If We Want to Send Astronauts to Mars, We Must Go Back to the Moon First, Scientific American
“Bush’s idea was inspiring enough that, in addition to NASA, no fewer than 13 international space agencies signed on to participate in developing a plan for reaching the moon. Unfortunately, the plan’s implementation was badly flawed. NASA tried to relive the glory days of Apollo by focusing on one-use vehicles that would transport everything to the moon from Earth. Apollo was a fantastic achievement, but it was not sustainable, which was in part why the program was canceled in the early 1970s. Bush’s vision proved too expensive to sustain as well, and in 2010 President Barack Obama declared that the U.S. had no need to go back to the moon, saying, in essence, that we’ve been there, done that. Instead, he said, we would go to Mars without taking that interim step. But a return to the moon is crucial to the future of human space explorationand – not just for the experience it would give us in off-world living.”
It’s a pile of cliches, that essay. “Lunar testing ground for Mars” . . . despite the fact that the Moon doesn’t give you a lot of parallels with Mars to test besides the radiation environment. “Fuel made from lunar ice that can be launched in one-sixth gravity!” . . . at a cost that will probably be astronomically greater than simply launching more fuel tanks from Earth for a mission, unless your mission frequency is already incredibly high.
TheBrett is right. We ought not to view the Moon as a stepping stone to Mars. We can start with missions to Mars that has nothing to do with going down to a planetary surface. We can start with a Mars flyby followed by a combined Phobos-Deimos (PhD) mission.
Simultaneously we should facilitate the commercial development of a cis-lunar transportation system using lunar polar ice for propellant (aka LunarCOTS.com). The Moon is a destination in its own right and has much more than enough water, carbon, and nitrogen in the polar ice than a large recycling base would need for decades to centuries.
What carbon and nitrogen in the polar ice, and how do you know there is any polar ice? Last time I checked, the data were also consistent with permafrost with a low water-to-rock mixing ratio.
http://lcross.arc.nasa.gov/…
“The suite of LCROSS and LRO instruments determined as much as 20 percent of the material kicked up by the LCROSS impact was volatiles, including methane, ammonia, hydrogen gas, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide”.
Yes, because of decades of neglect we know far less about the Moon than Mars.
Interestingly every time we send a mission to the Moon we find it is far more suitable to economic development and settlement than we thought. As the same time every time we send a mission to Mars we find another problem for economic development and settlement.
That’s more or less meaningless. 20% of the material kicked up were volatiles simply because volatiles are easy to kick up. Water is easier to vaporize than rock. Those volatiles contained an unspecified amount of methane, ammonia, etc. That proves that the abundance of those substances is non-zero, not that they are readily available.
The Apollo samples shows such a low abundance of nitrogen and carbon that the values normally aren’t even listed. To show that a resource can be produced and used in situ, you have to show that it is readily available, not just that it exists in small amounts.
All true (the argument that Luna and Mars are so different that form the point of view of our current tech they are black and white).
And while it is true that the Moon is close and likely less expensive to explore, the question of “why go?” remains unaddressed. It’s another case of horse/cart.
I love the idea of space and space exploration but can’t get away from answering the aforementioned question. Science?
The answer I have is that human expansion has proceeded “stormward and coldward”. We sail, explore, and colonize because that appears to be what our species has built into our genes. Frontiers is what we do. Its great to gain scientific knowledge or mineral resources, or whatever but these a side benefits. We go because it stirs us to go.
The Moon is reachable in 3 days and has the resources so it has the potential to become a place people can emigrate to. The Antarctic or the sea floor don’t appear to have the pull that space travel has on our imagination. It may be that while those places are hard places to live, but not NEW places to live. Dunno.
Partial answer to your question at best, but I think it touches the core of our dreams.
http://blogs.discovery.com/…
OK so the cave peoples or whatever gradually spread out, but most likely in search of better hunting or whatever.
The argument that for instance the New World was exploited because ‘it’s there’ similarly holds no water; those ships were expensive and were sent in expectation of reward.
I’ve heard (and made) the argument that we explore because we must but on close inspection can’t find examples.
I’ve told the story here that as a kid for weeks at a time I explored the Rockies on horseback, usually alone or with my brother. And yes we loved seeing what’s over the next rise, all the while telling ourselves that we were the first non-Native Peoples to see the view. Was this fanciful thinking or representative of how we behave as a group? Don’t see it.
It’s true that adventurers like Branson or Hillary or Amundsen do things for the thrill or to be first. But again is this how people act as a civilization?
(And yes, given the chance, I’d go to Mars).
Good points. Historically only a small percentage of any society have been explorers. Most folks are just happy enough to stay close to where they are born.
The English colonies are a good example. They were started as private for profit ventures, all the government contributed at first was granting them a monopoly (charter) and then the “benefits” of government when they became established. Emigration during the 17th Century was on the order of 2,000 a year to Virginia and about the same to New England despite all the unrest in England (English Civil War etc.).
Space will be the same, and in fact is the same. NASA has never shown any real interest in settlement as an agency, it is not even in their Charter. So it will be private groups that lead the way, as with SpaceX and Blue Origins.
https://upload.wikimedia.or…
Always give your source information for data you provide that you did not create yourself.
Which data?
Your map from Wikipedia disproves your statement as humans only go to colder and stormier regions when population pressure pushes them there. That is why the New World was settled so late in human history.
It is only lately that greed has proved another motivate in terms of the European exploration of the world.
Neither applies to space as least as far as scientists go which is why they are happy to just send robots.
It was not my statement. Obviously I was drawing my famous familiar quote from Huntington’s rather fevered and somewhat wacky, “Mainsprings of Civilization”. I was being metaphorical, not absolutely literal.
BTW – why do you ascribe the word “only” to my statement? You made that up. There are obviously equatorial bottlenecks that must be crossed on each continent.
Also, you artificially add in population pressure. Yes, we go into more vigorous regions as they open to us. While population pressure may sometimes be a factor, or climate change, it may be more that we migrate into frontiers that offer rewards, whether it is megafauna, gold, open farmland. religious or political freedom, whatever.
My purpose was to show that Humans and some of our close relatives are boundary pushers.
Your statement.
“The answer I have is that human expansion has proceeded “stormward and coldward”.
You only provided two reasons in it and did not reference it as coming from an external source.
All organisms expand as far as they are able to do by their adaptability from population pressure, its a basic principle of biogeography, so that is not surprising. Its only with the emergence of civilization that other factors became important to modern humans. Your map from wikipedia only shows the prehistorical expansion of biologically modern humans, not modern migration patterns. And the arrow for the Polynesians to New Zealand is wrong, DNA shows they originated from Formosa not SE Asia.
But returning to the post. Any sustainable economic development of the Solar System starts with the Moon. It’s advantage is it is close enough to actually support industrialization with a strong telepresence from Earth.
But Yale! They push boundaries in expectation of reward. Isn’t this an important distinction?
I differentiated science from human expansion. A scientist just doing science might be happy with a data stream, but the person wants to stand on the rim of Mariner Valley. While there may be resistance to HSF by SOME scientists, it is that there is the justifiable fear that limited resources will (and has) left science unsupported, plus in some cases, the justifiable fear of contamination (and back-contamination)
Science only emerged when the increased wealth flowing to Europe provided the resources to support it. In addition the expansion created more opportunities for science to be done.
A settlement of miners on the Moon, or settlers on Mars will create far more opportunities for scientific research than is available now when expensive robots must be flown from Earth and are useless from getting stuck or breaking down. When humans are on the Moon and Mars they will be able to easily repair those robots.
So its not a zero sum game where human expansion and settlement of the Solar System takes “limited” resources from science. It is a win-win situation where spending those “limited” resources on human settlement will create more opportunities for science.
One small point…it was very common for exploration parties to carry scientists or ‘naturalists’ as they were termed. Darwin stands out, but he’s only one.
Linnaeus was sitting in his lab while samples poured in from all over the world. Not all from trained persons, but still demonstrating the interest.
It’s basically science in my opinion, which of course raises the question of whether you actually need people there. The Moon is not far away, and if we put some decent relay satellites in some of the stable orbits around it we could make using robotic craft on the surface even easier.
There might also be some valuable resources there, if we keep looking. The basic lunar regolith is going to require a lot of processing to get useful materials out of it, but maybe we can find more concentrated materials in impact craters.
I tried to answer that in the following: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/a…
So what’s a LIGO guy doing on Mars, anyway? 🙂
A major reason to conduct lunar activities before Mars would be to develop reliable hardware that could survive the long Mars trip. If you have a problem, you can get replacement parts in days instead of months or years. Simulations don’t match actual harsh environments.
A perfect example is the oxygen and water generation on ISS. They had numerous failures and were able to send failed parts to earth for analysis and get replacements quickly. I haven’t heard much discussion about those problems lately. The station can still be used to validate equipment to use on the long journey. You don’t know what you don’t know.
The lunar surface may be harsher than Mars but that’s a great way to develop more robust equipment. It also allows you to think about and develop procedures to handle unforeseen accidents and various other problems such as cleaning suits dirty with lunar or Martian soil.
I would like to see companies such as SpaceX design landers and hardware to get to the moon. We could use some independent thinking and it would probably bring the cost down drastically.
So, we have the ISS which has over 18 years of space flight hardware survival testing. Exactly how long do we need to test hardware in the region between Earth and moon or on the surface of the moon before we feel safe? One year, 10 years, 20 years, or what? And when do we start? I’m sorry, but the moon is just not a economically viable or highly relevant test bed for Mars hardware, operations, ISRU, science or safety – completely different environments and material constraints. Interplanetary flight safety is a money problem, not a hardware problem.
It’s a money problem BECAUSE it’s a hardware problem…one glaring example is the need to discard very very expensive hardware just to get there.
Not in the case of things like radiation shielding, where 10 inches of water or a few inches of lead would completely cancel any radiation risks. We cant get that much mass out of our gravity well without a lot of money. This instance has nothting to do with expensive hardware, its strait physics.
You do not want to use lead, or any metal, for a rad shield in deep space. It might work for a nuclear reactor, but against cosmic rays, it just makes things worse.
(Also ten inches of water is nowhere near enough for anything except a very short trip. Long term, you need metres of shielding.)
Yes, two meters of lunar regolith will be pretty good protection in open space.
As usual I should have been more direct. What I meant to say is that current thinking in spaceship design is expensive because it is still driven by the ‘staged rocket’ model in which a very small payload is placed while sacrificing many millions in boosters. This notion is seen as ‘normal’. Musk is on the track but essentially he’s thinking the same way in his approach to Mars.
At some point I suppose we will build actual interplanetary spaceships. Once this notion takes hold as a goal, solving the real problems like radiation, spin-gravity, re-fueling, long-term isolation, and the like will come to the fore. Resolving those issues will lead to true ISRU utilization of astroid resources– extraction and smelting– which will allow factories in space. The cost of living in space will fall by many orders.
It’s true that in this future we’d depend initially on staged rockets– but even there progress is being made by reusability and by the likes of Skylon, where huge tech leaps are needed but widely regarded as possible. Over time, the huge rockets currently envisioned won’t be needed because the only cargo leaving earth would be people and certain limited very high value cargo.
We are not *thinking* like a civilization living in space, and until we do, we will be bound to earth.
I agree.. when reading some of the commentary, the thought occurred “Why not a stationary Lagrange station instead to test Mars equipment — something that could be spun to Mars gravity, pressurized to Mars atmosphere? Test several types of tech at the same time”.
One of the problems I see with this approach is that you will have a group that will treat this idea the same as they currently treat SLS — aka “The station to nowhere” in the same vein as “The rocket to nowhere”. They are a loud bunch! 🙂
ECLSS/etc developed for the lunar surface will be fundamentally different than flight-hardware for a Mars mission. Partial gravity versus micro-gravity changes how systems work.
Likewise, systems developed for the lunar surface will be fundamentally different than those needed for Mars.
For example, a spacesuit that works on the moon won’t necessarily work on Mars. Basic assumptions are different. The insulation in existing suits assumes a vacuum between layers (won’t work on Mars). Micro-g suits (shuttle/ISS suits) are too heavy, the current ISS suit is twice as heavy as desired for Mars. Some of that mass is micrometeorite shielding (unnecessary on Mars). The cooling system on a lunar suit uses sublimation of water, which won’t work the same within the Mars atmosphere.
The same is true of rovers, robots, habitats, etc. And especially true for the landers. A lunar lander is completely unsuited to Mars, and mostly vice-versa.
It’s not just that they’re different, it’s that the core assumptions you use in design on one body teach you the wrong skills for the other. Mars surface requires a fundamentally different way of designing systems than lunar or LEO systems.
It’s not the exact hardware you’d be developing, but rather the concepts such as part durability and replacement, how you cope with being on your own and all the assorted issues. I would think the lunar environment would be a better test than on earth.
As I said, the concepts are so completely different that you are learning the wrong skills.
Eg, it’s not just that you need a different spacesuit on Mars. It’s that the deep core design assumptions the engineers make about the concept of spacesuits is different.
Even operations is fundamentally different between the moon and Mars. A moon mission will be operated similarly to ISS, Mars can’t.
So when a suit fails because you have soil in a seam, how do you handle it in a remote environment? How do you clean it? How do you store them? How often does it occur? Not the details of what cleaner you use, but the procedural of what checks you perform before and after.
While the moon and Mars are not the same, how you handle these issues are likely to have some similarities that can’t be duplicated on the earth. You have the whole mentality of operating in a remote and dangerous environment that can be worked on.
This is a perfect example:
No, it’s not the details of the cleaner, it’s the underlying design assumptions behind the suit.
It’s not just “the suits are a bit different”, it’s that the very core concept behind the design is different.
It the difference between a car and a sailing ship.
For example, the standard answer to keeping dust out of the space-craft is the suit-lock concept. You’ll see that on various Mars proposals. Except that the design intended for the suit-lock is not capable of being used on Mars. Not just the details, the entire concept is wrong. The engineering for the design means that suit-lock compatible suits are about twice as heavy as required, plus they are top-loaded. The necessity of rear-entry makes the suit top-heavy, making it cumbersome and just plain dangerous on Mars. On the moon, because to the lower gravity, you can probably work around it (as they did for Apollo). But at 0.38g, it doesn’t work.
