Failure analysis of lack of acceptance of space access system concepts

In engineering doing development work, there sometimes is a need to debug something. The first step in debugging is to evaluate the data which discovered the failure to live up to expectations; this data and its failure analysis needs to be as thorough and accurate as possible, so as to be more likely to fix the problem in the subsequent effort.

The development of space colonization might benefit from a similar approach. Looking back at failures is no fun; but if we don't learn from our mistakes, it is wisely said we are doomed to repeat them.

I personally know of several such failures on the path to space colonization; so, despite my dislike of rehashing the unpleasant and often incomprehensible, subsequent events have provided me with significant understanding of what was going on in the bigger picture, that probably caused the failures to get those early starts in space colonization.

Sifting out what seems the most pertinent parts - the whole scenario and sequence of related events would take volumes to write - the following items are some of those failure analysis findings:

The first one has to do with the failure to build Space Elevator technology on the Moon, using the leftover Apollo Saturn 5 launch vehicles to emplace a seed elevator cable on the moon. This concept was informally gotten to NASA and in mid-1972 was given a rejection by the NASA Inventions & Contribution Board. This concept showed that an existing material, space-rated fiberglass, was capable of being used to build what is now called a Space Elevator, but I called it the Mooncable back then. A cable made of space rated fiberglass, built into a tapered constant-stress-cross-section shape, could be built linking the lunar surface with a somewhat lower gravitational energy level toward the Earth, going through the L-1 balance point, where the thickness was greatest. It took me months of hand calculations to prove that the material was up to the task; and my concept description described a way to utilize motor-generators traveling up and down the Mooncable, using conductive tracks on the structure to connect the earthward-downward electrodynamic braking energy over to lift another motor generator tractor up off the lunar surface toward L-1. The system thus provided a siphon-like effect, so my more extensive description was titled "The Mooncable: Gravitational-Electric Siphon in Space"This was a deeply integrated concept description, where it integrated the mooncable structural transportation mechanism with a major product so as to make it a profitable activity, supplying a useful material to the Earth. Foamed steel, a material only create-able in zero-g, would be made at a manufacturing plant located at L-1 balance point on the Mooncable, by using focused solar energy to melt nickle-iron brought up by motor-generator tractors from the Lunar surface. The metal would be filled with gas bubbles there in zero-g at L-1, while being input to a mold, which would shape the material into the form of a re-entry glider, for the trip from the earthward-end of the Mooncable to the Earth's surface. The cast gliders, with the durability of stainless steel yet the density of wood, would float in the ocean after landing, and be towed to land where it would be sawn up and used for construction material, such as for energy-absorbing crash barriers lining the middle of freeways; and building fireproof homes that were nearly impervious to weather effects. The Mooncable structure itself would be made of fiberglass, and glass is an abundant material on the surface of the Moon; so the only thing needing landing by Saturn-5 launch systems would be the original seed cable, plus a robotic operated glass materials plant. The timing was right; we were still landing astronauts on the Lunar surface, and this seemed an appropriate next step to build upon Apollo, and enabling economical establishment of a lunar manufacturing facility on the Moon, a first space colony. And the project could be started immediately, right then in 1972.

But it did not happen. What was the failure in the system? So here is an engineering failure analyst effort:

Looking back, there seems to be multiple points of failure, and each provides an example for preventing similar failures for present and future efforts striving for space colonization.

One factor was that it required Congress to vote to provide appropriations. And that congress was showing its meaningfulness by hacking off a percentage of the funds asked for Space Shuttle development, standard Congressional practice, to show they are doing their job. Unfortunately, the Space Shuttle proposal did not provide extra fluff to play the game of having its funds chopped back some; thus solid rocket boosters had to be put into the design, and ultimately we lost a spacecraft because of that, the Challenger and her crew. So NASA was in deep struggle for money to get its job done; the Mooncable project would have required a significant amount of money to achieve even its first steps, despite use of the two Saturn 5 vehicles that were built but not going to be used.

Much of this was explained in the brief letter the NASA ICB chairman sent to me with the rejection of my informal proposal. This rejection had another major effect, in that when my wife read the rejection, saying no grant funds were forthcoming, she was quickly out of my life, very pragmatic lady she was, and I was no longer as good a money source as other men would be. The effect on me was that, being an Asperger, now without a pragmatic mate to take care of the social etc aspects of my life, in despair I threw away my promising career at JPL and basically just existed for the next half dozen years. Occasionally I would try to find someone interested in my Mooncable concept, but I had no connections. In the early-1980's I made another effort, by writing an article for the L-5 News, but it was rejected.

