April 2, 2010
NASA Lost its Way
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.
57 Comments
RSS feed for comments on this post.
The web editors have closed comments for this blog.
Thanks for another excellent article. I love the simple logic that von Braun had for our space program. And I still think its viable today. Using a space station as a way station for missions beyond LEO is still a good idea. Unfortunately, the ISS is in a great orbit for Russian launches but not for American launches.
Of course, if we attempted to use the shuttle to deploy a simple space station in an orbit more appropriate for US manned launches, maybe using Bigelow technology, there would probably be heavy criticism that we already have a space station.
Still there is the question about why the tax payers should spend $100 billion over the next 5 years for a program that doesn’t build anything or go anywhere.
I was reading some old Moon base research papers by you and other scientist and thought to myself that its too bad the rest of the public are not aware of these fascinating and exciting visions of the future.
And that was the core problem with the Constellation program, IMO. It was never promoted as a Moon base program. In fact, it appears that NASA was afraid to promote it as such which caused a lot of confusion. A permanent and continuously growing lunar facility would absolutely capture the public imagination, IMO.
But instead the Moon was treated as a place that we really didn’t want to go to because we really wanted to go to Mars. Ironically, I don’t think we really can get to Mars without a Moon base.
Comment by Marcel F. Williams — April 2, 2010 @ 6:49 pm
The White House and Congress need to take some of the blame for the saga of utter institutional cluelessness. The VSE vision voice by President Bush was great: but there was no follow-through to make sure the VSE did not get perverted into a crypto-Mars program. Heads needed to roll–and they still do: they can start with Bolden.
I don’t know why it’s so hard to pick competent NASA administrators.
Paul, we’ve got to get you in there somehow as the next NASA adminstrator. I know the job won’t be any fun, but you’ve got your duty to your country to think about. Please take the job when it is offered.
And us Constant Readers can help out by creating buzz and starting a letter writing campain. I think when Mitt Romney gets elected in 2012, he can pick the right person, but only if he’s made aware of who the right person is. As space activists, that’s where we need to focus for the next couple of years.
Comment by Warren Platts — April 2, 2010 @ 7:33 pm
“Using the resources of the Moon” causes people to think about Helium-3 for fusion reactors that don’t exist yet. It will take a very big marketing effort (more than just this blog) to get people thinking about the resources of the Moon as raw materials for propellant processing plants that don’t exist yet. A great way to break away from that would be a robotic precursor mission to demonstrate that the technology is ready.
Comment by Trent Waddington — April 2, 2010 @ 8:21 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Joe Williams, FiberOpticToolSupply, Danielle Signor, Craig Karasiewicz, Matt Hunter Ross and others. Matt Hunter Ross said: RT @spacefuture: NASA Lost its Way #space http://bit.ly/ccgWAl [...]
Pingback by Tweets that mention NASA Lost its Way | The Once and Future Moon -- Topsy.com — April 2, 2010 @ 10:33 pm
[...] Paul Spudis lays out his view of how NASA ended up with the Constellation mess and with what he considers a flawed new plan: NASA Lost its Way – The Once and Future Moon/Air & Space Magazine. [...]
Pingback by Briefs: NASA misguided; Lunar waters; More space policy | Yooxe — April 2, 2010 @ 10:47 pm
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by rikerjoe: Latest from Paul Spudis: “NASA Lost its Way” http://bit.ly/cSqxIS. Point about failure to articulate mission is dead on, IMHO. #NASA #HSF…
Trackback by uberVU - social comments — April 2, 2010 @ 11:01 pm
I’m not sure why Helium-3 keeps being mentioned as a power source since we don’t have any fusion reactors and we don’t even know what the capital cost of a fusion reactors will be. Fission reactor fuel is extremely cheap, but it still has high capital cost.
You don’t need Helium-3 to provide Earth with power from the moon. Solar energy, or even nuclear fission energy, could be beamed back to Earth from the Moon via invisible infrared lasers. The beam spread from the Moon to the Earth should be less than 2 kilometers in diameter. Infrared photovoltaic energy farms on Earth could then operate 24 hours a day instead of only during the daytime.
Comment by Marcel F. Williams — April 3, 2010 @ 5:38 am
By the way, check out this March 31st video of what astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has to say about the NASA budget and the Obama plan. Its very interesting.
http://newpapyrusmagazine.blogspot.com/2010/04/how-much-would-you-pay-for-universe.html
Comment by Marcel F. Williams — April 3, 2010 @ 5:42 am
Marcel,
I’m not sure why Helium-3 keeps being mentioned as a power source
It keeps coming up largely because of its energetic and continuous advocacy by Jack Schmitt, who is adamant that it is “the answer” to Earth’s energy problems. It has never been a part of any architecture or strategy for lunar return that I have advanced or promoted. I want to go after the easy stuff first (water) to bootstrap a sustainable human presence in cislunar space. Once that is established, we can look at other possibilities.
Comment by Paul D. Spudis — April 3, 2010 @ 8:52 am
Yes, there is some sort of disconnect mechanism in the brains of NASA higher-ups when asked about purposes for spaceflight. The answer ALWAYS is that space is interesting, space offers scope for great science, space will generate friendlier and more productive contacts among all the peoples of Earth.
Which butters no parsnips. Yet this is as much as NASA leaders will allow themselves to say, it is what US presidents and their science advisors (mostly) echo, it is the language of Congressmen and US government publications, this is the discourse of the academic/think tank world, it is most passionate rhetoric of the space policy world.
I’m not sure why. And to be honest, it seems to puzzle other people as well, to judge by their books, Joan Johnson-Freese for example (SPACE, THE DORMANT FRONTIER), or W.D. Kay (CAN DEMOCRACIES FLY IN SPACE?, DEFINING NASA).
My suspicion is that at the highest levels of the American government (and the Russian and Chinese and Swiss and Sumatran governments) civilian space programs simply aren’t seen as having much value at all — they’re a lure for recruiting clever young engineers into the aerospace job market, and a convenient cover for the military and intelligence space programs that Really Matter. Which is a partial explanation for civilian space programs procede at such a glacial pace and with such lukewarm endorsement, but obviously not a complete one.
