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An ice rainbow seen in cirrus clouds on Earth. (UCSB Dept. Geography)

Five weeks ago a crater from the LCROSS impact formed on the Moon.  The pre-impact build-up had been sensational, but the actual event was largely invisible to observers on Earth. It was a different story on the Moon.  The slowly growing impact ejecta curtain threw water ice particles and vapor far out into space.  When the crater formed, flying ice particles could have refracted the glare of unfiltered sunlight into an “ice rainbow,” similar to those seen through very high altitude clouds on Earth.  For a very brief time, a rainbow might have been visible to an observer standing on the lunar surface.  And like its namesake, this rainbow is a promise – a promise that the Moon is habitable.  It is an invitation to humanity to extend man’s domain to our nearest planetary neighbor.

The LCROSS science team’s initial analysis of ejected impact plume data found evidence for water.  It appears that several other species, particularly some carbon substances also found in the cores of comets, may be present.  The new results suggest that some lunar polar volatiles may have their origins from outside the Moon, deposited there over millions of years by the impact of comets and asteroids.

Over the last 50 years, the idea of water ice at the lunar poles has generated as much angst as excitement within the scientific community.  Ice on the Moon was suggested by Watson, Murray and Brown in 1960.  They recognized that, regardless of the fate of such substances elsewhere on the Moon, the dark, cold floors of polar craters might retain volatile substances.  Rock and soil samples returned by the Apollo missions were not only bone-dry, but crystallized in a very reducing environment, suggesting that any indigenous lunar water, if present, must have been a very minor component.  Apollo scientist Jim Arnold resurrected the Watson et al. hypothesis forty years ago, concluding that their original proposal of water ice at the poles was still feasible and that a polar lunar orbiter was needed to search for such deposits.

We know that over geologic time, the Moon was bombarded by water-bearing objects.  Meteorites contain water, and just as they’ve landed on Earth, they’ve also hit the Moon.  Moreover, we’ve detected water vapor in the tails of comets with Earth-based telescopes.  But it was widely speculated that all this water must be lost from the Moon, which left the issue of polar ice unresolved.

Fifteen years ago, the 1994 Clementine orbiter mission revived our interest in the Moon’s polar regions.  When Clementine’s images of the Moon’s poles revealed large areas of shadowed terrain, it reminded Gene Shoemaker and the science team of the Watson and Arnold papers.  Large shadowed areas suggested that polar cold traps might really exist, so an experiment was improvised using the spacecraft transmitter to beam RF energy into the shadowed areas.  Analysis of the radio echoes suggested the presence of ice in shadowed areas near the south pole.  This result was questioned, largely because our team couldn’t repeat the passes using the improvised experiment.

In 1998, Lunar Prospector found evidence for excess hydrogen in the surface soils of both lunar poles.  These data could not show what form the hydrogen was in and had very low spatial resolution.  The issue, as to whether the observed polar hydrogen represented water ice in the dark cold traps or elemental hydrogen implanted by solar wind protons, was vigorously debated.  The preponderance of evidence in the years since Lunar Prospector, suggests that water ice is present in the polar areas, but its form, distribution and physical state are completely unknown.

The current flotilla of lunar orbiting spacecraft carry several advanced sensors, all designed to better characterize the environment and deposits of the polar regions of the Moon.  We have seen extremely low temperatures in the polar dark regions using the DIVINER instrument on the American Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft.  The Japanese Kaguya mission mapped the topography and terrain of the polar areas and showed us the extent of the shadowed areas.  The Indian Chandryaan mission sent a probe into the south pole, mapped the extent of sunlight and carried two NASA instruments – the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) and Mini-SAR radar.  In September, the M3 instrument found significant amounts of water bound into mineral structures at high latitudes.  The Mini-SAR instrument has made maps showing the interior of dark polar craters.  These maps are being analyzed for scattering characteristics to determine whether water ice might be present there; our initial results will be announced soon.

Now, the LCROSS impactor – sent to kick up the dust of the polar dark regions – has shown us that water ice does exist there.  We still don’t know how much water ice in total may be present; from Clementine,  we estimated there are billions of metric tones of water ice present in the south polar area.  Complete analysis of all of the remote sensing information in the next couple of years will ultimately give us a good estimate of the total amount of water available.  Clementine also revealed peaks of near-permanent sunlight in proximity to regions of permanent darkness at the poles (where the sun’s circular rotation keeps temperatures benign).

