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The current state of the U.S. space industrial base

Credits: USSF-DIU-AFRL

The U.S. Space Force, Air Force Research Laboratory and the Defense Innovation Unit just completed a workshop on the state of the U.S. space industry. The virtual event, hosted by New Space New Mexico, brought together more than 120 representatives across the federal government, industry, and academia to access the current health of the America’s space industry and to provide recommendations for strengthening that industrial base. The resulting report called “State of the Space Industrial Base 2020” has just been released this month.

The workshop focused on 6 key areas thought to be the locus of future space industry activities:

  • Space policy and finance tools
  • Space information services
  • Space transportation and logistics to, in and from cislunar space and beyond.
  • Human presence in space for exploration, space tourism, space manufacturing and resource extraction
  • Power for space systems to enable the full range of emerging space applications
  • Space manufacturing and resource extraction

Recommendations included:

  1. Industry should aggressively pursue partnerships with the US government to develop and operate joint commercial, civil and defense space capabilities. These partnerships should jointly fund developing capabilities that benefit from but are not heavily reliant on US government investment and revenue for their commercial viability.
  2. Entrepreneurs with innovative and potentially dual-use technologies must improve the protection of their intellectual property from unintended foreign assimilation, including protecting their networks from cyber exfiltration attempts, and avoiding exit strategies that transfer intellectual property to foreign control hostile to US interests.
  3. Businesses should engage across the US educational system to guide and develop the future STEM workforce to fuel the future space economy, to include funding for undergraduate scholarships/loans for STEM students, internships and providing space professionals to support instruction in space subjects.
  4. Industry should improve ties and partnerships with domestic and allied parts, subcomponent and subsystem manufacturers to strengthen trust and resilience in space supply chains.
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Self-replicating fungi radiation shielding for deep space settlements

Without adequate shielding, humans will be bombarded with lethal galactic cosmic radiation in deep space. Credits: NASA / scitechdaily.com

Galactic cosmic radiation poses a significant risk to humans in deep space. If a type of shielding could be found that could be “grown” through biotechnology starting from microscopic sources, significant savings in mass needed to be launched from Earth could be realized. It is already known that certain fungi can convert high-energy radiation into chemical energy through a process called radiosynthesis, analogous to photosynthesis in plants. Fungi have been found thriving in extremely radioactive environments such as the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and even on the exteriors of spacecraft in Earth orbit.

In a paper just uploaded to the preprint server for biology bioRxiv, results of a study carried out on the International Space Station have shown that a microbial lawn of the fungus C. sphaerospermum can be cultivated in microgravity and not only consumes and thrives on radiation, it provides shielding that if scaled up, could sufficiently protect humans in deep space settlements.

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Going up? Space elevators getting ready for prime time

Artist’s impression of a space elevator. Credits: Steve Bowers / orionsarm.com

The International Space Elevator Consortium (ISEC) has just published a position paper on the technology readiness of this alternative to launch vehicles subject to the constraints of the rocket equation. Recent advances in material science of single crystal graphene and other alternatives show potential for fabrication of tethers long enough and with the required strength to enable space elevators by the late 2030s. The authors present a case that the demand for launching enough mass to support ESA’s Moon Village, space based solar power and Elon Musk’s vision for Mars colonies far exceeds projected conventional rocket capabilities. Space elevators could fill this need while being better for the environment.

Diagram of a space elevator system. Credits: ISEC
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Human missions to Mercury and Saturn augmented by in situ resource utilization

A nuclear thermal rocket concept. Credits: NASA/Wired

In a paper presented at the 8th Symposium on Space Resource Utilization (2016), Bryan Palaszewski analyzes multiple mission architectures for human voyages to the inner and outer solar system. The planet Mercury has permanently shadowed craters at its poles which likely contain frozen water enabling ice mining for rocket propellant and oxygen for breathable air to sustain settlements. The outer planets and their moons are reservoirs of significant amounts of useful gases such as hydrogen, helium 3, methane, ethane, and ammonia which can be utilized as in-situ resources. Through nuclear propulsion and living off the land with ISRU, travel times can be reduced and payloads increased for both robotic and human missions. With a positive vision for eventual space settlement, Palaszewski concludes the paper with “These technological innovations will enable Krafft Ehricke’s vision of a polyglobal civilization“.

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Beyond Earth Institute publishes policy recommendations to accelerate space settlement

Illustration of an early space settlement. Credits: Beyond Earth Institute, Inc.

The newly formed nonprofit just issued their June 2020 BE Report outlining what steps need to be taken by government and industry in the areas of export controls, best practices and multilateral agreements to foster a future where millions of people will be living and working in space, while in compliance with the Outer Space Treaty.

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Space settlement through private enterprise

Artist rendition of Starship exploring Saturn. Image credit SpaceX/Flickr

In an interview by Stuart Clark in BBC Science Focus Magazine, Vice President for North American operations for the International Space University Gary Martin answers questions on how private enterprise is changing space exploration. Companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin, through their own initiatives and public/private partnerships are opening up the final frontier, paving the way for space settlement.

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The High Frontier

Checkout the trailer for the upcoming documentary The High Frontier: The Untold Story of Gerard K. O’Neill which was shown for the first time yesterday on the live stream of Yuri’s Night annual celebration party. The trailer begins with an introduction by Rick Tumlinson at 2:57.

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Executive order authorizes the commercial use of space resources

The document states that “Americans should have the right to engage in commercial exploration, recovery, and use of resources in outer space, consistent with applicable law. Outer space is a legally and physically unique domain of human activity, and the United States does not view it as a global commons. Accordingly, it shall be the policy of the United States to encourage international support for the public and private recovery and use of resources in outer space, consistent with applicable law”

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Interstellar travel using Q-Drive

An analysis of this innovative propulsion system credited to Jeff Greason of the Tau Zero Foundation is provided by Alex Tolley. The method for powering a starship saves fuel by extracting energy from plasma streams in the interstellar medium (or closer to home, from the solar wind) and converting it to momentum using onboard fuel to propel the ship. Although there are engineering challenges, the physics is sound and the savings in fuel enables the system to accelerate payloads to 20% of the speed of light.