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."

Comments

Re:Let's look closer to home, first

[KillerCow]

see false dichotomy.

Re:Let's look closer to home, first

[The One and Only]

We shouldn't abandon space travel simply to explore the earth, but on the same token, we shouldn't abandon the earth simply to explore space either!

Objections

[rijrunner]

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.

Re:Objections

[argStyopa]

"Essentially, you get the Moon and Mars for only twice the amount as getting the Moon or Mars."

OK, you've listed all the non-advantages for a moon program. Now how about some advantages?

1) by developing technologies for hard vacuum, you are in a sense prepping for one of the hardest parts of the Mars mission, that is, a months/years long transit time. You have a nearly perfect platform for testing technologies outside of the Van Allen belt(s), exposing them for long durations to solar heating and occluded cooling. Note: developing the tech for an asteroid mission is essentially saying that 'we can already do this part' - can we? Reliably to put a crew's lives at risk over extended periods of time?

2) long-term value: geopolitical, military, commercial, geographic - as you dismissively point out, there are theoretically (only!) 2 places where solar power access is continual. Possibly more importantly these two places (the poles) are also the only places where the sun, the earth, in fact the entire ecliptic (north or south) is in clear line of sight. How much are those two spots worth today? How much will they be worth in a century? Want to surveil deep space while having a straight line-of-sight link to earth? Want to have a launch point for a flinger that could theoretically put lunar materials anywhere in the earth-moon system with the simplest ballistic solution? I'd argue that being the first with a permanent base there has an INCALCULABLE value over longer timespans. And if you have the first base on one pole, it's not a giant stretch to put a second one on the other pole and monopolize both. The lunar poles - for near-earth space - are practically 21st Century Suez or Panama canals in their strategic value.

3) raw materials: again, a lunar base in the longer term answers one of the bigger questions to space exploitation. Tossing something up to an orbiting factory or processor module is trivial from the moon, and the effectively limitless raw material (including rather important oxides) doesn't hurt. Going to an asteroid lets you explore, but bringing that back where it could be usefully exploited is an ENTIRELY larger project with propulsive technologies we aren't even CLOSE to having.

Personally, if I were looking at it as a game of Civ or something, I'd say the asteroid is probably the cheaper, higher payoff short range program. The lunar base is the more expensive, slower-to-develop programs that ends up being the incontestable game-winning economic- and military-power multiplier in the endgame.

Needless to say, I don't see nearly the value you do in an asteroid mission. I see THAT as the 'flash in the pan' while the idea of a lunar base is the investment-growth option, for Mars certainly, but also for decades if not centuries further on.

Too late to be of value

[EmbeddedJanitor]

In the 1960s, space represented many things and was very successful in focussing the USA in many ways. However, once done it has served its purpose and cannot easily serve it again.

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?

Re:Let's look closer to home, first

[moderatorrater]

Wait a minute, you're offering a compromise and speaking as if there were a middle ground and not just two extremes. You and your views have no place in politics.

The basic problem is...

[Anonymous Coward]

... 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).