If you don’t know where you’re going, any path will get you there.

The Moon has the resources needed to bootstrap a sustained, permanent human presence.  It is the place where we can learn how to live and work productively in space.  The Moon has put out a welcome mat.  What are we waiting for?

New report - same old assumptions?

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. – Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince.

In his famous book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn described two types of science: normal science, the everyday background work, where constant, steady but unspectacular advances occur in our knowledge, and revolutionary science, where fundamental assumptions and ways of conducting business are unalterably changed forever.  Kuhn called such a change a paradigm shift; a new paradigm (i.e., a framework of knowledge, including the assumptions, worldview, approaches and techniques to conduct business under a given set of circumstances) replaces the existing one and the new approaches and attitudes become the norm.

The paradigm model might also be applied to conducting business in other fields, in particular, the business of spaceflight.  Since it arose more than 50 years ago, the paradigm of spaceflight has largely remained unchanged.  In short, we conceive a mission (robotic or human), then design, build and launch a spacecraft to conduct that mission.  This satellite or spacecraft operates for a time in space—gathering information or providing a service—until it breaks down or becomes obsolete and is abandoned.  We then imagine the next mission—going back to the drawing board to design the next spacecraft—a process repeated continuously and a major cost of space exploration.

Is a paradigm shift – a “revolution” in space travel possible?  One would think that with 50 years of experience under our belts, we would have already exhausted all the possibilities.  Indeed, the imminent development of warp drive or “Cavorite” does not seem likely, but then, that’s the nature of truly revolutionary breakthroughs, isn’t it?  On the other hand, is there something missing – something that could be done right now using existing knowledge to change the rules of spaceflight and possibly spur additional breakthroughs?

As long as we’re chained to the existing spaceflight paradigm, we must continue hauling from Earth everything we need in space.  For human missions this includes all the air, water and other consumables needed for life support.  The cost to lift all this mass (which includes the weight of a massive amount of fuel needed to escape from Earth’s very deep gravity well) is budget busting.  So for “normal” space exploration, costs will never be lower except at the margins and we will always be mass-limited in space.  And when you are mass-limited, you are capability-limited as well.

I’ve argued here and elsewhere that there is a method that is already well understood in principle, but its practical application and viability is completely unknown.  If we could use what we find in space to create new capabilities, we would change the rules of spaceflight, thereby ushering in a true paradigm shift in space travel.

Such was the original intent of the Vision for Space Exploration (VSE).  The desire for fundamental change in perspective was behind the program’s specific direction to study and experiment with using the material and energy resources of the Moon.  From the moment it was announced, the true purpose of a lunar return was misunderstood, both inadvertently and deliberately.  Constellation is a rocket program; the VSE is not.

No one knows if using space resources is possible but we can find out by pursuing innovative technology.  In theory it works.  We’ve never attempted high-risk mining on the Moon and it may have significant practical difficulties but potentially, it could become a highly leveraging activity.

If we can extract and make rocket propellant on the Moon, we can create a completely reusable, refuelable transportation infrastructure in cislunar space.  If we can extract the oxygen and hydrogen, we can live in space.  Of course, such an outcome would change and transform the business model of space—something that fascinates and attracts many but repels others and hence, its mixed reception in aerospace circles.

This would truly be a revolution, a paradigm shift in the same sense as we understand it from Kuhn’s description of scientific progress; as a vast new expanse is opened to us and we are free to move about the universe, the world changes and things are never the same again.

In order to mitigate risk and to ensuring our economic and national security, government often steps in to develop technology that the private sector cannot or will not take on.  A government push to learn how to use the resources of space will break the cycle of launch and discard.  Instead of having a short “shelf-life,” our indispensable and unprotected systems in space become maintainable, reusable, extensible and affordable.

While reading the newly released Augustine report, keep in mind its background and its assumptions.  It is based solidly on the traditional models of conducting business in space – design, launch and abandon, along with the accompanying plea for more money to ensure a “robust” program of space exploration.

As long as such assumptions prevail, advances never will.

