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White House Panel Seeks Input On Spaceflight Plans
Neil H. writes "The Augustine Commission, commissioned by the White House and NASA to provide an independent review of the current US human spaceflight program and potential new directions, is seeking public input on a document describing the preliminary beyond-LEO exploration scenarios they're analyzing. The destination-based scenarios, designed with NASA's current budget in mind, range from a Lunar Base (essentially NASA's current plan), to 'Mars First' (human exploration of Mars ASAP), to 'Flexible Path' (initially focused on several destinations in shallow gravity wells, such as Lagrange points, near-Earth asteroids, and the Martian moon Phobos). The Commission is also seeking input on the issues of engaging commercial spaceflight, in-space refueling, and coordinating human and robotic exploration."
So I figure we build a few thousand probe droids with solar sails and sling shot them around the sun and send them aimed at planets of all nearest solar systems. I've got some basic plans drafted up. Couple hundred years from now the first will be hitting Alpha Centauri and although we may all be dead, the footage they send back will make for some bitchin opening movie scenes.
My work here is dung.
The next time we send manned missions to the Moon (or Mars), let's get serious and do it sustainably. This business of sending someone up to collect rocks and beat a path back home just for the sake of planting a flag is just lame and depressing. Take the long view, secure international cooperation and funding, and work on genuine colonization efforts.
All of the proposed plans are based on the arguably flawed assumption that humans can add significant value in flexibility over current robotic explorers. Which is clearly not the case based on experiences with the mars rovers and similar devices.
Why can't we just admit the unpleasant: Yes, in 1969, if you wanted to explore the moon you needed a person. Now, 40 years later, you need robots and let the people sit comfortably back at JPL and Houston, safe and sound and cheaper.
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As appealing as "get your ass to mars" seems, I suspect the "flexible" shallow gravity wells option (mining NEOs and the like) would cause the most sweeping changes across industry and society.
If a space presence is what we really want, then that would seem to (under-informed) me to be the option with the most immediate and obvious financial benefits, and the one most likely to encourage indistrial expansion into space. Expansion of the sort that is most likely to stay.
The flexible path that would go to shallow gravity well destinations, such as asteroids or the martian moons, makes a lot of sense to me. This lets NASA gradually transition from the international space station to long duration space voyages, while avoiding the big problem of lifting the huge amount of mass needed to enter and return from gravity wells. To show how much simpler the shallow gravity well problem is, consider that efficient, low-power thrusters mounted on a platform similar to the international space station could do the trick. At the same time, this lets us gain access to materials (ice, metals, etc.) present in the space environment, and also lets us do a lot of interesting fundamental science.
It all comes down to one thing: What's the point?
The cost would be massive, 10%+ of the worlds GDP for several decades just to get the thing built and stocked. The risks would be huge, we know next to nothing about the kinds of things that could go wrong with such a plan and the risks we do know about are already significant. And the payoff? Next to nothing. Certainly there would be no economic payoff, even if we were able to establish a colony (and there's about a thousand ifs that would need to be fulfilled for that to happen) there would be no way to set up any kind of trading system over those kinds of distances. Not leaving a colony behind is even less cost efficient, you're basically consigning generations of people to strict rationing and constant danger for the purpose all to be able to look and see what's going on the next star system over (hint: probably absolutely nothing).
No, there's only two ways that ark ships will be built.
One is if we have advanced warning of a catastrophe so horrible that spending a significant portion of the worlds wealth and resources just to save a few thousand people is preferable to actually trying to solve the problem. I can't even think about what that kind of catastrophe could be, in order to build an arkship you're going to have to be able to move and mine asteroids so that's out. Anything that would disrupt the inner solar system would still leave semi-habitable environment inside the solar system at less risk than sending an arkship into the unknown.
The second is if the society of Earth persecutes a group to the point that they want to leave, while paradoxically giving that group the wealth, technical knowledge, and political influence to make such a project happen. I just don't see that happening, unless the singularity really is near, and the kind of power and technology to make an arkship happens becomes commonplace.
