Another Small Step Before the Giant Leap

Armchair Anarchist writes "Over at Futurismic, a new column proposes that NASA's plans to establish a lunar colony are an attempt to run before we can walk properly, and that developing orbital habitats first would be a wiser and more realistically attainable project. From the article: "... it seems to me that the trump card is with the orbitals; orbit is closer, cheaper and easier to get to, and offers more flexibility as a long-term outpost. Sure, let's put men back on the moon, mine it for helium-3, research its history and origins. But it makes more sense to launch missions of that type from an already-established colony in orbit.""

Comments

Unmanned is better

[morboIV]

Sending people anywhere in space requires incredible amounts of infrastructure to provide safe habitation, food, oxygen and so on. For the cost of getting people to the moon and keeping them their for any significant period of time, you could send probably dozens of unmanned expeditions all over the solar system. Not to mention that the capabilities of robots will inevitably come close or even overtake humans. Investing that money in better robotics would probably be much better for space exploration.

Re:Unmanned is better

[mmdog]

While I don't necessarily agree that robotic exploration is better, I think an approach that uses robots is called for.

Mostly, I tend to agree with the author of the blog. We need orbital stations first, but even so, we should also be sending robotic construction vehicles to the moon to start preparing a base for future habitation NOW. I think it makes a lot more sense to have most of a moon base built before we arrive.

Imagine the first construction crew arriving on the moon to find and extensive labyrinth of tunnels and chambers already bored deep into the lunar surface, with piles of building materials on site and mostly in place for quick use. The same thing goes for Mars when we someday take that step - in all honesty we should have robots prepping both locations for YEARS before we try to send human beings.

I think most people just miss the point that making space exploration and colonozation a reality is about resources. There has to be a reason to go there that justifies the expense. Sure, a lot of us think that just going there to get humans off the planet is a good reason but unless it can be made profitable it just isn't going to happen. When it becomes profitable to mine asteroids or the moon, or to manufacture things that cannot be reasonably made in a gravity well, that's when space colonization will truly take hold.

Robots can get us a lot closer to such a reality than we are now, but in the end establishing a permanent human presence outside of Earth's gravity well will be necessary to truly exploit the resources that are currently beyond our reach.

We must raise the bar

[MaGogue]

If nothing else, going to the Moon serves as a motivation. "Lingering in Earth orbit" sounds depressing and boring (although it isn't) compared to "going to the Moon and beyond". We should press forward, it will be easier to work in orbit in parallel to Moon efforts. Think Skylab - how easy it was to put 283 cubic metres of habitable space up there after Moon landings.

Re:A good point

[AGMW]

The way I look at it is that this is presumably all a trial run for Mars. I'd suggest (and have suggested) that we should start with an orbital platform around Earth to allow specialist craft to ply their trade between the platform and Earth. It does make sense to then try out some habitats on the Moon before we go for Mars, but before we land on Mars we should build an orbital platform for Mars too. This would be a copy of the Earth platform, with whatever improvements have been discovered from the Earth version. This would then act as the first backup point for the Mars landing. The Mars orbit to ground craft might be similar to the Earth Orbit to ground craft, which would be another set of tried and tested machines. Earth to Mars would be a scaled up version of the Earth to Moon craft we've already used, and they would run back and forth suppling the Mars Orbital Platform with supplies to be ferried down to the surface as needed/convenient.

In the event of a problem on Mars, safety would only be in orbit rather than having to get all the way back to Earth. The various craft would be specifically built for a single job rather than having to be capable of everything. All the parts would be tested closer to Earth before we need to rely on them for Mars. I'd probably put a bunch of GPS and Comms satalites around Mars first too - after all, we're actually pretty good at them now!

