NASA’s current plan for manned space exploration focuses on establishing a base on the moon, as a vital steppingstone for a visit to Mars. The initiative has been trumpeted by the Bush administration, which wants the first mission to launch by 2020. But trouble is brewing as a growing group of former mission managers, planetary scientists and astronauts argues against any manned moon mission at all. One alternative, they say: Send astronauts to an asteroid as a better preparation for a Martian landing.
The dissenters gathered at a meeting of the Planetary Society at Stanford University. “We want to get a positive recommendation to the new administration,” says Planetary Society executive director Louis D. Friedman. He supports an eventual mission to Mars, but argues that the current moon scheme was selected with inadequate debate after a speech by President Bush in January 2004. “If you said humans’ and Mars’ [to NASA officials] in the same sentence, you would receive a figurative slap on the face, and then four months later [the moon-to-Mars plan] was the main point on a viewgraph at the highest levels.”
A recent article in Aviation Week reporting on the views of the meeting organizers drew a sharp reply from NASA administrator Michael Griffin. Griffin issued a letter defending the agency’s Constellation lunar base program. “The conference organizers have assigned sole responsibility for our new civil space exploration strategy to President Bush, ignoring the hugely bipartisan — actually nonpartisan — support it has received in Congress,” Griffin wrote. “No such far-reaching proposal should be adopted without debate. That debate was had, in 2003, ’04 and ’05, and it was fulsome. From it came a unifying plan for civil space, and the best legislative guidance NASA has ever had.”
When asked in an interview with Popular Mechanics last year whether he thought the next administration might make manned missions a lower priority, Griffin insisted that he couldn’t “imagine any U.S. president or any U.S. Congress deciding to take the United States out of the business of human space flight.”
The lunar program, which was largely meant to reinvigorate NASA and renew public enthusiasm for space exploration, has suffered from a spate of bad press. Last week, the Associated Press reported that NASA’s Ares I rocket, the replacement for the space shuttle, could literally shake the lunar hardware it carries to pieces during launch. Some presidential candidates have weighed in, criticizing NASA’s current plan.
NASA does have vocal supporters, however. Robert Walker, a former congressman and a member of the Presidential Commission on the Implementation of the United States Space Exploration Policy, points out that a Chinese moon program has already begun, with the launch of a probe in 2007. Both India and Japan have also announced their intentions to launch manned lunar missions, to great fanfare.
“Having a U.S. presence on the moon at least gives us the chance to keep an eye on the standard of conduct,” Walker says. “And that’s pretty damned important.” In military terms, the moon can be seen as the ultimate high ground. A nation could set up hard-to-defeat microwave or laser weapons platforms aimed at in-orbit satellites or, in the best sci-fi tradition, to launch large rocks at the Earth with “mass drivers.” (These were the weapon of choice for Robert Heinlein’s revolutionary protagonists in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress.)
Read more on this story, the spy satellite shootdown, underwater terrorism and what the dark side of Mercury looks like from our friends at Popular Mechanics.
– Christian
The “man to mars” thing has always struck me as a popular cover for the moon race. 2 big reasons: energy (helium-3) and security (particularly heavy lifting capacity for stuff like “rods from god”). going to Mars is just a populist way to justify killing the shuttle program.
Going “back to the moon” does not make any sense in terms of the moon being a base for a Mars mission. It is equally silly, although for different reasons, to renew manned moon missions just to observe any possible military-related activity by other countries. Hopefully the next president will squash this idea before much money gets wasted on it.
It is not necessary to go “back to the moon” to justify replacing the shuttle. The existing fleet is unreliable & wearing out. The shuttle design was poorly thought out to begin with — it is an unreasonably expensive way of getting people into orbit.
That conference was old news as is the AP report. So far I’ve seen nothing that indicates the Stanford group had much traction, and as for the Ares I shake and bake, I’ve not seen in print anyone who actually knows what they are talking about, saying its an atypical engineering issue. So far I consider all of this talking head stuff.
Doesn’t matter anyway, new President and Congress will speak on it for entirely political reasons in the new year.
Obama is on record supporting cuts in Nasa. McCain I think will too but he hasn’t come out and said so yet.
We should be working with Russia,Europe,China,Japan,& India on this.China is making strides to go into space & most likely will be on the moon before we ever return to it.
Has anybody ever thought about the potential mineral wealth & energy that could be exploited from the moon?
[EDITOR: Link removed for formatting reasons]
Michael Griffin explains his NASA plans quite nicely. He knows his shit.
First finish the ISS POS, and retire the pain in the ass Shuttles. That will make budget room for something else, preferably a more ambitious and exciting manned missions. Everything has to be done within NASA’s measly 15 billion annual budget.
No one is going to Mars before 2040, though I expect the Chinese to be the first or maybe even a private venture, since the US collectively no longer has any ambitions to do anything like that. Too preoccupied with the usual short term BS.
The reason the moon will win out over mars, other than being lower risk, may be the potential for mining it. Helium-3 (for potential fusion reactors) at least poses some sort of reason (among others) for spending a lot of time on the moon. Any time spent there could only better prepare humans for exploitation of other bodies.
Or.…better yet, the benefits of liberty of mind could be enhanced by private enterprise taking over. Goal setting of any missions would be determined by an aglomeration of interests, whose purposes could be very diverse and lead to expanding technical scientific potential.
What is the economic benefit of the moon or mars?
