A New Push For The Moon – and Mars?
Statement from the Coalition for Space Exploration: Frank Wolf’s Letter to President Obama
“… policy decisions made in the next few years will determine whether the international space and science community supports a U.S.-led space exploration program for the next several decades or if they align with others. The Coalition for Space Exploration encourages the proposal to hold a conference early in the new year to develop a mission-oriented plan for a U.S.-led exploration program to send humans to Mars using the SLS and Orion systems, augmented by other systems and technologies contributed by our international partners.”
Wolf Asks Obama to Hold White House Conference in 2014 on Return to Moon, Space Policy Online
“Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) may be retiring, but that’s not till the end of next year. Until then, he clearly plans to remain passionately involved in both civil and national security space policy as evidenced by two letters he sent today. The one addressed to President Obama calls on the President to hold a White House conference early in 2014 to develop an international plan to return humans to the Moon within the next 10 years.”
Letter from Frank Wolf To President Obama, Space Policy Online
The letter from “Coalition for Space Exploration”. Industry players: the two main contacts are Chairman, George J. Torres, (Vice President of Communications, ATK Aerospace Group and Deputy Chair), Arthur (Bill) Beckman (Director, NASA Programs, The Boeing Company Washington, D.C. Operations). This is not a letter from independent advocates. The chairman and co-chairman are with companies with much at stake if certain programs are canceled. They are affiliated with aerospace corporations that will suck NASA dry and then come back to fix it again.
Caution. This letter is not from the advocates of space exploration. We are aware that American corporations will feed us sugar and fat for profit and likewise they will dutifully build what congress with lobbyists patting their backs, padding their pocketbooks will dole out.
Human space flight remains at a cross-roads. SLS and Orion have taken too long, is costing too much and will cost too much to maintain. Commercial crew and COTS is the path to going beyond LEO. American enterprise – SpaceX has the disruptive technology in Falcon 9 & Heavy (1/4th the cost of SLS), Dragon and along with Boeing CST-100, altogether has the launch vehicles to lift humans and the hardware to go to the Moon, Asteroids, Lagrange Points and Mars. It is not even unfortunate. It is part of what makes NASA great – technology transfer and expertise. NASA and the public cannot be in the business of making and maintaining launch vehicles such as SLS. The NASA engineers and managers of Houston, Huntsville, Cleveland and the Cape, need to turn to cutting edge technology that enables achieving real exploration … based on use of the new heavy launch vehicles from SpaceX, vehicles made in America. Take this path and the American taxpayer will get real exploration and the most for their buck. Choose to go to the Moon using SLS and Orion and NASA will flounder for a decade, taxpayers will lose $Billions and human exploration and the SMD missions will be delayed for decades.
I know George Torres. Do you? He is clearly an advocate for space exploration. Suggest you do a little more research before you post inaccurate claims on NASAWatch.
Corporations have a lot of honorable people of good intentions. And likewise NASA has many people of good intentions but in both cases they must function as part of larger entities. Corporations are driven by demands for profit. NASA has a flawed infrastructure – fiefdoms as its been described.
From this Coalitions site, here is a list of their “Members”: Aerojet, ATK, Astrium Americas, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman. A list of great American corporations that built much of the hardware that makes NASA famous. And there is no request for donations on this web site.
These corps. will just as easily build anything NASA and Congress will pay for until they are blue in the face. This includes the present projects that stand to handicap NASA for 10 or 15 years. We may not lose two crews of fine astronauts as with Shuttle but something is hitting the fan. Do we burn through a decade and how many $Billions? Delay projects and not afford to pay for the scientists to study our findings? Or do we put the burden on the taxpayer and let everyone involved live like fat cats?
Strictly as a generalization, I have found over the years that it is not uncommon for people to have personal preferences and ideals that are not consistent with the requirements of their professional activities. Individual cases can be simple or complex, significant or trivial. But they are not usually a reflection of the person or his/her values, but rather of the situation they find themselves in through no fault of their own. I see no reason why a sincere space advocate can not be an employee of, or associates with, any of the companies or other entities associated with the space programs/industry. In fact, I suspect that such people may be our biggest achievers as advocates.
Well, I don’t know Mr. Torres, nor do I know RockyJ, and I happily met you once, briefly, Keith; but how does knowing anyone change the thrust of RockyJ’s point that ‘Human space flight remains at a cross-roads’? And that ‘Big Space’ claims appear, at least taken by themselves, at least a bit disingenuous?