I think a significant part of the failure of the system for establishing Space Colonization that way in the mid-1970's was my lack of credentials: I was an unknown in the field. the concept was not allowed to speak for itself, in other words. This seems to me to be a significant failure mechanism in the overall system: not letting a concept speak for itself, but instead first looking at the originator's standing. It is analogous to people in the military look at the number of stripes on your shoulder, to decide whether or not to pay attention to you. The academic standing, the industrial position standing, is where the evaluators looked, and they found I was a nobody, had not even graduated from college, had even switched from a physics major to a psychology major for a semester before dropping out, clearly a loser. And possibly a related factor, how could PhD's in high positions, admit that someone who was a college dropout came up with a concept to get the job done, and the credentialed folks had not thought of it, what would people think about that; better just ignore the originator, and no one would pay attention to the concept. Later, the concept could be revived by accredited folks who could build careers on it. And that happened: Pearson wrote an excellent paper on such concepts four years later, in 1976; and even today there are businesses proposing building a Mooncable-like Space Elevator through L-1, so it was not a dysfunctional concept. It was a failure of the human aspects, not the technological aspects.

So the failure mode here is that of using the originator's credentials to speak for the capability of the concept, rather than let the concept speak for itself. Part of this may be the inability of the initial evaluators to evaluate the concept adequately, especially if it is a really different thing from their field of expertise; and they do not want to admit that.

The second example for this kind of overall system failure analysis, is my effort to gain interest in my concept for rapid expansion into high Earth orbit, initially with the purpose of building abundant Solar Power Satellites to provide plentiful clean energy to nations around the world. This concept would bypass the Space Elevator's severe limitations, yet be able to do the same efficient access to high earth orbit, probably even more capably too. It would use the outward force of internal centrifugal force to balance the weight of the structure in the planetary gravitational field, instead of utilizing strength of materials to do the job.

I created this "KESTS to GEO" concept - acronym for "Kinetic Energy Supported Transportation Structure to Geostationary Earth Orbit" - to bypass the problem with the Earth Space Elevator concept, that of the lack of a material strong enough for its mass to support its own weight between GEO and the ground. I was keenly aware of this problem, having thought of the earth space elevator idea in 1969 - not the first person to do so, it turned out - then realized that the tensile strength to density ratio problem that really made a problem for the concept. (However, that effort later enabled my 1971-1972 creation of the Mooncable concept.) So I constantly sought other ways to have large scale access of earth orbital space.

The early 1980's concepts of Keith Lofstrom's Launch Loop rocket lift to the fringes of the atmosphere by a trapezoid shaped tethered out-flung loop of continuous material, and Rod Hyde's "StarBridge" vertical tower to the fringes of the atmosphere, supported by electrodynamic drag of high velocity paramagnetic beryllium disks flung upward inside the structure, excited my hopes for early large scale space colonization in my time; even Earl Smiths' "Texas and Universe Railroad" concept of an out-flung expandable iron belt from the earth surface to GEO, although had some major flaws in it including that it would not go to GEO if anchored in the high latitude of Texas, got me to do my first speech supporting those concepts, as well as my Mooncable space elevator concept, to the National Commission on Space in 1985. But to no avail, the Commission's report did not mention any of these things.

I mulled over the why-not for a few years, and finally figured out how to combine all those concepts and add some new components, to make what appeared a workable large scale ground-to-GEO access space transportation structure of high efficiency, supported by the outward force of high velocity armatures circulating throughout the quasi-elliptical hoop around the Earth, connecting the equatorial surface to GEO. The materials and technology were well within the contemporary capability.

But the problem remained, of how I, as still an unknown in the field, could get this concept into the awareness of those who could take it to the next steps. About that time, I had gotten connected to the GEnie Spaceport Library, via my 300 baud modem connected to my long-obsolete Adam Coleco computer; as always, I lived on the edge of poverty, earning a living as an engineering technician in electronics. Finally I could get the attention to my Mooncable concept and my new KESTS to GEO concept, I thought.

Even the GEnie Network was sponsored by General Electric, a large company who could possibly be able to build much of the KESTS to GEO system, I thought. I posted the initial insights there in 1988, and had largely fleshed it out in 1989, posting many files in the GEnie Spaceport Library.

But the reaction I got as a result was lots of angry replies, not involving technology, but bringing up other issues that readers would have to wade through before getting to the technical parts of the chat strings back then.

It took me a long time to realize that the KESTS to GEO concept would obsolete the ground rocket launch vehicle industry, on which these folks based their futures. No wonder the anger.

