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NASA's New Mission to the Moon
mattnyc99 writes "Popular Mechanics has a new, in-depth preview of NASA's Orion spacecraft, tracking the complex challenges facing the engineers of the CEV (which NASA chief Michael Griffin called 'Apollo on steroids') as America shifts its focus away from the Space Shuttle and back toward returning to the moon by 2020. After yesterday's long op-ed in the New York Times concerning NASA's about-face, Popular Mechanic's interview with Buzz Aldrin and podcast with Transterrestrial.com's Rand Simberg raise perhaps the most pressing questions here: Is it worth going back to the lunar surface? And will we actually stay there?"
Will we go back to stay? not if it's for science only, IMHO it will take private companies to make space travel, including exploting the moon for it's resources, to make this 'permanent'. NASA has no where in it's mandate to do anything except research.
If we went back to the moon, I assume NASA's plan to would be to discover water so eventually the moon could be a docking station for trips to mars!
Is it worth going back to the lunar surface?
What do you mean "going back"? That assumes we were there a first time.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
The initial estimates are that this time around the mission is going to be far less expensive. One NASA official, who wished to remain anonymous, said, "CGI has really matured to a point where shooting a return to the moon is now viable. Instead of a sandy soundstage we'll simply have our guys in front of a greenscreen. In fact, some of the more optimistic estimates posit that by 2020 we won't even need live bodies in the studio."
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who cares about the MOON!
The boston police?
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
What for? Surely this is just another presidential exercise in sticking it to the Commies?
True, but there are other benefits. Learning how to colonize space would be a biggie in my book. Besides, if we can't go to the moon, we don't stand a chance at going to Mars, Europa, Titan, or possibly beyond our solar system. The moon is the first step.
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Lol. Many, many reasons.
Yes, there's the lifeboat argument.
There's doing research and rehearsals for manned exploration further out. I certainly wouldn't want to venture to Mars or the asteroids without technology tested a little closer to home first.
Raw materials -- He3 (as fusion fuel) is one possibility. As a source for raw materials (silicon, aluminum, etc) for building solar powersats is another.
Astronomical research -- lunar farside is the best place in the solar system for radio telescopes, it's shielded from Earth's noise. It's also a pretty good place for telescopes at all other wavelengths, especially if there's a manned base to swap out instruments, repair cameras, etc.
A frontier. People need one, even if only a few actually pioneer it. Earth will go crazy even faster without one.
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As the folks at Goddard expained it during the Moon Math student competition, "When you go camping, isn't it a good idea to try setting up the campsite in your backyard first, 600 inches away, so you can try out everything, or run back in the house if you forgot your flashlight, make sure you remember to bring everything, and *THEN* go camping for real to somewhere 600 miles away?"
That's a largely non-obvious reason for using the same basic vehicle for both mission sets.
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Funny how after 30 years of listening to people say "when will we go back and who will that be?" now people are saying "Is it worth going back to the lunar surface?" How did this reversal of thinking happen?
We have a lot more information than the last 3 moon attempts. Time was the only answer you could know about right and wrong was what you could think of on your own based on what you saw in the sky and how much spare cash you had.
Now the answers for everything are downloadable. You don't need to come up with your own answers because the internet has the answers for you. The change in where our information comes from has changed our opinions.
"I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and leaving him safely there."
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
I wonder if a roll of duct tape might be prudent as well.
Absolutely. Duct tape was essential to saving Apollo 13, when they had to rig an adapter for the square CM lithium hydroxide canisters to the circular LM canister ports. (CM and LM were built by different contractors, each with their own design for lithium hydroxide (part of the CO2 scrubbing system) canisters.)
Also comes in handy for keeping stuff from drifting around if there's no Velcro handy. Standard equipment on every Shuttle mission.
-- Alastair
I agree completely with Prof. Hawking--We need to establish life outside of Earth.
Deep space scientific observation is nice, but until we have a self-sustaining colony off of earth, manned space technology should be our #1 priority.
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There's an interesting article on what the space program could've look like if the Saturn V rocket program wasn't cancelled. The new program will be just a shadow in comparison.
