NASA Associate Administrator Robert Lightfoot defends asteroid mission in Alabama visit, Huntsville Times
“NASA Associate Administrator Robert Lightfoot knows about the debate over where America should go next in space while it develops the technologies needed for a Mars landing. Should astronauts go back to the moon and build a base there, visit an asteroid, or simply go somewhere else in the space between Earth and the moon? On a visit to Huntsville’s Marshall Space Flight Center to see Orion space capsule hardware in development, Lightfoot nodded when asked if he was familiar with the debate over destinations held during a congressional hearing Tuesday afternoon.”
– Where Do We Go Next In Space?, earlier post
– NASA Asteroid Capture Mission: First Real Step in Utilizing Extraterrestrial Resources, earlier post
I really don’t care whether we go to the moon, Mars, or an asteroid. We just need to go somewhere. The bigger picture is that these are nothing more than power point presentations that people argue about. There is no real intent to go anywhere. We have been playing this game for decades and have not had a manned expedition out of low earth orbit since 1973. Even ambitious unmanned probes such as JIMO have been cancelled. Serious funding and preparation is always down the road by 5-10 years and never materializes. This is a game that has been played all my adult life. (I am now 60.)
I think this is why Dennis Tito is pushing (and funding first two years) of Mars flyby so he can see somebody go someplace before he is dead of old age. I agree with that though I don’t have his kind of funds.
Regarding Orion but what I cannot phantom is this spacecraft is advertised as BEO capability. Yet it is just a capsule, less room per person than Shuttle and no bathroom and no airlock. What lacks (unless this is buried in some report or unknown website) are module(s) with supplies and exercise equipment plus a rad room in case of solar flares. Only thing I see Orion good for is high speed re-entry vehicle.
“Here’s why Lightfoot likes the [asteroid] idea.
1. It uses the Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft already being
built. It gives that system something important to do while waiting for
Mars.”
The words ‘tail’, ‘wagging’ and ‘dog’ spring to mind.
The real problem is the way in which they have not strategized and not presented the idea. They’ve made it sound as though the asteroid is the next big goal in space. That is ludicrous as there is little to no scientific or any other rationale for such a mission. As a consequence it does sound like a detour.
What they should have done was lay out the plan to get to Mars-assuming Mars is the goal. If an asteroid is one of the interim targets to prove some capability, that might be supportable. Apollo 11 was not the first mission to fly longer than a week, or the first to rendezvous or dock, or the first to go to the vicinity of the moon…those were all interim steps on the way to a moon landing. We have not seen such a step-by-step plan.
The other problem is the idea of an Orion or any Orion-like vehicle as the primary vehicle for carrying people to the planets. First, it immediately conjures up ideas of Apollo, and Apollo did not last exactly because of the expense of a mission in which everything was thrown away like Orion. Second, Orion does not look at all like an ISS-if we spent decades and a hundred billion dollars investing in the technology to take people to the planets, then why did we suddenly revert back to an Apollo approach. The best thing that can be said is the use of the ATV as the basis for the service module, but that just shows that the Europeans are smarter than NASA is.
Until NASA comes to grips with its lack of a believable plan, no one is going anywhere.
The trip to an asteroid referrers to two different missions with different aims.
1) Manned flight to an asteroid. Aim to pick up some samples and to perform a long in-flight test of the Mars Transfer Vehicle. This is a stop gap mission in the years between the development of the Transfer Vehicle and the development of the manned Mars Lander. A major assumption is that Congress will not give NASA sufficient money to develop both machines simultaneously.
2) The alternative mission is to move a rock. The main aim of the mission is to learn how to perform planetary defence against meteors, comets and asteroids by moving one away from the Earth. As a secondary aim, when we have moved the rock astronauts shall be sent to take samples for scientific investigation. A small rock shall be chosen on the old principle of “Don’t run before you walk”. Some of the machines developed, such as the Solar Electric Propulsion (SEP) tug, will have other uses including moving cargo to the Moon and Mars. Detecting the rock will also test the planetary defence telescopes looking out for dangerous meteors.
Congress will have to choose between the two missions or could pay for both.
First off, I don’t think the Huntsville Times article does much to help the cause because of the way it’s written. The writer tells us what Lightfoot said, and then immediately quotes him saying it. This came across to me as poking fun at both Lightfoot and the topic.
As for the asteroid mission(s), we still don’t have very much detail as to exactly what is planned, so it’s pretty hard to defend one’s opinion on the matter. There are a lot of valuable things that could be accomplished by asteroid missions, particularly if we’re willing to think a little farther down the road — and if we are willing to accept that there are important things to do in space besides just going to Mars. Money is an issue, of course, but the money that’s been outright wasted in the space program over the last 20 years might have accomplished a lot of good things instead.
I keep seeing people saying that humans to Mars is the ultimate goal, period, end of discussion. I can’t agree. Humans to Mars is one goal, and quite likely, in my opinion, not the most important of many goals. There seems to be a desire to put everything into the Mars basket and overlook everything else. Even a significant number of people who argue for the Moon call it a stepping stone to Mars.
Why is it so important to get out of one large gravity well for the purpose of getting into another one? I have long thought we should be concentrating a lot more on learning how to live in space, not another planet. If we master living in space, then many of the current stumbling blocks involved in space travel will be solved as well.
Expeditions on the ISS living in microgravity are not what I mean by living in space. So far we’ve just barely scratched the surface with the ISS. I could go on describing what I mean and arguing why we need to be doing it, but I think everybody here is smart enough to see what I’m getting at.
I think Mr. Lightfoot’s point about using things we’re already building is a valid one, but he picked the wrong “things” as examples. He turned what should have been logic into attempted justification. I don’t think anyone can justify designing SLS or Orion and then looking around for things that they might be used for.