Comment by mike shupp — April 3, 2010 @ 6:02 pm
Hell, I’d be satisfied if we were simply extracting oxygen from the regolith, 89% of the molecular component of water:-) Humans have been melting rocks for thousands of years. Extracting hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen from the polar areas would be icing on the cake!
But it’s going to be difficult to go to the moon with a president and and administrator that doesn’t want to go there. But its also going to be difficult for Congress to fund NASA at $20 billion a year, $100 billion over the next 5 years, and not build something!
So I do think there could be immediate funding for a heavy lift vehicle and perhaps an Earth Departure Stage. And with those things already funded, developing a lunar lander and lunar base modules might look much more tenable in the near future.
Comment by Marcel F. Williams — April 3, 2010 @ 9:55 pm
It’s just my opinion, but I think you’ll see space travel, including to the moon, become privatized/commercialized. The real objective is no longer science; the objective is to make money rather than spend it. You’ll see commercialization of the moon (resorts and advertising visible from the earth) before you’ll see the government shelling out any further vast amounts of money for moon or space exploration.
The moon will belong to whoever can get there first, build those resorts, and establish tourism. Keeping the moon a pristine laboratory where the scientists can play and space vehicles are produced and launched…I really don’t think that’s going to happen. Man keeps nothing pristine and his greed is rampant. Exploitation of the moon and space is where man is headed, just as man has exploited the planet. Science now is an afterthought. We can’t afford it.
Comment by tasha — April 4, 2010 @ 11:41 am
Hmm. If we’re going to extract lunar hydrogen, how much of it is there would be a key consideration in what we use it for. My understanding is that we have some evidence of water in trace quantities in certain small regions of the moon that are in permanent shadow. Everywhere else, all hydrogen containing compounds were completely boiled off by the sun.
If that’s the case, we couldn’t base any sort of cislunar transportation program or sustained interplanetary program off of lunar [i]hydrogen[/i]. We might use it to help boost one or two flag-planting mars missions. However, if you need 10,000 tons of earth-manufactured equipment to set up a colony (number pulled out of ass, but it will be a large one), then you would need something like 100,000 tons of propellant to get it there using Isp ~400ish chemical propulsion. There may not be 100,000 tons of hydrogen on the moon.
It may be a far better use of it to run life support and manufacture technology (hydrogen is a major component in just about everything that isn’t as hard as a rock – gasket sealant, lubricant, ect).
In that case, the cislunar fuel factory/transport system would have to be based around something else, like LOX/powdered aluminum.
What are your thoughts on this?
Comment by Aaron — April 4, 2010 @ 3:12 pm
Even more depressing, I think this also goes for every near earth asteroid with an eccentricity that places the bulk of it’s orbit inside what we call the “snow line” (somewhere around the orbit of Ceres) – we won’t be getting much in the way of volatiles from them either.
Comment by Aaron — April 4, 2010 @ 3:14 pm
tasha,
You’ll see commercialization of the moon (resorts and advertising visible from the earth) before you’ll see the government shelling out any further vast amounts of money for moon or space exploration.
There are considerations for government involvement on the Moon other than science. I have argued that routine access to cislunar space, enabled by developing and producing propellant from lunar materials, is reason enough for a federal government space program. All of our satellite assets reside in cislunar space. This includes not only national strategic assets, but maintenance and protection of commercial assets too. Science is only something done to serve national interests, not an end unto itself on the Moon.
Comment by Paul D. Spudis — April 4, 2010 @ 3:47 pm
Aaron,
If we’re going to extract lunar hydrogen, how much of it is there would be a key consideration in what we use it for. My understanding is that we have some evidence of water in trace quantities in certain small regions of the moon that are in permanent shadow.
There is actually quite a bit of water on the Moon, in a variety of forms. We have recently found evidence for surface grain water at all latitudes poleward of 65 degrees; the concentration increases with latitude. LCROSS demonstrated that between 5-10 wt.% water is found in shadowed, “normal” lunar soil; this is a very high concentration from a mining perspective. But the best water deposits to harvest are nearly pure ice deposits that the Mini-SAR radar experiment found in some permanently shadowed polar craters; we have recently estimated the reserves of this type of water alone at over 600 million metric tones. Just for perspective, that’s enough water to launch the equivalent of a Space Shuttle (LOX-LH2) per day, every day, for over 2200 years. So there is no shortage of water on the Moon.
See the recent article on lunar water here:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627542.200-liquid-asset-the-damp-side-of-the-moon.html?full=true
Also, I wrote on the recent Mini-SAR discoveries here:
http://blogs.airspacemag.com/moon/2010/03/01/ice-at-the-north-pole-of-the-moon/
However, if you need 10,000 tons of earth-manufactured equipment to set up a colony (number pulled out of ass, but it will be a large one), then you would need something like 100,000 tons of propellant to get it there using Isp ~400ish chemical propulsion. There may not be 100,000 tons of hydrogen on the moon.
Well, there’s much more hydrogen than that on the Moon, but your estimate of the required equipment that we must take there is way too large. We can start small, with a few ~200 kg rovers, moving polar soil and collecting ice in mini-bulldozers, and bringing it to a processing plant that would be no more than several hundred kg. All of this equipment could be remotely operated from Earth (3 second round trip time lag), something not possible for asteroid mining. Processed water can be stored as ice blocks in the permanent shadowed craters; they will be stable there indefinitely. All this processed water could be waiting for humans to use (whenever they arrive) as water for life support, radiation shielding, and thermal storage as well as electrolyzed into component hydrogen and oxygen for air, fuel for electric fuel cells, and rocket propellant. None of this requires “10,000 tons of equipment,” more like a few metric tones.
Comment by Paul D. Spudis — April 4, 2010 @ 3:56 pm
“to use its resources to create new space faring capability”
Amazing how clear and concise that is. Water on the moon…water on the moon! Go get it! Get it? Use the proven resources at hand, ULA, AtlasV, Delta, Bigelow keep it commercial based, low cost, innovative in application not hardware development and most of all sustainable. We do not need to flex around LEO for 2-3 decades. The mission is clear, concise, focused and worthy. Get the water first then go for the H-3. The rest will follow.
