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NASA Vets & Administration Clash Over Moon Plans
mattnyc99 writes "There's a serious feud brewing this week over the Bush administration's plan for a manned mission to the Moon as an eventual stepping stone to Mars. The Planetary Society, a top group of former mission managers, space-based scientists and NASA astronauts argues, is set to rebuke the Moon plan at a conference next month in favor of hopskotching an asteroid on the way to the Red Planet. Agency chief Michael Griffin issued an abnormally strong response to the society, calling it an overly political criticism of Bush for a plan that he says was 'the best legislative guidance NASA has ever had.' Either way, it's clear that the stars are aligning for the whole space race to be reconsidered as a new administration steps into the White House. So far Clinton and Obama (who just added his) are the only contenders with space proposals."
I'm sure they can find a good movie studio to shoot both projects
That's no moon... that's an overused joke.
for a moonshot. Its too far off to generate interest. We are also buried under a horribly long political process.
I am very convinced that if some of the leading candidates get in with all their promises of health care and expanded benefits there won't be any money for NASA to do something big. It will simply fall by the way side because it simply doesn't get Congressmen or Presidents votes.
The best thing has already been done, the hard choice has already been made, axing the shuttle. Hopefully that expense relief won't be taken from NASA but I fear it will. Without the costly expenditures needed the money will probably go elsewhere.
If the main opposition is truly because "BUSH" wanted it then it speaks volumes for just how juvenile the opponents have become. We need a direction, it has to come from the Administration, as Congress no longer attempts to lead anywhere but schemes to keep themselves perpetually in office. NASA has been wandering, stuck with two spruce gooses. The shuttle and ISS. The ISS could flourish without the shuttle and we can hope it will. Yet I am very sure that with all the promises being made by candidates that NASA is the least of their concerns. We are seeing the greatest promised expansion of Federal power over our lives and people are cheering it on as if it were the latest American Idol contest. That is not an avenue for great science to occur
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
One thing that really struck a cord with me was when I saw Carol Moseley Braun being interviewed on The Daily Show (14 January, 2004.) Somehow, the topic of space exploration came up. I believe it had to do with 'renewed interest' in going to Mars. If I recall properly, Jon asked her what she thought of going to Mars and if she had a plan to get us there. I think she said something along the lines of "Sure, I don't think we shouldn't go to Mars." But I remember her explicitly stating that there is so little we know about Earth. Specifically, she wanted to redirect our scientific efforts from focusing on outer space and focusing on Earth, and more specifically, underwater exploration. We know virtually nothing about our seas and oceans. And they're close. I believe Mosely Brown used the rational that it would take 18 months to get to Mars, but it would take only hours to get to the bottom of the Ocean. That, and what happens in the oceans affects us a hell of a lot more than what happens on Mars.
Weird, they don't even address any of the technical of economic objections to the Moon vs Mars mission. The article misses a lot of key points.
1) There is very little technical overlap in designs between a lunar and martian based program. The Moon has no atmosphere. That means no atmospheric braking. A lander landing on the Moon is radically different than one landing on Mars since the lunar one has to use only rockets to slow its descent. The Martian one can use rockets and parachutes as well as glide. Also, the lack of an atmosphere means that the Moon can not as easily provide oxygen or fuel as Mars, where those products can be pulled directly from the atmosphere. The Moon requires regolith mining to obtain any materials.
2) The transfer vehicle to the Moon is going to be able to complete the trip within 120 hours, or 240 hours if you have to do a return. That is easily within the range of not needing to recycle. You can just load up with consumables and then replenish at either end of the trip. The Martian vehicle will have to have some pretty hefty recycling technology.
3) The day/night cycle on the Moon is vastly longer than that of Mars. Mars is pretty close to that of Earth. Solar power is not even remotely practical on the Moon. (Except in the polar regions where it s theorized that would be possible to find spots where you have continual daylight). If you want to go somewhere other than the poles on the Moon for any duration, you are looking at needing a new generation of nuclear power. Which would also be useful on Mars, but there is a tradeoff there in terms of mass and other factors.)
4) I am back to "There is no atmosphere on the Moon" because it keeps impacting multiple areas. One of the problems that needs to be solved is HVAC type issues. Keeping things warm or cold. The Moon has no atmosphere, hence no convective heat transfer. All heat transfer is radiative or conductive. That necessitates a completely different thermodynamic paradigm than would be possible on Mars.
5) In terms of Human factors, the Moon is 1/6th gravity and Mars is 1/3th. That means items on Mars weighs twice as much as that on the Moon. The lunar space suits can not be worn on Mars as they are too heavy. New ones need to be designed. (We're also back to "The Moon has no atmosphere". Space suits need to be able to maintain a steady temperature inside. Since a lunar space suit is essentially a thermos when you consider it is in vacuum, all you have to worry about it shedding excess heat. On Mars, you are essentially enveloped by a fluid - the atmosphere - which has a temperature and can carry away excess heat.)