This issue just seems to go around and around and we never get any closer to a real game plan. And time keeps passing. Just my opinion.
“Why is it so important to get out of one large gravity well for the
purpose of getting into another one? I have long thought we should be
concentrating a lot more on learning how to live in space, not another
planet.”
I completely agree. Mars is interesting, but space is far more interesting. Mars is just a second, less good, Earth. Space is so much more.
An interesting notion. Are you saying that we will become a race of space farers, looking with disdain on the rock bound?
I’m not so sure. Smart people have thought about it in detail: Iain Banks, Jack McDevitt, Alastair Reynolds and Peter Hamilton come to mind, all of whom visualize space as a way to get from gravity well to gravity well. Banks even creates huge ‘Orbitals’ to provide a sort of terra firm and as a place to ‘go’. None show us space as a place to actually live (which doesn’t mean they are wrong, I know).
The point I suppose is that humans do best with feet pointed down. And isn’t this what our puny experience with space flight shows us already? Isn’t this why there is talk about rotating space ships to Mars? Astronauts come back from the ISS permanently hobbled by poor bone density.
The far future is populated with a destination of one: habitable gravity wells and straightforward ways of leaving them. All other steps must lead in that direction.
There is an extensive body of literature, both fiction and non-fiction, which describes humanity colonizing and exploiting “the solar system.” If we restrict ourselves to “planets” then that means Earth, Luna, Mars and maybe Titan, which together hardly make up the solar system.
However, solve certain technical and social problems and you can live anywhere in the solar system, although practicality dictates that for quite a while to come we’ll remain in the inner solar system simply because of all the advantages of being near enough to the energy of the Sun. But that’s still more “real estate” than we’ll need for a very long time.
For every instance where someone has written about colonizing planets I’d be willing to bet there is at least one person who has written about colonizing space, whether in a fixed-orbit station or in a moveable habitat.
Learning to live in space will give us a lot towards colonizing planets, but not the other way around, and it always pays to go with the synergy. In terms of long-term sustainability, maintainability and growth, I think that in-space “colonies” have many advantages over planetbound “colonies,” and natural resources and industrial development are only the start of them.
I suspect that a lot of people still think in terms of another planet simply because they always have, as opposed to thinking through other, more un-Earth-like possibilities.
“The point I suppose is that humans do best with feet pointed down. And
isn’t this what our puny experience with space flight shows us already?
Isn’t this why there is talk about rotating space ships to Mars?
Astronauts come back from the ISS permanently hobbled by poor bone
density.”
Rotation solves these problems. It’s easy to do. Scale helps here. The larger the habitat, the easier to just rotate it and have gravity.
The other big health issue is radiation. Shielding solves that one. Again, scale helps. When you have a big habitat, a much smaller percentage of the mass has to go into shielding if you’re using passive shielding, or less energy per person if you’re using magnetic shielding.
Finally, in the longer term, we don’t have to stick to our current body hardware with its dependence on gravity and aversion to radiation. Millions of years from now, when our civilization is spread out across the galaxy, do you really think it will be a civilization with exactly the same body plans we have now?
Gravity is not essential. None of the ISS crewmembers has suffered irreparable harm from weightlessness. But within 50 years artificial intelligence will be comparable to or beyond organic human intelligence. AI has fundamental advantages in an extremely austere environment, and can tolerate both radiation and long periods of inactivity.
In his non-fiction writing, Isaac Asimov called it “Planetary chauvinism”, criticising it as a failure of imagination of his fellow writers. But even scientists are prone to it, assuming that processes are somehow more efficient on a planetary/lunar surface, often twisting themselves in logical knots trying to justify that assumption.
[Then there’s Gerard K. O’Neill’s The High Frontier, and Freeman Dyson of course believed the future lay in small bodies, not planets.
And the “why fight so hard to leave a gravity well just to drop down another” meme is largely inspired by Larry Niven. Groundhogs vs Rockhoppers.]
It is the typical “let’s look like we are doing something important” NASA management mantra. I dislike being cynical, and I am willing to eat crow, but in my opinion, there will be the one Orion test flight and the Congress and/or the next administration will cancel the SLS and Orion programs. NASA is withering on the vine.
What if they were down sizing to become NACA like. Maybe best thing is to starve NASA.
The only destination this administration has set us on is to nowhere. There are no plans to go anywhere. Just empty rhetoric. The whole idea behind Velcro-ing an astronaut to an asteroid, I’m sure, stemmed from the fact that it wasn’t part of the previous administration. If you wish to take samples from an asteroid send a robot.
The purpose for sending humans into space is to establish a permanent presence there. The destination should supply the natural resources to accomplish this. The moon is the logical place to start … oops, that was a piece of Constellation … the most important piece.
No, in-situ resources on the moon was a central part of VSE, the core justification for a lunar base. But by the time it was filtered through Constellation, that part had been quietly forgotten. Indeed, even the idea of a base didn’t exist beyond the few hopeful PR pics. The actual planning/funding was just for a long duration Apollo.
One has to wonder if the asteroid retrieval mission was chosen to create a mission for Orion. It’s just not practical with current technology. We need an infrastructure in space first.
Agreed on every point. And the job for Orion part I think has several aspects to it, including holding out an olive branch to Congress (who pointedly ignored it). However, quite aside from all of the manufactured justifications, I still maintain that an asteroid mission (properly planned) can be a very worthwhile program with respect to learning/doing things that we will hopefully be doing in space later on. I think the biggest stumbling block is simply that an asteroid mission is a new idea for most people, not one of the age-old contender programs.
I agree but of course to do it right you need to have missions that use cheaper lifters like recoverable falcon heavies so more money can go to building infrastructure. SLS is just an expensive joke that hinders any progress.