Comment by Doug Gard — April 4, 2010 @ 5:59 pm
just 12 days left to the Florida Space Summit and counting… so, post your opinions and proposals now: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=356261201268
Comment by one — April 4, 2010 @ 7:17 pm
Paul,
A robotic LH2/LOX factory on the Moon would be the commercial, profit-center solution we’ve been looking for to could get government (NASA/President/Congress) out of the way in the road to space permanently. Who wouldn’t want to own the gateway “filling station” to the rest of the solar system?
I wrote up a description of what it might take to build such an “icebase”. It’s at http://www.bobcarver.net/icebase/icebase.pdf
Comment by Bob Carver — April 4, 2010 @ 8:13 pm
Paul,
I am sadden, but not all that surprised. I remember talking to many folks who recognized something major needed to be accomplished before administrations changed or it would all be reset to zero. That is why I feel if another administration, or even this, propose going to Moon as a space goal it will only last as long as they are in office. If the program is not able to be implemented in that time frame, or be at the point is also ready to go as was the case with Apollo, it won’t happen.
That is also why the only practical solution I see will be creating an organization dedicated to lunar exploration and development. Its the model that worked well with the major dam projects in the U.S., TVA, BPA, etc., as well as with the building of the Alaska Railroad. A federally, or internationally, chartered Lunar Development Corporation, with a clear mission statement in its charter and focused on bringing government and commercial resources together is the best bet for moving forward on both lunar exploration and economic development.
Tom
Comment by Thomas Matula — April 4, 2010 @ 9:51 pm
von Braun had it about right. But his ideas depended upon relatively easy and affordable access to space. You have to have that first.
Once Shuttle was ‘operational’, its operation should have been spun off to a company to operate ‘commercially’. NASA did not want to give it up. Instead NASA gave up R&D and new development.
Notice how the new X-37 spaceplane was started by NASA but given up.
Gilruth and Kraft discussed at the end of Apollo, that the time to go back to the moon would be when it would be a lot easier. NASA gave up on trying to make it easy and affordable. Instead we were going to be treated to an Apollo rerun. Which as you note, the Administrator never seemed to understand why, for what reason, and actually, neither did most of the people who were party to the Lunar Architecture Team.
It is time that NASA went back to developing the technology to be able to do these missions a lot easier, otherwise we will never make it to the moon and planets. The moon might be a step on the way there. But first we need to be able to get off the earth.
Comment by Enon — April 4, 2010 @ 10:52 pm
The problem with Constellation isn’t that the budget was too small; the problem was that NASA is simply incapable of operating efficiently. For all its flaws, Russia still manages to operate a very effective space program for a fraction of what NASA spends.
NASA has become an enormously bloated government agency with appallingly bad managers (two shuttles destroyed as a result of management incompetence should be proof enough of that, but the handling of Constellation is the icing on the cake). The organization is so horribly dysfunctional that hammering some “single sentence” mission statement into its collective skull won’t help a whit. They’re simply not capable of replicating — much less bettering — the great achievements of yore.
I think the president’s emphasis on private industry is a subtle recognition of NASA’s hopeless deficiencies.
I say close the book on NASA’s management. The place is broke and I don’t think it can be fixed. Time to try a new approach. One that might actually succeed.
Comment by Matt — April 5, 2010 @ 12:26 am
All that commercial/ private aerospace companies will be able to deliver will be Mini Space Shuttles. The Space Shuttle on steroids! It’ll be 1981 all over again. Privatizing spaceflight—100 Percent—will be a wholesale disaster, as far as any real future space exploration is concerned; because then we will never leave LEO! If the rocket lacks an earth-escape stage, then you basically CAN’T go anywhere! Hence, once you are in LEO, some 200 or 300 miles up, that is the finish of your “journey”: just going around in circles, in a free-fall state around Earth. What about getting NASA out of LEO, and into deep space?? You CAN’T launch a Moon or Mars expedition on board the Venture Star! There’s simply NO payload space. And this piece-by-little-piece approach, used for the ISS, will just not work, when it comes to manned deep space operations; going to planetary destinations. President Obama has proven to be ignorant, naive & gullible, to be thinking in terms that commercial firms are going to jump-start deep spaceflight. Believe you me: THEY WON’T!!! Thanks to that misguided segment of the space interest community who are dead-set against renewed Lunar exploration, now NASA is going to be trapped in low earth orbit for another twenty years!! This was the genesis of “Flexible Path”. The “Anywhere-but-the-Moon” fanatics, desiring to wrecking ball any future lunar flights. They finally found a President dumb enough to go along with their anti-Moon agenda! If Project Constellation actually stays dead, then America will henceforth get very inferior spacecraft, that will only be adequate for LEO flights. This move to kill the would’ve-been new Lunar program, stands as the most damaging-to-the-long-run decisions ever made by a U.S. President, with regard to spaceflight. The nation’s space capabilities will dwindle to nothing, under the Obama administration.
Comment by Chris Castro — April 5, 2010 @ 3:07 am
Tom,
That is also why the only practical solution I see will be creating an organization dedicated to lunar exploration and development. Its the model that worked well with the major dam projects in the U.S., TVA, BPA, etc., as well as with the building of the Alaska Railroad.
I think that your idea for a development corporation has a lot of merit, but is premature. In the examples you cite above, no one doubted that a dam could be built and operated or a railroad could be constructed across a wilderness. But one of the reasons we’re having such difficulty getting extraterrestrial development started is that no one has yet shown that it is possible. Yes, the chemistry and physics say that it is, but it has not yet been demonstrated on the Moon or in space.
I speak to a lot of people in the space business, both NASA and industry. When I talk about using lunar resources, I get a lot of blank stares. It is a topic beyond their comprehension because it’s never been done. For NASA, this means that they are deathly afraid of it — if something has never been done before, there is no guarantee that it can be done. Thus, ISRU is a mission risk and they’ve been trained to minimize risk. In fact, they have become totally risk-averse, a complete change of culture from their glory days during the Cold War, when technical people were willing to try almost anything at least once.
