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Lockheed Martin
Lockheed Martin's proposed "Plymouth Rock" mission would target a near-Earth asteroid. Our planet and the moon are in the background of this artist's conception.
To the moon? Or to an asteroid? Both destinations have been in NASA's sights — the moon during the George W. Bush administration, and a near-Earth asteroid during the Obama administration. Now a "Global Exploration Roadmap" being drawn up by NASA and its counterparts around the world lays out a 25-year scenario for each of the two paths leading beyond Earth orbit.
Both of the paths are aimed at the same eventual destination: Mars. And some observers are suggesting the best course is to aim directly at the Red Planet, rather than starting with closer destinations.
The moon vs. asteroid debate was brought back into the spotlight during the deliberations of a panel known as the International Space Exploration Coordination Group, or ISECG. The group, which includes representatives from Britain, Canada, the European Space Agency, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States, was established as a coordination forum for space exploration back when NASA was aiming for a return to the moon by 2020.
Over the past year, the group has retooled the long-term global strategy for space exploration. "It begins with the International Space Station and expands human presence throughout the solar system, leading ultimately to human missions to explore the surface of Mars," NASA said today in a news release. "The roadmap flows from this strategy and identifies two potential pathways: 'Asteroid Next' and 'Moon Next.'"
NASA said "each pathway represents a mission scenario over a 25-year period describing a logical sequence of robotic and human missions." That scenario would be consistent with the plan that President Barack Obama laid out two years ago, with a goal of sending astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid by 2025 and pushing out to Mars and its moons by the mid-2030s. The new twist is that the moon is back on the table as the initial destination beyond Earth orbit.
NASA
An artist's conception shows NASA's Orion exploration vehicle and a lander docked in lunar orbit.
Senior space officials gave their go-ahead to the two-pathway plan today during a meeting in Kyoto, Japan, NASA said.
"NASA is confident that the release of this product, and subsequent refinements as circumstances within each space agency evolve, will facilitate the ability of space agencies to form the partnerships that will ensure robust and sustainable human exploration," said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for human exploration and operations.
Gerstenmaier is the outgoing chair of the ISECG. The incoming chairman, Yoshiyuki Hasagawa of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, said the group's members were "very happy with the progress of the Global Exploration Roadmap."
NASA spokesman Michael Braukus told me that the roadmap was not yet available for public release, but space officials agreed that an initial version of the document would be issued sometime in the next few weeks. Based on viewgraph presentations prepared in advance of this week's meeting in Kyoto, both paths would eventually get to the moon as well as asteroids. It's more a question of which destination is targeted first.
One suggested strategy would start by sending a deep-space habitat to an Earth-moon gravitational balance point known as L-1. Later missions would go to the moon, as preparation for eventual Mars trips. Another scenario calls for reaching the lunar surface first. The lessons learned there would be applied to asteroid missions, and then to Mars-bound missions. A variant would focus on testing the deep-space habitat, then taking trips to the moon, then going to an asteroid, and finally flying to Mars. It's not yet clear how all these possibilities are wrapped up into the ISECG's "Asteroid Next" and "Moon Next" scenarios.
NASA
An artist's conception shows the Orion exploration vehicle and habitation modules in Martian orbit.
Are these 25-year plans necessary, or is it possible to send humans to Mars on a shorter, more direct timetable? SpaceX's millionaire founder, Elon Musk, says a 10-year plan could suffice for a mission to Mars. Rocket scientist Robert Zubrin, president of the Mars Society, made a similar case for an early Red Planet rendezvous last week in a Washington Times commentary:
"We’re ready. Despite its greater distance, we are much better prepared today to send humans to Mars than we were to send men to the moon in 1961, when President Kennedy started the Apollo program - and we were there eight years later. Contrary to those seeking indefinite delay of any commitment, future-fantasy spaceships are not needed to send humans to Mars. The primary real requirement is a heavy-lift booster with a capability similar to that of the Saturn V launch vehicle employed in the 1960s. This is something we fully understand how to create.
"The issue is not money. The issue is leadership. NASA’s average Apollo-era (1961-73) budget, adjusted for inflation, was about $19 billion a year in today’s dollars, just 5 percent more than the agency’s current budget. Yet the NASA of the '60s accomplished 100 times more because it had a mission with a deadline and was forced to develop an efficient plan to achieve that mission. If NASA were given that kind of direction, we could have humans on Mars within a decade. If not, as the rudderless agency continues to drift into the coming fiscal tsunami, we may soon end up with no human spaceflight program."
