This is not a NASA Website. You might learn something. It's YOUR space agency. Get involved. Take it back. Make it work - for YOU.
Exploration

Mars Czar Scott Hubbard Issues A Proclamation About The Moon

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
November 27, 2017
Filed under
Mars Czar Scott Hubbard Issues A Proclamation About The Moon

Keeping the Focus on Mars, Scott Hubbard, editorial
“The Moon is scientifically much less diverse and interesting than Mars. For example, no one claims that life could have originated on the Moon – unlike Mars. The technologies needed for landing and living on an airless body like the Moon are quite different from Mars. Lunar technologies will have limited benefit to future Mars exploration. Finally, some claim that the Moon’s resources, especially water ice, can be exploited for future exploration. In general, the Moon is extremely dry. There are data from previous missions to suggest that there may be more abundant water ice trapped at the poles of the Moon, but getting there and mining in temperatures nearing absolute zero will prove very challenging and expensive. By comparison, Mars has water in much greater concentrations distributed more broadly across the planet.”
Keith’s note: Former NASA “Mars Czar” and Planetary Society Mars advocate Scott Hubbard clearly thinks that there is no value in going back to the Moon. And he’s not afraid to cherry pick facts and skew recent history to make his point. Of course he just thinks that he can proclaim that Mars is the nation’s priority (he still thinks that he’s the Mars Czar, apparently). Add in the Planetary Society’s barely concealed aversion to putting humans on the surface of Mars. It should be quite obvious that the Planetary Society is soon going to be in an adversarial position once a new NASA Administrator is in place and this Administration’s pivot toward the Moon becomes more evident. If Hubbard et al have their way everyone but America will be going to the Moon and only robots will ever land on Mars.
Oh yes, Mars Czar Scott – you did see this latest research about Mars, water, etc.? Resources to support human activity are abundant – but they are hard to access – everywhere.
Recurring Martian Streaks: Flowing Sand, Not Water?
“The findings published today in Nature Geoscience argue against the presence of enough liquid water for microbial life to thrive at these sites.”
Planetary Society Is For And Against Mars Colonization Or Something, earlier post
The Planetary Society is For And Against Human Spaceflight, earlier post

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

85 responses to “Mars Czar Scott Hubbard Issues A Proclamation About The Moon”

  1. Johnhouboltsmyspiritanimal says:
    0
    0

    Funny how he slams the VSE for unrealistic budget yet seems to gloss over the unsustainable and extreme budgetary albatross that is the current Orion/SLS stay the course to mars infrastructure. Mars will never be achieved by NASA until it can be done in a president one or two terms. He espouses sample return but that has nothing to do with human spaceflight nor would it be impacted by a “detour” to the Moon.

    • George Purcell says:
      0
      0

      And it will never be achieved within an 8 year period without an actual cis-lunar transportation system to function as a springboard.

    • Michael Spencer says:
      0
      0

      The money spent to date exploring Mars is analogous to the SLS ‘albatross’: there is a huge sunk expense, and there is a well-developed, active planetary science community with careers made in Mars research.

      • George Purcell says:
        0
        0

        How so? Everything done so far not only contributes but is essential to any serious attempt at a crewed mission.

        An SLS-type sunk expense would be starting to dump billions and billions into a Mars sample return mission. Thankfully we have not done that yet.

        • fcrary says:
          0
          0

          A large part of the MSL mission was to develop entry, decent and landing technology needed for a sample return. In fact, if you look at the 2003-2013 Decadal Survey, that, and not the science done by Curiosity, was the main reason they were strongly supportive of the MSL mission.

          The Mars 2020 rover, currently in development, is part of the 2013-2023 Decadal Survey’s plan to accomplish a sample return in a series of three missions (caching samples on the surface, launching it into Mars orbit, and returning them to Earth.) Mars 2020 is the caching part of what the survey described called “Mars Astrobiology Explorer-Cacher (MAX-C).”

          Since both of those missions are in the $2 to $3 billion price range, I’m not sure what you mean when you say we aren’t “dump[ing] billions and billions into a Mars sample return mission.”

          • George Purcell says:
            0
            0

            Landing a highly capable science rover as part of a robotic exploration campaign is hardly wasteful spending analogous to SLS.

            The cache function for 2020 is a small portion of the science package for the mission; as long as they don’t land at Gusev it has independent value as ground truth and new landed science from a new location.

            Now if NASA does in fact fund some missions to go pick up the caches we could be in waste mode. But I honestly do not expect that to ever occur.

          • Paul F. Dietz says:
            0
            0

            The expertise at powered landing on Mars, developed at JPL, has carried over directly to landing the Falcon 9 first stage. Lars Blackmore is from JPL.

          • fcrary says:
            0
            0

            Well, if the 2003-2013 Decadal Survey hadn’t favored a sample return, MSL/Curiosity probably wouldn’t have flown. At least not in the form we know it. While Curiosity had done significant science, the NASA position about its budget and cost growth was based on the Decadal Survey and that was based on working towards a sample return.

            And, if you don’t think NASA is spending money to pick up the caches, you’re mistaken. It isn’t too much so far, but there is money going into mission studies and into related technology development for the cache retrieval and return.

      • Donald Barker says:
        0
        0

        “active planetary science community” which may begin to falter as larger and larger gaps occur in missions and jobs and we find that no younger people want to dig in and study in these fields because there is no pay off for them to do so. Add this to diminishing STEM and the potential burdens on students and access to learning from things such as the proposed tax bill, and the gaps get worse. The dominos are being aligned that will drastically affect all that happens in the next 25 years.

    • Paul451 says:
      0
      0

      He espouses sample return but that has nothing to do with human spacesuitart not would it be impacted by a “detour” to the Moon.

      I enjoy spacesuitart as much as the next nerd, but I assume from context that you intended another word there.