My point is that the VSE was an opportunity for NASA to return to its roots as a technical pioneer. The “mission” was not to industrialize the Moon — it was to determine if the Moon could be industrialized. Your Lunar Development Corporation is the logical step to take after we have shown that we can arrive at the Moon, survive using its resources, and thrive by producing a product for export and profit to cislunar space.
Comment by Paul D. Spudis — April 5, 2010 @ 4:21 am
This is a great article. In fact, it seems like one of the clearest I’ve read on this topic since the NASA budget came out in February. I fully support the notion of fostering commercial human spaceflight, recasting our primary goal as Mars (I am thinking that the moon would be an ideal training ground for a Mars trip anyway), and cooperating with other nations. What concerns me is the lack of a focused goal. I am only an avid observer of all this, but there seem to be many good ideas floating around for a platform for deep space exploration. I would bet many of them would work. Or we could combine ideas. But we need to take a stand and declare a “before this decade is out” kind of goal.
Comment by Matt Collister — April 5, 2010 @ 11:20 am
You are right on target Mr. Spudis, your last line summing it up so well – “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.”
Yet it is not easy to have engineers and scientists focus on the “affordable”, that “-ility”. At the R&D level, very new and innovative ideas, at the birth of a capability, there is usually no focus at all on how a technology may mature to be widespread, how it might become affordable in a widespread sense. Later, once value has been shown, the ability to do something that could not be done before, and if also useful, other organizations run with a capability to mature it, to add in the qualities like affordable, reliable (and safer), producible, more productive, etc.
In this sense the groups who work R&D must by definition embrace different parts of the world before them than those who embrace matters of cost and such. It’s this aspect, in the move to breaking out into healthy R&D vs. commercial arms in NASA that holds hope in the strategic layout of the budget as proposed.
So perhaps the embrace that is needed is of engineers and scientists in NASA (and their contractors) to develop capability that adds value (such as beyond Earth orbit transport, for using resources in-situ, for refueling in space, etc). It is for the commercial sector to embrace the capabilities that already exist to get to LEO and make such capability (existing technology) more affordable, reliable (safer), and productive (more flights per year, more people per year to orbit, more tonnage per year, etc along a growth curve expanding the market, revenue and overall access to new comers / customers.
So as new capabilities – “if the Moon could be industrialized” for example – are shown, then the cycle again changes, moving government capability ever further out, and the commercial role into maturation and growth of the previous frontier.
Comment by Edgar Zapata — April 5, 2010 @ 11:49 am
I have to disagree with the basic premise. Rereading the 2004 Presidential Commission Report it reads much like Obama’s plan. There is no clear goal or vision on why going back to the moon or even Mars is desirable. You have to get some major return for the investment and while I believe it is there (resources, energy (He# etc)) I have not seen anything beyond a vague “enhance our security and foster economic development” rationale. Colonizing Mars may be a wonderful fantasy but its a long way off and we are still far from understanding how not to destabilize our our ecosphere much less create a new one. VSE pushed commercial transport to LEO just like Obamas plan..”… the Commission believes that NASA should procure all of its low-Earth orbit launch services competitively on the commercial market.”
To summarize my assessment, NASA did not not understand the VSE vision, there *wasn’t* any real vision and it was not mentioned by Bush beyond his SOU address. Until there us a vision for manned space which provides us with real tangible returns and value, we are like to see this stumbling along on inadequate budgets continue. We spend more in a month in Iraq than we do for the entire space program in a year so its easy to see where our priorities are and until we provide a vision that is worth a higher priority, it will remain in the state it is.
Comment by Jamie Ross — April 5, 2010 @ 1:26 pm
I too was stunned when Charlie Bolden made the remark about how there were already six American flags on the Moon. Those six flags were standard issue American flags, bought through government supply or at the local Sears, depending on the story you read. Either way, they were made of nylon. After 40 years of being on the Moon, the extreme radiation from the Sun and galactic cosmic rays, the extreme diurnal temperature variations experienced on the lunar surface (from approx. -230 to +230 °F), and the constant micrometeoroid bombardment, have very likely made those nylon flags unrecognizable. The colors are likely completely faded, and and I’m willing to bet the material has lost much of its integrity.
Comment by JohnG — April 5, 2010 @ 1:35 pm
Jamie,
There is no clear goal or vision on why going back to the moon or even Mars is desirable
I suggest that you re-read the VSE announcement speech here:
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=13404
Note in particular paragraphs 16 and 17 (beginning “Our third goal is to return to the Moon….”)
Now have a look at the simultaneously released document that describes the three key elements of national space policy (to address national scientific, security, and economic interests):
http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/space/renewed_spirit.html
If that isn’t clear enough, I direct you to Presidential Science Advisor John Marburger’s exegesis of the VSE here:
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=19999
The “mission” on the Moon was clearly stated in the original announcements and elaborated on by Marburger (twice!) in public, just in case NASA had not gotten the message (they still didn’t get it).
Finally, have a look at my presentation that charts the words of the VSE founding documents and how the agency changed its meaning and emphasis:
http://www.spudislunarresources.com/Papers/The%20Vision%20and%20the%20Mission.pdf
The direction given to NASA — as well as an explanation for what we hoped to accomplish — was as clear as any Presidential space policy direction we have ever had.
Comment by Paul D. Spudis — April 5, 2010 @ 1:46 pm
I’ve always been in favor of placing NASA into a US Department of Extraterrestrial Resources. NASA could easily be a profitable TVA type of corporation, IMO. Of course the rest of the aerospace industry would hate that! And the Congress has done everything to make NASA more of a burden to the tax payers by banning the shuttle from launch commercial satellites, for instance.
If every shuttle launch were allowed to carry a commercial satellite, that would save the tax payers at least $500 million a year. If they reserved 8 seats on the shuttle for wealthy tourist, that could save the tax payers at least another $200 million per flight at perhaps another $1 billion a year. Of course, if the payload area were used to carry perhaps 45 wealthy tourist into space per launch at perhaps $20 million per tourist, then the shuttle would make a $450 million profit per launch.
