Glenn Urges Direct-to-Mars Trip

Geno Z Heinlein writes "Reuters reports that astronaut John Glenn testified March 4 before the President's Commission on Moon, Mars and Beyond, saying that Bush's plan 'pulls the rug out from under our scientists' and that 'It just seems to me the direct-to-Mars [route] is the way to go.' Referring to the Moon as an 'enormously complex' Cape Canaveral, Glenn said that NASA might spend all the money getting to the Moon and never get to Mars."

Comments

I fear that's the whole point

[nokilli]

Spending all our money on the moon, that is. The moon has military value. Mars doesn't. If anything should serve as a base between here and Mars it should be ISS (after all it's a big reason we built the thing.) ISS should also be exploited as a place where returning astronauts (or samples) can be studied, safely, without risk to life on Earth (as low as that risk might be.)

Re:I fear that's the whole point

[samcentral2000]

How does the moon have military value? I'm no expert, but doesn't it take like six days to go up there? Not to mention the costs. From a military perspective, wouldn't a base in orbit around earth be more practical?

Re:I fear that's the whole point

[trinitrotoluene]

The only obvious thing I can think is of is the fact that the Moon is high up in Earth's gravity well. So you can shoot a big chunk of rock from the moon and have it hit somewhere on Earth. Then you get lots of destruction with no risk to friendly troops and without resorting to nuclear weapons.

Re:I fear that's the whole point

[CrazyTalk]

25 years ago it only took 3 days (and less than a decade to develop and test the technology, but thats another story). One problem with a base in orbit is the lack of available raw materials - everything has to be brought up from Earth.

Re:I fear that's the whole point

[Aglassis]

You said: " How does the moon have military value? I'm no expert, but doesn't it take like six days to go up there? Not to mention the costs. From a military perspective, wouldn't a base in orbit around earth be more practical?"

Its like a man on a hill versus a man downslope. On the moon you have the ability to see every point on the Earth in time, but the 'dark side' (of course its not always dark) of the moon is never seen from Earth. It would be possible to stockpile weapons on the 'dark side' and then move them to a suitable base on the other side to attack the Earth. Additionally, if you are trying to defend the dark side, there is a very narrow cone-ring that you'd have to survey. But on the Moon you could easily attack any point on the Earth with a gigantic area that they'd have to defend against. And, of course, I haven't even started to talk about gravitational advantages.

Re:I fear that's the whole point

[dillon_rinker]

The problem with MAD, though, is we've lost both the M and the A. Who else can match our arsenal? Who else can deploy an ABM system?

All your other points are excellent.

The point of a moon base, though, would be a resupply base for all your orbital death stars. It's cheaper to get material out of the moon's gravity well than the earth's. It'd take a while to establish the industrial base needed on the moon, though; I'm thinking a permanent manned facility with a population of around 50,000 would be necessary to supply a ring of battle stations in low earth orbit.

"Fear will keep the third world in line...fear of our Orbital Death Lasers!"

Re:I fear that's the whole point

[torpor]

Pretty simple, really:

a) The moon is easy to defend from Earth-based attacks. It takes a looooot more effort to get something to the Moon from Earth than it does to get something from the Moon to Earth.
b) Anything launched from the Moon can reach any target on the planet, easily enough, using Gravity.
c) The moon has tons of resources for constructing weapons, especially new kinds of nuclear weapons. There's no Greenpeace, no protestors, and no life to destroy, so the Military-Industrial complex can do a looooot of things on the moon that they wouldn't stand a chance doing here on Earth.

This was, incidentally, a hot topic in the 50's and 60's, and I seem to remember more than one sci-fi author getting into a lot of trouble for suggesting that the moon be used militarily in the Cold War ...

A moon base would be the Top of the Hill for the Pentagon. Its very, very difficult to defend against moon-launched attacks ...

Re:I fear that's the whole point

[Daniel Dvorkin]

M: No one else can match our arsenal, but who gives a shit? China, Russia, and probably France and the UK have enough nukes to kill off tens of millions of Americans in one strike. That's really all anyone needs for an effective deterrent.

A: We will never, ever have an anti-missile system that can stop enough incoming ICBM's and/or SLBM's to fend off a massive strike. Period. And if we ever go to war on the assumption that we can, odds are decent that you and everyone you know will die.

Re:I fear that's the whole point

[Eccles]

As opposed to that giant thing orbiting the earth called 'The Moon'?

The moon is a significant gravity well. Once you get there, you're going to have to overcome gravity again, not to mention you have to land slowly enough in the first place. While it may be possible to mine the moon for materials to help enable a launch, or to build a linear accelerator that would do so, a near-zero gravity way station might be better.

I'd like to see if it is possible to redirect and capture a moderate-sized asteroid for this purpose. Said asteroid might itself be selected for having the sorts of raw materials that could be used for spacecraft launching.

Re:I fear that's the whole point

[AeroIllini]

wouldn't a base in orbit around earth be more practical?

As opposed to that giant thing orbiting the earth called 'The Moon'?

You seem to be forgetting about orbital distances. The ISS orbits the Earth at an altitude of about 500 km. The moon orbits at an average altitude of 378,000 km. (Analogy: the difference between traveling three miles to the grocery store or from Chicago to Los Angeles.)

Any weapon fired from the moon would have tremendous difficulties. A rocket-based weapon, such as an ICBM (IPBM?), would take 3 to 4 days to reach the Earth. One we fire from Earth could reach its target in a matter of minutes. Any laser-based or beam-based weapon would also have big problems, since the Earth, seen from the moon, only covers about 2 degrees of the sky. Aiming at a target on the Earth would require an instrument of incredibly high precision, and any such sensitive equipment would be exceedingly difficult to set up on the moon.

The moon is not strategic militarily. But I would agree that going to the moon as a jump-off point to Mars is a bit pointless, and it only made sense in the 1950s scifi books. Why leave one gravity well, just to land in another and have to overcome it again? The surface of the moon is every bit as unforgiving as orbit, since there's no insulating atmosphere. True, it has gravity, but that dust gets EVERYWHERE. It would make far more sense to do everything in orbit: build the spacecraft, fuel it, launch it, return it. Just stay out of the gravity well as long as possible.

Re:I fear that's the whole point

[x0]

You are making the assumption that ABM systems are designed to stop all of the incoming ICBMs. While it may have been sold to the public on that premise, I think there were two more important (and successful) reasons for the ABM research:

1. Stop enough incoming ballistic missiles to make strikes less than a sure thing for some percentage of the number launched.
2. Make the other guy spend more money to make more missiles, including maintaining those missiles, at a higher percentage of the GNP.

In short; Outspend them until they fail.

Seems like it worked to me...

Re:I fear that's the whole point

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Note that I didn't say "all," I said "enough." And my belief -- one that I think is well borne out by the numbers involved -- is that we will never be able to stop enough incoming ICBM's and/or SLBM's launched by any other major power to keep a significant portion of America's population from being killed in a nuclear war. "Outspend them until the fail" is an interesting proposition (and the collapse of the USSR is much, much more complicated than that) but the simple fact is that missiles are cheap and ABM is expensive.

You know, in some other countries, this might not be the case -- consider the great conventional battles of the past, in young men's lives were spent like pennies for a mile or two of ground. But Americans don't fight that way, and never have. (Gettysburg pales in comparision to the Somme, or Stalingrad.) There are governments which would probably regard the loss of a Chicago-size metropolitan center or two, or ten, as an acceptable risk. But traditionally, we don't think that way, and that's a Good Thing. I will be very saddened, and rather disturbed, if this changes.