Gearing up for missions to Mars would likely require a significant boost in space spending, as well as more serious efforts to solve the problems of interplanetary spaceflight, including radiation exposure and zero-G health hazards. The ISECG's deliberations are a sign that deep-space exploration is too expensive for any one country to take on by itself. But the latest reports about the roadmap suggest that the path beyond Earth orbit is not yet set in stone — which means there's still ample opportunity for you to weigh in on the debate.
Click your choice in the poll at right, and feel free to weigh in at length in the comment space below.
In related developments:
- Caltech's Keck Institute of Space Studies has invited students from around the world to participate in a competition to design a mission that would send astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid and return a sample. The team exercise will bring at least 30 students to Caltech from Sept. 12 to 16. The Caltech Space Challenge was created by two Caltech students, Prakhar Mehrotra and Jon Mihaly. "We have more than 275 applications from exceptional students at 100 universities worldwide, including all the top-rated schools," Mehrotra said in a Caltech news release. "Selecting is going to be very hard."
- China's Chang'e 2 spacecraft has left lunar orbit and traveled about a million miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth to settle into orbit around the sun-Earth gravitational balance point known as L-2. Chang'e 2's new location was announced today by China's State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense. China's Xinhua news agency said Chang'e 2, which spent about eight months orbiting the moon, will carry out exploration activities around L-2 during the coming year. L-2 already serves as the locale for the European Space Agency's Herschel space telescope and NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe. It's also the intended destination for the James Webb Space Telescope, which is currently under construction and due for launch around 2018.
- Instead of sending astronauts to an asteroid, how about bringing the asteroid to us? In the journal Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics, scientists at Tsinghua University in Beijing say "it is possible" to nudge an asteroid into temporary Earth orbit, and they provide a list of near-Earth asteroids that just might serve. One possibility is the 10-meter-wide (33-foot-wide) asteroid 2008 EA9, which could be placed in an orbit about twice as far away as the moon for study or for mining over the course of a few years. "Interesting idea," Technology Review's arXiv blog notes. "What could possibly go wrong?"
More about deep-space exploration:
- Gallery: Seven out-of-this-world destinations
- Europe and Russia take aim at Mars
- Counting down to a mission to Mars
- NASA retools spaceship for deep space
Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding me to your Google+ circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.
Leave a Comment:
Now if the private space agency can be pulled into the group the time should be reduced by about five or ten years.
SpaceX will be launching it's first flight of the Dragon to the ISS soon from Cape Canavarel.
@Dangerous Mind
Not if the Russians don't get there act together. Their latest space program fiasco could have the astronaut's abandoning station therefore leaving no crew behind to execute the docking procedure.
As long as they maintain at least a 3 person crew on the ISS, they will be able to receive the SpaceX Dragon Cargo capsule as planned. That will require just one Soyuz launch between now and December... the Russians will have more than one opportunity to launch between now and then.
Hopefully they will identify the root cause with certainty, and this will just be a minor hiccup in the end.
We should first go to a small asteroid, bore a big hole into it, set its' rotation to produce artificial gravity, build a habitat inside the big hole, strap some boosters on it, THEN send the colonized asteroid to Mars.
The intense radiation of the sun REQUIRES a scenario like this for shielding for deeper space travel.
What about creating artificial Van Allen belts around the spacecraft?
How would you move a spacecraft with the mass of a small planet?
Do you mean creating "anti" Van Allen belts around the asteroid-craft? That might be possible.
An asteroid 500 ft across should be maneuverable. Park it in Mars orbit and drop some crafts of people to the surface.
No, I mean Van Allen belts. For a long time there was a concern about long term exposure to large magnetic fields. The health concerns about the long term exposure to high magnetic fields have been answered via tests on animals (conducted because of concerns about cancer caused by power lines).
So, a reasonably sized rare-earth permanent magnet, coupled with mu-metal to complete the magnetic circuit should be able to deflect all "normal" interplanetary radiation.