A cislunar transport system will revolutionize space travel (NASA artwork by Pat Rawlings)

Water is an extremely useful substance in space.  The recent finding of water on the Moon has generated considerable comment in the space community; a quick search on Google using the phrase “lunar water” returns over 7.66 million hits.  Lunar water’s significance lies not in its role as a medium for the presence of extraterrestrial life but rather in its potential to support terrestrial life—ours—as humanity moves beyond Earth.  The Moon is the port from where we will navigate—the safe harbor where we will learn how to live and work productively in space and from where we will set sail into our Solar System, thereby ensuring the survival of our species.

The three principal uses for this water are life support, energy storage, and rocket propellant.

We can easily imagine drinking water.  We need about 2 liters of water per day under ordinary circumstances.  Water is also a constituent of food, both unprepared and preserved, adding at least another liter to that total.  In addition to consumed water, we can also use water to make oxygen, replenishing the air we bring with us to create a breathable atmosphere.  Water is over 85% oxygen by weight and the liquid is easily broken into its constituent gases by passing an electrical current through it.

Another way that water supports life is by offering shielding and protection against solar and galactic cosmic radiation.  Water harvested from the Moon can fill the outer jackets of surface habitats, protecting not only human life and technology within it, but also the plants that we will want to grow there, both for food supply and carbon dioxide scrubbing of the habitat air.  Thus, water supports life on the Moon as both a consumable and as a building material.

A second main use of water is less often considered.  We can break down water into its component gases using electricity, but the process can also be reversed – hydrogen and oxygen gas can be combined to generate electricity in a device called a fuel cell.  When these gases combine, they generate electrical energy and make water as a by-product.  This technique was used in the Apollo spacecraft for power and water production.  When combined with another technique to generate electrical power (e.g., arrays of solar cells or a nuclear reactor), we make a completely reversible, self-sustaining power and water system.  Thus, the water becomes a medium of energy storage – during lunar night, we combine hydrogen and oxygen to make water and electrical power while during the daytime, we reverse the process by using electrical power generated by sunlight to disassociate the water back into its constituent gases.  Such a rechargeable fuel cell system enables permanent, sustainable human presence on the Moon.

The third important use for lunar water is for the production of rocket fuel.  Liquid hydrogen and oxygen are the most powerful chemical rocket propellants known.  By manufacturing rocket propellant from lunar water, we make the Moon a refueling station and logistics depot in space.  The critical value of this ability is that such rocket fuel not only permits our routine access to and from the Moon, but also enables access to any other point in cislunar space (the volume of space between Earth and Moon.)

All satellites reside in cislunar space.  Numerous remote-sensing satellites are found in low Earth orbit.  GPS elements reside in moderately high (few hundred kilometer) orbits.  Communication satellites are found at geosynchronous orbit, 35,000 km above the Earth.  Other specialized satellites occur at different altitudes.  At present, we cannot access these satellites with either human or robotic spacecraft.  So we design, build and fly these space assets, use them for a time then abandon them, replacing them as needed with new satellites—at great cost.  The ability to reach valuable space assets routinely with people and machines allows us to change the way we conduct business in space.  Instead of the current “fly and throw away” template, we can build extensible, maintainable and upgradeable systems.

Very large, distributed space systems will enable new capabilities, such as global communications using hand held cell phone-sized equipment, anywhere in the world at any time.  New remote-sensing platforms can be built to look at any corner of the globe at any wavelength in unprecedented detail.  Telescopes built on the Moon’s far side, where they will be shielded from Earth’s radio noise, can scan the universe in new areas of the spectrum. These and many more capabilities are enabled by a cislunar transportation system and will vastly improve life on Earth.

By understanding and using the resources of our Moon, we can push out to the stars.  An abundance of water on the Moon fundamentally allows us to change the rules of exploration and spaceflight to our advantage.  We stand at the threshold of a new understanding of how the Moon evolved and works—and works to humanity’s advantage.

The more things change....

Over the long holiday weekend, Turner Classic Movies regaled us with a really obscure one – the 1960 biopic, I Aim at the Stars, starring Curd Jürgens.  This movie is a biography of Wernher von Braun, the German rocket scientist who built the V-2 for Hitler and the Saturn V for America.  Although no landmark in cinematic history, it was an interesting and reasonably well told story, even if it glossed over a few inconvenient facts about von Braun, like his nominal membership in Himmler’s SS.

