Panel Recommends Space Science, Not Stunts

wisebabo writes "A panel reporting to President Obama is recommending that we skip landing on the Moon and Mars and instead consider progressively deeper space voyages (first to the L1 Earth-Moon point, then perhaps the L2 Earth-Sun point, then a Mars flyby/orbit or asteroid visits). While in Mars orbit, the astronauts could send robotic probes to land on the surface, which could be much more effective than current rovers without the 10-minute time lag to Earth. I, for one, whole-heartedly agree that this approach would lead to 'the most steady cadence of steady improvement,' and keep us from inconsistent achievements in space (like not leaving Earth orbit for 40 years). Some would say that this approach would be lacking in the photo-ops necessary to maintain interest in the space program (no footprints on Martian soil) but I think there would be plenty of cool vistas — perhaps a rendezvous with a comet, or even orbiting one of the moons of Jupiter, assuming they figure out radiation shielding — to keep the taxpayer dollars flowing. The science return would be much greater because it would hopefully utilize both man and machine at their best; robots on one-way trips down into a gravity well while the humans provide the intuition and flexibility from orbit."

Comments

"We go to the moon in this decade..."

[BadAnalogyGuy]

The only way to sustain any interest in space exploration is what you call "stunts".

We have, for the past 30 years, embroiled ourselves in space exploration which has led us to the current state of apathy. NASA is at the ends of its life if we continue to follow a step-by-step progression towards the future. There is no hope in a slow progression towards the stars.

We need to take bold actions to ignite interest, because in America only bold actions and strong interest drive anything forward. Lukewarm actions toward a goal are not in our nature, so stop trying to sell us on it, man.

Martian Time Slip

[mbone]

than current rovers without the 10-minute time lag to Earth.

At opposition, the average round trip time (RTT) to Mars is 9 minutes.

At superior conjunction, the average RTT to Mars is 42 minutes.

At other times, the RTT will be in between these two values.

Both of these numbers will vary at the 10% level due to orbital eccentricities and inclinations, but, clearly, most of the time the RTT will be greater than 10 minutes.

However, this is almost irrelevant. All currently and planned rovers or landers use "bent-pipe tracking," where data is sent to an orbiter, and then the orbiter, sometime later, sends it to the Earth. This greatly increases the effective RTT (there are not orbiters passing over any given surface location at any time).

I believe that the Phoenix, the current rovers, and the Mars Science Laboratory all basically plan on an effectively daily RTT (i.e., at best one up and down link per day). These long effective RTTs and the use of orbiters to store-and-forward data are part of the motivation behind the efforts around Delay / Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN) - AKA the Interplanetary Internet.

Nonsense. Yeah... I think that is the word.

[denzacar]

That so called "plan" would have human crews travel all the way to Mars and then sit in orbit around it - in order to save 10 minutes that it takes to contact rowers.

A flyby of the moon might be followed by more distant trips to so-called Lagrange points, first to the location where the gravity of the Moon and the Earth gravity cancel each other out, then to where the gravity of the Earth and Sun cancel out. There could also be visits to asteroids or flybys of Mars leading to landings on one or both of the low-gravity moons of Deimos and Phobos.

To what use are ANY of these trips?

Lagrange points are only useful if you are actually going to position a permanent lab there.
Flybys and visits... What for? You can do that just as fine with robotic probes.

The whole point of space travel is to permanently get humans to other places in the Solar System, Galaxy and Universe other than Earth.
It is not a test to see how far we can throw a rock - it is a test to see how close we are to the colonization of our solar system.

Re:Nonsense. Yeah... I think that is the word.

[mdwh2]

in order to save 10 minutes that it takes to contact rowers.

I don't think the issue is "saving 10 minutes", the issue is lag.

Think computer games - a bad lag doesn't mean "You have to wait a few seconds longer to play the game", it makes the game unplayable.

From TFA:

"Instructions from controllers on Earth now take several minutes to reach craft on Mars. But astronauts on a Martian moon could operate robots on the planet in real time."

It's not 10 minutes, it's 10 minutes for every single instruction and response, as opposed to operating in real time. Not only would this speed things up by a massive factor, it allows the possibility of human intervention or control to prevent things going wrong (e.g., a human controlled landing).

The whole point of space travel is to permanently get humans to other places in the Solar System, Galaxy and Universe other than Earth.
It is not a test to see how far we can throw a rock - it is a test to see how close we are to the colonization of our solar system.

Why does this stop that? You can colonise space as well as other planets. And building the infrastructure to send men to orbit other planets will still provide a step towards one day colonising those planets.

Science for Science's sake

[bmajik]

is nice and many scientists seem to enjoy it.

But IMO, Buzz Aldrin (iirc) has the right point of view: from Kittyhawk to Apollo 11 was 66 years. It is an embarassment that we may not be able to put boots on Mars by 2035 --- which would be 66 years after Apollo 11. Human Flight -> Man on Moon shouldn't take less time than Moon->Mars.

If you want to argue that science doesn't concern itself with putting boots on Mars, fine, lots stop funding space science and get back to funding space engineering.

Any human being can understand these words: "the human race has set foot on a different planet". I look forward to the changes that will take longer to understand: what it will mean to the world pscyhe to know that we have demonstrated the possibility of escape, to know that there is a new world to explore, a new adventure to be had, etc. The re-colonization of the Americas by europeans co-incided with the beginning of the greatest leaps forward in technology, prosperity, and freedom (as long as you weren't brown at the time...) in world history. I am looking forward to seeing what shape the "discovery" of Mars will have on all of us.

Short of discovering God or alien life, no unmanned mission will ever get every single human being around the world simultaneously watching their TVs. That's the power of putting boots on Mars. There will be plenty of hard science and engineering to get us there. But having a single goal that any idiot can understand in just 1 statement: that's powerful, and it's worth working towards.

First, remove the fat.

[Syntroxis]

For a long time, there have been too many pigs gorging themselves at the NASA feeding trough. We need to get rid of the Boeings, Lockheed-Martins, and other contractors. A NASA engineer primarily oversees a horde of contractors who oversee sub-contractors who oversee sub-sub-contractors. By the time all of the time/cost billing is added up, NASA is being billed $800,000 for a $120,000 engineer. NASA does things like award a $175,000 contract to Lockheed with the cutsy sounding name of "determining an alternative zero gravity point device" when the ball in the old mice didn't work. A company which was flying a project on the KC-135 (vomit comet) ran into the same problem of the mouse not working, ran to the computer store, grabbed a $50.00 trackball, and the problem was solved. Solve these problems with cost-plus contractors, and NASA's budget will practically fix itself.