Back To The Moon – This Time With A Plan, Please
Why We Go to the Moon. It starts with a mission statement, Air & Space
“A mission statement is vital for people to succinctly understand and fully comprehend the reasons for returning to the Moon. Ideally, a mission statement is a simple, declarative sentence, one that permits no ambiguity about intentions or execution. There is much truth in the belief that if you can’t sum up your mission in just a few words, you probably don’t understand it yourself. One’s mission statement must encompass both anticipated activities and imply the value of its accomplishment.”
The Interplanetary Political Football of Space Exploration, Scientific American
“Leaving aside the harsh realities of any country’s political motivations to go to space, as a member of the astronomical community, it’s hard not to feel like a passenger in the back seat of a car, watching an ongoing struggle over the steering wheel. Having the vision for our space program remain agile and responsive in a changing science and technology landscape is one thing, but it bears remembering that if all we do is pivot, we’ll never get anywhere.”
“We go to the Moon to learn how to live and work productively on another world.”
Works for me. This is the essence of the “Moon First” logic…that the paradigms, technologies, and support infrastructures need to be tested and tuned 1 week away from Earth before expecting it them to perform for far more lengthy Mars missions.
You’d think the learning experiences of ISS in long duration flight would also have convinced people of the need for experience with landed bases in cislunar orbit before heading all the way to Mars.
close … is this an extended visit or a permanent settlement ? which would make part of the mission “to expand human presence beyond Earth”.
The grand challenges require demonstration that the crew and equipment can survive the long duration (~ 1 yr) trip economically *in the proper environment* (micro-g, full galactic cosmic radiation) to head beyond Earth/Lunar Orbits. Must also have ability to land heavy objects on Mars through atmosphere. The entire architecture must be based on reuse as stated in the VSE. None of these enabled by ‘mooning’.
GWP: “Stage 2 initiates human exploration of the solar system with a variety of destinations including “near Earth objects” such as asteroids, the Lagrange points; and the vicinities of the moon and Mars. Note that human landings on the moon or Mars are not included, although landings on the Martian moons (Phobos or Deimos) could be made, as they have negligible gravitational attraction and no atmosphere…both safer and more cost effective than going directly to the planetary surfaces as landing and ascent vehicles would not be required.”
o Asteroids brought all the resources to Earth/lunar
– most of those are near Mars and beyond.
o Common LV configurations lower certification costs
o LVs that carry cargo provide demonstrated reliability
– they may find that ‘unknown unknown’
o Higher annual flight rate spreads fixed costs lowering $/kg
o Solids increase LAS mass and are expendable
o 80% of mission mass is dirt cheap, Class D propellant
– enables future LV changes and pursuit of resuse
o Excess launch capacity; largest payload <= 20mT
o NASA demand enables multiple smaller LVs launch rates
– lowers the costs to DOD and other payloads
o No one launches 1B+, 10mT capsule on 1B+, 100mT LV
Good luck Dr Spudis. I hope your wisdom finally sticks.
Many/most of the regulars here have posted an opinion on the ‘moon first’ or ‘Mars first’ question; and from those discussions I’ve learned that there are two arguments:
• Luna is great practice — or, Luna and Mars have technology requirements so dissimilar that Luna first wont aid an eventual trip to Mars;
• Luna is close, making rescue easier — or, it’s far enough away that comparing distances isn’t useful;
• Luna offers built-in radiation shielding — or, protecting people traveling to Mars is a solved problem.
There are others. But it boils down to this: there are no compelling reasons to choose the moon or Mars first. In fact, aside from the scientific bonanza, there’s no reliable reason to go to either, aside from the ‘We are explorers!’ argument.
But what if Columbus (pick your European explorer) had, rather than those teeny sail boats, something like Royal Caribbean’s Harmony of the Seas’? Isn’t the discussion different with BFR in the picture?
Every possible destination becomes reachable and affordable.
All true as to destination-arguments.
But my vote would still go for Mars because it is a world more geologically evolved than the Moon. Mars has an atmosphere, clouds, ice (two kinds), volcanic and sedimentary rocks (and probably metamorphic ones too), climate, seasons, ice caps, flowing water in days of yore…
Bottom line? Mars is the most earthlike place we know of that isn’t Earth.
