The Future of NASA's Flagship Programs
Do Budget Cuts Mean an End to Flagship Programs?, Space Quarterly Magazine by Marcia S. Smith
The following article is a free sample from the current issue of Space Quarterly Magazine. It is our hope that if you enjoy this article you will consider subscribing to the magazine.
“The Obama Administration’s decision to cut NASA’s planetary exploration budget for FY2013 and beyond generated howls of protest. The action forced the United States to shelve planned cooperation with the European Space Agency (ESA) on two Mars probes in 2016 and 2018 that were the beginning of a string of missions to fulfill the holy grail of Mars scientists – returning a sample of Mars to Earth for analysis.”
In chaos there is opportunity. The demise of the flagship Mars program is brought about more as a result of its own cost spiral than anything else. At some point all bubbles burst and MSL was the peak of the Mars bubble with a Mars sample return being a bridge too far, especially done in the conventional manner.
Let this be a time where we begin to re-imagine the planetary program into a more balanced portfolio. It is scientifically and economically criminal that we have not landed a rover on the Moon since 1972. It is even more criminal that the RLEP program dissipated without a lander. A single lander to the polar regions of the Moon, north or south would bring amazing results.
There is an article from Technology Review this past week regarding the results of the Soviet Luna 24 sample return mission. That mission, which drilled down two meters into the regolith found up to 0.1% water!
http://www.technologyreview…
The Apollo samples also found elevated water results but since the scientific teams WERE NOT EXPECTING these results, they were rejected as terrestrial contamination. How different would the world be today if that finding, and the finding of the Lunar 24 mission been different?
We now know today what the mechanism is for the elevated water levels but it has been a very long hard slog to get it recognized. Paul Spudis and others who found evidence of elevated water from Clementine and Lunar Prospector were derided and their papers rejected from peer reviewed publication BECAUSE THE EXPECTATION was that the Moon was bone dry.
This should be an object lesson on skepticism in science that should be balanced with good engineering to trust the instruments that you send to a planetary surface.
Now that we know that the amount of water on the Moon far exceeds the pessimistic estimates we should turn our attention there and begin the hard core nuts and bolts efforts to take the fruits of Apollo, those magnificent samples, and figure out how to build a space faring civilization utilizing the resources of our nearest neighbor.
Those of us that protest that this is absolutely doable today get the same response that Paul Spudis and others who looked at the data and found water got.
“ISRU is not feasible today”. (Norman Augustine in the Review of Constellation”
“ISRU is at too low of a TRL” (NASA JSC when rejecting ISRU in Constellation”
“ISRU is too hard” (Various and Sundry at the VSE planning meetings)
It is time to quit telling us what we can’t do and start helping us do what we know we can do. If we do this then we will get a Mars program that will be sustainable. Without the Moon and without ISRU we will never get beyond flags and footprints.
All great points. I would love to see ISRU at least demonstrated before the end of the decade. I would prioritize this over my desire to see a Mars sample return. The long term payoff of ISRU is more significant I think than the multi billion dollar gamble of returning the Mars rocks that have proof of life, past or present. Ten years ago I might have felt different but now seems to be the perfect time to kickstart ISRU with all these new potential costumers of the fruits of this new technology.
I also don’t blame the administration for cutting back flagships. It seems quite clear to me that JWST robbed others of funding and the choice was made to stick with JWST. I optimistically look forward to new flagships after JWST is launched.
In the meantime, discovery class scientific missions can also be interesting. Red Dragon, Europa missions, Phobos. But most importantly a lunar ISRU mission.
There are at least 3 lunar landers under development at the moment:
Xeus – the largest, ~5 tonne reusable ~14 tonne expendable. Since it will need 4 or 5 launches to get to the Moon this will have to wait for a manned flight.
Mighty Eagle – a small lander. If the ISRU equipment is tiny this could be used.
Morpheus – 500 kg payload to the Moon. Suitable for larger ISRU experiments.
Zero of these are actual flight projects. They are all good and could form the basis of an actual mission but take a look at how much money is being spent on them vs Mars. This simply makes my point about the current imbalance.
“Zero of these are actual flight projects.” – this year.
Chaotic times are good times to change things since no one knows where they are going. The chaos is further enhanced by the coming US elections. In a years time there will be new senators and representatives. Also there may be a new president in need of a new space policy.
It would be a rush but an ISRU lunar probe could be launched within a single presidential term.
Construction of manned landers, rovers and EML-2 spacestation could be started.
Amen and lets hope, yea verily.
“At some point all bubbles burst and MSL was the peak of the Mars bubble“
Dennis,
I absolutely agree about the bubble, but I think we’re also seeing things greatly compounded by the current American money problem. As we all know, budgets are being cut in a great many places, not just NASA. So, I think simple timing has at least as much effect on flagship programs as anything else.
Consider that the Cassini-Huygens mission cost about $3.25B, launched not that many years ago, and everybody loved it. And today, MSL, at a cost of about $2.5B, was, as you say, the peak of the Mars bubble, and, I think, pretty much signals the end of an era in NASA planetary science missions.
10 years ago we had more money for planetary science, and maybe 10 years from now we will again. Toward that possibility, I think we should be planning (in detail) for a return to the Moon for when things are better financially. Instead of proposing new missions to be done in the next few years, as so many people are, and which would certainly be grossly underfunded, how about planning for a mission to be done say, 10 to 15 years from now? (which is the best that can happen anyhow given SLS). In the interim people can be developing and testing the ISRU and water conversion technologies, hardware and processes (as best we can) here on Earth. Mars was never really considered doable in any fashion until Robert Zubrin did his ISRU extraction pilot plant (on Earth), after which it was a lot harder for people to give him technical excuses for “why not?”
We need an overall plan — a sensible plan that reasonable people will buy off on (no mega-plans for flight one). Developing the plan will also illustrate (in an explainable fashion) why returning to the Moon will need to be a series of missions spread out over time, not a single super-mission. Many people have argued for a return to the Moon, but neglected to mention that it’s not going to happen all at once, and that’s how people set themselves up for a fall. Realistically, I think it’s going to take years and multiple (smaller) missions just to establish a first sustainable working location. The up side of this is that each mission should actually be much less expensive than people generally think, and the total cost is spread out over time, so with proper planning we can actually do ‘pay as you go.’ I’ve always thought that this aspect of the program should make it easier to sell to politicians and taxpayers. It’s not another multi-billion-dollar one-shot to be canceled after the next election.
I propose that the key is that each mission should add finished, working assets to a growing infrastructure, so that if we have to delay missions for a period, we don’t lose what’s already been done. There are many ISRU projects to develop and prove; each mission should contain at least one completed and working ISRU project, however basic, and it should be something that even TV thralls can understand (today, lunar explorers, for the first time, drank the water extracted from the Moon itself). Even something as mundane as lunar concrete can be a noteworthy TV news story if presented properly (and with video). Big Note: The milestones reported to the public should be planned and ordered in advance, as part of the program plan, for maximum impact, so that the climax doesn’t hit too early (remember Apollo).
Is anyone actually doing this sort of planning? You seem to be the man who would know. I’ve read lots of abstracts and proposals over the years (and plenty of “justifications”), but they all appear the same to me — ‘once we get the money we’ll start working on the details.’ That has gained us exactly nothing so far.
There is so much to do before any dollars are needed for major hardware, which can be done with the meager funding still available (and also by knowledgeable volunteers, and students). Right now there are too many pro-lunar camps and individuals each going their own way. I have often wondered if trying to amalgamate some or all of them into a single resource would make things better or worse. As things are, I see lots of activity, but no progress. What do you think? If we can convince some of these players to work together (and spread the load), maybe we can get people working on the real deal — what exactly we will do, how and in what order, once we get to the Moon — instead of just why we should and how we’ll fly there. Do you think this would help or hinder?
As always, I’m interested in your ideas.
Steve
Well Mr. Whitfield
Seems I finally have folded the right ideas into your thinking lololol
Ok so you didn’t need me but what you are saying sounds died on to me. 🙂
Mars-One
Moon-One
Moon robot dragon missionS
I have my building blocks ready 🙂
George,
I’ve always been Moon First, but I don’t mention it often because everybody argues about where to go first and how to get there, but I see so very little thinking about the details of what people will need to actually do there besides simply surviving. The overall plan that I mentioned to Dennis will be far from simple, either to come up with or to execute, and will take the dedication of a lot of committed people. This is something that I consider to be beyond debate.
The key point, in my mind, which seems to me to be completely overlooked in general, is that going back to the Moon can not be for the purpose of science, or to prove ISRU, or resource extraction, or settlement, or tourism, or as a staging point for later missions, or any of the other alternatives that have been suggested. For it to have any hope at all of succeeding, a return to the Moon will have to be for all of these reasons, and more. And they will all have to be mutually supportive, not in any way a competition.