It’s not just “well, we’ll obviously adapt the suit…” The entire design philosophy of the suit-port can’t work on Mars.
And its the same with every single other aspect of the suit. And for the vehicles, the habitats, everything.
Therefore those procedures you want to practice on the moon are not only inadequate, they are simply wrong.
Just as the control/operations developed around the Shuttle and ISS are completely inappropriate for Mars. Not just “well obviously we’ll have to change the check-lists”, the very core assumptions of ISS-operations is wrong for Mars. And going to the moon doesn’t change those assumptions.
I know you won’t ever accept this, but what I’m saying is not unusual. Plenty of people within NASA understand this. And they are deeply frustrated that NASA management doesn’t.
You are thinking like an engineer while thinking like a planner might be more useful. The argument for the moon as training ground has little to do with finding similarities in space suits or anything else. The point is learning how to think like a spacefaring people.
But somehow ISS hasn’t taught us that (it hasn’t), the Shuttle didn’t teach us that, the entire 50+ years of humans spaceflight haven’t taught us that. And simulations on Earth can’t.
So why would the moon?
If there’s no overlap in technology, there’s no overlap in the very design concepts, and there’s no overlap in operations or the concepts underlying operations, how would the moon teach us to “think like a spacefaring people” faster than we can learn it by focusing on Mars itself.
I can accept that having a sustained lunar settlement for 50 years would result in a mindset that allows BEO missions. But it’s clear that the Moon-then-Mars advocates are trying to create the impression that manned lunar missions will shorten the time to Mars.
IMO, the opposite is the case. Lunar missions will hurt and delay efforts to work out how to do Mars missions. Not just “doesn’t help”, but “makes it harder”.
[You might recall that I’m not a Mars advocate. This isn’t an emotional thing for me, “Mars First! Mars Only! Mars Is Our Destiny!” It’s just the nature of space travel. Moon missions won’t help a Mars mission.]
Well, I can make some guesses about “thinking like a spacefaring people.” First of all, the trip should not be the goal. It’s just a way to get somewhere. Second, the destination is a normal one, not a setting for some great and heroic adventure. As long as we consider traveling though space to be an accomplishment, in and of itself, we are not a spacefaring civilization.
Taking it a step further: has antarctica taught us anything? What about Keith’s efforts at Devon? Or the occasional studies that lock away volunteers, simulating the confinement Earth-Mars confinement?
I’d say that yes, there are lots of lessons learned there. Surely ISS has offered lessons as well, not the least in management, among others.
It’s easy to forget just how far we’ve come. As a kid I marveled at the sled experiments exploring how many Gs a person could tolerate. We didn’t know if we would be able to eat in space- would our digestive systems move food to the stomach and out the other end in zero-G?
So, yes, I’d say that while at first blush the examples you cite appear to have been without opportunity to move forward, on second examination they have been quite instructive.
If you accept that the details of the procedures will be different, but the necessary procedures and the nature of the problems will be similar, I don’t see the need to go to the Moon to learn. Deep diving on Earth requires life support equipment. Using only available supplies can be simulated (with a failure resulting in a replan, but not a death.) The needs for inspection, storage and repair procedures would be learned as well as they would be on the Moon.
Which is exactly what happens now: astronauts practice on earth in various environments contrived as much as possible in a 1G gravity. But it’s not the same.
Really? The only difference I see between Earth’s moon and Mars, from a short-term survivability standpoint (short-term as defined by travel time to Mars and back again along with residence time waiting for a return launch window), are navigation complexities, atmospheric entry difficulties, distance/time to Earth-based resources and difficulty climbing back into space to return. All of these make Mars survivability more difficult than the moon, not less. All of these need to be improved and tested robotically in the run-up to a human Mars mission while all of the other stuff (i.e. radiation, breathing, dirt-base building, use, and maintenance, resource extraction, use and transportation) should be developed, tested, and improved by boots on the ground on the moon over five or so years to make sure that the tech will work well over the length of a Mars mission when it goes to Mars. ISS can do some of that, but not all of it.
All of the things about Mars that makes it more like Earth than the moon makes it not quite enough like Earth to improve human survivability and only mucks things up when compared to the Moon. Therefore the moon is a safer testing ground for base building and operation because it is closer and simpler.
See Paul451’s posts in the comments for this article. He explains this better than me.
I get it, but partial testing is better than no testing at all.
How many times have you gotten on the freeway on-ramp and realized just at that moment that you’ve forgotten something? A two-way Mars trip lasts more than a year, with no going back or follow-up resupply. What you have is all you get. We need to get better at the space thing in general as we develop the Mars flight and survival tech. In spite of what Paul said, Mars and the Moon still have more in common with one and other than either has with Earth, with lessons that can be learned safer on the Moon than Mars.
In a way, a lot of this discussion is moot anyway. The “both at once” approach will happen regardless of what approach government let’s NASA take. Others will be on the Moon and the tech will be shared because NASA will be a partner at some level with most of the folks working towards either destination.
Yeah. The hardware for going to the Moon and Mars don’t have much in common. It is harder to developed hardware for Lunar surface activities since the Lunar surface environment is a lot more hostile than the Martian surface.
Propellants from the Moon will have to be mined, processed, stored and delivered to one of the Lagrange points. Never mind the development cost of setting up the Cis-Lunar infrastructure. Versus tanker flights from Earth with the Falcon Heavy or the Vulcan ACES and the tanker version of the MCT/BFS later Propellant from the Moon make very little financial sense in the near term.
Agreed that the moon and Mars don’t have much in common and this will cause hardware to be vastly different.
It’s not harder, just deeply different.
By coincidence, I was watching a presentation (online) just yesterday that talked about that.
Space-suits developed for Shuttle/ISS are reasonably suited to the moon. Vacuum-based insulation, sublimation cooling, lots of micro-meteorite shielding, heavy PLSS backpack, etc. They work in orbit, they mostly work on the moon. With the moon, the major new issue is dust. Everything else is pretty much 1:1 with existing LEO technology.
However, none of it works for Mars. That trace atmosphere, plus the 0.38g, utterly changes the assumptions you need to make in space-suit design. And very very little work has been done researching those issues.
The same will be true of Mars habitats, vehicles, etc. It’s not just that technology developed for lunar missions is different, it’s that your whole design philosophy needs to change. It teaches you the wrong skills, you need to essentially wipe out your technology base and start from scratch. Going to the moon as a “stepping stone to Mars” may actually make it harder to develop the necessary Mars technology because it leads us down the wrong paths.
Likewise transfer ships. It’s not just that the landers are fundamentally different, it’s that the optimal transfer hardware is different. There’s no advantage to SEP for lunar missions (multiple passes through the Van Allen belts is bad for SEP). Fast chemical transfer based on conventional upper-stage rockets is the best system. Likewise, crews can live entirely in their return-capsule during the trip out and back. They don’t need long duration ECLSS, nor independent habitat modules.
It’s the same with mission planning. The whole structure of lunar
missions is fundamentally from Mars missions. Doing moon missions
teaches you the wrong way to do space-flight. Lunar missions have much more in common with ISS ops than with Mars.
In theory, Mars should be an easier environment than the moon, but in practice, it’s so utterly different from how we do things now, it throws away our entire technology and operations knowledge base. So in that sense, it’s Mars that’s harder.
I’m an advocate of using the Moon and the L1/L2 waystation idea before we attempt a trip to Mars. It’s not because the Moon is similar to Mars, but because it’s close and it will allow us to improve our operations and engineering skills before we strike out for more distant lands. Exploration has been done in this fashion throughout history, and for a good reason. You work out your processes and technologies close to home, where support and provision is handy, before trying the bigger trips.
There’s also the fact that figuring out how to exploit cislunar space is a vital step in making a space-based economy possible. Highway systems don’t make much sense without gas stations, repair depots, and rest stops along the way. We need to figure out how to provision ourselves *in space* via ISRU and space-based power generation. We need to figure out how to build a closed-loop ECLSS system (or at least a far more efficient technology than we have now). We need to figure out how to implement radiation shielding that doesn’t add too much mass to the spacecraft. And while chemical rockets may eventually get us to Mars, it’s a stretch — we need to develop far better propulsion technology, and cislunar space will give us the opportunity to do that.
Don’t think of the Moon as a “new world” in the sense that Mars is. Think of it as a giant playground relatively close to home where we can work out a lot of our technology. If we want to build a sustainable space-based economy, we need to get a lot better not just at getting into space, but at living and working there for long periods of time. *Outside* the protective embrace of Earth’s gravity and magnetic field.
Yes. The Moon is to Mars and the Solar System as the Canary Islands were to the New World. Neither Spain or Portugal would have had the technology to reach the New World without first developing it to reach the Azores and Canary Islands.
Many have made the case that Luna isn’t a stepping stone analogous to the Azores because the delta-v required from Luna to Mars is nearly the same as Earth-Mars. Hope I have that right.
It’s worth point out that the Europeans were capable of routinely going to Asia, around the Horn of Africa, before attempting the westward route.
Ships were a mature technology, built in vast numbers, and routinely operated for months at a time without support.
It’s believed that Norwegian/Swedish fishing vessels travelled to the Grand Banks long before Columbus’ voyages. And rumours of such trips were the reason Columbus was so convinced that there must be a land mass to the west, which “logically” must be Asia, in spite of the size of the world being fairly well established by then.
Columbus didn’t use bespoke, single purpose “crossing the Atlantic” ships to reach the Americas. He used widely available off-the-shelf technology of the day. And he travelled somewhere only slightly further than other people travelled.
By that standard, we are not capable of travelling to Mars. Hell, we’re not capable of routine operations on the moon, let alone permanent habitation. Hell, we’re not even capable of HSF to LEO except as a hugely expensive government exercise.
The European colonisation is a really bad analogy to use for our current state of technology. A better analogy, IMO, is the very first human colonisation.
Supposedly fishing for Cod was the basis of the wealth of Richard Amerike of Bristol. That is why he financed the construction of John Cabot’s ship when Henry VII granted him a Charter to explore for land beyond Greenland. In any case it was well within the capability the merchant ships of the era.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/histor…
“Ships were a mature technology” was not really true in 1492, at least not for Columbus’ application. Previous trips from Europe to either Asia or America involved sailing near coasts (Africa, southern Asia or Iceland and Greenland.) Columbus used those same ships for a trip directly across a rather large ocean. The technology was woefully inadequate for that, and it’s lucky he didn’t kill more of his crew in the process.
The interesting point is that, having done it with inadequate technology, he got people interested in going to America. That got people interested in improving the technology and making the trip bot safer and less expensive.
I disagree that there were large changes in ship design driven by the discovery of the Americas. The pace of development of ship-building in the early 16th century wasn’t noticeably faster than during the late 15th century. And it was slower in the 16th century than it was in the early 15th.
People did not suddenly become interested in better ships after Columbus. Quite the opposite, it was the prior invention of the Caravel (early/mid 15th century) that allowed Columbus to believe he could make his expedition.
That’s what I mean about “mature”. “Modern” ocean-going sailing ships were developed in the early-15th century. By the end of the 15th century they were a mature technology, available off-the-shelf and second hand.
Columbus’ ships were not developed for grand expeditions into the unknown. The ships preceded the mission by a good 50 years.
Ships continued to develop after Columbus, of course, as they had before. But there wasn’t another change as significant as the Caravel for 300 years, until the invention of the Clipper Ship.
Even large ships like 16th century Galleons (as in the “Spanish Treasure Galleons”) were developed primarily for Mediterranean trade-routes, combining both cargo capacity and enough cannons for defence. The need for cargo plus defence drove development much more than the American trade. (The Barbary Pirates probably did more to promote ship development than a hundred Columbuses.)
[Sorry if I’m bombing you. This is something I’ve been arguing about with people for a couple of decades. European colonisation is just a really bad analogy with modern or near-future space travel. IMO, we’re still barely building bark canoes, we haven’t even developed the outrigger yet, let alone the sail. The 15th century Europeans (hell, even 11th Century) were vastly more developed than we are, compared to the scale of the challenge.]
Well, in all my eclectic reading, I’ve never studied the history of naval architecture. So I will concede your point about caravels. But I think we agree on some things.
The ships Columbus used were, or are generally considered to have been, very marginal for a cross-ocean voyage (as opposed to longer, but coast-hugging journies.)
The state of the art advanced greatly between 1300 and 1800. I’m not an expert, but this seems obvious when you look at _Mary_Rose_ and _Victory_ (which I recommend to anyone visiting Portsmouth or in London with time for a long day trip.)
These advances were not a planned effort to reach America, in advance of the first trip.
Once profitable colonies and viable exports came into existence, this contributed to the motives to improve transportation technology. It may not have been the sole motive, but I think it was a significant one.
However, the East Indies, India, and trade (and especially conflict) within the Med were enough to drive this development. Americans tend to have an exaggerated belief in the importance of their colonisation.
Without the colonisation of the Americas, ship development would have continued at roughly the same pace. The horn of Africa is a brutal crossing for sailing ships. They needed to be sea worthy (or ocean worthy) anyway.
Which reinforces your other comment about “space faring” thinking. The Americas were only a viable colony(s) because Europeans were already becoming a true sea-faring people. Without the Americas, it still would have happened thanks to the sheer volume of trade with Asia. And with America, it didn’t really happen much faster.
(You only need to look at the 90 year gap between Columbus’ first colonies, and the Nth American colonies. Whereas Magellan’s voyage was only 30 years after Columbus. Ship tech was 50yrs ahead of colonial ambitions.
The Americas were something of a side-show to Asian sea-trade, until the colonies themselves became major traders: Cotton and sugar out, slaves in. Broke the monopoly of the East India Company and ushered in a new era in ship development; the Clippers, then the Ironclads, then steam; all within a hundred years.)
Yes, but delta-V is only one element. Time to cover the distance is far more important when looking at human spaceflight. Also the Moon is close enough for a high level of real time telepresence support. By contrast the 20 minute delay would make any real time support by mission control for a problem on Mars very difficult.
My point was that the fuel needed is roughly the same, if I interpret the comments of those here more knowledgeable correctly, making trips from the moon to Mars perhaps twice as energy intensive as Earth-Mars; Luna has nothing to make the trip easier.
Rebuttals ere are hardware centric but its not just hardware; we havedea how a crew in space would do psychologically on a three year mission so far away from Earth – how will they fare psychologically? How will they react to a partial g environment? Will their retinas have the same, more or less risk of damage as astronauts do on the ISS? What about bones and muscles? Also, how about demonstrating the ability to live off planet with a high degree of recycling and in-situ use of resources? The moon allows for all of that (We don’t even have many good ways to package and store food for three + years)
In fact, most of the things people want to do at Mars are also achievable on the moon:
When asked why go to Mars, initial answers are to have people do real time science investigations on an alien world – well, the moon provides that and just because we went to six similar sites for very brief periods of time does not mean we’ve been their & done that.
Want to make humanity a multi-planet species – check.
Want to aver extinction of human life by avoiding a mass extinction event – Check
Want to establish a sustainable colony that actually could have unique exports (Helium 3) that could make business sense – Check; Mars -??
Want to look for alien life – well, here the moon probably doesn’t do anything but guess what; sending humans to Mars is probably guaranteeing that invasive species that live on and in our bodies will escape and contaminate the planet. So NOT sending people to Mars is probably better if you’re looking for alien life.
Lastly, why not do a mission where the costs can be shared with other nations making it both more affordable and less likely to be cancelled due to the international ramifications (e.g. ISS)
Humans are highly adaptable creatures as history shows. Stop using the psychology argument unless you hold an advanced degree in psychology and have proof of general species deficits due to off Earth habitation. The physiological gaps in understanding are more relevant, but all current indications point to them as being acceptable risks – surmountable only if the current road block of a risk-aversion culture is quenched.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t go because of psychological factors – just that we need to understand them and develop ways of selecting and tasking crews that take psychological factors into account. Russian Crews on Mir, would sometimes revolt against controllers if they were being overloaded or not given enough personal time.
Not just on Mir… Skylab.
And yes, choosing people who would cohabitate well with others in unusual and confined environments for a long time would be good. But I think that is a very difficult thing to get from something like a personality test.
No, not Skylab. Saying the people on the ground did not understand the working conditions and deciding to take a day off (what they actually did) is not a “revolt” or even a strike. It certainly is not evidence of phycological problems.
A “revolt” or “strike” as such does not equate to psychological problems.
Agreed. In both cases it was because the controllers on the ground had unreasonable workload expectations for the crew, so it was just the normal conflict that occurs in organizations.
Not just Skylab, either– Apollo (6, I think, where one of the crew had a head cold and was feeling particularly ornery).
Apollo 7 and they all had a head cold.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission…
It should be noted that none of the crew were given follow on flights.
I don’t agree. Psychological factors will probably never be understood, since they tend to generalize and generalization don’t apply to individuals.
In any case, we have a long, terrestrial history of explanation. Including harsh environments and small groups in isolation. Most of that was done with little or no consideration of phycological factors. And those expeditions were largely successful. I don’t see any roadblock here.
I concur.
“Psychological factors…tend to generalize and generalization don’t apply to individuals.”
Had to laugh out loud.
I like the idea of returning to the moon but NASA really doesn’t seem to do multi purpose systems very well, what we would probably end up with is an expensive lander capable of one thing, landing and taking off from the moon, it will not be in the slightest bit adaptable to future Mars missions, that would then require a complete return to the drawing board for another expensive lander which would again only be capable of landing and take off from Mars. Personally I would prefer to see a possible adaptation of the Dragon V2 for moon mission use either with a basic single use landing stage where the Trunk would be or some sort of refueling once on the surface although in each case I don’t know how capable the Dragon would be of using it’s super draco’s to take off rather than land.
Your D2 comment contracts the first half of your comment.
Dragon is really not suited to landing on the moon. It’s just the wrong design. While you could probably modify a Dragon to become a lunar lander, the modifications are so “deep” that you are essentially designing an entirely new vehicle… In which case, you might as well design an entirely new vehicle.
(The exception to the rule might be MCT. The upper-stage/crew vehicle (BFS) is so huge and so overpowered, and being reusable, so cheap, that you can waste 50% of its capability by landing it on the “wrong” world and still have a cost-effective mission design.)
I don’t see the contradiction of my Dragon V2 comments with the first half of my comment, I was just considering whether it would be feasible to re-purpose the Dragon V2 which is already in development as both a crew vehicle for the ISS and as an unmanned Mars lander as a manned moon lander rather than spending the potential billions required for NASA to develop a moon lander, I realize it would be anything but optimal but the Dragon V2 will eventually be capable of landing on both Earth and mars so my thoughts were how capable would it be of landing on the moon with no atmosphere for breaking etc. (from what I understand it would be capable of a moon landing), my second thought was then would the Dragon be capable of taking off again (which is obviously in a whole different league to the landing) if it had a full fuel tank. Obviously the Super Draco’s are pretty powerful as they are designed to rip the dragon away from it’s launch vehicle within seconds of a detecting a catastrophic failure, the pad abort test clearly shows their potential to launch from solid ground however whether they can be suitably throttled etc is a different matter. I really don’t see the modifications required as particularly “deep” as you put it unless you are trying to be optimal, Taking the fuel hit to land and launch the Dragon which would obviously be many times heavier than the virtually “Tin Foil” Apollo LEM assent stage would seem to be quite acceptable if it saved billions of dollars and countless years developing a new version of the LEM which by it very nature would really not be suitable for doing anything other than landing on and taking off from the moon.
I meant, the point you were making about landers being fairly specialised and not suited to different bodies is correct.
And that same point applies to D2.
As you note in this comment, the issue is the atmosphere. D2 is designed to eliminate 90% of its velocity using atmospheric entry. The landing system only needs to take care of less than 500m/s delta-v. And because those landing thrusters need to be high thrust and storable, that results in low Isp rockets.
The SuperDracos have an Isp of about 240s. By contrast, the Merlin 1d-vac has an Isp around 310s.
The SD’s on D2 have about 1300kg of propellant, and get less than 500m/s delta-v. Just for illustration, I’ll round that to 1500kg of prop, and use 7000kg dry weight for the capsule, to give 480m/s delta-v.
To land on the moon from low lunar orbit (that assumes something else puts it into lunar orbit) requires about 2.4km/s delta-v. And there’s no atmosphere to offset that. The SuperDracos would have to provide the entire 2.4km/s.
For the SuperDracos, that would require about 13,000kg of propellant. Or roughly an order-of-magnitude more than they have.
You’d essentially need fill the entire capsule and the trunk with extra fuel. And you have to get that overloaded capsule into lunar orbit.
And that’s just to land. To launch back to lunar orbit requires the same delta-v, hence the same 13 tonnes of prop, but you have to carry that prop to the surface, which means your total propellant load needs to be 48 tonnes. Not including the mass of all the extra tanks.
For a non-returning lander (such as for an unmanned science mission), there is a way to cheat. You turn an normal Merlin-based upperstage into a “crasher-stage”. This does the main 2.4km/s deorbit burn before separating from the landing capsule (and crashing on the lunar surface, hence the name). That leaves the capsule falling near-vertically with just the last few hundred m/s delta-v for final landing, well within the capability of the SuperDracos.
