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The now-defunct Ares launch vehicle. A "lesson learned"?

Credible rumor has it that NASA has initiated a “lessons learned” postmortem of Project Constellation in order to camouflage their failure to implement the 2004 Vision for Space Exploration (VSE) and to justify their new direction.  I had originally intended to expand on the agency’s postmortem pursuit by writing a piece about time wasting, bureaucratic “butt-cover” exercises done for public consumption, when a report in the press caught my eye that nicely illustrates a major problem with the configuration of our national space program.

In brief, a meeting was recently held between elected federal officials from Utah and the top levels of management of NASA.  Although we do not have a transcript of all that was said at this meeting, it is clear that a great deal of dissatisfaction was expressed in terms of the way NASA was fulfilling (or rather, not fulfilling) its directed tasks as expressed in the recently signed Authorization act.  That legislation directed the agency to begin a program to build a heavy-lift launch vehicle (initially capable of putting 70 metric tonnes (mT) into orbit, but ultimately expandable to capacities greater than 100 mT).  They also were directed to use parts of the soon to be retired Space Shuttle system “to the maximum extent possible.”  Similar wording was included in NASA’s last two authorization bills and thus, is nothing new or unconventional.

The press reported that some in Utah’s delegation are not satisfied with the way NASA is approaching this task.  Senator Orin Hatch expressed concern that NASA might not be following the law, or at least, the intent of Congress.  The Senator’s immediate concern is that ATK (manufacturer of solid rocket motors for the Shuttle stack and a large employer in Utah) might be cut from participating in the building of the new heavy lift rocket, probably through the selection of some design that relies solely on liquid-fuel boosters.  Whether or not this concern is justified or even if it is appropriate, it does serve to illustrate an issue: how do we know when the agency is executing its assigned duties correctly, or at least, as they were directed?

In theory, NASA is subject to oversight by both Congress and the Executive branch of the federal government.  The administrator is appointed by the President and answerable to him.  The agency’s budget request is prepared and overseen by the Office of Management and Budget, under White House administration.  In Congress, both the Senate and the House have standing committees that oversee the agency’s authorization (what it is to work on) and appropriation (money to work on it).  In practice, this oversight involves numerous briefings and reports by NASA to its oversight authority – before, during, and after program execution.

This appears to be a lot of oversight, so how could NASA deviate from its appointed task and run afoul of its political direction?  In broad terms, the agency has always complied with its mandate, but as in so many other areas of life, “the devil is in the details.”  When the President says “Go to the Moon!” he is not involved in the minutiae of architectural selection.  He cares only that his direction is executed within the time frame and budget boundaries set forth.  He may have some particular objective in mind and even express that concept as part of a new policy direction, but because he is consumed with a multitude of complex responsibilities, he typically leaves the details of the implementation of his direction to NASA through the agency administrator.  Presidents have little technical or scientific training and have neither the time nor inclination to acquire much more.  These same characterizations apply to most members of Congress; their staffers may possess considerable knowledge on space and technical issues, but can only advise the elected members.  And those members have a thousand other things vying for their time and attention.

So in actual fact, NASA implements space policy as it chooses.  It may get general direction from political entities, but exactly how it approaches a mission or objective is within their institutional discretion.  A given approach either meets its objective or it doesn’t.  Typically, when they run into trouble, the agency goes to the White House and Congress and asks for more money to fix the problem.  Sometimes throwing money at a problem works, sometimes it doesn’t.  But real difficulties come about when no additional money is forthcoming.  That usually means a given program or mission is redefined to be smaller or is cancelled outright.  Is it possible in practice to head off program missteps before it’s too late?

Once the nation had an entity to oversee how the agency was implementing major space programs, a body that existed and monitored the implementation of national space policy in the early 1990s.  As previously configured, the council is comprised of selected sitting cabinet heads and the President, backed up by the expertise of a technical support staff knowledgeable in space flight and program specifics and capable of overseeing and reporting on how NASA is implementing its assigned programs.  Such oversight finds and corrects significant technical issues early, before they become insurmountable budgetary problems.

The major problem with the implementation of the Vision for Space Exploration was that the agency did not adhere to the intent or mission of the return to the Moon segment early in the program.  As this was done subtly, no one (in either oversight branch) initially noticed that an unaffordable approach to lunar return was being developed.  Moreover, because the agency was approaching lunar return as a “super Apollo” set of extended sorties, the architecture was incapable of accomplishing the basic objective of going to the Moon to learn how to live and work there.  A space council reporting to the President directly (not through the NASA administrator) could provide the necessary independent technical advice and oversight the President and Congress require to determine if an architecture or launch vehicle is the appropriate choice for achieving national strategic objectives.  Re-creation of the National Space Council was a specific recommendation of the 2004 Aldridge Commission (on which I had the honor to serve) precisely because of the concerns I’ve discussed here.