They also had a couple of failures - and the failures/sucesses were dotted pretty evenly across the attempts. Zond was a percursor to a Soviet attempt to perform an Apollo 8 flyby to steal NASA's thunder - in fact, it was the Zond tests that lead to Apollo 8 being a lunar mission rather than a high earth orbit mission so as to steal the Russians thunder!
Before the budget cuts of 65/66 and the Fire, NASA planned on as many as *6* manned flights in LEO and an indeterminate number of lunar flights before committing to a landing attempt. Those budget cuts, the time lost after the fire, and the growing realization that the Soviets might be able to trump them forced their hand.
So much for the myth of Apollo-era NASA being the brave and bold agency they are so often portrayed as of late. Until forced, they were just as conservative as they are today.
The Moon is like Iceland - easier to get to from Europe but there's not much there besides scenery. The Mars system (Mars, Phobos, Deimos) are New York City, Boston and Philadelphia. I guess this makes Mars-Earth L1 the Hudson River?
The resources to build an entire civilization exist on/around Mars. The moon is a fossil world.
We can learn some from Luna, and probably take the first steps to colonization there, but the real action is going to be on Mars. There is a lot of planet-specific engineering that needs to be done for either location. Lunar spacesuits won't work on Mars, there will be huge differences in sealing technology and energy generation (you can burn silane as internal combustion on Mars, for instance). We can learn as much in high orbit or at a NEO about colonizing Mars as we can on the Moon. Almost all technical development for any near-term colonization is going to be developed on Earth, though.
If I had several Billion $$ right now, I'd commision a Russian-Bigelow spacecraft for a human mission to Phobos or Deimos. This is the ideal target for early development, energetically close to Earth, resource rich and within telepresence range of Mars. We can mine water and ship it back to LEO using technology we have now, or nearly. Russian companies have decades worth of human habitat experience, Bigelow would provide the main living space, custom tools purchased from best providers. The project would mine water and provide realtime control for robots throughout cis-Mars.
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building a colony at a Lagrangian point makes a lot more sense than going to the moon especially as a way station to Mars http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point
This could be considered slightly offtopic, but I would add one more benefit of NASA Moon mission: the resurrection of public interest in space science (in general) and Space Science Fiction (in particular). Did you notice that during recent decades the theme of science fiction shifted significantly from space exploration plots to fantasy and alternative history? As a big fan of space science fiction, I feel my favourite trend is neglected. The reason is obvious - the whole space research both in USA and Russia/Europe fell into stagnation and public interest was lost. Remember how excited the science fiction writers were about space technology back in 60s? They were expecting humans to fly around solar system by 2000 and to distant stars in the beginning of this new century. Where are their hopes? Ruined. Now I really hope NASA mission will bring back the long-forgotten public excitement about space exploration, and the science fiction will once again picture the starships instead of dragons and elves. I hope.
The moon is the first step.
Why? Colonizing the moon is a drastically different undertaking from colonizing Mars. The moon is essentially a vacuum. It's cold. It has no useful resources to speak of (and no, He3 won't be useful any time soon). 1/6th Earth's gravity. And it's fairly close.
Meanwhile, Mars has water. And abundance of minerals. A thin atmosphere containing useful gases. A surface temperature that actually breaks the freezing point occasionally. Double the gravity of the moon. And it's so far away that getting there has proved to be a surprisingly difficult undertaking.
Honestly, the idea that colonization of the Moon will tell use anything useful about colonizing Mars is, frankly, silly. The methods that would be used for the two projects are *completely* different. Meanwhile, we can't even build a self-contained biosphere on *Earth*! Maybe we should try tackling that drastically simpler task before we start planning Moon bases.
Even under the most dire/optimistic scenarios a lunar facility isn't gonna be much of a viable 'lifeboat' for generations yet. Indeed if things go seriously awry it's probably the most untenable place to be for any calamity except a fast-acting/highly-virulent/fatal terrestrial biohazard, and then you'd likely just get to live somewhat longer and die a premature death of a different cause. After a terrestrial catastrophe a lunar facility likely won't contribute much to future generations but an interesting monument. Rather a planet of 6 billion with a huge biosphere has so much more in the way of odd nooks & corners for refugees & resources.