Like at least a few others here, I imagine, I’m a bystander, watching the industry through your eyes. I don’t see anything in RockyJ’s post that’s any different from hundreds of posts beating the same drum- that to the extent that Big Space is invested in SLS, it will drown without a life line from Congress.
That’s the cross-roads, and in many ways, the preparation of ‘Big Space’ to engage in the inevitable shoot-out far surpasses what can be done politically by the puny newcomers like Mr. Musk. This is an arena very familiar to only one side through decades and decades of experience.
I don’t know from personal experience, but have no trouble imagining Mr. Torres as passionate about space. Of course he is! He’d have to be in his position.
At the same time, ATK and Boeing have lots of skin in the game–skin that many posters here have pointed out is at very serious risk unless the congress critters are coaxed into supporting a government rocket over commercial alternatives. That he’s an advocate for space, sure, but space on his (figuratively) rockets?
We are facing a huge problem: how to turn our stunningly excellent and creative space industrial base away from the past and into the future without losing the people, the talent, the future–and our way. One hopes Mr. Torres sees the issue clearly and has a plan.
There is that word again human space EXPLORATION 🙁
Robots explore
Humans follow building affordable highways
There is no money nor should there be money to just explore with humans.
The goal should be to settle space. Not just explore.
Has not the word explore been redefined to sell wasteful space like SLS
Orion and SLS must be canned!!!
The space settler
Don’t sell me another unaffordable trip to explore the moon?
Taxpayer
I don’t think it is true to say that “robots explore”, at least in anything other than a very superficial sense. Robotic space exploration is engaged in a very successful initial *reconnaissance* of the Solar System, but there are good reasons to think that, at least as far as Moon and Mars are concerned, humans will be required for true exploration. My own justifications for this assertion are written up in:
http://www.homepages.ucl.ac…
although I am not the first to make these points. Moreover, human exploration is not incompatible with subsequent space settlement, but is rather a natural precursor to it.
Ian Crawford
CSE DOES look very much like a front of regular club of defense contractors.
Their press releases are intended to look better for the casual reader than ATK boasting about SLS budget to their shareholders.
The list of member companies ( i.e. money ) is Aerojet, ATK, Astrium Americas, Boeing, LockMart, Northrop.
Notable absence of Orbital Sciences, Schafer, Andrews etc for example.
Rocky – Some research per Keith’s note in the recent piece by Bob Crippen in the Huffington Post last month. It’s not about just human space flight, it’s about all the above:
http://www.huffingtonpost.c…
As for me personally, I’ve been in all parts of the aerospace industry throughout my career and have written two books on the Space Program covering human exploration, planetary science, space-based observatories, military space, earth observation, etc.
In all due respect to Robert Crippen, his editorial has inaccuracies. First, SLS is not more powerful than Saturn. The SLS he refers to is the next generation or version that is now delayed until around 2030. The commenters on that post disagree likewise. SLS is not a game-changer nor will it create a highway to the solar system. There is the cost to performance issue – cost in terms of time and money to develop and also to maintain. I absolutely agree with Crippen that rumors of NASA demise are greatly exaggerated. There is so much exploration, be it robotic and human, that NASA needs to do. Private industry is not in the game of exploring and discovering and I do not want discovery accomplished by the private sector. NASA has the license and funds to be cutting edge – experiment & explore … all that. SLS and Orion is not cutting edge and private industry has overtaken it.
If I may add a little to Rocky’s view, I think Mr. Crippen’s view is typical of many groups, including many astronauts, who have a similar mindset — bigger is better, period. There are certainly situations in life where this is true, but it is not valid as a general rule. More often than not, we’re better off when we learn how to do more with less. This affords more and better opportunities for more people. If we all had to have Cadillacs and Audis there’d be a lot less drivers on the road. On the other hand, if we learned how to launch “big” missions using LVs, human-rated and not, that were of a more manageable, cost-effective size, then a lot more players could get into the game more quickly, with less risk, and the commercial folks could be carrying a much large portion of the load.
von Braun, himself, envisioned medium-lift LVs for Mars missions, with assembly in orbit and/or multiple spacecraft making the planet to planet flight. He was right about pretty much everything else; I think he was right about this concept too.
A few misconceptions in your note. The 130mT SLS is not “delayed” it just isn’t needed until a full-up mission to Mars. SLS is designed to evolve from 70mT to 105mT to 130mT as needed. There are al least a dozen missions that NASA is looking at that can be handled with the first two versions.
