Achieving Mastery of Space Operations by Transforming Space Logistics

Logistics Spectrum, Jan-Mar 2005 by Snead, James Michael

The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics' (AIAA) Space Logistics Technical Committee (SLTC) focuses on innovative, near-term space logistics to establish safe and affordable human and robotics spacefaring operations throughout the Earth-Moon system and beyond. To help accomplish this vision, the SLTC and the Space Logistics Division of SOLE - The International Society of Logistics are taking steps to reestablish a previously successful partnership between SOLE and the AIAA that has waned in recent years, perhaps reflecting the recent woes of the American space program.

Space still has the allure of the mysterious that provokes a return to the imagination of our youth. Yet, while still a new and exciting frontier today, its future for human civilization revolves around the creation of new space logistics capabilities that will make human space operations safe and routine. The focus of this article is on describing how nearterm space logistics capabilities can be achieved and, equally important, why building these new capabilities is important.

Defining Space Logistics

The SLTC has adopted the following broad definition of space logistics, based on the generally accepted definition of military logistics. Space logistics is the science of planning and carrying out the movement of humans and materiel to, from, and within space combined with the ability to maintain human and robotics operations within space. In its most comprehensive sense, space logistics addresses the aspects of space operations both on the Earth and in space that deal with: (1) Design, development, acquisition, storage, movement, distribution, maintenance, evacuation and disposition of space materiel; (2) Movement, evacuation and hospitalization of people in space; (3) Acquisition or construction, maintenance, operation, and disposition of facilities on the Earth and in space to support human and robotics space operations; and (4) Acquisition or furnishing of services to support human and robotics space operations.

Achieving Mastery of Space Operations

The context for understanding the renewed importance of space logistics was established in early 2001 by the Commission to Assess United States National security Space Management and Organization (generally referred to as Space Commission).

The first era of the space age was one of experimentation and discovery. Tels tar, Mercury and Apollo, Voyager and Hubble, and the Space Shuttle taught Americans how to journey into space and allowed them to take the first tentative steps toward operating in space while enlarging their knowledge of the universe. We are now on the threshold of a new era of the space age, devoted to mastering operations in space.

Mastering near-Earth space operation is still in its early stages. As mastery over operating in space is achieved, the value of activity in space will grow. Commercial space activity will become increasingly important to the global economy. Civil activity will involve more nations, international consortia and non-state actors. U.S. defense and intelligence activities in space will become increasingly important to the pursuit of U.S. national security interests.1

What the Space Commission focused on with these findings was the fact that opening new frontiers involves a key transformation in operational capabilities. The initial era of exploration and scientific study does not generally emphasize the establishment of routine, affordable logistics operations to, from and within the new frontier. However, with time, as economic and other advantages of the new frontier become apparent, government and private enterprise begin to make logistics infrastructure investments to reap these rewards. This is an important turning point because the act of planning and building the initial logistics infrastructure necessarily creates the knowledge, experience, and industrial base-how I define mastery of operations-necessary to establish economically useful, acceptably safe and acceptably affordable logistics capabilities within the new frontier. Once these are established, this new mastery becomes the important foundation for creating and supporting new government and private operations in the new frontier.

Von Braun's Original Spacefaring Vision

As the recent investigations into the technical and economic challenges necessary to overcome to repair the Hubble Space Telescope highlight, we have not yet achieved an initial mastery of space operations. This is a consequence of decisions made over the course of nearly five decades that emphasized immediate operational goals without making necessary investments in space logistics.

In the early 1950s Dr. Wernher Von Braun, at the time probably the most widely recognized "rocket scientist," introduced his ideas on how to become a spacefaring civilization. This was a period of significant public interest in aerospace technology with the breaking of the "sound barrier" in 1947, the first western flights of rockets into space, the emergence of peaceful uses of nuclear energy, rapid progress in aircraft design, the initial growth of TV, and the initial period of sightings of UFOs and related sci-fi movies. Starting with an initial technical conference in Texas, moving on to a series of well-illustrated articles in the leading popular magazine of the day, Collier's, and culminating in two specials on the Walt Disney TV show, Dr. Von Braun explained to a captivated public how to become spacefaring. (see Figure 1.)