The L-1 & L2 points and the Moon are all places of importance. It's more than a tad interesting that the Chinese have orbited the moon and then moved on to the L-2 point on the same mission. Meanwhile we contemplate "de-maning" the ISS. Too bad the ISS isn't in a orbit that makes it a desirable jump off point for the moon. I wonder where the Chinese plan to put their space station? Hopefully, 25+ years from now, when we ready to go places, we won't have to ask permission to visit.
Chinese mission, Hershel telescope, Anisotropy probe... Sounds like it's getting a little crowded up there at L-2. I wonder how they keep all this stuff from crashing into each other. Hopefully no one will forget to convert from standard to metric.
Going to the moon would serve a useful purpose and could pave the way for a permanent lunar base (much more practical than the space station which will sooner or later fall out of orbit). Manned mission to an asteroid is a stunt. Needed asteroid information can be acquired by unmanned probes.
I believe China, India and Russia should leave this group and continue with their plans to land a man on the Moon by 2025. IF I have read this report right, it appears that this group, lead by the USA has just vetoed India, China and Russia's plan on sending a Man to the moon.
I do not see this group doing anything at all except following the substandard plan of Obama the man who killed NASA which is to maybe some day go out beyond low sub orbital space and do maybe something or another.
Lunar orbit would be the place to assemble the spacecraft to go to the planets and asteroids. Maybe it would take a lot longer but it is a sound business plan and not some suicidal impulse to summit Everest without a guide or supplies, in your underwear. A functioning community on the moon would cut the costs of planetary travel immensely and establish the necessary technology for space survival within rescue distance. Solar energy is available in an almost unlimited supply at the poles 24/7 and could be used to get oxygen from the rocks, amongst other very useful things.
Build it like a business, one step at a time. Who cares who gets there first? If we establish permanent access first then we have won.
"Lunar orbit would be the place to assemble the spacecraft to go to the planets and asteroids"
Why? All manufacturing capacity is down here. They'd likely have to go into a LEO parking orbit first, anyway. Why take modules and propulsion all the way to Lunar orbit, before going some where else?
And no, before anyone says it, no one is going to set up a whole infrastructure of Lunar mining and manufacturing, just to build a couple of deep-space ships.
"A functioning community on the moon would cut the costs of planetary travel immensely and establish the necessary technology for space survival within rescue distance"
Rescue distance? I'm in favor of creating 'a functioning community on the Moon' for other reasons, but you have to understand that Earth's Moon is no closer to Mars or the rest of the solar system than Earth is...
"Solar energy is available in an almost unlimited supply at the poles 24/7 and could be used to get oxygen from the rocks, amongst other very useful things."
Not that much may well be correct, and valuable, if you then export the oxygen to where it may be most useful (even back to LEO), and not expect your users to come get it.
I mean, when was the last time you refueled right at a refinery or oil rig?
Magnum Serpentine,
We get it, from your many posts on the subject - you don't like Obama. Fact is, no president in decades has provided strong leadership on the space program, and CONGRESS essentially determines NASA's budget, human spaceflight agenda, and even goes so far as to dictate specific launch vehicle requirements (to keep their aerospace industry constituents happy).
Obama wanted to fund commercial space more heavily (which really represents our only hope of sending American's to LEO and the ISS on an American launch vehicle anytime soon), and increase NASA R&D for deep space exploration tech.
You say Obama "killed NASA", presumably because he the Constellation program... well if you know anything, you know that NASA's budget increaced under Obama, and you also know that Constellation was a technical and a financial (underfunded) failure well before Obama ever came into office.
Can we stop with the partisan BS?
I m almost certain you are wrong.
Wrong about which part? That all manufacturing capacity is down here? If you know of exiting Lunar factories, let me know.
That no one will create an entire mining and manufacturing infrastructure on the Moon, just to build a couple of deep-space ships? I'd bet on it.
Consider what it costs to build a whole new commercial manufacturing plant. Consider that said manufacturer expects to recover the cost of that investment across hundreds of units sold to customers. Is there that kind of existing demand for interplanetary ships? And factory construction on Earth doesn't have to take into account the difficulty of doing it in vacuum, low gravity, absolutely every bit of life-support being actively provided and managed by the construction contractor and building operator. On Earth, the presence of air is a given. HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning) is the closest to such concerns we have here. Water? Electricity? That utility infrastructure exists here. On the Moon, You (or someone you must pay) must provide this from scratch, again under Lunar conditions.
