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The Case for the Moon
apsmith writes "Continuing the flurry of recent hearings on the future of humans in space, a Senate committee on Thursday heard testimony in favor of a return to the Moon. Former senator and moon-walker Harrison Schmitt and physicist David Criswell see the lunar surface as an immense energy resource, just waiting to be tapped. Astronomer Roger Angel sees the lunar south pole as the ideal astronomical observatory, with locations for telescopes 100 times better than anything we've done so far. And geologist Paul Spudis sees a lot of unfinished business on the Moon, to develop it as the "feedstock of an industrial space infrastructure." TransOrbital also sent written testimony."
Why not? Competition is a good thing - competing with the USSR helped the US get to the moon in less than a decade. Competition from Craig Venter/Celera pushed the NIH to finish sequencing the human genome in half the projected time.
Without competition, the government will just lumber along, chewing up money and then maybe or maybe not get to a useful endpoint. External competition helps government agencies become much more goal-oriented.
"The Case for Mars", which makes the arguement that we should ignore the moon and instead head on out to the fourth planet.
His arguements:
1) In terms of energy, it's easier to go to Mars from LEO than the moon. (Takes longer, though.)
2) Mars is a more interesting destination: because it has an atmosphere, a lot of engineering obstacles are solved because you can do all sorts of nifty engineering tricks to steal resources from the air.
3) The moon is dead, and has always been dead. Mars, on the other hand, perhaps even once supported life. With effort on our part, perhaps it could again.
Anyways, go to the Mars Direct site.
-Brett
After the final lunar landings in 1972, NASA and the nation were at a crossroads. We landed on the moon but this was partially to make sure the Russians did not do so first. With the "Great Society" in the works and Vietnam still raging, the space program was put on the back burner in favor or funding for social programs and military expenditures. Russia never went to the moon and it looks to be at least until 2010 before China might try, thus there was no political incentive to sacrifice pork projects or "social" programs in favor of expanded space projects.
Though the Space Shuttle was supposed to reduce space travel costs dramatically and allow for low-cost LEO (Low Earth Orbit) launches, the costs proved so much greater than expected that NASA spends most of its budget maintaining the aging fleet and is hard-pressed to spare the cash for developing new launch vehicles. It was thought that space stations launched via space shuttle would be used as waystations to revisit the moon, but as the shuttles cost so much to move around, that plan became bunk fairly quickly.
We must return to the moon. Its natural vacuum and near-constant illuminated surface allow for massive energy and chemical manufacturing. Deadly plagues and other research requiring isolation could be done easily on our moon with minimal fear of contaminating the earth should their projects go awry. Telescopes on the far side of the moon would give us a new view of the universe uninterrupted by light (and for SETI et. al not so many electronic signals interfereing). If nothing else, the He-3 and solar resources could eventually help reduce our dependence on limited fossil fuels to run our economy. Some of the readers remember the OPEC crisis and no one wants those conditions to return. Finally, the moon serves as a waypoint to exploration of Mars and the Asteroid Belt, both of which contain abundant resources that could satiate our world's demands for resources far beyond the lifetimes of anyone reading this.
I'd like to hear from people who do not want to go back to the moon. Most of the soical programs they advocate funding in place of space exploration have their own difficulties, but maybe there are other reasons they have which get little/no attention.
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
I believe the relavent quotation would be:
"There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain. Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?
We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."
--John F. Kennedy
Going to the moon didn't really make much sense in terms of cost/benefit at the time, but if nothing more, it was quite symbolic of the age. Going to the moon, was in many ways, a direct response to the Soviet space program. It had some similar goals as the recent Chinnese launch -- much of the reason for going to the moon was to demonstrate the US' technological, scientific, and economic strength.
From a more idealistic perspective, it was because the US was given the dream, and challenge, of going to the moon.
John F. Kennedy,
Address at Rice University on the Space Effort,
September 12, 1962:
President Pitzer, Mr. Vice President, Governor, Congressman Thomas, Senator Wiley, and Congressman Miller, Mr. Webb. Mr. Bell, scientists, distinguished guests, and ladies and gentlemen:
I appreciate your president having made me an honorary visiting professor, and I will assure you that my first lecture will be very brief. I am delighted to be here and I'm particularly delighted to be here on this occasion.
We meet at a college noted for knowledge, in a city noted for progress, in a State noted for strength, and we stand in need of all three, for we meet in an hour of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and fear, in an age of both knowledge and ignorance. The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds.
Despite the striking fact that most of the scientists that the world has ever known are alive and working today, despite the fact that this Nation's own scientific manpower is doubling every 12 years in a rate of growth more than three times that of our population as a whole, despite that, the vast stretches of the unknown and the unanswered and the unfinished still far out-strip our collective comprehension.
No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come, but condense, if you will, the 50,000 years of man's recorded history in a time span of but a half century. Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them advanced man had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them. Then about 10 years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter. Only 5 years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels. Christianity began less than 2 years ago. The printing press came this year, and then less than 2 months ago, during this whole 50-year span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power.
Newton explored the meaning of gravity. Last month electric lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became available. Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear power, and now if America's new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight.
This is a breathtaking pace, and such a pace cannot help but create new ills as it dispels old, new ignorance, new problems, new dangers. Surely the opening vistas of space promise high costs and hardships, as well as high reward.
So it is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer to rest, to
near-constant illuminated surface allow for massive energy and chemical manufacturing...... .... Telescopes on the far side of the moon would give us a new view of the universe uninterrupted by light
The moon has a 29.5 day cycle meaning that places on the moon experience about 15 days of daylight and about 15 days of night. The far side of the moon gets just as much (and just as little) sunlight as the near side. Only radio telescopes would see a big advantage on the farside by using the moon to block the Earth's noisy radio chatter.
Its a minor point, but it does have implications for what you can do on the moon and the special engineering challenges of the environment (e.g., storing 15 days of solar power).
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
I've always thought the Moon would be a great place for a telescope, and he lays it all out in detail, including:
He does miss one trick, which is that the moon itself provides the stiff structure required for long-baseline interferometry, which would be necessary to image planets around other stars.
It's really nice to see this idea wrapped up in a neat package.
"You can't get something for nothing." - my grandfather, on the stock market and Reaganomics.
When NASA was preparing for the Apollo Project, it took the astronauts to a Navajo reservation in Arizona for training. One day, a Navajo elder and his son came across the space crew walking among the rocks.
The elder, who spoke only Navajo, asked a question. His son translated for the NASA people: "What are these guys in the big suits doing?"
One of the astronauts said that they were practicing for a trip to the moon. When his son relayed this comment the Navajo elder got all excited and asked if it would be possible to give to the astronauts a message to deliver to the moon.
Recognizing a promotional opportunity when he saw one, a NASA official accompanying the astronauts said, "Why certainly!" and told an underling to get a tape recorder. The Navajo elder's comments into the microphone were brief. The NASA official asked the son if he would translate what his father had said. The son listened to the recording and laughed uproariously. But he refused to translate.
So the NASA people took the tape to a nearby Navajo village and played it for other members of the tribe. They too laughed long and loudly but also refused to translate the elder's message to the moon. Finally, an official government translator was summoned. After he finally stopped laughing the translator relayed the message: "Watch out for these assholes. They have come to steal your land."
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