpts from Virgil’s new book on the big picture of property rights in space: Continue reading →
The Space Frontier Foundation issued this press release today, following our earlier call for NASA to fund its COTS-D program for demonstrating commercial human spaceflight capabilty.
The Space Frontier Foundation today called on President-elect Barack Obama to use the innovation and drive of American entrepreneurs to “close the Gap” in U.S. human spaceflight after the Space Shuttle is retired in 2010.
President-elect Obama has promised $2 billion in additional funding for NASA to address the Gap, when the U.S. will be dependent upon Russia’s Soyuz for crew access to the International Space Station. But two of the options proposed – extending Space Shuttle operations or accelerating the Constellation program – wouldn’t reduce the current estimate of a five year gap by much.
“Space leaders are considering three or four options for reducing the Space Gap, but only one reflects the spirit of positive change that Senator Obama campaigned on,” said Foundation Chairman Berin Szoka. ”According to NASA’s own estimates, flying the Shuttle beyond 2010 will cost at least $2 billion per year, so that only cuts the Gap by one year. And $2 billion is a drop in the bucket for Constellation, at best helping to address shortfalls that the Congressional Budget Office just predicted will add another 18 months to the Gap.”
A third option is being considered by some at NASA, according to published reports: Strip the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle of the capability to support Lunar exploration, making it simpler and lighter, and supposedly easier to complete sooner.
“This idea is crazy, because it will strand NASA in low Earth orbit, instead of exploring the solar system,” said Foundation co-founder Rick Tumlinson. “The whole point of the Vision for Space Exploration was to send NASA’s Lewis & Clarks further out into the frontier, to the Moon, Mars, and near-Earth asteroids, while the private sector takes over Earth orbit. Cutting Orion back gives us ‘Gemini on steroids’, which would be a change for the worse.”
“The only option that makes sense is to use President-elect Obama’s promised $2 billion to catalyze as many as five new commercial human spaceflight companies that will compete to close the Gap using the safest, most capable and affordable system they can develop,” said Will Watson, Foundation Executive Director.
“Let’s not put all our eggs in one basket by pouring even more money into the Shuttle, an old system that’s on its last legs, or a controversial new program that’s already behind schedule,” Watson said. “If we’re serious about closing the Gap and about making humanity’s presence in space economically sustainable, we need real change in how we put humans in space. Let’s use this $2 billion to stimulate multiple entrepreneurial systems that will not only slash costs, improve safety, and close the Gap, but also help create a whole new space industry with new jobs here in America.”
As TLF readers may know, I took over in July as Chairman of the Board of the Space Frontier Foundation. As I explained in my recent interview on The Space Show, SFF has been the leading citizens’ advocacy group for space commercialization since 1988. Dedicated to promoting Princeton physicist Gerard O’Neill’s vision of space settlement, as described in his 1976 masterpiece The High Frontier, the Foundation has always argued that “space is a place, not a program.”
We sent out the following press release on October 28, calling for a major transformation of the U.S. government’s space program by which the U.S. government would buy commercial transportation to the International Space Station. We’ll have more to say about this in the coming weeks.
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Space Frontier Foundation Finds Funding Source for COTS-D
The Space Frontier Foundation today called upon Presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain to invest the $2 billion in new funds they have promised to NASA for reducing the “Gap” in U.S. human spaceflight (after the Space Shuttle is retired in 2010) to spur innovation and competition in America.
Foundation Chairman Berin Szoka said “It’s time that our national leaders give American entrepreneurs a shot at closing this gap. Let’s take the two billion dollars in the candidates’ plans and fund up to five winners of COTS-D.”
The NASA Authorization Act of 2008, recently signed into law by the President, directs NASA to “issue a notice of intent [by mid-April 2009] … to enter into a funded, competitively awarded Space Act Agreement with two or more commercial entities’ for transporting humans to the ISS”-the “Capability D” of NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program (or COTS-D for short). But that directive is not yet funded.
Szoka continued, “Let’s have an American competition in space – to create good jobs, fuel innovation, and close the gap more quickly. With private funds matching government’s investment, we can dramatically leverage the $2 billion to produce breakthroughs in a new American industry – commercial orbital human spaceflight.” Continue reading →
I have a post on space politics at the WashingtonWatch.com blog. “If you think Washington politics is restricted to the debates among politicians, think again.”
I’m sure TLFer Berin Szoka knows this better than I do.
The San Diego Union Tribune has an outstanding summary of the recently-unveiled SpaceShipTwo (SS2) (Wikipedia), successor to SpaceShipOne, which became the first private vehicle to reach space in 2004 and won the $10m Ansari X-Prize. SS2 is vying to become the world’s first commercially operational spaceplane and the first in Virgin Galactic’s fleet. Pictured at left is Virgin founder and multi-billionaire Richard Branson, and to his right, Burt Rutan, designer of SS1 and SS2. The PDF does an excellent job of illustrating the basics of an SS2 flight, though at nearly 9mb, the file isn’t a quick download.
At a press conference this morning at the National Press club in Washington, the Space Solar Alliance for Future Energy (SSAFE) announced a milestone demonstration of the critical technology enabling SBSP: long-distance, solar-powered wireless power transmission. The demonstration project, led by NASA veteran John C. Mankins, demonstrated microwave power transmission between two Hawaiian islands 148 kilometers apart, more than the distance from the surface of Earth to the boundary of space. Although SBSP satellites would ultimately operate at much higher altitudes in the geosynchronous orbit (35,786 km AMSL), Mankins has successfully demonstrated the feasibility of long-distance energy transmission in principle.
Those of you who haven’t “cut the cord” to television (as I did about 5-6 years ago) may be interested to watch a special episode of Discovery Project Earth entitled “Orbital Powerplant) that will debut tonight at 10 pm with reruns on September 13 at 2am and noon.
This video provides more background on SBSP (until recently known as “Space Solar Power”):
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