Except a lunar facility is going to be markedly different then anything space-based. Significant gravity, a surface, 2 week bright/dark cycles, huge dust & debris issues; except for lack of atmosphere they're almost entirely different problem sets. A space station is certainly the better R&D environment for spacefaring development. As to Martian R&D Earth as good, and substantially cheaper/more-amenable venue then the moon offers.
Except that asteroids are probably a far better materials supply source and can be got roboticly, with their materials easier separated, refined, and then sent on to Earth in space then from the moon. Furthermore while He3 is promising we've yet to achieve fusion that could take advantage of it and those power sats would probably do as good a job with less complexity then a lunar-fueled terrestrial fusion system anyhow.
Except any manned base is going to be fouling up the local environment and require far more support then just installing spares & alternatives for everything. Again, the moon is good, space is likely better.
Because the moon is the only possible frontier? Not our oceans, deserts, mountain ranges, arctic & antarctic regions? Not more abstract frontiers like science, technology, sociology, psychology, diplomacy, etc.?
I'm honestly not trying to be contrarian but your reasons strike me more as rationalizations. Nearly all could be done better/cheaper using unmanned systems or directly in space. I'd hate to see a lunar base become another dead end like our hopelesly compromised space station, doing expensive science of minimal import or quality.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Couple of IFs:
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Well, let's see. 1/6th gravity might be nice for some things. It does equate to 1/6th the difficulty in managing heavy objects. Vacuum is, amazingly enough, common for many likely working environments in space. We need practice; better to do it around a developed moonbase with medical facilities, manufacturing and so on than around some asteroid that has a lot of something we want, plus vacuum. It's not necessarily "cold", by the way, it is in vacuum, which is something else entirely. There is plenty of energy falling on its surface from which heat can be gathered. And power. In any case, it isn't like you're going to lie on the surface naked. Another thing is it is closer than anything else, and once we have a base there, going other places is a lot less costly -- launching from a 1/6th gravity well is much less costly than launching from a 1G gravity well. Not just into space in general, but to Mars, to Earth orbit, moon orbit, everywhere. There have been many suggestions about how to mine the moon's resources and get worthwhile products from them. Once there and we get a little practice, I have little doubt there would be more of the same. If materials can be obtained to build spacecraft, for instance, then we're WAY better off with a moonbase. It's a great place for telescopes, too. And RF research. And vacations (I'd love to have a 1/6th G environment to practice martial arts in, or to have sex in, or even to just turn backflips in.) As for creating a self-contained biosphere, you know what they say about necessity being the mother of invention.
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"Can somebody better acquainted with the mechanics of sending a vehicle to the Moon and back please explain why Buzz Aldrin recommends taking a sextant?"
Because Aldrin previously demonstrated that you could maneuver in orbit using a sextant if your computer failed? On one Gemini flight he used the sextant to perform the rendevouz rather than the computer and radar, if I remember correctly.
One time, yes you do. But you also need to do that for a shot straight from earth. So that's pretty much a wash, agreed? The problem comes from multiple moon ->mars shots.
Certainly you can, and yes there is. Think about the basics. What is a space drive, generally speaking? It is a device that expels [something] in the opposite direction from that which you desire to go. And how do we get some of the highest exhaust velocities we've ever attained? Ion drives. Electricity. Ion drives expel stuff [any stuff that will hold a charge] using electricity. And is there electricity on the moon? Think solar panels, and the answer, of course, is yes. Right now, Ion drives are limited in thrust, but they are *very* efficient. That's one useful approach, and there's nothing to say we won't improve them hugely. They're really excellent space drives because they can keep adding thrust on a continuous basis; they use less reaction mass because they can attain such a high exhaust velocity. They're low, constant thrust.
