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Exploration

NASA's Somewhat Confused Destination(s)

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
November 12, 2012
Filed under , ,

Ditch the asteroid mission, Mr President, BBC
“Whatever the truth, I hope that Nasa is aiming big, because its current ambitions are – by its own scientists admissions – somewhat lacking. Although we now have the capability to return humans to the Moon, and travel beyond with manned missions to Mars, the world’s leading space-faring nation has another destination in its sights: an asteroid. A small lump of rock.”
Almost Being There: Why the Future of Space Exploration Is Not What You Think, Wired
“Congress was all for ditching the moon and Mars plans but decided to keep building the shiny new rocket (maintaining employment in many of their constituent districts). The Space Launch System, which is scheduled to be ready for human crews in 2019, will be the most powerful rocket ever built, capable of bringing astronauts beyond low-Earth orbit, where the space station sits, for the first time since the Apollo days. This puts NASA in a conundrum. “Once you’re out there, then what do you do?” said astronomer Jack Burns from the University of Colorado. Within a decade, we may be able to get people in the vicinity of the moon but “there’s not enough money in the budget to build a human lander.”
A glimpse at a gateway, Space Review
“This is a multi-center team that’s been working on trying to figure out what the agency’s going to be doing next,” [Harold White] said in a presentation that was part of a panel session on advanced concepts at the conference. “In principle, this is an incremental approach to human space exploration. We’re trying to take small steps and use as much of the stuff that we have in hand, and incorporate advanced technologies where appropriate to close the architecture.”
Charlie Bolden Intends To Press President Obama on Mars Mission Mandate for NASA, earlier post
“At one point, Bolden teared up and said that “Mars is the Goal”. Bolden claimed that he was intent upon going to the White House, “pounding his shoe on the table”, and demanding a commitment from President Obama to direct NASA to send humans to Mars. Bolden said that he needs that commitment to allow him to decide what to do (not do) with regard to extending the ISS.”
Keith’s note: The President directed NASA to send humans to an asteroid and eventually (in the 2030’s) to Mars. But with talk of L2 or L1 bases, Moon missions, etc. it would seem that some parts of the agency have engaged in mission creep beyond what the White House directed them to do. Then again, the President did say “Mars in the 2030s” and planning for that has to start sooner or later. Regardless of what destination(s) that different parts of NASA think they are aiming for, there is no money for the payloads needed to accomplish any of the missions. With Thanksgiving looming, so is NASA’s “passback” on the FY 2014 budget to OMB. Word has it that there will be some of Bolden’s Mars shoe pounding included in NASA’s budget response. Stay tuned.

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

31 responses to “NASA's Somewhat Confused Destination(s)”

  1. Helen Simpson says:
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    Not clear the “confusion” is that serious. Mars has always been the ultimate destination, but there is no serious promise for NASA sending humans there in at least the next two decades. Even Charlie knows that. Asteroid missions are easier than Mars, but still really hard. Long travel time, with challenging logistics. Also very constricted launch windows. We’ll do it … eventually. But the idea of a Lagrange point mission shows promise, if just in that of all the options (including lunar landing), it’s just got to be the most affordable. In fact, a Lagrange point mission exercises deep space capabilities and operations management that would be needed for both an asteroid mission and a Mars trip. For a cash strapped program, what’s not to like? It’s not inconsistent with what Obama stated were his ultimate goals.

    But I agree that this message has not yet been properly elucidated by NASA. Maybe now that things have calmed down on the political front, some real consensus administration vision could start to emerge. I’m thinking the 2014 budget proposal, in February. Charlie Bolden’s shoe pounding could be how a Lagrange point mission gets us to Mars.

    My reading of Adam Mann’s excellent article was that after Jack Burns expressed NASA’s conundrum, he went on to say exactly how a Lagrange point mission would resolve that conundrum. There is quite a lot that one could do out there he says that, at least in the near term, doesn’t involve a human lander.

    • Anonymous says:
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      Just what we need, another set of flags and footprints…

      not…

      While we thumb twiddle and twaddle….

      http://www.space-travel.com

      • Vladislaw says:
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        “After its sampling of the moon’s surface, the Chang’e-3 is expected to be retrieved
        in 2017, according to reports”

        From the link you provided, they are planning on bringing the entire rover back?

      • dogstar29 says:
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        Are you suggesting a new moon race with China? Where would we get the money, absent a tax increase? Borrow it from China? What practical purpose would a new space race serve? What are we trying to accomplish? This isn’t the sixties; China is an economic rival but we aren’t in a conflict of ideologies; China isn’t even Communist.

        Maybe we should think about using human spaceflight as a way of diffusing tensions and reducing the risk of conflict. If that was what we wanted, then a logical strategy might be to invite China to join the ISS program, as they are the only spacefaring nation that is currently excluded.

        • Vladislaw says:
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          Unless we are FINALLY willing to revisit the Outer Space Treaty there really isn’t any point until we go there to create wealth for the Nation.

          • Anonymous says:
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            It is a myth that the Outer Space treaty is an impediment to this happening….

          • Vladislaw says:
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            Great, then if an American company spends 10 billion finding a nice ice field, and setting up some ISRU they can immediatly list their mine as an asset on the books. That is good to hear. Also .. no one can just set up shop right on my mine and start mining my ice.. because that is that is settled and not an impediment for my willingness to invest. Can I sell off a bit of my ice mine? Can I lease some? Can i sell the regolith rights? Can I collect royalties? Can I set up a marktet for the buying and selling of mineral and water rights?

            Sorry I agree will most of what you say… but on this .. we can not have a space frontier past GEO because property rights are not settled past that.

          • Anonymous says:
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            Vlad

            Feel better?  

            Under the Outer Space treaty we already have the mechanism to deal with that scenario.  Nations have the right of use and non interference in the area where they are operating.  

            Read up on Berin Szoka and others’ work in this area.

            While you are at it, you might want to think about how to make it happen, not how to dream up straw man reasons why we can’t.

          • Steve Whitfield says:
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            Dennis,

            What applies to a nation in the treaty does not apply to a company (or any other legal person), which means there is still an outstanding conflict.

            Investments from NGOs are going to be required to develop the Moon and space in general; I think that’s just a reality we have to face.  But NGOs are not going to invest a dime if it’s not absolutely certain that they can own extraterrestrial property and make profits from the ownership and/or utilization of that property.  And right now that’s not clear.

            You’ve often argued (rightly in my opinion) that the Moon needs to be brought into our economic sphere, which means that the laws and treaties that regulate business on Earth must also do so on the Moon — for businesses and people, not nations.  As long as there are lawyers — and politicians — using the Treaty as “proof” that people can’t do business on the Moon (or “in space”) as they do on Earth, the stalemate will persist.

            Despite all of the analysis that has been written on this subject, I think it’s fair to say that both of the relevant treaties on this matter still limit all extraterrestrial interactions to nations, but “business” is not practiced by nations.  And it’s a two-way street; the Treaty places all “liabilities” for loss or damage on the owning or sponsoring nation, and this will have to be changed as well so as to shift the responsibilities to the business entities involved.  And once that happens, the whole insurance situation becomes a brand new ball game that is going to take nothing short of magic to sort out.

            I think there is still much to be done and it will require the amendment or superseding of the current treaties — in a fully legal manner, not just as an analysis written by an interested party, which is all I have seen done to date. Are you aware of any international legal activities to address the rights of businesses and people, as opposed to nations, doing business for profit off Earth?

            Steve

          • Andrew_M_Swallow says:
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             Under Article VI of the Outer Space Treaty the governments of Britain and the USA can ‘authorization’ ‘the activities of non-governmental entities’.That includes banning murder, applying commercial law and issuing mining permits.  A mining permit written by a good lawyer will grant the company its property rights/privileges.I suspect that a Federal ‘Commercial Space Activities Act’ will be needed.

        • Anonymous says:
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          Are you suggesting a new moon race with China?

          Nope.  Pass Zero G Zero Tax and the private sector will revolutionize space.

          Cancel SLS and put up a $7 billion dollar prize for the first company to land two or more people on the Moon and keep them there for a month minimum and bring them home alive.  Provide another $5 billion if they make 10 tons of oxygen and store it while they are there.

          Real republicans understand that the government has a role in our society (albeit limited) and so does the private sector.

          Together we can transform the future, or continue to piss in each others cornflakes and watch the next century belong to China.

          ZGZT alone is reason enough to give Dana R the chairmanship of the Space committee as an aside.

          • dogstar29 says:
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            Many of the space companies in Florida already have substantial tax breaks. Tax breaks provide an inducement to move from one state to another.   It’s hard to see how any company could produce something as expensive as manned lunar flight with only internal funds. And if the government put up a prize, and a company did invest billions of dollars in internal or borrowed funds, how would they get a return on that investment beyond the prize itself? 

      • Helen Simpson says:
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        Is this a reply to my post? No one is going to be leaving footprints at Earth-Moon Lagrange points. Programmatically, that’s one of the really nice things about them! What we want to do there are exercise strategies that we’ll need for going further. NEOs, Mars, etc. That’s hardly twiddling and twaddling. Of course, by that token, two decades of ISS has been twiddling and twaddling.

        As to the China threat, Chang’e-3 is a cute little rover that should put China’s abilities on par with the USSR’s Lunokhod. Are you worried that Chang’e-3 will lay claim to lunar resources? Fat chance. As to robotic capability, and the soft power that comes from it, Curiosity puts Chang’e-3 to shame. The sophistication of the former is hugely larger than the latter. It’s wishful thinking, perhaps, that Chang’e-3 could be touted as a threat that would render ownership of the next century by China. But it can’t.

    • grassrootsofone says:
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      Helen Simpson

      “Mars has always been the ultimate destination…

      That’s what Disney thought several years ago.

  2. dogstar29 says:
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    The problem is that the budget is tight and right now a huge amount of it is going into things like SRBs that were obsolete 40 years ago and won’t fly with people for another ten. SLS/Orion is an extremely expensive system with a lot of infrastructure that has no other customers. There’s little or no new technology here. Once it flies it won’t be cheaper. The numbers just don’t add up. There will never be enough in the budget for an Apollo-style campaign of human landings on the moon and Mars with giant ELVs.

    I seriously wonder if we remember 1974, or why Apollo was cancelled. Neither NASA nor the nation have money to waste. Until spaceflight is much less expensive we will not have more than a handful of people in space, and we will not be sending people BEO. When we recognize this (as we did all too well in 1974), then we will see that if we are ever to live and work in space, the cost of going there must be less than the value of the work we can do there.

    We should ditch not just the asteroid mission but the SLS and Orion. Rather than trying to repeat Apollo, we need to understand why we shifted from Apollo to Shuttle. Reusable launch systems have at least the potential to be affordable for large-scale human spaceflight. Expendable launch systems do not. When we can sustain our existing station at LEO and accumulate personnel, fuel and spacecraft there at modest cost, LEO can become the departure point for transfers to L2 and then to the lunar surface and ultimately Mars and the asteroids, just as von Braun originally proposed.

    • Steve Whitfield says:
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      vulture4,

      In principle, I agree.  Any problem becomes easier to solve when you can break it into logical smaller pieces which can solved separately — within reason, of course; too many pieces will increase complexity.

      If we can optimize Earth to LEO, then we can tackle LEO to L2 (or wherever) as a much easier, cheaper and safer proposition than going straight from Earth to L2, which seems to be the current NASA proposal.

      This would also give us increased efficiency in the form of dedicated-purpose spacecraft, instead of one-size-doesn’t-fit-all designs like the Shuttle, and this would make reusable designs that much easier and even more advantageous.

      The first step has got to be dumping all of the decades-old designs and “visions” that are still cluttering up the works, and do things in newer, smarter ways, an ability which is at least partially within our grasp at his point.  Unfortunately, there are still an awful lot of people who (wrongly) hold up Apollo as the way things should be done, who believe (wrongly) that we already have all of the technology and science that we need to successfully and safely put people and bases on the Moon and Mars, and insist (over-optimistically) that we should “just do it.”  So far, there doesn’t seem to be any way to make these people understand that they are actually hurting the cause and keeping the brakes firmly clamped on progress.

      Another problem I see is that we are still going to have funding battles, with each person promoting the part(s) of the overall infrastructure that they think is/are most important, at the expense of all the other parts.  So it’s going to be a real battle to get the whole system built in a logical order — logical in terms of both construction synergy and the testing and usability of a partially completed infrastructure.  It’s the same old multi-decade, multi-election non-survival issue, which we have never yet come close to solving.  Therein still lies perhaps the toughest challenge.

      But I’m with you on the concept, since sustainability and growth won’t happen by themselves.  We have to have the brains to make them happen.  And I don’t see how we can do that until we can be much more agreed (ideally unanimous) on a single game plan, which means a commonly accepted set of goals, which unbelievably, after all of these decades, we still don’t appear to come close to having.  But, getting Earth to LEO “right” first has certainly got to be step one.

