There’s a silent battle going on, whose stakes are billions of dollars and the future of spaceflight itself. It’s being fought in the corridors of NASA, the boardrooms of aerospace companies, and the offices of powerful politicians.
A paradigm is a set of rules accepted by everyone as ordinary common sense, how you do business. Right now, an old one and a new one are fighting it out. A lot rides on who wins. They’ll shape the future.
In one corner, we have the experienced heavyweight. NASA’s paradigm goes back to Project Apollo, and it has a lot of powerful adherents who have a lot invested in it and have prospered under it.
In the other corner, we have the brash young challenger, a whole new way of doing business, nimble, fast, light on his feet and able to punch above his weight.
Let’s take a look at the fight card.
The Heavyweight.
NASA and the legacy aerospace companies.
- Spaceflight is for government agencies, with the budgets of national governments.
- Spaceflight is primarily for national prestige.
- Russia was the adversary for Apollo, China for Artemis.
- Everything must go perfectly, to show technical prowess and national might.
- Private companies have their place as contractors, only.
- Industry in space is a by-product, acceptable as long as it is not manned.
- Any manned presence in space must be tightly controlled by its parent government.
The Challenger
SpaceX and the New Space companies.
- Private enterprise not only has a place in manned spaceflight, but should lead it.
- Spaceflight should be cheap, routine, available to anyone with the money.
- This is business, not national prestige. Government agencies are customers.
- If everything doesn’t go right, reboot and try again.
- Self-sustaining colonies on the Moon, Mars and elsewhere are the goal.
- Flags and footprints are irrelevant.
- National governments should regulate space industries as they now do for aviation.
- Tight control is neither necessary nor desirable.
The US Government, specifically NASA, is, amid great fanfare, preparing a return to the moon, dubbed Project Artemis. There is much debate, and some well founded doubt, as to whether Project Artemis will meet its ambitious goals of putting astronauts on Luna by 2030.
The master principle of war, and indeed of any endeavour, is to set and maintain the aim. With that firmly in mind, one can plan how to achieve this aim.
The aim is part of the paradigm, and the players on both sides are competing to define the aim for Project Artemis, and thereby which paradigm will carry the day.
The old paradigm aim is flags and footprints for the prestige of the US, to humble the Chinese by beating them to the Moon and thus to contain their ambitions here on Earth.
The new paradigm has a much grander scope. Cities on the Moon and Mars, industries to tap the resources and energy of space for the benefit of Earth, humanity surviving even a planetary disaster here on Earth. Here and now, the Moon is the first step and Artemis will pay the bills.
Recently, former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin, who now runs a consulting firm catering to the legacy aerospace corporations, has proposed radical action to meet the 2030 deadline, which he argues is not achievable with current plan and level of funding. He proposes instead that the upstarts such as SpaceX and Blue Origin, along with the NASA leadership who have let these contracts, be summarily fired. Apollo 2.0, says he, using all expendable hardware is the only way to meet the 2030 deadline and avoid loss of prestige to the Chinese before the entire world.
That’s the old paradigm talking, in case you hadn’t noticed.
The new paradigm has already landed some hard punches. NASA let two fixed-price contracts for lift of passengers and freight to the ISS. SpaceX’s Dragon has been flying for years now, hauling passengers and cargo reliably to the ISS. Boeing’s Starliner may, if not delayed yet again, fly its first crewed mission in April 2024.
SpaceX is going head to head with ULA for a chunk of the lucrative US Space Force launch queue, getting almost half of it. Falcon Heavy already has successful operational launches on its belt. ULA’s Vulcan Centaur has succeeded in its first certification launch. If the second certification launch is successful, it will be cleared for operational service.
Other, smaller companies are getting work, too. New paradigm guys. Nimble and flexible, able to rebound from failure and do a lot with a little.
The new paradigm takes over when the old one can’t cut it any more. If you want the TL;DR, check out Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”.
Money talks in anyone’s paradigm. Boeing was accustomed to the lavish cost-plus contracts of yore, where cost overruns were the government’s problems. The fixed price Starliner contract has been a money pit for them. Their participation in the ULA Vulcan Centaur project has had delays and problems, as well.
The proposed Apollo 2.0 project to the Moon would cost on the order of ten times NASA’s annual budget of 25 billion dollars. Getting that kind of money out of Congress in these times would be a pretty hard sell. SpaceX has accomplished quite a lot within the modest envelope of the contracts NASA has let to them, plus their USSF contracts and their commercial launches.
The future matters, too. The old paradigm would be a victory without a morrow. The expendable hardware would be expended. The aim of flags and footprints to support the national prestige would be accomplished, and there would be strong pressure to cut the budget and bring the astronauts home. The new paradigm is to build the infrastructure to get there, stay there, eventually become self-sufficient.
I’ve talked a lot about Boeing and the problems they’ve had. They could still turn things around. They could complete the Starliner contract and eat the losses, upgrade Vulcan Centaur to make it partly or even completely reusable, field a competitor to SpaceX’s Starship when it comes on-line.
ULA isn’t just Boeing. Lockheed-Martin is a mega-corporation with a lot of resources, too. They could stay in the game if they were willing to ante up. Field their own reusable heavy lift booster, match SpaceX’s launch rates.
Or, they could walk away. Both Boeing and Lockheed-Martin have other markets, other divisions. That would hurt, but if space is a money-loser for them then they might decide to cut their losses and concentrate on their other markets.
If the legacy companies decide to walk away and leave the field to the New Space companies, then the new paradigm wins and that’s how business is done from here on out.
If the legacy companies decide to turn things around, reform themselves and stay competitive, then they will have to embrace the new paradigm. The new paradigm wins in that scenario, too, because the customers want value for their money and if they don’t get it they take their business elsewhere.
The worst case for us space enthusiasts is that the old paradigm does carry the day, and Griffin’s proposal or something like it does get funded. The new paradigm will be out there in the shape of the New Space companies, who aren’t financially dependent on NASA any more, and are used to rebounding from failure.
That will be round one. The new paradigm will be back for round two, more experienced and better trained.
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