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Back To The Moon 3.0

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
May 15, 2018
Back To The Moon 3.0

Back to the Moon, Again: Will the Third Time Be the Charm?, Air & Space
“By coincidence, on the same day the White House formally announced that goal in December, a group of space historians and policy experts convened at the National Air and Space Museum to try to put the new lunar initiative into historical context. Overall, the mood was skeptical. Mark Albrecht, who had been President George H.W. Bush’s space advisor during the days of the (aborted) Space Exploration Initiative in the early 1990s, and who watched George W. Bush’s Vision for Space Exploration collapse more than a decade later, put it bluntly: “We are currently 0 for 2. The question before us now is, will we go 0 for 3?” Bridenstine meant to reassure contract hopefuls at NASA’s Moon meeting that the answer is no. Appearing unwounded by the protracted battle over his Senate confirmation, he strode into the NASA Auditorium, delivered a few pointed remarks, then left the group to its work. “This will not be Lucy and the football again,” he promised. “We are going to the Moon.” Thomas Zurbuchen, who heads NASA’s science office, reinforced the message that there will be no reversals, or even dawdling, this time. The agency intends to “go to the Moon fast,” he said.”
Report to Accompany House Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill, 2019 (PDF)
“Lunar Discovery and Exploration.– The Committee supports the requested level of $218,000,000 for the Lunar Discovery and Exploration program, including $18,000,000 for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and $200,000,000 for the new Lunar Future initiative. The Committee directs that the new Lunar Future initiative follow the lunar science priorities established by decadal surveys and the National Research Council’s Scientific Context for the Exploration of the Moon and collect data to address the strategic knowledge gaps important for human exploration of the Moon. The Committee anticipates additional reports from the Academies regarding NASA’s plans for lunar science and exploration. The funds provided for moon exploration are intended to support a mix of commercial lunar payload services; science instrument development; small satellite development; and long-duration lunar rover development. These funds will support science payloads and instruments for Lunar lander missions such as those developed in partnership with the private sector as part of NASA’s Lunar CATALYST program. These robotic missions will provide NASA with access to the lunar surface and allow for an affordable procurement of a variety of science and exploration payloads to prepare for future science and crewed Exploration Missions.”

“Public-private partnerships.– The Committee notes that Lunar Future funding is intended to support, in part, public-private partnerships to send exploration and science payloads to the Moon and will serve as an architecture foundation for both lunar surface and lunar orbit operations. The Committee understands that the commercial landers supported by this program will provide the first opportunity since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972 to directly investigate the surface of the Moon. As part of this initiative and in concert with expertise within the Exploration Research and Technology account, NASA shall undertake risk reduction activities in support of large lunar lander technology maturation. Development of these landers is essential for human exploration of the Moon and beyond. The Committee notes that there is a robust private space industry with companies engaging in development of technologies that support NASA in its human and robotic exploration missions. The Committee expects NASA to engage in these public-private partnerships with U.S. commercial space companies to initiate the most expeditious possible development of a lunar lander for both the Moon and extensible applications to Mars missions. This includes development of hardware, propulsion, communications, and software necessary for a lunar landing vehicle with the ability to deliver 1,000 to 10,000 pounds of payload to the lunar surface. To the greatest extent practicable, NASA shall offer existing capabilities and assets at NASA Centers with lander expertise to support these partnerships. As part of the report directed in the administrative provisions of this bill, NASA shall provide an outline of missions and their intended launch cadence. NASA is encouraged to ensure that industry partners under the Lunar Future program exhibit inkind or other cost share investments so the program can meet its intended goals on time and within budget.”

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

52 responses to “Back To The Moon 3.0”

  1. MarcNBarrett says:
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    “SLS” and “fast” (in the context of number of missions over a certain period of time) don’t belong in the same sentence together.

    • Tim Blaxland says:
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      Hence the CLPS RFP
      https://www.fbo.gov/index?s

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        Are we beginning to see a way out of the SLS morass for the Agency?

