About That NASA Moon/Mars Thing
My Open Letter to NASA Managers Who Can’t Say “Moon” without “Mars” in the Same Sentence: Please stop it., Homer Hickam
“We’ve even got a Vice President who is behind NASA, who wants you to go to the moon and build something permanent there, and who has stuck out his neck for you. For years, lots of us have been working in every way we can – me with my books and my other writings – to get someone in the Executive Branch who is really serious about going back to the moon, not in a sprint with flags and all that but for a purpose that’s good enough to keep us there.
But now I fear you’re about to totally screw it up mainly because of where your heads are on this moon and Mars thing.
So, with great respect to all of you who toil every day on the pathways to space, let me be clear: Every time you folks at NASA tack “and then we’re headed to Mars” onto your comments about going back to the moon, you diminish the moon as a destination whether you realize it or not. As such, you are totally confusing everybody, especially young people. Common sense says you’re not going to Mars because you have no orders to go there and the technology not only doesn’t exist, there are no plans to make it exist.
So, dear NASA folks, if we’re going to get young people excited about space, trust me on this: The moon is exciting enough and I’m going to tell you why.”
hear, hear !
The direction for was a permanent settlement on the moon, not a “drive by” on the way to Mars. wasn’t it ?
That became confused (IMO) with “the moon by 2024”.
We need (IMO) more exploration to prove the accessibility of ice, and to prove the production of H2, O2 from these deposits, and to demonstrate the operation of in-space refueling.
There are SO many things to be learnt before we can seriously think of going to Mars.
Well, although I don’t disagree with the central thrust of the article, I think the mars bashing is pretty excessive. He spends some considerable time discussing a martian space suit, but skips over it for a lunar space suit. As I have said before, a martian suit needs to supply O2 of course and other needed protection from the near vacuum of the mars surface, but I have a hard time with a martian suit providing thermal protection. Arctic suits bought off the shelf can provide that, and they can be donned over the core expedition suit. The mars thermal environment varies so much, from 23 degrees Celsius above to many degrees below zero, that to design a suit to compensate for this range doesn’t make a lot of sense – we don’t even have such a suit on Earth! Just have a range of arctic wearing apparel hanging by the airlock door, that is all that is needed.
His critique of NASA going for the “next shiny thing”, in this case mars, is spot on. We already have a National Laboratory in orbit, the ISS. When this was first inhabited, NASA stated it was the first “permanently inhabited” space station. Now they are talking about de-orbiting it and moving on. These statements are incompatible. NASA, if anyone, should understand what “permanent” means. But, they seem to now just use that word to describe what can be afforded at this point in time. We should be attempting to establish a National Laboratory on the Lunar surface, to match the one in Low Earth Orbit, and then continue with both of them.
“Now they are talking about de-orbiting it and moving on.”
I have not seen anything where NASA is considering abandoning LEO. Many at NASA have stated they would simply move into a commercial facility. The difference only being NASA is no longer and owner operator but just one of many customers.
A National Laboratory (as ISS is) is not funded by the private sector. The ISS will not be funded by the private sector either. And yes, NASA has discussed the end of ISS, they hope it would be taken over by private enterprise, but that is very unlikely.
I am not talking about commercial interests taking over the ISS. NASA has stated they would LEASE facility space from a private company like Bigelow and would no longer be an owner operator in LEO.
That won’t happen until the ISS is gone. The best option will be for the ISS partnership (remember it’s just not NASA’s station) to hire SpaceX to disassemble it with the Starship and return it’s pieces to Earth. Keep in mind the Starship has about four times the cargo volume and three times the down mass as the Shuttle Orbiter.
True, I was responding to this:
“When this was first inhabited, NASA stated it was the first “permanently inhabited” space station. Now they are talking about de-orbiting it and moving on. These statements are incompatible. NASA, if anyone, should understand what “permanent” means. “
I believe NASA will permanently inhabit LEO now not the ISS. That does not mean NASA will be owner operate in all cases while in LEO, they just do not have the budget for it.
So even though NASA may abandon ISS I do not believe NASA is going to abandon occupying LEO permanently.
