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President Obama and Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin walk toward Air Force One Thursday, April 15, 2010, for a day trip to Florida. (AP)

During a carefully staged appearance at Kennedy Space Center yesterday, President Barack Obama rolled out his plans for the U. S. space program.  Although there weren’t many surprises (the White House Office of Science and Technology, under the direction of John P. Holdren, had released a fact sheet days earlier outlining details), one startling part of the speech was that we are abandoning the Moon as a goal.  Though hinted at in several statements by people around the President, including NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and Apollo 11 Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, a path away from human return to the Moon is now officially the direction of Obama’s space policy.

Given the topic of this blog, it shouldn’t surprise many of you to learn that people are calling and writing me, asking for my reaction to the new policy.  Although it wasn’t much of a surprise, it is disappointing to me, but not for the reasons you might suspect.

The speech detailed aspects of the administration’s new space budget, which will eliminate Project Constellation, contract with commercial entities for human transport to LEO, and spend money for development of new technology so as to “revolutionize” our access and capabilities in space.  The Moon was finally mentioned near the end of the speech and I felt it would be fitting to use the President’s own words as the title for this post, and then give my views of the Moon’s place in the template of space exploration.

I’ve heard the “been there” line many times since 2004 when President George W. Bush announced the Vision for Space Exploration, so hearing it one more time was not a particularly jarring experience.  But stop for a moment to consider exactly what President Obama said.  Lunar return critics give many reasons to NOT go to the Moon: they think that it’s scientifically uninteresting, it doesn’t contain what we need, it will turn into a money sink (preventing voyages to many other destinations in space – perhaps number one on their list), that there are more pressing needs here on Earth, and I’m sure others that I haven’t yet heard.  But this new space policy rationale is unique and carries with it different and significant implications for our nation’s exploration of space.

We have now added a new requirement for U.S. space missions – we must go to a place never before visited by humans.  Of course, some will argue that such a concept is implicit in the word “exploration” but until recently, exploration encompassed a much wider concept where exploration was followed by exploitation and settlement by many people from many walks of life using many different skills toward a myriad of goals.  I wonder if supporters of this new space policy have stopped to consider the implications of the “not been there” requirement.  The new meaning of exploration contains within it the seeds of its own termination: after you’ve touched the surface, planted a flag, and collected some rocks or deployed an instrument, that destination is “done.”  Or does such a formulation apply only to the Moon?

One of the biggest criticisms hurled at Project Constellation is that it is largely a grandiose repeat of the Apollo explorations of the Moon undertaken over 40 years ago.  Certainly, as had been outlined by NASA, lunar return consisted of sortie missions that landed crews all over the Moon to do local field exploration.  Such a mission template is indeed Apollo writ large.  But that is not and was never the intent of lunar return under the Vision for Space Exploration which is now under assault.  Constellation was largely NASA’s rocket development program, while the Vision for Space Exploration was strategic direction outlining a sustainable lunar return, whereby we would bootstrap our way “beyond” by learning how to use the resources of the Moon and other bodies.

So let me respond to the President’s new plan by reminding the readers of this column why the Moon is our goal and of its significance and value to space exploration.

It’s close.  Unlike virtually all other destinations in space beyond low Earth orbit, the Moon is near in time (a few days) and energy (a few hundreds of meters per second.)  In addition to its proximity, because the Moon orbits the Earth, it is the most accessible target beyond LEO, having nearly continuous windows for arrival and departure.  This routine accessibility is in contrast to all of the planets and asteroids, which orbit the Sun and have narrow, irregular windows of access that depend on their alignment with respect to the Earth.  The closeness and accessibility of the Moon permit modes of operation not possible with other space destinations, such as a near real-time (less than 3 seconds) communication link.  Robotic machines can be teleoperated directly from Earth, permitting hard, dangerous manual labor on the Moon to be done by machines controlled by humans either on the Moon or from Earth.  The closeness of the Moon also permits easy and continuous abort capability, certainly something we do not want to take advantage of, but comforting to know is handy until we have more robust and reliable space subsystems.  If you don’t believe this is important, ask the crew of Apollo 13.

