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Pingback by Tweets that mention “We’ve been there before. Buzz has been there.” | The Once and Future Moon -- Topsy.com — April 16, 2010 @ 1:22 pm

I haven’t had time to write about this, although I feel as if your article sums up my point exactly.

While I would love to go to Mars (yes, I love Mars!), it’s just simply too far away right now to be of any real use.

Unless VASMIR can be perfected, taking a 6 month journey one way to Mars isn’t practical due to the amount of food, water and supplies one will need en route, not to mention the radiation, microgravity, etc. that can drastically affect health.

Hopefully the private sector won’t follow NASA’s lead and head towards the Moon first, then Mars as establishing a permanent colony is in our species best interests.

Comment by Darnell Clayton — April 16, 2010 @ 1:32 pm

Paul – At first glance, the President’s remarks sounded internally self-inconsistent with a theme of firsts in exploration and pushing the boundaries, then followed towards the end with this remark: “Our goal is the capacity for people to work and learn and operate and live safely beyond the Earth for extended periods of time, ultimately in ways that are more sustainable and even indefinite.”

I fully expect that when plans are developed involving both the commercial and public sectors to realize this “goal” (actually more properly cast as a vision), the Moon must be considered as a critical element to guarantee sustainability. Incorporating the Moon as a key element will occur after Obama is after office anyway, so I fully expect this oversight to be rectified in the not-too-distant future; perhaps as early as this year as the details are worked.

Comment by Joe Williams — April 16, 2010 @ 1:50 pm

Joe,

“Our goal is the capacity for people to work and learn and operate and live safely beyond the Earth for extended periods of time, ultimately in ways that are more sustainable and even indefinite.”

Yes, I heard this too, but I do not believe that he believes this. Otherwise, why the dismissive — “We’ve been there” in regard to lunar return? Note well: he could have simply ignored the Moon completely, but instead went out of his way to repudiate it as a goal.

Nope – I think there is another agenda at work here.

I fully expect this oversight to be rectified in the not-too-distant future; perhaps as early as this year as the details are worked.

I doubt that. In a year, we’ll still be on a funding CR for NASA, the various Congressmen will be wrestling their district pork, and we’ll all be “another year older and deeper in debt.”

By the way, many thanks for the very nice call-out to me on your blog the other day.

Best,
Paul

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — April 16, 2010 @ 2:01 pm

Darnell,

Unless VASMIR can be perfected…

You should be aware that a VASIMR-powered human Mars craft requires a 10-15 megawatt nuclear reactor to power it, something not only well beyond existing technology but given the aversion to nuclear power in space by this country, something not likely to be achieved on anything less than a multi-decadal timescale. See Franklin Chang-Diaz’s Scientific American article:

http://www.adastrarocket.com/SciAm2000.pdf

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — April 16, 2010 @ 2:05 pm

I absolutely agree with you. And I posted the President’s statements on my blog last night:

http://newpapyrusmagazine.blogspot.com/2010/04/how-congress-should-respond-to-obamas.html

But we still have a Congress! And scientist like yourself still have a voice! In fact, one of my biggest complaints is that not enough scientist and NASA engineers have been talking about lunar bases,lunar colonization and the long term social and economic value of the Moon.

Comment by Marcel F. Williams — April 16, 2010 @ 3:02 pm

Marcel,

I am largely in complete agreement with all of your recommendations, except for the building of a new space station using inflatables. The existing ISS could support lunar return, especially if we develop an SEP cislunar tug, as Dennis Wingo advocates. I would rather use the existing station and pay the delta-v penalty than spend more money to build one that is optimized for lunar return — the better is the enemy of the good enough.

And I am talking to members of Congress, staffers, and other people in Washington and industry. I agree with you that we have an obligation to explain the benefits of lunar return to them.

Thanks for reading and for your support!

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — April 16, 2010 @ 3:20 pm

Thanks, Paul, for taking the time to outline, once again, the reasons why it’s folly to ignore the deep-water port (and Rosetta Stone for the Solar System) situated so conveniently close-by.

All for the sake of popinjay politics.

It’s depressingly familiar, as though we were somehow back in 1972 watching the retreat from the Moon, completely unaware how far the reality would fall so short of the selling points and even our worst expectations. I wouldn’t have believed it then, if someone had told me, and it makes me sick just thinking what the next 40 years of spinning our wheels might look like.

Like standing on the docks, crying “bon voyage” as the Titantic slips off on its maiden voyage.

The hubris is just stunning. The True Belief of those who want to trust this administration is sincere, that the costs of scaling back aren’t unfathomable.

A last question, if I may. Let’s pretend, since it seems so fashionable, that it’s 1972, and you knew what the next 40 years would certainly be, in detail. Ignoring the paradoxes, etc., seriously… what course would you take?

Comment by Joel Raupe — April 16, 2010 @ 5:36 pm

Joel,

it’s 1972, and you knew what the next 40 years would certainly be, in detail…… what course would you take?

An interesting question. Clearly, although the Apollo system was technically superb, it was financially unsustainable. So we needed a cheaper way to get back and forth to orbit with people.

I would have developed a Shuttle, but a fully reusable, liquid booster one. It would be used only for crew transport to and from LEO. I would have kept Saturn V for cargo launch only; the Shuttle development budgets would have supported at least one cargo launch per year. I would have built a space station, largely to be used as a transportation node, out of Skylab-like modules. The next vehicle we need is a lunar “tug” or OTV, based at station and used for routine transport to and from Earth-Moon L-1. At the L-point, I would station a human-tended (not permanently occupied) staging node to transfer to and from the lunar surface. The goal of lunar return would have been focused on manufacturing: first oxygen production, then bulk materials (for shielding, aerobrakes for OTV return, structures, etc.) and finally, hydrogen. Materials would first be used to build up and establish the lunar outpost, but the goal is to export products to L-1 and cislunar. For a timeline, I think we would have had Shuttle/station by the late 70′s-early 80′s, OTV and L-1 node by the mid-80′s, and lunar outpost by the late 80′s-early 90′s. Routine cislunar access and construction of satellite distributed systems would have begun by the mid-90′s. By now, we would be on Mars.

Fun to speculate about, but I am under no illusions that this is all imagined with hindsight, which is always 20-20.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — April 16, 2010 @ 6:09 pm

The way I interpret the “We’ve been there before” comment is more in the light what can we afford to do, and what is NASA’s true mission

Sure we will go back to the Moon, and there is more to explore. But remember that we’re still exploring the Earth, so exploration will go on for centuries. We’re not going to hold off on other destinations because we haven’t finished exploring the Moon. I see exploration as part of what we need to do to start our exploitation of the Moon. I think NASA will be involved with this part (most likely robotic missions), but I see commercial companies as building and doing everything. Some of it may be under a NASA contract (like lunar fuel & water depots), and as industry becomes more established, this will decrease.

The job that we demand from NASA regarding exploration is to go to places and do things that no company can do. When the early explorers found someplace new, they may have created an outpost or started a food supply (i.e. goat islands), but they kept pushing on to the next new place. Others followed, and they were the ones to start the towns and create the local industries. That’s where we are today with the Moon. Armstrong, Aldrin and others found that the Moon wasn’t made of cheese, and that the lander didn’t sink into a puddle of dust. Subsequent missions showed us hints of how we’ll be able to move and work on the Moon. The explorers have done the hard work, and now the followers can start doing theirs.

For NASA the Explorer, the next goal should be to reach out beyond the Moon. This will entail a whole host of new knowledge & tecnology – this is where the affordability issue comes in. Some of this new knowledge & technology will be useful for Moon exploration & exploitation, but it is absolutely critical if man ever wants to explore the harsh environment of our solar system.

This is what I saw in the message of “We’ve been there before”.

Comment by Coastal Ron — April 16, 2010 @ 6:51 pm

The Moon is clearly not the central immediate goal as it was. However, I think it’s been given the status of “one goal among many, and not the first” rather than being crossed off the list entirely. The transcript has the following statement:

“I understand that some believe that we should attempt a return to the surface of the Moon first, as previously planned. But the simple fact is, we have been there before. There is a lot more space to explore, and a lot more to learn when we do.”

I suppose you could read this 2 ways. Obama could be saying the Moon isn’t going to be the first place we go to. He could also be saying that we aren’t going to the Moon at all, since we’ve already been there before. I’m inclined to give it the first interpretation because the 2011 NASA budget has a Planetary Science budget still having the Lunar Quest line. It also has the following phrases:

“NASA is taking a new approach to this long-term goal; by laying the ground work that will enable humans to safely reach multiple potential destinations, including the Moon, asteroids, Lagrange points, and Mars and its environs.”

“These missions will help us determine the next step for crews beyond low Earth orbit, answering such questions as … Do the resources at the lunar poles have the potential for crew utilization?”

