A new blog location at Air and Space magazine

Apparently, they liked my dispatches from India during the launch of Chandrayaan-1 last month, so Air & Space Magazine has asked me to post to a new blog at their web site. The new blog is called:

The Once and Future Moon

and will consist of miscellaneous pieces describing ongoing lunar exploration, the return to the Moon, space policy and a few other things as my interest wanders.

Please check out the new blog!

India Aims for the Moon

Just returned from India to attend the launch of Chandrayaan-1. While there, I was blogging the launch activities for the Smithsonian Air and Space magazine.

The original posts can be found HERE. This should be up for the next few weeks. I have also posted a PDF of my blog pieces at the main web site HERE.

Great trip! The launch was spectacular. Now comes the hard work of exploring the Moon.

“Been there, done that” -- Space Policy Ipecac

The first NASA Lunar Science Conference is now concluded. On the first day of the meeting, Carle Pieters (Brown University) gave a talk summarizing the NRC report on the Scientific Context for the Exploration of the Moon. Although a straightforward summary, Carle used the phrase “Apollo was exciting... but been there done that” during her talk. Note well: she does not subscribe to this view, but it was picked up by the press and trumpeted in a wire story.

This phrase is not only offensive to the ears of working lunar scientists, it’s flat wrong in regard to a return to the Moon under the Vision for Space Exploration. During my talk immediately following Carle’s, I attempted (once again) to review exactly what the Vision means and why it was laid out the way it was (presentation posted here). I think that the fundamental problem comes from the idea that the VSE is “Apollo on steroids” or in fact, any reincarnation of Apollo at all.

If the mission of lunar return were to conduct Apollo-type sortie missions focused on lunar science, it would indeed have an “Apollo Redivivus” flavor. In fact, we are NOT going back to the Moon to fill in the blank pages in the notebooks of lunar scientists. As clearly laid out in the Vision for Space Exploration founding policy documents, the aim of a return to the Moon is to learn the skills we need to live on other worlds. Foremost among these skills is using the material and energy resources of the Moon to create new spacefaring capability. I cannot imagine a mission statement more antithetical to the trite and dismissive “Been there, done that.”

Of course, no one knows if using space resources is even possible. That’s exactly why it’s such an interesting mission – we don’t know the answer ahead of time. NASA’s job is not to industrialize the Moon – it’s to find out if the Moon can be industrialized. Such a challenge has never been attempted by any nation or entity, but it is a skill that we must master if we are ever to become a true spacefaring (and space-inhabiting) species.

The Vision for Space Exploration: Quo Vadimus?

Just got back from ISDC 2007 in Dallas this Memorial Day weekend, where I gave this talk. I felt the need to evaluate publicly the current status of the Vision, particularly in regard to certain architectural decisions made by NASA over the past 3 years. Jeff Foust over at Space Politics has written a fairly accurate précis of my talk at the conference.

I’ve tried to evaluate this as honestly as I can. In brief, I find the current state of the VSE to be wanting in several respects (see presentation at Spudis Lunar Resources). In particular, many of the key recommendations of the Presidential Aldridge Commission have been ignored or poorly implemented. I am not Pollyanna; I recognize the fate of most commission reports is the dustbin. However, the Vision is not merely “the next mission for NASA” as the agency seems to assume. The Vision is an outline for an entirely new and different paradigm of space exploration, one in which we expand national participation in space by directly involving and getting investment from the private sector. It also involves using the unlimited material and energy resources of space to create new spacefaring capability.

These worthy goals seem as far away now as they ever have. I fear that NASA understands neither their new mission nor the philosophical underpinnings of it. The VSE in NASA terms has become all about building the new Orion and Ares vehicles with very little tying these spacecraft to their destinations – the Moon and beyond. The CEV without the Moon is merely Shuttle II – a vehicle without a destination.

One additional note on my advocacy of more robotic missions. This is not a self-serving career move as has been suggested by some posters at Jeff’s discussion board – I have enough data and scientific projects to last me well past my retirement. The robotic program is important because it is a tie to our destination. A robotic presence on the Moon prior to human arrival not only tests important processes we’ll be using on the Moon, particularly in regard to resource extraction (which we’ve never done), but also emplaces assets on the lunar surface for human use when crews finally arrive. But most importantly, it provides continuity in a program in which a full decade will elapse between the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and the first human Orion landings. Our robotic presence on the Moon is both a statement of programmatic intent and a “claim stake” on rare and valuable lunar property. President Bush specifically called for a “series of robotic missions to the Moon” in his VSE speech* for these reasons – robotic missions are about much more than simply collecting new map data.