        For sometime, it’s been obvious that SLS is not going to be very useful. And I’ve wondered how NASA was going to back out of using it. Now we see, perhaps: let’s ask the “ankle biters” to loft some small, cheap stuff to Luna. As they do, and as expertise improves, NASA can stand back, taking note “heck! We can use those guys for even more stuff! Who ever knew?”

        • ThomasLMatula says:
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          And then BFR comes along and blows everything open 🙂

          • Michael Spencer says:
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            And THAT is going to be- well, really cool. Yes, BFR lowers costs and increases up mass.

            But far more important than that: it is the introduction of true spaceships (although, yes, a halting, non-binary step, but still).

            NASA is still thinking about rendezvous and landers and command modules. Sheesh!

        • Steve Pemberton says:
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          Yes that is where I see this going. I suspect that is why SLS is not being mentioned for the lunar surface missions but instead remains relegated to the relatively far in the future LOP-G. Sort of like in an office when someone on the way out (but who doesn’t know it) gets assigned to some type of future project. Then all they have to do is cancel the project ……

          I realize that SLS has survived other project cancellations, but there are signs that support for it is starting to erode mainly because of advances in the commercial sector, which assuming they continue will put SLS at increasing risk.

      • Rick Smith says:
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        “The contractors shall provide all activities necessary to safely intergrate,…”. Really?

    • Steve Pemberton says:
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      I don’t think SLS/Orion will be involved in any of this, at least that’s the impression that I am getting. Vehicles and launchers for the initial scientific/robotic missions will be provided commercially via CLPS. The larger goal of these missions is to develop capability and requirements for eventual human missions. Although unstated, I think the intention is that the human lunar surface missions will also be provided commercially, following the successful example of COTS and CCDev. In those programs SpaceX developed a cargo vehicle which could then be upgraded to a human spacecraft. I suspect that is what is hoped for with CLPS that one or more companies will build a lunar cargo vehicle that can later be scaled up to human capability, evidenced by “Earth re-entry vehicles” being listed in the CLPS solicitation. Even though that’s for sample return it would also provide an early start on development of ascent and return capabilities for eventual human missions.

      SLS/Orion meanwhile will continue to be relegated to LOP-G. The good thing about that is that if SLS/Orion is delayed or cancelled this would only affect LOP-G, the lunar surface exploration program would not be impacted.

      Of course the bad thing is the money that will be required to run both the lunar surface and LOP-G programs in parallel. Eventually the football may have to be pulled out from one of them. However if the lunar surface program is progressing nicely by that time, it would be difficult to justify cancelling it in favor of LOP-G, regardless of the political clout of SLS.

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        Exactly my thinking, though more clearly explicated; CLPS is going to be NASA’s back door away from SLS. CLPS is an incredibly smart move.

      • Bill Housley says:
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        Part of the point to the fixed-price commercial partnerships is that it lowers the coat enough to run two big projects at once.

        Also so that all the expansive tech is being spin-off to the commercial partners so that they can go off and do whatever they want with it once Congress loses interest.

        In other words, Charlie Brown just snatches the ball away from Lucy and drop-kicks it!

  2. Keith Vauquelin says:
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    Here is how to measure “fast” and “slow” on this effort:

    Opponents in this race:

    1) Visionary Entrepreneurs

    ~versus~

    2) US Government / NASA / Legacy Aerospace

    NEED I GIVE YOU ANY OTHER YARDSTICK?

  3. richard_schumacher says:
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    The fastest way to the Moon will be to hire… oh, I don’t even need to write the name.

    • tutiger87 says:
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      Yes you do. LEO and lunar space are two different things.

      • TheBrett says:
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        Musk should fund a Red Dragon-style automated uncrewed moon landing mission with a Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy. It’d be a good test of concept if he wants to potentially compete for a contract to take people there, and it would be easier than the now-cancelled Red Dragon mission (which had planetary protection concerns as well as the greater distance and engineering difficulties in landing).