“ESMD will also develop multi-mission operational concepts for future human space flight campaigns to such targets as the Moon, asteroids, Martian moons, and Mars itself…”

“NASA will fund research in a variety of ISRU activities aimed at using lunar, asteroidal, and Martian materials to produce oxygen and extract water from ice reservoirs. A flight experiment to demonstrate lunar resource prospecting, characterization, and extraction will be considered for testing on a future Flagship Technology Demonstration or robotic precursor exploration mission.”

“NASA will work with industry and academia to develop advanced spacesuits to improve the ability of astronauts to assemble and service in-space systems, and to explore the surfaces of the Moon, Mars, and small bodies.”

“NASA will begin funding at least two dedicated precursor missions in 2011. One will likely be a lunar mission to
demonstrate tele-operation capability from Earth and potentially from the International Space Station, including
the ability to transmit near-live video to Earth. This will also result in investigations for validating the availability of resources for extraction. NASA will provide opportunities to participate in the payloads and observation teams, and potentially portions of the spacecraft, through open competition.”

“Potential missions may include: … Landing a facility to test processing technologies for transforming lunar or asteroid materials for fuel could eventually allow astronauts to partially “live off the land.””

“Additionally, a new portfolio of explorer scouts will execute small, rapid turn-around, highly competitive missions to exploration destinations. Generally budgeted at between $100M and $200M lifecycle cost…” [I'm having trouble picturing missions from $100M to $200M going to, say, Mars, so I think the Moon is a prime candidate for this scout program run by NASA Ames.]

Comment by red — April 16, 2010 @ 8:50 pm

Paul, I think you’re exactly right! Ending the Apollo program was one thing. But decommissioning the Saturn V was a tragedy!

All we needed was one of those classic two staged winged people shuttles to go with it and we’d have a much different and much better space program today. And, I agree, we’d already have a Moon bases, or bases, and a Mars base.

My favorite two stage shuttle concept was the Bono and Gatland 1969 Perseus concept which used a reusable SSTO LOX/LH2 plug nozzle booster to launch a space plane glider situated on top of the booster. The booster would return to Earth immediately after launch, landing vertically like the Delta Clipper; the space plane would return to Earth after the completion of its orbital mission.

A reusable SSTO booster would have been the ultimate game changing technology. And I guess if you could refuel it in orbit, it would also be the ultimate reusable orbital transfer vehicle.

Its a shame there hasn’t been any significant funding for plug nozzle technology since the termination of the X-33.

Comment by Marcel F. Williams — April 16, 2010 @ 9:17 pm

It is at times like these we can realize that, no matter how wonderful the Apollo program was and no matter how much it achieved so early in the age of spaceflight, that it ultimately taught the American public and politicians the wrong lesson. Apollo taught us that the way to do space was to make a huge spectacle of it: have a huge rocket, send up superheros and have them leave flags and footprints. Then, when the public is no longer interested, close up shop.

So yesterday, BHO mentioned going to an asteroid. Great! How I’d love that! But then the depression set in: NASA would only go to an asteroid just once or twice just to say that we’d achieved a new first in space. Take some pretty pictures, onto the next destination. There was no mention of platinum group materials nor of space industrialization that could be achieved with NEOs. No, just a way stop on the way to Mars, that’s all. Impressive firsts is what it’s all about.

Apollo taught us the wrong lessons. By contrast, the Soviets lost and now they launch Proton 12x per year and launch Soyuz 12x per year without much fanfare. Their first stage booster engines are awesome machines mastered 4 decades ago that the U.S. will now spend billions to replicate. The Russians launch Progress several times per year to ISS and deliver crews regularly too.

Maybe it would have been better had we lost the race to the Moon!

Just a side note on Proton launching 12x per year… Proton is no small rocket: it is in the same class as the heavier Atlas V and Delta IV variants. Imagine if we could launch 6 Atlas Vs and 6 Delta IV Heavies per year. Each one of those flights could deliver, say, 3 metric tons to the North Pole of the Moon. Imagine delivering 36 metric tons of robotic equipment to the Moon’s North Pole each year. Now that would be a space program!

Comment by Itokawa — April 16, 2010 @ 9:29 pm

What saddens me and frustrates me about these debates about alternative destinations is that it oftens seems to result in ignoring some of the best aspects of the new plan.

I think that the moon is great, as well as asteroids, the moons of Mars and Mars itself. What I think is even greater is developing a broadly useful space transportation system that could be used to go wherever we ultimately decide to go.

This general space infrastructure includes much cheaper access to LEO. It includes fuel depots to increase the capacity of current and future rockets. It includes things like an orbital transfer vehicle and expandable structures. It includes autonomous rendezvous and docking. It includes other technology development (eg. life support, radiation shielding, etc). All of these things will make space so much more doable in the long run, and they are all in the new plan!!! (The only item that wasn’t mentioned in the plan was an OTV, but it’s a very reasonable option.)

If Obama doesn’t have a destination/deadline or the “right” destination, then so much people predict the downfall of our space program. I, on the contrary, think that this new plan finally puts the space program on the right track for the long term. It’s the development of these enabling technologies that excites me.

It’s the involvement of the commercial access to space that is also exciting for the future development of space. Once the commercial people really get involved, there is the long-term potential for an explosion of space activities. I would guess that the moon would be of interest to them. I know that Bigelow is already interested in landing his modules on the moon.

These are exciting times! Let’s support this new direction of technology development and sustainability in space.

Stefan

Comment by Stefan — April 16, 2010 @ 10:52 pm

I forgot to mention in my prior post that there is also the very practical issue of not being able to afford the development of a lunar lander (or any lander) at this time.

By making space activities more affordable, we’ll ultimately be more able to go wherever we want. We can let the long-term destinations take care of themselves. As everyone keeps mentioning, Obama won’t be in office by the time we’re ready to really pick our destination.

One final thought:

This is something that I never see mentioned anywhere. There is also the option to team up with other countries and have them develop elements of an exploration program that we can’t afford. For instance, Europe and/or Russia could pay for and develop a lunar lander and/or deep space vehicle. This would make ambitious exploration goals more doable. Any comments on that idea? Or does our national pride say that we have to do everything alone?

Comment by Stefan — April 16, 2010 @ 10:59 pm

red and Coastal Ron,

Obama could be saying the Moon isn’t going to be the first place we go to. He could also be saying that we aren’t going to the Moon at all, since we’ve already been there before. I’m inclined to give it the first interpretation

I understand that the statement as written is subject to individual interpretation. I read it in the second sense, largely on the grounds that people in the agency (with few exceptions) never really understood the reasons for going to the Moon to begin with and as the President gets his technical input from them (and Buzz), he doesn’t know the value of lunar return either. So I wrote this column to lay out those reasons yet again.

I am not one of those who treat political speeches as holy writ, designed for exegesis and commentary. I think of them as straight-forward statements of intent and belief. I see the preservation of the Lunar Quest program as indicative of nothing in particular, except to let Ames keep its small mission work (LADEE) and to bureaucratic inertia in general. As for the alleged new ESMD robotic missions to the Moon, I’ll believe it when I see it.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — April 17, 2010 @ 5:11 am

Stefan,

I, on the contrary, think that this new plan finally puts the space program on the right track for the long term. It’s the development of these enabling technologies that excites me.

I am not against technology development. My point on this (made in several past columns) is that you can get technology development in two ways: through developing and flying real missions to specified destinations or through a random R&D “investment” program. The historical record shows that NASA is good at the former and abysmal at the latter.

there is also the very practical issue of not being able to afford the development of a lunar lander (or any lander) at this time.

Yes, I know this is an article of faith among many, especially fans of the Augustine report — I do not agree with them and I question both their costing methodology and results (on that issue, see this very interesting article in the current AvWeek:

http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_generic.jsp?channel=awst&id=news/awst/2010/04/19/AW_04_19_2010_p28-219871.xml&headline=Obama%20Explains%20Future%20Space%20Plans

By the time we would need a lander (the end of this decade), we could have one ready; in contrast to widespread opinion, a lunar return program is affordable under the projected run-out budget. Just because Constellation was unaffordable does not mean that lunar return is — it all depends on the program architecture.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — April 17, 2010 @ 5:23 am

Itokawa,

no matter how wonderful the Apollo program was and no matter how much it achieved so early in the age of spaceflight, that it ultimately taught the American public and politicians the wrong lesson

Only because we insist on taking the wrong lesson from it. Apollo was never about space faring — it was a battle in the Cold War. It just happened to occur in space.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — April 17, 2010 @ 5:33 am

Paul, I agree with all the points in your article about why the Moon is interesting and why we should revisit it. But that’s not necessarily the reason why it should be the next destination for human exploration by NASA.

I think there were far better ways that the President could have outlined the new NASA vision, but I do agree with the new direction. I would like to suggest the following descriptions:

NASA Human Exploration = Visiting new places beyond Earth, while perfecting the methods and technologies that let us do it safely. Apollo 11 – 17, including Apollo 13, epitomize this.

