I remember back then many said, “he’s just a bean counter, we need a engineer [that knows of technical stuff] for NASA Administrator!” Which at first glance makes sense except administrator duties are mainly battling budgeteers and schmoozing politicos for money. I think if Sean were to stay on in NASA, he would have planned programs to better match available funding, i.e. a better understanding of the political process in Washington DC. But then we’re constantly reminded the most successful NASA administrator was a businessman (and backed by engineering talent i.e. Dryden). A lesson for us all.

When I think of satellite assets I think geostationary. To marry this imperative national asset with human space exploration is not such a stretch. If the ISS was in geo orbit it would be able to do all things telecommunication but of course the radiation up there above the Van Allen belts from solar events would irradiate a crew sooner or later.

But the ice on the Moon means radiation shielding in the form of water can be transported from the Moon to Earth geostationary orbit. These shielded human crewed space stations from the Moon could replace the ring of space junk we now have up there.

And while a spaceship is always the best space station, if you put an engine on these geostationary shielded and crewed telecommunications platforms they are turned into spaceships.

I am not ant-nuclear by any means though. Yes, lunar propellent is the requirement for a profitable cislunar satellite infrastructure; but outside the magnetosphere nuclear propulsion is IMO required and Woodcock details Mars missions while I do not think Mars is a worthwhile destination (and not practical anyway using chemical propulsion). With nuclear propulsion systems assembled, tested, and launched from the Moon there are much more interesting destinations like Ceres and the moons of the gas giants.

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/leag2012/presentations/Connolly.pdf

Let me try to put this another way.

The current Mars Reference Design Mission calls for “8-10″ Ares V-class heavy lift launches for one human mission. When NASA was still doing this study, a more realistic assessment called for as many as 12 launches. At $1-2 billion per launch, that essentially makes a human Mars mission a complete non-starter.

Most of the mass (>80%) launched for this mission is propellant. We need to learn how to extract water from the Moon and make propellant from it. This is a government activity because no one knows if it can be done — as I said before, it is an engineering, R&D project. Moreover, there are important national strategic considerations at stake, primarily, to establish the international legal principle that resource extraction is a valid activity. If the U.S. government is not involved in this, it is highly likely that things will not go our way.

The Mars advocates have always torqued any new civil space initiative toward an “Apollo-to-Mars” type program. My point is that model will not work because there is no geopolitical imperative to go to Mars. There is a geopolitical imperative to protect our satellite assets in cislunar space. Thus, return to the Moon is geopolitically relevant while a human Mars mission is not.-
[from thread above]

Rule One for mining lunar rocket fuel.
The problem is lack of market for rocket fuel at lunar surface and/or lunar orbit.

Part of solution to rule one is to have it low cost.
Another part of solution to rule one is get as many customer as you can.

NASA can help with “to have it low cost” by doing the exploration which is required before
anyone can mine lunar water.

If NASA explores the Moon and finds best places to mine lunar water and make rocket.
Anyone who then spends the capital to mine the water and make the rocket rocket fuel, are not given a free pass to vast riches. If not done well and if not “lucky” it is quite possible to lose billions of dollars and go bankrupt.
If they were to do it, and after year or two, one is close to being in the black, then
you can point at them, and say, these guys are going to make billions of dollars. Billions of dollars MORE than they have already spent.

Or in other words I can’t say at this point whether Virgin Galactic will be profitable.
It’s unknown.
But I don’t think having NASA “take over” Virgin Galactic” operation would be clear path to success.
Instead, I think that would be the death toll. NASA could pour hundreds of millions of dollars in to it, but it’s seems near certainty, it would be a waste of tax dollars. And of course doing this would be in violation of US law.

So as you know I am big fan of getting to point of making lunar rocket fuel. But only because lunar rocket is potential market in space. And more markets in space, will certainly lower the cost
of getting into space. And lower the costs of getting into space is EVERYTHING.

