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Apollo Veteran: Skip Asteroid, Go To the Moon
astroengine writes "It's 40 years to the day that the final mission to the moon launched. Discovery News speaks with Apollo 17 astronaut and geologist Harrison 'Jack' Schmitt about where he thinks the Earth's only satellite came from and why he thinks a NASA manned asteroid mission is a mistake. 'I think an asteroid is a diversion,' said Schmitt. 'If the ultimate goal is to get to Mars, you have a satellite only three days away that has a great deal of science as well as resources. The science of the moon has just been scratched. We've hardly explored the moon.'"
The National Research Council came out with a report a few days ago which found that the inability for the U.S. to find a consensus on where to go is damaging its ability to get there. Bill Nye spoke about the issue, saying, "I believe, as a country, we want to move NASA from [being] an engineering organization to a science organization, and this is going to take years, decades. Now, through investment, we have companies emerging that are exploring space on their own and will ultimately lower the cost of access to low-Earth orbit, which will free up NASA to go to these new and exciting places."
The ugly reality is that our society has shifted toward one focused on inward spending and care, not outward focus and exploration. This was inevitable with the radical demographics change that has happened in the last 15 years as the Baby Boomers, who are something like 1:1.5 with Generation X and Millennial put together got to the point where they need to start retiring. Aging societies become inward focused, with the focus being on domestic spending, not "young activities" like exploring new frontiers at tax payers expenses.
An elderly relative of mine was complaining about the cost overruns on the F35, and I pointed out to them that the whole federal R&D budget across all departments was likely less than the $112B in Medicare fraud that the OIG for Medicare uncovered about six months to a year ago. Many of those overruns aren't even "fraud" but rather are caused by things like different government "stakeholders" coming in at the 11th hour to add new requirements on projects (IIRC, the F35 was almost done, and the USMC nearly killed it by demanding that they get their VTOL piece come hell or high water even though it was ready for NATO naval forces).
It was disheartening for them to hear the plain and simple truth: we are an aging society that is cannibalizing its stored wealth to lavish retirement and health care benefits on the older citizens. It is absolutely true that we don't have money anymore for foreign wars and big military adventures. It's also true that at present budget projections we won't have a budget for NASA, the NSF, federal law enforcement, the US highway system, education subsidies and anything else that doesn't revolve around pure entitlement spending for the massive waves of retirees hitting and about to hit the system.
Politically speaking, about the only way to do that would be to get the defense contractors on board (since they all but own Congress outright). Unless Congress puts Northrop Grumman in charge of building the craft, Blackwater (or whatever they're calling themselves this week) in charge of moon security, and KBR in charge of moon logistics, you can forget diverting any money from defense.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
> The US is already the dominate military power on the planet, bar none, so I am sure they could trim the military budget by a tiny percentage
I'm not really disagreeing, but I do think there's an important point people overlook when discussing things like this: Military dominance is all about spending. It's quite like a bleeding edge computer. You spend thousands on the best of the best, and in a year's time anyone could have the same setup from a quarter the price. You're then either with the Joes or spending more to stay on top. You can't really step back and say 'okay, we spent enough'; it's literally an arms race and staying ahead is expensive.
> Its nice to think that private enterprise will provide the means to get there (for whatever values of "there") but although its happening, its not happening overnight.
I'd point out that NASA isn't exactly doing anything overnight either. As long as it's taking for private enterprise to enter the game, they seem to be moving faster once they're in it. Honestly, I wouldn't be too surprised if the next exploration mission is privately funded at this point.
and who is going to build these spaceships? Toyota?
The defense contractors were the ones who built apollo. Northrom Grumman built the moon lander outside of NYC
What could we learn about an asteroid from sending a person there that we wouldn't learn from sending a modern robot there? What could we learn from the moon or mars today that we couldn't learn from a robot?
Quite a lot actually. Now, part of that is simply the reality that a manned mission is going to be orders of magnitude larger and more complex, just by definition.
For instance, sample return is basically built into a manned mission. If you add a sample return objective to a robotic mission the cost numbers are suddenly much closer (still not close exactly, but closer). The rate of exploration is also much, much higher for a manned mission. The Mars rovers, for example, were designed to move just 600 meters over their lifespan. They've obviously exceeded that, Opportunity has driven 20km so far after all. Apollo 17, on the other hand, covered that distance in a matter of days. A prolonged human presence would allow us to explore a larger area in much more detail than would otherwise be possible. Not to mention the possibility of bringing a real chemistry lab along for the rid (as opposed to the 'lab on a single camera' setups that robotic missions use).
Yes, a lot of those advantages would disappear if you spent the same on a robotic mission as you did on a manned one. But you also have to remember the human factor. Humans can perform repairs, investigate problems, spot things in the terrain, cover more ground, look at things from different angles (in a matter of seconds), etc, etc. Designing a robot that can do everything that a human can do as well as a human can do it, even ignoring the light speed communication issues, would probably be more expensive than just sending the human in the first place.
Of course, Curiousity is actually doing something other than just moving in a circle around the Earth.
Would the kids be more interested in Curiousity than they would be in six men on Mars?
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The US is already the dominate military power on the planet, bar none
I know I'm not going to be terribly popular with what I'm about to say but I think it bares saying anyway. The power of a nation's military is not in its present inventory of weapons. They are here one day and blow to bits the next. The power of a nation's military is in its manufacturing capability and the ability to maintain the supply of raw goods to them in a time of war. All of these high-tech weapons are nothing but a flash in the pan if they cannot be replaced at the pace at which they are consumed, or faster. Bleeding edge, billion dollar bombers are worthless if there's no fuel to get them into the air. Blueprints for matchless weapons are worthless if manufacturing capacity cannot supply but a trickle to a rapidly depleting inventory. A gun without bullets becomes peer to a steel pipe in the hands of the person that wields it.
Now tell me, who has the largest and most rapidly expanding manufacturing and logistics capability in the world? It sure as hell isn't the US. Take a random sample of the objects presently surrounding you and look at their "made in" label. Notice a theme? What oil field does your fuel come from? There are strong odds against it being Texas.
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