  4. Johnhouboltsmyspiritanimal says:
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    https://uploads.disquscdn.c… you want context here is what the agency did and what it is trying to do with the levels of technology, experience and budgets over 14 years.

    • fcrary says:
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      To be fair, there were 21 Shuttle flights between 2006 and 2011. On the other hand, your nice graphic undercounts the number of manned Apollo flights.

      • Johnhouboltsmyspiritanimal says:
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        Shuttle flights are independent of time and money spent on developing the cislunar architecture of constellation, SLS, Orion.
        Apollo 7,8,9,10,13(with explosion) are csm icons
        Apollo 11,12,14,15,16,17 are LM landing on moon.
        Besides apollo 1(which was not accomplished) what did I miss?

        • fcrary says:
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          As a stickler for literal accuracy, you did say “Manned Flights Accomplished” without reference to when the vehicle was designed or developed. But as far as Apollo goes, you’re right; using the LM as an icon for a successful CSM _and_ LM mission confused me.

          • Johnhouboltsmyspiritanimal says:
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            The title of the graphic is design and development of cislunar architecture. shuttle doesn’t qualify for that.

  5. Zathras1 says:
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    I’ll believe it when I see video of someone actually stepping back onto the lunar surface in my lifetime (and I’m 58 now, so they better get a move on).

    • Daniel Woodard says:
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      It depends on whether “someone” might refer to an AI. When you look at the robots buil tby Boston Dynamics, the voice-based tech support at Google, and of course self-driving cars, it may not be long before there will be no effective difference. Or if there is,, in a remote and hostile environment, it will be in the AI’s favor.

  6. DougSpace says:
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    It’s not fast but small landers that we need, it’s fast human-scale landers that we need. What we need is funding for XEUS/ACES-like landers and now.

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      “Landers”, in the current context, implies a capsule/command module/lander sort of approach. What SX has in mind is something with fewer moving parts: a single ‘space ship’ that could also land.

  7. Robert Jones says:
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    Like Lucy a new president and new Congress will likely change the goals yet again. http://Www.robert-w-jones.com

  8. Jeff2Space says:
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    We ought to be learning from past failures. SLS/Orion is simply repeating the failure of CEV/Ares. Every slip to the schedule makes this more clear. At the predicted flight rate the per flight cost of SLS won’t ever be below $1 billion. Add on Orion and you’re more like $1.5+ billion per flight. Add on whatever cargo is under Orion and your’e surely around $2 billion per flight. That’s just insane.

    • Mark says:
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      SLS isn’t just a repeat of CEV/Ares. At least CEV/Ares were part of “Project Constellation” which planned to have a more affordable launch vehicle to LEO (more “affordable” than the Shuttle, Ares V or SLS) as well as Lunar landers, rovers, etc. SLS and Orion don’t have any of that planned. They have a “Gateway” Lunar station planned, but not yet funded. And nothing else.

      So yeah, at least Constellation had more Dumpster for it’s Dumpster Fire.

      • Jeff2Space says:
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        No, it’s not an exact repeat, but there are similarities. Both programs baselined a general purpose “deep space” capsule design and a (more or less) shuttle derived HLV. Neither program really had any solid plans for the use of either, so the justification for both has been a bit nebulous (at best).

        A big example of the after the fact justification was the bit about needing both Ares I (crew) and Ares V (cargo) because of the “lesson learned” from the space shuttle that cargo should not go up on the same flight as crew because “safety”. SLS/Orion did a complete 180 on that stance and will co-manifest cargo with crew yet again. Why? Because the separation of crew and cargo was always a b.s. argument. You’re not going to make a launch vehicle deliberately less reliable for multi-billion dollar cargo than you are for launching crew.

