May 15, 2009
What the Augustine Committee Didn’t Know in 1990
Earth set over the south pole of the Moon, seen from the Kaguya orbiter
A newly formed commission led by Norman Augustine will review NASA’s human spaceflight program with the aim of determining if we are on the “right track.” This is familiar territory for Augustine, who led the 1990 Advisory Committee on the Future of the US Space Program. Now, 19 years later, it may seem that he’s treading across similar ground, but the landscape has changed.
Compiled in the wake of the Challenger accident, the first loss of an American crew in flight, the Commission was charged to consider 1) Should America have a human space program; and 2) if yes, what should be its goals? The 1990 report concluded that human spaceflight was an essential part of the program and that the long-term goal of human exploration is Mars, preceded by a LEO Space Station which emphasizes life-sciences and microgravity research, an exploration base on the Moon, and robotic precursors to the Moon and Mars (Recommendations 4-7). The view of the Moon in Augustine 1990 was to explore the Moon as a test-bed for future missions to Mars. The report emphasized that the lunar base was to be built such that it could be human-tended, but not require permanent staffing. Surface activities were worded carefully because as far as it was known in 1990, the Moon offered little or nothing to sustain a long-term human presence.
Sustainability on the Moon revolves around two principal issues: power and consumables. Destinations in space typically lack one or both of these vital commodities. That’s why we bring all our consumables ( air, water, rocket propellant and electrical power) with us. For some time now, we’ve been able to generate electrical power in space using solar arrays, but these have the drawback of being unusable during night and periods of eclipse.
The Moon was viewed as a barren desert. True, it has no atmosphere or flowing water. Lunar samples are exceedingly dry and contain no water-bearing minerals. Moreover, the Moon has a slow rotation rate (28 days), meaning that after a scorching 14 Earth days in sunlight, you freeze for 14 days of cold, no-solar-power nights. These properties led to a concept of operations that emphasized transient stays on the Moon, science exploration and use of the Moon as a test-bed for Mars.
However, in the intervening twenty years since that Augustine report, several robotic missions have changed the way we perceive the Moon. We found that the poles are very different from the rest of the Moon. The 1994 Clementine mission found large areas in permanent shadow near both poles; the sun never reaches the bottoms of craters here because Moon’s spin axis is almost perpendicular to the plane of Earth’s orbit around the Sun (the ecliptic). Such areas are extremely cold, possibly only a few tens of degrees above absolute zero. Water added to the Moon through bombardment by water-bearing meteorites and comets for billions of years could be retained in these dark areas. Additionally, we found areas in close proximity to these dark regions on mountain peaks rising above the local horizon that are nearly continuously illuminated by the Sun. In 1998, the Lunar Prospector mission found elevated amounts of hydrogen in the polar regions, consistent with the accumulation of excess volatiles (including water).
So what do these discoveries mean for lunar return? We now know that sustained human presence on the Moon is possible, largely because we’ve found a source of near-constant power (permanent sunlight) and a source of sustenance and rocket propellant (volatiles, including water). The robotic Clementine and Lunar Prospector missions showed us that the poles, almost completely unknown in 1990, are inviting oases on the lunar desert. There, we can extract hydrogen and oxygen to make air and water for life support and propellant to fuel rockets. The sunlit areas can generate near continuous electrical power, with regenerative fuel cells providing power for the short duration eclipse periods. Locally obtained power and consumables means that continuous human presence is possible, without the enormous expense or unproven technology of large nuclear reactors and the delivery of massive quantities of material from Earth.
The new Augustine committee should be made cognizant of these facts. The more we learn about the true nature of the Moon, the more the goal of learning to live there on a quasi-self sufficient basis appears feasible. This opens up wholly new areas of operations and commerce in space, undreamed of as little as twenty years ago. It has the potential to change the entire paradigm of spaceflight, from a narrow, government-run, science-oriented program, completely dependent upon the caprice Congressional largess to a self-sustaining, free-market program, in which NASA develops and demonstrates new technologies that open up spacefaring by many different passengers and payloads for a wide variety of purposes.
Much of the original 1990 Augustine report is directly applicable to today, including a gradual movement of humans beyond LEO and a “go-as-you-pay” paradigm for agency funding. By using the Moon, where expanded dimensions in exploration can be developed and tested, we will transform and enhance the business of spaceflight.
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With the greatest of respect I feel I must counter your suggestion that lunar Hydrogen be utilised as rocket propellant! I am of the opinion that barring the discovery of vast quantities of lunar Hydrogen and/ or water ice; that any LUNH be conserved as a “Common Heritage” in a life support loop rather than thrown away. Even on an international mission to Mars! For local ‘hops’ a Al/LUNOX mono-propellant rocket is a viable alternative and the Moon is an ideal launch pad and shipyard for “brute force” Nuclear propulsion systems. Perhaps, if the corrosion problem could be solved, these could just use LUNOX as reaction mass.
Once we are mining NEOs and Main belt asteroids (Ceres!) for water we could return to LH as a propellant.
(But we probably won’t need to!)