What fascinated me in this movie (which I had not seen) was not von Braun, but the character played by James Daly, Major William Taggert (an intelligence officer in the U.S. Army who, having lost his family to a V-2 hitting London, hated von Braun and all of the Peenemunde rocket group).  After the war, Taggert follows the Germans as they relocate, first to White Sands and finally to Huntsville to continue their research into rocket flight.  Taggert becomes a reporter (his civilian occupation) who beats his media pulpit about the irrelevancy of space flight.  “All the money spent on space could build schools and hospitals instead!” he angrily harangues via television, a philosophical counterpoint to von Braun’s plea for an American satellite program.

Watching the movie, I was struck that this debate has been ongoing for the last 50 years.  Something about space exploration or human forays into new realms sticks in the craw of some people.  Although the context of the von Braun-Taggart argument was Sputnik and a possible American response, much has remained the same over these last 50 years.  The public still falls into two camps – those who believe that our survival depends on continued reach beyond Earth versus those who think it’s a waste of money or that the money could be better spent.  NASA spends most of its outreach efforts trying to win the hearts and minds of this latter group.

Case in point:  a NASA “white paper,” clearly a rough draft, leaked to the press, describing the post-Augustine space program.  Omitting the use of our Moon as the logical next step, “Generation Mars” is billed as the necessary pathway to keep NASA relevant, the public engaged and the required pipeline for sustainable product and group input cycles.  No more idiotic fooling around with, or distractions from, lunar bases.  The “exciting” destination is Mars – in about thirty years or so.  In the mean time, keep flying Shuttle so as not to upset the applecart.  Oh, and imagine, “use” the ISS for something (Just pull one or two studies—from the hundreds gathering dust—off the shelf of unfunded programs).

A key assumption here is that NASA’s survival revolves around an excited and engaged public.  The authors of this piece apparently think this will happen with Mars because the public doesn’t care about the Moon; that the Mars Generation can become “emotionally engaged because they will become contributors to the Mars goal and part of the maturation process in achieving it.”  Great stuff that – “emotional engagement,” not reason or logic.  The system of taking incremental steps using lunar resources to make space faring routine is abandoned for a multi-decadal agency program to take an “excited” public to Mars, a program “owned” by its contributors.  That’s a lot of time and work needed to engage, excite and own something.  It sounds like the description of an entitlement program, not a mission statement.

After 50 years of obvious benefits of space flight, many still are, at best, indifferent to it.  But even more significantly, few feel the need to be emotionally engaged with it.  People understand that along with our vast interstate road network, we have other vital economic infrastructure, such as railroad transportation, air traffic and more recently, a network of telecommunication satellites orbiting Earth.  We depend upon this infrastructure on a daily basis, but except for buffs, we do not get emotionally engaged in their day to day operations.

As no significant additional money is likely to materialize, we must strive for achievable goals and a paced rate of advancement.  A program that promises accomplishment thirty years in the future is not a program at all, but rather, an excuse to “study” the problem indefinitely.  In other words, it means another thirty years like the previous thirty years – lots of swell viewgraphs, color artwork of astronauts climbing the walls of Valles Marineris, and bureaucratic blither about exciting students.  But no actual spaceflight infrastructure.

I’ve touched on this issue before; no one votes for a candidate based on their position on the space program.  The net effect of this environment of public indifference is that NASA’s budget (which comes from an ever shrinking slice of the tax-funded, discretionary spending pie) will remain at existing levels for the foreseeable future.  What does this mean for NASA’s Mad Men advertising campaign for “Generation Mars?”  Basically it means that a space agency dependent upon public excitement to enrich its budget is one that is not likely to prosper.   With budgets devoured by countless cycles of viewgraphs, white papers and consensus management missives in the coming decades, what remains is an agency with no sustainable space exploration system.

To add space to our other national transportation networks, the kind that we take for granted but that contribute in so many ways to our prosperity and security, NASA needs to lay the groundwork for private industry to follow.  NASA needs to be the driver of private sector technology as it explores.  Without logical steps, NASA becomes the devourer of resources and not a technology driver.

As the next frontier is scouted, business will follow, as it always does.  Business is eager to follow.  NASA needs to finish laying the groundwork before moving on.   The Moon is the next destination in space.  Will America lead and  have a stake in this new land or will we stay behind and watch the movie?

The path to Cone crater (LROC image, Ariz. State Univ.)

In 1961, Alan B. Shepard’s successful 15-minute sub-orbital hop gave President Kennedy the high cover needed to announce a reach for the Moon, “by the end of this decade.” America’s spirit was lifted and Alan Shepard became a national hero, getting ticker tape parades and White House receptions. Then, as in a Greek tragedy, he was struck from the flight list after developing Meniere’s syndrome (an imbalance of the inner ear). His flying days were over. Or were they?