  2. DougSpace says:
    0
    0

    Problem #1 with such Mars advocates is that they have the science exploration-only perspective. So, yes, Mars is scientifically more interesting. But most lunar advocates are interested in more than just exploration but in development and settlement as well. That’s why commercial space advocates are mostly Moon-firsters. Does Hubbard believe that the near-by Moon is harder to develop than Mars?

    Problem #2 with such Mars advocates is that they assume that the purpose of the Moon is only as a stepping stone to Mars without recognizing that the Moon is a legitimate destination in its own right. Imagine if lunar advocates were to switch things around as say, “We got some lunar advocates together in our Affording Moon Workshop and we concluded that going to Mars was unnecessary for going to the Moon. Therefore, the entirety of NASA’s HSF budget (plus inflation) should go to the Moon and not Mars”.

    Without success, I have emailed the leading Mars advocates trying to make the case that they need to support a very cost-effective plan for real lunar development (aka “Lunar COTS”) otherwise they could find themselves on the outside looking in while lunar advocates consume NASA’s HSF budget. Although it would be poetic justice for Mars advocates to experience what lunar advocates have experienced the last eight years, the best outcome would be an approach where lunar development was so cost-effective that enough money remained available to start the steps to Mars starting with a Mars flyby mission ASAP.

    • George Purcell says:
      0
      0

      I’d argue that we are still 5-8 launch windows away from being ready for a landed crewed mission to Mars. We have the assets to scout potential landing locations but we need ground truth from multiple sites, landed assets at a selected site, and probably a mission or two similar to Apollo 8 – 10 to test out the mission architecture and be able to have telepresence for the potential landing sites.

    • sunman42 says:
      0
      0

      Sounds like a great opportunity for private enterprise, then. Why isn’t Mr. Musk more interested in going to the moon than to Mars? Maybe because there’s been four decades of research in terraforming Mars, and you can’t terraform a rock with no atmosphere at all?

      • Steve Pemberton says:
        0
        0

        Musk’s well known singular goal is colonizing Mars so yes he has no interest in the Moon. Just as he has no interest in shipping cargo to a LEO space station, or launching commercial satellites. But he’s doing those things both as a way to provide income for his ultimate Mars expeditions, and also using them as a means to develop the capabilities of his systems. I expect that Musk would participate in any lunar missions for the same reasons, unless he was so far along in his Mars program that he decides to go it alone, but I don’t think that is likely.

    • Paul451 says:
      0
      0

      Problem #2 with such Mars advocates is that they assume that the purpose of the Moon is only as a stepping stone to Mars

      They are doing so in response to lunar advocates trying to glom onto a Mars-focused program by pretended that the moon can (and must!) be a “training ground” for Mars. (An idea you head repeated in this forum, often.)

      I’m not an advocate of Mars-HSF (hell I think Mars science could use a break for a few decades). But the arguments of lunar advocates are certainly no less garbage than those of their Martian brethren.

      • Jeff2Space says:
        0
        0

        Agreed. The conditions on the moon are different enough from Mars (quite different actually) that the hardware to land, survive, and take off must be quite a bit different.

        Suit cooling, for example, is “easy” on the moon by using sublimation cooling (freezing water and letting it evaporate). But on Mars, that technique won’t work because the tenuous Martian atmosphere prevents it from working effectively. Worse, the higher gravity on Mars means that the (necessarily more complex) cooling system must have very little mass.

        • fcrary says:
          0
          0

          Suit cooling isn’t inherently harder on Mars. It’s inherently different, but solutions have been suggested and studied. What definitely does not work is the current approach, which deals with all possible extremes by completely isolating the astronaut from the outside environment.

          To deal with everything from unconscious in lunar shadows to high levels of activity, the current suits have enough insulation to stop any appreciable heat flow, and then pump all the metabolic heat out artificially.

          The temperature (and heat flux) extremes on Mars are less than in space or on the Moon. With a couple layers of removable insulation (take your coat off when exercising and put it back on when sitting in the shade), you can make a simpler system work on Mars. And you’d want to: Removing all metabolic heat by sublimation or evaporation consumes water in a non-recyclable way at a huge rate.

          • Jeff2Space says:
            0
            0

            I agree completely. But it will take some research and development. I can’t imagine that putting on and taking off layers while outside would be terribly easy. Doable, perhaps, if your partner helps you, but not nearly as easy as Mr. Rogers taking off his hat and coat and putting on his sweater when he got home. 😉

          • fcrary says:
            0
            0

            It would definitely take some research and development. I was involved in a very little bit of work, along these lines, back in the early 1990s. I know my thermal modeling could be vastly improved, especially with modern computers. Unfortunately, most of that was “not inverted here” as far as NASA space suit development efforts were concerned. I doubt if more than a dozen people even remember it. But it might count as TRL 2 rather than TRL 0.

            As far as easy of removing layers of insulation, I imagine a fairly loose, outer layer wouldn’t be hard to take on or off. Something like a great coat. But two easily-removable layers, without adding too much bulk, that might be a challenge. I’m afraid I’m a physicist not a fashion designer… But you’ve touched on another suit design issue which needs improvement. Either on the Moon or Mars, the current hardware is to cumbersome. If an astronaut couldn’t take a coat off without help, I’d question how much really useful work he could do.

  3. Bernardo de la Paz says:
    0
    0

    Enough with Mars fantasies derailing lunar reality. We’ve already wasted well more than a generation of lost progress to this Mars next stupidity.

  4. Ian Crawford says:
    0
    0

    I am troubled by the blanket assertion that “The Moon is scientifically much less diverse and interesting than Mars.” It is true that Mars is more “diverse” geologically, but, as far as science goes, the Moon still has much to tell us about the history and evolution of the inner solar system (including the origin of the Earth-Moon system), has the potential to act as a platform for astronomical observations, and may provide a test-bed for exploration technologies that may later be employed further afield.