When you need materials here, you get in touch with a provider of aluminum, who will make parts to your order. Plastics? Same deal. (and many plastics are hydrocarbon based...oil drilling and refining on the Moon? ANY kind of fossil fuel? Right...) Repeat for anything else that goes into an airplane. None of those providers are on the Moon, either. And down here, you aren't their only customer. The aluminum guy also may make money turning out home siding, foil, baseball bats and a million soft drink cans. He doesn't have a major investment just for a handful of your products, either.
Then there's the guy who mines and processes raw aluminum ore (an energy-intensive activity) who now must try to do this in vacuum...if the Moon has sufficient concentrations of ore.
But there's the most basic question...why do we want to make these on the Moon and not Earth, anyway? Is all this 'because the Moon has a lower escape velocity' when it's time to launch. It's true, but so what? Earth has a (gasp) deeper gravity well, but fuel resources here are also plentiful and cheap.
(Fuel costs are not what makes spaceflght expensive. If that was all that mattered, flying to orbit would cost about as much as flying across the Pacific.)
On the Moon, you have some water ice at the poles, but you may find it more valuable to use right there for life-support and other processes. The concentrations may be too low, and thus, too valuable to blow into vacuum as rocket exhaust. (as opposed to the planet that's mostly covered with water, if hydrogen-oxygen rockets are what you want, or nuclear-thermal rockets that use only hydrogen as reaction mass) and in a launch to orbit, much of the exhaust will remain in its atmosphere anyway). I'm okay with Lunar O2 from the regolith, however, because there's effectively an unlimited amount of that. Earth also has various hydrocarbon fuels that just don't exist on the Moon at all. (Indeed, industrial hydrogen actually comes from methane [natural gas] because it's easier than breaking water., but for reasons that have little to do with spaceflight, I'm quite willing to assume that someone will eventually find a practical means for breaking it from water...preferably solar driven)
No, you won't see Lunar manufacturing until there's a reason to go to the considerable effort to do it there that has clear economic advantages (perhaps processes that need low, but not zero-g* and/or unlimited volumes of vacuum and/or easily produced deep cryo temps at night, or at the poles*) over doing it down here. And building spaceships is not it.
(* But see Neil Ruzic's book 'Where the Winds Sleep' for some hints on what those might be)
Oh, and I'm all for using natural fuel resources in space where that's practical...at your destination. Let's push ISRU for all it's worth. But going to the Moon to refuel, in order to go somewhere else? Nonsense. Again, if you're doing chemical rockets, send regolith-derived Lunar oxygen back to LEO, where spaceships should be assembled (not unlike ISS), after manufacture just a few hundred miles below...
Wrong about the part in which you assume that it must always be true. The NASA plans are for the future and the plans must mesh with future technology and infrastructure rather than present technology and infrastructure.
See you in 2025.
Forget all that. Start with a space elevator (floating, Mountain, or Sea). The technology is already here and it will make all future trips cheap by comparison.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator
Gee, we do have a "Mountain" of Space Cadets (aka: "I do not believe in Evolution"), could we start there? Just asking.
With as much junk as we have in low Earth orbit, the elevator concept is not feasible.
There's a number of other huge engineering problems involved with it, but I'm not even going to waste time elaborating them all to you.
@ NWOwatchdog and KINGOFZED:
Missouri.
I do not like these multiple plans idea. We have limited resources and their price isn't going down anytime in the future. We need to pick one path and use our resources to accomplish it. How many "destinations" were NASA considering when JFK gave the deadline to America that we would be on the moon in less than a decade?
The problem with multiple plans is that these other destinations become side projects which millions are spent which could later be axed by a change in management or "direction." Then all that money is gone... thanks for playing. It's great to keep a roadmap of future destinations and projects, but managing when a project goal has been completed and when the next goal should be tackled is needed in order to keep the most amount of your resources focused and efficiently used.
I think the moon would be a good choice. Especially since they have found water on the pole. An amazingly important find for any human colonization. From what we learn in building/living on the moon in just a short while will be cruicial to future exploration.
Why would it take 15 years to get to the moon????? We've already been there. That is a sad commentary on the U.S. space program.
Jack,
I believe this is just a lie of the Obama administration. The truth is that Obama has no plan for space, he says he has grand plans to maybe someday explore Mars, or maybe could be or would be explore an asteroid, if only we did this and maybe that and a little bit of this and some of that... get it?