Goals

[FTL]

Most people seem to agree that going to the Moon is a silly thing to do if your goal is to get to Mars. But I don't think that's the goal here. I think the goal is to go to the Moon. The word "Mars" doesn't even appear in the executive order. Bush just added the "and at some point on to Mars" to the end of his speech to keep the Mars camp happy.

Frankly I don't care where we go, Moon, Mars or asteroids. Let's just get off this rock.

Re:Goals

[cybermace5]

And I totally agree with that. I would much rather see money used for some lasting, useful space infrastructure than blow all the cash on a one-shot firecracker to put a bootprint in red dirt.

Let's try for some logical progression here. The giant leap was when a man first set foot on something other than Earth. Now let's start walking. There are no lasting benefits right now from a massive Mars bootprint operation, let's go there when it's cheaper and we have some practical Moon colony experience to build on.

Re:Goals

[JWW]

I personally believe that if we can't make it back to the Moon and establish a base there that we will NEVER get to Mars.

The moon needs to be the proving ground for the technology needed to get to Mars.

This weapons platform gibberish is just the rantings of Bush haters.

If you really want NASA to succeed it needs long range plans like Bush's proposal. AND it needs the opposition party not to fight them. The timelines for going to Mars are so long that political machinations need to be kept out of the equation or Mars exploration just becomes something to kill off the next time the opposition party takes office.

Re:Goals

[demachina]

Easy solution. DON'T follow the Apollo mission profile when you go to mars. A profile where you are expending a massive effort to do a round trip with the dubious returns of a short stay on Mars, bracketed by a massively long, expensive, dangerous, debilitating trip there and back.

Instead start launching large cargo containers with water, food, nuclear reactors, habitats, bulldozers and rovers. Use the same craft to transport this cargo you will use to fly astronauts there. When the cargo ships are arriving reliably and there is a critical mass of resources on the surface launch people as colonists, not astronauts, on a one way mission to Mars. It will be a lot easier to fly people on a one way flight than it will be to do a round trip. The ROI will be immense on a colonizing mission versus miniscule on a short stay round trip. You could send real geologists who would spend a life time exploring the planet and would have a motivator in they are trying to find the resource to free themselves from cargo flights from earth. You also wouldn't need to continue expensive manned flights from earth if and when a self sustaining colony is established. Mars is better for a colony than the moon because gravity is higher, its not a hard vacuam, and it probably has a lot more resources than the moon. It is only marginally worse than what the scientists living at Antarctica experience (the four added problems being radiation, no air, limited water availability, and long expensive supply runs).

The technology spinoffs form a Mars colony would probably be huge because you would, for example, need to establish a society with zero dependence on fossil fuels and you would need significant advances in food production and manufacturing.

The human race desperately needs a frontier colony with a fresh start. A colony where we might try to lose a lot of the economic and social baggage all the nations on Earth currently carry. The 20th century was the first one where mankind stopped having frontiers on Earth and that is not a positive change.

Moderators probably should mark this redundant because I post the same thing everytime a Mars thread comes up.

Bush's Moon Plan is a 'shock and awe' tactic:

[Neuropol]

A moon base is just a way to get people thinking about votes.

China

[ultraexactzz]

Though Mr. Glenn's arguments are sound, they fail to take into account one of the most pressing reasons for a permanent moon base - China intends to build one in the next 12 years. Though it smacks of the Cold War, could the president really allow a (communist) foreign power unlimited access to the moon?

Moon having "military value"

[zoney_ie]

Is there any kind of International treaties governing use of the Moon? I'm thinking particularly of the situation with the Antarctic here. There certainly should be some kind of International agreement that it's "common ground".

If not, I suggest ESA had better at least mount some similar type of mission to NASA, making sure that there is more than one "presence" on the moon.

Yeah, OK, it's just a ball of rock - but it's a tad upsetting to think someone else might single-handedly "claim" the entirity of that pretty disc in the sky.

Re:Moon having "military value"

[xtal]

Is there any kind of International treaties governing use of the Moon? I'm thinking particularly of the situation with the Antarctic here. There certainly should be some kind of International agreement that it's "common ground".