    For anyone interested, my colleagues and I have documented these scientific reasons for returning to the Moon in this review article:
    http://www.homepages.ucl.ac
    The truth is that the Moon and Mars are *both* interesting and important scientifically, so the question really becomes what is the logical order to explore them within the context of a human spaceflight program. It seems to me that logically the Moon must come first…..

    • muomega0 says:
      0
      0

      Logical order is to address the Grand Challenges, & recognize that Mars has nothing in common with ‘mooning’. If its not a Beyond ‘mooning’ architecture, the public will lose interest long before NASA plans on sending crew ‘explorin’.

      Economic Access to Space. Rather than subsidize LVs, provide flight rate with NASA’s 100-200mT/yr to conduct missions/R&D, so its driven by ‘mission/R&D content’.

      Long duration space travel in proper environment. 3 day trips will not cut it. Extend the duration with the Deep Space Voyager stationed at L2 (recaptures most of delta v) and cycle it to Mars with chemical/ EP tugs to demonstrate crew and hardware can sustain the mission. The 1/6th gravity of moon is insufficient and it blocks half the GCR – wrong environment.

      ISRU- all of the resources originated from asteroids located near Mars and beyond. The first trillionaire mines asteroids.

      • brobof says:
        0
        0

        “The 1/6th gravity of moon is insufficient”
        I have yet to see any data on this. One reason to go back to the Moon would be to see if mammalian embryos can come to term. Mice before women!
        Of course a spinning spaceHab could do the job for one sixth the price. But the moon has plenty of regolith (radiation shielding) and Heinleinian CUBIC. Mooncaves nonwithstanding.
        The only question is… is there enough ice to support a population until we start carving up the NEO and MBO iceteroids.
        I remain a Phobos firster w.r.t. an _American_ destination. For their space partners. Like China 😉 naturally their kilometreage may vary…

    • Donald Barker says:
      0
      0

      There are interesting questions and potential scientific research everywhere in the reachable universe and these are not sufficient drivers to send humans anywhere. Science alone will not get humanity far off the Earth as the past 40 years have proven. Increasing funding competition as humanity heads towards 10 billion will ever constrain anything done in space that has no immediate return on investment or a response to geopolitical fear (i.e., military/national muscle flexing). If “WE” cannot provide a sufficiently well detailed, sustainable and long term plan, other than the selling of “science” then we will only plant flags, no matter the location. And such a short sighted response is a huge waste of time and resources.

      • Ian Crawford says:
        0
        0

        Yes, but I did not claim that science is the only, or even the major, reason for wanting to return to the Moon — only that a strong scientific case exists, which it does!
        I am aware of a host of other motivations (economic, geopolitical, cultural….), some of which are indeed arguably stronger than the science case alone. Ultimately any argument for human space exploration needs to be built from a combination of benefits across many fields…..

        • muomega0 says:
          0
          0

          IMHO, the best thing for HSF and science is to build the cyclers from L2 ‘to Mars’. This will allow propellant to be supplied to reduce the decades or more of elapsed time, and provide demonstrated reliability of HSF hardware. Most importantly, it uses NASA mission mass to reduce $/kg and drives technology innovation rather than just provide LV subsidies. The numbers work, but the politicos will not approve the transition plan.

          Most folks say the same thing in general terms: “If ‘WE’ cannot provide a sufficiently well detailed, sustainable and long term plan, other than the selling of “science” then we will only plant flags, no matter the location. And such a short sighted response is a huge waste of time and resources.”

      • Donald Barker says:
        0
        0

        Oh, and some unfriendly budget projections: https://www.cbo.gov/publica

  5. ThomasLMatula says:
    0
    0

    This is why NASA will never embrace a lunar goal. There needs to be a separate lunar research and development corporation (like Comsat) that will have the freedom to use a variety of public-private financing models for lunar development. Then NASA may focus on Mars as it wanted to since the 1960’s.

    • Michael Spencer says:
      0
      0

      I’m thinking that Kool-Ade won’t go very far. And the reason is the same reason I’ve been asking for a long time: what is the commercial use for the moon? Plenty of science, sure.

      A COTS program is an equation AND a goal; the right-hand side of the equation has something of value that is worth going after.

      What? Tourism? Pricey moon rocks? Really?

      • ThomasLMatula says:
        0
        0

        Sadly that is the type of mindset a space policy based on science results in. No one has made money from the Moon to date so no one will. The Virginia Company went to Virginia to get rich off of gold and silver. They found that tobacco and timber were the real wealth.

        We won’t find economic value unless we go to the Moon looking for economic resources. If we go for science all we will find is science. And science won’t pay the bills.

      • Vladislaw says:
        0
        0

        Because it is a 9 BILLION acre asset waiting to go on the books. An ounce of gold on the moon carries the same asset value as an ounce of gold on terra firma. The only question is ownership. With electronic banking asset value of commodities is constantly changing and who owns how much with the vast majority of them never moving. More gold sits in vaults across the planet and it never moves, along with gemstones. They are simply assets and the only thing that changes is who owns how much on any given day.

        It will be the same on Luna… stockpiles of assets and who owns how much will be conducted electronically.

        • Paul451 says:
          0
          0

          No, that makes no sense. Gold is used commercially. It’s value depends on its availability for use. If it didn’t, people would simply trade shares in gold reserves still in the ground as if they were gold, instead of expensively mining the stuff.

          • Vladislaw says:
            0
            0

            Yes it is used commercially but huge stock piles of gold and gems sit in vaults that never move.

            http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

            http://abcnews.go.com/Busin

            https://www.cmi-gold-silver

            https://qz.com/1043795/ther
            “There is $300 billion worth of gold locked in the vaults of London”

          • Paul451 says:
            0
            0

            Not sure what you think that proves.

            The proposal (and you aren’t anywhere near the first to suggest it) that you can have gold (or anything else) sitting on the moon being sold on Earth as if they were on Earth (no shipping required) represents a fundamental misunderstanding of how commodities work.

            An ounce of gold on the moon carries the same asset value as an ounce of gold on terra firma.