This oversight recommendation of the Aldridge Commission was neither embraced nor adopted by NASA.  I know for a fact that Sean O’Keefe did not like the recommendation; although I have not discussed it directly with Mike Griffin, I suspect that he felt the same way about someone looking over his shoulder.  But NASA and the space program do not belong to the administrator, they belong to the American people.  And the people are entitled to and should demand accountability from the agency for a more considered and thoughtful program, one relevant to national interests that won’t be abruptly canceled because of budget concerns.  If NASA’s implementation of the VSE had been reviewed independently on a regular and continuing basis, its fundamental programmatic and technical deficiencies would have been revealed and corrected long before the convening of the Presidential-level Augustine Commission, by which time the only solution (an untenable one) was to significantly increase the agency’s budget – to preserve the non-optimum decision made many years earlier, not to set the pursuit of the objective back on the right track.

There is plenty to be said about motives, miscues and the abdication of responsible behavior, but by convening a “lesson’s learned” exercise in pursuit of political cover, we merely continue to delay leadership decisions at the very time the country is demanding that sensible solutions replace national folly.

Time to return

Remember when space exploration was “groovy” and excitement about seeing humans explore the Solar System within our lifetimes was palpable?   What happened to NASA and America’s dream to boldly go?   The pathway that assured us that space exploration is cool, amazing and pushes excellence has disappeared, littered instead by U-turns and Stop signs.  NASA’s groove was the right stuff.  When did vanish?  Can we get it back?

America’s rhythm is stalled.  Movement in our economy is going the wrong way.  Education standards are mediocre.  We’re not evolving.  We’re not in our groove.  And the country feels it.

Is NASA’s dilemma symptomatic of what ails us?   “If we could put a man on the Moon..” has become cliché but was the zenith of American exceptionalism.   The last time a human walked on the Moon was in December 1972 – 38 years ago next month.  NASA has long since stopped getting “free drinks” from the retelling of that decades old conquest.   It’s time to light the fire again and do something profound, this time something cumulative and lasting.  Conquering the Moon is where we found our groove and if we choose, where we can reclaim it.

NASA languished a year waiting to hear what, where and when their mission would be.  They’re still waiting, as NASA ponders how to proceed on the “Flexible Path” to their ultimate goal of Mars.  Congress recessed without passing a federal budget for 2011 and NASA is operating under a continuing resolution.  Things are certainly flexible.

The latest buzz in the space blogosphere is about the recent midterm election results and subsequent changes in House committees with Republicans in the majority.  After these new committee chairs take charge, will they set new priorities?  Only time will tell but past statements by those mentioned to fill these positions give some clues.  They seem less inclined to “sell the farm,” thereby giving control of U.S. space access to foreign entities.  They seem to be cautious about handing the reins of LEO access to commercial start-ups, preferring to have them prove themselves first, while at the same time guaranteeing that NASA retains the infrastructure necessary to assure our national interests in space.  Will their priorities for NASA rest more with the agency staying as a national economic and security asset and less as an international outreach program, heavily influenced by Earth science concerns?  Much rests on the decisions made and the money appropriated by the incoming Congress.

The current administration’s decision to abandon NASA’s mission of resource utilization on the Moon needs to be revisited.  The ability of the United States to routinely access cislunar space through the use of the Moon and its resources needs to be well understood and addressed.  We cannot afford to remain complacent about the Moon while other countries move forward to reap the rewards of lunar return.  The United States needs to make smart investments that will pay long-term dividends.  Lunar return is one of those economic and technological investments.

The majority of the panel of engineers and scientists invited to speak at the recent Space Manufacturing conference meeting at NASA’s Ames Research Center (sponsored by the Space Studies Institute) held the view that lunar mining was the logical next move and that government needed to “prime the pump” and demonstrate that this was possible before private enterprise would follow.  We need private sector money to fully pursue the purpose and realize the potential of space exploration.  NASA needs to show that resource utilization is possible on the Moon.  Once we understand how to access and develop lunar resources, private enterprise will capitalize on these findings.  As the door to a sustainable space faring infrastructure finally swings open, the tyranny of the rocket equation will be broken.

It is time for America to find its groove again.  It is time to extol the right stuff and pursue goals of national excellence.  Setting a goal that may be obtained in 30 years is not a space program.  A return to the Moon to learn how to use its resources is achievable using existing technology and within the decade-long timescales demanded by our political process.

Comet Hartley 2 as seen from the EPOXI spacecraft this week. Comets are one source of water for lunar polar ice.

Although the discovery of ice on the Moon comes from a wide variety of different measurements, they are all “remote sensing.”  We have not yet landed near these deposits and examined them up close.  Thus, we do not know the physical nature of lunar polar ice.  Having spent the last couple of weeks at several meetings in which this became an issue, I’ve been thinking about the nature of lunar ice.  What is lunar polar ice?  Is it a smooth pond of solid ice?  Perhaps it is broken-up blocks and slabs of tough, compacted ice chunks.  Maybe it’s a porous, void-filled snow-like aggregation of microscopic ice pieces.  The question of the nature of lunar ice is not academic.  If we plan to go to the Moon to harvest this ice to support human presence and space transportation, we must understand the physical nature of the deposits.