It’s interesting.  The Moon offers scientific value that is unique within the family of objects in the Solar System.  The Moon has no atmosphere or global magnetic field so plasmas and streams of energetic particles impinge directly on its surface, embedding themselves onto the lunar dust grains.  Thus, the Moon contains a detailed record of the Sun’s output through geological time (over at least the last 4 billion years).  The value of such a record is that the Sun is the principal driver of Earth’s climate and by recovering that detailed record (unavailable anywhere on the Earth), it can help us understand the details of solar output, both its cycles and singular events, throughout the history of the Solar System.  Additionally, because of the Moon’s ancient surface and proximity to the Earth, it retains a record of the impact bombardment history of both bodies.  We now know that the collision of large bodies has drastic effects on the geological and biological evolution of the Earth and occur at quasi-regular intervals. Because our very survival depends on understanding the nature and history of these events as a basis for the prediction of future events, the record on the lunar surface is critical to our  understanding.  A radio telescope on the far side of the Moon can “see” into deep space from the only platform in the Solar System that is permanently free from Earth’s radio noise.  The Moon is a unique, rich and valuable scientific asset.

It’s useful.  In my opinion, this is the most important and pressing argument for making the Moon our first destination beyond LEO.  Because of the detailed exploration of the Moon undertaken during the last 20 years, we have a very different understanding of its properties than we did immediately following Apollo.  Specifically, the Moon has accessible and immediately usable resources of both energy and materials in its polar regions, something about which we were almost completely ignorant only a few years ago.  For energy, both poles offer benign surface temperatures and near-permanent sunlight, as the lunar spin axis obliquity is nearly perpendicular to the plane of Earth’s orbit around the Sun.  This relation solves one of the most difficult issues of lunar habitation – the 14-day long lunar night, which challenges the design of thermal and power systems.  In addition, once thought to be a barren desert, we have recently found that the Moon contains abundant and accessible deposits of water, in a variety of forms and concentrations.  There is enough water on the Moon to bootstrap a permanent, sustained human presence there.  Water is the most important substance to find and use in space; not only does it support human life by its consumption and provision of breathable oxygen, in its form as cryogenic liquid oxygen and hydrogen, it is the most powerful chemical rocket propellant known.  A transportation system that can routinely access the lunar surface to refuel, can also access all of cislunar space, where all of our national strategic and commercial (and much of our scientific) assets reside (many satellites reside above LEO and are inaccessible for repair).  Such a system would truly and fundamentally change the paradigm of spaceflight and can be realized through the mining and processing of the water ice deposits near the poles of the Moon.  Space exploration should be a driving force in our economy not merely a playground for scientists or a venue for public entertainment.

Given the real and potential benefits of lunar return, the question is no longer “Why the Moon?” but “Why bypass the Moon?”  I’m glad that “Buzz has been there” but that fact is irrelevant to either the value or the desirability of lunar return.  By proposing to eliminate the Moon as a destination, the President has fundamentally altered the societal value of the space program in a significant and qualitatively different way.

If our new space program is to be made into a simple instrument of public spectacle (“cheap thrills” and “colossal feats,” as variously reported by news columnists) with each new mission requiring a “series of  ‘firsts’ to engage and excite the public”, it will no longer have any more real long term benefit to our national security and wealth than did the bread and circus shows that heralded the demise of ancient Rome. Yes, there were and will be some exciting spectacles.  And when such events are finished, people turn away and go home – none the wiser, none the richer, and none the better off.  We won’t be staying at any destination long enough to fully characterize it and use what it has to offer.

Is this the kind of space exploration we want?

The seeds of the termination of our national space program were planted yesterday in Florida.