          • Vladislaw says:
            0
            0

            That proves that assets are assets in the electronic age and someone like bezos with 100 billion in assets would see a 500 million gold on the moon as nothing but a hedge on untaxable wealth.

          • Vladislaw says:
            0
            0

            it proves that there are literally tons of metal laying around in vaults that never really moves … and why do you think it will be different.

          • Paul451 says:
            0
            0

            The value of held commodities is their future availability to commercial use, even if the net quantity of that commodity in storage doesn’t change.

            It’s why extracted gold has a higher value than proven reserves still in the ground. The value of proven reserves is the current value of commercially available gold minus the cost of extraction, minus the future cost of money, minus a reasonable hedge on the likely change in value of both gold and money.

            [Unextracted gold has a higher hedge because you can’t use it today. It has a built-in lag.]

            The value of gold on the moon would be the value of gold, minus the cost of shipping it to market, minus the extra hedges.

            [I see so many bizarre economic ideas thrown around by space-advocates. There was a guy who wants Mars settlement funded by loans paid by selling land on Mars to future settlers, who pay for their trip to Mars by getting loans paid by selling land on Mars to yet future settlers. He had a whole website about it. Could not get the guy to understand that he’s just describing a pyramid scheme.]

          • TheBrett says:
            0
            0

            Robert Zubrin had that type of thing in his How to Live on Mars book with mining-claim fraud, but at least he was joking about it (I hope). I think the SF author Ben Bova once proposed that the US encourage space development with tons of low-interest loans like with the US transcontinental railroads, but that only “worked” because of massive fraud and other subsidies.

            I don’t think there is an economic rationale for having people in space with our current space technology. We’d either need to get the cost of people in space way down, or a group of very rich people would have to decide that they want to live off-world and pay for it.

  6. sunman42 says:
    0
    0

    “If Hubbard et al have their way everyone but America will be going to the Moon” was what my mother used to say was no argument at all. Just because other people’s kids got to do things that were stupid or dangerous for no real reason, didn’t mean we got to.

    I can believe that there may be good reasons for revisiting the moon, though I can’t think of any other ones than mining helium-3, the existence of which in significant quantities has yet to be proven conclusively. But I don’t limit such arguments to what I think I know, and I’m willing to be convinced — but other folks doing what we did nearly fifty years ago is no excuse in and of itself for spending the taxpayers’ money on something inherently less interesting that (say) Mars, Europa, or something else with possible exploration value. Of course we need to send enough robotic craft to any destination first to make certain we eliminate as much unnecessary risk in landing humans as possible — that’s what we did before Apollo 11 with the Ranger, Surveyor, and Lunar Orbiter programs, as well as manned missions to parts of the near-lunar mission out without landing, as we did Apollo 8 and 10.

    I guess my real frustrating with going back to the moon is based on how much it will delay planning and actually carrying out manned flight to place such farther away, No one in their right mind would go to the moon in order to get to Mars or beyond. Earth orbit is just fine for assembly of large planetary vehicles.

    • Paul451 says:
      0
      0

      I can believe that there may be good reasons for revisiting the moon, though I can’t think of any other ones than mining helium-3

      He-3 is the opposite of a reason.

      But how about this: The source for the supposed polar ice is the impacts of comets and “wet” asteroids over however many hundreds of millions to billions of years the moon’s axis has been stable. Each impact forms a weak atmosphere of volatiles which eventually freeze out as a frosting wherever doesn’t get boiled off again, ie, those polar craters. In between, the larger number of impacts of rocky asteroids will throw up clouds of dust that drop everywhere, some ending up (with no preference) settling onto the same polar craters.

      Hence you will have a chronologically sorted representation of the entire impact history of the moon, for at least hundreds of millions of years. A layer of ice from each “wet” impact, separated by a thinner layer of random dust from all the “dry” impacts in between.

      A single coring of an ice sheet would be a direct sample of the history of the solar system, chronologically sorted samples of thousands to millions of comets and “wet” asteroids all in one neat stack. Is that not worth something to science?

      (The complicating factor is the amount of micro-meteor impact in the icy layer, how deeply does it churn the layers together? Worse case will reduce the neat layers into to a mush with a mere historical trend as you go deeper. Smooshy data, but still useful data, IMO.)

      • sunman42 says:
        0
        0

        Really? All those impacts and no heating, melting, and merging of the mixed ice and debris deposits?

        • Paul451 says:
          0
          0

          No sure what part you’re replying to.

          • fcrary says:
            0
            0

            You described stratigraphy from alternating large “wet” and “dry” impacts. In the time between those large impacts, would micrometeor impacts and impact “gardening” mix the strata and mess up the layered deposits you postulate? I’m also curious how you would age date the strata. On Earth, it works because ice deposition is seasonal. I can’t see anything similar happening on the Moon.

          • Paul451 says:
            0
            0

            In the time between those large impacts, would micrometeor impacts and impact “gardening” mix the strata and mess up the layered deposits you postulate?

            I mentioned that in the last paragraph in my post. So I can’t see that was what Sunman42 was responding to. Hence my confusion; impacts elsewhere on Mars won’t heat and mix the ice/dust layers.

            We obviously don’t know the ratio of layer depth to MM impact depth. But meteors impacting similar density materials can’t make craters deeper than their own depth, Newton showed that. And judging by normal regolith the main “farming” mechanism is apparently thermal, which is vastly less of an issue in the permanent shadowed regions.

            IMO, even a worst case will still leave you with a trend, older material at the bottom, newer at the top. Mushier, but still valuable, IMO.

            I’m also curious how you would age date the strata.

            I would expect it would tie in with the impact history from the rest of the moon. Other methods might also be available, some forms of thermoluminescence can be used back to more than a hundred million years BP. There are also methods based on radiation exposure which can probably be adapted (on Earth you can use radiation showers from cosmic rays, in space there might be a way of using solar wind radiation as well.)