That family of vehicles will in fact provide a highway to space that addresses the key benefit to a heavy lift vehicle – direct trajectories to destinations that don’t require planetary flybys to get more Delta V to reach the outer planets (as is necessary with current LVs). Look at the last few missions to Jupiter or Saturn, and you’ll see that they took 6-8 YEARS to get there. SLS can get there in 1/2 the time. Then look at JWST – it’s complexity – which has led to many of its cost overruns is largely because it has to be crammed into a 5 meter fairing. SLS will have a 8 – 12 meter fairings that allow large aperture observatories not possible today.
Last point on heavy lift advantages is to look at how long it took to build the ISS. When the Saturn V launched the Skylab it had more volume in a single launch than the ISS had until the last few ISS modules were finally delivered.
And finally, SLS is more powerful than Saturn V. At launch the Saturn V had 7.6 million pounds of thrust and SLS has over 9 million pounds. For fun, go check your history and you’ll find that there were plans to upgrade the Saturn V for Mars missions – until Nixon cancelled Apollo 18, 19 & 20.
For a highway in space, all that is required is an upper stage that can be filled with propellant on orbit. Most highway trips require a fill up and the vehicle is not discarded.
A gas station is space would eliminate the need for an HLV altogether, even Mars. http://nextbigfuture.com/20…
With 16.8m to 30m telescopes envisioned, the costs of retaining a HLV dwarf development cost of the alternative, heavy, monolithic approach.
Part of the JWST cost overrun was the need to perform more testing on the ground due the lack of a on-orbit service capability at L2. This is a ~20mT mission. Why use a 70, 130, 186, or even a 50 mT LV?
So if one assembled the 450 mT ISS in four or five flights, what piece of hardware would it launch next? Flight rate reduces launch costs. With no flights fixed costs are retained. Each ISS element was less than 20 mT. If they were ready to fly, ISS could have been assembled in a few years using the existing fleet.
Breaking costs into smaller, less monolithic amounts allows greater flexibility in meeting smaller and changing budget profiles. It also reduces overall risk.
Bravo!
You said:
“There are al least a dozen missions that NASA is looking at that can be handled with the first two versions.”
Are they funded? I would like to see some of these “Powerpoint” spacecraft. Because there is certainly no money to build any of them. Why, because SLS is sucking NASA dry!
That is what a lot of NASA and industry people are missing. They do not seem to grasp that Congress (and most people on the street) are not interested in spending money in Space. Making Space more affordable is the only way to get there. SpaceX is doing that. Their vertical integration is their economical advantage over ULA, Orbital and especially, NASA’s SLS.
The most counterproductive statement ever made regarding US
space policy was the infamous April15, 2010 “been there,
done that” statement. Now we are paying for it. We must not live under a moon dominated by a country with China’s ideology. The Europeans want to work with us, want us to lead but they are often frustrated. Whatever works the best should be used, be it Falcon, Dragon, SLS, Orion or whatever. Lunar landers are often pointed to as “so expensive” and “so difficult”. It has now been shown that landing on the moon is within the capability of many. Putting together a comprehensive, goal structured program, similar to the Transcontinental Railroad (a much used but highly apt example).
Get on with it; it’s only our future as a free world that’s at
stake.
There is absolutely nothing to indicate or even subtly hint that “our future as a free world” is at stake. Rational thinking is required to move our space program forward, not irrational paranoid ranting.
Think again, whoever controls the resources controls a lot more. Why do you think we get so nervous when the Persian Gulf gets threatened. This is a legitimate concern, not easily waived away.
I think you had better review where the US gets its petroleum from. More pointedly, the Moon is not a resource that will be controlled by only one entity. The Moon has ¼ the area of all land on Earth, so the idea of any single country controlling that much area is ridiculous. Nationalism run amok is not a reason for doing anything, and neither are fears blown out of proportion.
I rather doubt anyone will be blind to advancements in the Chinese space program. In fact, China is quite happy to show off their advancements. I also rather doubt that there is no one here in the US not thinking about resources on the Moon and how someone would go about gathering such resources. Finally, I’m quite confident that China won’t be mining on the Moon for quite some time to come.
You may want to review your history for the last 100 years or so. Appeasement and weakness ultimately led to a few problems.
As to the oil question, take a look at world markets whenever there is any issue about the gulf. My original comment was about a free world after all.
The free world would be a lot better off if people with your attitude could get it through their heads that its people with your attitude, and the inflammatory comments that they make, that are the root cause of so much of the tension in the world, where ever they happen to live.
Some will chose to say, don’t worry, don’t make the competition mad, be happy but as the implications of this situation becomes clear, many more will see the need to act.