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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.""
Let's put some more junk into orbit!
Step 1: Ask for big moon base budget
Step 2: Forget the moon: Build stuff in orbit of Earth
Step 3: Profit!!!
I wonder if I use bold in my signature, people will notice my posts.
They could call these orbital habitats "Space Stations". Perhaps the international community could come together to build it?
... to establish colonies in Science Fiction books and on NASA proposals. Seriously. I grew up with the dream of colonies in space, and cheap space flight. Space flight has only gotten more expensive, and our national will to make this dream come true has dropped to near zero. After hearing about plan after plan, and seeing nothing come of it, you get jaded.
I hope I am wrong, but am willing to bet we won't have anything except the ISS (if we have even that) by 2020. The only possible exception might be if the Chinese put up something similar to ISS... but even that will be a far cry from anything we are talking about today (or twenty years ago).
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
I think they have a good point here. We've been working on a 'space station' for quite some time and barely have anything to show for it yet. How much planning could they possibly put into a moon base yet? The basics are pretty much like earth bases, and the long-term effects of no/low-gravity are not really known. So it'd be like designing a regular earth base with airlocks, and huge gaping holes where they are going to put the unknown things they'll need once they understand non-earth living.
Just a bit premature.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Well, it's nice to doubt the decisions made by NASA, but one would hope that if they announce a project of this scale they would have thought through their plan and considered other options first. Hopefully they know what they're doing with their next project if they've decided to funnel a few billion dollars into it?
... what 'great leap' is this? The only leap, really, is the change in vehicle. The moon is well-defined: we had the lunar prospector mission which gave us a detailed survey of the moons surface and we've been there several times in the Apollo era. Sticking around in LEO is just wasting time. Building satellites around the earth is completely different than building habitations on Mars or the Moon, structurally and in the complications faced ( micrometeoroids, gravity fields, dust and static charges, etc)
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.
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.
What you want an ISS 2?
ISS is already up there and should be much more mature by the time we plan on landing on the moon again.
They're trying to establish a lunar base, rightly recognizing that a lunar colony (or an orbital colony, for that matter) would currently be beyond their reach.
There are actually still a few advantages to stopping at an orbital base on the way to the moon, but all you need at the base is an insulated fuel depot and a robot arm, not a massive spinning habitat. Even once it's a good time to build massive spinning habitats for their own sake, we'll want to mine lunar resources or captured NEO asteroids to do it, and learning how to make a lunar base more self-sufficient is one small step on the way there.
I'd rater see something on the moon than in orbit...
There's actually mineable material on the moon, I don't know how useful it is, but at least theres a chance the moon can produce resources as well as research.
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You need to set extended goals to make the intermediate steps possible. It was the goal of sending people to the moon "ready or not" that made it possible in the first place. It is not the purpose of the national agencies to make permanent habitats... just make the proof of concept habitats. That has been done as far as the space stations are concerned. It is not up to the rest of us, private industry etc to make permanent habitation a reality. Bigelow is set to do this for the space stations.... the role of NASA is now to tackle the difficult task of setting a lunar base and publish the information as to what to do and what to avoid for those who will actually make permanent homes there in the future. The reason that space exploration has made so little progress since Apollo, is that national agencies were expected to do it all. Well they should not. The role of national space agencies is to build the prototypes, show that it can be done, and how it can be done, and then let the private sector get into the business of incremental improvements and actual settlement. You need an economy built around any new colony... it must grow on its own.
Yeah right. It makes so much sense to launch a lot of stuff into orbit, just to use a small amount of that stuff to go to the moon.
There's nothing in orbit that can be used by the colony, apart from solar energy. Everything else has to be shipped up there, or generated, or simply isn't available (gravity, anyone ?).
On the moon, there's at least a chance to use some local resources (Oxygen, building material, maybe water). And gravity. There's a lot of difference between pratically zero-G and 0.16 G. In the latter, stuff will start acting somewhat like on earth (things/liquids fall on the floor, people can actually walk and distinguish between up and down). You could have an actual kitchen on a moon base - unthinkable in zero G.
One reason: Gravity. They have it on the moon. They don't have it in orbit. Makes showering, sleeping, eating, everything more comfortable. Plus the fact that you don't have your colonists dying of accidentally bumping into something and breaking all their bones.
A colony implies people living there for longer than 10 years. Zero gravity is a bitch at 10+ years.
--Blerik
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.
Science fiction for grown-ups...
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.
