Obama to Romney: Will You Fire Mike Griffin?
Will Mitt Romney Fire Space Advisor Michael Griffin For Proposing Permanent Moon Base?, BarackObama.com
“While speaking to Global Space Exploration Conference in Washington D.C. on Tuesday, Romney Space Advisor Michael Griffin renewed his calls for a “permanent base on the moon.” Given Romney’s promise to fire anyone who proposed putting a colony on the moon, will Romney keep his promise by firing Griffin?”
Keith’s note: Mr. Romney has said next to nothing about space policy thus far. But on the one notable instance where he did say something, Romney stated that he’d fire anyone who took the position of supporting moonbases – the stance that Romney campaign space advisor Mike Griffin has taken. You have to wonder whether Mike Griffin actually knows what his candidate’s positions are with regard to space policy – or is this an indication that Romney’s positionon moonbases has changed? Stay tuned.
– Partisan Romney Space Advisor To Call For Non-Partisan Space Policy, earlier post
– Obama Campaign Issues Space Policy Fact Sheet, earlier post
Nah … only insane when Gingrich brings it up 🙂
It’s sad both that Romney said he would fire someone for proposing a moon base and that Barack Obama is holding him to that standard.Â
Unless you get multiple space stations launched, we are one disaster away from ending the manned program, even if there are no fatalities, e.g. severe space junk damage to ISS causes loss of attitude control and the crew have to evacuate. If there’s a disaster on a moon base, it’s more likely that you’ll be able to salvage a significant portion of the infrastructure, even if you have to evacuate temporarily.
What if the effect of Obama’s chiding is for Romney to more formally backpedal? To say “well you know, a moon base isn’t a colony and I said colony, but Griffin wants a base” – or what if it becomes a point of differentiation between them? I don’t like what Obama’s said about the Moon and other things that won’t matter until after he’s gone, but for matters of immediate concern such as rebuilding our LEO access I think his administration has made good decisions. And we’re almost back in orbit.
I wish we can have an honest technical Moon-first vs. Mars-first discussion without the politics.
Remember? Â Delta-V, time-in-transit, panic-options, lunar vs. martian environment, ease of ISRU… Â Â
I like the moon over Mars for the launch windows — lots of them, frequently. NASA missed the launch window for their last rover and it cost them 2 years.
Short trips to the moon reduces radiation risks. Frequent trips to the moon reduces launch costs.
The challenges are (1) do it for a lot less than Constellation/VSE planned, and (2) find a useful reason to be there, especially with some economic benefit. Wingo gave it a try, but I’d like to see more energy in that direction. Many purists cringe at the idea of bringing the moon into “our economic sphere of influence”, but unless we do, I don’t think any sustained space exploration effort will survive.
heh, I was being rhetorical, lamenting the lack of chance of this ever happening, and hey – let’s see how long it lasts….
True about accessibility… actually, on the first three criteria above, the moon wins (to various degrees). Â But – it depends whether you want to do a “plant a flag” mission, or a prolonged sustained presence. Â
For a short-duration mission, the moon wins for exactly these reasons. Â But for a plan with longer duration with multiple outbound trips and reliance on ISRU, Mars is easier, since the environment is so much more benign, and the availability of a CO2 atmosphere, a geology, and water.
So why not start with the moon?  Since I think the “quick and easy” mission is an illusion.  It will get difficult quickly, and most of the difficulties with the moon are not relevant to Mars.
Good points CadetOne. Apollo only scratched the surface on science late into the program. There is so much more to learn from the Moon and before attempting anything remotely related to going to Mars, NASA needs to go to the Moon to gain the knowledge of long term surface exploration rather than jumping head over heels on a Mars program.Â
CadetOne,
I’m with you all the way on the Moon first decision, for lots of reasons, — BUT — not in the manner that it would be done if we did it today. If all we did was transfer the ISS logistics, methods and way of life to the Moon, we wouldn’t gain a thing. We’d only be wasting money.
Every drop of water and breath of air on the ISS was hauled up from Earth and losses are replaced the same way. In a space station the size of the ISS that’s all you can do. On the Moon, however, we know that many of the necessary resources are already there, but we have yet to learn how to acquire them for our use — safely, reliably, affordably and sustainably. This must be done first.
