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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.""
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?
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
... 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.
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.
If there was money to be made, someone in the private sector would have already designed and built what is needed. Eventually, the government backed scientists in the ISS or on a shuttle will find a way to so something profitable in space. Once this happens, and the cost of the space flight is justified by price of the returning product, then, we will see a useful step toward a space colony of some type.
There is not enough monetary justification for a moon base. The cost of transportation would far outpace the price of the minerals returned.
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...
ISS isn't a proper space colony, though.
1. It isn't remotely self-sufficient. ISS 2 (or whatever) probably won't be fully self-sufficient either, but it'll let us work on the logistics issue first.
2. It is strictly a space lab. If we want it to be a portal into the rest of the solar system, we need to have something where we can construct and refit spacecraft in orbit.
3. It is very low orbit.
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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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
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?