Columbus had a revolutionary new technology; the Spanish galeons were much more practical and seaworthy than Norse longships and were, in general, affordable and reusable. His knowledge of navigation was limited; he understood the trade winds but believed the Earth to be much smaller than it actually is. His requests for funding were rejected by most authorities not because they believed the Earth was flat, but because the actual circumference of the Earth had been accurately measured centuries earlier by Eratosthenes https://en.wikipedia.org/wi… and it was well known that reaching China from Europe by sailing west would be impractical. Of course the existence of the Americas wasn’t suspected, except by the numerous people who already lived there.
The ships of the Columbus expedition were not galleons. The Santa Maria was a carrack (fat and slow designed for carrying more cargo and had larger crews: 52) and the Nina and Pinta were caravels. Caravels had a shallower draft than a nao and did not have much cargo space. But were able to explore shallow bays and the mouths of rivers.
Yes, they were developed in Portugal from experience gained from the expeditions Prince Henry sent out along Africa to find a route around it.
The galleons were developed in response to the discovery of the New World as a ship better able to meet the transportation needs.
Specifically to get around the laws of the Spanish Empire governing how many ships could make the trip. It favored the biggest ships possible.
They also had much better economies to scale and more capable of defending against English and Dutch raiders.
Actually, northern European fishing/whaling boats visited the Grand Banks for a few centuries before Columbus. It’s likely that hearing reports of the description of Newfoundland/St.Lawrence convinced Columbus that they were describing the north-eastern Russian coast, perhaps around Kamchatka/Okhotsk. Likewise the descriptions of native fishermen would have sounded like Asiatic Arctic tribes from that region.
Hence if you could reach Russia via a stormy, ice-filled northern route, it should be much easier to reach the valuable east-stretching Indies via a warm tropical route.
It wouldn’t be hard to convince yourself that all those clever university types must be wrong about the size of the world.
We know a lot more about the Moon than Columbus knew about the New World, unfortunately the Moon has no easily exploited resources (or natives) so science fiction notwithstanding, the economics remain challanging. Even Helium 3 is, regrettably, easily manufactured on Earth and not even particularly expensive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
I’ve read that claim before, but never seen any evidence for it aside from the Greenland Norse being active off the coast of northern North America.
It’s not totally out there, given that the Norse had explored the northern Canadian islands, Labrador, and Newfoundland. Ships from Europe were trading with the Greenland Norse up until the early 15th century. But so far it’s just a claim, based on the fact that fishermen were there pretty quick in the 16th century once reports got out of how rich the fisheries were.
There are plenty of fragments of evidence, like the Portuguese stories of “Bacalhau”, the “land of cod”, which correlate with Newfoundland; leading to the Corte-Real expedition in the 1470’s. Just stories about that expedition alone (lands to the north-west, full of Asiatic people) could have been enough to convince Columbus about a route to Asia.
(And obviously the Norse lands knew of Iceland/Greenland, and there were Viking settlements in Newfoundland around 1000AD. It would be fairly extraordinary, given the quality of European ship-building by the 15th century, that if there was a bad year in northern European fisheries, they wouldn’t seek out the more difficult but virtually guaranteed grounds south-west of Greenland. I suspect European ports were generally full of such stories.)
While the plural of anecdote isn’t evidence, sometimes it is a big neon sign saying “Look over here —>”
The longships took the vikings around more of the world and quicker than the 15th or 16th century ships ever did: oceans seas and rivers.
well, it should be much cheaper to get to the moon. Clearly the Moon avoids a lot of the radiation risks; I didn’t think this was a “solved problem”. Robots can be remotely controlled (from Earth) in near real time. Sure if you get into trouble on the Moon then recovery or support is some time away, but not years as it would be for Mars. Certainly we can develop means for ISRU, and no doubt these will have to be tweeked to work on Mars; but at least we’ll have a starting point (or another data point, other than Earth). At a minimum on the Moon we can try out technology and methods where the cycle time is days, not years.
And I’m sure Columbus would have preferred to travel on the “Harmony of the Seas” and avoid a lot of the scurvy.
Cheaper is a relative term. If by going to the moon it ends up being a 5 or 10 year project and is then canceled so we can afford to move on to a Mars project, than its mere unsustainability makes it very expensive and a diversion of funds away from what could be designed as a more sustainable and permanent off Earth colonization attempt. And if your starting point for ISRU is like going to mine water in a desert and then alter it to mine in permafrost, then no, it is not a good, efficient or relevant starting point.
I agree, if you have a crystal ball and can see the future. I believe the plan should be for a permanent, ultimately self sustaining settlement on the Moon, and not a project to be cancelled.