Kinda like the ABM treaty?

*cough*

I've never been accused of being an optimist, but for some reason I don't think international agreements not to militarize space are going to mean a whole lot in the next 15 years unfortunately. The ABM treaty issue is being hotly debated in Canada and will be an issue in the next election. (US Plans call for ABM sites in Canada, leading to space-based weaponry)

Re:Moon having "military value"

[xtal]

even though the government with which the treaty was signed no longer existed?

There is always a difference between the spirit and letter of the law. The intent of the ABM treaty was to stop nuclear prolifertion and hold the status quo of power. While the Soviet Union has been dissolved, Russia and it's friends still have ICBMs in silos - and if their effectiveness is reduced, alternatives WILL be found. Nations do not have friends.

The agreement to not militarize space is supposed to represent a understanding amoung nations that our conflicts here on this planet should not exend elsewhere. Perhaps this is a naive view of the world, but I'd like to think that others might share it. The USA is in a position to militarize and dominate the theatre of space; At least until the LGM decide to show off their superiority in weapons.

Never forget, that this is a slippery slope - once it starts, it -will- end with nuclear weapons in space pointing down on us. I don't want to have to explain to my kids that there has to be MIRV orbital warheads aimed at the planet because we're really miserable to each other. Space is the last hope left for man working together as a species, and once it is gone, I fear it is gone forever.

It is likely the inevitable outcome of the USA's emerging world dominance. It will accellerate the development of (american) space initiatives. The USA will be making many moves in the next 10-20 years to solidify it's military power before world oil reserves become a problem. Having a monopoly on the heavy hydrogen reserves on the moon may be a justification down the road as well. Alas, I am an engineer, and not a military strategist.

My $0.02cdn.

Re:Hero Gone Politician

[YetAnotherAnonymousC]

Amen. This is just more of the usual "criticize the other side" partisan bickering.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

Ohio constituents

[amightywind]

Bush's plan 'pulls the rug out from under our scientists' and that 'It just seems to me the direct-to-Mars [route] is the way to go...

Which translated means Lewis Reasearch Center in Ohio has entrenched interests in the Space Station and stands to loose funding in the short term with President Bush's initiative. What Senator Glenn doesn't make clear is how a direct Mars effort can be funded concurrently with Shuttle/IIS. It can't.

The Real Point of the Bush Plan

[ChuckDivine]

The real point of the Bush policy changes is to promote reform at NASA. Terminate the shuttle program -- and redirect resources to achieving lower costs to orbit. Terminate ISS -- it's not turning out to be a real benefit for science or much of anything else.

I can easily support a manned mission to Mars. But it must be part of a space effort that is more broad based than the current work is. To achieve that, we're going to have change the way we do things. The spectacular project that sometimes succeeds, sometimes doesn't, offers little hope for this style of action.

NASA's predecessor, NACA, helped make revolutionary progress in aeronautics by sticking to technology development and working with nascent aeronautical companies to develop real airplanes that could be used for a wide range of activities by a wide range of organizations. We need the same kind of work from NASA.

Re:Oh Come on...

[prgrmr]

Just because the man made it to the moon

Glenn never went to the moon. NASA wouldn't let him go, they didn't want to risk losing their hero.

does *not* mean he is an authority on the economic / social / political needs to make a manned trip to Mars

Having served in the US Senate, I'm sure he's much more of an authority on those matters than you would belive.

Space Elevator

[cflorio]

If they would just fund research on the Space Elevator They could have both the Moon and Mars!

Re:One question: why?

[Atrahasis]

This talk of trips to the moon and Mars makes me ask: why?

Because man always has and always will seek to further his horizons. We've run out of horizons on Earth.

What can people on the moon or Mars do that a robot can't?"

