DARPA’s DRACO nuclear-powered rocket for cislunar operations

WASHINGTON: The possibility of future military activity around the Moon is en vogue in the national security space community, with a plethora of seminars featuring senior Space Force, Air Force and DoD officials musing on the likely need for the US counter China in deep space.

John Hopkins Applied Physics Lab is even planning the first of what its website says will be an annual  classified Cislunar Security Space Conference on Oct. 27-29.

But the mainstream space industry — not counting the ‘New Space’ crowd and its deep-pocketed venture capitalist backers — has yet to be convinced. At the moment, industry sources say, there is no money to be had in developing systems for DoD cislunar operations.

“In order for us to go off and do some development work, we have to get a customer to give us money to do that. So, until then …” one industry official told me, with a nearly audible shrug.

Indeed, industry and former Pentagon officials say, the lack of “real” money — rather than tiny sums for basic research that trickles out of places like DARPA and Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) — is in part because there is no consensus about the need for DoD to be exercised about reaching out to cislunar space.

Instead, there are two distinct camps on where Space Force should be putting its research priorities and dollars.

‘Space Camp A’ comprises the “space hawks,” as one industry official put it. They are convinced China is going to plant a flag on the far side of the Moon not just for commercial reasons such as mining water ice, but also to seize the next military ‘high ground.’

For example, Brig. Gen. Steve (Bucky) Butow, who heads up the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), told AIAA’s ASCEND conference last week that the US must lead in commercial and military exploitation of space between Earth and the outer lunar orbits to set normative and legal precedents — before China beats us to it. (He spoke on a panel titled “National Security Space Track” panel with the title: “Cislunar Logistics: Motivations, Markets and Users.”)

“Much of our law that we follow today is established on precedents. And one of the things we don’t want to do, is we don’t want to let our peer competitors and adversaries go out and establish the precedent of how things are gonna be done in the solar system, beginning with the Moon,” he said.

Butow also was a participant in the ‘futures’ study released last September by the former Air Force Space Command (AFSPC). The study’s recommendations flow from the ‘Camp A’ worldview that centers on the idea of “flag follows trade.”

“The U.S. must recognize that in 2060, space will be a major engine of national political, economic, and military power for whichever nations best organize and operate to exploit that potential,” the study, The Future of Space 2060 and Implications for U.S. Strategy, asserts.

Thus, it recommended that Space Command move to develop a strategy to “address how the national security establishment will defend the full range of expanded national interests in space (i.e., civil and commercial space capabilities and citizens in space) – not just the services that directly support national security.”

Many in industry, however, challenge the notion that there will be any commerce to defend in deep space anytime soon.

“I don’t think we have a clue about what that would look like,” said one former Pentagon official now working in the commercial space world. “To get to a place where we’re actually moving around on the cislunar volume in a way that it means something in terms of a commercial activity, I think we’re like 30 to 50 years away from that.”

So, for the moment, the defense-oriented space industry largely remains in bed with the second Pentagon camp, ‘Space Camp B,’ who think the denizens of ‘Camp A’ are just a wee bit fanatical about the Chinese threat. These DoD officials argue that while it pays to keep a beady eyeball on Beijing’s space program, there are more pressing needs for Space Force to attend to — especially if DoD’s budget contracts in the post-COVID-19 era. Those in ‘Camp B’ want to see research and development firmly fixed on ensuring the space assets and networks the US currently has are survivable, and that follow-ons are more resilient against possible attacks.

‘Camp B,’ thus, is content with the low-dollar, exploratory research into cislunar that last year was deemed a new focus. On May 16, 2019, Gen. Jay Raymond, then still the head of AFSPC, signed a memo on Long-Term Science and Technology (S&T) Challenges that called for more attention on operations in cislunar space, including logistics. Raymond is now the Space Force Chief of Space Operations.

“The space domain of the future will be characterized by an increasing private, industrial, and government presence. This presence includes sustained commercialization of near-Earth space, the exploitation of space resources, an increased human presence in space, and the push to establish a long-term investment on the Moon and beyond. The multinational confluence of these political, social, technological, economic, and environmental trends will redefine this global security context,” the memo says.

An attachment to the memo lists the challenges to be addressed includes a section on “Technologies to include access to space and provide in-space logistics.” These are defined as: “Novel ways to expand capabilities in space — to include activities beyond traditional low earth orbit/medium earth orbit/geosynchronous earth orbit regimes.” For example, the memo specifies, new propulsion techniques for maneuver, “in-situ resource harvesting,” communications, and position, navigation and timing among others.

According to Space Force officials, the memo continues to apply, explaining the increased focus at AFRL, DIU, and DARPA on cislunar research.

And while such research is, as one industry official noted “in very early days,” it might be worth pointing out that executing the strategy was entrusted to Joel Mozer, who now is the chief scientist at Space Force. And Mozer was also a key participant in the AFSPC futures study — putting him pretty firmly in ‘Space Camp A.’

So as the old saying goes: watch this space.