I used to think the same, but if the Democrats win they may well refocus NASA on climate change, which would make human spaceflight an unneccessary luxury.
ya I am sure they are going to move all ISS and exploration funding into climate change probably all of the portfolios will be shifted to that and only that.
I think that’s being a little harsh. The statements about ISS being “permanently” inhabited where always slogans and obvious nonsense if taken literally. It isn’t as if there was a realistic expectation that a station designed in the 80s and 90s, and built in the 90s and 00s would last forever. Even if that were possible, it would be a stupid idea. Even if the words in the slogan didn’t match, NASA was talking about a permanent inhabitation of low Earth orbit. Damascus has been permanently inhabited for five thousand years. But no one would expect to find any five thousand year old, continuously occupied houses there.
Ironically…(chuckle) at least they can’t de-orbit a Moon base.
I remember as a kid being livid when they allowed SkyLab to de-orbit. But I’ve lived my life as a hopelessly frustrated Moon Child anyway. Part of the reason I turned to Science Fiction.
One problem people don’t talk about much is _how_ ISS could be deorbited. It is really big and we don’t have any good way to deorbit it safely and in one piece. I’ve seen a few, rarely mentioned estimates, and it doesn’t sound like an easy job. Easier than building it, but that isn’t saying much. And we can’t just abandon it and let it reenter when and wherever that happened. Debris from Skylab didn’t hit anyone and just resulted in a great deal of embarrassment, bad publicity and a pretty funny, joke fine for littering. But ISS coming down in an uncontrolled manner would be orders of magnitude worse. Deorbiting it in a controlled manner is going to require lots of time, effort and money.
I remember pieces of Skylab landing in Australia. They happened to be having the Miss Universe pageant in Australia shortly after that. They brought a big chunk of Skylab on stage at the pageant to show it off.
The thermal issues for a Mars spacesuit aren’t quite that easy. But I agree with you about the basic idea and the conclusions. I did some thermal modeling of this, about 25 years ago.
You can’t just take the right parka, jacket or whatever off the hook before going out. It takes a little more flexibility. I found a Mars suit would need three layers of insulation. One, presumably inside the pressure suit, selected for the time of year. Then two other, outer layers which could be taken off or put back on during the EVA, depending on the time of day and how active the astronaut was.
That’s still well within the norms for terrestrial clothing. In winter, I wear long underwear. In summer, I don’t. Winter or summer (expect for hot days) I often wear a coat or a jacket. Depending on the time of day or what I’m doing, I take it off or put it back on. Or zip it up or down. Two layers isn’t atypical for hikers or people working in cold climates.
Full agreement. The Moon is a worthy destination in its own right – it’s not just a stopping point on the way to Mars.
. . . Nor, honestly, is it really helpful as a precursor to Mars exploration. Everything is different in keeping humans alive on Mars versus on the Moon.
Everything is different…in all the ways that make Mars harder. Everything is the same in the ways that make the Moon and Mars equally hard. He is quite correct there.
However…and far be it for me to argue with the great Homer Hickam, a man for whom I have loads of respect…but all the things he said about dropping an anchor and colonizing the Moon will happen anyway. The commercial partnerships under NextStep are designed to do exactly that, so that government ADHD can’t (again) shrink the envelope once it has expanded. Nor is it NASA’s job to mine, or even find, resources on the Moon. This is not the 1960s, private companies and second-world countries can reach the Moon now without NASA’s help. In a couple of years, they can start planning to land people there without NASA’s help. A couple after that and they can plant their own way-station on the Moon for folks to venture out from to mine it as Mr. Hickam rightly envisions.
His analysis also makes the assumption that all that crewed Moon activity won’t more quickly solve the Mars problems that he named that the Moon and Mars actually share. You have to have a spacesuit with aggressive climate control for both places. You have to get better at radiation shielding. You have to build long-term habitats. You still should learn to grow food off-Earth. You have to solve the health problems of long-term low-gravity. We are developing better engines than chemical rockets. NASA’s current Mars timeline…that Mr. Hickam says is too fast…is already freaking 20 years away! Twenty years of crewed Lunar capability by multiple companies and countries pushing innovation cycles round and round.
Of course, this accelerated Artemis thing takes a step back from a colonization configuration in favor of flags and footprints in several annoying ways. That much of his analysis is spot on.
I can’t argue with much of what you’ve said here. My purpose in writing my letter was just to whack NASA managers up side their heads and get them hopefully back on track to do what they’re supposed to be doing. It is my very real hope that commercial space will overwhelm NASA and make spaceflight a new ball game leaving our federal space agency mostly promoting American interests and being somewhat regulatory like the FAA.
I would like to see NASA working the “bleeding edge” of technology, raising the TRL and then shoveling it into the private sector so NASA can buy the hardware COTS (commercial off the shelf)
“Everything is different…in all the ways that make Mars harder…” and “You have to have a spacesuit with aggressive climate control for both places.”
Mars is an environment which is always cold and never really above room temperature. The extreme temperatures are from winter night to noon on a summer. On any single day (as in dawn to dusk), the temperature range actually isn’t very large. The Moon is an environment where you go from extreme hot to extreme cold, just by stepping from sunlight into shadow. That’s a big difference, and it makes Mars a much easier thermal environment to deal with.
Yes. Meaning that technologies for the Moon make Mars easier.
And agreed. The Moon goes from freezing a pizza on a rock to cooking one just by closing an umbrella. 😉
I’m afraid that doesn’t work. Dealing with the cold _and_ hot temperatures on the Moon pushes a suit design into a high mass and high consumable (sublimated water) solution. The environment on Mars allows other solutions. But if you insist on technologies developed for the Moon, you’re closing the door on those options. The mass of a lunar suit is especially a problem, since the gravity on Mars is a hair over twice as great. The Apollo lunar suit, including life support, was 91 kg. That’s 33 pounds on the Moon (manageable) but 76 pounds on Mars (tolerable if all you want to do is walk around, but useless if you plan on carrying any tools as well or doing any useful work.) What you’re suggesting is designing to the worst common denominator: High(ish) gravity _and_ an extreme hot _and_ cold thermal environment.
You’re correct about the need for suits of different designs. I was referring to the tech within those different suit designs. Having practice at building and using a suit on the Moon helps with the development of Mars tech. That’s all I was saying.
My entire point was to disagree with the idea that the two destinations have to be deliberately linear.
You know more than I do, but your description understates the temperature issues on Mars. You are referring to the equator, but the lowest elevation location, to get closer to equal in air pressure, isn’t on the equator. Further, some of the most interesting things to look at (easily accessible water) are at the poles. I don’t think there is anywhere on Earth where it snows CO2.
Actually, only the remark about noon, summer temperatures around room temperature applies to the equator and a few other places. The fact that it’s always cold on Mars is true everywhere. (And for a space suit, cold means well below body temperature.)
[Edit, I forgot one point.] The higher pressure, and therefore lower altitude regions are off the equator. Hellas is about 40 deg. south latitude and 7 km below the reference datum (what passes for sea level without seas.) That’s the highest pressure place on the surface of Mars. But, like the Earth, temperature decreases with altitude. In the case of Mars, it’s 2.5 deg. per kilometer. So Hellas is 17 or 18 deg. C warmer than you’d expect for it’s latitude.
Day night temperature swings are about 50 or 60 deg. and less at higher latitudes. That’s a lot compared to Earth. But if you are designing a suit for an eight hour EVA, you don’t need to worry about the difference between pre-dawn chill and early afternoon peak temperatures. That’s probably only a 20 deg. That’s still large compared to most places on Earth, but not unprecedented.
And carbon dioxide can freeze on Earth. That happens at -78.5 deg. C. The record low on Earth is -89.2 deg. C (Vostok, Antarctica, in 1982.) But the temperature isn’t actually the problem for a spacesuit. If it were one temperature and one level of activity by the astronaut, you could just add insulation. That’s an easy engineering problem. The real thermal challenge is the range of outside temperatures, the possible need to deal with hot and cold conditions, and the varying metabolic heat production by the astronaut. In those respect, the conditions on Mars are much easier to deal with than those on the Moon.
“Actually, only the remark about noon, summer temperatures around room temperature applies to the equator and a few other places.”
This is not my field, and it’s been a while, but my recollection from MSL is that when they talk about “room temperature” on Mars it’s with reference to ground temperature. Air temperature just 1-2 meters off the ground can be 20 deg C cooler during the daytime.
The air temperature is usually 5-20 deg different from the ground temperature, but that really depends on what the ground is made of and on the weather. And that’s enough variability that it doesn’t even matter if you’re thinking of degrees Fahrenheit or Kelvin. But I don’t think Curiosity has ever seen temperatures I’d regard as room temperature. Those would be lower altitude or more equatorial locations. Also, a 1.6 meter mast is a lousy platform for a weather station. Curiosity gets the weather as modified by Curiosity itself (wind diversion and heat.)
Ya, I knew about Hellas. I didn’t know that there was anywhere on Earth that could freeze CO2 naturally.
It did occured to me during my earlier post that the poles might be the best place for liquid methane plants, since concentrations of CO2 and water ice (and better temperatures for storing liquid methane) are both right there. It never seemed to me like you could make much rocket fuel by just sucking it out of the air while digging for the water ice.
That’s an interesting idea. You’d want the north pole, since the water ice is exposed then. In the south, there’s a few meters of permanent CO2 ice on top, even in summer. I’m not sure what the winter CO2 frost deposits would do to your mining or propellent production facilities. I think it’s about a meter of dry ice. Then again, there are plenty of terrestrial, industrial facilities which get a meter of snow building up in winter.
However, the idea I’m most familiar with for low-latitude propellent production uses CO2 from the atmosphere and H2 imported from Earth. You probably can’t pull enough H2O out of the air for propellent production. Subsurface permafrost would be a different matter. We know it’s there, just not where, how much and how deep.
Better fly a backhoe and a covered dump truck to each pole. Just scoop it up and haul it. Tesla?
Homer, while I agree with most of your points however not being up to speed on the Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) onboard the Curiosity Rover makes for an incomplete and inaccurate description of Martian radiation issues especially once on the surface. Here is just one of the papers on RAD results for you:
Mars’ Surface Radiation Environment Measured with the Mars Science Laboratory’s Curiosity Rover
Donald M. Hassler et al. Science 24 Jan 2014: Vol. 343, Issue 6169, 1244797 DOI: 10.1126/science.1244797
Thanks. I looked that up but didn’t see any conclusions. There’s some work being done on radiation jackets to be worn by Mars-bound and Mars-living astronauts like the jackets we wear during dental x-rays but that won’t do much for the brain being damaged. Still, my point is that maybe we shouldn’t work so hard to get humans there since robotics and AI are liable to be the better way to go if all we want to do is find out what’s there. If we want to live there, that seems a pretty desperate thing to want to do but maybe a group of people in the future might just be that desperate. Who knows? But that’s not NASA’s responsibility at this time.
I also came across these numbers:
A mission consisting of a 180-day cruise to Mars, a 500-day stay on the Red Planet and a 180-day return flight to Earth would expose astronauts to a cumulative radiation dose of about 1.01 sieverts, measurements by Curiosity’s Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) instrument indicate. “It’s certainly a manageable number,” said RAD principal investigator Don Hassler of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., the lead author of the paper I previously cited. A 1-sievert dose from radiation on Mars would violate NASA’s current standards, which cap astronauts’ excess-cancer risk at 3 percent. But those guidelines were drawn up with missions to low-Earth orbit in mind, and adjustments to accommodate trips farther afield may be in the offing, Hassler said. RAD’s data have been gathered near the peak of the sun’s 11-year activity cycle, a time when the GCR flux is relatively low (because solar plasma tends to scatter galactic cosmic rays).
There is no evidence of astronauts suffering brain damage from radiation in space. Please don’t make things up. There is evidence of slight change in how the brain works, either do to radiation, free fall or something else. But slight changes in the functions of the human body are not the same thing as damage.
For example, if you move from Denver to Houston, or vice versa, your lungs will change. They are adapting to a different pressure and oxygen content. That is naturally and normal, not a sign of damage. So why do you assume the changes to an astronaut’s body while is space are automatically “damage”?
And the radiation involved in going to Mars doesn’t require people to wear lead under ware. They could probably do without that, if they were willing to accept a 7% rather than 3% increase in the risk of eventually getting cancer.
We just don’t know how radiation from cosmic rays will affect astronauts on a multi-year mission to Mars (or even a multi-week mission to the Moon). The cancer risk is not a show-stopper as far as we can tell, but it’s more about other kinds of bodily damage that might occur (especially from HZE ions). The Apollo missions went beyond the magnetosphere, but they weren’t beyond it long enough to get useful data on that.
It’s probably too expensive to test that with humans (although we’ll get testing on it as a by-product of longer Moon stays if Artemis doesn’t die off), but we could be testing it with animals on returnable missions beyond the magnetosphere.
I guess this is a philosophical disagreement. You are saying that we do not know, for certain, that the radiation issues are acceptable. And therefore we can not do anything without further studies. I am saying that there is no evidence of risk (beyond the known ones and the best estimates of the effects of high Z ions) and that we should proceed based on those best estimates. That is taking a risk that we might be wrong. But that risk would be taken by people who were very well aware of it and accept that risk. The alternative is to risk nothing and, in the process, do nothing.
By the way, the idea of animal experiments in space isn’t a good idea. We know the radiation environment in interplanetary space. We can produce it on Earth. Just put the animals in the beam line at places like SLAC. There really isn’t a need to send chimps into interplanetary space.
It’s also really expensive to run ground simulation tests of GCR exposure for long periods, which is why they’ve tried to do high dosage over short periods of time. There’s a good paper where they recognize the problems this imposes for testing GCR exposure.
Probably still cheaper than sending mice into space for a few months beyond the magnetosphere, but also harder to get a test with fidelity to the actual conditions in space. But either way, I think the testing absolutely is vital – it’s going to be much more expensive and embarrassing if the astronauts get really sick or die, and you then have to do expensive redesigns on your spacecraft to incorporate more shielding.
I think “get really sick or die” is a huge exaggeration. We don’t know everything about radiation effects, but we do know more than nothing.
The current career limit for astronauts (0.2 Sv, if memory serves) is based many conservative assumptions.
It’s an overall risk of a 3% increased risk of death from all causes, not just cancer later in life. It just happens that cancer is the most likely cause at that 3% threshold.
It’s based on a linear no threshold model. That is the currently accepted model, but there is some debate over that. Other models say the risk from the same dose at a lower rate is lower.
Most of the data, both from animal experiments and accidents involving people, is from short, high rate exposure. That is almost certainly worse than low rate exposure, since it includes damage which just does not happen at low rates. E.g. actually killing such a large number of cells that organs cease to function before new cells can replace the dead ones.
High energy heavy ions are a big uncertainty. But the standards assign a weighting factor of 20 to that. I.e. the medical effects are assumed to be 20 times worse than the same ionizing energy from electrons or gamma rays. Again, that is a fairly conservative assumption.
With all those conservative assumptions, I think it is very likely that the standards overestimate the risk, not underestimate it. Could that be wrong? Could it be worse? Sure. Almost anything is possible. But could that be _so_ wrong that an estimated 3% long-term risk actually means “get really sick or die” within a year or three? When we know the thing which causes that sort of sickness or death is high rate exposure? The sounds extremely unlikely to me.
In addition, RAD is working just fine, as far as I know. The radiation experiment which failed due to, ironically, radiation was MARIE on the Mars Odyssey orbiter. Nor are the doses so immediately fatal to people. Yes, they’d need something like a storm shelter for solar energetic particle events. You also need storm shelters in Kansas for tornados. Outside the events, we’re talking about doses which push career limits, but those limits are set very conservatively and correspond to under a few percent increased risk of cancer later in life.
And, the temperatures aren’t nearly as harsh as he implies. Summer daytime highs can get up to what people on Earth would call room temperature, and the averages aren’t harsh by Antarctic standards. What’s worth realizing is that it’s always cold on Mars, which is easier to deal with that the lunar mix of very cold and very hot, and that the human body is a very large source of heat. Just sitting around, 500 W is a typical metabolic rate, and physical activity can easily push that into the kilowatts.
I also think the atmosphere has some advantages. Sure, no one is going to be breathing it (for long…) But it can be pumped in and used in situ resources. Running a pump is much, much easier than digging and strip mining. It is also enough to help you land; on the Moon, landing has to be all-propulsive. On the other hand, the atmospheric pressure is at exactly the wrong place on the Paschen curve for high voltages. That’s really annoying for those of us who like hardware using high voltages.
Although, if you do want to dig for in situ resources, you can get things like carbon and nitrogen, which you would not find so easily on Mars (or possibly at all, in exploitable abundances.)
And, as I’ve noted before, spending most of the time in a habitat isn’t too different from many terrestrial lives. I can think of some people who wouldn’t mind staying in doors all the time (although the telecom limits to their online social media lives would be traumatic.) But even here in Boulder, Colorado, people get out and hike (or climb or ski) in the mountains less than you might think. The radiation issues on Mars might keep someone indoors for all but five or ten hours per week. How different is that from working in an office, spending most of your time at home indoors, and going out hiking for one day a week?
I would like it myself since I am a writer and am used to long periods in seclusion and I will admit that this is the weakest part of my argument. Sure, all these things can be solved. My point is they have to be solved, there is nothing in the pipeline at NASA to solve them, and NASA managers who seem to think it’s on the way of being solved are kidding themselves and therefore I am going to point out the obstacles while questioning if humans on Mars is really a good idea. Also, of course, I want them to focus on the moon since, you know, it’s their present job, not Mars.
I can’t argue with the fact that there are problems with any sort of human, planetary spaceflight. And they are not going to be solved by just kicking them down the road. But I think the best argument for lunar missions in the near term is commercial.
I think you can actually turn a profit from refueling and repairing communications satellites. And getting them from LEO to GEO. That is something real, for-profit communication satellite companies are spending research and development money on (not to mention the military.) That means there is a market, and potentially a large one, for lunar ice in high Earth orbits. We could argue about how much money you could make that way, and how much of a lunar presence it could support. But I think it’s significant. Mars, on the other hand, isn’t going to have any exports which can’t be transmitted over a radio.
Rather than vilifying Mars missions, I’d rather hear more about the positive side of lunar missions. Comparing the strengths, rather than emphasizing the weaknesses.
Slightly askew of what you’re looking for but written so as to keep the interest of the casual reader, here’s my somewhat controversial case for the moon: https://homerhickamblog.blo…
Sadly, I have to point out the many times that this administration wanted to SPEED things up – can NASA do this in trump’s first term? Can you speed this up? Can you do this by 2024 vice 2028?
Also the continuing confusion about the Moon and Mars. See the tweets.
We have to ask if the administration is dedicated to going to the Moon – or doing something by 2024? If it is anything by 2024 – is this at all connected to the election in 2024? Might we ask if this is a multi-billion dollar Republican campaign rally on the Moon? We need to hope that the NASA staff can hold to a rational schedule and not bow under any pressure that might be applied.
Can you say, “Let’s put a crew on EM-1!”. Trump did.
Maybe if they stopped talking about the waste of money gateway in every moon sentence more people would be more enthusiastic. Unfortunately people are just seeing it as another SLS boondogle that is going to cost taxpayers billions of dollars while only creating endless jobs without achieving any accomplishments.
” if we’re going to get young people excited about space, “
OR creating a realistic pathway they can take to actually get into space. It is like saying we want more people interested in playing football, but never actually letting anyone get out on the field and play. INCLUSION sparks interest.
That’s why I’m on the board of http://www.spacecamp.com. We are the inclusion kings and queens of space. You should see the young people light up there brighter than any rocket.
Once suborbital is operational and celebs with 50 million twitter followers start taking flights and their experiences going viral will help also. Can’t wait for Lady GaGa with her 77 million followers cuts a track in suborbit.
Takes more than that.
There is a segment of the population that thinks jobs like ours are impossible for them to achieve because they don’t see themselves, or very few. I can testify to this personally, as that I go to schools all the time, as well as coach. When I tell kids I work at NASA, they have this glazed look.
