Long-term planning (an unfortunate lack, thereof)

Well since you asked....

You state, "If you keep them waiting for too long they will grow impatient.
", which is certainly true for a public program. The public likes pretty
pictures, so all exploratory probes should include high-quality
visible-light imagery to satisfy and maintain that interest. The
scientists may be more interested in what the gamma-ray spectrometer is
saying, but as was found during Mars Pathfinder, the public loves pretty
pictures easily available at Websites.

As I mentioned in my earlier note, finding all NEOs (and not losing them
after first discovery!!) above 100 meters is, I believe, a top priority
item. Five more ground-based observatories of the caliber of the LINEAR
scope, all located in the Southern Hemisphere and doing automated sky
searches, would be a good start. Figure $50 million each for
construction, several million per year operating costs. This would be
followed later by a fleet of 10 identical or near identical 1-meter
space-based NEO hunter telescopes positioned at various points within the
inner solar system (e.g., Earth L4/L5, Venus L4/L5, Mars L4/L5) doing
automated sky searches. Let's figure $300 million for the first one, and
$100 million for each additional copy (NEAR Shoemaker was $223 million,
soup to nuts). The public could be kept interested by continued stress on
the fact that we could be eradicated if we don't find these --- it doesn't
make much sense to spend our time looking for black holes when a simple
rock could really ruin our day! Public safety issue. All of this
NEO-hunting stuff would only amount to $2 billion, maybe. And then we
could sleep easier.

[As a nice side-effect, we'ed also find oodles of smaller NEOs, and also
short- and long-period comets, Centaurs, and TNOs.]

Once all the 100+ meter NEOs have been found, let's select 20 for visits by
probe of the caliber of NEAR Shoemaker. The 20 selected should be
selected based on factors that will likely make them useful for space
industrialization. Figure $250 million for the first copy and $100 million
thereafter, or $2 billion total, roughly.

Meanwhile, carpet Luna with 10 identical teleoperated rovers with various
scientific equipment on them to hunt for concentrated ore deposits. (Take
lots of movies and pretty pictures, of course). Another $1.5 billion.
And perhaps most importantly, spend another $2 billion on a collection of
probes and rovers to explore the lunar poles for ice and other volatiles.

I think I've chewed up $8 billion so far (remind me how much NASA gets per
year??), and maybe 10 years --- easily fundable under a $2-$3 billion per
year budget.

At this point, we'ed be in a much better position to determine whether Luna
or some NEO makes most sense for an initial mining effort. Narrow down
the field of candidates with another $2 billion worth of probes, landers,
etc. Make that selection, and initiate a program to return to HEO 365 tons
per year of material. If people are needed, so be it, but try to minimize
their involvement as much as possible --- Hypothetica doesn't have the
budget for humans in space. Once the material begins to return to the
high Earth orbit stockpile, auction it off in lots of a ton or 10 tons each
to winning bidders, public and private. Continue to return 365 tons per
year ad infinitum, or until such time as doing so becomes irrelevant
because private mining companies are returning an order of magnitude more
material. At such time, government involvement would end --- government
involvement should not aim to displace private involvement.

This last part --- establishing a HEO stockpile of 365 tons per year of
extraterrestrial material and operating it ad infinitum --- would be much
more costly, of course, say $50 billion for setup and a couple of billion
per year operations. I don't think that the setup could be funded within
a $2-$3 billion per year budget. Auctions of the returned material --- it
could be presold, too, long before any material arrives --- would generate
some cash, but I think we'ed be fooling ourselves if we thought it would be
profitable from get-go. Not sure Hypothetica could do the last step
alone, and it might have to seek investment and risk partners for the
startup costs.

But Hypothetica could easily find all the big NEOs, and characterize Luna
and 20 NEOs within that budget over 10 or so years... alone.

My finger-in-the-air estimate for all these activities is less than the $95
billion already spent on ISS. If I'm underestimating by a factor of 2,
the cost would still be quite comparable to ISS.

Ron Menich

hollroa@...
Please respond to thereof)
ssi_list

...

Sounds sensible. This program would certainly work.

Hypothetical situation. You are elected as minister for space, in a
hypothetical European country, called Hypothetica. Hypothetica is one of
richest nations in the world, but most of the money is used up just through
maintaining the public services. You are given a budget of about $2-$3
billion per year and want to fulfil the O'Neill vision as quickly as you
can. You have almost total discretion in how you spend the money. There are
nearly sixty million people in your country, and many of them dream of
going into space, walking the lunar deserts, living in O'Neill colonies
and enjoying cheap electricity. If you keep them waiting for too long they
will grow impatient. Your visionary space ambitions are part of what got
you elected and the people are itching to see results. What sort of space
policy would you design? What would you consider to be the optimum
schedule?

Actually, I tell a lie. This isn't entirely hypothetical. In fact its
not that hypothetical at all.

Tony