As I said above, I feel this group has just vetoed China, India and Russia's plan on returning to the moon and their plans were vetoed just because the USA can't do that sort of thing anymore.
Well it's not as if we've had anyone of Kennedy's quality around lately is it?
To answer your question Jack, it's because if we go back to the moon, it will be for a purpose other than planting a flag and bringing back some rocks.
People who complain that we already did it with Apollo don't understand what's being discussed. It doesn't serve any purpose simply to send people there and have them return a couple of days later. We are now talking about extended stays, everything from setting up a small research base to full blown colonization. That will take time to plan, get the appropriate infrastructure in place to create it, and get it to the moon.
If we truly wanted to, we could get back there in just a couple of years via something like Apollo. But it just wouldn't be worth the effort and cost.
Mitchell
Because the only way we have of getting there is to pay the russians to put our astronauts and their supplies into low earth orbit where they will have to wait around with their thumbs out until a chinese ship flys by on it's way to the moon. That's why.
dan42day,
There is no evidence that any other nation is any closer than us to putting a man on the moon again. China's, India's, and even Russia's capabilities are often greatly overstated in comments like your's.
Steer an asteroid gently onto the moon where we can mine it for materials to construct larger long range ships. Cheaper/easier to build it in space, than to build it here and send it up piece at a time.
Forget "gently." I guess you could create any number of new craters on the "dark side" and no one would ever know.
"Cheaper/easier to build it in space, than to build it here and send it up piece at a time."
Wrong. I've discussed that elsewhere in the thread.
And there is no 'gently' landing an asteroid on the Moon, anyway.
I voted for the asteroid first. Neither the Moon or Mars is likely to fall on us. Right now we're as helpless against a flying mountain as the dinosaurs were.
Seems like a pretty good reason to me.
Excellent point.
Why send people to an asteroid? There is not enough gravity for them to walk on it. Asteroids tumble in their orbits and would be very dangerous to visit. A crazy idea. Send a robotic craft.
Going to Mars. How do we introduce artificial gravity so that astronauts do not loose bone mass and muscle mass?
How do we protect them from radiation in space once they get to Mars?
We don't know how to do this and it will be a long time before we do.
Going to the moon makes the most sense to me.
It is close. Easy to resupply if we set up a base there. A great place to work out the kinks in our deep space capabilities.
We do not have the capability at present for deep space missions.
Until we do, use robotic spacecraft instead
Artificial gravity (it already works and is easy, Spin the ship):
#mce_temp_url#
The crew could retreat into the center of the ship during a solar flare and would be safe, protected by the provisions and the water stored around them.
for more information read: The Case for Mars by Dr. Robert Zubrin
I for one, had hoped to have seen the space shuttle evolve into a ship that could have had landing AND liftoff capability on the moon.
Instead, we have reverted backwards to rockets for space exploration.
I shutter to think of all that we have achieved in the few short years we had with the shuttle program, to scrap it for....WHAT?
I am a mere layman in these matters but it just doesn't make sense to me.
Hello sir... the space shuttle has wings to land on earth... which has an atmosphere. There is no need of a winged vehicle to land on the moon, which has no appreciable atmosphere. Actually, the shuttle was a step backwards so far as exploring deep space... it was never meant to go beyond low earth orbit. Does that make sense?
As I said...I am but a mere layman in these matters.
But if you reread my post, I used the word EVOLVE where the shuttle was concerned.
Right now we don't have SQUAT, unless you consider certain lame attempts in the private sector 'progress.'
Russia is even more laughable. They have been horrendous in revealing how many failures their space program has had and yet we put our astronauts fates in THEIR hands?
NOW pray tell, Mr. Mister.....how does THAT make sense?
What about the Challenger and Discovery, the two that blew up? Our shuttles didn't have the greatest record either. They were past due to be retired it's just sad nothing was lined up to take their place right away. It's a dangerous business.
Trust me, Dangerous Mind...
The Soviets disaster record with their space program is 10 FOLD compared to the USA.
Let me put it this way so that certain people here can understand my meaning:
Evolve means to develop, gradual change.