Robots, not people

[b00le]

Sure, manned space exploration is romantic and exciting, but manned missions to the moon accomplished nothing beyond nationalistic PR that culdn't have been done better by machines, and the ISS has produced no science worthy of its staggering cost. We will inhabit space one day but for now current talk of manned Moon bases and Mars missions are not like trying to run before we can walk, they're like trying to fly before we can stand up. There are two little machines working away on Mars still that would agree with me. Read Bob Park http://www.bobpark.org/ for detailed, expert reasoning.

I'm all for space fareing, but....

[Pedrito]

we have some serious problems going on right here at home that need tending first.

If the economy was in the condition it was before Bush went into office, I might be for something like this, but at the moment, we're sinking into debt up to our noses and the last thing we need to do is spend a fortune going back to the moon. We ought to get a little fiscal responsibility in place first. I know these things take years to work out, and had Clinton pushed it, I would have been all for it because I would have thought, "How could this enormous surplus possibly be squandered so quickly?" And yet, Bush pulled it off in record time.

I do think, however, if you take the economics out of it, that a moon colony is a much better next step than another orbital station, for various reasons, not least of which is, a station just isn't really a step forward. It's a step sideways. We need to move forward and we need to take grander steps. There will be failures (and sadly, some will probably cost lives), but it's the steps forward that make the big impact on the public and help build further support for the program.

The public was excited early in the Apollo program. They wanted to see us go to the moon and they watched it every step of the way. But then we just kept going back, picking up a few rocks and coming back (this is from a public perception point of view), and quickly support diminished. When NASA isn't moving forward, they don't get support, and people simply won't support another station, especially after the disaster that ISS has been from a PR point of view. It's been a money pit and as far as the public is concerned, it's not much more, fascination-wise, than a big, expensive Skylab.

Pie in the sky BS...

[kcbrown]

I've always had a huge interest in space. The sooner we're able to permanently and independently live in space, the better.

But a permanent, independent manned presence in space isn't likely to happen within our lifetimes. Why? Because:

1. NASA is nothing more than a convenient means to funnel money from the taxpayers to the big defense contractors. And for the foreseeable future, the resources required to research, develop, and build a permanent independent manned presence in space aren't available to anything less than a large government, so you can count private interests out here. The amount of energy required to move back and forth between earth and space is far too great to make the finances work out in favor of getting materials from space, so the private sector can be counted out for the foreseeable future.
2. A permanent manned presence in space that isn't truly independent will be very expensive to maintain. More expensive than most governments have shown themselves willing to pay for except in the most dire of perceived circumstances, and even then only temporarily. Temporary != permanent.
3. Any group of people who are in space permanently and independently will be a group of people the governments on the earth are going to want to keep on a tight leash. Why? Because once you're in space and have enough technology to be truly independent, you suddenly have a very large amount of power over the earth-dwellers. Why? Because to live independently in space means you have to be able to manufacture everything you need to survive, including ships, fuel, food, air, etc. You have to be able to get to the raw materials required for all that and move them (in some form) into space. The moon is better than earth for this but true independence probably means being able to mine asteroids and comets for that. That probably means you can move around reasonably large masses. If you can move around reasonably large masses then you can drop those masses (and other things) onto earth, which means you now have the equivalent of WMDs. No earth government is going to be willing to risk having their power usurped by some group of space-dwellers.

The bottom line is that an independent permanent manned presence in space simply is not going to happen. Earth-based governments won't allow it because they want to maintain their power. And a dependent manned presence in space is too costly to maintain. The only way such a presence will ever happen is through a power struggle between governments. The presence will thus last only as long as the power struggle continues.

As a big fan of hard science fiction, I find this to be very depressing. But reality always wins in the end, and reality in this case is that it looks like we're going to be stuck here on earth for a very, very long time. :-(

NASA is in the Entertainment and Educat. Business

[Doug Dante]

NASA is in the entertainment and education business by way of the science business. NASA must generate buzz and excitement regarding its missions amongst the voters so that those voters encourage Congress and the President to continue to support it. It must also generate interesting and possibly useful scientific information to maintain its credibility.