            There are a large number of dating systems, and geologists routinely deal with irregular deposit patterns.

            Even if you couldn’t date the sequence at all, merely having samples from say thousands of comet impacts (and millions of dry-asteroid impacts) would be extraordinary. Just being able to establish statistical ranges of compositions, which will be related back to reflection spectra of known objects (just as we relate composition of meteorites on Earth to classes of asteroids observed only by spectra).

            There’ll probably be whole families of comets and wet-asteroids, based on ice-composition, which will then relate to existing theories of solar system formation, which will then relate back to changes in the pattern of distribution of impacts and what it says about disturbances in the outer solar system (if you get rare bursts of deep Oort Cloud comets, amongst the more consistent shower of KBO comets, it may relate to extra-solar events like passing neighbouring stars. Which may then relate to Earth extinction events…)

            [You are in a better position that I am to ask field-related researchers whether and how much they would value such a source, including the worst case mixing. I’m curious about their responses, once the concept has been allowed to sink in for awhile.]

      • brobof says:
        0
        0

        Concur important science and -IMHO- a flexible human coring mission might succeed before multiple (tele)robotic failures. However any human seleneologists will be supported by robotic infrastructure and a lunar base.
        Ice cores and Antarctica spring to mind.

    • Daniel Woodard says:
      0
      0

      Helium-3 is a useful industrial material but its value in fusion power is speculation. More to the point, it is easily manufactured on Earth in any needed quantity by irradiation of lithium. It is not even particularly expensive. It’s value as a lunar resource is unfortunately an urban legend. https://en.wikipedia.org/wi

  7. Michael Spencer says:
    0
    0

    In some ways, the Luna/Mars argument mirrors the Meti/Seti discussion. Your POV depends greatly on presupposition. Here’s mine: the first destination is the one with the lowest barrier. Then go to the next. But GO.

    But there is this: consider the desirability of actually settling.

    Thin or not, Mars’ atmosphere will provide sunset and sunrise, while the plant’s rotation mimics that of Earth, yielding a place to live that is much more Earth-like than Luna can ever be. And while we can’t breath the air, we can get raw materials from an endless supply (for now, anyway).

    Life on Luna will be living inside a box. Any windows will show days and nights 14 days long; ask anyone over-wintered in Antarctica what that’s like. Take a look at the problems in Scandinavia or Indeed Russia associated with long winter nights as well.

    Mars could be far more livable than the moon.

    Pass the vodka.

    • Paul451 says:
      0
      0

      Life on Mars will be living in a box. Unless you terraform the planet, you are living inside a pressure vessel.

      But, as I’ve said before, Moon/Mars (or asteroid) arguments always miss the point, “you can’t get there from here”. We can’t put humans anywhere permanently as long as we have high launch costs and high cost of support. That must be the first goal. Stop building systems too expensive to operate. Work on finding ways to lower the cost enough that people can make stupid mistakes at their own cost, and some of those stupid people will accidentally find the optimal path outwards.

    • Bernardo de la Paz says:
      0
      0

      Mars is not colonizable in the sense of supporting a large human population. The cost of transiting the gravity well with the current Martian atmosphere exceeds economically practical solution on an industrial scale with any existing or anticipated technologies. Even if that could be solved, sustaining life on a large scale on the Martian surface is even more economically impractical given the current atmosphere. Assuming somebody figures out some miracle terraforming trick that can bring science fiction to life, perhaps those realities can change, but it would only be fleeting since any renewed Martian atmosphere would be lost again over time. Mars has no significant industrial value or potential. Until somebody figures out how to violate the laws of physics to make interstellar travel within a human lifetime possible, the only future for large scale human habitation off the Earth is in artificially constructed free-flying colonies. At present, the moon is probably the lowest cost source of materials for such construction, although improved propulsion technologies could bring some asteroids and comets into play. But not Mars. Sure, someday, somebody will no doubt put some flags and footprints there, but that will be it. Delusions to the contrary only divert us from real progress.

      • fcrary says:
        0
        0

        There are a whole lot of assertions in what you wrote, and essentially no details or facts to back them up. Why is “transiting the gravity well with the current Martian atmosphere” impossible with existing or likely technology? Why is “sustaining life on a large scale on the Martian surface is even more economically impractical given the current atmosphere” so difficult? Or, more to the point, why is it harder than on the Moon or on orbit? If “the only future for large scale human habitation off the Earth is in artificially constructed free-flying colonies,” what makes them so much easier? How, for example, would they replace oxygen (or even nitrogen) lost to leakage and inefficiencies in the recycling process? Importing it seems to be the only option. Why is that easier than producing it from atmospheric carbon dioxide on Mars or from regolith on the Moon? At least there are raw materials available there.

        In any case, you’re probably wrong about loss of atmosphere from a terraformed Mars. Loss to space does seem to be the dominant process. But it also seems to be very dependent on solar activity. Based on studies of Sun-like stars, the Sun used to be much more active. It would take a long time for the current loss rates wouldn’t strip away a dense atmosphere. I think we’re talking about a billion years, but even if it’s a million, that’s forever. At least according to the time scales of human civilizations (e.g. the oldest known writing dates from about 5000 years ago.)

        • Daniel Woodard says:
          0
          0

          I’ve read that atmosphere loss should be fairly slow on Mars but in that case water vapor, methane and other gasses produced from volcanic venting should be accumulating in the atmosphere.

      • jackalope66 says:
        0
        0

        And no terraforming scheme will move Mars closer to the sun. It will never receive more than 30% of Earth’s energy to whatever ecology we establish there.

        • fcrary says:
          0
          0

          And Fairbanks, Alaska only receives 43% of the direct sunlight as Quito, Ecuador. You might be surprised how many trees there are around Fairbanks. (Yes, I know that’s not really a fair comparison, since a think atmosphere and oceans tend to smooth out equator-to-pole temperature changes…) But I think the lower solar flux is one of the lesser problems a would-be Mars terraformer would face.