Although the details are probably complex, the concept of lunar ice deposition is simple.  Water ice is stable in the cold, dark areas near the lunar poles.  Any water that is made or deposited on the Moon is not stable in sunlit areas, and so will migrate across the surface.  If it gets into one of these polar cold traps, it is there forever – no known process exists to remove it.  Thus, even though the addition of water is extremely slow, over very long periods of time, a substantial amount of water may accumulate there.

But what is the physical nature of these deposits?  Our expectations derived from experience here on Earth are probably misleading.  We deal daily with water in liquid form and ice on Earth is usually made by the freezing of liquid water.  This results in crystalline ice, as water molecules in solid form assume an ordered, tightly bonded lattice structure.  As everyone knows, this material is both hard and tough and greatly resists attempts to break or gather it using normal digging tools.  Water also can crystallize directly from vapor form into a solid as frost, usually found as an extremely thin coating that is very soft and easily scraped and removed from the object on which it forms.

Water that freezes within soil forms a tough, indurated deposit that can be quite difficult to dig or excavate.  In the polar regions of the Earth, this material is frozen solid year-round and is called permafrost.  Permafrost is extremely hard and difficult to excavate.  Buildings in arctic regions require heavy equipment to dig and move the permafrost, including the use of explosives to break up the rock-hard frozen soil.  If lunar ice is like this stuff, it will be extremely difficult to dig up and mine.

In contrast, snow is soft and easy to excavate.  Snow is created when precipitation droplets (rain) freeze before they land on the ground.  Typically, airborne dust particles will nucleate these droplets.  Small drops have time to crystallize into magnificent ice crystals which famously, are each unique and individual.  Sometimes larger water drops freeze quickly in flight and form ice blobs which may land on the ground as hail.  In any event, if this material accumulates on the ground, we have a porous, weakly bonded deposit that is easily scooped up, usually by cursing inhabitants wielding large flat shovels.

Neither of these two accumulation scenarios occur on the Moon.  We don’t know whether lunar ice is deposited (e.g., by comets hitting the Moon) or made (e.g., by solar wind hydrogen reacting with mineral surfaces).  But however it is deposited, the water exists as individual molecules in gaseous form.  Although this water is found all over the Moon, it is not stable everywhere.  The molecules hop around the surface randomly, not slowing down until they land at a cooler locality and don’t stop until they reach a cold trap.  The Moon loses most of these water molecules by a variety of mechanisms, including escape, disassociation and combination with minerals.  The lucky few that reach a polar cold trap are there forever.

So what form do lunar ice deposits take?  They are not now and never have been in liquid form, so crystallization into dense, “ponds” of ice is not likely.  This lack of history as a liquid also means that “permafrost” (at least as we understand that term from terrestrial experience) is not likely either.  Both of these ice forms ultimately require a freeze-thaw cycle, even if the time frame for such a cycle is hundreds of years.  The lunar cold traps are cold now and have been for billions of years.  And for this length of time, they have been gathering water molecules, sometimes at very high rates of accumulation (as when a comet strikes the Moon nearby) but usually at very slow, steady rates of accumulation.

Lunar ice probably is very porous, or at least “solid” but weakly bound together.  The tight bonding of crystalline ice is made during the transition from liquid to solid during freezing.  This doesn’t happen on the Moon; the water is added to the surface through direct ballistic deposition as individual molecules.  In addition to the accumulation of water in the form of extremely tenuous vapor, dust and soil particles may interact with the water, creating a deposit with variable strength and water content.   Even this material is likely to be loosely bound, as this mixing occurs at low temperatures and the water does not have a chance to re-crystallize, the usual reason for the steel-like hardness of permafrost.  In astrophysics, a fine-grained, loosely bound structure is referred to as “fairy castle structure.”

Do we have any evidence that this guess may be correct?  We have only a few indirect clues at present.  The ejecta plume observed during the impact of the LCROSS upper stage was unusually narrow.  The science team suggested that this was a result of impact into an unusually low density soil; the term they used to describe it was “fluffy.”  In addition to the high CPR fill of anomalous craters seen in the Mini-RF radar images of the poles (which we interpret as ice), we also observe anomalously low CPR in the areas surrounding the anomalous craters.  Extremely low CPR implies fine-grained, lower than  average density deposits with few rocks.  Yet because polar ice is geologically young (less than a couple of billion years), if there were rock-hard, crystalline ice in abundance, we might expect a higher than average radar CPR, caused by abundant angular blocks excavated by impacts.  Such a signal is not observed.

Admittedly, the evidence for this story is very weak.  To determine the true physical and chemical nature of lunar polar ice, we must examine and study it in detail from a suitably equipped surface rover.  Such a mission has been repeatedly proposed and I note that it is one of the proposed mission studies in the National Academy’s Planetary Exploration Decadal Survey.  For a resource that may change the rules of spaceflight, determining its properties should be a high priority for exploration.