Buzz Aldrin's Radical Plan For NASA

FleaPlus writes "Apollo 11 astronaut (and MIT Astronautics Sc.D.) Buzz Aldrin suggests a bolder plan for NASA (while still remaining within its budget), which he will present to the White House's Augustine Commission; he sees NASA heading down the wrong path with a 'rehash of what we did 40 years ago' which could derail future exploration and settlement. For the short-term, Aldrin suggests canceling NASA's troubled and increasingly costly Ares I, instead launching manned capsules on commercial Delta IV, Atlas V, and/or SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets. In the medium-term, NASA should return to the moon with an international consortium, with the ultimate goal of commercial lunar exploitation in mind. Aldrin's long term plan includes a 2018 comet flyby, a 2019 manned trip to a near-earth asteroid, a 2025 trip to the Martian moon Phobos, and one-way trips to colonize Mars."

Comments

Good ideas.

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, NASA (and most space programs in general) should have one crucial long term goal: Getting us off this ball of rock and inhabiting other ones. I think that Aldrin's plans make more progress towards this than most of what has been going on for pretty much my entire lifetime.

Re:Good ideas.

[MaskedSlacker]

Except it's not a colossal amount of money at all--this is the absurd misconception about space travel. The reality is it is peanuts. Cheaper in fact than fixing this world, by a several orders of magnitude.

Re:Good ideas.

[Jafafa Hots]

I am so tired of the "get us off this rock" crap.

I'm a lifelong NASA nut and space fan, and my fantasies are as elaborate as anyone's but that's all it is - fantasy.

There are billions of people on this planet, and counting. We would have to launch over 200,000 people a day into space each day just to keep up with the daily increase in the population, without even making a dent in the "reserve."

Apart from thousands of years off Nivenesque dreams of turning the planet itself into a spaceship, we just stuck here and we have to face it.

The absolute best we could hope to achieve is to launch a very select elite by using far more than their fair share of resources, while leaving essentially the entire human populace behind to deal with the consequences.

And when they left, then what? Here we are with a perfectly self-regulating ecosystem in the prime location with conditions tailor made for us (or rather us for them), and we can't understand it well enough or control our own impulses well enough to keep from fucking it up.... but somehow we'll be smart enough to go somewhere else less opportune and build one from scratch?

"Get us off this rock" attitudes are the product of denial, passing the buck to the our future victims, the ultimate expression of our throw-away consumer culture. We'll use up this planet, toss it and get a new one.

No. Exploration of space is vital to scientific knowledge and indeed to our attempts to understand earth (as exploring Venus helped us understand global warming) but as a species we are stuck with what we have and we'd better take care of it, there's nowhere else in the neighborhood worth anything more than an outpost.

If a sentient species from earth ever DOES spread out far enough to fully leave Earth behind for good, it won't be Homo Sapiens who does it... it would be far enough in the future that either our descendant species (or something else's) will be doing it.

Re:Good ideas.

[savuporo]

Seriously, NASA (and most space programs in general) should have one crucial long term goal: Getting us off this ball of rock and inhabiting other ones

NASA is a government agency ( an arthritic one ), government agencies don't colonize. Especially when international law explicitly forbids that.

What most people miss in 2001: Space Odyssey, are the logos on the space plane and Space Station V itself, where dr. Heywood flies to . They read "Pan American" and "Hilton Hotels" accordingly, NOT NASA, RSA or any other *SA.

Ironically, when time called for beating the communists to the moon, the great U.S. of A. did not tap into free enterprise, but created a huge socialist government-run space business, which 40 years later still thinks it should be running a space trucking line.

Re:Good ideas.

[Jane Q. Public]

Really? Have you read your Darwin? Are you aware of how much of natural selection takes place? Often, it happens because a population gets isolated due to the destruction of the main population.

You may think it's fantasy, but keep in mind that eventually, a life-killer asteroid strike, while extremely unlikely in any given year, is eventually a mathematical certainty. By all the best evidence, it has happened before, probably more than once.

It may be a long-term goal, but eventually we must send at least some people "off this rock". Scoff all you want, but that is playing the real probabilities.

Re:Good ideas.

[clarkkent09]

We would have to launch over 200,000 people a day into space each day just to keep up with the daily increase in the population

You are right, shipping people off to other planets without making other changes, such as reducing birthrate, is not going to reduce population of Earth. However, if your goal (among others, such as access to new resources) is to ensure the survival of the species should something horrible happen on Earth, then a long term plan to spread to one or two other worlds does make a lot of sense. A self sustaining base on Mars is not a fantasy, it is something that could possibly be achieved with today's technology if the will was there. In 50 years, just as the biological and nuclear weapons of mass destruction are getting within reach of even small groups of psychos, it will be no problem at all. You have to make a first step somewhere.

Re:Good ideas.

[uglyMood]

I would argue that the main advantage of the "get us off this rock crap" is that at some point we are absolutely going to take an extinction-level hit from some other rock, or a massive solar flare that toasts half the planet, or some other damned thing. If we don't spread across several worlds, we vastly increase the likelihood of becoming just another trilobite bed.

It isn't merely a matter of fixing the earth, which I wholeheartedly agree is of prime importance; off-world colonies are essential for the survival of the species. We don't need to colonize only Mars and Luna; we need to colonize other star systems. Gamma-ray bursts, supernovas and asteroid impacts aren't imaginary bogeymen. The universe is an incredibly dangerous place, and so far we've been lucky, but that's only because we're new in the neighborhood. The geologic record is littered with evidence that bad shit happens. Hell, just look at a map of Canada. Lake Manicouagan in Quebec was created by a chunk of rock three miles wide.

At some point terrestrial homo sapiens is guaranteed to take an irrecoverable hit, and if we haven't put down roots elsewhere, that's it for humanity and any of our eventual descendants.

So yes, we have to get off of this goddamned rock, and the sooner the better. I'm astonished anyone even bothers to argue about this.

Re:Good ideas.

[Ihlosi]

Self sustaining Mars BASE, quite possibly.

A self-sustaining base must have the capability to expand (or else it'll just shrivel up and die as soon as a minor disaster strikes. Teetering on the brink of self-sustaining really is _not_ self-sustaining.). And once you have that capability, there's exponential growth and you'll have a colony sooner or later.

Re:Good ideas.

[Ogive17]

Well, for one thing, a manned space program keeps some very intelligent scientists and engineers employed. It also hopefully captures the imagination of the youth to provide us with another generation of scientists and engineers.

We keep complaining that math and science education in this country keeps sliding. Giving kids something tangible that says "math and science can be fun and exciting" is what we need.

Plus it's not like 100 billion dollars gets strapped to a rocket and blasted into space. Most of the money spent is put straight into the economy (through salaries). The only actual "loss" is the cost of the raw material sent into space.

Re:Good ideas.

[EbeneezerSquid]

You want Firefly? First you need FireNASA.

http://www.spacefuture.com/vehicles/how_the_west_wasnt_won_nafa.shtml

NASA should be a regulatory agency, just like the FAA. But when you give regulation to a "competitor-in-the-field," amazingly, no-one else meets the regulatory requirements to compete.
(offtopic/ Think of that when they talk about a "public insurance plan" too. \offtopic)

Poor Author C. I wish he had lived to see his 2001 visions come to life. . .

Re:Good ideas.

[Hasai]

....Much better to spend the colossal amount of money on fixing this world....

Uh-huh; I heard that before, way back in 1969, in fact. Did a bang-up job on that, didn't we?
.
Listen, meathead, before you go parroting crap that was utter drivel 40 years ago, perhaps you should compare NASA'a annual budget against, say, oh maybe the amount of money the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services or the U.S. Department of Defense burns through in a WEEK.
.
Then, please be so kind as to examine the RETURN ON INVESTMENT on those three budgets.
.
Yeah; we're really 'fixing' this world.
.
Idiot.

