Today I found a very interesting video of a presentation given earlier this year by Jeff Greason, President of XCOR Aerospace (NOTE: as of November 2017 no longer in business).
It is quite an eye-opening presentation, and seems to have been very well received. Essentially, the point he makes is that NASA lacks long-term goals and a strategy when it comes to human space flight.
Settlement is the goal.
The points that he makes are very compelling and the solutions clear and well-defined. Ultimately, he argues NASA should be looking to colonise the planets; this should be the long-term goal or else what's the point of humans going into space at all? We should go and we should stay. His strategy for this is a careful and relatively simple plan that involves using staging posts that act as stepping stones and, in addition, aid later steps by producing fuel.
Those stepping stones are:
- A Low Earth Orbit fuel station - create a market for fuel in orbit, make it profitable for a company to keep it stocked and allow other companies to use it.
- A Moon station that produces fuel on the lunar surface and supplies the LEO station.
- A L1 station also stocked from the lunar plant.
- A manned Phobos station that also produces fuel and investigates the Martian surface.
Finally, once these stepping stones are in place, a human Mars surface mission seems much more within grasp as there are stopping posts and fuel available en route, which vastly reduces cost.
I think that the whole strategy is excellent, and something well worth considering for NASA. The video is well worth watching if you have 45 minutes to spare.
I have also included the follow-up Q&A session video below, which expands on a lot of these core concepts during the audience discussion:
