Yet Another NASA Pick-the-Next-Destination Effort
NASA NSPIRES: The Next Generation Plenary: Next Destinations for Human Space Exploration
“Calling U.S. students and U.S. young professionals! If you could choose humanity’s next destination in space, where would you choose? We want to hear what you think should be the next destination for humans to explore and why your destination is the best. As today’s 21- to 35-year-olds, you will be the senior engineers and mission managers who will be carrying out and leading the next human missions to explore space, and we want your input. Why wait 10 years to be heard?! We invite you to share your ideas with space leaders in government, industry and academia at the International Astronautical Congress in Beijing, China, 23-27 September 2013!”
NASA’s Call for Abstracts for the 64th International Astronautical Congress (IAC)
Keith’s note: I think it is great that NASA seeks the input of the next generation of space explorers. But its somewhat odd that NASA is asking people what “humanity’s next destination in space” should be when (depending who you listen to) the agency has already been given that destination. Is this request seeking the next destination after asteroids/Mars – or is this one instead of asteroids/Mars? Given that NASA Administrator Bolden does/does not want to go to an asteroid – or may want to bring that asteroid back to Earth – or maybe also wants to go to L2 and/or Mars, I guess yet another destination exercise won’t really make things that much more confused.
Charlie Bolden’s Meandering Strategic Plans, earlier post
It doesn’t mean anything, other than NASA drumming up publicity for yet another summit. I suppose it could be worse – it could have been yet another study group.
One would like to believe that the IAC is open-minded enough to accept a “destination” that is not a spatial one. That is, a “destination” can also be something that one is destined for. What might a non-spatial “destination” be for humanity in space? Well, maybe expertise in and confidence about human survivability in space, or even turning space access into a truly commercial enterprise. Perhaps even expansion of the species. Hmm. Maybe about federally funded jobs for everyone? But the idea of a destination as merely a location in space, and more likely just footprints on a particular rock in a gravity well, is an appeal to a sadly archaic definition of exploration. The fact that there are very few rocky gravity wells that are by any stretch of the imagination accessible to humans is an enormous handicap that human space flight programs have been laboring under, ever since the Moon first defined that word for us. Of course, congressional legislation has just reinforced the spatial definition of that word in the U.S. But the U.S. Congress is no stranger to sad archaisms.
That would take some real courage, wouldn’t it?
Excellent point Helen. I guess this is why we always seem to come back around to the word “goals.”
Hopefully it’s in lieu of an asteroid – which was nonsense from the time it was first announced. The stated rationale for the asteroid, in lieu of the Moon: “already done that” was about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard! An asteroid would be a guaranteed one-shot-deal, the very last thing NASA needs.The Moon is the logical next step, always has been. The Moon is 2 days away, has an abundant supply of water (as we now know), and all the raw materials needed to build a permanent presence there.It provides an excellent means to work-out all the systems engineering problems associated with establishing a permanent presence off Earth. The obvious precursor to building a settlement on Mars.
“The Moon […] has an abundant supply of water (as we now know)”
No we don’t “know”. We’re getting a remote (orbital) reading consistent with a hydrogen concentration, which is a good signal for water. But we don’t know the actual amount or nature. And we won’t until we put a decent science package on the ground. Likewise, we assume certain asteroids will have water, based on Earth-fall meteorites, but again, we have no surface sampling from any of the wide variety of possible targets.
Without that information, we can’t design extraction/processing technology. So if we were serious about sending humans to either asteroids or back to the moon, we’d already have landers on them today. We don’t, so we aren’t.
“The obvious precursor to building a settlement on Mars.”
You aren’t going to see a Mars “settlement”. If you had an Apollo type budget increase, you might see a flags’n’footprints program, but there will not ever be a settlement. Mars is a terrible planet.
If we aren’t ever going to settle Mars because it’s a “terrible” planet and we don’t have an Apollo budget, where are we going? And if we aren’t going anywhere, why have a human space program? Why bother sending probes to Mars to scratch around in the dirt?
BTW, “LRO’s laser altimeter’s examination of the Shackleton crater at the
lunar south pole suggests up to 22% of the surface of that crater is
covered in ice.”
“If we aren’t ever going to settle Mars because it’s a “terrible” planet and we don’t have an Apollo budget, where are we going? And if we aren’t going anywhere,”
And this is a perfect example of why I despise Mars. It turns otherwise intelligent people into morons. Not going to Mars means not going anywhere. Not going to Mars means cancelling the space program. Madness.
“Why bother sending probes to Mars to scratch around in the dirt?”
God yes. Mars is scientifically interesting, but it does not deserve the monomaniacal focus over other vastly more interesting targets throughout the solar system.
“suggests up to 22% of the surface of that crater is covered in ice.”
“Suggests”. As I said. Not “Know”.
Even if we “knew” the poles had ice, try to design a device to produce water suitable for other purposes, potable water, fuel, oxygen based solely on that percentage.
Is the ice mixed with the 78% regolith? Or is the ice in a layer? Is it icy-dust over vacuum/thermal cemented hard layer? Or is it deep dust pools because of the lack of sunlight preventing thermal cycling? Or is it rock-hard permafrost?
Design a tool that can deal with all possibilities, without any information from the actual surface.
As I said, if we were serious about putting humans on the Moon (or sending them to asteroids), we’d already have robotic landers on the surface.
Maybe we ought to focus on building larger and more self-sufficient space stations that would orbit a moon or a planet and only send astronauts to the surface to harvest needed resources or perform scientific or even commercial missions? We extend the envelope of human presence in this manner?
Paul, Thanks! I too have never understood the whole colonize/terraform Mars craze. Why try to put a settlement on Mars? The only reasonable justification would be a hedge against human catastrophe on Earth; either man-made or from the heavens. But if you are going to preserve some aspect of the human race, Mars is NOT the planet to do it with. Mars’ lack of a magnetic field makes any thought of terraforming pointless. Any thick atmosphere you may be able to create by polluting the heck out of Mars is going to be eroded away by the solar wind long before you would be able to oxegenate it. Any human settlement is going to have to heavily shielded if on the surface or be underground. It would also have to be so large as to support not only us (people) but all the ecological support we need (air, water, crops, etc…) Our resources would be much better spent bettering life on our Earth. I know, this is a NASA site and we all want to go explore space and discover what’s out there. But I’ve always thought we were putting the cart before the horse. Mankind would be so much better served solving our intra-planet problems first, before we even worry about the exo-planet endeavers beyond basic research and observational sciences. jmho.
“Our resources would be much better spent bettering life on our Earth. Mankind would be so much better served solving our intra-planet problems first,”
Except we aren’t. And the few billion dollars spent on NASA are certainly not going to make the difference. [If you think you can solve the problems on Earth for $18b, do share with the class.]
However, “Greenfield” sites are incredibly useful for proving new ideas. The US did more to solve Europe’s internal problems than anything done in Europe at the time, simply by allowing political and technological experimentation which could then be re-imported.
My objection to manned Mars missions and Mars colonisation is most certainly not about “solving problems here first”. It’s because the obsession with Mars prevents us from colonising the solar system. And I consider our expansion off of Earth to be vital if we really want to “solve” the problems on Earth.
Paul,
I agree on all points but one. I think that, at the correct point in time, “settling” Mars will be a valuable exercise — not as an end in itself, but as a safer training ground for expanding into the solar system. I’m looking a little further up the road, here.
The Moon is too close to Earth to be considered as a measure of our capabilities for “settling” elsewhere. All of the desirable locations past Mars orbit are too far for initial and early efforts. By default, Mars is where we learn and practice a lot of the crucial processes, and test/refine the hardware/software for settling the rest of the solar system past cis-lunar space, including open space (non-planet/moon locations). It also gives us a fallback position for subsequent ventures, and can perhaps be a critical supplies depot for a time (or its moons).