Jobs for terra firma. Competition for sub contractor solutions inspires growth, competition would overcome inertia of political interests. Development and advancement of the case for human involvement in galactic enterprise. Encourages genius, identifies practical considerations for tradeing up our limitations. Advances alternatives to overcome systemic largess. Discovery happens in the eyes of the explorers, as much as it is in the motive of the mission. Encouraging new mission objectives can best come from observations not tied to limitation of narrow systemic hegemony. Makes more sense to me.
Dr. Friedman and company are focusing a little too much on the exploration aspects of space. Going the Mars Direct route will put us in the same state after Apollo, after Skylab, immediately after the construction of the shuttle, a major lead that gets pissed away.
I would say most involve know the absurdity of the orbital mechanics behind a moon to Mars mission, but the reason why they keep silent about it is because the real goal is to establish a permanent base on the moon. Yes, it would be preferable to find water-ice on the moon’s surface, but it isn’t the killing blow the Planetary Society thinks it is.
I know this is linking to their opponents at this point, but here is some information about extracting hydrogen and oxygen from the Lunar environment. http://www.asi.org/adb/02/02/regolith-volatiles.html
Bryan2020
Sorry dude, I had to remove that YouTube link because it was too long and messed up the formatting for the blog. Not sure, but I think when we upgrade to the latest version of Movable Type, that kind of thing will be fixed.
I think We should start sending deep diggers and tunnel boring machines that have autonomous and remote control capability to the moon. That way could can start building underground structures from the confines of earth. There are many benefits for it to be underground. I’m very confident engineers have the capability to make this a reality with our current technology and capital. We could have partners such as Britain, Canada, Japan, Germany, France, Austraila etc Investing in such a project. This should have been done years ago. The moon would be a perfect training model on how to colonize other planet because of it’s proximity and practicality and safety reasons. Projects such as mining and moon tourism will also spur more capital which could be incorporated to fund other future planetary mission. I just don’t see what benefits landing on an asteriod would do as opposed to landing and colonizing the moon. This would just be a waste of money. You think small you get small results, you think big you get big results.
The moon would be a perfect research ground for further exploration. I don’t understand why we aren’t on it right now. It is a sad thing America have money to go to war but doesn’t to set a worldwide goal. China, USA, Japan, Europe should all work together for it. One country isn’t enough for this task.
We won’t be able to get to Mars if we don’t have less gravity pull. It is just way to costly/heavy. If we can produce propellant on Moon (helium-3 or methane) it would help a lot to get to Mars.
Get us back there and stop the war!
Use Moon as steppingstone to Mars & have He3 from Moon be a new Energy Industry base.
More Pvt sector jobs on the Moon & link to Space Solar Power arrays too.
More jobs
Win Win.
& use Moon to deter incoming asteroids.
Launch missiles or use Mega ray guns to deflect asteroids.
I am 40 years old. When I was a little kid, I felt completely obsessed with the moon missions. I remember a guy from NASA said that the future space shuttles would build the space station that would build to space ship to take us to Mars. Although I hope that we can use He3 from the moon for nuclear fission, I just want us to go to Mars before I die. I would feel great pride from seeing a few flags planted on Mars. Who cares about the science benefits? Just to say that we went to Mars would be good enough for me.
Going to the moon could be useful in panning out the technologies needed to have a manned mission to Mars wherein the astronauts have to survive on the resources brought with them and the material on the moon. It’s a safer situation than testing those technologies on Mars when any assistance is over a year away, as opposed to the moon being days away.
It’s a simple fact that the US thinks it owns the moon and especially this president to take any competition from another country as a ‘threat’ there. Monitoring other countries activities on the moon as well as securing the ‘good ground’ for ourselves is also a priority I would imagine.
The shuttle was not designed to ‘get people into orbit’ it was made to launch satellites as well as be capable of landing in a more controlled and reliable manner than capsules.
As far as a group mission to mars or anywhere else it’s a laudable goal but look at the all the trouble we’ve had with our ISS. We’ve had to pay for the Russians contribution and had delay after delay, not to mention how it was scaled back. Countries cannot work well enough together to support and implement a manned mission or join space flight programs.
I’d like to see a real space station capable of supporting itself with minimal if any resupply, a self sustaining moon base, and of course a new space vehicle before a mars mission.
’abba’ has it right, we take these steps to push out but don’t follow through or end up with something that’s basically worthless once our short sighted goal is accomplished.
Going to the moon could be useful in panning out the technologies needed to have a manned mission to Mars wherein the astronauts have to survive on the resources brought with them and the material on the moon. It’s a safer situation than testing those technologies on Mars when any assistance is over a year away, as opposed to the moon being days away.
It’s a simple fact that the US thinks it owns the moon and especially this president to take any competition from another country as a ‘threat’ there. Monitoring other countries activities on the moon as well as securing the ‘good ground’ for ourselves is also a priority I would imagine.
The shuttle was not designed to ‘get people into orbit’ it was made to launch satellites as well as be capable of landing in a more controlled and reliable manner than capsules.
As far as a group mission to mars or anywhere else it’s a laudable goal but look at the all the trouble we’ve had with our ISS. We’ve had to pay for the Russians contribution and had delay after delay, not to mention how it was scaled back. Countries cannot work well enough together to support and implement a manned mission or join space flight programs.
I’d like to see a real space station capable of supporting itself with minimal if any resupply, a self sustaining moon base, and of course a new space vehicle before a mars mission.
’abba’ has it right, we take these steps to push out but don’t follow through or end up with something that’s basically worthless once our short sighted goal is accomplished.
India