Can we produce the foods and liquids necessary to provide a healthy and acceptable diet day after day on the Moon? And what non-local resources must be added to be able to do so? From where? This has yet to be figured out and tested, despite what the science fiction stories say.
In my opinion, issues like these have to be addresses and solved — and proved — first, before we go putting people down on the surface and expecting them to survive. ISRU is the key, and precursor missions (unmanned, robotic and then a short-term pilot base) are the key. We need to live (initially) on the Moon more like living in a small early-20th-century farming community (with no big stores) than like living on the ISS, and that is going to take a whole lot of learning and planning that NASA hasn’t yet begun to do, as far as I can find (I would love to be shown wrong, if NASA is doing this).
Going to Mars and living on Mars involves all of the exact same problems, except 50 times harder and 100 times more dangerous (I picked these numbers out of thin air, of course, but you get the idea). We could perhaps go to Mars the same way we go to the ISS, living out of a new, fresh packed suitcase every day, but that would only guarantee that we’d never go to Mars a second time.
Once we have a place to live, air to breath, and running water, the very first “machine” that should be sent to the Moon is a washing machine! for clothing and bedding! followed by “farming” equipment.
To the Moon first! — properly planned. There are no short cuts.
Steve
So Steve – I’m with you that any future exploration program has to be ISRU based.  But I don’t agree with the “50 times harder and 100 times more dangerous “.
This is the core of the argument though. Â
The environment on Mars is much more hospitable – and the resources are much easier to extract. Â It is further away, but if you’re going to stay for many years, the trip time and launch windows are less significant.
I’ll give you a few example:
The moon has hard vacuum. If you’ve ever designed machinery (e.g. washing machines!) for hard vacuum, you’d know that it is extremely difficult and expensive. Metals spontaneously weld to each other, lubricants boil away, plastics fail, etc. Â
When there’s hard vacuum, there’s no erosion, and so lunar dust is an incredible abrasive since it has extremely fine edges.
There’s no convective heat transfer, so thermal gradients build up really quickly, and again – equipment fails.
All this is absent on Mars. Â Apollo equipment started breaking down within 24 hours. Â The Mars rovers have lasted for years, without even really trying.
Because of this, the extraction of local resources (a dirty process that requires a lot of interaction with the local soil) is much easier on Mars. Â Much rather handle ice at moderate temperature and in an atmosphere than in hard vacuum, with one side of the machine boiling hot, and the other side cryogenic… Â And much rather get C and O out of atmospheric CO2 and H and O out of water that’s in the ground under my feet then try to go to cryogenic craters, or vaporize rocks.
I like your concept of washing machines – I just think we can there faster on Mars.
Agreed – and that’s why a ‘lunar outpost’ – serviced from a Lagrange point makes sense. You go to the Moon not to do science, but to establish a beachhead of sorts for a more extensive presence down the road, and to learn how to do ISRU in a cost effective and efficient manner. From achieving those two important goals, the rest of the solar system – Mars, the NEOs, and ultimately the outer planets – are there to explore from the Moon, not from the Earth.
The key to humanity becoming a true ‘space-faring’ species is building a permanent human presence in Cislunar space. The longer we spend hauling all ‘our stuff’ up Earth’s gravity well, the longer it will take and the more expensive it will get to do beyond Earth orbit missions.
Build a ‘moon-centric’ space program, and make it that you operate from the Moon (and the Lagrange Points), rather than from Earth. Of course you still need to get there and bring payload and personnel, but that’s where commercial space can really play a major role.
Even if its initially a man-tended outpost, with regular missions from an L point base, supported by commercial space from Earth, with much of the surface activities done by robotic systems, that to me is an important step forward. It helps us learn what resources are there, how we can access them, and what we can do with them. Once we have ISRU mastered, we can then expand a lunar outpost into a proper lunar base, perhaps manned by an international complement of scientists, engineers, and astronauts. The purpose of that base is then to act as a stepping stone outwards for human and robotic exploration of the solar system.
This is why we should go to the Moon, and do it before 2030.
Dr. Malcolm Davis
Gold Coast, Australia
–Asteroid/Mars vs the Moon–
Radiation protection:Â lunar regolith and the crew lives like moles versus travel to Mars likely requiring magnetic fields
Bone loss: Moon has 1/6th g versus exercise equipment on the micro-g trip.  If SEP is included, a constant low acceleration is needed.
landing on moon versus landing on mars.