        At any rate, Ares (I plus V)/CEV wasn’t really functionally much different than SLS/Orion. From a gross requirements point of view, they’re both intended to allow “deep space” crew access as well as enabling the launch of very large payloads. Arguing that the two are different is skipping past the requirements and jumping straight into the implementation details.

        • Steve Pemberton says:
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          I think part of the argument against mixing cargo and crew has to do with the size of the vehicle required to carry both. If the Shuttle only carried crew it could have been sized closer to something like the Dream Chaser, maybe a bit bigger than that but not the behemoth size of the Shuttle. A smaller vehicle in theory could have been built safer than the Shuttle.

          Carrying cargo on the Shuttle also required massive SRB’s as part of the design, which in the opinion of some people SRB’s of any size are not safe for human rated vehicles, and certainly not giant ones.

          Not to say that the argument about size automatically applies to all other vehicles or launchers. Although it could apply to SLS where even more massive SRB’s are used. Then again Ares I, even though the crew was “safely” separated from cargo, they still would have had to ride on top of a quite large SRB. So I’m not saying they have been consistent I’m just saying why I think cargo was considered an issue and it had to do with size.

          A good visual example of size difference would be comparing Saturn IB and Saturn V. Of course besides cargo Saturn V was also capable of launching to the Moon, but that required what was essentially an Earth departure stage which could be considered a type of cargo, if they had done EOR for the Moon missions the crew would have probably launched to orbit on a Saturn IB. Now was Saturn IB safer than Saturn V? That I don’t know, of course all of the manned launches were successful, so with the limited flight rate the safety was the same. But I guess you could ask yourself would you feel safer on a Saturn IB than a Saturn V? Of course there would be more to that question than just the size.

          • Jeff2Space says:
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            Essentially “the devil is in the details”. We don’t typically exclude flying cargo from passenger airline flights. But the exception is for “dangerous” cargo. Many times it’s the cargo that causes the risk.

            An example of “dangerous” cargo for the space shuttle would have been the Centaur upper stage. That was cancelled after Challenger due to safety concerns. Had Challenger not happened, we might very well have lost an orbiter due to launching a LOX/liquid hydrogen filled Centaur upper stage in the payload bay. But we’ll never know for sure.

            So, the rule should be, IMHO, that we don’t fly “dangerous” cargo with crew on SLS. But flying benign cargo should be just fine (like a space station module that has no fuel, oxidizer, and etc.).

            In the end, space travel is never going to be 100% safe. And we’ll always be able to find astronauts willing to take the risk because the rewards are so great.

          • fcrary says:
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            The other point is to avoid letting the one-way cargo drive the requirements for reuse. Each Shuttle launch placed a sizable mass on orbit, but the relatively low fraction of that mass was payload. That was a direct result of having to return a large, (almost always) empty cargo bay.

          • Jeff2Space says:
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            I agree that for the shuttle this was arguably a bad trade especially given the relatively low flight rate. The ability to return large payloads using the space shuttle was rarely used. And when it was used to return Spacelab and Spacehab, it was arguably mis-used because there was no space station yet.

            But, when you look at BFR, returning and reusing the entire upper stage is likely to be advantageous both in terms of safety and economics. Assuming a high enough flight rate, single use hardware limits your reliability and drives up costs.

          • Michael Spencer says:
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            “In the end, space travel is never going to be 100% safe.”

            In the long run this must be proven false.

          • fcrary says:
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            No, 100% safety is never going to happen. 99.99%, maybe. But not 100%. Civil aviation is incredibly safe, and the 737 is one of the best designs around (in my opinion, but also because it’s still competitive with much more recent designs.) But check today’s news: A 737 went down shortly after takeoff in Havana. As a practical matter, 100% safe can’t be done, and we have to accept the fact that 99.99% safe is acceptable.

          • Michael Spencer says:
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            It’s a figure of speech 🙂

          • Jeff2Space says:
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            Nothing is 100% safe. Getting those last few nines on 99.999% reliability is exponentially harder than getting the first two or three nines. Trying too hard to make something too safe just drives up the cost needlessly. Humans are terrible at estimating risk, but we’re also very good at accepting it. Traffic accidents kill thousands of people, yet many of us get in our cars every day and drive to work without a second thought to how dangerous driving really is.

      • Richard Malcolm says:
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        Nothing about Ares V – or even Ares I – was going to be affordable. Nothing about Altair was going to be affordable, either.

        But Constellation did have an objective and some idea of how it would get there. Gotta give it that.

  9. Donald Barker says:
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    I am highly skeptical for many reasons. First, nothing has changed in the past year from the preceding 45 years to drive any truly dedicated human movement past LEO, including fixed funding availability. Second, no one has answered the question as to WHY we are going there or anywhere else in a truly sustainable, long-term manner. And this is exemplified with the continued use of the word “Exploration”
    which at its roots refers to transient human thought and behavioral processes. If they were truly committed to human habitation off Earth they would use a word such as settlement, and devise a goal directed process to achieve it. And related, they keep trying to sell going back to the Moon as an important scientific expedition, but as such will also not sustain humans off Earth or worse as a needed stepping stone to Mars which has a completely different environment and set of design characteristics (kind of like building an igloo for the Sahara).

    • Mark says:
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      I’m sure people have told you why going back to the Moon is important, you’ve probably just ignored them because it doesn’t match your expectations.

    • TheBrett says:
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      Having humans on the Moon would be useful for scientific reasons, although I don’t think it is cost-effective compared to sending a bunch of robots. The main reason to do it is because the politics of spaceflight in the US require funding for crewed missions, so we should try and get the most bang for our buck in terms of the science they can do.

      I agree that it’s not a stepping stone to Mars. All of the arguments assuming that the Moon is a stepping stone to Mars assume that we’re flying so many missions that it’s more cost-effective to mass-produce fuel on the Moon and send it to rendezvous points for spacecraft from Earth, versus just having another launch carrying up fuel that can then rendezvous.

      • Donald Barker says:
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        Please tell me exactly WHAT scientific reasons? And keep in mind that I just finished a Ph.D. in geology and personally have Apollo 15 and 17 regolith samples Ive been working with for a few years.

        • TheBrett says:
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          You don’t think it would be useful to gather more samples, drill down deeper, and collect information on human exposure to cosmic rays outside Earth’s magnetosphere?

          I don’t think it’s useful enough to justify sending people versus sending robots if we were designing this from a clean start, but we’re not doing that. Funding has to go to a crewed program of some kind for political reasons to keep NASA’s funding intact, so the Moon is a fine enough destination – and one that the ESA and Chinese are also interested in.

          • Donald Barker says:
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            “You don’t think it would be useful to gather more samples…” – what is your definition of “useful” and by how much and to whom? Yes, it would incrementally advance our understanding as the scientific process is apt to do, but useful, pragmatic? And worth the cost? Could not better, more fruitful and permanently sustainable goals be established? Me thinks the bigger picture is usually missed in such discussions.

          • TheBrett says:
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            Like what goals?

            Again, the political situation is that we are going to have to spend a certain amount on crewed missions, whether or not they’re cost-effective for their mission. Lunar missions are something we can do with such funding, something that other countries are interested in potentially doing once the ISS ends its mission and either gets turned over to private operators or (more likely) de-orbited. Mars missions as we know them are not affordable on a fixed realistic budget with the technology we have now (although perhaps that could change later). Orbiting Earth is just doing what we’re already doing with ISS.

          • fcrary says:
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            Well, if we do have to pay a certain amount of money on some sort of human spaceflight, for political reasons, then let’s look at the returns. What sorts of human, lunar missions would give the best return on that mandatory investment? Multiple landings at many different sites? Longer duration landings for a more comprehensive site survey? Are stays of over 14 days worth anything (i.e. enough to justify sitting around and doing very little during lunar night?)