I do not object to going to the moon with bases that could be temporarily inhabited by visiting astronauts. The easiest would be through Space X which will have the capability with their Spaceship or BFR and Bigelow with nothing new being built by NASA.
However, having a manned space station orbiting the moon, permanently manned bases and perhaps even cities on the moon, and relying on NASA to do all this with budgets that will never be appropriated guarantees failure. Look at NASA’s record of not having humans beyond low earth orbit since 1973.
I think the ‘Moon then Mars mindset’ is stating the obvious, but it does have the problem that it implies the Moon is simply a pitstop along the way. It shouldn’t be treated like that. Really, if we wanted to take that mindset to its ultimate conclusion, the NASA mantra would be ‘we’re going back to the Moon, and then to Mars, and then to the main belt asteroids, and onto the moons of Jupiter’ and so on and so forth… all the way to Proxima B.
We all understand that human space exploration is about exploiting stepping stones, but what needs to be made clearer is the need for and justification for establishing a permanent human presence in space that is self sustaining and expanding. Making the case for humanity as a space-faring civilization is a much more important message. NASA doesn’t articulate that really. Instead its about ‘Moon then Mars’ without really a justification – when the message should be ‘we are establishing the basis for a growing and self-sustaining human presence in space’. That’s a bit more difficult to articulate in a snappy sound-bite, but its the more important message in my view.
You said it, why is it so hard for NASA to say it?
Because NASA is still thinking in an Apollo paradigm of landings and flags and footprints. Sure, they say they are going to stay, but they know that only happens if the money keeps flowing from government. That’s not assured.
A sustainable approach is one which funds itself, and where a space-centric economy and industry is established to fund further goals and missions. If we want to colonise Mars, the taxpayer is not going to fund that – but profit from commercial space, whether lunar and asteroid mining, or in-space manufacturing, or space tourism, just might. If we want to go beyond Mars, then we need a valid rationale for doing so, and I’m thinking about the massive resource wealth of the outer solar system. Doing science and searching for life is much easier if you are actually out there to stay.
NASA is thinking ‘missions’ – I’d argue they need to think about and articulate the next step for human civilization. A much bigger idea.
The problem is NASA both came of age and had its basic culture created during Project Apollo. It is why it’s incapable of seeing goals in space from any other perspective. Just look at the mess it made of trying to commercialize research on the ISS. Imagine the mess it would have made of commercializing comsats if the same Members of Congress didn’t understand NASA’s limitations and create Comsat instead.
Some random thoughts:
1. D-Day’s supply tonnage per person is actually not that large, I read it has 156,115 soldiers and 7 million tons of supplies, which gives about 45 tons of supply per person, we have architecture in design right now that can do this.
2. As pointed out by others here, Mars is better than the Moon on nearly every aspect, the only weak point of Mars is the travel time and commercialization potential. However, one has to wonder what role NASA, a government agency, can/should play in lunar commercial development.
3. I think the how is much much more important than the where, a well executed public private partnership for Mars exploration would be much more beneficial than a poorly executed cost-plus Moon base plan. Instead of focusing on the destination, we should focus on the execution.
4. If the goal of going to the Moon is commercial development, and the goal of going to Mars is exploration, I have to say the latter is by definition more exciting than the former. People don’t get excited when a new mine opens, they are excited when someone does something new like jumping from space, this is just basic human nature, I don’t think there’s any point in fighting it.
5. NASA is not going to send a thousand robots to Mars, the current one they’re planning to send cost $2.1B even though it shares much hardware with the previous one. There’s no way NASA can even afford 10 of these, let alone a thousand. In fact, has anybody send a thousand spacecraft to anywhere ever? The only plan to do this is the mega constellation plans by private companies.
6. This goes back to point 2 and 3, even if a thousand robots is a desired outcome, NASA as it is now is not capable of doing it, which is why the how is more important. It doesn’t matter whether the task is sending thousands robots to Mars or setup mining base on the Moon, these won’t get accomplished if NASA doesn’t change its way of doing business, this latter part is more important than the task itself.
You don’t need to get folks excited if they are making money. That is why going to the Moon has the potential to be sustainable unlike going to Mars.