Both you and Mr. Mister I hope can now understand my posts.
lestweforget-3299938 I don't understand your posts. The shuttle program couldn't evolve beyond upgrading the internal electronics and subsystems. The shuttle was a fat pig, it weighed too much to go beyond low earth orbit. The initial idea was that the shuttle was going to be a very cheap, very safe and a highly reusable launch system. They were going to be flying into space every few weeks. The shuttle was never safe, semi-reusable (at best) and very expensive. Why try to evolve and improve on a failed platform from the 1970's , doesn't make any sense.
You claim the shuttle had only been around for a few short years, what? In the first 10 years NASA went from nothing to landing on the Moon and launching a large space station Skylab (just look at the pictures in and a jogging rack inside it.) The shuttle era (or dark ages) lasted about 30+ years and cost about $200 billion or about $1.5 billion per launch. We lost the capabilities of a space taxi (Saturn I), a super heavy lift (Saturn 5) and a lunar lander in order to build the space shuttles. Today we only can dream about having the capabilities we once had in the early 70's. Just imagine how the technology that put us on the moon could of "evolved". There was plans to upgrade the F-1 rocket engines to increase it's thrust to 2.0 million pounds from the 1.5 million. The ISS could of been built with just a few Saturn V launches.
You're implying that we should not be reverting back to rocket technology and you're also complaining that we don't have SQUAT with regards to capabilities. Well what exactly are you proposing that we use to get to space, an anti-matter engine that doesn't exist? Sure maybe in a few hundred years we'll fly to Mars on in our anti-matter engine that cost trillions of dollars to develop to visit all the Chinese hotels on Mars.
Then on top of it all you complain about the private sector. The private sector is the 1 bright shine star we can pin our hopes on. If you're looking for launch systems they can evolve, then look at SpaceX, they are working on an upgrade to it Merlin Engines right now it will be version D. Their heavy lift rocket Falcon Heavy is a direct evolution of their Falcon 9 rocket. Very smart and cost effective.
The US has had 2 launch failures with humans, so the 10 FOLD must mean the Soviets has lost 20 missions? That is a bunch of secret missions they have hid from US Intelligence. How our intelligence wasn't aware of these 20 failures but a self professed layman seems to have knowledge of these soviet secrets is astounding.
If nobody is going to correct this I will, It was the Brave crews of Columbia (STS-107) and Challenger (STS-51) that lost their lives for a record of 2 out of almost 140 missions.
Your sacrifice for science, innovation, and exploration continue to inspire!!
SO far a lot of good posts, I noted I was out voted for the moon 2 to 1, straight to mars seems to be popular at this point..
First, I suggest a multi track approach...the priority mission is the one that nasa would take full control of, meaning we appreciate the help, but all primary systems are under nasa's sole direction...I like the all chiefs and no indians management philosophy, but here we are, days after the retired shuttles are pulled and bingo....plan d, an empty science lab, is on the table....there is only one way to prevent that from happening to a mars, boots on the ground crew....want it done right, do it yourself....in the meantime, we are absolutely foolish NOT have ing a lunar base operational...I would put it at top priority but second is fine, as long as it is recognized as a valuable space asset and not defunded per political will...finally an asteroid mission is in the cards, for now robotics is called for (more imperial space droids!!)...see, here is the rule of thumb...no matter what it is...send out recon probes, send out surface robots...THEN send out live boots iff merited (if and only if). Seems simple enough. So I propose we pick a priority one destination...moon, mars, asteroid, large moveable station....no matter..build for that with speed and determination....earth to there and back...meanwhile (concurrent) we pick a priorty two destination, earth to there and back...then we pick a priorty three destination...earth to there and back...mix it up with plans like prioty one destination to priority two destination, and back...and so on...THAT WAY, we do not have all our eggs in one basket..(and what a basket case nasa management is in todays world)...If I were an astrounaut on the iss, I would be saying, hey, the ruskies gonna get it fixed,howzabout let's stay put here and you putz with the g s 18's and up go for early retirement, we'll just wait ya out.
anyways, nasa is wise to up the priority on A mission, but they should be all out for a moon base as the waypoint for further out, part of the process should be a focus on faster ships....one grand point indeed for a moon base dug into the surface.....5/6 ths the energy can now be for speed!! earth to moon and back can and should be REAL SPACE SHIPS!! (which of course, DO NOT BOUNCE!!). Meanwhile the others (jaxa et all) can help with the primary systems for the OTHER missions, and ancillary projects on the moon,world wide private enterprise welcomed here NOT on the priorty A missions. The multipronged approach will have built in redundancy and engineering sharing.....we usually call this a good thing in mission critical planning. Fast track to the moon and back and you will be really fast tracking a successful mars AND asteroid mission AND be set for jumping further out, faster...and wiser I might add. Not my humble or inhumble opinion...more like the original plan we waivered from thanks to unwise advisers.
nice article alan.
