NASA has officially announced its plans to put a permanent base on the Moon. This is all part of the Moon, Mars and Beyond program that has sucked the life out of astrophysics research at the agency. But going to the Moon would be incredibly exciting in its own right, if it didn’t cost any money. (Nobody knows how much it actually will cost.)
The plan is to first finish building the International Space Station using the Space Shuttle. The Shuttle is scheduled to be retired once and for all in 2010 — so I gather that we won’t actually be doing much with the ISS once we finish building it. Meanwhile, NASA will be developing a new set of spacecraft, featuring the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle that will be launched on Ares rockets. The goal is for the new system to be functional by 2014, if not earlier.
And then on to the Moon — reaching there by 2020, hopefully with a continually-manned station by 2024. Not much is known about what such a base would look like, although there is some idea of putting it somewhere that the astronauts could replenish some resources through mining. The South Lunar Pole is apparently an interesting destination, perhaps near Shackleton crater.
It’s frustrating to be so lukewarm about the Great Human Adventure in Space, about which I’d much prefer to be enthusiastic. But nothing about the operation inspires confidence, much less wonder. NASA Deputy Administrator Shana Dale described the program in this tired bit of management-speak:
“This strategy will enable interested nations to leverage their capabilities and financial and technical contributions, making optimum use of globally available knowledge and resources to help energize a coordinated effort that will propel us into this new age of discovery and exploration.”
Do people really talk like that? It sounds straight out of Dilbert. Complete with numbingly bullet-pointed Powerpoint presentation!
Maybe the concerns are misplaced, and NASA will be able to aggressively pursue human exploration of space without sacrificing their unique contributions to cutting-edge astrophysics. But I’d be just as happy to let NASA concentrate on the science at which they excel, and leave the space-cowboy stuff to the X-prize folks.
And so part one of China’s great USA-head-fake bears fruit… You tell the US you plan to send a mission to the moon, and in good Pavlovian fashion they jump up and throw a trillion dollars down the toilet — most amazing leverage in money spent on politics ever. (Of course Iraq is, in a sense, a better deal for China bcs that’s money not only wasted, but that actively generates hostility to the US. But I don’t think anyone is claiming that that particular adventure was inspired by China, so it doesn’t meet the rules of this category.)
Twenty five years from now, when the US is reduced to the UK circa 1955, China will be laughing their asses off as they point their telescopes at an American flag “flying” on the moon surrounded by an abandoned ghost town. Heck, it might make a good intro shot for the nightly national Chinese news.
I wonder if NASA is ignoring the Advisory Board’s Roadmap. There are issues regarding lunar dust that anyone designing a moon base should consider as well.
Forgive my ignorance of space politics. But it seems to me that space exploration and science should be funded seperately. Why give NASA a buget of $20 billion a year and ask them to do science missions and space exploration missions? One’s always going to be stealing from the other, as it seems both are so desired. Why not allocate a certain amount for science and a certain amount for exploration? then one won’t have to suffer at the expense of the other. Has this been considered before? and why can’t this be done?
“It sounds straight out of Dilbert.”
I find Dilbert funny because its so true. Realy Realy. PHB are everywhere. I stoped reading the quote as soon as i got to “leverage”.
I agree totaly with you. I’m not a great fan of maned missions because of there ROI (hehe). People cost a lot to put in space and when they die, we seem incabalble of doing anything for several years incase someone else mite die. The arguments for manned missions is thin at best. I mean how many mars rovers can we launch per shuttle flight? And lets not forget the money hole that is the ISS.
But once we are good at space then i want to go. So don’t think my anti manned missions means I don’t want any. Just not the expensive worthless crap we get at this point.
Ah yes, welcome to the world of bureaucratese from anyone “running” (read ruining) NASA. I hear this excremental drivel all the time as I work at a huge bureaucracy.
Science, especially basic science, should be funded separately, and funds for basic science greatly increased. Unfortunately, the brain stems “running” this country are shortsighted, wanting only immediate results (read “money”), never being able to see the long-range benefits. If only wisdom could evolve upwardly in our species.
“It sounds straight out of Dilbert.”
Don’t mock the results of the free market. 🙂 This language is straight from the meeting halls of the Fortune 500.
http://adactio.com/journal/538/ has a good example.
Of course, corporate speak was probably invented and fine-tuned in the hallowed halls of Harvard Business School and the like.
A parody is here:
http://www.jefflindsay.com/pointless/index.shtml
A glossary is here:
http://www.mcmcse.com/articles/corporatespeak.shtml
Isn’t it nice there is something that you can’t blame on government?
Questions:
1. Is very long baseline interferometry with antennae on the moon and the earth a feasible and a useful thing?
2. Is there useful astronomy in the area of the spectrum that we use for communications? If so, would not the far side of the moon be an excellent shielded spot for observatories?
3. Are there any advantages to instruments anchored to the moon over instruments in earth orbit?
I’m with the folks who call for separate funding for basic science and the manned missions. They’re two very separate kinds of projects with totally different benefits. And why not join forces with the X-prize people? In its early days, NASA was the original home for space cowboys. Now, well, you see what’s happened since the bureaucrats took over. It happens to every organization, but on that note, I’ll say again what I said about going to Mars: let business help pay for it and assume both some of the human risk and the capital risk. There’s plenty of precedent, though I’m not sure the biotech industry is all that great an example. At least in this case nobody will be trying to patent my genes.
“But once we are good at space then i want to go. So don’t think my anti manned missions means I don’t want any. Just not the expensive worthless crap we get at this point.”
