NASA: We're Not Racing SpaceX To Mars (seeker.com)

astroengine writes: According to NASA's new science chief Thomas Zurbuchen, the U.S. space agency doesn't see SpaceX as a competitor in a race to Mars and that if any private company gets there before NASA, it will be cause for celebration and a huge science boon. "If Elon Musk brought the samples in the door right now I'd throw him a party out of my own money," Zurbuchen told reporters on Monday. He also said that polarizing topics, including science issues, need to be tackled with empathy for and patience with people who have opposing viewpoints. "Just because somebody doesn't agree with us the first time we open our mouths doesn't mean that they're stupid, or we're smart, or the other way around. I think it's really important to create, bring some empathy to the table," he told Seeker. "There's a lot of stuff that can be learned by just talking to people." The report adds: "Before joining NASA, Zurbuchen was a professor of space science and aerospace engineering at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. His areas of expertise include solar and heliospheric physics, experimental space research, innovation and entrepreneurship, NASA said in a statement."

Comments

Good attitude

[Camembert]

I like his humble, collaborative attitude, befitting a true scientist. I expect that, in practice getting there in a repeatable way will be the result of various international cooperations where different organisations will bring their own skills. Empahy and dialogue can only accelerate the process.

Re: Good attitude

[WarJolt]

Ever hear the story the tortoise and the hare? In this version the hare blows up. It's really not that hard to be humble.

Re: Good attitude

[rtb61]

Priorities also count. So race to Mars or race to build a city on the Moon. You might find that the city on the moon is far more capable of supporting Mars exploration, than trying to do it from earth (less gravity and no atmosphere). So should NASA focus on the bleeding edge always or should they also start to focus more on building the infrastructure to give others the opportunities to make the most of that space infrastructure that NASA builds, say a landing and launch facility on the moon, Mars ship assembly, fuel generation etc.

Look at it this way, people say we can't afford, too much debt but you build space infrastructure and you add new assets to offset debts, like the entire surface of the moon or the entire planet Mars and of course a whole bunch of major asteroids and shit we ain't even out of the solar system yet, they can dump debt on all the new planets we find, those colonists will be born in hock up to their eyeballs but they will be out there exploring the galaxy.

Settling space means creating trillions in new assets and the value of those assets would be bound to the cost of getting there, that exclusivity value and only the best going means the best have something to aim for. Are you good enough to set foot on another world or not?

Re: Good attitude

[NotAPK]

"The moon's surface, however, leaves a great deal to be desired as a habitation location versus Mars."

Rei, I like your posts and you are well read/educated in rocketry and planetary science. But what are you basing this on? The 6 mbar CO2 atmosphere on Mars may as well be hard vacuum. Exposure to cosmic rays will be similar in either location. And it's a tough call between the abrasive dust on the moon and the perchlorate-laced soil on Mars. Neither is going to grow you some potatoes. No actual hard evidence for water has been discovered in either place, and until a robotic rover actually picks up a chunk of ice and melts it into water, no one in their right mind is going to travel there on the assumption that they can find water and use it in some way. OK, I'll concede, the gravity on Mars will feel more normal for the astronauts.

The moon is closer, which makes it much easier to get to.

Re: Good attitude

[Rei]

Indeed. And that's just one reason. Here's a few more.

  * We don't know at what gravity levels negative health consequences will occur and at what rate. But the moon's significantly lower gravity will certainly compare poorly to Mars in this regard, regardless of how Mars fares.

  * Mars's atmosphere may be thin, but when it comes to radiation, it's a big help. Radiation levels on the surface of Mars are fairly similar to those aboard the ISS, and much lower than on the moon.

  * For long-term sustainability, Mars has a much more diverse surface mineral distribution. The moon's surface is certainly not uniform, but it's been altered by notably fewer and less diverse processes than Mars. It's also relatively depleted in volatiles (aka, elements that tend to be important for life) and low in heavy metals and dense minerals (often important to industry).

  * Attempts to work around the problems tend to butt up against each other. For example, "peaks of eternal light" (questionable how "eternal" they are - SELENE suggests no more than 89%) where you can get more steady temperatures and light levels, are tiny and scarce, while areas with a significant hydrogen signature (water or hydrogen-bearing minerals) are very unevenly spread (aka, not particularly likely to be associated with a particular peak's permanently-shadowed adjacent crater floors), and even if so would require long transports to and from the peak. The only real hope for that appears to be Peary Crater, which has "eternal light" peaks on its northern rim, and some indication of hydrogen enhancement, mainly in craterlets in its southeast. But it's 79km across.

  * Having hydrogen alone isn't enough - you also need nitrogen, carbon, and other compounds that the moon is extremely depleted in. If they can't be found on the surface, another prospect might be drilling for trapped volcanic gases. But that's speculative, and the technological challenges in doing so render it anything but near-term.

Re: Good attitude

[jellomizer]

Well there is a key different in culture between government and private industry.
Government: When you make a mistake and failed. You get punished. Successes are treated as minor rewards quickly forgotten.
Private Industry: When you make a mistake you get a minor punishment and it is quickly forgotten. While Successes are touted and reasons for promotion.