Another factor to be considered is that while the ordering and prioritizing of activities on the Moon will be dictated largely by the requirements of survival, they will also have to be ordered in such a way that 1) the people directly involved attained sufficient satisfaction, stress relief, and quality of life to continue performing at a high level under very demanding conditions, and 2) the media release of events is such that interest on Earth is maintained for the extended period(s) necessary — for multiple missions over a period of many years. This whole consideration is something that I have never seen mentioned or even eluded to, and it is something that, I think, more than anything else, will determine the success or failure of our return to the Moon. But given the nature of this idea, and the number of people who I suspect would dismiss it out of hand as unimportant, I don’t generally mention it.
If people are going to live on the Moon, or anywhere else off Earth, all of our plans have to take into account that they are people first. I’m kind of tired reading stuff by people who put launch vehicles first and everything else an equal, distant second.
Well, now that I’ve got that off my chest, I’ll be keeping my eye on your building blocks and rooting for the railroad.
Steve
Steve as you know I’m not really an any place first person but seems to me as I wrote in another thread that the loonies should try get some private cheap missions going. I don’t know the details. But I think you start with a very light foot print staying away from public money as much as possible.
From other thread lol
“PS with all these used dragon capsules laying around. Don’t you think bolden should talk to Elon about refitting one for the moon to do a cheap water search. Or the moon group should call Elon and the google guys or some private group to get that going on the cheap??”
Lol I just read that they have many ideas for dragons on mars. Let’s do some on the moon too.
Maybe all the budget wows will force people to be more creative in and out of NASA and instead of fighting over porky pie sections to feed themselves they will join together more because they have no choose.
Not having anything to do with NASA I REALLY didn’t realize that a large percentage of the bickering at NASA watch are people protecting their life line/pork.
Anyway
Seeing some of the ideas I have been typing here with little or know response, sure is fun 🙂 when similar real stuff starts to happen.
My formula read what Mr. C, You, Tinker, Paul, oldscientist and a few others says and then pretend I had an original idea lolol
My guess is build a mars railroad but use the moon plenty since it should be easier to get privite money to help with cheap projects.
Just my, humm well our thoughts lol
“Don’t you think Bolden should talk to Elon“
DTARS,
I have a suspicion that Bolden and Musk perhaps have been talking, privately, of late, and maybe so have a lot of the other “players” in the space game. More and more in recent years the mere announcement of a sensible new plan or proposal in enough to get the rich and powerful “old space” managers and their allied politicians putting up road blocks and swaying the press against new ideas and new ways. The obvious tactic to fight this obstructionism is to work more or less covertly until a new plan is sufficiently developed and “protected” that it can stand up to the bad old boys who will oppose it. Consider the fairly recent announcements of the Planetary Resources asteroid mining scheme and the Mars One settlement plan, each of which was obviously well along in the planning details before they hit the media. I think it’s a real possibility. Does it sound like a possibility to you?
Steve
Replying to DTARS
ISRU will always be too hard so long as we refuse even mild attempts at actually trying it in the real (other) worlds. What if each lander sent to Mars had dedicated a small mass to a subscale ISRU experiment? We might have learned a thing or ten.
This is what happens when you depend upon government to provide funding for your projects, they screw you every chance they get. To get things done, privatization must be used as in case as Space X and that’s the only way these project can be fully utilized, they can be done cheaper and better without government interference.
I don’t know where to start with this one. Maybe Mr. Hudson knows more than I do. Maybe he’s a big dog in the industry. I don’t know. (I do know that he uses his real name).
‘screw you every chance they get?’ Seriously?It’s just too obvious to point out that SpaceX stands on NASA’s shoulders technically and financially. Not only did NASA provide some development funding, but NASA is also a huge customer for flight services. Without the bad ole government, SpaceX is cheese.I hear this ‘government interference’ bullshit all the time and I am just sick of it. Much of the time, it is coming from ideologues with no real clue about the proper role of government. Sorry, everyone, for this rant. Maybe I’ve been troll-baited. Dunno. Comments like those of Mr. Hudson just make me crazy. How about something useful that actually moves the ball forward?
Bobby,
And to do all of the important things that need doing (in space and on Earth) but which have no appeal (profit or other returns) for private companies, you would suggest…?
For future reference: if you are going to make bold proposals like this one, you are going to have to be brave enough to use actual meaningful nouns instead of words like “projects” and “things.” Your entire paragraph has no subject that I can see, and therefore no meaning that I can determine.
Steve