Larger habitat required for trip versus moon. Orion type capsule is too small.
Most if not all the technology for an asteroid mission is needed for MARS while the moon with ISRU may enable multiple MARS trips more economical.
–Economics–
Take two lunar missions per year or one Mars mission every two years.
Thats 2×120,000 kg   or 450,000 kg/2  is about 250,000 annual average.
Assume *one* launch vehicle that flies 10 times to spread fixed costs:
thats a 25,000 kg LV!    The world has excess launch capacity and the US has EELV + COTS. Hence the direction is shift $ from SLS to Lunar/Mars.
–Asteroid/Mars and the Moon–
it appears that the technologies for both locations can now be worked, per the flexible path.
–Firing People–
is not the message clear:Â cash is needed for mission hardware and there are no shortage of missions, crewed or not!Â
So the flexible path allows for missions to the moon, which may be ISRU or an ISRU servicing hanger or a radiation shelter or a telescope or a 6 day outpost by choosing a more economical architecture.
The other path seems to want either A) 3-4B to launch a not-needed-130,000 kg HLV that prevents this debate on Asteroids/Mars/Moon from occuring since there is no mission hardware $$$ or B) flops to EELV/COTS to free dollars, but has decided on Mars/Asteroids since “outpost” are out.
And that was Newts biggest mistake, allowing Romney to characterize his simple lunar outpost plan, which Romney himself endorsed when Bush was President, as an expensive multi -hundred billion dollar colony.
Newt should have immediately said that a lunar outpost is not a lunar colony and that he would establish such a permanent lunar outpost well within the NASA budget that President Obama inherited from George Bush. Newt should have also said, “My opponents will apparently spend exactly the same amount of NASA funds that Obama is currently wasting with absolutely nothing to show for it. But I intend to utilize those same NASA funds, without raising any taxes, for something the American people can be proud of and something that could eventually lead private industry, with their own money, towards colonizing the Moon and beyond while growing the American economy.”
Marcel F. Williams
I gave up on NASA ever building a base on the moon, landing on mars, or going deep space exploration…
I’m behind SpaceX.
Elon has already started projects that will allow Dragon to be able to do all these and many more. The Dragon will be a utility vehicle that will have multi purpose missions. It will be reconfigurable to explore deep space, to land on the moon and mars, and once there it will become a base for outposts and experiments. Once Falcon 9 Heavy is completed, we will see the Dragon landing on the moon and mars. Why I think all this will come true, because Elon wants to see it himself in his life time before he passes away.
I fear that Griffin will bring Constellation back. Even before he became NASA administrator he proposed that architecture in a paper, so I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that after an in-depth trade study, NASA came to the same solution Griffin promoted before he was at NASA.
When Obama pushed for more emphasis on commercial space (at the cost of Constellation), Griffin complained. I worry that he would march right along with the Congress critters shifting more money away from commercial efforts and towards SLS.
“You have to wonder whether Mike Griffin actually knows what his candidate’s positions are with regard to space policy“
That’s an easy one. The only positions and policies that Mike Griffin actually knows are those dreamed up by Mike Griffin.
Steve
Does somebody have Romney’s actual quote? As I recall, it wasn’t that he would fire someone for proposing a moon base itself, it was that he would fire someone for proposing a new $100B program to build a moon base?
You need to read what was posted.
 Give Him a break. He might have taken some different technical approaches than some want but at-least he rescued NASA from the disastrous policies of his predecessor . He is an egineer not a bean counter.
Sean O’Keefe didn’t come from the bean-counting side of OMB, but the management reform side of OMB. And he helped to create the Vision for Space Exploration, which was not intended to turn into Apollo on Steroids.Â
Can you detail these “disastrous policies” of his predecessor?
If we cannot have a Moon Base lets settle for a Moon mining village. A couple of buildings and a landing pad will make a start.
Any proposals for a working lunar village that can be built in 7 years with (unmanned?) progress after 3 years? I am allowing a year for the law to be passed by Congress.
Well noted, that Griffin is sticking his neck out with respect to Romney’s response to Gingrich. But “fire him”? That assumes that Griffin is actually working for Romney or even representing Romney.