    • brobof says:
      0
      0

      Unless Mr. Musk’s Mars effort is a geriatrics colony I would posit that any ‘surface’ colonists will be huddling under the Martian sands. At least until the Atmosphere Project gets underway.
      If I remember my “Red Planet”, only the nymphs lived out of doors and nine out of ten died in the process!
      One hopes that one sixth gee is sufficient gravity for human embryonic development. If not then the Moon is a dead end except as a tourist destination and a nuclear rocket park/ industrial wasteland. Hopefully before we turn these “Green Hills…” into a nuclear wasteland…

  8. BlueMoon says:
    0
    0

    Once again, an editorial with very little discussion or explanation about why NASA should be sending humans or robots anywhere. In the next-to-last paragraph, the author states, “I also believe that any future human exploration plan must keep moving towards Mars for all the reasons described earlier.” I cannot clearly recall what all those reasons are. More water than on the Moon, searching for life, and what else? Are you saying robots alone cannot do those things, Mr. Hubbard? If so, why not? Water for what, Mr. Hubbard? If we find live or dead creatures, what then, Mr. Hubbard? Will you advocate NASA drop all Solar System exploration to send human missions to find intelligent life? Where will you send humans? To which star or stars, and at what costs?

    Hubbard is talking tactics when there is no true, Administration-bridging, cost-achievable, NASA strategic plan. So NASA will continue wasting time, money, and talent chasing political- and ego-driven goals of the day.

    • Vladislaw says:
      0
      0

      Unless there is a full embrace of the commercial sector and taking NASA out of the launching of rockets once and for all we will be stuck where we are.

  9. mfwright says:
    0
    0

    Interesting of many different experts (people with much more education and experience than me) can have very different outlooks on what next to do. However, I think favor the water argument for the Moon because it is three days away unlike Mars is much deeper gravity well (and always “20 years away”). I guess need to consider quantity of water to accessibility to a object in space.

    This “Moon is less scientifically diverse” that I think of Dennis Wingo’s recent post,

    “The problem is not that SLS/Orion is too expensive to develop and operate, the problem is that its use is misdirected. NASA since the 1970’s and especially since the Challenger disaster has been science dominated in its raison dat. Science is important, and is not to be cast aside, but science must not be allowed to dominate all planning and execution of our national space policy. The purpose should be to support economic development.”

  10. NArmstrong says:
    0
    0

    The entire science argument is specious. Science was not the reason for going to the Moon in the 1960s. It is not the reason for space flight today, and it will not be the reason any nation decides to spend hundreds of billions of $$ in the future. NASA’s role, like NACA’s before, and like the reason for its inception was to keep the US ahead in industry, commerce and technology. Maybe some science will get done along the way, but it is not the raison d’être for human space flight. It is done for reasons of supporting the advancement of US industry and commerce.

    NASA lost its way. The idea was not to give more money to aerospace contractors. They were supposed to facilitate access to space. NASA thought it was a good idea to encourage the commerce and industry of international partners, at the expense of US industry.

    • djschultz3 says:
      0
      0

      Should we not do a careful scientific study to see if Mars harbors indigenous life before we contaminate the planet with human poop? Or is the advancement of industry and commerce more important than learning if life could have evolved independently of Earth? The next few decades should be spent answering that question, before we begin sending humans to Mars.

      The NACA freely published its airfoil research in the 1920’s and 1930’s, and the Nazis found those results quite useful in designing their WW2 war planes. The NACA reports saved them a lot of research effort. Whatever the NACA’s mission was, keeping the US ahead in industry, commerce and technology was not one of them.

      • NArmstrong says:
        0
        0

        NASA is doing the scientific study. They have been launching ever more capable landers and rovers since 1976. It does not require humans. In fact as you say, humans would risk contaminating the planet.

        Yes, commerce and industry is more important. Commerce and industry make the program self supporting instead of trying to get the US taxpayers to pay the way. Once commerce and industry take hold you will see an expansion of human access just like was seen in aviation and air transport 75 years ago. Until that time, NASA and everyone else is behaving like barnstormers.

        The US government says it is trying harder than ever to put in place export controls, but at the same time they and NASA do a really poor job. Particularly in the case of NASA human space flight, NASA sees the importance of international cooperation as outweighing the importance of industry and commerce export controls. In fact, NASA is sponsoring other non-US companies to develop the systems and spacecraft ‘as a cost savings’. What this means is that NASA would be paying its own US contractors far more than what they should be getting.

      • fcrary says:
        0
        0

        I have one concern about this idea of putting human landings on hold a few decades, to look for possible life (extant or fossil.) The Viking landing were very much focused on looking for life. Now the view is that Viking wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t, but when do we say we’ve done enough? Do you really mean a “few” decades? Because there will always be places we haven’t looked, or new techniques which can look more closely. This sort of logic could go on for centuries rather than decades.

        In the past, I’ve asked for some standard for “good enough”, and I’ve only gotten one response I consider satisfactory. That something like half a dozen to a dozen landers in a limited area, with negative results being adequate for allowing human landings in the area examined. Since that was just from someone posting on this forum, I said I was fine with that idea, but someone would have to get NASA’s planetary protection office and the Planetary Society on board.

        • brobof says:
          0
          0

          A ten year study with robotic infrastructure in the most promising oases (Hellas Basin; any volcanic hotspots on Tharsis; lava tubes…) using teleops from a PHOBOS BASE. The latter is something we will be building anyway. After that study we send in humans. And then we’ll probably discover there was life (Or protolife.) …WAY back in the past and that will take decades and thousands of scientists/ colonists _in situ_ and serendipity but by then the terraforming should have started.
          Moot.
          I’m assuming a non-biological source for the methane. That is a serious anomoly.
          http://exploration.esa.int/
          This astrobiologist still has hopes…

      • Spaceronin says:
        0
        0

        P.o.O.: I am not sure what point the NACA airfoil argument was supposed to make but it is worth noting that the Germans were further advanced in aeronautics than the allies were in most fields (not laminar flow wings..?). The first ‘thick’ airfoil was thanks to Ludwig Prandtl. For all his contributions to aeronautics; he was a Nazi fellow traveler in the end. Much of the NACA series was derived from his GAMM work. Swings and roundabouts…

    • Daniel Woodard says:
      0
      0

      That was the idea behind the original Obama space policy, shifting resources from what was then Constellation to a new initiative in Space Technology. Unfortunately this required moving money from the LV development centers to tech R&D centers, precipitating a congressional roadblock.

  11. Synthguy says:
    0
    0

    The ‘Mars First’ crowd just don’t get it!! Going back to the Moon is not just about ‘doing science’. Its about establishing a permanent, self-sustaining and expanding human presence off-Earth, exploiting lunar and cislunar resources, accessing resource rich near-Earth asteroids, and fundamentally, making humanity a space-faring species. Going to the Moon is about commercial profit and expanding commercial space activities beyond Earth orbit. Its about laying the foundation for humanity’s future in Space.

    Going to Mars still happens – but it takes a bit longer, and I think if we leverage a lunar infrastructure, there is a better chance of getting humans to Mars safely, in less time, and more cost-effectively, than launching from Earth.

    Finally, if we go to Mars, we want to stay. We don’t want to have just a few ‘flags and footprints’ missions, and then politicians lose interest, the funding is cut, and that’s it for another fifty years. We don’t want to merely replicate Apollo on the red planet.

    • Paul451 says:
      0
      0

      If “flags’n’footprints” is a risk for Mars missions, because people lose interest and funding is cut, why isn’t it an identical risk for a renewed lunar program?

      I mean, VSE directed NASA to exploit the resources of the moon to act as a stepping stone outwards. Once it was hijacked by Griffin’s Ares, it was reduced a small equatorial base. And by the time it was cancelled, it was reduced to a a handful of flags’n’footprints mission with no permanent infrastructure having any chance of being funded.

      It happened in Apollo. It happened in Constellation. Why wouldn’t it happen for TrumpSpace?

      When you look at SLS/Orion development repeating the same mistakes, show me what has changed within the culture of NASA to make “permanent, self-sustaining and expanding human presence off-Earth” more likely today than ten years ago?

      • Synthguy says:
        0
        0

        That’s part of the problem. There isn’t a culture at NASA that sees the bigger picture – and that makes any mission, whether to the Moon or Mars, vulnerable to the same government spending cuts that neutered Apollo.

        I think the one difference with the Moon is that its much easier for commercial space to reach – it does not just have to be a government-funded effort. NASA can and obviously should contribute, but the lead should be taken by the commercial space operators.

        That’s much more difficult to do for Mars, and the business case for them is much more challenging. Musk has lots of great slides at IAC 2017 showing Mars Bases building up like in a computer game, but the reality will be way tougher than what he is suggesting. The Moon by contrast, being much closer, is much easier to develop.

        So there might be a similar risk that NASA does not show the leadership to sustain a Moon program, and government is not willing to fund it properly – but (hopefully) commercial space should take the lead and we go, and we stay anyhow. If NASA want to watch from the sidelines whilst making empty statements about Mars, that’s their business.

        • Paul451 says:
          0
          0

          That’s part of the problem. There isn’t a culture at NASA that sees the bigger picture – and that makes any mission, whether to the Moon or Mars, vulnerable to […]

          Then why advocate Moon vs Mars at all? Surely the only “Mission”, “Vision”, “Challenge” that you should accept is “Lowering the cost of manned spaceflight”.

          Anything else that NASA is pointed at merely delays that goal.

          I’m not a drooling SpaceX fanboi because I agree with Musk on Mars. I don’t. I think colonising Mars is stupid. But his path to Mars requires lowering the cost of spaceflight, then lowering the cost of manned spaceflight, then lowering the cost of routine privately-funded manned spaceflight. And that enables every path into space.

          The Moon by contrast, being much closer, is much easier to develop.

          Not seeing the reasoning here. Mars advocates point out that you have an atmosphere, a near-24hr day/night cycle, less thermal extremes, better radiation shielding (about a third of the moon), easier access to water, etc etc.

          (As I say, I’m not a Mars advocate, but I don’t see the magic advantage that “closeness” of the moon brings. If nearness to Earth matters so much, because you are so dependent on ground support, then you aren’t capable of building a permanent base on the moon, with ISRU and commercial profit and the rest. The most you can do is build a more expensive version of ISS, and suck up the entire HSF budget merely maintaining it for a decade or so until enough older members of Congress retire and support runs out, then abandon it to chase the next Congressional whim.)

          • brobof says:
            0
            0

            “the magic advantage that “closeness” of the moon brings.”
            CommLag and a robotically supported augmented International toehold on our sister ‘planet’ [Alan Stern applies >;-)))]

          • Paul451 says:
            0
            0

            CommLag

            As I said, “If […] you are so dependent on ground support, then you aren’t capable of building a permanent base on the moon”. If you can’t handle a sub 30m radio lag, you aren’t capable of autonomous space activity, which means you aren’t capable of creating a long-term complex settlement, even if that settlement is on the moon. Or low Earth orbit. Or a mine-site in Western Australia.

    • fcrary says:
      0
      0

      I think a Mars mission is a little less subject to a “flags and footprints” problem that Apollo was. A one-week trip with only a day at the destination is unfortunate, but not absurd. A two or three year trip with only few weeks at the destination really is absurd. Put another way, Apollo could work with landed facilities which could only support a very brief stay. A Mars landing would very likely involve facilities which could support a stay of over a month. At that point, the step to a sustained base (although perhaps not permanently staffed) isn’t so big. It’s more supplies and maintenance than anything else. The similar step from an Apollo Lunar Module is huge.