NASA Human Exploitation (for lack of a better word) = Re-visiting a prior destination, and expanding our knowledge of that place. Apollo did some of this on the Moon, and next it should be robotic explorers to help us refine our future human plans. Some of this may be geology related, but I think ultimately NASA will use the Moon as a testing ground for exploration technologies needed for human expansion beyond Earth’s orbit. I also think that NASA will do this by contracting with commercial firms to provide the transportation and logistics.

Commercial Exploration = Utilizing the knowledge accumulated by NASA Exploration/Exploitation to identify future commercial areas of interest. I see this as an extension of current business R&D funding, and these companies will be relying on the pathfinder technologies that NASA has funded directly or indirectly.

Commercial Exploitation = Creating profitable enterprises in space. In order to have a robust commercial space industry on Earth, there must be profitable materials, products or knowledge that we can extract from space. NASA’s Exploration/Exploitation activities are crucial for companies to understand what the risks/rewards will be if they want to generate revenue from space activities. The industries generated from these activities are the ultimate payoff from the knowledge NASA has passed down from the prior years of exploration & exploitation.

NASA is planning robotic explorers for the Moon, and this will help us understand the next steps for exploitation. But we already know how to get to/from the moon, and we already understand the basic risks/rewards of going there, so while going back will be exciting in it’s own way, it’s not really new.

However, if we want to venture beyond the Moon and Earth’s orbit, that will require a new set of solutions and technologies, all of which trickle down to our growing commercial space industries. We haven’t been there yet, and NASA is the only organization that can do it.

Last thought. I think part of the reason this is not crystal clear to all of us, is that we don’t have a robust commercial space industry yet. I think in their own way, Obama/Bolden are trying to encourage the nascent space companies that are out there, but maybe they’re doing it in too coy of a way.

Comment by Coastal Ron — April 17, 2010 @ 1:06 pm

Paul, may I suggest that you write another article entitled, “Why I Am Against Space Exploration”?

Of course, you are not against space exploration with respect to the manner in which *you* interpret that term. However, space exploration to the politicians means an Apollo-like program with a sequence of new firsts, flags and footprints of superheros, gigantic rockets, big spectacles, on to the next desination. That’s what the politician wants.

You and I, on the other hand, do not want space exploration in that sense. What we want is space development, space industrialization. You would say, using your definition of the term space exploration, that space exploration is necessary for space industrialization. But we don’t want *exploration*, per se, we want *prospecting*. Of course it is good to know the history of the Moon and you are a scientist for whom this knowledge is of keen interest. But your articles show that what you deem more important, long term, is space development and industrialization, not space exploration as the politicians define it.

We now have that term *exploration* everywhere: Vision for Space Exploration (VSE), Exploration Systems Architecture Study (ESAS), Exploration Systems Mission Directorate (ESMD) and so forth. It’s time to come out against space exploration.

I, for one, am against space exploration. I am for space development and industrialization.

Comment by Itokawa — April 17, 2010 @ 1:19 pm

While I’m at it, let me say that I’m against “Human Space Flight”, too.

Amongst us girls, am I against human space flight as we might define it? No, of course not: no one will be more thrilled to see regular people visiting space hotels.

But Human Space Flight to the politicians and to the leadership of NASA who serve them means a focus first on getting humans to space and later, if ever, figuring out what to do with them once they’re there. As you’ve pointed out many times, that’s backwards: we should decide on goals and then decide what combination of humans and/or robots best achieves that goal.

So this apparent Luddite is now coming out against Space Exploration and Human Space Flight, because those terms I don’t control and the interpretation of those terms by the politicians is completely corrupt.

Comment by Itokawa — April 17, 2010 @ 1:22 pm

@Stefan

Private enterprise isn’t into the charity business. Their in business to make money. And any American manned spaceflight company is going to have to compete with other private and sometimes not so private manned spaceflight companies. This pretty much means that they’re going to have to compete with the mighty Russian Energia company for cost, safety, and reliability!

Maybe a company like Space X somehow knows a lot more about flying into space than NASA or the Russians. But I don’t think so! And its very likely that Space X will go through the same growing pains that NASA and Russia went through. So just one fatal accident aboard a Space X vessel would probably send 99.9% of customers to Energia– with a brand new meaning in the English language for the term– Space X.

Its going to take a long time for American private companies to get off the ground and prove that they can deliver people into space as safely and reliable as NASA or Energia can. So obviously, you don’t completely shut down the government’s ability to fly into space until the private companies have proven that they can fly humans safely and reliably to and from orbit.

And that’s what President Obama doesn’t seem to understand! He’s not turning over Space Shuttle operations to private industry. He’s completely shutting down the government’s ability to fly into space– with absolutely no replacement vehicle. And that would be extremely foolish!

Secondly, why should the corporations be the only ones able to fly into space. Why shouldn’t an agency owned by the American people be able to fly into space too since they’re the once who invented America’s manned space program in the first place!

I strongly support NASA giving private companies money to develop private access to orbit. However, that $1.2 billion that NASA is giving to private companies is only a tiny portion of the $20 billion dollar a year NASA budget. So I’m a lot more concerned about the president’s policy wasting the other $19 billion dollars, nearly $300 billion over the next 15 years with only the ISS and a single visit to an asteroid to show for it.

A permanent Moon base would be a much better investment for that $300 billion, IMO, for both public and private enterprise. And when we finally build that base, the privateers, torist, and the settlers would quickly follow and America will be a much richer country with a much more exciting future!

Comment by Marcel F. Williams — April 17, 2010 @ 4:37 pm

Itokawa,

may I suggest that you write another article entitled, “Why I Am Against Space Exploration”? Of course, you are not against space exploration with respect to the manner in which *you* interpret that term.

You may suggest anything you want, but I am not against space exploration. I am against stupid space tricks.

I have already directly addressed the issue of what exploration means and entails — now and then — here:

http://blogs.airspacemag.com/moon/2010/01/25/have-we-forgotten-what-exploration-means/

I refuse to submit to someone’s re-definition of the perfectly good word “exploration” that has had a given and clear understanding for well over 500 years.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — April 17, 2010 @ 5:28 pm

Ron,

if we want to venture beyond the Moon and Earth’s orbit, that will require a new set of solutions and technologies, all of which trickle down to our growing commercial space industries. We haven’t been there yet, and NASA is the only organization that can do it.

Absolutely and one of these technical areas is In Situ Resource Utilization, which should be NASA’s mission in a lunar return program. The agency’s job is not to industrialize the Moon — it is to determine if the Moon can be industrialized.

Oh yes — to learn how to do lunar ISRU, you need to be on the surface of the Moon for some time with some degree of capability.

Ooops! I guess the Moon is in the critical path.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — April 17, 2010 @ 5:36 pm

One of the most important things we could discover from a permanent base on the Moon is whether humans and other animals can actually remain healthy and reproduce under a 1/6 gravity environment.

We already know that microgravity environments are inherently deleterious to human health. If men and women are stationed on the lunar surface, we’ll also find out if a hypogravity environment is deleterious to human health.

If a 1/6 hypogravity environment is not harmful to the human body then private industry is probably going to be a lot more enthusiastic about investing big money into lunar colonization. It will also probably make the colonization of Mars look more attractive.

Scientist might also wonder just how low gravity has to be before it becomes deleterious to human health. Could human colonist remain healthy on Callisto or even on Ceres?

But if it turns out that the low lunar gravity is deleterious to humans permanently stationed there then we’ll quickly discover something about the environmental limitations of the human body. But even this problem could probably be solved by undergoing high levels of artificial gravity for a few hours a day with portable centrifuges.

But how humans and other animals respond to a 1/6 lunar gravity for long periods of time (years) will probably be one of the most important discoveries in the history of our species. And once a permanent base is established, it won’t take too long to find out!

Comment by Marcel F. Williams — April 17, 2010 @ 10:28 pm

Don’t get me wrong, the “been there, done that” grates on me as well when people speak of why they would rather not go to the Moon first, but you have to understand that this is simply a short phrase to represent a complex set of feelings amongst young people today. They feel as if they’ve lived in the shadow of the baby boomers and greatest generation all their lives, and yearn for a way for them to step out of their shadows, to show the world that they are capable of the greatness that marked the American experience all throughout the 20th century. Landing men on the Moon, or even building the first permanent base on the Moon doesn’t do that; however, being the generation that sets foot on the first planet besides Earth does.

It’s more than simply stepping out of the shadows; landing on Mars and establishing a base there also salves that impending sense of apocalypse and doom that many of the young have. They feel, with reason, that a long term human presence is more likely on Mars than the Moon, and want to establish the capabilities to go there. While I’m a Moon first person, I understand their feelings and want them to help our efforts in space. I recognize that if we are able to travel to and land on Mars, that a follow-on effort to the Moon will not only be easier than it is now, but cheaper.

For me, the goal of the new NASA should be to establish a permanent presence and capability in space; With the VSE, the Moon as a first goal was dictated to the American people. The young in this country would find Mars as a goal easier to support, and if that’s what it takes to step out in space and stay, then I can support that as well. Your comment about the “seeds of the termination of our national space program were planted yesterday” was over the top and something I would expect to see from the Fox network, not a forward looking and accomplished scientist as yourself.