To heavy lift or not to heavy lift -- that is the question.

A recent talking points memo by the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) seeks to clarify some aspects of the new direction in regards to the cancelled Project Constellation.  Touted by some as “compromise,” it asserts that NASA will develop and build a new “Orion lite” crew vehicle whose primary mission will be to serve as an escape pod for the crew of the International Space Station (ISS).  And more interestingly, the policy “Begins major work on building a new heavy lift rocket sooner, with a commitment to decide in 2015 on the specific heavy-lift rocket that will take us deeper into space.”

I’m confused.  If a heavy lift launch vehicle (HLLV) is not needed for future human missions beyond LEO, why are we spending billions of dollars researching aspects of it in order to make a design decision five years hence?  If a heavy lift launch vehicle is needed for such missions, why are we waiting five years to make that decision when we have the parts and workforce needed to make the vehicle now?

Are you confused?

Let’s break this down a bit. What exactly is a heavy lift launch vehicle and what is its significance to spaceflight and more specifically, to sending people beyond low Earth orbit (LEO)?  The Space Shuttle orbiter carries a bit more than 24 metric tonnes (mT; 52,800 lbs.) to orbit.  That would seem to qualify as heavy lift.  But the old Saturn V could launch 118 mT (260,000 lbs.) to low Earth orbit.  That capability allowed us to launch the complete Apollo spacecraft (three modules) and its Earth departure stage (S-IVB) in one fell swoop.  The cancelled Ares V launch vehicle was to have carried up to 188 mT to LEO (over 400,000 lbs).  These indeed are heavy lift launchers.

Why do we need heavy lift?  On this topic, thought among space engineers falls into two broad categories – those who think that heavy lift of the Saturn V variety (~100 mT to LEO) is the sine qua non for human missions beyond LEO, and those who think we can develop an incremental approach that uses the smaller vehicles currently available, such as the medium-lift class Atlas V (21 mT to LEO) and Delta IV-Heavy (25.8 mT to LEO) launchers.  The basic philosophical difference centers around what can be done in space versus what has to be done on Earth.

The Saturn V was built so that a single, self-contained lunar mission could be launched on one vehicle.  This meant that the crew could focus their efforts solely on their lunar voyage and not have to concern themselves with assembling a larger, more complex vehicle in Earth orbit.  In modern terms of human flight beyond LEO, the big advantage of heavy lift is that you can use fewer launches to get the same amount of equipment and material in space, thus reducing the chance that a single launch failure might cause a mission abort.  Propellant can “boil off” in space, especially the very cold (cryogenic) liquid oxygen and hydrogen that fuel the most powerful chemical rockets.  It is also assumed that assembling a few large pieces in space is simpler than assembling many more smaller ones.   But now we’ve learned quite a bit about assembly in space from construction of the ISS.

Critics of new heavy lift vehicle development point to the high costs associated with new vehicle development.  They also point out that there are new techniques and technologies that can help us venture into the Solar System with existing launch vehicles.  One of those ideas are depots where propellant is collected and used to fuel empty vehicles for journeys beyond LEO.  A detailed architecture that features propellant depots and that does not require a new heavy lift vehicle has already been published.  Many groups strongly advocate this approach.

Which brings us back to the new OSTP document.  This new document indicates that work will proceed on development of a heavy lift launch vehicle, with a decision on what vehicle to build coming in 2015 (note well: not building a vehicle, but making a decision on what vehicle to build).  How will our decision on heavy lift be more informed in five years than it is now?

In five years, all the Shuttle manufacturing and assembly infrastructure, including tooling dies, assembly jigs, milling facilities and solid-rocket booster production lines will have been disassembled, mothballed or discarded.  Some of this shutdown has already begun. The skilled workforce that now builds and operates the Shuttle launch system will dissipate (people have families to support and cannot stand around waiting for a decision five years – maybe never – down the road).  There will be no experience base to build, assemble and launch a heavy-lift vehicle within NASA or industry.