Experience it first hand. Describe being there in a qualitative as well as a quantitative manner. In short, FEEL what its like to be there. If you fly a kite, you can hardly say you flew, can you? Similarly, putting a robot on the moon or Mars does not justify the statement that man has been there.

Robots are even better suited because, well, they can be specially built to be suited.

No, robots are actually LESS well suited becuase they MUST be built to suit. Being specialised is not a good trait when you are unsure of the circumstances in which you might find yourself. The ability to adapt to changing circumstance is not one that the field of robotics has yet mastered. Thankfully nature has done the work for us, and we are natural adaptors.

Space Elevators

[mbone]

If you really want to make the USA into a Space Faring Nation again, we should put our money into space elevators.

In just 2 decades, this idea has gone from being impossible to far-out to design studies.

By comparison, the ISS is a waste and the Moon would be an expensive diversion. Space elevators would really open the solar system up for human - not just robot - exploration.

Re:One question: why? because...

[adzoox]

Is a digital camera or a DVD better than your eyes? Would you rather be at the Duke basketball game or watch it on TV?

Can you look at a mountain range on a video or in a picture and see it context to your height, surroundings, atmosphere?

The answers to all thos questions and more is no.

Manned missions are important to the entire human race as accomplishment and to be cliche, "To seek out new life and new information" - Experience moves the human race forward - Robots confine us to to the earth - limit our boundaries. Both are useful - but one is only a step for the other - each is an enhancement to the knowledge gathering.

Woozle-wozzle.

[JMZero]

The moon may have been a military resource in the 60's, but it's hardly one now.

Soldier 1: "We're taking fire from that alley!"
Soldier 2: "Quick, deploy the moon missiles!"

It's hard to argue that the US has any problems controlling the top of the hill these days. ICBM's still work. US planes have operated pretty much undeterred for a long time. And MAD, on the other hand, is less viable than ever as a strategy (given enemy psychology).

The moon has tons of resources for constructing weapons, especially new kinds of nuclear weapons

That's silly. Constructing weapons would be a ludicrously costly, stupid thing to do on the moon. New kind of nuclear weapons? The old kinds work perfectly well, thank you - they are perfectly capable of supplying any kind of abomination the military might demand of them, even if they must be dropped out of a plane rather than launched from the moon.

The US military needs more precise ways to blow small things up that they can't see - not bigger ways to blow big things up that they can see from the moon.

Good practical reasons to establish a lunar base

[jguthrie]

I happened to sit in the audience on a panel at ConDFW whose topic was "Man on Mars by 2030?" or some such. At that session, it was pointed out that NASA is a political beast by its very nature, (and how can it be otherwise as NASA is an arm of the US government, itself one of the most political of beasts,) and does what it does for political reasons. That's why they haven't managed to get anyone out of low earth orbit in 32 years. There's been no goal that a politician has had that requires NASA to do that.

In fact, my opinion is that essentially no progress has been made in spaceflight in those 32 years. After all, it doesn't matter to me if a very select few gets to occasionally ride into space because I want to go, and I think that there are lots of people like me. Our interest in space is derived, not from a desire to read about or watch the exploits of a Glenn or an Armstrong, but to go ourselves. However, it appears as if the folks at NASA don't want that. They still view flying in space as being something only for the, well, few that they've selected. I'd like to see that change. Establishing a lunar base gives us the possibility of seeing that change.

There are a number of companies that have been established to exploit space commercially. However, none have really been successful so far. The primary reason is that the income from that exploitation has been uncertain at best. NASA now has the opportunity to change that. If they were to call for a request for bid on, say, five contracts: For providing transfer of personnel from the earth's surface to low earth orbit, for providing transfer of cargo from the earth's surface to low earth orbit, for providing transfer of personnel from low earth orbit to the lunar surface, for providing transfer of cargo from low earth orbit to the lunar surface, and for the construction of a lunar base, this would be the sort of guaranteed income needed to get commercial space ventures really going.

And once those contractors become established, they're going to look around for other ways to make money. One of those ways will be tourism.