Like an aging actor, NASA needs makeovers. Like any corporate giant NASA likes to tell success stories. NASA has an apparent target demographic of kids, students and educators. However, their real target demographic is the parents and grandparents of school aged children and adult science geeks. NASA must convince them, the voting public, that they're doing useful science. This market is similar to that faced by most educational toys.

As a corporate entity, NASA must look to the future. NASA cannot focus on boundad, workable, and term-limited projects such as the IIS, there will rapidly become no NASA. Such projects aren't as fundamentally entertaining, even if they may be more scientifically useful. NASA must continue to make plans to enhance future revenue by continuing to entertain their apparent target demographic, and appear to educate them in the eyes of their true demographic. NASA may be able to complete the IIS, but the IIS story has played out. They need something new and exiting, and they know it.

This is not written to slight NASA in any way. Every entity has its own economics. It's just that when I read stupid statements like the one made in the essay, I feel as if the author doesn't understand the fundamental economic position of NASA. NASA's primary job isn't human spaceflight, or spaceflight. It's to entertain while it educates. That's what brings in the money.

Underwater colony first

[GodWasAnAlien]

Rather than going to the moon to figure out how to have a airtight, self-sustainable eco-system and colony, why not try it in the ocean first?
Yes there have been above-ground attempts (why did they stop). Underwater makes it harder to cheat and would be closer to moon isolation for much less cost.

Re:Better Plan

[shawb]

As much as I would like to see us get people to Mars, I don't want a replay of the Moon joke. Over-priced impracitical throwaway missions... and we haven't been back there in THREE DECADES. I do not want a throwaway mission to Mars. As nice as it would be to get people there and get dome decent science out of it, it's just NOT WORTH IT to do a tera-bucks throwaway mission to land a couple of people for a holliday vacation and then abandon Mars for two or three of four decades.

That's just the way exploration and colonization works within the framework of human society. Columbus discovered (at least within the European perspective) the Americas in 1492. Serious colonization arguably didn't start until the founding of Havana in 1515. Considering the vast differences between creating long term colonies in the Americas and creating colonies on another planet, it makes sense that the exploration phase would take much longer. Especially considering that individual human life has a much higher political value than it did during the time of Columbus. I.E. a few deaths in exploring the Americas was simply expected. The deaths we've had in exploring space are national tragedies and viewed as a point of failure in the entire space program. It is therefore going to take a lot more time to develop the methods and technologies necessary in permanently colonizing other bodies such as moons and planets successfully. And we have to show that the benefits outweigh the costs to some extent.

And actual human colonization and even exploration has become much less of a necessity as our technology has gotten to the point where we can get vast amounts of information without actually sending a single person to the place being studied... from the rovers to satellites that can perform basic geological analysis including the recently found evidence that mars may contain flowing subterranean (submartian?) water. This information allows us to plan for any future colonization with much better accuracy and allows us to make much better decisions (including the null decision... that taking action is not worth it at this time.) The methods used in planning for such an enormous venture have also been refined in that while the process takes a lot longer, a better decision is usually made. In my mind one of the ultimate examples of this decision making process is the Environmental Impact Assessment which eventually ends with an Environmental Impact Statement as defined by the National Environmental Policy Act of 1970. Not that the EIS is all that applicable here (although I'm sure launching the Space Shuttle has a large enough potential environmental impact that running an EIA for each launch could be justified) but the methods used in measuring costs, identifying risks and planning for their mitigation, proposing several alternative plans, and finally deciding if the value gained from implementing the plan outweighs the associated costs and risks is about the closest thing I've seen to a scientific method of decision making.

Re:thermal sink and nuclear power

[maddogsparky]

I use geothermal heating and cooling in my home. It is amazing what efficiency you can get with big loop of buried coolant lines and a heat pump. I don't know what the subsurface temperature of the moon is, but I bet it is pretty cold. As a bonus, you can use the waste heat and a heat exchanger to heat your habitat.

