President Obama's Science Advisor John Holdren has generated controversy by suggesting that American astronauts might fly on the Chinese Shenzou spacecraft as well as the Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Recently, our own Vladislaw offered his superb take on the subject:
American Astronauts to ride Chinese Rockets?
Previously, I have suggested that space exploration offers the United States a superb venue for building international soft power but only if we were to adopt a collaborative approach.
In the 1960s beating the Soviets to the Moon was necessary to demonstrate our superior technology.
Today, perhaps it would be better to show that we can "play well with others" by working cooperatively and collaboratively with other nations in doing lunar exploration. Facilitating a "neutral flag" EML fuel depot could offer a novel approach to accomplish this objective.
Outlined below is an abstract I intend to submit to the 2009 National Space Society conference in May.
In some ways the idea is taken from the Babylon 5 television series -- a space station in neutral hands that facilitates trade, negotiation and cooperation amongst the spacefaring powers.
Babylon 5 image (Any suggestions on how to shrink the image to better fit?)
Anyway . . .
LaGrange Point Fuel Depots and the Entrepot precedent
Abstract:
The use of fuel depots to leverage space operations raises several non-technological challenges. Issues of private ownership versus governmental ownership present one such challenge as well as issues of national jurisdiction, especially given prospects for the European Union, India, Japan and others to join the United States, Russia and China as members of the spacefaring community. Related issues are associated with the choice of orbital inclination for LEO depots. While certain resonant orbits appear favored by the constraints imposed by orbital mechanics, lower inclination depots are inaccessible to higher inclination launch facilities suggesting the relevance of geopolitical constraints on the available inclinations.
In any event, since every LEO facility will face launch window restrictions limiting functionality and since LEO depots appear to offer little benefit absent robust programs to access destinations beyond LEO, this paper proposes LaGrange point locations (EML-1 & EML-2) for depot deployment particularly if reusable lunar landers (RLLs) are also deployed with such facilitities. EML depots would be equally accessible from any point on the Earth or the Moon, offering 24/7 global access to both destinations and RLLs will lower the cost of lunar surface access particularly once lunar ISRU LOX becomes available.
The shared use of an EML depot and RLLs by the various spacefaring nations would enhance the Moon as a destination, promote global cooperation in space exploration and facilitate increased demand for transit from LEO which would stimulate programs seeking lower cost LEO access from Earth. A shared use EML depot plus RLL would offer synergy with an American flag LEO depot at 28 degrees, a Russian flag depot at 51 degrees, a Chinese flag depot at 20 degrees (Hainan Island launch facility), an Indian flag facility at 14 degrees (Sriharikota launch facility) and equatorial depots deployed to support Kouru.
The realities of international geo-politics and the apparent inability of any one spacefaring nation to fund (by itself) all aspects of a robust lunar exploration program suggests that mutual benefits could be attained if an EML depot plus RLLs were owned and operated by an entity not under the jurisdiction of any current spacefaring nation. As an example, such facilities could be owned and operated by entities having situs within sovereigns such as Singapore or Dubai, historic entrepot cities. The Isle of Man offers another possible jurisdiction.
Throughout world history, entrepot cities facilitated trade along difficult routes and between parties not on amicable terms. With respect to future cis-lunar commerce, a Singapore or Isle of Man flagged EML depot could accommodate, service and fuel vessels from every spacefaring nation while remaining neutral during the ebb and flow of geo-political antagonisms. Further, once genuine commercial and industrial development of the Moon commences and once humanity initiates travel beyond cis-lunar space, the commercial value of an EML depot can only be expected to increase (perhaps substantially) since real estate is always valued by three factors: location, location, location.
In the days to come I shall post additional diaries expanding on this idea and presenting various arguments why I believe an "entrepot city" at EML-1 and EML-2 would be:
(a) Good for facilitating robust lunar exploration;
(b) Good for global geo-political stability; and
(c) Good for United States geo-political interests.