So I hope suborbital can become a market of space. I think lunar water and lunar rocket could be a market in space,
Without more markets in space, one can not have settlements on Mars. PERIOD.
It true a Mars settlement would be a kind of market, but that market can’t survive in a vacuum.

Also lunar exploration should make mars exploration more probable, and with lunar rocket fuel
it makes sense for NASA to explore Mars- because with lunar rocket fuel market , one could have settlements on Mars. Why NASA explores Mars is because there could Mars settlements in the future. NASA Mars exploration should focused on exploring Mars so that Mars settlements in the future can happen [sooner].
And no doubt everyone can agree that a Mars Flags and Footprints would very bad thing.
If some entity other than NASA wants to do a Mars stunt, it’s their money- though quite unlikely to actually happen- getting to Mars alive is hard. And getting to point of being able to make the attempt is also hard.

I didn’t address all your points, some challenging points. But I have already made this post be long enough. The point of legality is an interesting issue.

The current Mars Reference Design Mission calls for “8-10” Ares V-class heavy lift launches for one human mission. When NASA was still doing this study, a more realistic assessment called for as many as 12 launches. At $1-2 billion per launch, that essentially makes a human Mars mission a complete non-starter.

Most of the mass (>80%) launched for this mission is propellant. We need to learn how to extract water from the Moon and make propellant from it. This is a government activity because no one knows if it can be done — as I said before, it is an engineering, R&D project. Moreover, there are important national strategic considerations at stake, primarily, to establish the international legal principle that resource extraction is a valid activity. If the U.S. government is not involved in this, it is highly likely that things will not go our way.

The Mars advocates have always torqued any new civil space initiative toward an “Apollo-to-Mars” type program. My point is that model will not work because there is no geopolitical imperative to go to Mars. There is a geopolitical imperative to protect our satellite assets in cislunar space. Thus, return to the Moon is geopolitically relevant while a human Mars mission is not.

I certainly have never said that. It is my strong opinion that any power generated on the Moon should remain there to power its industrialization.

As reply to:
“Well, in that case, you know that it is my belief that the VSE started to go off track almost immediately. The Mars crowd torqued the direction of the VSE away from the Moon, just as they did during the SEI 25 years ago. The same old song.”

I will quote rely you made further down the thread:

-Paul Spudis says:
December 28, 2013 at 2:34 am

You just made my point — the Moon is an enabling destination and as such, it needs to be the near-term target for the civil space program. Thus, it is not “a mistake to focus on one target.”-

So I would say not fault of Mars crowd, but rather we should have and still can enable the Mars crowd.

President Bush pushed in this direction to some extent. He wanted to make sure the message was his vision was a path to Mars.

Or you say it thought it was important to intervene
when he thought that the “direction” appear it did not include Mars.

A more dramatic point of Bush leadership in terms of message, occurred when the story of transfer of Iraq sovereignty was in news. And there was talk of partial transfer of sovereignty.
A Bush said, full sovereignty.
So I believe Bush thought that going to Mars was a part of vision.

So the Moon actually enabling going to Mars [within people’s lifetime] should a part of what NASA is doing.

But where I might disagree with Bush, I think NASA should explore the Moon. That exploration will enable
utilization of the Moon. And I think NASA needs to focus on a fairly brief, focused, and low cost exploration of the lunar poles to find best areas which could minable.
And let investor, who risk their money, decide if and when the Moon would be mined.
In addition to an objective assessment, in which this kind of objective assessment constantly done on Earth related various mining operation. The forgoing
of NASA investing in lunar mining, allows NASA to more quickly proceed in Mars exploration.
So this gets us to Mars on faster path, and it’s enabling Mars exploration, sooner and in a more realistic way.

So, whether the Moon is mined, doesn’t require money coming from a NASA budget.
How it is done, exactly, may not be just the private sector. It possible once the Moon has been explored by NASA for Congress to address the issue of what Congress may or may not do in regarding to “mining the moon”. It could set up different agency tasked with doing this. It might not do anything.
Point is by exploring the Moon, more informed decisions can be made by everyone. Or NASA will have competed a job it was created to do.