Comment by Jim Gagnon — April 17, 2010 @ 11:53 pm

Paul, ISRU would be nice, and it’s part of the exploitation that should happen. I also agree, as I mentioned in an earlier post, that some of it should be funded by NASA. But exploitation is not exploration.

Part of the reason for discourse on this issue may be in the interpretation of the timeline of when exploration & exploitation occur, and even how quickly. I see robotic missions to the Moon as precursors to eventual manned exploitation missions. But I see quite a few robotic missions needed before we decide what task & equipment will be needed for manned mission. What are we going to exploit, where is it, what equipment do we need, how do we make it work in low gravity and a vacuum, how do we establish a logistical supply line? This could take a decade or more to put in place.

In the meantime, and in parallel, NASA will be working on exploration beyond the Moon, and all of the technology being developed will contribute to the Moon exploitation missions. The Moon is not needed for fuel, but it will eventually be the cheapest place to find it. But I think that will be at least 20 years.

To accomplish all of this, we will need the ability to launch many missions per year. This in itself will spur a more robust commercial sector, but unless costs can be contained or reduced over time, it will be hard to afford everything at once. Without exploitation opportunities, commercial companies won’t share the risk. And without non-government money, we will be limited in pace of activity. There’s no magic formula for this, but if you don’t start the process (i.e. The New Plan), then it won’t happen.

Comment by Coastal Ron — April 18, 2010 @ 1:41 am

In response to comments from Marcel F. Williams:

“Maybe a company like Space X somehow knows a lot more about flying into space than NASA or the Russians”. Why do you say this? They have never boasted about being better than anyone. You’re making a false comparison.

“So just one fatal accident aboard a Space X vessel would probably send 99.9% of customers to Energia…”. This didn’t happen with the two launch failures Soyuz had, and it didn’t happen after we lost Challenger, or later when we lost Columbia. Astronauts are smart people, and one of the first things I’m sure their contract says is “You Could Die!”. Commercial space will have to prove itself, but I see NASA as being one of the many overseers of their services. Keep in mind also that the CCDev winners are part of an effort to “spread the wealth” for creating human-rated vehicles.

“Its going to take a long time for American private companies to get off the ground and prove that they can deliver people into space as safely and reliable as NASA or Energia can….” Hence NASA providing some financial incentives to hurry this along.

” you don’t completely shut down the government’s ability to fly into space until the private companies have proven that they can fly humans safely and reliably to and from orbit.”. Talk to your buddy Bush about this, although I agree with his timing (after finishing the ISS). Other than supporting the ISS, what would you use the Shuttle for? We’re talking taxpayer money here – pretend like you only have a limited budget…

” Why shouldn’t an agency owned by the American people be able to fly into space too…”. This is one of the funnier arguments I hear. Look around the U.S. government, and you see will plenty of examples of how they will do this – they will buy what they need! And like all other forms of transportation, the government controls the infrastructure & licensing, and allows companies to operate. All they need to do is buy launch services, or whole rockets, or whatever they want. This is so obvious…

“However, that $1.2 billion that NASA is giving to private companies… more concerned about the president’s policy wasting the other $19 billion dollars…”. So you think we should outsource NASA, or shut it down? I don’t understand what your point is…

“A permanent Moon base would be a much better investment …” How do you magically invent the technology to do this? How do you afford it? Constellation was only going to provide a few trips of temporary visits, with no permanent infrastructure being left behind. That was going to take 15-20 years, and $50B+. Don’t you think this is a big leap, even from Constellation? I think a more incremental plan would be more helpful…

Comment by Coastal Ron — April 18, 2010 @ 2:26 am

I viewed Obama’s speech, and I got to tell you: IT WAS JUST AWFUL!! He totally trivialized & excluded the Moon as a destination. He totally drew the battle lines, along making it seem like a stark choice between the Moon or Mars—a complete falsehood! We as a nation CAN do both! We merely do the Moon first, because it’s closer and more viable for resource exploitation sooner. We of the space interest community need to articulate, right now more than ever, the firm need of a Lunar Return as the nation’s prime intermediate goal. President Obama basically sold out to the Planetary Society and the “Anywhere but the Moon” lobby, in putting his Presidential weight on the flimsy “We’ve-been-there-already” jazz. HOW COME THAT ARGUMENT NEVER APPLIES TO LOW EARTH ORBIT—which is scarcely even a real destination, other than the same old space stations that we and the Russians have been placing up there since the 1970′s…?? Mr. Obama pandered to the Mars extremists—those people who are dead-set against any further manned journeys to the Moon. (Lately, I try to call them the Anti-Moon people or the “Anywhere-but-the-Moon” people, to be more conciliatory. I darn well know, that there are plenty of Mars enthusiasts who actually do NOT oppose further ventures on the Moon. These Mars moderates are precisely the kind of persons that we need to keep an open dialogue with; with our continuing campaign to save Constellation. We need to together, lobby Congress into keeping the Aries 5 heavy-lift rocket—which ALREADY is a viable plan & design—plus all the other elements of the Constellation program: the fully developed, Lunar mode Orion spacecraft, the Altair-class Lander, and the Aries 1 rocket to launch the astronaut crew separate from the massive trans-lunar cargo. Are you all with me on this?? Regardless of what your favorite destination is??) THE MOON FIRST!! Before & ahead of any asteroid!!

Comment by Chris Castro — April 18, 2010 @ 2:52 am

By the way: Low Earth Orbit….HAVEN’T WE BEEN THERE ALREADY?!?! This should be a protest sign message from us Moon enthusiasts, who only want to do what is pragmatic, prudent, & most practical.

Comment by Chris Castro — April 18, 2010 @ 2:56 am

Jim Gagnon,

With the VSE, the Moon as a first goal was dictated to the American people

Interesting formulation. Now let’s see — the VSE was the product of a year-long study by NASA, the Cabinet Secretaries, and the White House. After it was announced, both House and Senate held extensive hearings on it. Both houses of Congress voted overwhelmingly to authorize it — twice (once in 2005 and once in 2008, both under the leadership of different parties). And the agency has been trying to implement it for the last 6 years.

In contrast, from this administration, we have a rolled out budget proposal, conceived and put together by a two or three people in OSTP and NASA, and so half-baked and ill thought-out that when the Administrator is asked about timelines and destinations and planned activities along the new “Flexible Path,” he has no answer, but mumbles something about there being “six American flags on the Moon already.”

Yeah, “dictated” is the right word. But in the wrong place.

The young in this country would find Mars as a goal easier to support,

Your evidence for this please?

“seeds of the termination of our national space program were planted yesterday” was over the top

You think so, huh? Well consider this. The historical record shows that when NASA is given a pot of money and no specific direction except to “do good innovation,” we usually get nothing — no flight hardware, no useful product, no missions. Just Powerpoint charts.

Now stay with me for just a few seconds longer — If they implement the “new path” as I have outlined above, what do you think is the likely greeting they will get in Congress and in OMB after spending tens of billions with nothing to show and announce that they are now ready to go to Mars?

Your answer? [Jeopardy! music playing background....]

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — April 18, 2010 @ 5:32 am

Ron,

To accomplish all of this, we will need the ability to launch many missions per year.

My point is that by going to the Moon to learn how to use the resources we find there, your statement becomes obsolete — we still need “many launches” per year, but not from the Earth. As long as we are confined to the existing template of spaceflight that requires launching everything we need from the bottom of the deepest gravity well in the inner Solar System, we will be mass- and power-limited in space and therefore, capability limited. Our mission in going to the Moon is to change those rules.

a more robust commercial sector

We all want this; I sure do. But the idea that the proposed “new path” will give it to us is a statement of faith, not fact. It is the triumph of hope over experience.

You can discount everything I say about the value of lunar return and the capabilities it will create, but you cannot gainsay the history of NASA as an organization. They will take the $ 20 billion per year and happily spend it. And we will get nothing for it.

You may not believe me now. But you will.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — April 18, 2010 @ 5:47 am

@Coastal Ron

Space X and its advocates are constantly touting how more successful and efficient they’re going to be relative to NASA, yet they’ve never flown one individual into space. They need to be quiet and simply start putting people into space and bringing them back safely.

Space X advocates are some of the harshest critics of NASA safety. Space travel is risky business. NASA has made it look so easy that any fatal accident is considered a catastrophe. Yet they somehow think that a company with no manned spaceflight experience is going to improve safety.

Sorry, but I never voted for Bush and was against terminating the shuttle and also against the Ares I/V architecture. Obama is the President and he had plenty of time to make sure the shuttle program continued. But he clearly doesn’t want it to continue it.

I don’t consider a $20 billion a year budget a limited budget– especially if you’re not going to build anything or go any place. And I’d use the space shuttle to prepare for manned beyond LEO missions until a heavy lift vehicle is finally built.

NASA ships are already built by private vendors. But private manned spaceflight companies needs to avoid the panacea of NASA contracts and focus on launching commercial satellites and space tourist. There’s simply not enough manned space flight traffic from NASA to support more than one company– unless you’re advocating a monopoly for just one company.