Hello “Not Invented Here”. I am not sure you are thinking clearly when you compare the D-Day supply mass for basic war fighter life support (food, water, medicine, etc.), in “tonnage/person”, which was primarily supplied by transport ship…with being even remotely equivalent to what it would cost to launch and achieve Earth escape velocity with the equivalent supply mass. There must be approx. 3 orders of magnitude difference in cost/ton, and thus cost/person.
Thank you Mr. Hickam, perfectly said. The years since Apollo are littered with false starts to return to the Moon, all too many of which have died from premature efforts to redirect the focus to Mars. There is clear value in going back to the Moon to stay and it is a clearly achievable next step. Mars on the other hand is a far greater challenge than most people realize and something that is simply not going to happen in the near term under even the most optimistic scenarios. Even if we are able to overcome the challenges in getting humans to Mars, there is as yet no plausible plan for how that would achieve anything of value other than planting some symbolic bootprints. A worthy goal to be sure, but trivial compared to the value to be had in permanently returning to the Moon on a near-term achievable scale. The only result of diverting attention from lunar to Martian efforts has been to derail and delay any real progress to anywhere for a couple generations. The Moon is for today. Mars is for someday later.
There is one thing missing from your argument for a permanent presence on the Moon. Why? I personally favor Mars, but I can see one strong and rational argument in favor of the Moon. The possibility of near term commercial ventures which could help support a permanent presence. You simply seem to be advocating a permanent presence in space, as soon as possible and without any clear reason or means to support such a permanent presence. Those reasons are out there and could be used to support lunar missions. Why not use them?
I like Homers’ characterization of the moon as our other continent. This speaks to me of what it means. Our age of exploration adventurers were commercially driven to exploit the newly discovered lands. I will set aside the impact on the indigenous civilizations other than to say I do hope we don’t run into any neighbors out there. So the historical precedent is relatively clear. So too is the likely commercial targets: rare materials. Gold may not be so in vogue at the moment but we need many other rare earth metals for our economies. We are consuming these at a clip. They are also encrusted with political baggage due to their geographical locations. Helium is also being gobbled up at a prodigious rate. Harvesting one of the most abundant gases in the universe would be child’s play (Mylar balloon market?). One can go on. Dropping these down the gravity well from cis-lunar fabricants is logistically feasible. Lofting them from Mars much much less so.
While I think that we will go to Mars sooner or later it is a highly unique destination. The moon on the other hand is more or less representative of many astronomical bodies that we will want to exploit. So those suits from the Moon would be applicable to other astronomical bodies that we may wish to bring into our economic sphere. Anything we develop for Mars alas would not. As you have pointed out in another post the moon is devoid of an atmosphere compared to Mars. Use of high voltage there is a challenge. This I suspect would exclude many fruitful processes that we can exploit on the Moon and consequently everywhere else in the solar system. One that comes to mind is additive manufacturing of shelters with the regolith. This can be done by electro beam welding (resin approaches are unnecessary). This is a very low consumable approach and on the moon would be fully ISRU. It is not available to us on Mars. Astronomy from the Moon would be awesome. Less so from Mars. Collecting asteroids for planetary protection would necessitate bringing them into lunar orbit. The risk of bringing them into Earth orbit is unthinkable. There they can be readily exploited. Those are a few off the top of my head. There are many many more out there. The underlying point is that the moon is in line with all our historical precedents on exploration; for commercial gain. Mars is not. At least not yet. The ideal of man exploring because he has an innate desire to, is neither here nor there. Someone has to fund it and they usually expect a return on their investment. The business case for Mars is not so strong. A dry but critical point in all this.
Very true. The problem is that NASA sees itself as a agency that does science and basic aerospace technology research. Trying to turn it into an agency to do economic development and applied technology research is like trying to turn Boeing into a non-profit. It’s why you need to create a separate public-private corporate that is exclusively focused on developing cislunar space and let NASA continue its quest to explore the Solar System. Efforts to change a culture that is as set as NASA’s culture rarely succeed. That is OK, America is wealthy enough to support two space agencies, especially one that will make the taxpayers money instead of just spend it.