But clearly they were only interested in their personal fortunes, not the vision of large scale economical access and utilization of high earth orbit, and the large scale access of the Lunar environment and Mars' moons and asteroids, all now potentially in the near future, instead of something that would only have to withstand the test of real physical construction and usage generations later, as were the other forms of space colonization views as based on rocket systems alone.

This post is getting too long, so I will continue this in a subsequent post.

What happened to the dream

Where did the dream go? Consider this quote from a NASA document, of some 35 years ago:

"We have put men on the Moon. Can people live in space? Can permanent communities be built and inhabited off the Earth? Not long ago these questions would have been dismissed as science fiction, as fantasy or, at best as the wishful thinking of men ahead of their times. Now they are asked seriously not only out of human curiosity, but also because circumstances of the times stimulate the thought that space colonization offers large potential benefits and hopes to an increasingly enclosed and circumscribed humanity.

"Permanent communities can be built and inhabited off the Earth. The following chapters present a detailed description of a system for the colonization of space. It is not the best system that can be devised; nor is it complete. Not all the important questions about how and why to colonize space have been posed. Of those that have, not all have been answered satisfactorily. Nevertheless, the 10-week summer study is the most thorough and comprehensive one made to date. On its basis space colonization appears to be technically feasible, while the obstacles to further expansion of human frontiers in this way are principally philosophical, political, and social rather than technological.

"The focus of the system is a space habitat where 10,000 people work, raise families, and live out normal human lives. Figure 1-1. [ http://settlement.arc.nasa.gov/75SummerStudy/figure1.1.gif ] shows the wheel-like structure in which they live. This structure orbits the Earth in the same orbit as the Moon in a stable position that is equidistant from both Earth and Moon. This is called the Lagrangian libration point, L5. The habitat consists of a tube 130 m (427 ft) in diametral cross section bent into a wheel 1790 m (over 1 mi) in diameter. The people live in the ring-shaped tube which is connected by six large access routes (spokes) to a central hub where incoming spacecraft dock. These spokes are 15 m (48 ft) in diameter and provide entry and exit to the living and agricultural areas in the tubular region. To simulate Earth's normal gravity the entire habitat rotates at one revolution per minute about the central hub.

"Much of the interior of the habitat is illuminated with natural sunshine. The Sun's rays in space are deflected by a large stationary mirror suspended directly over the hub. This mirror is inclined at 45 degrees to the axis of rotation and directs the light onto another set of mirrors which, in turn, reflect it into the interior of the habitat's tube through a set of louvered mirrors designed to admit light to the colony while acting as a baffle to stop cosmic radiation. With the help of abundant natural sunshine and controlled agriculture, the colonists are able to raise enough food for themselves on only 63 ha (156 acres). The large paddle-like structure below the hub is a radiator by which waste heat is carried away from the habitat.

"Abundant solar energy and large amounts of matter from the Moon are keys to successfully establishing a community in space. Not only does the sunshine foster agriculture of unusual productivity, but also it provides energy for industries needed by the colony. Using solar energy to generate electricity and to power solar furnaces the colonists refine aluminum, titanium, and silicon from lunar ores shipped inexpensively into space. With these materials they are able to manufacture satellite solar power stations and new colonies. The power stations are placed in orbit around the Earth to which they deliver copious and valuable electrical energy. The economic value of these power stations will go far to justify the existence of the colony and the construction of more colonies...."

The document from which this is quoted was created some 35 years ago, titled NASA SP-413. (Its soft copy can be found at
http://settlement.arc.nasa.gov/75SummerStudy/Table_of_Contents1.html )

What happened to this dream, created just a couple of years after the last of the Apollo moon adventures had left the Moon? NASA seems obsessed with just using rocketry to put things into space, perhaps because that is what they are familiar with, and is what their current adventures rely upon. Even their sponsorship of space elevator concerns seems just to prove how hard and inefficient that could be, such as the contests for climbing up a tether they have suspended from cranes or helicopters, contests to beam high powered lasers to supply energy for climbers up the dangling tether; but that is not the best way for a space elevator to work. But it does spin our wheels - thus preventing forward motion - regarding any effort in that direction, thus excusing continued total reliance on rocketry, nice familiar rocketry - maybe even forcing nuclear powered launch vehicle rocketry efforts again, who knows, instead of just interplanetary nuclear rocketry efforts.

And righteous disdain for tether space elevators or space hoop escalator concepts, which do have the potential for truly economical large scale movement of construction materials into nearby space, such as for the building of the above-described kind of space colony which they had dreamed of back in 1975, although built in GEO and shielded with ice mass brought up with the very cheap electrical lift from the Earth's surface.