You can read my blog on the subject if you’d like to know how I’d spend that $300 billion in NASA expenditures over the next 15 years:

http://newpapyrusmagazine.blogspot.com/2010/04/how-congress-should-respond-to-obamas.html

Comment by Marcel F. Williams — April 18, 2010 @ 6:17 am

I agree with you 100% about why the Moon needs to be our next destination. That said, I’m not worried about the new policy simply because the Mars proposal is so far away (mid-2030s) and upcoming exploration of the Moon is not slowing down at all, with some 20+ missions over the next eight years or so. Mars only has about half that, and whenever one of them misses a launch window it gets set back by another 2.5 years.

I’m a big supporter of the near-Earth asteroid mission, and what I actually think will happen is that the new program will invest heavily in attaining launch capability again, the asteroid mission and any other related technologies, and then after about 5+ years preparations for the asteroid mission will be well underway, but the increasing presence of missions on the Moon by other countries and even private industry will cause the US to think again about whether it really wants to go all the way to Mars when exploration of the Moon has already begun. The Mars mission will be put on the shelf and the US will decide to help out with the international effort and the Moon will become our next destination, along with the odd near-Earth asteroid mission.

Comment by Mithridates — April 18, 2010 @ 6:30 am

“You think so, huh? Well consider this. The historical record shows that when NASA is given a pot of money and no specific direction except to “do good innovation,” we usually get nothing — no flight hardware, no useful product, no missions. Just Powerpoint charts.

Now stay with me for just a few seconds longer — If they implement the “new path” as I have outlined above, what do you think is the likely greeting they will get in Congress and in OMB after spending tens of billions with nothing to show and announce that they are now ready to go to Mars?”

Paul, you are so so right! If you give federal workers hundreds of billions of dollars of tax payer money to build absolutely nothing, I guarantee that they’ll do an excellent job at that:-) And so will their private vendors!

Comment by Marcel F. Williams — April 18, 2010 @ 6:30 am

Mithridates,

upcoming exploration of the Moon is not slowing down at all, with some 20+ missions over the next eight years or so.

There’s an interesting prediction. What missions are those? Where are they described?

Or maybe you meant missions by countries other than the United States….

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — April 18, 2010 @ 7:48 am

Yes, I meant missions by other countries plus the United States, which thankfully is still sending robotic missions to the Moon even if manned exploration is shelved for the time being.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_and_future_lunar_missions#Under_development

Comment by Mithridates — April 18, 2010 @ 8:46 am

Mithridates,

The vast bulk of those missions will never fly (e.g., the ILN (International Lunar Network) nodes are unworkable within the budget envelope projected for it). The only missions on that list that may actually occur are GRAIL, LADEE, Chandrayaan-2 and Change’E 2. All the others are vaporware.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — April 18, 2010 @ 10:11 am

I should have mentioned that the missions there should be seen in comparison with the proposed Mars missions over the same time period, only about half the number and again with a lot of vaporware missions as you mentioned. IOW, missions to the Moon are relatively more frequent and also much easier than those to Mars.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration_of_Mars#Timeline_of_Mars_exploration

Comment by Mithridates — April 18, 2010 @ 11:33 am

Paul D. Spudis said “My point is that by going to the Moon to learn how to use the resources we find there, your statement becomes obsolete — we still need “many launches” per year, but not from the Earth.”

I don’t disagree with the goal Paul (Moon exploitation), but I think you’re discounting the logistics part of building any place of work. My background is in logistics and moving new products out of engineering and into full production – manufacturing. When I look at a task, I start imagining what needs to be put in place to support everything.

The most popular example of ISRU is H2O, which can be used for water and fuel. H2O is important, but its a consumable. Everything else that you need to extract it must be shipped to the Moon. We don’t have self-assembling factories yet, so regardless of how much local material is at hand, you can’t build a computer or drill bit out of moon dust.

For every machine you send, you must also send the spare parts – lots of them. When a machine breaks, you can either discard it and grab a replacement, or you can fix it. Both of those options involve landing tonnes of cargo on the Moon on a regular basis. And we haven’t even started talking about the logistics of adding people into the equation. Workers, maintenance, staff, transportation, logistics & support, food service… plus rotating people out on a regular basis.

What is the ratio of Earth lift mass to Moon landed mass?

Any level of complexity on the Moon suddenly becomes a lot of work. There are lots of historic examples of this (railroads, dams, ISS, etc.). You can experience this at home too – take a 3 month RV trip with your family, and count the number of times you stop for supplies, visit any type of business, or maybe need something fixed. In the U.S. it’s so ubiquitous that we forget about it.

I do see exploitation happening, but it can only happen as fast as we can ship the people and equipment to the Moon. And also remember that the 1st generation of any product does not last very long, so you have to plan for continuous replacement and improvement (i.e. more stuff shipped).

All of this activity supports the commercial space industry. More launches supports more competition, and helps to innovate and keep costs in check. I’m not saying it will be cheap, because you are right about us being in a deep gravity well. But I think we can use the ISS experience as a guide post to what it will take to expand our presence in space, and the lesson I get is that we’re going to need lots of upmass capability.

Comment by Coastal Ron — April 18, 2010 @ 12:43 pm

Mithridates

IOW, missions to the Moon are relatively more frequent and also much easier than those to Mars.

The series of hypothetical future missions to the Moon listed on Wikipedia outnumbers a series of hypothetical future missions to Mars and that proves what exactly?

If you look at the actual number of missions in the last 20 years, Mars has had (17) versus the Moon (7). This shows where the exploration emphasis has been.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — April 18, 2010 @ 1:02 pm

Ron,

More launches supports more competition, and helps to innovate and keep costs in check

I don’t disagree with this in theory or as a goal, but there is no evidence that the “new direction” will produce this result. I also do not for a moment minimize the difficulty of what I am proposing — you are correct, it is a long-term, difficult task. But we are going to spend ca. $ 20 B per year on NASA in any event and my contention is that they should do something useful, not useless. Doing technology “development” and paper studies for a Mars mission that is 25 years into the future is not the former, but the latter.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — April 18, 2010 @ 1:06 pm

The past 20 years when the Moon was completely ignored isn’t really relevant to the current situation. Since 2007 there has been a total of one mission to Mars, and five to eight (depending on how you count) to the Moon. Why? Because countries like China and India are now capable of contributing there while Mars is still more or less out of their league. At the same time even Russia and the US have failed to launch probes to Mars in 2009. And in the next decade or so as well we should expect to see missions at a similar rate, perhaps one or two Moon missions for every one to Mars.

Comment by Mithridates — April 18, 2010 @ 2:17 pm

Whoops, that should read _two or three_ Moon missions, not one or two.

Comment by Mithridates — April 18, 2010 @ 2:18 pm

The past 20 years when the Moon was completely ignored isn’t really relevant to the current situation

On the contrary, it is very relevant. There has been no Mars mission since 2007 only because JPL and its MSL mission cost overruns have sucked all the money out of the Science Mission Directorate, not because NASA has lost interest in Mars robotic missions.

The agency’s Mars obsession has kept them from designing and implementing a rational lunar program and from understanding why lunar return is important and what our mission there is. Thus, they dissipated the political will to do attainable lunar return and exchanged it for pie-in-the-sky, “sometime in the future” man on Mars dreams.

This continues to the present day and is clearly manifested in the new announced space policy.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — April 18, 2010 @ 2:35 pm

Well, I agree there. I meant that it isn’t relevant if one were to take the number of missions over the past 20 years to each destination and try to use that as a gauge for the difficulty of each destination (i.e. “See! There were more missions to Mars over 20 years because it’s an easier target!”).

Comment by Mithridates — April 18, 2010 @ 5:32 pm

Paul, I think there are a lot actionable items they are doing, that are the building blocks for future systems:

1. The COTS program (from the prior administration) takes two companies that don’t have experience in cargo or ISS docking, and teaches them how to do it the NASA way. With shared risk (lack of supplies for NASA, lack of payment for the companies), these inexperienced cargo companies get to acquire a lot of real experience, and will position them for future launch opportunities. For SpaceX, the COTS program provides a paying customer to gain experience with their Falcon 9 & Dragon systems – something they could not afford on their own. They will leverage this into crew capability quicker because of the COTS program. Time will tell if they both are up to the task, but the tasks on the milestone schedule are part of reducing some of that risk.

2. CCDev, which although small, is spread out to technologies that can be applied fairly quickly if NASA decides to fund a commercial crew capsule. Based on the plans for Orion, I think they will. The payoff for this contract is not clear yet, but I think they are starting to connect the dots for further investment in commercial crew. More on this will happen after the budget is approved.

3. The ISS. We shouldn’t overlook the elephant in space – a $100B, fully functioning space station that has a crew & logistics supply line in place through 2015. In the world of space Supply (launchers) and Demand (places to go), this gives us demand for lots of launches. Without a clear future market, companies find it hard to invest long term. The ISS provides a potential market for services through 2020, and hopefully beyond.