Comment by Marcel F. Williams — April 5, 2010 @ 3:13 pm
As Paul Spudis has pointed out, we need an integrated, re-usable Earth to orbit and Earth orbit to Moon transport system that is financially sustainable. One of the ways to make it sustainable is to use lunar resources for rocket propellants, at least to start up a base operation. I suspect that a lunar mining base including propellant extraction could be set up with as little as 500 tons of equipment on the lunar surface. This would be no more than about 25 payloads of 20 tons each delivered to the lunar surface using unmanned but re-usable cargo landers, in addition to crew landers. All of these payloads would need to be delivered within 3-4 years to sustain a practical effort to “launch” or “boot” a mining base. The mining base could then support a science base, and provide “LUNOX” for operations in cis-lunar space. A successful base could then evolve into a permanent base and eventually a colony. It might take several decades for us to develop lunar based fabrication techniques to allow expansion of a base into a colony using primarily lunar materials.
Until the actual quantities of usable lunar volatile resources are known, we do not know how long we could use them for rocket propellants like hydrogen. Oxygen is far more abundant on the Moon and is the heavier propellant component by far, so that it would be a very critical propellant component to be brought up to lunar orbit than hydrogen. Lunar hydrogen could be used primarily for lunar ascent in the near term.
The publically quoted financially sustainable rates of two Ares 5 launches per year show that a successful lunar base boot will NOT occur using an expendable HLV such as the Ares 5, combined with expendable cargo and crew landers, since it would take 20 years to launch this many cargo payloads and thermal cycling would render most of them useless within 5 years without human maintenance. A minimum set of payloads have to be landed within a few years to safely support a crew and then to allow the crew to establish propellant extraction. This underscores the importance of having a re-usable HLV design, and not rushing to build a quickie HLV based on the Shuttle solids and ET simply due to shuttle-related jobs. If you were a NASA employee, would you rather be building expendable booster parts or re-usable lunar lander or Mars lander or hab parts. If the transport costs can be brought low enough, we can do both Moon and Mars.
John Strickland
Comment by John K. Strickland Jr. — April 5, 2010 @ 9:25 pm
[...] Lost its Way Dr. Paul Spudis’ latest post, NASA Lost its Way, on his blog, The Once And Future Moon that should be read by everyone following what is the [...]
Pingback by NASA Lost its Way « AmericaSpace — April 5, 2010 @ 11:52 pm
The fundamental error in mr. Spudis’ article is that it misinterprets the objective of the Apollo program. As John Kennedy said clearly:
“If we are to win the battle that is going on around the world between freedom and tyranny, if we are to win the battle for men’s minds, the [Soviet Union's] dramatic achievements in space which occurred in recent weeks should have made clear to us all…the impact of this adventure on the minds of men everywhere who are attempting to make a determination of which road they should take…. We go into space because whatever mankind must undertake, free men must fully share…. I believe this Nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to earth.”
President John F. Kennedy, May 25, 1961¹
Apollo was funded because it was a symbolic substitute for a perilous race to build nuclear arms. Space Station was funded only when the Russians joined, to provide Russian rocket scientists with something to do other than build missiles for Iran, and to serve as a catalyst for international trust and cooperation. Yet Bush, not understanding this, wanted ISS cancelled in 2010.
This is not the Sixties. China is as capitalist as we are, and the nonaligned countries are looking to them because of their willingness to invest huge sums in local projects, not their space program. To expect US taxpayers would put up $150 billion just because we space enthusiasts want to run around on the moon is simply unrealistic. If Constellation went forward in this taxes-are-a-sin political climate, the money would have to be borrowed from China, and would hurt US interests
John Strickland is right on target. The problem with Constellation is that it costs far too much to be sustainable. The cost of human spaceflight must be reduced to WELL UNDER $10 million per seat to LEO before it can even BEGIN to be considered practical. This requires fully reusable launch vehicles, and is a lot harder than a $150 billion lunar joyride with obsolete solid-fueled throw-away rockets, but it would be a practical long-term goal.
Comment by Dan Woodard, MD — April 6, 2010 @ 6:09 pm
This would be no more than about 25 payloads of 20 tons each delivered to the lunar surface using unmanned but re-usable cargo landers, in addition to crew landers. All of these payloads would need to be delivered within 3-4 years to sustain a practical effort to “launch” or “boot” a mining base.
That’s kind of what I was thinking; an Earth-based analogue might be a land-based oil rig. They have comparable numbers of “modules” that must be able to be carried by ordinary tractor-trailers: ~20 tons each. To do it all in 3-4 years is a fast launch schedule though. The ULA “Affordable Architecture” paper says that 2 modules per year could be done for $7 billion USD per year (which is comparable to Paul’s estimate in the blog post before this one–see the first figure). Assuming 13 years, that would cost maybe ~ $100 billion USD, and still not break NASA’s budget. In other words, for the cost of an ISS, we could have some serious lunar ISRU capability. The money has to be spent on something, so we might as well spend in on something that will give us back a practical benefit.
Comment by Warren Platts — April 6, 2010 @ 11:56 pm
Dan,
The fundamental error in mr. Spudis’ article is that it misinterprets the objective of the Apollo program
Just curious — have you ever actually read anything I have written?
It’s NASA who are continuously attempting to repeat Apollo and that is a mistake, as I have written on this blog repeatedly over the past year. It is the current Administrator who talks about “planting flags in an endless series of space ‘firsts’”, not me.
You also missed the point I made that the reason to go to the Moon is not because “we space enthusiasts want to run around on the moon.” It is to use the resources of the Moon to create new space faring capabilities. That is a mission objective as far removed from the rationale for Apollo as I can imagine.
And I have written on the meaning of Apollo here:
http://www.spudislunarresources.com/Opinion_Editorial/Apollo_30_op-ed.htm
Yet Bush, not understanding this, wanted ISS cancelled in 2010.
Wrong again. The VSE policy specifically instructed NASA to complete construction of the ISS by 2010. Our participation in research there was to be finished in or around 2016.
Comment by Paul D. Spudis — April 7, 2010 @ 5:03 am
John Kennedy also frequently said that space is the new ocean. So he fully understood that this was more than just posturing with the Soviet Union this was about the pioneering of a New Frontier!