I have written previously that a Shuttle-derived heavy lift vehicle can be built now, with existing piece parts and minimal changes to the assembly and launch infrastructure at Michoud and the Cape.  Such a vehicle can launch 80 mT to LEO; two launches can send a human mission to the Moon.  And it is completely affordable, fitting into the existing run-out budget and available for use within a few years.  Currently, robotic missions are discovering and analyzing the vast resources of the Moon.  More robotic missions are needed to begin the processing of lunar resources in preparation for human return and expansion beyond LEO.  These are all things NASA can afford to do now.

This re-invention of NASA, as trickled out by the administration, has been eagerly seized upon by many in the “New Space” community, as their long sought, free-market (but government funded – for now) opening at building a commercial rocket industry.  Some of us (who also believe in free markets) see different motives for this new direction and are particularly concerned that the new “flexible path (FP)” doesn’t have any specified destination or mission.

The fundamental fecklessness of the new direction is exposed in this new OSTP document; we will build a Crew Return Vehicle for ISS that is not needed (if we can get there on the Soyuz, we can certainly return on it) and we will conduct “research” on heavy lift technologies that are already well understood.

Maybe it’s not so confusing after all.

From the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Not in my lifetime. And probably, not in yours either.

As we survey the wreckage and ruin of yet another NASA “return to the Moon” program, the inevitable “what went wrong?” arguments play out.  We’re in a much different place today than we were when Apollo 11 reached the Moon (and each year there are fewer of us alive who witnessed it).  To some of us, this is not a new movie – we’ve been to this show many times before.  Although some aspects of the experience convey a startling sense of déjà vu, in other respects, this time it was a very different event.  While one could rightly blame previous unsuccessful efforts on politics, this time another culprit brought us to the tipping point.

Our efforts to return people to the Moon after Apollo came from a sense that such a move was inevitable.  This feeling largely came from Wernher von Braun’s vision of our future in space.  von Braun wrote a series of magazine articles and books in the early 1950s that outlined a sequence of steps that would lead us into space.  They were so logical that despite the out-of-sequence Apollo lunar landings, NASA returned to this template after we “jumped ahead” of his vision sequence.  The von Braun architecture began with a rocket that could routinely go to and from Earth to low Earth orbit, followed by the construction of a space station, the building of a transfer vehicle, lunar landings, and finally a manned mission to Mars.  This “stepping stone” sequence was to give us both routine access to space as well as move humanity out into the Solar System.

In order to answer the challenge posed to America by the Soviet Union in space, von Braun’s vision was altered when President John F. Kennedy called for Americans to go directly to the Moon.  Afterward, NASA tried to pick up von Braun’s original sequence (shuttle, station, Moon tug, Mars) but by then, the logical appeal of his architecture had faded.   The Moon landing ignited passions about space, popularizing and expanding study of science and engineering.  But each failed “vision” has seen our country retreat from space exploration, fall behind in engineering, and our dreams of moving into space have faded away.  The logical sequence of manned exploration of the Solar System had stalled; the program fought for its very existence by promising new rockets, new space stations, and landings on the planets, “sometime” in the future.

I have argued previously that you must understand your mission before you make decisions on how to accomplish it – the objective of your trip may well have relevance to decisions on launch vehicles and architectures.  The Vision for Space Exploration (VSE) proposed by President George W. Bush in 2004 was exciting not for its chosen destinations (“Moon, Mars and Beyond”) but because it clearly and cogently articulated the mission (the purpose) for space exploration and the need for lunar return – to use the resources of the Moon to create a sustainable human presence there.  Once we learned how to do that on the Moon, the entire Solar System was the objective.

