Updates to the Global Exploration Roadmap
“NASA and 11 other ISECG member agencies have released an update to the 2011 Global Exploration Roadmap. The updated document reflects ongoing dialog and continued preparation for exploration beyond low-Earth orbit – beginning with the International Space Station (ISS) and expanding human presence throughout the solar system, leading to human missions to the surface of Mars. The GER highlights the critical role of the International Space Station in preparing for deep-space exploration.
It also demonstrates that the global community is working together on a space exploration strategic plan, with robotic and human missions to destinations that include near-Earth asteroids, the Moon and Mars. NASA plans to host a workshop in early 2014 to engage the space community in discussions about the updates to the Global Exploration Roadmap. Comments are welcome! NASA is interested in obtaining feedback on the Global Exploration Roadmap. You are invited to submit your comments to: [email protected]” Download the Global Exploration Roadmap (5.8 MB PDF)
Keith’s note: Page 8: “Observation: In order to build a sustainable human space exploration endeavour that lasts decades, agency leaders should maintain a focus on delivering value to the public.” Alas, Charlie Bolden still cannot explain to the public why NASA needs to go grab an asteroid and put it into lunar orbit and then have people visit it. How can people see the value of this mission if no one at NASA can explain why it needs to be done?
Charlie Bolden still cannot explain to the public why NASA needs to go grab an asteroid and put it into lunar orbit and then have people visit it. How can people see the value of this mission if no one at NASA can explain why it needs to be done?
Easy answer
We don’t have enough money to build a gawdafully large lunar lander so we are doing something that will allow us to fly the things that we actually can pay for!
Jeez, I have seen tons of these position papers over the years, most of which are forgotten the week after they published. Without some kind of endorsement from the politicians, its just another pile of electrons to be shunted off to a dusty place on your hard drive.
Instead of just sitting around waiting for Bolden to explain the details of an asteroid mission, and to provide reasons why it is a worthwhile program, how many people have invested the time and thought into trying to propose program elements that would potentially be of value and some details as to how those elements might be accomplished?
More importantly, how many people have done their own analysis as to whether an asteroid mission can potentially provide benefits that would justify the cost and/or satisfy one or more absolute needs in the future?
Do those of us outside of the loop have enough information to try to realistically assess these things ourselves (as opposed to just throwing in opinions off the top of our heads)? Maybe, maybe not. But as a minimum, I think we know enough to formulate the specific questions that need to be asked and answered for us in order to make a proper assessment and develop an informed opinion.
Personally, I found that I had a much better handle on what the program might be and might accomplish after spending an hour thinking it through. No doubt, half of my assumptions will turn out to be wrong, but the exercise made me think through things that I hadn’t done previously and haven’t seen others comment on.
Yes, it’s work, and it takes time, but I felt better about my own opinions (which changed somewhat) and proposals after taking the time. If we just wait to be spoon fed, maybe we don’t consider it so important after all.
Interesting comment.
I’ve had a think about this as per your recommendation and am now asking, if you don’t mind to please enlighten me as to the following:
What this international effort is about?
Who’s involved?
Who’s funding the various aspects?
What vehicles and missions are involved and when they expect to fly including who’s designing, funding and flying them?
What science goals and contributions are expected?
What the timeline for these individual efforts and overall are?
To name but a few of my questions however I’ve run out of breath.
Cheers.
BCFDU,
All very good questions, for which I have not seen any useful official answers. I could propose possible answers of my own devising, but I’m not going to try doing that at this point because that would be doing things out of order, and therefore not really useful either at this stage. Your questions all pertain to the implementation of the program (the how), when we haven’t yet defined the program itself (the what), which must come first — we can’t reach a goal if we don’t know what it is. And there is another necessity which comes even before that: a change in methodology.
First off, I’m convinced that it’s not viable or even sensible to make this a single big program, but rather it needs to be broken into smaller programs (or projects) because there are essential interdependencies between certain major tasks — or prerequisites if you prefer. If you have a look at Asteroid Experts Are Not Very Fond of NASA’s Asteroid Mission, around the middle of the page, you can see where CharlesHouston and I have kicked this around, so I won’t repeat it all here. But as an example, there’s no logic in detailing or starting a program to move an asteroid until you’ve both sufficiently developed the “rockets” with which to do that and selected a specific asteroid and determined its composition and physical/movement characteristics to a level consistent with safety and available technology. There are difficult new things to learn all through this asteroid “mission,” but they must be done, and done in order, even though they are hard. Their difficulty makes accurate first-try scheduling unlikely, so start dates for the downstream tasks are guestimates, or TBD, until the dependencies for each task have been completed. Old-schoolers will cry, “schedule slip!” but it’s not a “slip” if it’s expected and planned for.
There are tasks all through this endeavor that have the potential for being iterative and requiring more than one try to accomplish/perfect. But until each one is perfected, in the proper order, there’s little point in scheduling any of the downstream tasks, except very roughly, and the downstream task budget estimates will be reestimated with each completed task. This idea will probably have NASA people jumping up out of their chairs with all kinds of objections, but in the final analysis all of those objections will boil down to, That’s not how we do things here! So what? NASA is used to doing science missions and getting-to-a-destination missions. With this asteroid business we’re looking at something new to NASA, and all national space agencies — in-space technology development missions. And there is no reason whatever to expect technology missions to be done the same way as any of the other mission types. (ISS missions, inside and EVA types, each require different methods again; failure of many people to realize this is perhaps a major contributor to the less than satisfying track record for ISS “experiments.”)
So, to my mind, that’s step one — understand and accept the necessity for logically compartmentalizing the various tasks into smaller programs and identifying all of the interdependencies between them, because technology development “missions” are not the same as “science” or “destination” missions. If anyone, including NASA management, can’t get past this necessary change in thinking, then I say forget it; the asteroid “mission” will fail miserably. If we can get past that first hump, then we can start looking at the major goals we want to accomplish from the overall combined asteroid missions, and from those goals we can start to work out the necessary details of the individual smaller programs. Much like a hardware design, the required “outputs” of each stage (smaller program) determine the “inputs” which must be provided for it, which in turn define the required “outputs” of the previous stage(s), and so on until we work backward to the initial conditions.
The second step is more subjective because we have to evaluate and decide on the major overall goals that we want the combined asteroid missions to achieve (maybe would should give them a unique name, like sub-missions). And keep in mind, “science goals and contributions” are not the meter stick by which we are measuring this thing — it’s primarily a technology development mission; and science or other benefits that may come out of it are serendipity, not program drivers.
I’d say that’s more than enough for now.
Thanks,
Steve
Ok good answer. I admit I was being a bit facitious however followiing on from your points, my concerns mirror yours. How do we get NASA and Congress in particular to commit to short, medium and long term goals including technology development whilst all they appear to be hung up on is big missions and programs that provide certain politicians with the ability to spout about providing jobs?
This is, I think, the real challenge for anyone seriously concerned about HSF and exploration into the future.
I guess this roadmap could become a rallying point for space nuts like you and me but at the moment, it seems a bridge to far.
Cheers
This has got to be internally confusing as it is to the public, this looks to be a follow up on the Moon Mars and Beyond road-map initiated by Bush, but I keep running across rumor that Obama effectively canceled that program. So is this “Obama’s” Global roadmap, which will be canceled by the next president? We can’t build bases on the Moon but we can build giant data recording centers and monitor every American and international person with a data foot print? What exactly is security, contracting with foreign nations and sending most of the jobs and IP overseas. If only spaceflight and exploration were part of National Security once again, we might get somewhere, this political stuff is trackless.