Comment by Marcel F. Williams — April 7, 2010 @ 2:59 pm
Polls show that 7% of those wealthy enough to pay $20 million to fly into space would do so. That’s a population of over 7000 people world wide.
If just 10% of that population payed to travel into space every year then the cost of space travel would fall dramatically since space rockets would have to be mass produced instead of kraft produced in order to keep up with the demand. And then would probably only increase the demand for space tourist. The energy cost for traveling into space are relatively tiny. You could add even more demand by setting up an international space lotto for the average Janes and Joes that want to travel into space.
Comment by Marcel F. Williams — April 7, 2010 @ 3:09 pm
The new budget proposal is much closer to Von Braun’s vision. I have no doubt it will get us further into space and sooner than continuing the path with Constellation. And we will go back to the moon as well.
Comment by Jack Vaughn — April 8, 2010 @ 3:25 pm
Jack,
The new budget proposal is much closer to Von Braun’s vision. I have no doubt it will get us further into space and sooner than continuing the path with Constellation.
You imply that the choice must be either Constellation or the “new budget proposal.” An alternative possibility is that neither will do what you claim. I’m glad that you “have no doubt.” Some of us do have them.
Comment by Paul D. Spudis — April 8, 2010 @ 3:31 pm
The new budget proposal reduces our investment in manned space travel from $8.4 billion a year down to only $4.1 billion a year. And it pretty much keeps us at LEO for the next decade or two!
If its not Obama’s intention to gut our Federal manned space program– he sure is doing a good imitation of it!
Comment by Marcel F. Williams — April 8, 2010 @ 5:42 pm
[...] at The Once & Future Moon blog, Dr. Spudis articulates his belief that NASA has lost its way to the Moon under the new plans for how NASA is going to approach space. I don’t necessarily [...]
Pingback by Carnival of the Egg Moon - Out of the Cradle — April 8, 2010 @ 6:56 pm
Good article, though I disagree somewhat with the motivation for returning to the Moon. Lunar resources will become very important, but the principal reason for going back to the Moon initially, then on to Mars, will be science, at least for the foreseeable future. Whether new spacefaring capability is useful depends on what we do with it. Apollo barely scratched the surface of lunar science, and the Mars landers and orbiters have revealed a world with a very complex geologic history that has raised myriad questions for scientific investigation that can only realistically be answered with a long-term human presence on the planet. There is plenty of useful science to be done.
The question, as you touched on in your last paragraph, is how do we do it in a way that is “permanent and affordable”, which translates immediately to “How much will it cost”? Apollo died because it simply cost too much to throw away a Saturn-V and Apollo CSM and LM to land 2 men on the surface of the Moon for a few days. All of NASA’s attempts to restart our manned lunar exploration program have amounted to little more than trying to redo the Apollo Program (with all new technology), and they have suffered from the same fatal flaw that killed Apollo: a reliance on expendable Heavy Lift Launch Vehicles (HLLVs). The expendable HLLV paradigm is dead. It is time to stop beating on that dead horse and give it a decent burial.
Fortunately, there is an alternative (which I have been promoting on the internet, off and on, for the last 8 or 9 years). The alternative is to develop a fully-Reusable, 2-stage, Vertical TakeOff and Landing (VTOL) Launch Vehicle (RLV). We have had the technology to do that for some 40 years. Unfortunately, NASA fixated on the notion, back in the mid-60s, that Reusable Launch Vehicles Must Have Wings. Thus, they proposed a design for the Shuttle, a 2-stage, fully-reusable, VTHL design with fly-back booster, that would have cost much more to develop than the limit imposed by the Office of Management and Budget. As a result, NASA was forced to enlist the aid of the Air Force, which demanded an Orbiter with a very large cross-range (which has never been used), as their price for participation, resulting in the very complex, partly reusable design we have now. When the Challenger disaster showed that the Shuttle was not, and never would be, the reliable, low-cost launcher that NASA wanted, they embarked on two successive programs to replace it: NASP and X-33. Both were single stage, horizontal landing designs, and both failed.
A 2-stage, VTOL design has many advantages, but, as far as I know, the concept has never been seriously considered by NASA. A 2-stage design is much easier than a single-stage design, since it has much less challenging dry mass requirements. It is also much simpler, structurally and aerodynamically, and will, therefore, cost much less to develop. But the principal advantage is that, if we can refuel the Orbiter stage at an LEO propellant depot, the Orbiter can then do the TLI/TMI burns to send our manned lunar and Mars spacecraft on their way, thus dispensing with the need for an HLLV (which I define as >150,000 lb. payload) entirely. The Orbiter would be sized for that capability, and the Booster stage would be sized to get the Orbiter, and it’s attached lunar/Mars payload, into LEO, arriving dry. Once in LEO, the Orbiter would dock with the propellant depot, nose to nose with the tank set, then the entire assembly would be rotated around it’s common centerline to settle the propellants in their tanks, and the propellants would be transferred from one to the other with differential gas pressure.
Not only do we eliminate the need for an HLLV but, once we have the capability of refueling on the Moon with lunar LOX, the Orbiter stage can fly out to the Moon (after refueling in LEO) land on the Moon, refuel, and return directly to LEO with aerobraking. And we can do all of that without expending a pound of hardware. That gives us the capability of sending a much larger expedition to the Moon than Apollo could for only a few percent of the cost. Once that happens, lunar tourism becomes a serious possibility.
Eventually, we will be able to do the same for Mars. A complicating factor is that, initially at least, we will be manufacturing our Earth-return propellants from CO2 in Mars’ atmosphere and a small amount of seed LH2 brought from Earth to produce LOX/Methane propellants (the Mars Direct scenario). There is plenty of water on Mars, but, initially, we will not know where and in what quantities and what impurities may be present. (Brine might be a better description.) It is also much more difficult to store LH2 on Mars than Methane. But CO2 is available everywhere – just open a valve and start pumping.