Sure we could prototype ISRU here on Earth but how relevant will that be for ISRU offworld ? I accept that ISRU on the Moon won’t be directly applicable to Mars but it is another data point and the experience developing it should be somewhat applicable.
First the Moon, then Mars … permanent settlements for both.
But it boils down to this: there are no compelling reasons to choose the moon or Mars first.
The compelling reason for the Moon is simple: NASA cannot afford to go to Mars, not on any reasonable time frame. it *could* afford a lunar surface program, albeit only barely, and only then with aggressive use of commercial partners.
NASA can’t factor in BFR at this point. And Congress will refuse to do so.
That’s exactly my point: there being no compelling reason to choose one or the other, money decides.
As to whether or not NASA can afford to go to the moon: as an interested observer I would say not, based mostly on experiences with SLS, with the whole Ares silliness, among others. NASA just isn’t equipped to do it any other way than the Apollo way.
Of course you are correct about BFR, but the times they are a-changin’.
How long could it afford a lunar surface program given the increasing budgetary problems of the next 35 years (a problem for all human space flight). How internally sustainable can the moon ever become and how quickly can it get to that point? What will NASA be doing on the moon that is worthy of the money spent going there. What is the 100 year out plan for the moon? And if you say going there to do science is the driver then it is a lost cause. I have actual lunar samples in my hand and have no “compelling” argument for sending humans there. Not that I would not go myself. The moon for humans is good for two things, a Vegas style resort and a retirement community. Build those and a spacecraft that can get a minimum of 200 people back and forth every week and you might have something.
Excellent questions all, Daniel.
The most immediate answer is that NASA will only be able to afford it in the first place if it can maximize the commercial role in such a base – both to supply (and expand) the base itself (which would inherently be directed toward scientific purposes), as well as to make the base a resource for cislunar fuel depots.
Of course, all of that still involves a sovereign client (or more than one). Getting private clients is going to be more of a challenge, especially if none are actually living or working on or around the Moon. Tourism is a possibility; it may be a while before those develop.
But I think a lunar pole base with a major commercial ISRU/fuel depot architecture could make at least a man-tended base affordable for a lengthy period of time – or at least for what NASA is paying for ISS operations now.
There is a common subset of needs that they share…
1: They are both outside of close Earth orbit.
2: You can’t breath on them.
3: They both have major day to night temperature extremes.
4: They are both not Earth.
Also, I do think there is a world of difference between a “practically anytime” launch window to a shallow gravity well and an “every twenty or so months” launch window to the skeleton coast of exploration spacecraft, inside a much deeper gravity well.
So is every other planet and planitesimal in the solar system. Are you adding them all to this argument? People need to understand the big picture from both a human evolution perspective (e.g., 2 billion more costly humans on Earth in 35 years) and what is the optimal location in the solar system to begin “living off the land” as soon as possible.
You just made my point without realizing it.
You just reminded me that the moon is a close-in, shorter innovation/development cycle, lower cost, lower risk version of every other destination in the Solar System. Once we’ve mastered it, then sure we’ll need to adapt that knowledge to other planetoids, but that adaptation is smaller than it is from here to there.
It’s like learning a second language…learning a third is easier because you’ve already learned how to learn languages.
And, Michael, you’re right. A week is still too long. We need to shorten it and we won’t do that with chemical propulsion…and “wait until something better comes along” won’t work anymore either. We’re all sick of waiting. We’ve spent an entire generation waiting.
No, I completely realized it.
I disagree that there are “no compelling reason to choose moon or Mars first.” I published a paper, now two years ago that gives plenty of rational and compelling reasons: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/a…
More important than having a plan is having the right organization structure. A NASA based return will be blown by the winds of politics with each change of Administration as it has since the 1990’s.
You need to view the Moon instead as the new frontier of the Earth’s economy and approach from the perspective of economic development, not pure exploration. The best way to do that is with a dedicated government corporation focusing on funding the creation of infrastructure, basically a lunar of the TVA.
It’s function will be to use federal dollars to fund development of the Gateway station, the Moon Base and a lunar communication system. It would have the flexibility NASA doesn’t have to partner and fund commercial entities. Not just direct funding as with NASA, but also with development loans and tax credits. It would also be able to, as with TVA and Comsat, issue revenue bonds to selected projects with the clear potential of generating revenue. It would also be able to benefit from revenue streams from IP from research conducted at lunar facilities. It could also generate from sharing with commercial partners the sale of lunar material to commercial markets for it.