Anyway, when NASA was born it had the mandate to get to the Moon before the Soviets to prevent the Soviets from putting nuke-armed missiles there aimed at America, like so recently (at the time) they had started to do in Cuba, too terrifyingly freshly in mind to say no to the daring and very expensive project. Go for the Moon, at any cost, just do it. And amazingly, NASA managed to do it, and then got out of the game before they lost a vehicle, like almost happened in Apollo 13. That was the cause of us putting men on the Moon for brief times, not the urge to adventure or explore other planets or find sources of raw materials on the Moon. Then the soviets said "OK you win, I give up on that one" and then so did we, game over, we won; back to the burgers and TV sports.

But lots of us continued on in our imagination, space was a place and it had enormous potential for helping mankind's civilization, such as the high capacity solar-derived energy systems called "Solar Power Satellites" which were conceived in basic principle way back in the 1960's.

No, it was not with the purpose of enabling a clean energy powered vigorously expanding civilization, that we went to the Moon and jump-started the space program; it was war fears that got the money coughed up by we Americans. Most of the people and corporations who actually did the stuff to make the Apollo and Space Shuttle happen, would still most likely prefer to sit on the couch with their beer & chips watching football on TV than to do that kind of thing; even now, I think. Resting on ones laurels is indeed tempting.

When someone like me attempts to rattle their cage, me babbling something about making a hoop-configured electrical motor encircling the earth, in an orbital-transfer-trajectory-like shape from the equatorial earth surface, which uses its internal kinetics to support its own mass and that of captive spacecraft the motor would lift up and down itself eccentrically from the equatorial ground up to geostationary earth orbit, where a new level of civilization could thereby be built - and could have been started back in 1988 when I first pointed out that potential, and would most likely have operational systems already working to put solar power plant construction materials in GEO. But it is far easier to sneer and ignore such babble by an "unknown" apparently attempting to horn in their well-earned prosperous peerdom, from their highly esteemed positions of influence. Now, back to their couch and the football, an easier exciting game for them.

And similarly it is easier for me to glower at being left in their pompous dust, than to much about it either. While time is delayed ever making it harder to do anything except by rocket, anything else getting likely to eventually be chopped through by something orbiting below GEO, and the more things put there, the harder it will be to but up the truly efficient space transportation structures so things can be bult up in GEO and further rocket launches be made from up there, already 91% up out of Earth's gravitational well from the start, and beyond the atmosphere's drag.

Surely that would be a prime goal for an agency which had the purpose of managing the expansion of civilization into space to help the earth and its incredible precious living systems.

Thus the logical conclusion is, that that is not what that agency considers its purpose to be. It was born of war fears, and apparently continues mostly to keep the technology alive to stay in the game in case rival nations once again go for nuke platforms on the Moon, Mars moons or elsewhere, period. That kept under control, back to the couch and TV sports, job done.

Well, I too can do that kind of thing. But first I put the space colony, space elevator and hoop space escalator designs to the tune of science fiction adventures, and put them in paperback form at minimum cost, and made them free for all for download on the internet, such as one at smashwords download site "Its Down To Earth" by J E D Cline https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/2459 (which has had over 700 downloads) and "Building Up" at scribd http://www.scribd.com/doc/14776925/Building-Up Thereby I get to live out the doing of the dreams I had for helping NASA and humanity, albeit only in virtual reality, which is slightly better than nothing. It expands the dream a bit.

Well, also I have been putting the concepts out for all to see, even from the beginning in 1988 on the GEnie computer network, then on the internet on my www.home.earthlink.net/~jedcline pages starting in 1996, and more recently on dedicated websites www.kestsgeo.com and www.escalatorhi.com; but, few if any find them and comment back to me. I also endured the writing, camera ready preparation, travel, and formal presentation of some eight technical papers at space conferences, all at my own out-of-pocket expense, telling of these concepts (such as http://www.scribd.com/doc/14090773/The-Space-Escalators-Unique-Potentials and presentations http://www.scribd.com/doc/14091289/efikestspps7n and http://www.escalatorhi.com/techscifi/tupsec_j.swf ), and calculations http://www.scribd.com/doc/14093583/Energy-Given-to-Mass-By-Lifting-From-Ground-Up-Into-GEO to space folks that only considered them rival to their own bread & butter space concepts, their own cherished laboriously created dreams; although most were corporate ventures.

Anyway, I did my best to show them what might could be some even better dreams for them to have too. Naive me, thinking that a more rewarding dream to actualize, could attract them away from what was their games, their very own thing - understandably. ("A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" it is said. Even if that bird in the hand simply cannot do the job nearly enough adequately, it is something they have got.)

