A Cold Look at CATS

[This began in rec.arts.sf.written as an offshoot of a thread about
Charlie Stross' "High Frontier, Redux" essay

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog...edux.html#more

now at 650 comments and counting. As there's no sci.space.alt.
history, I thought I'd toss it out for reactions here]

***

Space advocates agree that cheap access to space -- frequent, highly
reliable transport to orbit at a small fraction of today's cost per kg
-- is essential to any rapid or large-scale expansion of space
activity. It was once hoped that the Shuttle system, approved in 1972
and first flying in 1981, would provide it. And for the last 20 years,
discussions of CATS have dissected every aspect of the Shuttle's
failure to do so. Critics have sought the crucial mistake in every
aspect of its design, technology and operations, as well as the
politics that helped shape them.

One conclusion is widely shared: that Apollo had proved we could do
anything we set our mind to. So if the crucial mistake --whatever it
was -- had been avoided, we could have had CATS long before this.
Sadly, this conclusion hides (and helps perpetuate) a deeper mistake:
the failure to understand that CATS is many times harder than Apollo
was.

Space fans love historical analogies. But Columbus and the Wright
brothers and even Zheng He are getting tired. So let's bring on
another hero: Roald Amundsen of Norway, whose 1910-1912 expedition was
the first to reach the South Pole.

Let's imagine that his expedition was a triumph for NASA (the
Norwegian Advanced Sled Authority). Soon after, they and King Haakon
VII determined to develop cheap access to the Pole....

"We showed Scott and his Brits a thing or two. Now... what we need in
six or seven years is a robust system for weekly round trips to the
Pole from Auckland or Capetown. It should be able to haul heavy
freight for big facilities there. And accommodate scientific and
commercial equipment. And do some hush-hush work for our ski forces.
And be far safer than Amundsen's dogsleds. And oh, yes -- creating
it should cost less than his expedition, and it should deliver
material to the pole far more cheaply."

NASA wanted 45% or more of Amundsen's budget, but had to settle for
20% to start with. Combining icebreaker and sno-cat technology, they
built four hybrid vehicles, along with an elaborate infrastructure.
Not surprisingly, in the end they needed nine years and twice the
initial appropriation. And a huge staff was required to keep the
bleeding-edge system running. And it could make only a few trips a
year. And -- surprise! -- it cost so much that savings were
negligible, and Norway's corporations showed little interest in cargo
service. But so much money and political commitment and national
prestige had gone into it that few were inclined to admit its
shortcomings and start again with something more realistic. Even if
they were, the operating costs were too high to permit it.

So Prime Minister Ranald Raegen declared the system operational, and
called for planning of the polar station. Over the years, projected
costs increased and the plans were cut back -- partly because of
tragic mishaps, but mostly because the transport system and its delays
cost so much. Indeed, the station would have been canceled if the
Swedes and Danes hadn't been roped in. Construction kept running
behind schedule and above budget, until it appeared that the station
would never be completed or fully staffed.

By 1947, 35 years after Amundsen's triumph, NASA was preparing to
retire its aging, much-criticized hybrid vehicles and beginning work
on its Vision for Sled Enhancement. But frustration and impatience
were widespread. Many who wanted to go to Antarctica were offering
competing visions. They knew what had gone wrong. In fact, they had a
variety of explanations:

"It was the damn politicians in the Stortinget back in 1915! They lost
sight of the Vision, and didn't spend enough to build the hovercraft
that would have made a successful system."

"No, NASA should have stayed with what worked for Amundsen -- built
more, bigger dogsleds, and raised huskies by the thousands."

"No, it's the bloated NASA bureaucracy and their corporate cronies!
They can't innovate like our little team in the warehouse at the
Trondheim docks! With a few more rounds of financing, we'll show them
how it should be done!"

"Who cares? All we've done for 35 years is spin on our axis on top of
the ice! We need a goal, a still more ambitious Vision to motivate the
nation! Start work *now* on the Polar Deep Drilling Project and the
Polar Power Tower!"

Many in the Alt. Antarctica movement expected great things from
private enterprise. They pointed to the winners of the Ansarsdottr
Prize for a quick, low-cost dash to the Ross Ice Shelf. They
anticipated Bransson Tours' day trips on the Weddell Sea. They were
sure that PoleX would reach its destination the next time around, or
the time after that... and Antarctic travel and commerce would
burgeon.

There was one radically different point of view, favored by only a
handful of cynics. They agreed that with enough investment, 1915
technology could have done it. But they believed that "enough
investment" would have been many times what Amundsen had spent for his
lunge to the Pole. The task would inevitably have taken far longer
than nine years, with many technology trials and experimental
prototypes, before it could hope to get close to meeting all the
original goals.

These cold-eyed people believed that the national exhilaration of 1912
had led to a profound over-estimation of the real demand -- political
and commercial -- for access to Antarctica. And that over-estimation
had blinded almost everyone -- not only NASA, but the government and
the people -- to the real magnitude of the difference between an
expedition for glory and a practical, cost-effective transportation
system. The result was crippled not by any one mistake, but by the
hubris at its heart: the insistence on doing quickly, in a single
program, what could only be done as an incremental, evolutionary
effort, learning along the way.

Even now, the Alt.Antarctic pioneers were going to need a lot more
time and a lot more money than most were willing to acknowledge. Yes,
private funding would make them nimbler and more efficient -- but that
much more? To believe that the hovercraft, frequent trips and polar
hotels would now come quickly, with costs plummeting, required a truly
magical faith. The Alt.Antarcticans' focus on private enterprise as
against public bureaucracy seemed like a red herring (very popular in
Norway). Someday there would be a bustling, even profitable and
self-sustaining Antarctic travel business... but getting there was
still going to be a long haul.

In short, the doubters murmured, the new visions -- those of the
critics as much as that of NASA -- had all too much in common with the
ambitious delusions of 1912.

This was so uninspiring and chilly a perspective that most people just
ignored it and talked about their visions a little louder.