The revenue opportunities available to it would make a lunar return substainable and enable the expansion of the Earth’s economy. It also would provide political stability, since it would take an Act of Congress to create it and another Act to close it down, the political stability private enterprise needs to develop the Moon.
Finally, with the Moon off the table, NASA will be free to focus on the next step outward, sending humans to Mars without the threat of being whipsawed back to the Moon with every change of Administration.
Maybe what we really need are updated versions of the Dutch or British East India companies or the Hudson’s Bay company. Now don’t get worked up about exploitation, colonialism, etc. I’m just talking about the fact that a lot of the development by Europeans in far off places were done by these sorts of not entirely corporate, but not quite government entities. And their was money to be made.
Which is exactly what a public-private lunar development corporation would be. Its tested in history as being successful.
It’s what it might be. These old corporations became almost sovereign states in their own right, which sometimes included police and military powers. This sort of thing is often hinted at in SF, usually in a negative light (Total Recall, Aliens, etc.), but it’s probably going to have to go that route in order to get the job done.
Except this isn’t the 17th Century. Those firms acted within the legal and moral framework of the era they existed in. Modern ones will act within the current societal norms. This is what those science fiction stories get wrong. But then if they didn’t use those old models the stories would just be boring courtroom dramas and Congressional Hearings.
Well, let’s just say that I don’t think human nature has been repealed yet. A lot of people think it has, but I’m not one of them.
Those models depended on the existence of exploitable resources.
If there ain’t exploitable resources, nothing’s going to happen.
These are all very pertinent issues. A mission statement is just a bunch of words without identifying …
Why are we doing this ? merely for exploration or for commercial, or political, gain ?
Who’s money are we using ? Who gets to profit ?
How are we going to organise ourselves ? private, or public, companies ? or government agencies ?? international consortiums ?
How will we arbitrate disputes ??
But the mission statement, like the catchy name (Lunar Gateway) look so good on the Power Point slides 🙂
(Adopts Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonation) “America! Get your ass to the Moon. Wait the hell are you waiting for?! Do it – do it now!!”
I think Elon said it better: “It’s 2017…we should have a lunar base by now. What the hell’s going on?”
Yup – he did. God bless him!! And I don’t know if he can do a good Arnie impression or not…
We choose to go to the moon, not because it is easy, but because it is affordable for thousands of billionaires buying tickets on dirt cheap high risk rocket companies who successfully demonstrate miraculous feats of rocketry.
A government with a $20 trillion deficit is too busy going into further debt to keep the money flow shell game going by helping people who vote for them get mediocre jobs, houses, and cars to pay taxes, car notes, mortgages, insurance, and medical bills.
and as the Koch brothers just stated about doing the tax cuts … don’t worry about the deficits just cut the taxes
While Dr. Spudis is right, we do need to know why we are going, I do not think the mission is necessarily NASA’s. In fact, I am pretty sure that if NASA led the way it has been, no one will ever get back to the moon. This is for a number of reasons.
NASA, as it has done business for most of the last 3 decades wastes a lot of time and money and does not get very far very fast. Tied together with the changing hands of politics, this leads no progress. Do NASA civil servants offer a unique service or ability? Have they designed and built hardware and managed technical efforts? Are they just pushing paper? Maybe they just operate the systems. We have some pretty technologically advanced systems that are not operated by NASA pilots or engineers. Why would that be a NASA role?
What is the job? is it a technology development job? If someone were developing new space technologies, then I might see that NASA has a role. I think new technology development has been NASA’s job. Are we developing new kinds of propulsion systems? environmental control systems? cooling systems? roving systems unique to the lunar surface? Although in the past, whether the distant past and LRV tires made out of piano wire, or recent past and sabatier reactors for use in environmental control on ISS, NASA just hired those jobs out; NASA had little role besides signing the check. I could see a role for NASA for those sorts of technology development functions. That is the kind of work NASA engineers do.
I think trying to do new kinds of scientific experiments-those unique to the space or lunar environment, would be NASA’s job, but on ISS, NASA told the scientists and scientific institutions for many years that this was not NASA’s role. I am not sure why, but NASA abandoned a lot of the scientists who had supported NASA programs for decades. I think the AMS, which is probably the most sophisticated and expensive scientific instrument on ISS is a solar or galactic physics experiment supported by dozens of nations; in the US it is sponsored by the DOE. Years ago NASA turned the science job over to an outside group, CASIS. There is a lot less science going on now on ISS. A lot of ISS was not built by NASA. NASA’s role on ISS is mainly operating a facility. So who will support lunar science? NASA? The DOE? The USGS? The NSF?