But that’s not a system that can be used with humans (SuperDracos can’t get you back into orbit). Nor is it sustainable.
To design a lunar lander, you’d need to change so much of the Dragon that it wouldn’t be a Dragon capsule any more. It’d be a one-off dedicated lunar lander.
(This criticism doesn’t apply to MCT. The BFS is essentially built around a second-stage, so it already comes with vacuum optimised high-Isp methalox engines and enough tankage to get from the Martian surface back to Earth, or to carry a hundred tonnes into Earth orbit. Because of its heat-shields and inefficient lifting-body shape, it is not optimised for lunar flight. But it should be capable of landing 50-100 tonnes on the lunar surface and maybe a lot more. Even if you could theoretically design a more efficient optimised lunar lander around Raptor-engines, the low price of MCT means its not worthwhile.)
I agree. For the same reason the Apollo capsule did not land on the moon. A lunar lander doesn’t need the heavy hull, heat shield and aerodynamics of the Dragon and it does not seem reasonable to expend the energy to land it on the lunar surface.
The Apollo Lunar Module used hypergolic propulsion also, it just used separate descent and ascent stages. My feeling is that if Dragon is used for the Moon it should be left in lunar orbit and a separate lander used as with Apollo.
I wonder how many G’s the Dragon will pull hitting the Martian atmosphere.
I am assuming that there will be some type of Earth to Mars transfer vehicle needed as I highly doubt a crew will travel to Mars in a Dragon capsule. Even with Bigelow modules attached, when they approach Mars then what, ditch the Bigelows as expendables? Then what will they use for the return trip to Earth? That’s why I think two separate vehicles will be needed.
That being the case, why drag the lander (Red Dragon) all the way to Mars and back. Why not keep a Red Dragon (and a second one for backup) permanently at Mars. Use a D2 to transfer the crew to LEO, where they will board the Earth-Mars transfer vehicle, and leave D2 in Earth orbit.
Arriving in Mars orbit, the crew transfers to the waiting Red Dragon for the descent to Mars. Since that’s all it’s used for it can be smaller and lighter, and I am guessing deorbiting from Mars orbit will subject it to less heat and structural stress than coming in direct from Earth, but that I’m not sure about. But anyway the advantage is that you only have to transport Red Dragon from Earth to Mars once.
I realize the weight savings will be offset somewhat by having to decelerate into Mars orbit, and into Earth orbit on return. But this way the Dragon capsules remain in the vicinity of their respective planets, instead of constantly transporting them to and from Mars.
Of course on orbit fueling is needed for the Earth to Mars transfer vehicle, ideally refueled in Mars orbit for the return trip. And some way to refuel Red Dragon between LMO transfer missions.
I’m sure this type of idea has been considered over the years, but I’m just wondering why it’s not being considered now. Then again we don’t know exactly what Musk will announce in September, maybe Red Dragon will only be used as a LMO to Mars surface transfer vehicle. But if he doesn’t go this route of having three vehicles, is this because it would be inefficient, or are the potential gains not worth the complication of using multiple vehicles? The risks and complications of on orbit refueling. Or is it just that the current impetus is to get to Mars as soon as possible and so simpler is preferred.
I realize I’m talking about Mars not Moon but the topic that was brought up about specialized landers got me to wondering whether Red Dragon will be only a Mars lander or will it have a dual role as an Earth “lander”
Dragon V2 isn’t part of the MCT concept. It won’t carry people to the surface of Mars. (It can’t.)
It may be confusing because Musk has also floated the “Red Dragon” concept, which is an unmanned mission to Mars which uses the manned-version of the Dragon capsule and an unmanned Mars lander.
As for MCT, what info has been released so far strongly implies that there will be a single huge vehicle (BFS) which will travel from Earth orbit, land on the Martian surface, get refuelled, and launch directly back to Earth. There won’t be a space-only, orbit-to-orbit transfer craft.
Thanks, to clarify I was using the current terminology because I assumed they considered Red Dragon a prototype of a possible human Mars lander. So far it seems like they are building current capsules with the idea that they are testing hardware for future models, even if those future models may have a somewhat different shape and size. So in my imagination there could be a Red Dragon V2 built for this purpose (landing humans on Mars). It would be simply (relatively speaking) an upgrade of Red Dragon V1. They already have experience upgrading an unmanned capsule to manned, so I thought maybe they were planning the same for the Mars version.
So if Musk is instead planning a multi-purpose vehicle, functioning as both interplanetary transport and lander (and also bringing the crew back to Earth’s surface?) that sounds like one heck of a big and complex spacecraft. Hard to wrap my head around that idea. Especially in the timeframe he is suggesting (even adding 2-6 years) Sounds a bit like the original Direct Ascent lunar landing plan, which was of course later revised to something closer to what I was referring to for Mars, a multi-vehicle approach. The lunar concept was revised as they got into the actual designing and began to see what the weight was going to be, so I would guess that will be a critical moment in Musk’s project also and will validate or invalidate this approach.
With manned landers on other bodies, you start by looking at the return trip; then work backwards.
Dragon is therefore tells you little about MCT because it isn’t a launch vehicle. BFS needs to be able to launch from the surface of Mars. Dragon needs a Falcon to launch, so it can’t be your starting point. For MCT you’re looking at an upper-stage as your starting basis and building a spaceship around that. You don’t start with a lander, then try to add a launcher.
Dragon may need a Falcon to get it to LEO, but then it could be ferried to Mars by some type of cargo tug. I’m not using that as an argument for using Dragon as a Mars lander (although I had always assumed until now that was the plan) but it would be nice to get vehicles separated from dependence on particular launchers, to add some flexibility. I realize that type of flexibility is not easy to do, but as with docking standards it seems like it would be possible.
I understood the model you were describing. It’s NASA’s standard Mars architecture. (Design Reference Architecture v5.0)
But what I meant was: To get from the surface of Mars back up to the main ship in orbit, Dragon would require something similar to Falcon 9. (Not quite as large. Just a single stage.) And that launcher would need to also be transported to and landed on Mars.
In which case, why not just build the crew capsule into that launcher?
That seems to be Musk’s reasoning. The rest follows from that decision.
(NASA’s architecture uses an Apollo-syle throw-away pieces mentality. The whole system works for just one mission.)
Not quite design reference, as you said they would throw stuff away. And they would also drag Orion to and from Mars. I’m talking about reusability. Such as yes, you have to transport a Red Falcon to Mars. But only once, as it would be a reusable booster (presumably methane powered) that would return to the launch site to be fueled and used again, as would virtually every part of the system, as each vehicle does repeated round trips between its two assigned end points.
Maybe I’m just biased from watching too many times the Heywood Floyd segment of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Or from making a possibly wrong analogy with surface transportation. Like fcrary was describing modern travel, to get to a specific location in Europe you will be on a combination of airplanes, trains, and metros. I’m just thinking if we are planning to build a transportation system to Mars, it will eventually look something like that. If it doesn’t at first, then presumably it’s because of the overwhelming logistics of the early attempts. That’s the point of all my question in case it wasn’t clear, and by the way thanks for the informative replies.