Actually, the reason for the asteroid mission instead of the lunar one is simple. It will require essentially the same type of spaceship that is required to get to Mars. The lunar base only has about 20% overlap with Mars technologies and - honestly - for those 20%, Earth is as good an analog as the Moon. When you develop a technology to go to the Moon, that is what you are developing. You are not developing one for Mars.
Essentially, you get the Moon and Mars for only twice the amount as getting the Moon or Mars.
Sputnik put USA on the back foot. With the whole Communism vs capitalist theme going at the time, the space program was wrapped up tightly with the US national identity (gotta show those Russians who's boss). Space was patriotic. Space was exciting. The USA were the people doing the space thing. Space was completely intertwined in the national identity as well as the identity of a generation (the kids who grew up in the space era).
The whole national obsession with the space program drove the interest in science which bootstrapped a generation of scientists and engineers. It was not space per se that did this, but the obsession that saw Apollo models hanging from the ceiling in every second kid's bedroom. That obsession was linked not only to science, but to selling cars, pens, breakfast cerial etc.
Just rolling out another space program will do nothing to help education and science unless it is accompanied by the passion. What are the defining obsessions of today?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
An asteroid has a much less steep gravity well than the moon. This would save a lot of fuel over a stopover at a moon base. The moon makes no sense as a stepping stone to Mars, but an asteroid might.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The Planetary Society published this (pdf) in collaboration with Griffin (he's listed as one of nine members of the 'study team') before he became head of NASA. The Planetary Society got their guy in and he's following the plan they sold to the administration and Congress. What the fuck is going on here?
If the peanut gallery over at the Planetary Society start jerking the Government's chain over settled NASA policy they're going to get stuff defunded. Most of our leading presidential candidates will take any excuse they can find to snatch away the funding and use it to buy votes some other way.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
It could be just me, but a bunch of robotic probes going from asteroid to asteroid to drill samples in search of useful ores would be really cool.
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
Frankly I have little faith in NASA. I'm sure there's going to be some attempt to go to somewhere in space someday somehow (their "new" space shuttle is having serious problems and not to mention it a mock up it of the Saturn rocket used decades ago). I believe that the private realm of business will become dominant over NASA in the coming years. There is definitely potential for profit in space and NASA is too concerned about analytical science to figure out how to answer the entrepreneurial aspects of space. For example on the moon an isotope of helium could be used to create pure burning fuel for nuclear reactors. It's been estimated that the amount of platinum on certain asteroids would have market value in the trillions. NASA is too busy fighting a stubborn bureaucracy to really tap space's potential. They are never going to make bring space to the common person. Rather, I believe that private industry will take over as the dominant space explorers. NASA should fill in as a watchdog over the private space industry. I believe NASA should foster the growth of the space industry.
I was always under the impression that the moonbase plan was not really a hopscotch for going to mars physically, but rather a proving ground to test, develop, and prove that it is feasible to set up permanent installations on other planetary bodies. If something goes wrong in a moon mission (i.e. that Apollo mission), it's only three days away, and there is at least a chance of bringing people back home. A screw up on a year-plus mission is more certain death.
I couldn't imagine trying to do something like that on an asteroid or going straight to mars until we have figured out how to get to the moon, and stay there for a while!
More Caffeine. NOW
As difficult as making fusion a viable energy source at least there is tremendous potential payoff. As to manned exploration of space it is only for the adventure. Robots can do so much better for so much less $$.
... one of assumptions.
If all you're going to do is a one-shot mission to the moon, mars or an asteroid, then it doesn't matter which one they do.
They'll go to the moon/mars/asteroid, come home and pat themselves for a job well done and if we want to go back we have to do the whole damn thing over again.
Heinlein said "Get to low-Earth orbit and you're halfway to anywhere". We need a truck stop in LEO. If we have someplace in LEO where we can stockpile fuel, food and water, it becomes much easier to start a mission from there than to carry everything in one go from the ground (and no, the ISS isn't even close).
Oh please. NASA has very little to do with the development of missiles or fighter jets. All that stuff is done by the Air Force under separate contracts. Virtually all of NASA's money goes to manned spaceflight these days. The Air Force would like nothing better than to be rid of NASA, since using disposable launchers is much cheaper than using the shuttle. But they're forced to use the shuttle (or at least they were) to help justify its enormous expense.
NASA doesn't "work for" the Air Force, unless you intend the quotes to show the statement is blatantly false. It's not a defense program or even a science program - it's a jobs program. The purpose of NASA is to steer money to specific congressional districts. And that's why, no matter how little it does, it will never be cut significantly.
You appear to be under the illusion that NASA receives more than a fraction of a percent of the US budget.
My ass. The best guidance NASA ever had was when John F. Kennedy sent the United States to the moon.
This "guidance" is nothing more than the best idea a stupid chimp could come up with at the time to try to ride Kennedy's coattails.
As with just about anything Bush, going to the moon again is pretty stupid. What's the purpose? Hell, all we would need to do is just build a few new Saturn V's, a new LEM or two, and another couple of Lunar Rovers. We have all the plans and we know they work.