I don't really see an alternative to nuclear power if we are serious about space development. Hopefully fusion will be available soon, but with a track record of nearly 50 years, researchers are saying it will likely be at least another 40 years before it is commercially available (i.e. sometime after they retire and it is someone else's problem).

I'm not a big fan of fission in the way it is implemented on earth in most places (e.g. no realistic plan for fuel disposal), but there are a few promising technologies that don't require off-site disposal (one idea floated involves a city-scale plant that is essentially solid state and gradually looses output as its fuel decays). Systems such as the Casini RTG have demonstrated relatively safe systems of boosting fuel into orbit. Such systems could/should be used to meet power requirements for exploration craft and bases, at least until on-site manufacturing can support other types of power generation/collection.

Futurismic Should Read the Plans

[iamlucky13]

In addition to the obvious fact that we already have built an orbiting habitat, reading NASA's lunar architecture study report makes some advantages of a lunar habitat obvious. Of course, statements like, "With an orbital platform, materials that make it out of the Earth's gravitational pull are right where they need to be," show the author doesn't really know what he's talking about. There's also long-standing fallacy that an LEO stopoff at a space station is inherently better for exploration, and the irrelevancy of comments about mining Helium-3 when we haven't even mastered D-T fusion yet.

For those not familiar with the study, it basically looked at a variety of approaches for returning to the moon, based on the capabilities of the Orion capsule, Ares launch systems, and Lunar Surface Access Module designs and recommended the best one.

The conclusion they reached was that the most sustainable approach was to start by landing several missions in the same location in a nearly permanantly lit region near one of the poles (avoids the problematic 14-day night). Each mission would be brief, but leave behind equipment that could be used by the next. The somewhat modular concept for the LSAM (likened to a lunar pickup truck) means it could easily bring different payloads down on each mission. After 5 missions, there would be enough equipment to support extended visits, and begin research into In-Situ Resource Utilization and other long term experiments; things you flat out can not do on the ISS.

The beauty of an outpost with the capability to be permanently manned on the moon is threefold:

1.) It doesn't need to be constantly manned, or even constantly maintained. Unlike the ISS, which at the least needs periodic orbital boosts and constant power to it's orientation control gyros, you can simply "winterize" a lunar outpost and leave it for a while. If you have budget constraints or some other program setback and have to abandon it for a time, it just sits there waiting for you to come back. The ISS deals with gravity just as a lunar outpost would, but the lunar outpost actually turns it into an asset.

2.) It enables long term investigation of a piece of lunar soil, and does not interfere with exploring other parts. NASA recognizes that the LRO may find other interesting sites on the moon to send manned missions to, and the proposed architecture still supports that. At the same time, they can get an in depth look at lunar geology and practice techniques that will hopefully be used in a Mars mission.

3.) It provides a wide range of options for contributions. A criticism of the ISS is that it has been constantly hamstringed as nations, including the US, have been slow to contribute pieces...all while it continues consuming resources. The US would develop the launchers capable of putting large payloads on the surface and create an infrastructure that can support a human presence, then welcome contributions from partner nations in the form of equipment, experiments, and astronauts above and beyond the basic goals as they see fit to contribute. Among the many possible contributions NASA has identified are ISRU experiments, alternate power sources, astronomy equipment (a radio telescope would have find effectively unprecedented low level of noise), and a pressurized rover for long distance EVA's.

Of course, the author did get right the concerns over the fact that the moon is much harder to get to than the ISS, and there are more things that can go wrong getting there and back, but so many more of his criticisms are off base. Even the concern about meteoroids strikes me as wrong. I can think of no reason why the moon should encounter a greater meteoroid flux than the earth (a noted threat to the ISS), and in fact, might even be safer for the lack of space junk.

The US has built two space stations. The Russians have built three, counting their ISS contributions. Private industry is even getting in on the game (Bigelow). Honestly, how long should we wait before re-extending our presence to the moon? How much more does low-earth orbit really stand to contribute to our understanding of how to go places in our solar system?