Dude, this is America! We don't wait for things! Even the 6 months it takes to get to Mars is pushing it...the way our attention span is, we'd probably launch the astronauts to Mars, and then 3 months later some Congresscritter would recommend cutting out this silly "Mars mission" from the budget, because no one even remembers what that was for, and use the money to build a new movie theater in his district (named after him, naturally). They'd lay off everyone at Mission Control, and the astronauts up in their capsule would wonder why no one is answering their transmissions anymore.
Talking about something that would take 200 years? Hell, when Voyager was (briefly) back in the news a couple of years ago, most people probably didn't even know what the hell it was, other than some vague memory in the deep recesses of their brains that it had something to do with Star Trek, much less what it was supposed to be doing out there. 200 years from now, people will probably think the transmissions coming from your proposed spacecraft are from some alien race and freak out.
My prediction is that this whole process results in some pretty exciting plans, which will all be canceled after NASA's budget gets slashed yet again.
The most important single advance that could help spaceflight, manned and unmanned would be to reduce the cost to LEO. This will require, ultimately, a SSTO (single stage to orbit) launcher. Of course it's tough (remember the X-34? the Delta Clipper?) but that doesn't mean that with new advances in materials (can you say carbon nanotube reinforced composites) it's impossible. Unless we can bring the cost of access to space down by a factor of at least 10 a lot of these dreams will remain just that; dreams.
After that, new low thrust high specific impulse engines would be very useful along with a compact energy source to power them. VASIMIR sounds promising and maybe magnetic sails (which might have the side benefit of protection against cosmic rays). We'll probably need real nuclear reactors in space like the SNAP program (or the Russian equivalent). Remember the words of an airforce general: "a new plane doesn't make a new engine possible, a new engine makes a new plane possible".
Ultimately, of course, a space elevator is the best way to go. There was a proposal, I think, of building one for less than $10B by using a "small" elevator to bring the materials gradually up from earth (rather than trying to capture an carbonaceous asteroid to use as a material source/counterweight). Of course we'll need those carbon nanotubes again!
We create a huge solar array, big enough to cause a solar eclipse, and position it so it happens every other week or so. It would really freak India out...
Anything else we do is grave decoration.
Sending probes or even people to explore Mars, Alpha Centauri or Wolf 359 is a waste if we are wiped out by an asteroid. We have some good theories on how to do it. We need to test them.
Let's practice while we still have the luxury of time... and failure.
Go ahead and go, go anywhere and everywhere...
But actually DO something once you get there, don't just go there to wave your dick around.
I'd really like to see a good sized radio telescope built on the far side of the moon, complete with relay lines to dishes at the terminus between near and far sides, so there's no accidental reflections from earth off of relay satellites instead.
Going further out than LEO would be good also...
I remember reading this PDF of a flight plan from around 40 years ago, where they wanted to send a crew further INTO the solar system, and actually intercept/orbit Venus, using apollo tech.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manned_Venus_Flyby
How about a small, self sufficient station at L3?
You'd need a couple of relay sats for comms, but that's a smaller cost than the station.
Alas, none of this will happen though, because we're too adverse to risk these days, and we wouldn't DARE send someone condemned to death out there instead, it'd de-demonize them (serial killer and first man on another planet?).
Plus, have you noticed that most of the studies about going into space for long periods of time involve seeing if people can do with limited to no social interaction?
Yeah, most of US can, but the ones they trust to send up there, CAN'T!
So we gotta settle for unmanned probes.
So fire off at least one every month.
Pick something to study: moon, planet, propulsion tech, comm tech, interstellar phenomenom (this one will take time and would need to be fast).
And if you need some tech to make sure it works (such as an RTG), and people complain about it, ignore them with extreme prejudice.
And more space telescopes!
Seriously, we have barely a handful pointing outwards, but probably hundreds (classified, guess, and hope you're not accurate) looking back down?
One is if we have advanced warning of a catastrophe so horrible that spending a significant portion of the worlds wealth and resources just to save a few thousand people is preferable to actually trying to solve the problem.
The Sun will be going red giant in just 5 billion years. That's plenty of time to prepare.
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