§ 8.3.3 Space Studies Institute (SSI)
 The first and foremost private organization, and the only not-for-profit one I cover in this chapter, is the Space Studies Institute (SSI). First, SSI has been the foremost leader in the field of space resources utilization. Secondly, outside of government circles, SSI has produced the largest quantity of useful research and development for utilization of lunar and asteroial materials, their sole focus. SSI's emphasis is on the private sector, though as a 501c3 not-for-profit organization SSI cannot embark on a mission itself. The results of this research and development are available to any private companies and consortiums embarking upon a venture. SSI is a not-for-profit research organization in the truest spirit. SSI thrives off of generous philanthropic donations and various subscription services such as their "Senior Associate" program.
Besides past and present research, SSI is one of the very best organizations to know for meeting many of the best research professionals in the relevant fields.
SSI was founded in 1977 by Princeton physicist Dr. Gerard K. O'Neill. SSI's mission is to fund research and development leading to lunar and asteroidal resources utilization which NASA, other governments and the private sector are not supporting, i.e., it is independent of political winds and business trends. SSI's research is usually performed in conjunction with private companies, universities, and sometimes NASA, but SSI is not dependent upon them for its existence and SSI's policy is not shaped by any subserviant desire for contract money. SSI has maintained focus on its mission for more than 20 years now.
For example, SSI entered into a joint project with McDonnell Douglas Corporation, Alcoa (Aluminum Company of America, an industry giant) and Goldsworthy Engineering for the construction of a pilot-scale solar powered glass composite production facility. Using a 10.3 meter concentrator with a focusing capacity of 10,000 suns, this unit is the first large-scale demonstration of lunar processing techniques. This is just one of many, many examples of SSI research projects performed in conjunction with technical leaders in private industry.
The best place to find information on SSI's past and present R&D is on the SSI website at http://www.ssi.org and with particular emphasis on their research and development page at http://ssi.org/research.html which gives a long list of past and current research projects. However, I could not find information on some SSI research projects which I know are ongoing and have achieved results. This is consistent with SSI's consistent neglect of their website since the inception of the web, largely the result of volunteers who just don't get the job done completely.
There are a couple of things in particular not covered by the SSI website which I should add here:
When the US Department of Energy and NASA were completing studies into launching Solar Power Satellites (SPS), it was clear that their price tag was far too high due to the studies calling for the satellites to be launched up from Earth. Largely in response to this behemoth government contractor generated scenario, SSI sponsored a workshop on utilizing lunar materials led by Dr. O'Neill and Dr. Charles Rosen, president of the Machine Intelligence Corp. (specializing in machine intelligence and teleoperation), which came up with a proposed set of equipment to be delivered to make a small, minimal lunar base on the Moon and a small space industrial facility in high Earth orbit which would process the lunar material into fuel propellant and other basic products sellable in orbit, including for solar power satellites. The emphasis of this scenario was "bootstrapping", i.e., using the first products to expand the lunar base, space manufacturing facility and transportation infrastructure. Hence, the first deployment was to be a "seed". A report entitled "The Low Profile Road to Space Development" gives an overview of the plan.
In contrast to the government contractor SPS proposal costing hundreds of billions of dollars before payback, the Low Profile private sector report conservatively estimated that the total cost before breakeven was around $7 billion, that is, roughly the cost of the Alaska oil pipeline project. Subsequent work has reportedly improved upon this scenario whereby the cost before breakeven has been reduced, but I've not seen any later published report.
The government reports made assumptions to simplify their study, which were easy to make since it would be government work instead of profitable private sector work. For example, they assumed no bootstrapping. They also assumed all infrastructure to build SPS would be developed, built, launched and put into operation producing SPS before any revenues came in.
However, in my opinion, the weakness of the SSI "Low Profile" scenario is the reliance on a lunar transportation system that was too risky and unnecessary. It was an electromagnetic launcher on the Moon, called a "Mass Driver", invented by Dr. O'Neill, with three models of the accelerator section built and successfully tested (each model making major improvements in economics over the previous model). Reliance on such new transportation technology entails an additional risk which is hard to sell. They should have based the system on more mundane transportation technology. (Understand, I worked in the field of electromagnetic launchers for the Pentagon's SDI/"Star Wars" and have much confidence in the technology, but I'm a physicist, not an investor.) SSI and its people are heavily invested in the Mass Driver and believe in it.
Asteroidal resources were not considered in the Low Profile report. Many researchers see asteroidal resources as more economical than lunar resources. Since the time of the Low Profile report, the distribution of SSI research money has shifted significantly so that their interest now reflects both asteroidal and lunar materials in a more balanced way. Mass Driver research and development has not continued like before.
Another piece of history worth mentioning is that Dr. O'Neill privately founded a separate company called GeoStar to provide global positioning system (GPS) services, based on a technology patented by Dr. O'Neill. It was clearly Dr. O'Neill's intention to make a lot of money from Geostar and give it to SSI. Dr. O'Neill saw the promise of large revenues from the global positioning business. Dr. O'Neill and some of this top associates started spending a lot of their time, effort and resources getting Geostar up and running. Geostar used no SSI research, as it was technically unrelated, so all time, effort and resources going into Geostar did not benefit SSI one bit.
However, two tragedies struck. First, Dr. O'Neill was diagnosed with leukemia in 1985 and had to reduce his workload. Secondly, the first two satellites deployments failed, one due to a rocket failure during launch and the other after being deployed in the right orbit (the satellite just suddenly went dead). Soon after the second satellite failure, Geostar failed (even though both satellites were insured).
There are two theories on why Geostar failed. One school of thought blames it on key management decisions, which I'd rather not go into. However, Geostar's main competitor who was extremely successful in providing GPS services told me that Geostar's failure was because they tried making a better satellite rather than using off the shelf components for a sufficient first generation satellite (which is a management decision, of course). He attributed it to Geostar's academic staff. He said that his company got up and running with quick revenues from GPS services using equipment put together quickly, and that's why they beat Geostar in grabbing market share.
Of course, the not-for-profit SSI is entirely independent of the for-profit (and now defunct) Geostar Corporation. SSI would have benefitted from Geostar's success, but did not (and legally could not) invest any resources into Geostar. The two were entirely separate entities in every way except that some people who worked for Geostar also did things for SSI. It is good that SSI remained a separate, not for profit entity not affected by business or else it could have failed as well.
Dr. O'Neill died from leukemia in 1992, but SSI has taken on a life of its own, and continues to be one of the top leaders in performing research and development in utilizing lunar and asteroidal resources.
For example, the Lunar Prospector probe which verified ice at the lunar poles (verifying what Clementine 1 detected, and roughly quantifying it), was initially designed by SSI and its associates. SSI had always wanted to search for volatiles in the permanently shadowed lunar craters. NASA didn't buy into this visionary project until after the Defense Dept. Clementine probe discovered the ice. (The Clementine project was in turn led by some SSI followers.)
SSI hosts and co-sponsors (with the AIAA -- American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics) a series of bi-annual conferences, the proceedings of which are published by the AIAA, the latest being held in May of 1997. A list of papers presented at these conferences is available on the PERMANENT website. This is one of the two top conferences in the space resources field, and should not be missed by any serious entity.
Notably, at one of the SSI conferences, one of the family owners of the Shimizu Corp. (discussed below), without any prior notice, walked up to Dr. O'Neill and gave him an envelope with a very large sum of cash for SSI.
If you're interested in developing a business plan to utilize lunar or asteroidal materials, it would be a good thing to get in touch with SSI, who know many technically skilled people in this field. You can contact SSI by sending e-mail to ssi@ssi.org.
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