I will admit that these are small steps, but they are in the right direction. Based on the new budget, and the announced plans, I think we will see a clearer commercial plan emerge over the next two years. Obama/Bolden have deviated only slightly from their proposed budget (Orion CRV), so I think they are serious about what they said.

There really isn’t too much NASA can do until their new budget is approved, so I think there is a lot more to come. For the talk about Mars, I would call them “forward looking statements”, not actionable plans. They are concentrating on building the building blocks, but the public needs to be weened from “A Place” that we’re going to in 15 years. What a lot of us see, is that they are building the infrastructure for “Lots Of Places”.

Comment by Coastal Ron — April 18, 2010 @ 9:00 pm

Paul, I repeat that, yes, the goal of the Moon was dictated to the American people. There was never any public referendum, all the studies were conducted by a NASA that many consider dysfunctional, with the final decision in the lap of the commander in chief. When it comes to space, Congress rubber stamps what comes out of the White House, you know that — oh, appropriations and schedules may be adjusted, but they never change space goals or strategies that come out of the White House, no matter which political party is in control.

As a lunar scientist, I imagine you travel in a different professional sphere than I. Yearning to step out of their fathers’ shadows is a real feeling among the young today. I’m afraid that no scientific poll has been conducted that either of us can point to; in lieu of hard data, I’m afraid that we’ll have to yield to the political process to sort out the popularity of goals.

You state that “The historical record shows that when NASA is given a pot of money and no specific direction except to “do good innovation,” we usually get nothing.” Actually, when it comes to new systems for human space flight, the statement “The recent historical record shows that when NASA is given a pot of money we get nothing” has been equally true, forget goals and directions. Our sole major new achievement in manned space flight since the Shuttle is the ISS, and the only reason it happened is that Clinton went international with it and we were bound by treaty.

You feel that for some reason Obama is determined to initiate a process to terminate the nation’s space program. If this president was bent on the destruction of NASA’s human space flight and the reclamation of its budget, then do you really think he would have increased NASA’s budget and appointed the first black administrator, just to set the agency up for failure? Do you seriously believe that?

Those of us outside NASA look at the Constellation program in general, and the Ares 1 in particular, and shake our heads in wonder that such colossal failures as these could have come out of NASA. Ares 1 represents a triumph of ego over physics and engineering; the fact that it got as far as it did indicates that something is seriously wrong inside of NASA. Large bureaucracies are supposed to be self-correcting, avoiding serious mistakes such as Ares 1 — NASA didn’t do that, and any president in Obama’s position that let such an agency continue making mistakes without investigating why and correcting them would be shirking their duty.

For the Moon first crowd, you have a choice: fight or compromise. I’m Moon first and I’m in the mood to compromise. The administration has already committed to landing a Project M telepresence robot on the Moon. We need to ensure that money is budgeted for more than one, and that these telepresence explorers are equipped with the tools to conduct real research on the Moon, its composition and environment. The administration should also continue the development of a lunar communication infrastructure so that Project M explorers can operate anywhere on the Moon. If your goal is lunar science, Project M offers us more science faster and longer than human explorers ever could, and at a fraction of the cost.

Finally, once of the nice aspects of the Bolden plan is that the fulfillment of our goals in space is no longer the sole directive of a single agency. The company SpaceX has as part of its mission statement the goal to land men on Mars; their employees and investors are steadfast in their beliefs that they can do it, and make money in the process. Their motivations are multi-faceted, much of it stemming from the fact they are a young company eager to step out of their fathers’ shadows, but their goal also comes from the realization that if they are successful in reaching Mars, then the machines they and others create will make reaching the Moon a piece of cake. I, for one, applaud them in their effort to lead mankind to the planets, for I know that by doing that they too will come to understand the wisdom of exploring and settling the Moon.

Comment by Jim Gagnon — April 19, 2010 @ 12:41 am

Ron,

For the talk about Mars, I would call them “forward looking statements”, not actionable plans. They are concentrating on building the building blocks, but the public needs to be weened from “A Place” that we’re going to in 15 years

They have been making these “forward looking statements” for 30 years and we are no closer to the capability we need to go to Mars than we were since then. The public doesn’t need to be “weened” from anything because they don’t follow it closely one way or the other — all they want is a space program that 1) seems to be doing something important; 2) doesn’t kill people too often; and 3) doesn’t cost too much.

I find it amusing that supporters of the new path have unlimited faith in technical research and the agency’s capabilities now that we’ve exchanged a goal for which near-term measurable accomplishment is possible (lunar return) for one in which the payoff (Mars landing) comes 30 years down the road.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — April 19, 2010 @ 3:54 am

Jim Gagnon,

I repeat that, yes, the goal of the Moon was dictated to the American people. There was never any public referendum

When did we ever have such a thing to set national policy, in space or anything else? Oh yes, they are called “elections.” Well, in that regard, George Bush was re-elected in 2004, after he had proposed the Vision for Space Exploration. Does that qualify as the “people speaking” on how they feel about the new policy? And before you give me the line that Obama was elected too, I seem to recall that after a few early “mis-statements” during his primaries, he came out and promised to continue Project Constellation if elected. Seems that he was concerned about votes in Florida at that time.

I’m not going to argue with you about the motivation for this “new path” — I only have my suspicions and it really doesn’t matter. The issue before us is whether this is the correct direction for our national space program or not. For the reasons I’ve outlined in the piece above, I think it is not.

And with that, I believe that our discussion is concluded.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — April 19, 2010 @ 4:01 am

So it now appears that the Augustine Commission was just a tool for his science advisers to shut the Federal manned program down with an easy solution, “Just let private industry do it!” And then we hear the president arrogantly saying that we really don’t need to return to the Moon. I’m pretty sure the president spent– at least an hour– deciding that one:-)

And that’s really a shame when you think about how John Kennedy’s enthusiasm for space captured our imagination and our hopes for a better tomorrow.

Of course, we don’t need to return to the Moon– if you’re not really interested in America’s space program!!! If President Obama, who I voted for, was interested in NASA, he wouldn’t just make one short speech about space and then rush out to attend a fund raiser. And he would have had that town hall meeting he promised initially. But he didn’t!

If the president’s really not interested in our space program then Congress needs to step up and use its– power of the purse– to take charge of our extremely valuable space assets. And I think that’s exactly what they’re going to do!

Comment by Marcel F. Williams — April 19, 2010 @ 4:05 pm

[...] community.  Several excellent analyses of the President’s remarks are offered by Justin Kugler, Paul Spudis, Jeff Foust, and the Christian Science Monitor.  Being a student and practitioner of innovative [...]

Pingback by A Way to a Vision – And More – We All Can Believe In « Leading Space — April 19, 2010 @ 7:04 pm

My argument for exploring and exploitng the Moon is very simple: If we’re going to build in space, do we want to pay to lift the materials from a 1/6g gravity well or a 1g gravity well? Obviously the guy who figures out how to lift from the Moon is going to make as much as 5x the profit of the guy who has to wade through mobs of screaming econut protesters to get to his space ship. On the Moon – the backside, at least – “Strip Mine” is not a dirty phrase. With unfiltered sunlight to run solar furnaces and power our bases and massive fields of regolith just waiting to be bulldozed into the hoppers I can’t imagine a rational argument against going back to the Moon.

Comment by Orion — April 20, 2010 @ 12:56 am

Coastal Ron: “We don’t have self-assembling factories yet, so regardless of how much local material is at hand, you can’t build a computer or drill bit out of moon dust.”

You can when the moon dust is principally composed of titanium, iron, and tungsten. You run the regolith through a solar-powered furnace to liquefy and separate the materials into their pure forms then form and shape the tools & parts with your 1st generation factory to build your 2nd generation factory (ies). In 10 years your colony could be virtually self-sufficient on the Moon, needing only periodic resupply of hydrogen and other volatiles that the Lunar surface is deficient in.

Comment by Orion — April 20, 2010 @ 1:07 am

Orion,

your colony could be virtually self-sufficient on the Moon, needing only periodic resupply of hydrogen and other volatiles that the Lunar surface is deficient in.

