Fairchild and Mendell edited the proceedings of The NASA In Situ Resources Utilization Workshop held at Lake Buena Vista, Florida, from January 28 to 30, 1987. Sponsoring organizations included the NASA Lyndon B.Johnson Space Center (JSC), the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Large Scale Programs Institute, United Technologies Corporation, Kraft Foods, and Disney Imagineering. Attendance was by invitation only and was held to about 50. The NASA installations that were represented included JSC, JPL, Lewis Research Center, George C. Marshall Space Flight Center, and NASA Headquarters. The rest of the attendees came from other Federal and State agencies, universities, and nonaerospace industry.
The concept for the workshop arose from lunar base studies at JSC. Attempts to characterize mass flows, power requirements, crew sizing, launch rates, Space Station impact, lunar surface infrastructure, schedules, and costs for lunar base scenarios depended critically on technology estimates from nonaerospace industry such as mining, surface transportation, thermochemical processing, construction, utilities, and even agriculture. Since the studies were being performed in house on very restricted budgets, much of the required technical information had to be gathered informally through commercial contacts. The workshop was an attempt to exchange information with
industrial representatives about the needs and the potential for advances in the relevant technologies. One element of the interaction was discussion of the possibility for more direct involvement by industry in the planning and execution of space initiatives targeted (tentatively) for the turn of the century.
After formulation of the workshop was well under way and after the invitation list had been developed, the Office of Aeronautics and Space Technology (OAST) requested that the participants examine the issues associated with the new Civilian Space Technology Initiative being advocated in that organization. In response to the request, the steering committee for the workshop organized the meeting around working groups on various technology issues. Topics included mining, prospecting, transportation, construction, assembly, power generation, life support, automation and robotics, manufacturing, and materials processing.
The first half day of the meeting was devoted to background briefings on the state of NASA advanced planning. The rest of the time was spent in working group meetings or periodic progress reporting to the entire group. Some working groups had an initial problem with focus because the planning scenarios were not highly defined and because most of the attendees were unfamiliar with the space program or with conditions on the Moon and on Mars. However, by the end of 2 days, all groups had agreed on a conceptual structure and had produced a series of recommendations on approaches to future technology definition in the "Pathfinder" and "Pioneer" categories (OAST
terminology). A subgroup, consisting of industrial executives, spent part of the time examining the potential for private development of marketable space technology. They concurred on a set of future actions to explore the concept of "technology spin-off inversion," whereby a long-range program is designed to produce intermediate commercial products while preparing for 21st century leadership.
Although activity was intense, the brief duration of the meeting precluded production of a finished report. All groups have prepared written presentations, and they have been edited and combined into this document. This report is being made available to all interested NASA, public, private, and academic sector managers. A major product of the workshop will be discovery by commercial industry of opportunities for participation in the space program of the coming decades.
No future space development is possible unless the enabling technologies are in place. The word technology really means technical capability_ with performance within certain specifications. The NASA has defined a set of 7 technology readiness levels that chart the development of an operational capability from an understanding of the basic scientific principles (level l) to successful testing ]n space of a prototype model (level 8). This development takes investment of capital and time. The technology development for many of the activities identified in this report has not been started. Many of these activities will require long lead times. It is possible that certain goals for space development cannot be met because the required technologies are not already sufficiently developed to be ready in time.
Technology development is guided by the overall goals of space development and the objectives toward achieving those goals. Generally, the goals in space for the Nation_ as well as for the rest of the world, revolve around continued exploration and eventual settlement of the solar system. Most space planners envision human involvement in all aspects of this activity which, in the near term, translates into learning to live in space permanently.
To meet these goals, a significant initial capital investment is required. It is quite likely that very little human development of space will happen without demonstrated economic advantages of the associated activities. Certainly, if the private sector is to be involved in any sort of cooperative development, the eventual economic potential must be apparent.
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