Although sometimes I again briefly wake up enough to wonder, what happened to the dream.

My prior short posts re space utilization involving human spaceflight

Per my immediately preceding post here, realizing that I don't seem to have my prior comments put on on Facebook for the "Human Spaceflight" conference here in my blogger jedcstuff blog, here is my summary comment to NASA regarding my efforts to contribute to the "human spaceflight committee" invitation for Facebook comments:

"Probably you have already decided that America's next effort in space is to just be for the adventure of going to Mars and returning with some rock samples, an Apollo for Mars, since Apollo was such an attention-getter, providing immense money to corporate businesses, and so quickly ended, no follow up required.

So I will start with the brief descriptions which I prepared to post on Facebook today in effort to help you, as if you actually really wanted my help:

1) If the purpose is to prepare for a long term connection with Mars, then an initial goal of establishing an outpost on Phobos, the inner moon of Mars, and building a dual pulley anchored tether space elevator there to drop to close to an atmospheric drag area in Mars' atmosphere, then all we have to do is the low delta-vee trip from earth orbit to Phobos, then use its considerable mass and orbital position to have dual-belt pulley space elevator technology to get to the upper atmosphere, so from there down to Mars surface and back is all the propulsion energy requirements, perhaps entirely winged flyable for round trips thereafter, connecting to the low end of the space elevator, from the surface of Mars.

But if there is real interest in the application of space for the benefit of civilization, beyond the stimulation of technology and corporate business, here are some more suggestions which were also prepared per the request by email to do comments, such as on Facebook, which I quickly found had a maximum of 1000 characters for an entry.

2) If the purpose is to go to the Moon, then we need a better purpose than last time, which was to be able to set up missile launch bases there too if the Russians were doing that. That was a tremendous technology stimulant and was a lot more fun than throwing bombs at each other, too. The Moon is a potential high source of construction materials for things in Earth orbit, from GEO to L-5, takes much less energy to lift from the Moon to those places than to lift from the Earth's surface. So early return to the Moon might be for establishing experimental materials collection and processing facilities, particularly destined for processing in zero-gee enroute to points of construction usage. For lots of ideas read in the easy form of sci fi adventure, see The Ark of 1984's Future https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/2824 and The Torus Cities Ice Shields Returning Home https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/2499

3) If the purpose is to develop long term nearly fully self sustainable habitation technology for space, support conventional automated launch vehicles, and support private development of conventional technology manned medium scale access to LEO, then we might consider the completely automated launch and basic assembly of the classical mile-diameter wheel type space station for 200-1,000 people, built of modules designed as both specialized prefab habitat modules and for use as their own fuel tank during launch by a reusable flyback engine module and supported by an airbreathing flyback booster, all teleoperated launch and docking into the circle, before the first person arrives, thus a low risk and cost activity. For technical descriptions see http://www.scribd.com/doc/14091376/Wet-Launch-of-Prefab-Habitat-Modules and http://www.scribd.com/doc/14099702/CentristatIon-WetLaunch-Space-Station-Wheel-Concept and as sci fi see http://www.scribd.com/doc/14776925/Building-Up

4) If the purpose is to explore potential means for accessing space resources in a full scale way, then it makes sense to explore the long ignored "space escalator" type concept for continuous ground to GEO high efficiency electrically powered transportation, resembling a filled-in Orbital Transfer Trajectory shape synchronous electrical motor between equatorial earth surface and GEO above the opposite side of the planet, the quasi-elliptical structure enclosing hard vacuum and inductive tracks along which motor armature mass segments travel at twice the orbital velocity to centrifugally press outward on the structure to support the equal stationary structural mass of the motor's stator elliptical perimeter, and use inductive drag against the upward armatures to drag captive spacecraft from ground to GEO, by which Solar Power Satellites are built in GEO, along with Total Recycling Plants and GEO spaceports for very large scale rocket vehicles to Mars and elsewhere. http://www.scribd.com/doc/14090773/The-Space-Escalators-Unique-Potentials

I doubt you will carefully consider what I have to say any more than the National Commission on Space did when I testified before them on a similar subject in 1985. It is easy to continue to ignore me into oblivion, won't take much longer. But I have done my best here in the few words allowed. Anyway, this is easier than giving a speech in front of all those people, wearing my best interview suit, like in 1985 in Golden Gate Park in the museum's huge auditorium, now torn down and something else built there.

There is a big difference between playing a political-business game, vs going toward that which helps mankind and civilization's best interests. The kind of pay they provide is quite different, too. Whatever, I wish you the best of luck.

Jim Cline"