If Musk says why not just include the crew vehicle while you are doing this, is it because that is the most efficient, or just because it’s the most practical logistically for the time being. No criticism either way, but when he lays out his plan I will be curious to know why did he make specific decisions. Similar to the decision to use Merlin engines (with slight modification) on both stages of the Falcon 9. Might not be the most efficient way to do it, but from a manufacturing viewpoint it is very efficient so that’s why he went that route and it has worked out well for him. That’s what I will be wondering about, the rationale for the various elements of his Mars plan when he reveals it.
However, the crew capsule would also have to go up and down. So why not merge the functions? And that essentially is the BFS, only much much larger.
But your general idea of a Mars shuttle was one of the proposals people came up with trying to second-guess what MCT was going to be like.
Musk had already hinted that the Mars ships would be refuelled in Earth orbit for the trip out. And fuel would be manufactured on Mars for the trip back.
Since orbital refuelling is a gating technology for MCT, it seemed logical that there’d be another refuelling step in Mars orbit.
Comments Musk has made since seem to reinforce the idea that the main ship lands on Mars, is refuelled on the surface, and launches directly back to Earth. It never goes into Mars orbit. The main ship is also the only lander.
But personally, I think having an orbital refuelling step in Mars orbit makes a butt-load of sense.
[Even if the three steps (Earth-surface to Earth-orbit, Earth orbit to Mars orbit, and Mars surface to Mars orbit) initially use the same type of ship, you can gradually optimise them with each generation. Until you end up with Earth-shuttles and tankers. Mars shuttles and tankers. And in between, the true deep space ships.]
The lunar concept was revised largely because it would have required Nova. What Mr. Musk is proposing is larger than anything considered back then.
As I understand the Aldrin cycler, the spaceship approaches Mars/earth on a ballistic trajectory, eliminating the need for huge delta-v at each end; the issue of transferring to/ from the surface remains.
FWIW, I’ve alawys thought that any SpaceX lunar lander would reuse the propulsion system, the inner pressure vessel and the control systems but arranged on a different structure (possibly a H-shaped ‘space crane’ with the main engines at the tops of the vericals of the ‘H’). That way you could just remove the pressure vessel and crew airlock from the central spine and replace it with various types of cargo.
And again the fractured and unaligned space exploration community, Mars vs moon vs asteroid vs space station, humans vs robots, scientists vs operations vs engineers, politicians vs everyone, one pile of money vs another, etc. continues to push any actual gains or leaps of humanity off Earth farther into the future. Going to Mars is as far away as it has ever been; yet again 20-30 years down the road.
Oh, and that future Earth thing is looking quite tentative given the ever increasing population of the planet and the inability of humans to actually get along in a globalized culture. Another 2 billion humans in 35 years, and anyone who thinks that any of our current problems will be solved or made better is delusional.
I fail to see why all the discussion revolves around what to do in a sequential fashion. Sure all these plans to return to the moon, capture asteroids, explore Mars are all very expensive and if they all had to be done by a single entity they would have to be prioritized.
But we are entering an era where things are not all dependent on governments. There are private companies that are now blazing their own path regardless of what governments want to do (or can afford to do).
SpaceX seems to be focused on the Mars mission better than anyone so if any agency wants to work on something else at the same time, that’s fine.
Sometimes folks actually make sense:
If God wanted man to become a spacefaring species, He would have given man a moon.
— Krafft Ehricke
The Moon is the first milestone on the road to the stars.
— Arthur C. Clarke
The Moon is a white strange world, great, white, soft-seeming globe in the night sky, and what she actually communicates to me across space I shall never fully know. But the Moon that pulls the tides, and the Moon that controls the menstrual periods of women, and the Moon that touches the lunatics, she is not the mere dead lump of the astronomist… . When we describe the Moon as dead, we are describing the deadness in ourselves. When we find space so hideously void, we are describing our own unbearable emptiness.
— D.H. Lawrence, Phoenix: The Posthumous Papers of D.H. Lawrence, pt. 4, 1930.
Human interest level does not equate to “cheaper” in any sense. Me thinks you are being contrary to your final sentence.
I am of the LEO first school. The first step to the Moon and Mars is practical low cost access to LEO and a substantial infrastructure there for refueling and maintaining BEO transport vehicles.
If we want to go beyond LEO, the Moon makes sense as a next step since the cost is less. To colonize Mars we need high thrust SEP or NEP, preferably a reusable stage that can make the trip back and forth between near-Earth and near-Mars.
Whether it is worth going depends on the price. If we cannot afford to sustain human presence, it will soon be another Apollo.
I think a lot of people pushing for “Mars Immediately,” despite claims of wanting to establish colonies, etc., are really just motivated by wanting to see it happen in their lifetime – and not just in their lifetime, but without having to wait through much of their lifetime.
They’ll be happy with it being “another Apollo.” Not happy enough to stop them from griping afterwards about how “we gave up on Mars,” but definitely much happier living to see an unsustainable program happen that they can later gripe about than to see development towards a sustainable program that doesn’t land within their lifetime… or even near the end of their projected lifespan.
The latest crop of human Mars mission enthusiasts seem have less patience waiting for a Mars landing than they do for the next generation of gaming consoles to come out.
Sorry, but I’ve been waiting for three or four decades, am fairly patient, and do not own and have never owned a gaming console. I just think a sustainable presence requires producing as much as possible locally, and doing so with the greatest ease. Gas versus dry chemistry, and easier access to hydrogen (access everywhere, not just at the poles), carbon and nitrogen, makes Mars more attractive than the Moon.
Your point about dry chemistry bears closer consideration.
Could you more specific? Consideration or elaboration by me, or consideration by someone else?
Again I’m being unclear 🙂 I meant to say that chemistry hereabouts is of the aqueous variety, largely, and that dry chemistry requires a very different mind set.
I guess I was the person being unclear. For all practical purposes, it’s going to be wet chemistry. That works best. But having to take a dry solid, dig it up, grind it up and dissolve it is a pain. Pumping in gas from a low pressure environment and then compressing it is less work and easier to automate.
Adapt ‘to Mars’ hardware to lunar, not vice versa. SLS and Orion designed for lunar only resulted the inability to reach an asteroid, a decades old stepping stone to Mars. The past decade shows that lunar develops the wrong hardware/ mission philosophy. Everything is compromised forward. EP from L2 <-> Mars.
Avoiding gravity wells forces NASA to step up to the in-space transportation, crew health, abundant power, economics and reuse challenges, not ignore them. The reward is missions.
The 3-6 month trip in microg/full GCR is completely different than the lunar surface. The suit design is different than ISS/lunar. Landing on heavy objects on Mars with an atmosphere will require multiple precursor missions. Shorter trip times require pre-positioned supplies and propellant: near zero boil-off depots required-not for lunar. Asteroids– more resources than lunar.
Congress and NASA and even we here can toss this issue back and forth for years. However, other folks want to go to the moon and all the leading launch providers (except China) are NASA partners. Whether passively (through access to their knowledge base by their partners) or actively (through unfunded Space Act agreements), NASA will be going to the Moon on timelines that precede their journey to Mars and which have no door for Congress to stick their foot in.