As far as I can tell, the title “Romney Space Advisor” is one that Mike just adopted. Is that position formally acknowledged by the campaign? I mean, if I shout something to Mitt on the rope line, I can be his “advisor” too.
Is there any evidence that Griffin is in fact part of the Romney team? Has the Romney campaign acknowledged that title?
And exactly which NASA administrator selected both SpaceX and Orbital
from the firmament of aerospace companies competing for his commercial
space effort?Â
Oh yeah, that would be Griffin.
—John
So Obama’s plan, which was a COTS-based Mars exploration plan, got killed by mostly the republicans in congress and the old-space lobby (and Mike Griffin…) – and this is Obama’s fault?
That was a manned exploration plan leading to Mars. Â First ever! Â And we pissed it away on self-interests and politics.
Jim Muncy is correct. Sean O’Keefe had been Secretary of the Navy in addition to Senate and DoD budget work. He was brought in by George Bush to clean up the NASA fiscal mess – at that time manifesting itself as massive space station over-runs. The Vision for Space Exploration had a sustainable “go as you pay” fiscal approach and “spiral development” capability driven technology approach.
As Wikipedia notes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wik… “O’Keefe responded to President Bush’s Vision for Exploration by hiring retired Navy Admiral Craig E. Steidle who had previously led development of the Joint Strike Fighter
(JSF) as an associate administrator in charge of a new office:
Exploration Systems Mission Directorate (ESMD). A mission architecture
for lunar exploration was developed based on four launches of
medium-lift vehicles and four space rendezvous per mission. This mission
architecture was immediately scrapped by Michael Griffin upon his
arrival at NASA. NASA started over with the Exploration Systems
Architecture Study (ESAS), sixteen months after the Vision for Space
Exploration (VSE) had been announced by President Bush. That
architecture led to the Ares I and Ares V launch vehicles (later canceled) and the Orion Crew Exploration vehicle.”
The Mike Griffin era was all about feeding constituencies and issuing contracts instead of developing capabilities. The Obama approach is a significant departure from the Griffin “Apollo on Steroids” approach – which is not sustainable from a budget or technology approach – but it has a lot in common with the philosophy and ultimate objectives of the original Vision for Space Exploration. (And hey, if somebody wants to pay for the lander, we can do a lunar mission too).
As noted in other posts, the 2008 space policy paper validated much of the Bush objectives but criticized the management and budget approach that was leading to a growing HSF gap and the cannibalization of earth and space science.
“THE CHALLENGE
Historically, the U.S. space program has inspired people the world over with its feats on behalf of all humankind. This leadership can continue; indeed, the Bush administration set an ambitious agenda for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), but has since failed to provide adequate funding or leadership to move forward with that agenda. As a result, key programs have suffered. Poor planning and inadequate funding are leading to at least a five-year gap after the retirement of the Space Shuttle. During those years, the United States will have to depend on foreign rockets and spacecraft to send Americans to orbit. NASA has had to slash its research budget, including its aeronautical research, its programs to study climate change, microgravity research that can yield new technologies, and even the robotic exploration of the outer solar system and the universe beyond. Many other countries are moving forward in space; the United States cannot afford to fall behind.   (http://manuals-online.com/a…“
Mitt Romney owes the American public more detail in his program and budget approach – the “there is a plan to get a plan, the first step is to get a plan to get the plan to plan”.
Â
I never liked Mike Griffin. His policies left NASA stuck with an Ares I rocket that (after thrust oscillation was reduced by adding heavy hardware to the Ares I rocket) would have been unable to launch a fully loaded and capable Moon/asteroid/Mars Orion crew module. Also, by building LC39B for just Ares I rockets, and LC39A for Ares V rockets, there would have been no pad redundancy in case of a launch failure that might destroy the launch pad.
As soon as the various problems were discovered with the Ares I rocket design, such as thrust oscillation caused by the single first stage SRB and the inability to use one SSME as the second stage, thus requiring lots of modifications to the Ares I rocket design, and requiring a less powerful J2-X engine (rather than  the single SSME), NASA engineers should have stopped work on Ares I and focused, perhaps on DIRECT/Jupiter rocket proposals. After all the SLS is close to a DIRECT/Jupiter rocket design.