Oh and one final thing....

[DiamondGeezer]

...punch Bart Sibrel in the mouth. Repeatedly. My only criticism of Buzz Aldrin is he didn't plant his feet hard enough to break Sibrel's jaw with the punch. And have me there so I could hold Buzz's coat. Hey! Maybe we could fire Sibrel at Mars to colonize it on his own. And then deny he ever existed.

Gah, no.

[zippthorne]

Good idea ditching the extra launch vehicles. Let someone else take the risk if you can.

But an international consortium? Did he even pay attention to station?

International consortiums are great, if your goal is "to work together with other nations towards a goal." But they tend to fail miserably if you have something you want to actually accomplish. You end up doing everything redundantly anyway, and somehow it costs even more than just the redundancy ought to account for.

The only upside to the consortium idea is also a huge downside: you can sort-of force certain milestones by making them treaty obligations. Unfortunately, then you have a pile of treaty obligations in your way if you need to scrap part of the project to go down a better avenue, or you just want to cut your losses and get out.

Re:Commercial exploitation

[timmarhy]

it saddens me that people like you still bitch about commercial ventures, when you wouldn't have the PC or internet to do so if it wasn't for such ventures. repeat after me - just because it's being done for money, it doesn't mean it's evil....

Gravity wells

[TheLink]

I don't see the big plus of inhabiting other "gravity wells". It's not like they're that much nicer places, and it'll be expensive to get back off them.

Better to work on building sustainable space stations with necessary stuff like artificial gravity and radiation shielding, so that people can actually live on them _indefinitely_. Start by building them near the Earth. After that work on space stations that can build space stations out of stuff like asteroids - space factories. Then we can have space colonies and roam about colonizing the solar system.

Once you have a sustainable space station, it doesn't really matter how long it takes to get to Mars or Titan (within reason of course). No rush.

In fact, the long term inhabitants of space colonies might view living on Mars or the Moon far more unpleasant than living in a space colony.

Trying to live on some other planet or some moon without having a "real" space station seems like trying to jump before even being able to stand unsupported. Yes, maybe you can still do it with great effort and cost, but it's ridiculous and stupid.

The current space stations don't count - they're spaceships "going nowhere", the equivalent of living in a cramped subcompact car. Not suitable places for raising future generations of humans.

Re:Manned space flight is a fucking waste

[MadUndergrad]

That's just a canard. The only thing we learn from manned spaceflight is that it's really expensive. If we want to colonize other worlds we need to spend the money doing the research and developing the technologies we need, not wasting money sending people on weekend getaways to airless rocks or spacestations that will deorbit in ten years.

Re:Colony practice?

[TheLink]

No. Self sustaining colonies should be practiced in orbit around the Earth.

The moon is an X day trip, whereas the time to orbit is much shorter. It's easier to help them if things go wrong.

Once you have self sustaining colonies in space, it doesn't matter so much how long it takes to get to Mars.

But people might then think, hey why bother landing humans on Mars, we'll just stay in our comfy space stations and send robot probes down to mars, while we mine the asteroids (and build more probes if necessary).

Ummm... Yes?

[interactive_civilian]

Would you want to live on titan?

Yes. Yes I would. Absolutely, without a doubt. Where do I sign up?

Spending all the money fixing this world does nothing to get all of our eggs out of the basket, and if anything harms that basket, then we are screwed. To paraphrase Carl Sagan in "Pale Blue Dot", any species that does not move off its planet is doomed to extinction. You may not care about the long term survival of the human species (or any other species), but some of us do, and the best way to increase our chances of survival is to spread out. We aren't going to do that by spending all of our money and resources here. We aren't even going to do that by pussy-footing around sending only robotic explorers to other places (as much as admire these feats of engineering and the data they bring back). We are only going to do that by getting out there and doing it ourselves. And it will only become cheaper, easier, and safer as we do it more and more and more.