          • TheBrett says:
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            I think it would only be worthwhile to do longer-than-14-day stays in any particular area if

            a) you need to do so just to operate whatever experiment you’re doing (like if you’re doing a deep drill down into the Moon).

            b) you’ve found a place with lots of resources, like metals in a crater site (presumably the moon has metals delivered by asteroid impacts on the surface, even if they’ve become covered by regolith).

            c) you’re deliberately doing an extended stay to study what happens to humans who spend significant time in low gravity and outside the Earth’s magnetosphere.

            Otherwise, it’s best to have shorter stays in a lot of different areas. That could be done with direct launches from Earth to the Moon (but that would require a big rocket for each launch), or by building up some infrastructure and designing reusable smaller landers that can make suborbital “hops”.

            As I said, I think that’s better for the funding we have than Mars (where we just don’t have the money for it unless launch costs go way down, or there’s a major political shift in the support for space travel), Earth orbit, or a Near-Earth Asteroid rendezvous.

          • fcrary says:
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            Or look at the smaller picture. A sample would definitely be worth more if it were collected from a specifically selected site, from a particular formation, perhaps a certain depth below the surface. The Apollo samples weren’t exactly a snatch-and-grab collection. But there is room for a whole lot of improvement. Not a billion dollars per kilo worth of improvement, but perhaps a thousand dollars per gram for the first few dozen samples.

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      Yes.

      I’ve made the same point here, and elsewhere, and over and over: space will be settled when there is a reason to do something.

      Lots of folks get all all starry-eyed about the (now) plummeting cost of access to LEO, and presumably BEO, imagining that finally the free market is set free! Entrepreneurs are appearing! Stuff is gonna happen!

      Like what?

      Beyond a necessary scientific outpost mirroring our Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station, exactly what is going to happen on the moon? And yes, I know the argument that we don’t know what we will find but we will find something. This is specious at best.

      And lest anyone forget, there is quite a lot of enabling tech yet to be developed. NASA hasn’t clarified exactly the mechanics of getting there other than to assume there’s some sort of ‘lander’ (not developed). SX appears to eschew landers all together. But there’s more: how will ‘ore’ of unknown composition and yield actually be extracted? How do we build something comparable to a big Cat 797? How is the ore transferred, or smelted, or whatever is required? How do we get sufficient solar energy to the site- we are talking megawatt hours here. The list goes on: how do we keep that crappy regolith outside and not inside?

      Mr. B. made the mistake of an amateur with that announcement. It is going to cost all of us.

      • Not Invented Here says:
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        Like what?

        Tourism, for starters. Remember the US only has about 3,000 people in various Antarctica stations, while about 40,000 tourists visit Antarctica every year.

        SX appears to eschew landers all together.

        Huh? They are building a lander, they’ll test fly it next year.

    • Richard Malcolm says:
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      Second, no one has answered the question as to WHY we are going there or anywhere else in a truly sustainable, long-term manner.

      I think Paul Spudis has proposed a serviceable answer. “We go to the Moon to learn how to live and work productively on another world.”

  10. Brian_M2525 says:
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    The sooner they move away from NASA managed programs and NASA developed hardware the sooner we might get back to the Moon. Especially in human space flight, NASA has nothing to offer. The experience and expertise of the past is gone. A massive cumbersome bureaucracy with zero expertise has taken its place. If you had to have government establish agreements and contracts there are a .handful of NASA types that might help, but actually the commercial operators could do it faster and better without NASA involvement.

  11. TheBrett says:
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    If the funding was totally fungible, I’d agree with you. Without the political constraints on funding, it’s hard to build a case to send people back to the Moon when it’s so much more cost-effective to use remotely operated robots. Even Paul Spudis IIRC (the big “back to the Moon” advocate) thinks we should do it at first with robots.