NASA continued to send men to the moon long after the public lost interest — one reason for multiple destinations. The primary reason is that a significant amount of new technology will be developed on the path to Mars while at the same time creating new markets vs zero.
Moon first has cost billions. Wrong heat shield for Orion and could not return from an asteroid. Solids with crew so NASA’s Ares I could not loft them. Staging Ares V for Mars resulted in 70t of boiloff, with no technical way to achieve the 0.1% per day assumed. SLS launch costs 10X the smaller fleet and NASA has no need for HLV in the first place. Go Figure.
To infinity and beyond..infinity is the time scale.
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Loved the videos. 😉
Again, humanity will be going back to the Moon on a timeline that runs slightly ahead of our best Mars timeline and way ahead of any Congressionally lead and funded.
However, while NASA won’t be allowed to lead those efforts, the spin-off program provides several avenues for them to be involved in them without a Congressional nod of approval. Furthermore, those who are not NASA partners will play catch-up and have to reinvent several wheels along the way while those who are NASA partners bleed NASA’s database and expertise as they go.
Just being moon first is only a part of the battle. It needs to be a sustainable evolutionary architecture.
The description here: “NASA tried to relive the glory days of Apollo by focusing on one-use vehicles that would transport everything to the moon from Earth. Apollo was a fantastic achievement, but it was not sustainable, which was in part why the program was canceled in the early 1970s. Bush’s vision proved too expensive to sustain as well,”
aptly describes the current Orion spacecraft just as it does Apollo. Orion/SLS is so expensive we can only afford to fly a crew of a few people every couple years? Shuttle was going in the right direction and should have been improved upon. Instead we threw it all away and the system replacing it is several times more expensive/less sustainable. REALLY DUMB! ISS was going in the right direction and for 20 years its design and further development/improvement has gone nowhere. ISS PEOPLE TODAY SIT ON THEIR HANDS! DUMB! I am unaware of any work even going on on a new sustainable architecture. NASA is NOT on the road to sustainability.
It’s interesting to see some people saying that Mars is the first step to a multi-planet species and to the stars, while also saying that the moon is not only not a step to Mars, but an incompatible distraction. Different technical requirements, etc.
I’m no engineer, but something tells me that the tech for a starship might be different than the tech for a Mars lander.
I’m also thinking that the tech for a Mars colony habitat will be different from the tech for a Mars lander.
Also thinking that while moon colony tech and Mars colony tech may be different, they do have a couple of things in common. They’re both not on the Earth we apparently need to get the hell off of… and they both would have nothing humans can breathe outside of them, so apart from EVAs, both would be the whole “world” of these colonists. Indoors.
Obviously, if the habitat is intended for SCIENTIFIC purposes, for research on the worlds themselves, then things are vastly different. You DEFINITELY need a Mars habitat for in-place human study of Mars.
But oddly I don’t see a lot of discussion of planetary science. Not much indication that the reason people want to go is to dig around in the dirt and figure things out. Mostly just talk of going for the sake of going, and going because it’s “what we do,” and because we need to not have all our eggs in the Earth basket. Also a bit of “to advance technology.”
Somehow it seems to be an unspoken rule that the moon as a stop on the way doesn’t meet these last few criteria, but I haven’t seen an explanation of why it doesn’t.
I suppose that’s true. “Go to the Moon because we can do useful stuff there, and there’s international political support for doing so” is certainly a valid reason when this all basically depends on governmental support.
Moon vs. Mars is what I see this is all about. Anyway, here is something by Thomas Matula from my diatribes folder. It might be going OT but I think worth posting here for a perspective.
—quote—
I blame most of the destination argument on the creation of the Mars underground in the 1980’s. Prior to that NASA was focused on using the Shuttle for industrialization in LEO with projects like demonstrating the repair and return of satellites, building structural items in orbit, tethers, etc., all logical starting points for building a Cislunar industrial capability that would have given us the Solar System. NASA didn’t even have plans to send robots to Mars. By advocating that we needed to skip the Moon and go rushing off to Mars they started this entire useless destination debate that has paralyzed space policy ever since.
Although their arguments made no rational or economic sense, falling back on outdated ideas like “manifest destiny” and painting Mars like a second Earth, they struck some cord among a very vocal hard core group that has shouted down any rational space strategy ever since. We see it now with Senators force feeding the SLS with money it doesn’t need while starving commercial crew because the SLS would, in theory, be able to take astronauts to Mars. As a result the ISS is only one Soyuz failure away from being abandoned.
We need to give Mars a rest and once again spend the limited budget on building capabilities in space, space tugs, orbital refueling, lunar LOX, that would serve for going to all the interesting destinations beyond Earth, not keep wasting money on plans to go to a single one that is already well mapped and explored.
—end quote—
To be fair to those disgusting and utterly corrupt Senators, they mostly aren’t interested in Mars. Most of them are moon fans wanting to wind back to Constellation, which was trying to wind back to Apollo. If you wanted to go to Mars, you wouldn’t be supporting SLS.
Planners in the late 50’s to early 60’s saw the moon as the natural first target, after building a space station.
It’s also true that they thought we’d land on Venus by 1965. Venera 4 crushed that idea (sorry).
I’m sorry, but that’s not what the Mars Underground was about. It was simply a bunch of people who showed, contrary to what NASA was saying, that there are no insurmountable technical obstacles to manned Mars missions. This was in an era when NASA and most others felt that it was so completely impossible that it would take impossible amounts of money and decades to do even the most minimal Mars mission. Most of the people involved were also in favor of sustainable LEO infrastructure and had nothing against lunar missions or science.
I think you are confusing the Mars Underground with the much more publicized rhetoric of one member (Bob Zubrin) who is very much a Mars-only advocate.
It’s fun to argue about Moon vs Mars (I’m a Lunaphile myself) but the sad and sorry truth is that the US federal government has almost zero interest in human space flight. This will continue until some entity starts to make money out there and a competition between other governments gets going. None of them really want another theater of potential conflict so our government will lead the parade to lock up the moon from mining. Ultimately, I believe the very way we govern on Earth will have to change to make humans spacefaring. It won’t be pretty but it will be interesting.
The changes you describe might just happen in reverse order.
A determined and well-funded advocate, along with successful in situ resource utilization, could mean the establishment of a self-sustaining colony on Mars. It has more resources than the Moon and is a less hostile environment. It’s also sufficiently far from Earth that imposition of political will from Earth would be very substantially harder on a group of colonists who decide to establish their own government.
The creativity required of those colonists in a harsh environment, far in time and space from Earth, could prove to be the source of a wide range of innovations, not least of which might be in the forms of human government.
Pick a Corner. Then Turn It. We Turn them one by one, we get somewhere.
There and back again for Mars is too long for Apollo style “Flags and Footprints”. By the time you have the tech to go and come back successfully, you also have the tech to go and stay. The only difference is an unmanned resupply infrastructure for continued habitation.
Antarctica is but one supply ship (or two) from failure.
Some say that SpaceX is going straight to Mars, but there are efforts by others with regard to the moon that SpaceX is and and will be involved in within their Mars timeline. Doing both is not just possible, some of it is contracted. At least one Google Lunar XPrize competitor has signed to fly on a Falcon in 2017. Moon First isn’t a question anymore.