The VSE laid out a path forward that would change the paradigm of spaceflight, from one-off missions where everything we needed must be brought from Earth, to one where fuel and other consumables are extracted from what we find in space, thus creating an extensible, reusable space faring infrastructure that conquers the budget busting limitations imposed by our residence inside Earth’s gravity well.  Numerous articles since the announcement of the VSE expounded on these goals and objectives.  They were widely discussed and disseminated to the public.  The legislative branch responded to President Bush’s proposed mission twice, with strong, bipartisan endorsements of the VSE in 2005 (Republican majority) and in 2008 (Democratic majority).

Although the purpose of the VSE was clear to the White House and the Congress, it became increasingly clear over time that NASA was having difficulty understanding the mission.  They eventually embarked on a multi-year study to define exactly why they had been tasked to go to the Moon and to understand what they might do once they got there.  The mission to understand their mission involved lots of meetings, workshops and conferences, whereby all the “stakeholders” had an opportunity to give their input.  All this “input” was distilled into a series of documents containing six themes and 181 different specific objectives.

No one at NASA could state the mission of the VSE in a single sentence.

Recently, former Administrator Michael Griffin was interviewed about the “new path” for NASA.  Among the questions about the demise of the Constellation program, he was asked:

Ars: What was the imperative for developing the Moon? Was it because it was felt its resources could be used for longer-term exploration?

Griffin: Well, the Moon is interesting in itself. And the United States bypasses the Moon at its peril, because other nations—as they develop space capability—will not bypass it. So, the Moon is interesting in and of itself. Secondarily, the experience of learning to live and work off-planet will be valuable… it may not be essential, it may be possible to go to Mars without learning how to utilize the Moon. But, as I say, it is not advisable. So, the experience of learning how to live on another planet only three days from home, I think, is enormously valuable, before we set out on a voyage where our astronauts will be seven or eight months from home.

I read this answer in stunned amazement.  The former Administrator of the agency charged with executing the VSE omitted the principal reason for going to the Moon:  to use its resources to create new space faring capability.  The interviewer seemed more informed about the reason for a lunar return than the former Administrator; he even teed up the answer within his question!

This lack of understanding of the mission didn’t just emanate from the top.  A recent quote from Jeff Volosin:

“We really never had a compelling reason to send humans back to the Moon …. More than that, we really, really don’t have a compelling reason to set up a permanent presence on the lunar surface – we really don’t.”

Really Jeff?

Jeff Volosin worked at NASA in the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate.  He was in charge of collating and synthesizing the results of the agency’s efforts to articulate the reasons we were returning to the Moon (the one with six themes with 181 different specific objectives).

Lest you think that such was then and now is different, the current NASA Administrator, Charles Bolden, was recently asked what he thought about China going to the Moon.  His response:

“There are six national flags on the surface of the moon today. All six of them are American flags. That’s not going to change.”

In other words, because an American planted a flag on the Moon 40 years ago, there is no possible reason for the United States to want to go there, nor to be concerned about another country doing so.  Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

You may well ask, what is the purpose of wallowing in this sordid saga of utter cluelessness?  First, it is important to understand that while the reasons for the VSE were clearly understood by some (and that includes many dedicated, smart, hard-working people within NASA), many more either never understood it or refused to accept it and could not explain it to those who needed to know.  So their selection of a doomed architecture may well have been inevitable.

Second, this experience offers food for thought to those who think the “new path” for NASA (as laid out in the proposed budget) will somehow magically transform the agency into a fount of technical and scientific excellence.  NASA couldn’t understand why we were going back to the Moon, which confused their reasoning about “how” to get back under the existing budgetary envelope.  So why should anyone believe that with the “new path,” NASA will be able to go to Mars and beyond?

Finally, unless and until scientists and engineers jointly embrace the objective of making human reach into the Solar System permanent and affordable, our country and its space program will continue to diminish.  Robotic missions are important but their true value lies in enabling sustained human exploration and settlement of space.  With the increasing evidence of vast lunar resources, a logical sequence of stepping stones into the Solar System is more relevant than ever.  It is the way back to what was once the promise of NASA.