* “Beginning no later than 2008, we will send a series of robotic missions to the lunar surface to research and prepare for future human exploration.” Reference

Others Won’t Pass Up This Opportunity

Don Beattie’s article in this week’s The Space Review comments unfavorably on my earlier effort to articulate a single, clear and understandable mission for America’s return to the Moon as part of the new Vision for Space Exploration. Beattie takes issue with my argument that the Moon is both the right destination and that the mission is to learn how to live and work productively on another world, with emphasis on understanding the role of using space resources.

Beattie says “We can ‘…do everything else that we want to do in space’ without detouring to the Moon.” Beattie contends that the Moon is passé – been there, done that – and it’s time to focus our energies on robotic exploration of Mars, where he perceives the “real science” is—a view shared by others in the planetary exploration community. His value judgment, that there’s nothing of interest on the Moon, a pronouncement gainsaid not merely by me, but by the entire planetary science community, who made aspects of lunar science fundamental in the latest NRC decadal study.

Beattie claims that the idea of using space resources is foolish; concept studies have shown that current techniques don’t pay for themselves and that, “There are no lunar resources that, when processed, would have any economic value if utilized on the Moon or returned to Earth.” Well, concept studies can show anything you want them to show, especially in areas for which we have literally no practical experience, like space resource utilization. Beattie condescendingly advises ISRU advocates to “reopen their chemistry and physics textbooks and spend some time with real-world mining and drilling operations.” In fact, many ISRU workers have extensive mining and engineering backgrounds; studies on lunar resource utilization have been done by such dilettantes as Don Burt, mineralogist and mining geologist from Arizona State University and institutions such as the Bechtel Corporation and Colorado School of Mines. Beattie’s second misjudgment comes from an uninformed assessment of the current marketplace (markets for unimagined products are always non-existent) and a misunderstanding of how resource utilization fits into the Vision.

The goal of resource extraction in lunar return is not to “create economic value,” but rather to process resources on the Moon to discover their potential and determine if they do have economic and exploratory value. If humanity is to have a role in future space exploration, we must learn to cut the cord of Earth-based logistics. Unlike Beattie’s experts, I have no idea if lunar and other space resources can be used to create new capabilities or not but myself and many space-faring nations are eager to find out. The Moon offers us the ability to experiment with a variety of techniques and products along with a space platform where we can evaluate the difficulty of their production and their utility when made available. This is a challenging goal, one where federal engineering R&D can experiment with processes and techniques yet too difficult and too uncertain for the private sector. We go to the Moon to find out if living there is possible—our nation and the world will benefit (as other countries realize), as it strengthens our technological and scientific hand. And if we succeed, we will move into the Solar System.

Beattie dismisses the attraction of the lunar poles. Beyond the potential for water ice and the realization that many countries are preparing scientific expeditions to the Moon, there is the obvious advantage of near-permanent sunlight available at several spots near the poles. This sunlight and the benign thermal environment at the poles allows humans to stay on the Moon throughout the 14-day nighttime without resorting to nuclear reactors for surface power, an alternate solution that greatly increases cost and bureaucratic red tape. It’s the sunlight that makes the poles attractive—water, if present, is icing on the cake.

From his response to my article A Moon Full of Opportunity, it is clear Beattie doesn’t want a permanent human presence on the Moon or for that matter, anywhere else in space. His vision for space exploration appears to be a science-driven program whereby robots send us postcards from space. As I said in my TSR article, people differ on where NASA funding should go. I think that a program designed to learn how to use off-Earth resources to create new industry in space opens up new opportunities for wealth creation, inspiration, human commerce… and science. It is a very different vision from those who think we should have a small, government-controlled program, offering limited access to space to a small subsection of the populace to conduct an extremely narrow range of activities.

Should the Vision for Space Exploration open up space for all constituents, with an eye toward engaging the private sector, or leave it as a government-funded, private playground for academia? Readers can decide for themselves which vision is broader, richer and ultimately, self-sustaining.