But wait... How do you get anything off the surface with a low thrust engine? You need more power than an ion drive, right? Yep. Can you do it electrically? Sure. You can use a linear accelerator. Again, purely electrical technology, and you can fling things at astounding velocities. The longer the accelerator, the more human-freindly the acceleration will be. Short tracks require high G's, and we hate that. Anyway, again, it's down to electricity and nothing else. No need to lift anything out of the earth's gravity well, once the system is running. We're doing better and better at capacitive storage, and batteries will soon fall to ultracaps, or at least, that's how it looks today. Solar panels are getting less and less expensive, and more and more efficient, and silicon... is there silicon on the moon? Yep. There is. :-)
And landing? Next, there are space elevators. We've got some really tough technical issues trying to build a space elevator on earth. The materials strength to gravity well challenge is just about at the edge of what is possible. But on the moon, this isn't at all the case. 1/6th the gravity means, pretty much anyway, 1/6th the problem. You can bring all manner of cargo up and down at absolute minimum cost and a reasonable constant energy expenditure. After all, space vessels should probably remain in space; it isn't them we want to get from here to there, it is the cargo. Space elevators are also much happier when there is no atmosphere; they just sit there. No blowing around, etc. On Mars, while the gravity is in your favor there, the atmosphere might be a little annoying. Still, it's more doable than it is here on earth.
It's like anything else. You have to spend to build the infrastructure required to get things running on their own, but once that's done, then the returns defray, and eventually eliminate, the original investment. But it doesn't have to be an infinite loop of bringing things from earth to the moon. There are plenty of creative solutions to these problems - I'm not saying they aren't problems - and in the end, there is every reason to think we can pull this off and make it work, and work well.
There are enormous amounts of natural resources out there. We should go get them. We should land and establish bases everywhere we can. We should explore, because knowledge rarely proves useless, and because a lot of us like to explore. The more resources we pull from space, the fewer we'll need to pull from the earth. Delivery of raw materials from space is pretty trivial, basically let gravity do it; the main thing, I would think, is to make them come in gently enough so as not to cook the atmosphere in the process, and avoid scattering them on impact. Water landings and gliding bodies come to mind. But that's not my area of expertise. :)
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Well, maybe not fuel, but you can make all the oxidizer you could ever need, and that's the more important half.
72% by weight of a typical Kerosene/LOX rocket engine is oxygen. And the soil/dust/regolith on the Moon is mostly oxygen. We just need to perfect automated methods of extracting the oxygen from the soil, but that's an engineering problem, and not a showstopper.
Not exactly. You burn some fuel to bring a small amount fuel from Earth to the Moon, and don't bother to bring oxidizer. Then you combine the fuel you brought with LOX you harvested from the surface of the Moon, and launch to Mars with that. Since you're only leaving a 1/6g gravity well, you will need far less fuel to leave the moon and go to Mars than you would to leave Earth and go to Mars, assuming you left during the launch window when the Moon has a higher orbital velocity with respect to Mars than the Earth does (which happens about once a month). All this adds up to an energy savings.
Of course, this all requires some sort of infrastructure to work, like a moonbase, and that will be expensive to build. But once the infrastructure is in place, the long-term energy savings are substantial, especially if we start doing things like harvesting objects outside the Earth's gravity well for the other half of the fuel/oxidizer ratio. There's water in comets--that's a hydrogen source. Most asteroids have the same composition as Carbonaceous chontrite meteorites, which are chock full of organic compounds--these can be cracked open to collect both hydrogen and nitrogen. Hydrogen can be burned by itself or combined with oxygen to make hydrogen peroxide (a low-energy monopropellant used in some thrusters). Nitrogen can be combined with oxygen to form dinitrogen tetroxide (a decent rocket fuel that requires an oxidizer) or with hydrogen to form hydrazine (a high-energy monopropellant). I'm sure people with more experience in chemistry and astronomy can suggest many other possibilities as well.
The bottom line is, there's lots of fuel available out in the solar system, outside the big gravity wells, and taking advantage of launching from a small gravity well using fuel harvested from other small gravity wells will result in a substantial energy savings.
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