So we might have to develop a separate Earth Return Vehicle (ERV) to make use of LOX/Methane propellants, but there may be a way around that. The RL-10 has been run on methane, with some modifications, and Pratt&Whitney is now working on the CECE (Common Extensible Cryogenic Engine) which will run on both LH2 and Methane. The Methane turbopump has one less stage than the LH2 turbopump, but that could be handled by placing a bypass valve around the first stage of the turbopump. If all other differences could be handled by simply designing for the worst case, then we could dispense with a separate ERV and just use the Orbiter. It would fly out to Mars using LOX/LH2 and land, then switch the engines to LOX/Methane mode. When the Earth-return launch window opened, it would fly back to Earth using LOX/Methane. The Earth return Delta-V is much less than the Earth-to-LEO Delta-V, plus it will not be carrying a substantial payload, so it could do that with a single stage.
The 2-stage, VTOL RLV gives us the capability to establish fully-reusable transportation systems between the Earth and the Moon and Mars. Being a medium lift design (approx. 80,000 lb. lift capacity), it would have many other uses as well. It could launch communications satellites (two at a time like the Shuttle used to do), space station modules, various kinds of scientific satellites and planetary probes, as well as establish a robust LEO tourism industry carrying approx. 50 passengers per flight for less than $1 million per ticket – eventually much less. Those other uses would help support the fixed costs of the manned lunar/Mars transportation system and immunize that program from cancellation by shutting down the launch vehicle production line, as happened with Apollo. It can be flying by the end of the decade for a lot less than what NASA wants to spend on Constellation – to take a lot longer to do much less.
Comment by Dick Morris — April 8, 2010 @ 10:41 pm
Dick,
I want to comment on two of your points.
There is plenty of useful science to be done.
I do not disagree with this statement, but science alone is an insufficient rationale for human spaceflight. The real goals are to create a permanent, extensible space faring system. I think that the key to this is to learn to convert what we find in space into what we need, i.e., learn to use off-planet resources of materials and energy. I focus on the Moon because it has both, in forms that we already know how to manipulate.
Apollo died because it simply cost too much to throw away a Saturn-V and Apollo CSM and LM to land 2 men on the surface of the Moon for a few days.
No, the Apollo program ended because it had achieved its mission objective: to beat the Soviets to the Moon. That’s why I think we need a more compelling reason to go into space than pulling off stunt missions. Learning how to create sustainable presence off-planet and a system that can routinely access cislunar space (where all our satellite assets reside) seems like a good rationale to me.
Comment by Paul D. Spudis — April 9, 2010 @ 8:51 am
Apollo ended because it accomplished it’s goal of beating the Soviets to the Moon – and it was too expensive to keep it going just for science. Science is a good reason to go back to the Moon, and, especially, on to Mars, but we will need major cost reductions to make it happen. Once we have a low cost launch vehicle, we will be able to go back to the Moon, and developing lunar resources, particularly liquid oxygen, will be critical to supporting the transportation system.
Once we have that capability, it would make sense to set up a propellant depot in LLO to transfer lunar LOX from vehicles returning to Earth to vehicles arriving from Earth. That would make a major improvement in the economics of the transportation system. It might then make economic sense to export LOX to other destinations, possibly even LEO.
The metals produced as a byproduct of LOX manufacture might also be exported at some point, but it should be noted that the RLV, which will be absolutely necessary to get to that point, will, itself, be pretty stiff competition for lunar “outsourcing”. How the economics will work out is difficult to predict at this point. Lunar resources will be used wherever it makes economic sense to do so, and I’m sure it will be a major industry eventually.
I completely agree that creating a spacefaring civilization is the long term goal, I just have a slightly different perspective on the strategy: Once we get the cost down, science will be a good and sufficient reason for expanding the frontier, and everything else will follow. But other strategies are certainly possible, and I will support whatever works.
Comment by Dick Morris — April 9, 2010 @ 1:29 pm
Apollo ended because Nixon and a Democratic Congress didn’t want to use the heavy lift architecture to build a lunar base.In stead, Nixon decided to invest in a– game changing– architecture (the Space Shuttle) that would allow America to cheaply and conveniently access LEO:-)
Be careful what you wish for!
Comment by Marcel F. Williams — April 9, 2010 @ 8:33 pm
“Be careful what you wish for!”
Indeed. But are you suggesting that we forego a fully-reusable design now because of past blunders that ruined the Shuttle design (and caused NASP and X-33 to be such dismal failures)?
Building a fully-reusable launch vehicle would have been the right thing to do at that time. The Nixon administration and Congress didn’t proceed with a lunar base, as NASA proposed with the Apollo Applications Program, because of cost. The administration actually cancelled the last two Apollo flights, even though the hardware had already been built. It was not considered worthwhile to assemble the vehicles on the pad and launch them, so a lunar base was completely out of the question.
Unfortunately, we allowed the Air Force and Office of Management and Budget to drive the Shuttle design, then NASA downsized the vehicle as much as possible during preliminary design in order to maximize the performance. The result was the very complex, partly reusable, extremely fragile and unreliable vehicle we have now. Our manned space program has never recovered from those catastrophic blunders.
We have another opportunity now to do it right. If we don’t, I can easily see us beating our heads against the brick wall (expendable launchers) for another 10 or 20 years.
Comment by Dick Morris — April 12, 2010 @ 12:48 pm
[...] Paul Spudis of The Once and Future Moon has an excellent post analyzing how NASA lost its way, which can be summed up in three words: lack of vision. [...]
Pingback by Carnival Of The Space Geeks (Celestial Spider) | Colony Worlds — April 12, 2010 @ 8:11 pm
Just what has NASA being doing for 40 years? The united States, the most powerful nation on the planet, has no idea of where it is going, paralysed by political bundling and interference. When China puts a man on the moon, only then will the US wake up. Obviously deep space exploration is difficult, but why does it take another 25 years just to put a manned flight in Mars orbit? How many hundreds of billions of dollars has the US spent on Iraq, which could have been spent elsewhere and Nasa is promised a lousy $6 billion over five years. Well no doubt that will just about pay for the “bubbly” at the senior management meeting over that time. Who would have thought it, that the US, would end up like this: utterly rudderless.