Excellent points Ray! A Moon mission with the goal of a permanent outpost lends itself to the completion of the other two goals. Going to Mars directly seems a little too much like an Everest expedition without any possible payoff - just another flag planter. An asteroid mission could easily be accomplished alongside moon missions and should benefit from the experience of the moon. I would much prefer missions with useful endpoints and the Moon provides that in a way that the others don't at this point.
I also agree and would suggest that the Moon should be first so that we have a launching platform to another planet or ? If we don't have an atmosphere to get out of (i.e. Earth's) that fuel/oxygen can be used for the crew and craft or even just to have more room for supplies and equipment.
We now have the capability to have small suitcase size nuclear reactors that can power the equivelant of 8 house size buildings per reactor which along with solar should enable an outpost to be able to be built on the moon rather quickly (relatively). We then use robots to aid us in building larger structures for bigger plans to store planting soil, water and oxygen along with hydrogen and nitrogen or just the water used with the electricity from the reactor to create oxygen and hydrogen but some means for the basis of life. Then we start up greenhouses for food and other things to create a habitat to send our species into space and propagate other planets in our solar system and beyond. This would of course be supplemented by future supply missions.
It is a big task, but as we know the knowledge benefit from such a venture would be a hundred-fold vs. the time and cost.
KNW wrote:
Awesome! That means we can spend say $100 billion on going to the moon and Mars and eliminate the income tax. :)
I am saddened really,as a young child I looked to the stars with hope and wonderment knowing that we we were close to putting a man in space, then kennedy proposed to put americans on the moon by the end of the 60's and as a country we did.
Doing that got the country to pull together the astronauts were and are still heroes.Next stop mars!Next came Skylab and it got used for awhile and then sent to plummet into the ocean, I remember thinking thats the end of the space program. No Mars in my lifetime. I am close to 60, and not likely I am going to see that goal met before I die. What happened to America?how do we get that dream back when there are so many distractions? I wish I knew.
They decided it was more important to wage war for strategic control of the world and it's resources. It's sad actually. It took one man with a vision (Kennedy) to get us to the moon. It took many more men to entrench us in an expensive decades long struggle for power with dubious benefit for the tremendous cost in time, lives, and money.
We'd probably be living on Mars by now if people's priorities had been different.
Don't make Kennedy out to be more than what he was. I firmly believe that Apollo is one of our greatest accomplishments and offer no disrespect in any way for the program. But it was very much a propaganda project of the cold war and a rather expensive project at that.
Mitchell
Your Comment:
I am saddened really,as a young child I looked to the stars with hope and wonderment knowing that we we were close to putting a man in space, then kennedy proposed to put americans on the moon by the end of the 60's and as a country we did.
Doing that got the country to pull together the astronauts were and are still heroes.Next stop mars!Next came Skylab and it got used for awhile and then sent to plummet into the ocean, I remember thinking thats the end of the space program. No Mars in my lifetime. I am close to 60, and not likely I am going to see that goal met before I die. What happened to America?how do we get that dream back when there are so many distractions? I wish I knew.
Visit an asteroid. As far as the future of humanity is concerned, Mars and the Moon together only have about the same land mass area as the Earth. The asteroids can support a million times as much effective area, and thus population. Plus, you can spin space settlements for normal gravity, while both the Moon and Mars have too little gravity to raise children.
The moons of Mars (Phobos and Deimos) alone can provide the raw materials needed to build space settlements supporting several times the Earth's current population - so I'd support a manned mission to the moons of Mars!
See
Actually Mars alone has the same land mass as the earth when you subtract out our oceans. I was gratified to see Dr. Robert Zubrin featured prominently in this article His Mars Direct mission architecture is a well thought out strategy for getting humans to Mars within a decade using existing technology. The simultaneous development of nuclear thermal rocket technology that we pioneered under the NERVA program between 1955 and 1973 would then allow even more robust missions enabling permanent colonization of the Red Planet to commence within 15 years.