      Steve

  3. Saturn1300 says:
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    It looks like NASA might be trying something new and use the taxpayers in the most efficient way.At JSC they have taken the wheels off the latest Mars-Moon rover.They are going to make it the asteroid spacecraft.The one with the built in spacesuits.I saw a picture of one NASA worker doing some wiring.About all the workers needed to get it ready by 2025 I suppose.It seems they are being logical and work on the next mission rather than Moon-Mars.
     They found something to use the VAB for.They put rotors on a capsule and dropped it.RCed to a landing.Neat.Sorta like the Gyrocopter that flew by last week.
     Don’t know when the right story will come up so here is something I discovered.A Rep. at a hearing said she was happy that the Merlin was a Fasttrac engine.I thought:no Elon designed the 1A.Later research shows that Merlin1a is a slightly larger Fasttrac.Same tubo pump.So NASA gave the plans to SpaceX.Fastrac was low cost engine project.It is ablative cooled.If the engine is going to be discarded,then why not make it as cheap as possible?No need to machine all those cooling channels.They thought they could get the cost down to $145,000.It used non regular suppliers.The turbo pump maker did not make those,but similar products.It was going to be used on the X-34.Canceled,but NASA did get to fly it sort of,on Falcon-1.This is what I suggested for NASA to do,if they could not build launchers themselves,to go get their local sheet metal shop to build them or at least road tanker makers..They are all sheet metal.Sheet metal rockets.
     

    • Steve Whitfield says:
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      Saturn13,

      I don’t want to get into this again, and besides, I’m sure you must be pretty sick of my comments on this subject by now.  But, I respectfully suggest you do a little more research into how LVs and spacecraft are manufactured.  It is not just a matter of bending sheet metal, and hasn’t been for a lot of years (if memory serves me correctly, for anything bigger than sounding rocket, the Atlas-D first stage shell of the late 50’s and early 60’s was the last generation that was simply formed sheet metal).  Today, and for many decades, high-tech, high-precision milling machines, made for the purpose, have shaped the metalwork making up both LVs and spacecraft.  This is specialized machining that you can’t get at your local machine shop.  Even aircraft are built this way.  Any volume of metal that is not structurally or functionally required is milled away to reduce weight, or to provide channeling for electrical, hydraulics, etc., air flow for cooling, aerodynamic surfaces, and so on.  The tooling is almost all specialized and expensive.  It is also large, which means that, whenever possible, metal component manufacturing and vehicle assembly take place at the same location.  And generally speaking, the newer designs require more and better precision manufacturing, not less.

      Steve

      PS: Don’t give up pursuing new ideas. I certainly don’t know everything, and I can be wrong.

      • Saturn1300 says:
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         Your wrong.SpaceX Falcons are built this way.Go look at the videos at SpaceX.Soyuz is built this way.Look at Space Tourists.Atlas and Delta are probably like you say.I have seen Hot Rod builders put a slab of Al. in a machine and have a wheel come out.A new design each time.A turbo pump ought to be easy.SpaceX does make Dragon by machining slabs for the pressure vessel as with Orion.If Titan-2 was built this way,it was,there is no reason not to do the same today.The less machining should make it cheaper and faster to build,like Falcon 9,which  is much cheaper,proving my point.

        • Steve Whitfield says:
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          If Titan-2 was built this way,it was,there is no reason not to do the same today

          Saturn13,

          Please think about that statement.  Progress must count for something.

          And as I’ve said before, Titan II is not a good example of a LV.  It was a very rough ride, it hit 8 g’s while still in low atmosphere, and shook like hell — according to interviews with Jim Lovell and others who flew Gemini missions.  This is 2012, not 1962; a lot has changed, for the better.

          Steve

          • Saturn1300 says:
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             I was talking about the construction.I don’t want 8 g.Maybe the engines would not throttle.You dismiss the savings SpaceX has got by using this method.It is a smooth 4g ride.How is machining away most of a 3’x4’x3″ plate and welding them together an improvement?Canada makes more money because more aluminum is used?Less workers?Only one to operate the milling machine.Takes 2 to operate the rolling machine to make the tanks.Think of the speed of doing these operations.They are charging about 4x more that use the plate method.
             I do know of one  large machining process on a sheet metal rocket.SLS  core is a sheet metal rocket as far as I know.NASA machined the joining flanges of the inter tank,I think it was.27′ circle.I do not think that SpaceX does.They must  have found that a jig works fine.Can you think of a better way to save money so to finish programs faster and have more programs?You don’t want to try anything different.