In fact, in order to do business those contractors will have to build just the infrastructure you need to send human explorers off to the other planets. It is the establishment of the infrastructure that makes the cost of launching a Mars mission from a lunar base larger than going the Mars direct route. If NASA can get others to build the infrastructure instead, then the numbers look a lot better for launching from the moon or from a space station than for Mars direct.

waystation != mfg. center

[LaCosaNostradamus]

The Earth is very fortunate to have the Moon. The only better things for space manufacturing are asteroidal moons and even a rubble ring (like Saturn has).

A waystation is generally better served in an orbit, yes, but the Moon is a currently unparalleled manufacturing site for space development. It has only 1/6g; is abundant in sunlight, oxygen, aluminum, silicon and iron (with calcium, titanium and other traces); has no atmosphere; and is about a 3-day journey from the mother world.

The problems of the Lunar well are solved by mass drivers built on the surface. With no atmosphere to stop it, an iron bucket carrying cargo (usually basic materials mined from the Lunar regolith) can be flung off the Moon at Lunar escape velocity -- you just have to build the linear accelerator long enough. Then you have to have mass catchers in Cislunar space to capture and make use of said materials.

Really, reaching for Mars without first preparing a Lunar manufacturing site is such abominable stupidity that I can only predict the Mars Adventure will end as Apollo ended ... memories, rocks, lost billions and finally piles of equipment rusting in the Florida sun. A "straight to Mars" mission is almost entirely political -- with the remaining portion being some scientific intent.

With a well established Lunar base, all other planetary tours can take place as a side-effect of Lunar manufacturing activity. And once asteroidal missions return a sufficient chunk of volatiles to Cislunar space, shipments from Earth can be reduced to personnel and other small, specific cargoes like medicine, special equipment, biologicals and trace elements.

Re:Hero Gone Politician

[Dun Malg]

He participated in 83 science experiments over 9 days while up in the shuttle. (That's an average of 9.2 experiments per day, for those having trouble with the math as well as with history).

So what? The tests were pointless because, as the linked story says:

Glenn, 77 at the time and the oldest person ever sent into space, was so healthy and the mission so short that the results weren't much different from tests done on men and women half his age.

Then is goes on to quote Glenn saying we need to send more old folks up to get more varied test results, but that'll never happen. NASA won't send anyone up who isn't in excellent physical health because they don't want the risk.

Glenn being a bit shortsighted, two-faced...

[prisoner-of-enigma]

If the (Democratic) Senator wishes to say that getting to the moon is "enormously complex," then precisely how would he define a trip to Mars? It's a six day journey to the moon, but it's a six-to-nine month journey to Mars, followed by an almost mandatory one year stay, then a six-to-nine month return trip.

If complexity and danger are enough for Senator Glenn to rule out a moon colony, just how in the hell can he claim a Mars run is an easier choice?

Perhaps the Senator has, in his old age, forgotten Apollo 8, which did a dry run of the entire Apollo CM/LM setup all the way around the moon before an actual landing was attempted. Many claimed it was a waste to send the whole damned setup to the moon and not land, but NASA (rightly) decided that a shorter hop was safer than a massive leap. By establishing a moonbase first, we are in a far better position to send manned expeditions and, more importantly, colonization efforts to Mars.

The last thing I want to see happen is for NASA to blow its wad on a Mars trip, bring back a few rocks, and then sit on its thumb for the next fifty years like we did post-Apollo. We need permanent offworld settlements, not rock gathering missions. A moonbase gets us a toehold, but with an election year dawning and the Democratic Senator Glenn wishing to derail Republican Bush space initiatives, I guess politics wins out over safety of astronaut lives. Thanks, Senator. You're such an American hero.

Dock Worker

[*SpOoNdRiFt*]

I used to work on a truck dock, and we had a philosophy that we lived by when loading and unloading trucks: never move your freight twice. It's double work. I'm with Glenn.