Shepard, a smart, tough, no-nonsense aviator, took a job helping Deke Slayton (previously grounded by a heart murmur) run the Astronaut Office. Shepard and Slayton picked all flight crews for the Gemini and Apollo missions. Very early on, it became clear that you did not cross Al Shepard, lest your career come to a screeching halt. Shepard never stopped his Apollo training or flying in the T-38, even though he had to “backseat it” with another astronaut. His personality was memorably captured in Tom Wolfe’s book, The Right Stuff, as “The Icy Commander.”

After taking a chance on experimental surgery to correct his inner ear problem in 1969, he successfully returned to active flight status and looked ahead to an Apollo flight assignment.  Rejected for the Commander’s seat on the next available flight by NASA Headquarters (on the grounds that he needed more training time), he was named to command a subsequent flight, while Jim Lovell was named Commander of Apollo 13.

Geologists who worked on the Apollo training were ecstatic – Lovell was one of their favorite pilot astronauts, a smart, capable guy with a keen eye and an analytic mind. He was being sent to Fra Mauro, the first highland site to be visited on the Moon. This region was considered a key locale to decipher lunar geological history, being located on the ejecta blanket of the Imbrium basin, the largest impact crater on the near side.

Jim Lovell was considered the right man to study this site and collect the key samples scientists needed to help unlock the secrets of the Moon. Unfortunately, with the failure of Apollo 13, Jim Lovell didn’t land on the Moon. Still, the Fra Mauro site was considered so important, it became the designated landing site for Apollo 14, eighteen months later.

Uh-oh. Lunar scientists didn’t have Jim Lovell to explore with—they had drawn the “Icy Commander,” the guy who cheerfully admitted that, compared to aeronautics, he thought geology was a low-grade science. Nevertheless, Shepard assured the Apollo scientists he would try to do the best job he could for them.

While successful in almost every way, the Apollo 14 mission was not without controversy. Cone crater, a large young impact feature, had apparently dug up rocks from deep within the Fra Mauro Formation, including it was hoped, ejecta from the Imbrium basin. During their second moonwalk, Al Shepard and Ed Mitchell trudged up steep slopes leading to Cone, dragging along their Modularized Equipment Transporter (MET), a small pull-cart designed to carry tools and samples with them, getting more winded and disoriented with each step. Getting to the rim of Cone crater was considered critical to the scientific success of the mission.

At 47, Shepard was the oldest man to fly to the Moon and many felt that he was out of shape and not up to the rigors of lunar trekking (which didn’t explain why Ed Mitchell was also having problems.) Moreover, it seemed that Shepard was all too eager to abandon the trek and declare victory after he radioed to the ground that he thought they were already at the rim of Cone crater. (Enough with the hiking trip! We’re running out of time and consumables. Let’s sample this area and call it the rim of Cone crater.)

Scientists in the back room were aghast. Getting Cone crater samples was critical to mission success. And now this old, panting geezer was destroying their chance to unlock a deep secret about the Moon. Although they put on a good face, scientists were resentful; after all their work on geological training, the “Icy Commander” simply declares victory and turns for home. Adding insult to their perceived injury, back at the Lunar Module, Shepard pulled out a 6-iron and conducted a little sand trap practice. (He abandoned the quest for Cone crater – to play golf, no less!)

Now, thirty-eight years later, we’ve just received a magnificent picture of the Apollo 14 landing site from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC). Its quality is so good we can see the path of the astronauts footprints and MET tracks on the Moon. It is even possible to follow their tracks all the way up to Cone crater—to the point where Al Shepard declared victory.

Oops. Al Shepard was right. He was at the rim of Cone crater. Terrain around the rim is so hilly that he and Ed Mitchell didn’t know they had reached the rim; the deep crater interior is just over a slight rise, a few tens of meters north of where they were. The samples that Shepard and Mitchell collected do represent the deepest ejecta from Cone crater, thereby fulfilling that goal geologists set many moons ago. For almost 40 years, the “Icy Commander” was right. Yet his name lived in infamy in lunar geologic circles.

If there is a moral to this story, it could be that scientists should never state something is absolutely known and settled.  It’s likely they’ll be proven wrong.