Space is difficult. Just like any difficult endeavor, from motorcycle racing to cosmology, you have to constantly work at it in order to improve or even maintain. If you do nothing, waiting until you think all of the required tools are sufficiently perfected before you make a go at it, then you won’t start accumulating real world experience until then, meaning that all your tools have been developed without the benefit of real world experience. That’s not a good way to create complex systems.
Now, I am not saying that I think NASA’s new manned exploration program is a good thing, I don’t know enough about it to form a solid opinion. What I do know about it has me feeling pretty much as Sean has expressed above. But I do feel that we need a manned space program that progressively, and constantly, pushes the limits of what we are capable of so that we are constantly gaining experience and evolving our capabilities. Within reason of course, which is open to limitless debate. I don’t think unmanned science missions should, or need to, suffer either. There is always competition for resources but I think it is possible to balance the two so that reasonable proponets on both sides are satisfied. Both sides will benefit from the improved capabilites of the other side. For example, HST would not be the success it is today if it were not for manned servicing missions. Future space based observatories are sure to benefit, if not require, manned servicing missions, and some of them won’t be in earth orbit.
I bet Stephen Hawking is excited about this
I would like to know when NASA starts shooting for Mars and other of the
planets. Google mars will be pretty cool when Mars is sufficiently inhabited:
Arun asks: Is very long baseline interferometry with antennae on the moon and the earth a feasible and a useful thing?
Possibly feasible, but for gravitational wave detection (the prime use for VLBI) you need an additional moon, because you need two legs in an interferometer. Two celestial bodies make up at most one leg. Of course, if we do put an observatory on the moon, we need the ability to go there and repair it (remember the initial trouble with the Hubble Space Telescope), even though a moon base does not need gyroscopes.
I think the real reason that the Bush administration is pushing a manned mission to the Moon, and then to Mars, while at the same time not really funding it, is to starve NASA’s climate research budget.
Another comment: if you hear NASA officials say that we can use the resources on the Moon such as WATER for our lunar bases, then don’t believe it. Few planetary scientists believe that there is water on the Moon to use (and it is significant that no subsequent missions have confirmed Clementine’s findings).
That money can be put to better use I guess! Maybe for investigating alternative fuel?
Many years ago I attended a class on project management. One of seemingly turgid topics was “How to Write a Mission Statement”. What made the topic interesting was the example chosen to illustrate the principles of “specific and measureable” — John F. Kennedy’s famous pledge to reach the moon:
“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”
Sorta puts Ms. Dale’s “statement” in its proper context.
I’ll be interested to see what becomes of this “plan” now that Rumsfeld is gone. I grew up in the Apollo era, so I love manned exploration, but this administration has really put a damper on that enthusiasm, especially with the damage to science from they’re “we’ll use cost as an excuse to justify cutting anything we don’t like, but without actually cutting overall spending.” Rumsfeld had a long history of favoring a military space force, and ever since it was announced, I’ve been suspicious that development of the “crew exploration vehicle” was just cover to put that plan into motion. With him gone, it might lose some support, or it might continue for at least the next two years from bureaucratic momentum or the administration’s refusal ever to admit error.
My father was one of the principal design engineers, and project manager of the first stage, of the Saturn V launch vehicle and the three types of engines used in that system, and i am intimately aware of the J2, as well as the solid rocket booster assembly. It will be interesting to see how the Ares is going to be thoroughly tested prior to its use. As recent history has shown, NASA would rather launch and then discover problems, than actually put systems through complete R&D testing; something about money and expenses. One miscalculation (has that happened?) and the entire program goes up in a fireball over Florida.
I agree: Manned space exploration and astrophysical research are two quite different things and should be funded separately. However, just because NASA wastes money on ISS and manned exploration does not mean that that money should go to non-space related destinations. If you want to put money into research for cleaner fuel, I say take it out of the defense budget: They use much more of it, and they have vastly more money.
Just a word about the idea that science and exploration should be funded separately: nothing is funded separately, really, no matter what they might be pretending at any specific moment. At the end of the day, Congress makes a budget, and there are a bunch of reconcilliation committees that sit down to do the difficult balancing between the ideas of the House, Senate, and OMB, not to mention individual agencies and countless lobbyists. And everything is on the table. Not even just NASA — the NSF budget, for example, has been held back by OMB types saying “Sorry, we need that money for Moon/Mars.” As long as this ungainly beast needs to be fed, science money will be hard to come by.
A somebody who lives in nation with less high-flying ambitions, I find it quite cool that my college friend and överföhs (how do you translate that? Frosh initiation boss?) will become the first Swedish astronaut on Dec. 7.
http://www.cosis.net/abstracts/COSPAR02/02489/COSPAR02-A-02489.pdf
Abstract of the Moon as a VLBI platform.
http://www.spaceagepub.com/ilo/ilo.testimonials.html
The Moon as Observatory.
A bit off topic (but related): maybe the simplest way to make sure that the linear collider is built in the US is to make sure that the goverment of China expresses intersest in building it there…
The big question I have about the whole moon thing is the cosmic ray problem. So far I haven’t seen a real solution proposed. The solutions I have seen seem to fall into to categories. The first focus only on solar flares and temporary shelter, the second talk about ways to mitigate extreme exposure. This article seems a good example of this.
Maybe I’ve missed it but I haven’t seen a proposal that deals with long term radiation exposure (several chest x-rays worth of radiation every day). I fear we are going to spend trillions of dollars only to find we bought a “permanent” station where the staff can only stay a month and half of those develop cancer.