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: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. :-(
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As much as I want us to return to the moon and get to Mars and beyond, I think we're going about it all wrong. We're sending people up on top of insanely expensive fireworks. It's just plain too expensive. It's not practical or sustainable.
Instead of blowing insane amounts of money on the space station and on unreasonable shuttle launches, we should be pouring those exact same dollars into RESEARCH on better and cheaper means to reach space. Whether it is beamed energy launch vehicles, rail-gun like ground launch facilities, a space elevator, scramjet engines, or who-knows what other tech, we will be far better off if we (temporarily) sacrifice the manned space program to sink the up-front dollars into cheaper access to space. Once you have that cheaper access, then future dollars will provide vastly greater dividends in future practical sustainable manned space development. Then and only then can we establish practical and sustainable oribtal facilities and a moon base and even a SUSTAINED Mars base presence.
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.
I'd rather wait a while for that first mission to Mars and then see it done right. Do it when it makes sense to do it. Shift the current spending to more robitic missions and probes across the solar system, and shift the spending to development of more efficent space access technology.
So I am opposed to our current manned program and I am opposed to the various proposals for more manned missions... and I do so out of my deep desire and support for manned space projects.
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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.
The world will not get better through technology. We must seek to be better people.
Listen Slashdot- please stop with the "witty" story titles. For those of us using live bookmarks or news feeds- it really sucks to have to click over to a story just to find out what the hell it is. Geez!
Look back at exploration prior to the 17th century. These trips were made in small ships that were marginally self-sufficient. They sailed with extra crew because they _knew_ they were likely to return fewer in number, if at all, and had to have a minimum number of people left to sail. They were equipped to sail for intermediate lengths of time, but not well suited to long-range exploration. They sailed with pretty much only the materials they were expected to need, and if they ran out of something important, they tried to limp along until they could get back to a port.
Compare this with later ships that circumnavigated the globe on multi-year expeditions. The ships tended to be larger and more self-sufficient. They included things like portable blacksmith shops that could repair and fabricate unknown articles as needed, manufactured from stock materials that were also brought along.
Now that private companies are showing some proficiency with tasks that were previously only the domain of government (e.g. launch capabilities, manufacture of orbital habitats and facilities), NASA should concentrate on the next step in exploration. If they want to explore (which I fully support doing), they should concentrate on developing things which support exploration that nobody has done yet. Support tasks, such as launch capability, habitats, etc., should be farmed out in competitive contracts or Grand-Challenge style contests.
A moon base is a logical step, but it is really just a support role. NASA should farm this out or indicate willingness to purchase capabilities and participate in evaluation, but should focus on creating long-range exploration capability. After all, even Columbus's trip was government financed. Once people became aware of the investment potential, they financed new ventures themselves and eventually opened up what had been exploration efforts into commercial enterprises and settlements.
science is a religion
At least this time it is extremely blatant and right out there in front, instead of a being a mildly blatant ruse as such things have been done in the past.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
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.
One of the big reasons for the altitude of the ISS is radiation shielding. It is close enough to the earth that the earth's magnetic field keeps out a lot of the radiation it would encounter further out. The amount of shielding needed to bring down to acceptable levels is pretty significant. A moon base can theoretically get around this by burying the habitats under regolith. La Grange points are useful for really long-term projects like telescopes and the like. However, I do think it is time to step beyond LEO.
science is a religion
"we have to learn to walk before we can run". "we have to learn to crawl before we can walk" "trying to fly before we can stand up"
The above are all commonly said and assumed to be true when in fact, they may not be.
1. Several of my younger siblings were able to run before they could walk. The MIT media lab ran had the same experience with their "waliking" robots-some were able to run more easily than walk.
2. I've seen a few babies that didn't learn to crawl until after they were walking. They had a short period where they sort-of scooted around, then went straight to walking/running without learning to move on all fours.
3. Loons (the Minnesota state bird) never learn to walk. Their center of gravity is so far forward that they are unable to stand and can only push themselves around on land (although I've heard some people claim they can land in trees). However, they are fully capable of flight.
Doing stuff in space is not a "natural progression". Just like in rock climbing, dynamic moves (i.e. jumping to the next hold) are sometimes called for because there are some places you can't get to by taking incremental steps-there comes a point when you just have to go all out and hope that you hit your target. Small steps got us the Shuttle and the ISS. We are overdue for a dynamic move.
science is a religion
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.
science is a religion
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?
The moon HAS NO ATMOSPHERE! What did you expect?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton