Slashdot Mirror
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."
"Alice, yer not going to an asteroid, but to the Moon!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
out of the defense budget, and go do both. 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 without anyone who doesn't wear a brass hat noticing. Whats the saying? "A billion here, a billion there and pretty soon your talking real money?"
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. NASA needs to continue doing it all themselves until business is established in orbit - otherwise we waste a few decades waiting for it. As well, think of all the scientific discoveries we might make during this moon mission series. The last one turned out pretty well didn't it?
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
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.
Wow, Godwin's law in only 9 minutes!
Oh, no,no,no. It would have been a Godwin if he said that "Going to the Moon is what Hitler would have done." or "NASA acts like a bunch of Nazis."
But by making an implicit Ad Hominem attack on the GP, you are acting just like Goebbels.
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.
Skip Asteroid, Go To the Moon
Do not pass the LaGrange point, do not collect $2bn.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
You know, your argument would be more persuasive if you knew the difference between a million and a billion.
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?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
I really think we should have a dual focus, neither of which involves Mars:
1. Permanent manned presence on the moon. It's ridiculous that we went there, poked around a little bit, and now we have folks saying we should basically forget about it and send manned missions to Mars? Huh? What a crazy waste of an opportunity to test out long-term space solutions nearby, where we can monitor things closely and have round-trip human travel.
2. Robotic exploration and mining of asteroids. It's silly to expect that every visit to every place in our solar system will have to involve people at all times. Asteroid mining may not be a way to get rich quick, but it's a big goal and realistic task that will further advance practical space exploration and travel.
Long-term, both of these tasks have to be privatized, just as airplane flight started primarily as government/military and became commercial. Once we've worked on long-term human habitation beyond earth orbit, and once we've been able to have industrial-scale machinery operating in conditions far from earth, then it would make sense to leave the moon and asteroids to companies and move on to Mars.
I think a lot of the Mars-or-bust folks took away the completely wrong lesson from the moon missions. The moon missions were one of the most inspirational things mankind has ever done, true. But we only half did it. I can't believe anyone alive at the time didn't believe that within 40 years, we'd have a permanent presence on the moon. That idea had been floating around for a century before the moon missions, and was foremost in most of our thinking.
But then, after poking around a bit and doing all kinds of circus tricks (drive a golfball, speed around in a vehicle, etc), we abandoned the moon and set our sights somewhere else. The resulting drop in achievements and public inspiration (including the desire for funding and the desire to enter science careers) is NOT because we didn't have humans going somewhere humans have never been before, risking their lives, it is because we didn't even try to achieve the expected and exciting goal of a permanent presence. We can't look up at the moon and know that people are living and working there.
Would the kids be more interested in Curiousity than they would be in six men on Mars?
Wrong question. Better question: Would the kids be more interested in six men on Mars, or dozens of robotic missions to all corners of the Solar System that we could afford for the same money.
"Better question: Would the kids be more interested in six men on Mars, or dozens of robotic missions to all corners of the Solar System that we could afford for the same money."
There's absolutely no question they would be more interested in six men on Mars. If not for the Science, it would basically be an amazing reality show, with real, proper heroes on a desolate and hostile planet, millions of miles from home. If done right, NASA would have several hundreds of millions (if not over a billion) of people across the globe tuning in to find out how their heroes were doing. I wouldn't be surprised if the total revenue (advertisement, DVD/Blueray sales, merchandising) went a long way towards actually paying for the mission.
Nobody is going to do that for a robotic rover.
I think you've got your timeline of aviation backwards. It started as tinkerers in the back of their (private) bicycle shop, was pioneered by (private) individuals flying (private) planes in long-distance challenges to win (private) prize money. Now the two main builders of civilian aircraft are a huge conglomerate dependent on government contracts (Boeing) and an outright government-sponsored industry (Airbus).
0 1 - just my two bits
Per dollar spent, not spending a dollar at all has the best benefit. Give it a try. Apply this to your food, for a few week.