  4. Steve Whitfield says:
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    CD,

    Not helping.  I much prefer to read your constructive suggestions, even if I don’t personally always agree with them.  Stuff like you’ve written above has a nasty habit of becoming contagious, and then you get people who know a lot less than you do about the situation blindly repeating it all over the place and creating an impression about NASA in other people who know nothing at all about it (but will still parrot the negative).

    I assume that you must want us in space doing sane and necessary things or you wouldn’t come back to NASA Watch every day.  How about giving us some of your constructive insights instead of spreading your negative thoughts around.  Any know-not can write cheap critique; it takes experience and informed thought to create positive ideas.  I think you’re selling us, and yourself, short by not sharing your positive ideas with us.  Just my opinion, of course.

    Steve

  5. dogstar29 says:
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    I’m not clear on why having a human crew would make an asteroid probe more effective, if the goal is to gather data on the asteroid and perhaps return samples.

    • grassrootsofone says:
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      vulture4

      “I’m not clear on why having a human crew would make an asteroid probe more effective…”

      Furthermore:

      Asteroids are covered in loose (but probably sticky) regolith, so humans could only fly close. Trying to send tethered scoopers or whatever might raise dust clouds that would obscure the asteroid and endanger the spacecraft. 

      Has NASA done any studies on studying asteroids close up? How could they be probed, sampled, drilled , etc? 

      Maybe the best way is to blast one with a projectile and hopefully see underneath the regolith and into exposed layers below. 

      I can’t picture much being done with any kind of remote-control rover or whatever; maybe just some quick snapshots after the blast, before dust encircles it all.

      Just imagining.

      • Steve Whitfield says:
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        Asteroids are covered in loose (but probably sticky) regolith

        grassrootsofone,
        This is not the case.  NASA and lots of other people have tons of data on asteroid composition, particularly surface composition, and what you suggest does not appear to be the general case.  An asteroid can be solid rock and/or metal, and unless it was a very large one, there is not enough gravitational attraction to hold a crust or dust.  Even on a large asteroid, any “regolith” is not going to have accumulated deep enough to be a problem.

        If we were talking about a comet, which heats and cools as it orbits the Sun (very long orbits), you might have a problem with trying to land on a crumbling surface.

        Even carbonaceous chondrite asteroids tend to have solid surfaces, so there should be no real problem with landing on one other than the lack of gravity.

        Steve

        • grassrootsofone says:
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          Steve Whitfield:
          “Even carbonaceous chondrite asteroids tend to have solid surfaces…”
          Aren’t the “carbonaceous chondrites”, that we have observed closely, meteorites, rather than asteroids.? What does “tend to have” mean, are there observations of solid surface asteroids?

          About actual asteroids, are you citing NASA sources or aren’t you? Which ones?
          Here’s one about a small asteroid actually encountered:

          http://curator.jsc.nasa.gov

          • Steve Whitfield says:
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            grassrootsofone,

            NASA, ESA, several universities and a handful of organizations looking at protecting us against NEA impacts have been collecting data for years.

            The “thousands of particles” that your reference refers to are less than a handful of powder.  That mission had trouble collecting particles because they were so small and because they were not at all abundant.

            Available data show that  when “regolith” exists on an asteroid’s surface, it is like a very fine powdering of very tiny particles and does not accumulate to any depth.  The particles are typically so small that electrostatic attraction rather than gravity adheres them to the asteroid surface.

            With spectroscopic analysis it is possible to determine the chemical makeup of surface materials on an asteroid, even from Earth.  The nature of the molecules detected can usually differentiate surface material from the underlying structure.

            The bottom line is that there is no indications that dust clouds will occur.  If fact, in order to get dust clouds from an asteroid other missions had to impact them very hard and blast out a crater.  But remember, we’re talking asteroids; comets are a different story.

            Steve

  6. hikingmike says:
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    I’m not picking sides (asteroid/Moon/Mars) but an asteroid seems like a pretty badass destination to me. It’s never been done before, it’s moving really fast (relatively), the window is very limited, each asteroid is a bit different and could help us learn more about the solar system, how about mining, they often are oddly shaped, gravity is very small so landing and walking around would be nuts, they are in sci-fi quite a bit, an asteroid could kill humanity some day.