Actually, the new discoveries at the poles of the Moon indicate that there are significant quantities of hydrogen on the Moon, in a variety of forms (radar data for the north pole suggest at least several hundred million metric tonnes of water in that area alone.) Import of hydrogen may not be necessary, for hundreds of years anyway.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — April 20, 2010 @ 4:22 am

I often speak to students and teachers about the human and robotic exploration of space, and I always talk to the “been there, done that” attitude when it comes to our return to the Moon. Here’s how it usually goes: Though a small planetary body, the Moon has almost as much surface area as North and South America (about 90%). We’ve landed at only six places on the Moon, all relatively near to each other. If you take the distances between the landing sites and put them on a map of the United States, this is what you get. Start at Houston, the heart and soul of human spaceflight, and use that as the Apollo 16 landing site. The farthest west we’ve been would be near El Paso, Tx with Apollo 12 (Apollo 14 would be near the Midland/Odessa area). The farthest north we’ve been would be Apollo 15 near Salina, Kansas. The farthest East would be Apollo 17 near Memphis, Tennessee. Apollo 11 would be somewhere in the woods and swamps near the Arkansas/Louisiana border. Then ask yourself, if those were the only places we had been to in North and South America, what would we know about? The Appalachian Mountains? Rocky Mountains? Mount St. Helens, Mt. Rainier, or any of the other volcanoes all the way down to South America associated with the ‘Pacific Ring of Fire’? The hugely complex Amazon Basin? How much would we know about plate tectonics? The answers of course are nada, zero, zilch. So, when it comes to the Moon, ‘been there’-sure, ‘done that’-no way. We’ve only begun to understand the importance of the Moon, and to bypass it makes no sense what so ever.

Comment by John G. — April 20, 2010 @ 1:05 pm

@Orion

If we utilize one of the space cannon concepts on the lunar surface, we could probably toss thousands of tonnes of lunar material, including water, off the Moon to a Lagrange point every year even cheaper. That would turn the space depot idea from a marginally attractive concept to a revolutionary concept that would make it almost as easy to travel to the Moon as it is to get into orbit.

A ten tonne space craft launched into orbit could fuel up at a LEO depot resupplied by lunar oxygen and hydrogen and travel to L1 where is passengers would be transferred to a lunar lander that would take them to the surface of the Moon.

Lunar resources could also provide interplanetary vehicles destined for Mars with the cheap mass shielding that they’ll need to protect them from solar and galactic radiation in addition to the fuel they’ll need to land on the Martian surface.

Moon bases are a game changer!

Marcel F. Williams

Comment by Marcel F. Williams — April 20, 2010 @ 3:59 pm

If we utilize one of the space cannon concepts on the lunar surface, we could probably toss thousands of tonnes of lunar material, including water, off the Moon to a Lagrange point every year even cheaper. That would turn the space depot idea from a marginally attractive concept to a revolutionary concept that would make it almost as easy to travel to the Moon as it is to get into orbit.

Propellant depots are not marginally attractive: they are mandatory. Moreover, it is counterproductive to send unrefined bulk material from the lunar surface to orbit. A factory in orbit will have every problem that a factory on the Moon’s surface will have, and then a bunch more as well. Not to mention the mass of the factory itself. A factory built on the Moon from lunar material doesn’t need to be launched anywhere by anything. Then there’s the problem with waste disposal and accidental collisions that an orbital manufacturing facility would entail. The Kessler syndrome is getting bad enough as it is. Let’s try and keep it confined to LEO.

Comment by Warren Platts — April 20, 2010 @ 5:54 pm

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.

Let’s not kid ourselves: Constellation had little to do with the Moon: it was a Mars program. Cripes, they named their rockets “Ares”. There’s no better proof than that. President Obama did us all a big favor by cancelling that dinosaur. But then he took what could have been a grand opportunity, and blew it. Every poll I’ve seen shows that Americans prefer a Moon program over a Mars program. Yet the vocal minority of Mars advocates managed to get to the President’s ear, and so now we get Constellation redux. Instead of Apollo on Steroids, we get Apollo on Meth: a toothless, skinny version of Constellation.

The sad part is that there was a viable alternative: the affordable, commercially based lunar architecture devised at United Launch Alliance by Frank Zegler, Bernard Kutter and many others. These guys are the top aerospace engineers at the top aerospace company in the world. Their proposal could have got us to the Moon within a decade using today’s technology. It didn’t require HLV’s or fancy robots that don’t exist. It was a lean ‘n’ mean Viking-like architecture that could have got us there in small boats by breaking up the voyage into small parts, just as the Vikings broke up the voyage to North America with stops at Iceland and Greenland.

Moreover, the timing of the ULA proposal was perfect: it came out at about the same time as when Augustine was wrapping up. The ULA proposal could have been the perfect antidote to Constellation. But that would have entailed, in effect, following in the footsteps of President Bush’s VSE. Presumably, President Obama himself is dismayed at how he’s been snookered into following President Bush’s footsteps on issue after issue. So he probably figures that if he can find a relatively harmless issue where he can take a different path, he’s going to take it if he can. Start with medical marijuana dispensaries; now America’s space program.

Unfortunately, it is the Mars advocates like Buzz Aldrin, who have convinced the President that taking the different path in this case is actually the correct path. No other lobby has done more to destroy the US space program. Bypassing the Moon for the sake of Mars gets us neither.

But look on the bright side, Paul. The Obama plan contains seeds of destruction all right: but they are the seeds of its own destruction rather than of the US space program as a whole. Politically, this will be a net loss for the President. On the one hand, he’s managed to alienate the majority of those who care about space at all–Marsnauts are a minority compared to MoonFirst!ers by at least 2 to 1. On the other hand, he’s alienating his base who don’t give a hoot about space. I was watching the speech at the local truck stop, and the waitress said it best right before she changed the channel: “He’s talkin’ ’bout the International Space Station and satellites in space when there’s still people starvin’ on this planet!” (So we watched Dr. Phil instead.) Then there was the USA Today political cartoon the other day, where a guy is complaining about how the national debt “is astronomical”–”but we’re not going to cut the space program!” This goes to show that inspiration from space is the last thing most people want, and it’s certainly not something anybody needs. The next election is going to be close. This may well be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Then it will be back to square one with a clean slate. The VSE will still be there, and so will at least one sane architecture for bringing the vision to fruition.

It’s time to start recouping some practical economic and strategic and practical scientific returns from our human spaceflight program. Only the Moon offers at least a chance of that happening.

(And let it not be said that there is more more important “pure” planetary science to be done on Mars. Mars is interesting in itself, but it is unique, and thus doesn’t have much to say about the Earth, or the Solar System as a whole. The Moon on the other hand, has a history inextricably tied to Earth, and it preserves a record of what has happened to the Solar System and the Sun for billions of years. From the perspective of “pure” planetary science, the Moon offers more scientific bang for less bucks.)

Comment by Warren Platts — April 20, 2010 @ 6:54 pm

Mandatory means that you can’t conduct space travel without them. Since we don’t have any space depots, obviously they’re not mandatory.

Unrefined material has immediate value since it can instantly provide the hundreds and even thousands of tonnes of mass shielding that are going to be required for permanent space stations located at a Lagrange point. Being able to extract oxygen from lunar material and from asteroids is going to be essential if we are to dramatically lower the cost of space travel.

Comment by Marcel F. Williams — April 20, 2010 @ 9:05 pm

Warren,

I think that your analysis is spot on. One slight departure — I do not think it will be either easy or cheap to re-establish the industrial capabilities that are being destroyed now. So it’s not simply a matter of putting the VSE “on hold” for a time and then picking up where we left off sometime in the future.

We are discarding an existing spaceflight capability (for all its faults) for the promise of a new and better future capability (“The better is the enemy of the good enough”) and exchanging a near destination against which measurable progress is being made for future, distant destinations which are so far off in time and space that we cannot judge whether progress toward them is being made or not.

I suspect that suits some just fine.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — April 21, 2010 @ 8:18 am

@ Marcel: We don’t currently need propellant depots because we never leave LEO. Yes, we didn’t have depots during Apollo; but that’s why we had Saturn V–it all had to go up at once. So unless we have Ares V or an equivalent, depots are pretty much mandatory. I know you like HLV for some reason, but if our goal truly is to go to the Moon and establish an infrastructure capable of producing hundreds to thousands of tons of propellant per year, I think we should be leary of building heavy lift as a matter of strategic politics. By starving the beast of heavy lift capability, then Mars is no longer a viable option (never mind that it never was anyway). By taking heavy lift off the table, we take Mars off the table. Yes, 1,000 cubic meter space stations that can be lofted with one launch would be nice–but as Paul says, the better is the enemy of the the good enough. All we’re asking for is 10 or 15 years without distractions so we can get the Moon Base going good. Then we can talk about Mars again; by then the lunar infrastructure will make a Mars flight much more doable. For right now, we would be better off spending the money building a lander instead of an HLV. Of course, all this will have to wait for the next regime change.

@ Paul: There is one industrial capability that is not being discarded, and that’s the EELV family of launch vehicles, thanks to the Air Force. What is your take on the United Launch Alliance affordable, commercially based, lunar architecture developed by Zegler, Kutter, Barr, et al. Is this architecture “good enough”? Can they get the job done for $7 billion USD per year?

Comment by Warren Platts — April 21, 2010 @ 7:44 pm

A few comments:

(1) The ISS – fully functioning that has a crew & logistics supply line in place….

Sorry, not really. They can probably keep enough supplies coming up for a few years to keep a crew of at least 3 and maybe even 6, via Progress and ATV; HTV is not on the same schedule. There is at present NO return capacity so science experiments, samples, and anything larger than what fits in a astronaut’s pocket won’t be coming back once Shuttle stops. We are already hearing that the lack of return capacity is already restricting the number of interested experimenters from places like the NIH.