In the past, many people have proposed the Moon as a training ground for going to Mars, and there was some good logic in this, except that Mars as a final, permanent settlement destination doesn’t make sense (to me), except as a research station, perhaps.
For our first far-out efforts, we need a “place,” because building anything of meaningful size and moving it “out there” is too complex/risky for initial efforts. Using Mars as our “first home” until we can develop and prove better facilities for proper settlement just makes sense to me. Mars is a tool that’s been given to us for free. Dealing with its gravity well is a trade-off for risk mitigation and cost savings, but it’s also something that we will have to deal with further out when we look a places like Titan, Europa and Ganymede, or even just the delta-V for returning back in-system.
Just my thoughts.
Steve
I think you know how I feel about Mars as a goal. I just can’t see it as a stepping stone or training ground for any other place in the solar system. The logistics of using it as a supply dump for other destinations doesn’t work. Techniques developed for Mars aren’t going to be of any use anywhere use, it’s a unique location. Hence Mars will always be just a drain on resources without the reward of training us to better deal with the rest of the solar system. That only makes sense after we have enough resources in space to throw away on a whim.
In reply to Paul451, Jan 07, 06:51 AM
OK, Paul, I’ll see it your way. Which leaves me with two questions for you:
1. How about the Martian moons for depots, safe houses, comm relay centers, whatever, manned or unmanned? They’re free for use and possess no gravity well worth worrying about. Their orbital speeds would seem to be the only challenge.
2. If we’re not using Mars, where or what do you propose using as a “base of operations” for our first, second and third, manned missions outside of cis-lunar space? We can’t pick an empty spot in space and start operations. And I guess the same question applies to non-manned operations intended to operate for extended periods. (In answering this question, I think we have to consider safety to be just as important as resource sources.) Add to this question: for the first three missions, do we go to three different places or the same one three times to expand it quickly, and why?
Steve
Missed your reply, sorry.
“1. How about the Martian moons for depots, safe houses, comm relay centers,”
Their position makes them useful for a Mars mission. And as virtual asteroids, their utilisation means more broadly applicable technology, techniques and resources than the Mars mission itself. But their location is probably not specifically useful outside of a Mars mission, unless they have some unusual and useful geology.
If NASA were to be committed to a manned Mars mission, I would expect that developing a Phobos base as a stepping stone would be quickly dropped in order to preserve the narrow “goal” of putting boots on Mars. (Just as Constellation never actually funded a moon base.)
When Constellation was sort-of-cancelled, I suggested that asteroid missions provided a clearer path to Mars than Constellation (or Zubrin’s Mars Direct). My reasoning was that Phobos/Deimos is just a longer asteroid mission. So a future President (say a Republican) will almost inevitably issue a Kennedy-style “Mars Challenge” by simply following up Obama’s “ridiculous asteroid-to-nowhere” mission with a quick cheap Phobos mission with the hardware already built; and he’d know that the first astronauts would arrive at Phobos within his own term, but wouldn’t have to budget for the much greater cost of the actual Mars lander/base development. All the credit for having “Vision”, for “correcting Obama’s folly”, but none of the cost. The President after him would be stuck with the cost of doing an actual Mars landing, or risk outrage over “cancelling Mars”. It seemed a nearly inevitable way for everyone to get what they wanted… Until Congress forced SLS onto NASA, so choked off funding for any asteroid mission, which rules out a Phobos mission, which means a future manned Mars mission will do to NASA HSF what JWST is doing to NASA science.
“2. If we’re not using Mars, where or what do you propose using as a “base of operations” for our first, second and third, manned missions outside of cis-lunar space?”
My preference is to develop asteroid utilisation. It gives us the most universally applicable technology/techniques for later work. Not only does it make every asteroid available for expansion/exploitation, but will be applicable to the vast majority of moons.
There’ll be vast differences between dealing with different materials and structures in different types and sizes of asteroids and moons, from metals to ice, solid to rubble-piles. But it is a more natural progression. Incremental. One mission per problem, one problem per mission.
We can also get there in stages, small missions that build up into greater capability as we learn more about asteroids (and oh look, a scientific rationale for the missions), and understand how to work with the material and develop greater resources.
If done right, it can create a “supply line” which can be filled out by private players selling fixed-price services, a la COTS/CRS/CC. Where NASA hands off more and more of the routine tasks to fixed-price-fixed-service contracts. That commercial capacity could potentially spin off secondary markets, such as refuelling satellites and/or upper stages/tugs, or private space stations/space-tourism, etc. Eventually, even if not in my lifetime, full blown asteroid mining.
I can see it being done badly and preventing that path of development, but with asteroids I see a greater chance of it happening by accident, without any grand Presidential “vision” (as I said, “visions” tend to result in the elimination of useful development to preserve the stated, but actually worthless, “goal”.)
“The Moon is too close to Earth to be considered as a measure of our capabilities for “settling” elsewhere.”
I’m not really interested in getting “a measure of our capabilities”. I want to create an ecosystem that doesn’t depend on NASA for its continued existence and expansion. Just as aviation doesn’t depend on NASA aeronautics division’s “missions”, nor does it depend on public outreach programs to convince people of the value of aviation, nor Presidential “visions”. Same with shipping, mining, electronics, etc etc.
“We can’t pick an empty spot in space and start operations.”
Orbital mechanics sometimes makes “empty spots” more valuable cross-roads or way-stations than the more obvious existing bodies. Mars (or the moons of Mars) aren’t necessarily a good stopping off point to the outer solar system. EML2 and ESL2 might be better, or some other weird looping orbit at some gravitational node on the “interplanetary highway”. Just as an asteroid orbiting half way between Earth and Mars isn’t useful for a Mars mission, but a Mars Cycler space-station is.
The headline is misleading, they are not asking for destinations. The goal is to get young people excited and engaged in space exploration..
You might want to read past the first seven words in the invitation. They are indeed asking for destinations. The goal is certainly excitement and engagement, but that goal is framed by what they refer to repeatedly as a choice of “destinations”.
The phraseology here is curious, in that by asking about the “next destination for humans to to explore”, one might read that as meaning that the Moon is off the table. Can the next destination for humans to explore be one that humans have already explored? Of course, it has always struck me as a little odd when human exploration is implicitly about footprints. One wonders about what species would have to be exploring Mars with Curiosity, for example. The creatures sitting at those consoles in Pasadena sure look like humans, though the “mohawk guy” is perhaps reaching for a fringe.
Would be nice if they found something for the present generation to do…
Wow – how jaded we all have become. Many of you immediately jumped to the conclusion that this is a NASA activity or that this is to develop a new plan for NASA. The US is not the only space faring nation. NASA does not have exclusive control over “destinations” (and use destination however you wish).
Read the words. Help me find NASA anywhere in there except that NASA NSPIRES was used as a distribution means for the announcement.
Get out of NASA bashing and read what it says. You may be surprised!
Today there seems to be general agreement that flags and footprints is pointless. So, recognizing that wherever we go, we must do something there, and that something must useful so as to justify the expenditure, I’m surprised that we still get so many comments that completely ignore what we would do at a given “destination” and why — in the near future time frame (concepts like settlement are still too far down the road to be immediate goals). When looked at this way, a NEO asteroid actually hits the top of the list of what is currently doable and offers opportunities for both science and learning about things like ISRU (natural resources are already a concern, not a far future issue). There is a lot we could learn/practice about dynamic rendezvous, close maneuvering and long-term station-keeping, resources extraction and storage, possibly resource refinement/processing, and even testing of deflection methods for asteroid impact threats … and other things never yet actually tried. The Moon holds lots of current possibilities as well, but in terms of return per unit money spent, risk or time, a NEO asteroid can’t be beat. I don’t define “return” in terms of dollars profit, but there could well be a dollar return from a NEO mission, which is highly unlikely from any of the alternatives at this point in time. This is just my assessment, but I encourage people not to dismiss a NEO asteroid just because they don’t find it immediately sexy or exciting.
Those seem like good goals, but the connection with human space flight is poor. What, we need humans on site to investigate dynamic rendezvous, close maneuvering and long-term station-keeping? Nope. Not at all. Testing deflection methods hardly requires a human there. Nor does doing science. Telerobotics and supervised autonomy give us a lot of capability, and that capability is increasing dramatically. Even for resource prospecting and refinement, it’s not clearly arguable that you absolutely need a human there. Does that human have a shovel and pickaxe?
Remember, we’re talking value, as in accomplishment per unit dollar. Humans on asteroids are enormously expensive. Until we do a careful assessment of what humans on site absolutely enable that we can’t accomplish telerobotically, this argument is weak. The fact that you’ve never seen telerobotics do some of this stuff is meaningless. On the Earth, it is hugely cheaper to use humans.
In fact, although flags and footprints might be somewhat pointless, they do offer value in national prestige and pride. The question is whether that prestige and pride is worth the cost.
For many of the things that we have to learn about (and are not going to get perfect first time), I feel there is no substitute for a pair of eyes and a brain on site. We are talking about going past things that can be scripted months or years ahead of time. Something as simple as moving a rock back to where it was and retrying something 10 times becomes a few minute’s work, instead of weeks of meetings. The best fixed-position camera can miss things that the human eye can catch. But the big thing, in my mind, is no totally scripted missions; make decisions about what to do next based on what just happened, in real time. It’s unfortunate, but I think prestige and pride are too expensive at any price just now. Hopefully that situation will improve. We need useful results and we need “new,” or the politicians and the public between them will call the whole thing off. I have a bad feeling that things are getting to be that desperate.
I think you’re confusing operational and decision making strategy. Humans at NEOs can still have to wait for weeks of meetings to tell them what to do. It’s a matter of deciding whether you need weeks of meetings. When you’ve got people out there, you just don’t have the luxury of weeks of meetings. Weeks of meetings among people with a wide range of expertise can actually be hugely informative in deciding the best course of action.
Telerobotics, though limited by communication latency for the longest distances, puts human perception and dexterity on site. I’m not talking about “scripted” tasks. Sure, a fixed position camera can miss things that the eye would catch. Why are we talking about a fixed position camera, anyway? That same camera could have vastly higher resolution and spectral range than the human eye. In principle, it should do a lot better than an in situ human eye.
Name one thing for which there is no substitute for a human eye and brain on site. I think there are fewer things than you might think. For situations where communication latency is a factor, just get people close.
Brian,
As long as you realize that combining H2 and O2 is a process requiring careful continuous monitoring and likely can’t safely or effectively be automated. Also consider that PURE H2 and O2 are required to make water; otherwise you don’t get water, you get mud, or something with a high/low pH, or other surprises. I’ve yet to see a convincing process proposed for “cleaning up” ET H2 or O2. Unless I’ve missed it, this is yet another area where the necessary R&D and testing, long known as requirements, simply hasn’t been done.
Steve
Why does anyone think we have to ‘hurry up and go some place’ ?
Why a destination?
As NASA in its current state is showing with Constellation, it is a challenge for them to try and do even the most basic things, like create an Orion capsule – no service module, few systems, they are just trying to create a basic three dimensional air frame, and have not done very well technically, budget-wise or schedule-wise.
Orion/MPCV is not unique. There are several recent examples of failure and a dozen or more manned space system failures over the last 20 years.
Does anyone think that if someone challenged them to go to X tomorrow, that they could move any faster?
By the time they’d have any level of buy-in and support, people would be saying its the wrong place and we need to try someplace else. And just as soon, there would be a new President, new Administrator, different support in Congress.
They’d best start with where they are today and make small incremental steps to develop modifications, develop new systems based n the existing, advance the state of the art, advance capabilities, and slowly work there way into higher orbits and then to other trajectories.