Comment by Peter Hall — April 15, 2010 @ 5:27 pm
Paul- One point of clarification for the record – You did describe the role I played a number of years ago for NASA – but – you forgot to mention that I resigned from this position at NASA almost 3 years ago… and – based on what you read about my perspective today – I would say that being at the front end of trying to establish the value of lunar missions helped shape my current opinions – and led to my resignations…. Ad Astra Per Aspera!!!
Comment by JeffSpaceGeek — April 17, 2010 @ 8:21 pm
All Constellation would’ve required was a 3 billion dollars per year commitment from the U.S. Government. Now President Obama says that the project was “underfunded & unsustainable”. Now he proposes to instead spend way more than this sum on NASA per year, soley to do advanced propulsion research!! WTF!! Hello, Mr. President?!?! If a major project is struggling for funding, what you’re supposed to do then is ACTUALLY FUND IT. And furthermore: WE ALREADY HAVE A VIABLE HEAVY-LIFT ROCKET DESIGN & PLAN: it was called the Aries 5 rocket. Why don’t we just go ahead with this heavy-lift launcher? Or can it be that the Obama administration just hates the initial, slated destination? And they think that if they terminate Constellation and start all over in 2015, that they’ll get to build a new NEW heavy lift rocket soley for their Guiness Book of World Records highest altitude spectacular asteroid mission. By the way, all this asteroid mission bull dung that Mr. Obama is speaking of: it serves only the purpose of bypassing & avoiding the Moon! Yeah, right….on 2025 NASA will have huge & elaborate bases on an asteroid far, far off in interplanetary space—but at the same time, the Moon will be completely empty & devoid of any human activity. Does anybody out there, besides me, see something very flawed & wrong with this scenario?? Why the freak do we have to bypass the Moon?? What is wrong with these Anti-Moon zealots?!
Comment by Chris Castro — April 18, 2010 @ 3:26 am
Jeff the Geek,
I would say that being at the front end of trying to establish the value of lunar missions helped shape my current opinions – and led to my resignations
Given the bang up job you guys did while taking taxpayer dollars at ESMD, I wish you a similar level of success in your new advocacy.
Comment by Paul D. Spudis — April 18, 2010 @ 5:09 am
Chris,
All Constellation would’ve required was a 3 billion dollars per year commitment from the U.S. Government.
That was a $3 B increase in the existing levels of funding for Exploration ($ 5-6 B per year) and it comes from the Augustine report. But that group spent all their time “proving” that the Ares boosters were too costly, not on looking at options to make Constellation affordable.
NASA gets plenty of money — they just don’t know how to spend it wisely.
Comment by Paul D. Spudis — April 18, 2010 @ 5:20 am
They don’t want to spend it wisely. Maintaining employment levels at their research centers is their principal motivation, so they always try to do everything the hard way, as with NASP and X-33, in order to “justify” a great deal of technology development work. As a former Space Station official put it “We’ve GOT to push the technology – it’s our mandate.”
Even that, however, doesn’t fully explain the Ares cost estimates I’ve seen. To think that it should cost 4 or 5 times as much to develop a largely expendable launcher as it does to develop a new commercial aircraft model, which is much more complex, is simply insane.
Frankly, I don’t understand why anybody is still talking about the Ares launchers. The expendable HLLV paradigm has killed every proposal for manned lunar and planetary exploration since the end of Apollo, and now Constellation appears to be going down in flames. On April 8 I outlined a proposal for using a 2-stage, VTOL RLV, plus a propellant depot in LEO, which would enable us to do manned lunar and planetary exploration for a small fraction of the cost, and give us a much more useful launch vehicle as well. I wish someone would explain why it is not obvious to everybody that that is the way to go.
Comment by Dick Morris — April 26, 2010 @ 12:48 pm
Dick,
The expendable HLLV paradigm has killed every proposal for manned lunar and planetary exploration since the end of Apollo, and now Constellation appears to be going down in flames.
I do not agree — I think that programs to go beyond LEO have floundered because of a failure to articulate what we would do there and why it is important. Arguments about rockets, destinations and architectures are secondary to this fundamental requirement. If you don’t know what you’re doing and why you’re going, it doesn’t matter what other plans you come up with.
Comment by Paul D. Spudis — April 26, 2010 @ 1:47 pm
And if you DO know what you’re doing and why you’re going, it STILL doesn’t matter if it costs too much to make it worthwhile. The cost of Earth-to-orbit launch is the fundamental driver of the cost of everything we do in space, and with expendable launchers it will simply cost too much to set up and maintain a lunar resource utilization capability to justify any application of such resources that I’ve ever heard of.
I believe that my proposal for a 2-stage, VTOL RLV, plus an LEO propellant depot, is critical for establishing a manned lunar exploration and development capability. Based on my 50+ years of study and observation, I cannot imagine that we are going to do it any other way. Goals are indeed paramount, but, as they say, the devil is in the details, and how we propose to accomplish those goals will determine whether we will be given the chance to do it.
Comment by Dick Morris — April 26, 2010 @ 8:29 pm
Dick,
Goals are indeed paramount
As we agree on this, we can leave it at that.
Comment by Paul D. Spudis — April 27, 2010 @ 4:52 am
I am just one of the observers, though highly interested in the field. The Space and Apollo program was a speedy and concentrated effort response to a perceived challange from another nationstate. It involved survival in many areas relevant to the public. After having gone through a depression, then World War 2, now in a cold war, history and was not that far from them and their children (remember those school nuclear drill diasters? . NASA was of the engineers and scientists, and as we had lots of babyboomer taxpayers to help with the cost of research and development, NASA was a natural to go to the moon. I do not believe NASA is gone, nor will it fade, but is in the midst of change, one that it was meant to go through however at a later date then now required (9/11 changed many things). Businesses will increaseingly be involved with things space. Universities will utilize these businesses as they now have the money. Government will use NASA as a supervisory agency of, a regulatory agency of, and primary exploration agency of, space and worlds, now that so many other countries have the opportunity to join in mans ancient quest. Is there still lots to do? Yes. NASA is finding its new path in this and will settle down within my lifetime.
Comment by Don — July 28, 2010 @ 5:53 pm