(2) the VSE was the product of a year-long study by NASA, the Cabinet Secretaries, and the White House. Both houses of Congress voted overwhelmingly to authorize it; the agency has been trying to implement it for 6 years.

Yes the VSE was developed by extended planning and review. Constellation was NOT the VSE.

The people testifying before Congress were the Constellation/Exploration people and Dr Griffin. They always said it was on schedule, on budget…It was always on until they would move the schedule further out, or reduce the requirements… Everyone was happy if they were getting truthful answers.

(3) Those of us outside NASA look at the Constellation program in general, and the Ares 1 in particular, and shake our heads in wonder that such colossal failures as these could have come out of NASA. Ares 1 represents a triumph of ego over physics and engineering; the fact that it got as far as it did indicates that something is seriously wrong inside of NASA. Large bureaucracies are supposed to be self-correcting, avoiding serious mistakes such as Ares 1 — NASA didn’t do that, and any president in Obama’s position that let such an agency continue making mistakes without investigating why and correcting them would be shirking their duty.

You are right on this. I was bewildered to see Constellation failing to make the necessary milestones starting almost from the start more than 3 years ago. By 2 years ago it was well known that they could not close the architecture. The defined Orion could not be carried by an Ares 1. I watched from the sidelines. Where was the senior NASA management. They should have gotten on top of this situation and corrected it years ago; they had to let Augustine point out the fallacies ??? Is the senior NASA management worth anything ?

Who are these people ? They should be summarily dismissed or worse. Not only were they wasting our money ($10 billion) and time (4+ years). They’ve now created the near term GAP, and they may very well have killed US HSF for the forseeable future.

(4) I do not think it will be either easy or cheap to re-establish the industrial capabilities that are being destroyed now.

We are discarding an existing spaceflight capability (for all its faults) for the promise…

This is the REAL IMMEDIATE issue. Make no mistake about it, you will need heavy lift capability and a Shuttle derive HLV is your best, and relatively inexpensive hope, for the forseeable future. If you really want to test out the Buzz XM Cruiser, you need to be able to launch ISS-sized or larger modules. If you want in-flight refueling, you’ll need similar sized and heavier mass payloads. A Shuttle derived heavy lift is a relatively inexpensive way to do this. It could be done now with relatively few dollars and in a relatively short amount of time, by people who have already begun to lose their jobs.

Instead, Obama chose a purely political decision to support Colorado with an Orion-lite that there should be no need for.

Does not make any sense at all.

The last one, the Obama-Orion save, is really troubling. There is no rationale for that vehicle, except as a jobs program for Colorado. This shows that Obama cannot be trusted. No telling whether any of his words last week meant anything at all.

Comment by JerryL — April 21, 2010 @ 11:05 pm

Warren,

What is your take on the United Launch Alliance affordable, commercially based, lunar architecture developed by Zegler, Kutter, Barr, et al. Is this architecture “good enough”? Can they get the job done for $7 billion USD per year?

Possibly it is. What is needed is a thorough and objective technical review (Augustine was not that) and re-build of the entire architecture, not cancellation of the program wholesale. First, define the mission objectives of lunar return (to learn the skills we need to live and work off-planet, including especially new enabling activities that have never been done, like resource utilization.) Second, design the architecture you need to implement this mission; if you need Shuttle-derived heavy lift, build it — if you don’t need it, use EELV. This decision should be driven strictly by the objectives to be met and the projected cost envelope (you need to know both — ESAS was clueless about the former).

The issue that I have with the current new direction is that it discards the overarching strategic direction of the VSE. How we implement it is of less (although not zero) concern to me.

As for the “$7 B per year” cost envelope, it has always been my belief that an exploration program can be built that fits into any cost profile. The important thing is to keep the strategic horizon in sight. If we get less money than we expect, we stretch the program out longer. But we make continuous, steady progress towards the goal, which is sustainable and permanent human presence beyond LEO.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — April 22, 2010 @ 4:50 am

The article by Paul D. Spudis, gives a cogent analysis of the importance, inevitability and irrepressibility of the Moon’s role in space exploration. A pleasure to tweet it in the hope of a wider audience.

I would add that the moon is a natural launch platform, with one-sixth our gravity and yet stable enough for our gradual amassing of paraphernalia, prior to any launch into Space beyond. Bases are inevitable, as is our colonizing of our Moon. Man’s history and innate tendency has been to explore and colonize uninhabited places, and this has always followed a logical progression in terms of effort and distance.

Buzz, with tremendous respect for you and your place in history (and you remain a hero to me and many) I nevertheless would plead that you have ‘been there’, but we, lesser mortals have not – and we’re eager.

While President Obama’s emphasis on better vehicles than those planned for Constellation, is to be applauded, sidelining the Moon and in the meantime the Shuttles (man’s fleet of smoothly-performing, workaday cargo spaceships), could prove a false economy. Falling behind the rest of the world may be irreversible for the US, as Britain experienced with manned Space after Blue Streak et al. If The traditional home of Space Travel, the USA, does relinquishes its hard-earned place at the forefront of manned space exploration (easily lost), by not returning to our moon to finish the job Kennedy started, and establish man’s foothold on our immediate heavenly body, then the BRIC countries, Brazil, Russia, India & China will step in to fill the vacuum (pun half-intended). Matters can be reversed at present – it’s OK to err in the wrong direction, but less so to persist with it.

Comment by Vinay (@vinluce) — April 23, 2010 @ 10:05 pm

Possibly it is. What is needed is a thorough and objective technical review (Augustine was not that) and re-build of the entire architecture, not cancellation of the program wholesale.

Arguably, there has been such a technical review and rebuild of the entire architecture, the EELV based architecture by Frank Zegler and his collegues at ULA. It requires no shuttle derived heavy lift, and relies entirely on existing assets, or on gradual evolutionary modifications of such assets; e.g., the ACES-41 EDS is descended from Centaur; the low boil-off, cryogenic propellant depots and lunar landers are then derived from the ACES-41. There are no “clean sheet” designs, so reliability should be good. The dual thrust axis landers (DTAL) land horizontally after the fashion of the landers depicted in the old TV show “Space 1999″. These are superior to the Altair design in at least 20 different respects; there’s not enough room here to go into it. It can deposit 15 tons onto the lunar surface, and it has a 5 m diameter cargo bay. I don’t know if it could carry the 250 kiloWatt solar arrays you all contemplated in your Going Beyond the Status Quo paper; however the “DTAL-R’s 5 m cargo hold and lunar performance are capable of supporting all of NASA’s planned lunar surface systems, including hard shell and inflatable habitats, crewed rovers, ATHLETE,in-situ resource plants, lunar telescopes, or large drilling rigs.” A reusable SSTO version of the DTAL can deliver 7 tons of propellent to an L2 depot. A tanker version of the DTAL based on the ACES-71 would be able to deliver even more.

They claim they can get us to the Moon permanently within a decade after the starting gun goes off, with two manned missions per year, all within a $7 billion USD budget envelope. What more do we need? I’m surprised this potential architecture isn’t talked about more. I’ve certainly never ran into even one article, blog post, or discussion forum rant that can point out even one showstopper in this design.

Comment by Warren Platts — April 26, 2010 @ 12:00 am

Warren,

They claim they can get us to the Moon permanently within a decade after the starting gun goes off, with two manned missions per year, all within a $7 billion USD budget envelope. What more do we need?

What’s needed is a clear understanding of what our mission is on the Moon. I have written on this previously:

http://blogs.airspacemag.com/moon/2009/06/25/first-nail-down-the-mission/

Clearly, no one currently in authority at NASA understands the purpose of lunar return and they and others who similarly don’t understand it are the ones informing the decision makers.

Which architecture you choose is irrelevant if you don’t understand what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — April 26, 2010 @ 4:48 am

I think there’s a growing consensus in Congress for immediately funding a heavy lift vehicle. That in itself would be a game changer from the Constellation program where a HLV vehicle was not scheduled to be developed until after the Ares I was completed.

But we really don’t need a super duper HLV for the Moon or even for Mars, IMO. A simple shuttle derived HLV, either sidemount or inline, that can transport at least 100 tonnes into orbit (with an EDS stage) should suffice.

So instead of a final presidential decision on an HLV in 2015, we could have an HLV ready to go for beyond LEO missions by 2015.

Comment by Marcel F. Williams — April 27, 2010 @ 3:35 am

I am SO sick of that stupid argument being brought up, whenever there is talk of a Lunar Return! If we can never ever go back to where we’ve been, then there will NEVER be bases nor resource-utilization! Mr. Obama has just turned deep space exploration into nothing more than a Guinness Book of World Records farthest-distance stunt! People, going farther in space DOESN’T mean doing better in space! The destination does matter. After that first “Flags & Footprints” docking mission with an asteroid…just what in heaven’s name, happens next?? Remember, we can NEVER ever visit a planetoid more than once, according to our supreme leader, Mr. Obama.

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