    So I disagree with the ho-hum attitude of the first paragraph above.

  7. Steve Whitfield says:
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    Cessna_Driver,
    Now that sounds more like the Cessna_Driver I’ve come to know.  Tell us what we need to do, what will work out for us.

    Here’s something to think about.  We’ve sent rovers to Mars over and over, and people are starting to object because it’s the same old thing, not new and exciting. Well, last night I watched the latest MSL (Curiosity) program from PBS; it was an update on the program and there was nothing in it that I hadn’t already read on line.  But watching it, I got all excited just the same.  When I watched the science team cheering and hugging as the landing was confirmed (which I’d already seen several times) I was emotionally involved all over again.  I watched the whole hour and hung on every word, and this is the stuff that more and more people are objecting to as already done, nothing more to learn.

    It got me to thinking.  The other stuff NASA is doing is not “the Eagle has landed,” but in its own way, it is all exciting stuff when people make the effort to get into it.

    To be perfectly honest, the Apollo 11 landing and Apollo 13 blowup each had one thing that the other space programs didn’t and don’t — it was spoon fed to the world audience on television, so nobody had to make an effort.  And sad to day, I think that more than anything made them exciting to the average person.

    So, when I think about an asteroid mission, I know it’s not going to be all over the TV news or on the front cover of Time magazine.  And I know I’m going to have to make an effort (repeatedly) to follow the program.  But I also feel pretty sure that if I do make the effort, the mission will prove to be exciting — exciting at the key points, just like any mission — unless I’ve made up my mind beforehand that it won’t be.

    Next I’m thinking, it looks like an asteroid mission for now, or nothing.  Are there things can can be learned from an asteroid mission?  Are there capabilities we need to develop for it that will be useful in other programs in the future?  Are there things that should be or could be included in an asteroid mission now so that we don’t have to develop/learn them later?  And I think these are the things that we should be brainstorming and talking about now, not the fact that we can’t have the big things we really want right now, so what’s the point.

    If an asteroid mission, and/or an L2 “Gateway” is what’s being served up now, then let’s talk about how to do them as well and as fruitfully as possible instead of saying, it’s not what we wanted, and leaving the details of what is actually happening as a surprise.  Who knows  what novel ideas might show up here and make their way to the people who can make them happen.  Instead of adding to the “destination confusion,” let’s see if we can support and perhaps improve upon the currently proposed programs.

    And that just leaves the same old challenge — how do we get the not-already-converted folks to join the ranks of space advocacy?  That’s the biggest challenge that we face.

    Steve

  8. Steve Whitfield says:
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    CD,

    It needn’t be an either/or situation.  There are three possibilities — budgets will: 1) get better; 2) get worse; or 3) stay the same as this year.  Instead of just arguing for the one we want, why not have game plans ready for all three possibilities which indicate priorities, prerequisites, trade-offs, etc.?

    We can go better than that even;  Within each of the three possibilities above there is the question of how the funding is distributed.  What if the budget did magically double, as per NdT, but only 10% of that doubling went to HSF?  We would have got “what we wanted” but still be complaining because we didn’t spell out the details.

    (I really don’t like these skinny replies.)

    I can envision a growing flowchart of decisions and plans.  But we need data to create it — you and I would probably elect to apply the greatest budget increase to HSF, with planetary science second, but in what proportions, and is that representative of the majority view?  (We have to consider the majority view, or we’re wasting our time.)  There is so much that we don’t actually know which we should know, in detail, if we’re to make a coherent and complete case for our “Vision.”  Perhaps this is one way we can work towards “empowering” space advocacy, by using personal contacts and sites like NASA Watch to build a database of plans and possibilities that can be presented for evaluation, first to other advocates, then to the public at large, and then maybe even to NASA for their consideration.  You never know where a spark will come from, but without collected and organized data, we’re just noise.

    I wonder if Keith and Marc would be agreeable to the idea of the “NASA Watch Question of the Week.”  If we could build a list of logically ordered questions in advance and collect/collate the posted responses, we might just learn some important things and perhaps correct some misconceptions.  But we’d have nothing to lose.

    I’m thinking in terms of getting us into a positive mode here; if we can’t enthuse ourselves, how can we possibly create interest in others?

    Steve