So, one way ticket to Mars? Titan? Points outward? HELL YES. I wouldn't hesitate to accept such an opportunity, and I doubt I'm alone in this.

Re:Ummm... Yes?

[Thiez]

> To paraphrase Carl Sagan in "Pale Blue Dot", any species that does not move off its planet is doomed to extinction. You may not care about the long term survival of the human species (or any other species), but some of us do, and the best way to increase our chances of survival is to spread out.

Dude, unless some meteor comes along and kills us all, we still have *millions* of years to perfect space travel. If we delay manned missions to other planets/moons for half a century, it won't matter. If you really care so much about the survival of the species, you'd be encouraging research that can protect us from really big rocks on a collision course with ours, rather than trying to get a colony on titan.

It's funny how you're using "Won't somebody think of the HUMAN RACE?!?!?!?!" like politicians would use "Won't somebody think of the children?!?!?!", using it to support your agenda by accusing your opponents of 'not caring about the survival of the species'.

Re:Ummm... Yes?

[ckaminski]

At the very least, development of working Biosphere type environments, increases your survival ANYWHERE, and is a necessary precondition for long-term survival on other worlds or deep space.

Re:Ummm... Yes?

[AGMW]

If we delay manned missions to other planets/moons for half a century, it won't matter.

Actually, there are some who think that is untrue, and here's why. The cost of feeding the world is ever rising as the population climbs. As the population climbs the amount of land available to grow things falls. At the moment, finding the few billions it might take to get us off-world just seems expensive, but at some point finding those billions may actually require taking the decision to stop feeding some people and that will be a tough decision for anyone to make!

There are some who suggest that if we don't det off-world NOW we may never have the spare cash to throw at it again, and that's a BIG risk for the survival of our species, and presumably all the species we take along with us for the ride. Though, to be fair, they often quote 100 years as "NOW", but it's still a gamble upon which our species very survival may rest!

Not only that, but I'd like to see it at least start to happen!

Re:About time we had some public debate

[Kjella]

In my lifetime three things have driven technology's march:

* Space exploration.
* People wanting to kill each other more efficiently.
* Making a quick buck.

Of these, only space exploration is an example of Man aspiring to greatness.

Yes, because getting the funding to run a huge missile program right after the cuban missile crisis during the height of the cold war was soooooooo about taking money away from "People wanting to kill each other more efficiently." and gicing it to an altruistic aspiration to greatness. Sure, it came in a very nice sales package with a civilian agency and a great morale booster but the reason it passed was that it created lots and lots of high tech research and equipment of military value. If it was about "aspiring to greatness" why would the russians break their back trying to keep up with it? The other two points are timeless classics though. Add "Getting the girl" and you've summed up the reasons for most of humanity's innovation...

Re:"Self sustaining base"

[smoker2]

Blah blah blah. Planes can't fly, we've never seen the bottom of the ocean, we'll never walk on the moon, we can't see what's happening on the other side of the planet in real time, if you go over 20mph you'll suffocate, if you sail west you'll drop off the edge of the world, the atom is the smallest thing in the universe, don't go outside, you'll be hit by a bus ....

Do you have any balls ?

We don't need to create self-sustaining colonies in Antarctica, or underwater, so why do it ? If you put yourself in space, you not only need to, you have to deal with it. Necessity is the mother of invention. But I guess in the slimy greedy world of Intellectual Property, you would rather just accumulate wealth for yourself, fuck the universe (and your neighbours). If the only way we can have a space colony is to replicate exactly what we have here, then you're right - it's a waste of time. If you want to head in a new direction however, space is the ONLY place to do it. This planet's full of nay-saying assholes.

BTW, you missed out Burger King and Walmart from your list of "necessities".