People have been to the moon. Lots of unmanned vehicles have been to the moon. Are we developing new technologies to get to the moon, or just building new spaceships? Look at Orion-what new technology went into Orion? They went with safe-simple-soon for a reason. It is Apollo-shaped because that was a known. They went with the avco heat shield because that was a known. They went with parachutes and ocean splash down because those were knowns and easier to do than land landings and reusability. Much of the Service Module was turned over to ESA because they could develop it relatively easily based on ATV-a known and existing system. Even after all this, it sure did not turn out soon, I don’t think Orion is too simple and safety has yet to be shown. So if all the technologies were known and little new was required, why not do it the way Dragon or CST-100 were done and put it out on a fee for service contract basis? Maybe someone else can provide the capability more quickly for less money; that is the American way, capitalism, competition.
A lot of people think it is NASA’s job to ‘operate’ or perform the mission. What does this mean ? Provide the astronauts? Train the astronauts? Provide advice and consultation during the mission through mission control, provide mission control, coordinate recoveries? I think these are all covered in the fee for service kinds of contracts that NASA has been signing. 550 astronauts have flown. They have a fun and exciting job, but not a job that is particularly unique anymore. No one knows who the astronauts are anymore. Besides this they spend a lot of time simply waiting to fly.
If they are testing new kinds of technologies, maybe you could make a case for a NASA astronaut. NASA astronauts were part of earlier rocket plane programs, although those flights were first flown by the companies building the rocket planes to make sure the rocket planes worked as they were supposed to; and then the test piloting duties were shared with the branches of the DOD and NASA as new technologies were tested and new flight regimes were reached.
I think the longer term goal is lunar exploitation, not exploration. We are trying to advance economy and industry in space and on the planets. Eventually we might expand humanity to other worlds. In time we might do some exploration too, but I don’t think that is what we are willing to spend a lot of taxpayer cash on. Lets do the explorations when they are less expensive. Exploitation, commerce, industry, the government might have a role in investing in these, but maybe the cost burden needs to be shared with investors looking to make a return?
Until these kinds of questions are addressed and answered, I don’t think anyone is going anywhere. NASA cannot do the job as they have tried to do it on the budget they have for human space flight. And Presidents and Congresses for 50 years have said that, not knowing where all this leads, the percentage of the national budget that NASA has been getting is enough-there is not going to be a big increase in NASA’s budget; even if there were, what would it be for? And besides, if NASA’s role is that important, industries and corporate interests could sponsor a lot of the effort.
So the job is really not just to identify a mission statement, but also to figure out who’s mission it is.
“NASA, as it has done business for most of the last 3 decades wastes a lot of time and money and does not get very far very fast. “
That should read:
NASA, as it has been directed by congress, for most of the last 3 decades wastes a lot of time and money and does not get very far very fast.
As I mention it is in part due to the continuously changing political situation-but only in part. To some extent NASA needs to get things done faster, in increments, and at the costs they estimate. If they cannot get it done because of political interference then they need to insulate themselves by trying some other process, like commercial cargo and crew has seemed to work.
For supporting life on Earth, the most important part of space is LEO. It may be more important to make it economical and practical to get to LEO than to make it possible to get to Mars.
Exploration has historically been an economic activity at heart. The pioneering spirit stuff is spackled on afterwards. The question is, as put in the article, do we want to bring the solar system into our economic sphere? If yes then we need to learn how to work there. The moon offers two things that Mars cannot. Operational tempo and economic relevance.
The moon is closer. We can roll in lessons learned far faster there than Mars. So the effective ROI is higher. The physiological challenges are less. Rescue is feasible. So the operational tempo is better overall.
The economic relevance is not so much about mining helium 3 or any of that stuff, though it may become so at some yet to be determined future. It is more likely our rare earth metals economy will become the driver. Either way operating in a hard vacuum in the presence of regolith is key. Dust that is free from the erosion qualities of atmospheric varieties. Dust that trashed most of the Apollo hardware to within an inch of its useful life. Dust that is most likely to cover all the solar system objects of economic interest. Including those in the near term that have those rare earth elements. None of which need us to go down a gravity well with an atmosphere to get. They do however require we have a grip on surface EVA in the presence of this regolith. There is also the nature of prolonged exposure to zero g. Do we have any data what the exposure to low gravity does for us? All this can be done on the moon in preparation to go for the Red Ball.
As for the target. What about those lava tubes? We have ready made shelters there. Even a half decent target for a robotic mission.