With regards to other lunar resources LUNOX; Al; Si; Ti;… extraction costs will mean that a profit must be had and thus exemption from Common Heritage rules will be required. As a figleaf for international assent some form of levy: land deeds, taxation, etc should be in place to raise a common International Space Fund for those nations without any space infrastructure and used to bootstrap their off world activities.
In this way the Moon Treaty can be upheld in principle and become the future foundation of the development of Lunar ISRU rather than a roadblock.
Comment by brobof — May 16, 2009 @ 8:17 am
First the U.S is not required to follow the Moon Treaty, thanks to the foresight and efforts to stop the U.S from joining it 30 years.
Second, there are no Common Heritage “Rules”. The concept of Common Heritage just means that ALL nations have the right to use lunar resources as they wish. No single nation may stop another from having reasonable access to it, but there is no requirement for any nation to share what they use with other nations. The legal principle is the same as fishing on the open ocean, you are free to catch what you want. But you are not allowed to stop others from fishing as well. And of course there is no legal requirement to share what you catch with the world. Its yours to keep.
And this legal principle has already been established by the Russia selling some of their lunar samples into the private market and the U.S. government suing to recover stolen Apollo samples under the laws that govern stolen government property.
Comment by Thomas Matula — May 16, 2009 @ 2:04 pm
If lunar water is present but not vastly abundant, more important than drinking it is studying it and other frozen comet gases for a compositional chronology of the projectiles that penetrated the inner solar system over time. We may not be returning to the Moon for science, but to willfully destroy a unique scientific resource would be uncivilized.
Comment by Chuck Wood — May 16, 2009 @ 3:31 pm
Dr. Wood,
Granted. And knowing its composition before you use it for any purpose will be important as a safety issue. Trace elements could create a lot of problems. But with modern techniques the amount needed for sampling for scientific research would not be great.
Comment by Thomas Matula — May 16, 2009 @ 6:01 pm
It is simply NOT true that “we now know that sustained human presence on the Moon is possible”. Sorry, but it just ain’t so. There have been some interesting suggestions about ISRU, but nothing verified. Nothing proven.
This isn’t about commercialization or saving civilization. It really seems to be about a crusade. That, frankly, is what scares me about the lunar return and settlement community. The arguments they make are only lightly founded in reality, and heavily hand-waving. There is good reason to believe that lunar settlement isn’t about what is best for civilization, but about something else.
Comment by Anonymous — May 16, 2009 @ 7:50 pm
If lunar water is present but not vastly abundant..
Define “vastly abundant.”
The best current estimates for the amount of water at each pole is between 1 and 10 billion metric tonnes. If it’s even the lower limit, that’s enough hydrogen and oxygen to launch the equivalent of one Space Shuttle per day for over 200 years.
Comment by Paul D. Spudis — May 17, 2009 @ 7:51 am
It is simply NOT true that “we now know that sustained human presence on the Moon is possible”.
That’s purely a matter of opinion. I happen to believe that it is true, but in any event, part of the mission of our return to the Moon is to settle this question — to find out if it is possible. NASA’s job is not to industrialize or settle the Moon — it is to determine whether industrialization or settlement of the Moon is possible.
Comment by Paul D. Spudis — May 17, 2009 @ 7:54 am
As a follower of the Lunar Ice Deposits ever since Clemmie, I too share your optimistic view of an abundance of Lunar Hydrogen. Somewhere! It certainly makes things that much easier and for certain posters to continue to ignore the PRINCIPLE of the Moon Treaty!
However I feel that we must prepare for another disappointment when LCROSS reaches ground zero. The fact that Lunar Prospector failed to kick up a signature in Shoemaker (nee Mawson!) …was a grave disappointment and the “Arecibo Radar Mapping of the Lunar Poles: A Search for Ice Deposits” by Stacy, Campbell & Ford puts forward a pretty convincing argument that lunar ice may be largely artifactual. Alas, academic arguments aside, nothing will be resolved until after an exhaustive search for the Ground Truth. On the Ground.
Finally, you are no doubt aware of the most recent model by Dr Vincent Eke (Institute for Computational Cosmology, Durham University); “Moon’s polar craters could be the place to find lunar ice, scientists report” December 18th, 2008
http://www.physorg.com/news148805928.html (and International Journal of Solar System Studies, Icarus.)
His estimate is 200 MegaTonnes (“metric tons”) and sufficient (by extending his simile to that of the Northumbrians it supports!) … for a Lunar Population of roughly 300,000!
That will do nicely until Ceres sets up its export business!
Comment by brobof — May 18, 2009 @ 6:04 pm
brobof,
I am well aware of the scientific argument about polar ice, having been personally involved in it for the last 15 years. The Arecibo results are not contraindicative of ice, they are ambiguous. We are mapping the poles now using radar in lunar orbit and will soon have data from a better viewing geometry that will allow us to put constraints on the presence and quantities of polar ice. But you are correct — ultimately, we must land on the surface to unambiguously measure the amounts and physical states of polar ice.
Comment by Paul D. Spudis — May 19, 2009 @ 5:59 am