There is a good an bad for both methods. Government needs to error on the side of caution this means things will move slower... However there will be less collateral damage.
Private Industry you can get things out much faster. However mistakes on the way can have a large cumulative cost to them.
 

Re: Good attitude

[Rei]

Indeed - if you can't get volatiles like hydrogen (water does appear to be available in some locations, but there are limits, and we really don't know how accessible it is), your options for propellant become extremely limited. Without H, He, C or N, your best propellant option would be something like extremely fine aluminum dust burned with oxygen in an extremely oxygen rich environment (would probably need a ceramic engine). It'd have to be oxygen rich because Al2O3 condenses out of the exhaust stream at very high temperatures and can thus no longer be put to work via expansion; it needs to transfer its heat to a working fluid, and you don't have a lot of options apart from oxygen. Another potential working gas would be metallic sodium (from sodium/aluminum powder fuel burned with O2, very fuel rich). The obvious downside is that your "gas" would condense out at 1156K, so you wouldn't be able to expand it as much as you'd like. But at least you'd get a good chunk of the energy, including the heat of condensation of the Al2O3 - and it's a lighter gas than O2, so that's an advantage.

In both cases you face a challenge of how to burn the fuel and oxidizer, since you don't have a binder for a traditional hybrid, nor a liquid to gel powders into. And you wouldn't want to have to keep aluminum in a molten state; that's totally impractical. Your best option is probably taking a cue from ALICE (aluminum-ice): they have the aluminum powder embedded in an ice matrix, burned as a solid rocket. In the case of LOX as the oxidizer (aka, you don't have ice), you could use solid oxygen as the binder. So, 54K or less. As a last option, I suppose you could try fluidizing the powder and spraying it into a combustion chamber along with turbopumped LOX... but I've never even heard of an attempt to make a rocket like that.

Lots of options open up when you have carbon and/or nitrogen even without a source of hydrogen (for example, on Mars without ice mining or Venus without acid harvesting), such as burning carbon monoxide or cyanogen. But without volatiles... rocketry is tricky.

Humility and Empathy

[_archangel]

"Just because somebody doesn't agree with us the first time we open our mouths doesn't mean that they're stupid, or we're smart, or the other way around. I think it's really important to create, bring some empathy to the table," I wish this was the de facto attitude people took when communicating about all aspects of life, not just science.

Re:Humility and Empathy

[CustomSolvers2]

What you describe is a quite standard behaviour among reasonable people and, presumably, scientists are reasonable. But one thing is being tolerant and understanding with a poorly-communicated sensible idea (or even with a not-that-sensible idea built over deep knowledge or perhaps just good faith or hard work); and a completely different story is being tolerant with a complete nonsense generated from a poor understanding (and, even worse, egoism and shortsightness).

NASA is very grateful for what SpaceX and people like Elon Musk can bring: fresh air and popular support to a field which is starting to find difficulties to justify their huge budgets. The recent Elon's claims have put them in a very delicate situation; they are a scientific and objective-correctness-driven organisation which cannot agree with impossible fantasies, but they also want all the associated support.

I have personally been very tolerant and understanding with people who throw a pure nonsense, want to be heard and, when all the results are wrong, don't want to take responsibility (or blame anything else). BTW, these people tend to misunderstand the word "empathy" as "I can do/say anything. Until proven wrong, I expect my opinion to be considered and to be part of all the important decisions. Once proven wrong, I expect my actions to be forgiven and forgotten because I didn’t know what I was doing or I was angry or I thought whatever, etc.", whose better definition would be "spoiled kid"; empathy means putting yourself in others’ shoes and, in that case, I would feel really ashamed, would expect to bear all the responsibility on my shoulders and would feel even bothered by anyone trying to unfairly reduce the impact of my actions. Note that these people tend to buy their way in and seem to be actually required, but this is only an illusion (precisely created by others like them). Engineering, science, objective-correctness should be exclusively managed by knowledgeable people; and big idea and money individuals should focus on what they are good at (enjoying their money and making more). If everyone focused on their specific field and, for anything outside it, relied on "I will let the experts there take care of everything, because I want to get a proper result", the world would be a much better place.

In summary, I don't think that NASA (or any other knowledge-prone organisation) should be tolerant or request some understanding for what doesn't make any sense. If NASA failed at anything, nobody (much less that kind of people; always asking for understanding, never delivering it) would be tolerant with them. If NASA started making shoes and they did a terrible job, everyone would merciless and rightfully attack them.

of course it isnt' a race

[Anonymous Coward]

When NASA gets to Mars, SpaceX will happily welcome them in to see how the colony has been progressing and offer them some tea.
 

Good article in Nat Geo re SpaceX/NASA

[turp182]

The current issue of National Geographic has a good article which already explains that SpaceX and NASA are basically partners (SpaceX shares everything with NASA for instance).

It's paywalled, but here's the article (I read the tree based version):
http://www.nationalgeographic....

Anyway, nothing to see here, move along.

Re:Of course they would say that

[Oswald McWeany]

I'd be happy if India got there first. With China or Russia, their intentions may worry me, but I'll be happy for the fact we, as a species has got there.

Re:SpaceX isn't going to Mars

[MrLogic17]

You must be new to space news. NASA has blown up more rockets that SpaceX has ever built.

If you need a refresher:
https://www.google.com/webhp?q...