“Stuck on the Moon”

Another aspect of Lou Friedman’s recent rant about the shortcomings of NASA’s new lunar architecture is his fear the we will get “stuck on the Moon.” By this, he means that NASA will become so involved in the construction and maintenance of lunar outpost infrastructure that there will be no resources left for a human mission to Mars.

This attitude fundamentally misunderstands the meaning of the Vision for Space Exploration. Friedman’s not alone; many at NASA are under similar misapprehensions. In the decade before the announcement of the VSE, many in the space community had pressed repeatedly for a national commitment to a human mission to Mars. In fact, the Mars Society was founded on this single assumption: that Mars is the only destination for humans in space. When the VSE was announced, many in this group assumed that their fondest desires had been answered, a manned mission to Mars.

In fact, the Vision has a different set of goals. Our “ultimate destination” is nothing less than the entire solar system. Yes, a human Mars mission figures prominently in Vision documents, but the VSE also mentions “other destinations.” And that’s a whole other story.

A speech last year by Presidential Science Advisor John Marburger is a key document on the fundamental purposes of the Vision. This exposition makes it clear that the Vision is much more than simply a “Mars mission” – or even a simply a lunar one. Its purpose is nothing less than the expansion of humanity into the solar system. That’s why particular emphasis is placed on the use of space resources, the materials and energy found naturally in space, gathered and turned into usable form. By harnessing space resources, we begin to “cut the cord” with the Earth, critical skills needed by any true space-faring species. We begin to do this on the Moon, simply because it’s close and has the resources needed to learn how to do this.

Friedman sees the Moon as an obstacle – a stone in his path on the way to Mars. I see it as a stone too – a stepping stone. On the Moon, we will learn how to live on another world, protect ourselves, provide for, and build a transportation system that will permit us to go anywhere we want, with whatever capabilities we need, for as long as we need. We do not have such capabilities now and the only way we can ever get them is begin to use what we find in space to create them. This will enable not only trips to Mars, but other journeys into the rest of the solar system.

Stuck on the Moon? Hardly. The Moon will soon become part of man’s world. We will continue to expand our reach into space …one step, and one planet at a time.

Lou Friedman rants

On the current blog of the Executive Director of The Planetary Society, Dr. Louis Friedman rages against NASA’s new lunar architecture. Several points struck me reading this missive, but one paragraph in particular stands out:

In contrast to Mars, the Moon is dry -- and it is getting drier. New studies using Earth-based radar confirm that previously-detected hydrogen is probably not bound in ice. These new observations also show that measurements of hydrogen in the permanently shadowed areas (where theoretical analysis points to trapped ice) were about the same as in sunlit areas (where ice cannot possibly exist). Still, we hear many enthusiasts speak about lunar “resources,” ignoring both the science pointing to the absence of water and the complex engineering needed to extract resources from dry soil.

Virtually nothing in this paragraph is correct. The “new observations” mentioned refers to a paper by Don Campbell and colleagues in a recent issue of Nature (19 October, 2006; Vol. 433, p. 835-837.) They claim in this paper to have shown that “no thick sheets of ice exist on the Moon.”

Well, no one ever claimed that such sheets do exist. I review this claim and the true nature of the dispute about lunar polar ice in a recent paper at The Space Review. In brief, we simply don’t know yet whether ice is present in the polar dark areas or not. In a way, it’s irrelevant. The real attraction of the poles is not the putative ice, but the near-continuous sunlight. Unlike the rest of the Moon, where nighttime lasts 14 Earth days, the poles offer areas that are illuminated by the sun almost constantly. This allows long-term presence on the Moon and continuous, rather than batch processing of resources.

Friedman seems to think that extracting resources out of the “dry Moon” is impossible, while the allegedly “wet Mars” is presumably a paradise, in which straws stuck in the ground will gush water, manna, and quite probably oil. In fact, extracting and using resources from any extraterrestrial object is a difficult thing and a skill we do not yet possess. But acquiring such a skill is essential. If humanity is to have a future off this planet, we must learn to extract what we need from what we find in space, regardless of its physical state and concentration level.

A key activity on the Moon is answering the question, “Can we extract and use space resources?” It is a critical issue to the future of human spaceflight. And it will be a key set of objectives and activities on the Moon when people return there.

Friedman’s real beef is with the idea of “permanence” on the Moon. He fears an endless money commitment to a lunar base, detracting from his cherished goal of a manned Mars mission. He’s wrong on this, too and I’ll tackle that issue in my next entry.