Wasting the time and money on doing something we did almost 40 years ago is typical for our diminutive presidenter.
Someone put him back on a Segway and hand him a pretzel.
Various space advocacy groups have been backing different visons of what type of exploration should be done for quite a long time.
Planetary Society has been pushing Mars rather than return to the moon since at least the late 80s.
At least part of that position was stated to be that a manned Mars mission could be a cooperative effort between the US and the Soviet Union. i.e. A political goal. That's an aspect that doesn't apply quite so much now.
Also, at that time, the Planetary Society was a lot less keen on manned missions than robotic ones. Friedman, Murry and Sagan (the notable founders) were all veterans of the highly successful unmanned planetary probe missions. They tended to view the manned program as a very expensive method that tended to take money away from the robotic probes.
Others disagreed with this viewpoint. The National Space Society, for example, (also populated with former astronauts and space scientists though no one as much of a household name as Sagan) tended to take a more pro manned space viewpoint.
I have been saying *all along* that Bush's Space proposal is *pure* vapor. He mentioned it once to leave a scant legacy, he never mentioned it again, and he very trivially increased NASA's budget.
I can't believe how many space enthusiasts took this obvious bait.
For most practical purposes Mars also has no atmosphere. It's just 0.6% of our, or in other words 99.4% not there. Yes, it does change the conditions a bit, but Mars is much more like the moon than earth..
With the moon as near to the sun as earth, but lacking clouds and atmosphere, it receives much more sunlight than corresponding spots on earth, and is therefore that much more suitable for solar energy. The 330 hour lunar night can be handled just like the 12 hour martian night, using battery technology.
It won't be a windy day in Arizona, this time.
But, when I re-read the tag, I saw:
NASA, Vets & Administration Clash Over Moon Plans
I guess monkeys or apes will go on the mock runs... They'll return (after 5,125 years of suspended animalization), and find... Cornelius? Or, maybe a Charlton Heston statue half-buried in older New York...
Or, they'll find the Land of the Lost, with millions of sexually-incompatible Sleetaks groveling all over the Earth.
I think the NASA part will be: Continuous audio piping of "Hey Hey, we're the Monkeys!...."
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
I was really wondering wat vetenarians had to do with missions to Mars. Does NASA plan to send animals along with the ride? Maybe for fresh milk and eggs? Of is it just an experiment to send live-stock up there to see what the influence of zero-gravity has on such animals?
Then it dawned upon me. This is a US site. A vet is something entirely different there.
Not unusually strong but "abnormally strong"?
One can only imagine Michael Griffin gurning, blood vessels popping, perhaps some sort of fit...has someone got the utube clip?
Yep, he sure did. He cut it by 51.3 million in 2000 and another 10.8 million in 2004. Of course I'm thinking Clinton should have still been in office for the fiscal year of 2000 so I don't know if we can blame that on Bush. But NASA's budget has been cut 6 times between 1995 and 2004, 5 of which has been at the hands of republicans in congress and they ad up to less then the one the democrats were behind in 1995. This has nothing to do with the recent cuts though. This Wikki article will give an idea of the current struggles.
My point wasn't that Bush is great or anything. It was that bush didn't fail to fund anything, congress and NASA fail to follow his direction. And don't look for solace in either party, It is that they both do it and the dems seem to have a history of cutting it deeper them the republicans do. Don't look to them as a solution.
I don't disagree..
Neither man on mars or man on the moon will happen while he is in office. I suspect the real reason for this poorly debated bad policy to goto both is to raise the bar on what America is capable of. This seems to be important when we aren't battling the Russians for which country is better but we have India, China, Japan and Europe entering the market. We are losing a holdout from the cold war where we were number one in a lot of these areas around the world. If we had a commitment like we did in the 60's, it could recharge schools and children to product productive adult ready to meet the challenge that we would be faced with. Look at all the side benefits we have seen from the last generations participating in the idea, among other things, I would think computers as we know them today are a result of push toward science and engineering and math we had left over from the space race. Unfortunately, I don't think it is working out as he had planned.
There is some things that people are just better at. But I don't think th idea is to get to mars for the sake of getting there. It is to relive a time of being superior in education, science and math skills. A time when tasked with a challenge was just an excuse to outperform any limitation in existance at the time. You get the idea, I hope.
Yes. In theory that's half of NASA's charter. And, to be fair, they do still have the odd high-speed wind tunnel project. Scramjets, too, which you could argue may benefit the military someday. Maybe.
But the shuttle is the Monster that Ate the Budget. Most of the aeronautic work has been defunded, and important scientific work like interplanetary probes and high altitude astronomy is hanging on a thread. This will only get worse. CEV's configuration was, in large part, chosen to ensure nobody who works on the shuttle will be put out of work. Since the 20,000+ people doing shuttle work comprise most of the shuttle's cost that's bad news for the agency's orphan children.
The idea NASA's budget is primarily spent on "planes and missiles" is laughable.