A question: Since the asteroid belt lies between Mars and Jupiter why is it viewed as logical to visit an asteroid before visiting Mars? Wouldn't we pass Mars on the way to the asteroid? Why do that instead of going to Mars first?
I assume there's a science-based answer to this question - and would appreciate hearing it. Anyone? Thanks!
There's asteroids everywhere, well in a general sense. My guess is that we would go to a near Earth asteroid that wouldn't require such a long transit time, most likely one that's roughly in our orbit.
Hope that answers your question :)
Mitchell
NEO (Near Earth Objects) are just that. They lie between 0.9 and 1.3 astronomical units from the Sun (where Earth's orbit is 1 AU).
Missions to NEO's have certain advantages over Moon/Mars in the immediate future. The amount of the development that needs to occur is less, because of their proximity and minimal gravity, meaning a lander does not need to be developed, and total fuel and cargo requirements are less.
This makes an NEO mission more affordable than Moon/Mar/Phobos and easier to achieve in the near-term, while still achieving milestones and technical challenges that will bring us closer to Moon/Mars/Phobos in terms of capability.
That's the idea behind NASA's "flexible path" approach which ultimately leads to putting humans on Mars.
I can't fathom why on earth we should waste money (Taxpayers) on a mission to Mars. A hot and barren planet with no vegetation and no chance of being freely colonized with its closer proximity to the Sun. The only thing that may be discovered would be new minerals,ore and gemstones? And if that's the case wouldn't it make sense for the mining companies and others who would benefit from these commodities to foot the bill for these wasteful expeditions. Or would the wealth from these discoveries be freely shared with all? I think not........Say No to Mars before it's too late to turn back
Right on. It's nothing but a huge waste of assets we don't have. Come to your senses people, we need to take care of the planet and people we have.
Mars is neither hot nor closer to the Sun. It would help to know more about your argument before you make it.
True Blue Patriot you want me to respect your view? First you need to understand that Mars IS NOT a hot planet and it IS NOT closer to the Sun. Well after reading your post we should sue your science teachers for failing to teach you basic science. Now that was a true waste of tax payer money.
Mars it the only interesting place in the solar system that can actually support humans. It isn't easy but the CO2 in the atmosphere can be used to gain easy access to the Oxygen to breath and to actually make water.
It is difficult to know what direct benefits can come from pushing technology forward. Look back at Ben Franklin's foolish experiments with electricity. I am sure there were plenty of small minded people yipping at Franklin telling him, he was wasting his time and money. Well how did that turn out for humanity? Maybe in developing new technology for living on Mars we find new ways to help ourselves here on earth. NASA's budget is less then 1% of the federal budget and hardly the source of our spending problems.
If there are rich mineral resources on Mars do you want the Chinese to become the wealthiest nation on the face of the earth for the next 1000 years? How true blue are you?
The best destination is Mars! Why? Because it has the greatest potential scientific payoff and we already possess the technical expertise to conduct the mission. Not to mention that a mission to Mars would put America back in a space exploration leadership role and give Americans something to inspiring to be proud of.
But regrettably America lacks the leadership, will and political integrity to accomplish great things. President Obama has dismantled the space program to the point where we can’t even send our own astronauts to low earth orbit to man our own space station. It is pure fantasy to plan missions to the moon or mars or any other celestial bodies under our current political leadership. We have lost our way!
America needs new, forward-thinking political leaders with a can-do spirit. Unfortunately there is not one single candidate for president that has the vision, leadership qualities and integrity to restore America’s greatness. I nominate Robert Zubrin for president!
Private space efforts well do well as long as there is a monetary payoff. Mining the asteroids and the moon, construction of orbiting hotels, etc. works because they return cash to those who spend it.
But for the more purely scientific and exploration minded missions, we will still need NASA (or similar) who will blaze trails that return science and discovery that don't have an immediate dollars & cents value.
There has to be a recognition that neither can do all that needs to be done alone... but between the two, we may perhaps someday do all those things that none of us alive today will live to see accomplished.
Commercial Space got a big boost this year when SpaceX got a 5 yr launch contract with Iridium. Our U.S space program didn't die when the Shuttle went away...it just got better!