      • Paul451 says:
        0
        0

        However, a Mars mission is even more prone to a once-and-done mentality. Yeah, they might spend a month or three “doing science”, but with no planned funded follow-up.

        [Because the point of them being there isn’t “doing science”, the point of them being there is “humans to Mars”, and once you’ve done that, it’s done. The contemptuous term “flags and footprints” is not about what they actually do when they get there, it’s about what the funders or the administration cares about. Just like Apollo, any science done is in spite of, not because of, the real goal.]

        The gap between the typical DRA5.0-type proposal and a “sustained base” is huge; just as big as the gap between Apollo and a moon base.

        • Donald Barker says:
          0
          0

          Please stop using terms such as “doing science” especially with regards to field work. There is no “box of science” to be had. Science is a long, involved and cyclic process. Making observations and taking data is only a very small part of this process and people who continue to use this word wrong do a great disservice to the public’s understanding and perception of this process. This is quite evident in our social selling of “science” in a society absorbed by short-term attention spans and instant gratification.

        • George Purcell says:
          0
          0

          The mission would be there for 500-600 days. Even assuming a significant amount of time in orbit for prior to and following a landing that’s more than enough time thoroughly explore a variety of Martian environments–something on order of three to five person-years I’d imagine depending on the size of the crew sent. It’s also why establishing ground truth and highly focused robotic probes to the location are so critical (and also why a window or two prior to a crewed landing mission would be required for provisioning).
          Maybe that ends up being a “one and done” mission, at least for 40-50 years. It would still be one heck of a valuable one, more than a flotilla of robotic probes could accomplish over decades.

          • Paul451 says:
            0
            0

            You have to look at the history of manned missions. The proposal is not what you end up with.

            VSE was originally intended to be a permanent manned base using ISRU to produce fuel for Mars ships, as well as doing major astronomy from the permanently shadowed polar craters.

            By the time Griffin hijacked it for his Ares concept, it was reduced to a small near-equatorial base.

            By the time it was cancelled, it was just a short-duration lander and 3-4 crew. With only one confirmed landing.

            The things you care about are always the first things that get cut when funding tightens. As long as it meets the narrowest reading of the “goal” (in the case of Constellation, “return to the moon”, in the case of a Mars mission, “humans on Mars”) it will be deemed a success: even if it gives up every single original justification of the program in the process.

            Keeping people alive on Mars for 500 days will be difficult. It isn’t essential to meet the “goal” of “humans on Mars”, so it will be cut. Extensive travel is difficulty and risky, it isn’t essential to meet the “goal” of “humans on Mars”, so it will be cut. And so on.

            Yes, NASA will find a way of getting useful science out of whatever is left, but given the inevitable cost of a manned mission (if done the way NASA always does these things), it will not deliver more than the equivalent $100+ billion worth of probes/rovers (not just on Mars, but across the solar system.)

        • fcrary says:
          0
          0

          I don’t think so. Consider the surface assets required for Apollo compared to any human landing on Mars. The Apollo Lunar Module was too small to be habitable for more than a few days. It was about 4.5 m^3 of habitable volume (whatever that means) for two people. Life support was completely open. Nothing even vaguely similar would have supported a two-week stay.

          For a Mars mission, the stay on the surface would be months. There are some architectures that only have a stay time of a month or so. I personally don’t like them, but a months is a plausible, bare-bones minimum. That almost mandates enough room for people to live in for months, and that would probably also do for a year or more. Life support would have to be at least partially closed, or the mass of supplies becomes unreasonable. In effect, the facilities required for just about any sort of human Mars mission wouldn’t be too different from the facilities for a small base.

    • Donald Barker says:
      0
      0

      “permanent, self-sustaining and expanding human presence off-Earth” is a nice thought, but is not a lawful part of NASAs charter or any true goal of any person running our government today.

  12. Bill Housley says:
    0
    0

    This sort of stuff shouldn’t annoy me anymore. We are in the beginning of the end of the military procurement model for space tech anyway. That means that NASA, Congress, even this Scott Hubbard fellow, don’t have to care about the moon for Lunar projects to launch from U.S. soil.

  13. Daniel Woodard says:
    0
    0

    I agree regarding planetary and lunar science. However as I have said there is a gradually increasing focus on using the ISS as a platform for man-tended observation instruments, both for Earth and astronomical observation, that can be inexpensive and rapidly updated and easily repaired.

    • John_K_Strickland says:
      0
      0

      I put it this way: Science is the Tool of Mankind, but Mankind is not the tool of science. I say this as a life-long science supporter. The Moon-Mars tug of war will continue until it is either decided by Congressional fiat, or there is a compromise between the two camps to support a lunar mining base first, but with Mars exploration to follow SOON after, supported by lunar propellant stashed at L1 or a similar location. (Note that there are lots of lunar polar base locations that are not in the permanent shadow, and the shadowed areas are no less than about 40 Kelvin.) Proving that the lunar volatile deposits are mineable is the highest priority right now. A combined Lunar-Mars program is only possible if heavy emphasis is placed on support from private companies with reusable rockets and spacecraft. The current SLS program can support neither a Moon or a Mars program.

  14. Spacenut says:
    0
    0

    Mars or The Moon? A question people asked all too often, the fact is there are very good but maybe different reason to go to both. If we really want to move forward in the exploration of space we really need to stop thinking of The Moon and Mars as mutually exclusive or at best as a strict linear progression, and work on a far more “plug and play” type system that can quickly, efficiently, and cheaply be configured to where we want our next mission to go. Sadly an LV that costs 1bn+ per launch which can only occur every couple of years can never be a part of this sort of system, clearly SpaceX and others have worked this out while NASA is left blindly following a dead end road paved by old space cost plus pork barrel ideals. NASA need to wok out who the space innovators are and who is just treading water waiting for the next cheque to come in.

  15. Orlando Santos says:
    0
    0

    Honestly Keith do you really need to resort to such childish photoshop stuff?