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Exploration

A Defeatist View of Human Exploration

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
August 24, 2012
Filed under ,

Column: Manned missions to Mars aren’t just sci-fi, opinion, Lou Friedman, USA Today
“Human travel to Mars is inevitable. Human journeys beyond Mars will be virtual. This makes Mars the ultimate destination for humans, in body at least. Once we realize that, the context of robotic missions like Spirit, Opportunity and, now, Curiosity changes. President Obama may actually understand this; he is the first president to announce that human expeditions to Mars (he said by the mid-2030s) is the goal of America’s space program. The president may understand it, but his administration doesn’t. It has cut out most future Mars plans in NASA. That disconnect needs fixing.”
Keith’s note: I simply do not agree with Lou Friedman when he suggests that personal, physical human exploration is going to be limited to Mars – with no human venturing beyond in person. This is narrow, defeatist thinking in the extreme. Friedman talks about the potential amazing technological advances in on sentence (electronics) for future robotic spacecraft – right after he says that human life support technology is stuck in the 1960s and apparently is immune to similar technological advances. He’s already given up and decided what is hard and what is not.
Alas, Carl Sagan spoke for decades about humans inside starships. Not everyone sees Mars as the “utlimate destination” as Friedman does. Rather, many see Mars as just a first step – one of many steps to be taken by human boots – accompanied by robots.
But I do agree with Friedman on one point: if you are going to set a goal i.e. sending humans to Mars, then the monetary resources to build up to that capability need to be in place to enable the development of that capability – now.
As for being Friedman’s statement that Presient Obama “is the first president to announce that human expeditions to Mars (he said by the mid-2030s) is the goal of America’s space program.” I guess Lou missed this 2004 statement from President Bush: “With the experience and knowledge gained on the moon, we will then be ready to take the next steps of space exploration: human missions to Mars and to worlds beyond.”. This was immediately followed by the President’s Commission on Moon, Mars and Beyond. In 1989 his father said that America would be “sending humans back to the Moon, and ultimately sending astronauts to Mars”. I was at both events and clearly heard the word “Mars” both times.

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

120 responses to “A Defeatist View of Human Exploration”

  1. Engineer_in_Houston says:
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    To paraphrase Scotty: You can’t defy the laws of physics.
     

    • kcowing says:
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      And a lot of people turned back when they reached the shore of the   Mississippi (heading east, and, later, heading west) because they did not know how to build a boat to cross. Someone eventually took up the challenge and did so.

    • Michael Reynolds says:
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      That statement is meaningless until we fully define the “law of physics”, as in complete the standard model first.

  2. Engineer_in_Houston says:
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    To paraphrase Scotty: You kinne defy the laws of physics.

    • kcowing says:
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      So, its not possible to send humans to visit Jupiter’s or Saturn’s moons?  Asteroids “beyond Mars”? Why?  Friedman talks about “The human brain will be integrated with that of the spacecraft,
      utilizing advances even more profound than those in the physical and
      electronic technologies.” So why can he get away justifying his stance using technology that does not yet exist to trump technology that does (or soon will)?

      • Tod_R_Lauer says:
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         The radiation level throughout the Galilean moons is about 6000 rad/hour, or a lethal dose in 5 minutes or so.  You will not be able to go there unless you hide behind immense shields.  You will not be able to walk on any of the surfaces of the moons in spacesuits.  Titan might be fun, but hydrogen cyanide is a major component of the local chemistry.

        • Steve Whitfield says:
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          The water pressure only a handful of meters down in the ocean will kill you even quicker, but we found a way around it.  Now we send people to depths previously thought to be completely impossible, using more than one method.  Time and a willingness to invent can achieve a lot of impossible things, if you’re willing to try.  Let’s let physics define the relationships in nature, not the limitations.

          Steve

          • Tod_R_Lauer says:
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             So what?  I didn’t say that you couldn’t go there if you really, really wanted to.  But you’re if you’re going to have to work like crazy to do it, you better have a damn good reason for it over other alternatives.  Underwater exploration is in fact a perfect analogy.  No one goes swimming at those depths, and over time more and more work has been done remotely.  I also don’t know what “previously impossible” means.  Trieste showed got to the Challenger Deep 52 years ago, but this demonstration did not stop the development of remote exploration.

  3. Engineer_in_Houston says:
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    To paraphrase Scotty: You kinne defy the laws of physics! Interstellar travel by humans is not very likely to happen – at least for a very, very long time.

    • Steve Whitfield says:
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      Engineer_in_Houston,

      Heavier than air machines will never fly.

      Rockets won’t work in space because there’s nothing for them to push against.

      Steve

      • Mader Levap says:
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        Oooh, I can play this game too.
        Perpetuum mobile is impossible.
        You cannot build spaceship that is faster than speed of light.
        Your cites are menaningless. There always will be detractors for anything, right or wrong.

        • Steve Whitfield says:
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          I listed things that have been done.  You listed things that are theoretically impossible.  How is that the same game?

  4. kcowing says:
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    I am part of that swarm so I am probably just as guilty. That said, and you touch on this, what do we do about this inbred ready-fire-aim behavior that seems to permeate discussion (online) of space policy? When will the remaining 99.999% of those affected have their chance to speak up?  Frustrating.

    • Steve Whitfield says:
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      Keith,

      One way to encourage a change is clearly through sites like NASA Watch.  I think it’s more likely we can spread good ideas from non-biased sites to the the ones that Mike references than have their inferior “dialog” come back and poison the good sites.

      Perhaps there is also a possibility in adopting the method that the newspapers and their web sites use: guest commentary.  You can pick only what you want and you (you specifically, Keith) can probably get enough good stuff for free from in-the-know people who share your concerns on a regular basis.  As always, the key lies in what people are overhearing and repeating to one another.  Control the information flow and you control the dominant ideas.  Is this totally ethical?  Who cares; this is a species survival issue and history usually redefines the ethics to favor the winners, anyhow.

      Steve

      • no one of consequence says:
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        Concur. The issue is channelling effective advocacy so that it constructively reinforces, and “less effective” “advocacy” destructively cancels.

        So the “noise” of various kinds/sources diminishes, and the “signal” … builds.

        You see that happening in small ways here already, in the evolution of commentary by many here, generally for the better.

        As to mechanism, many possibilities to enhance.

        In general, simply by having the conversations in the first place, one is serving, albeit slowly, that end.

        add:
        Mr Steve,
        Can you suggest examples?
        Sure thing. Bear in mind, I’ve been working to attempt this for over a decade, when I noticed the power (and chaos) of group communication. To that end, I’ve worked with start-ups and other companies to do this. Why it doesn’t happen is because it interfears with the means people choose to shape opinion to be channelled as they see fit, rather than as an emerging constituency (or as some fear, a mob). Before Larry Lessig left Stanford, we discussed this at length … he wanted to use it for “truth squads” in his concept. Powerful and provacative.

        OK, the key idea is assembling components of “wisdom” as endorsed by others that have been seen to have identified that property. Note the hard part is avoiding group think/rants/popular untruths et al being so catagorized. You do this by allowing everyone to select phrases/sentences/paragraphs from comments, and attributing them to a term from acarefully chosen list of terms, where multiple entries fall into a smaller list of actual typed catagories which include (rant, wisdom, history, witness, noise). This provides a hidden, data driven, invisible to viewers, means to characterize by topics the contributions in comments. Wise who respond to wise (statistically) who appear to reinforce same topics, get the opportunity to synopsize the shared “wisdom” as a specially formatted comment extension that must be approved by a moderator. The idea is that these accumulate, allowing the blog writers to report on the nascent wisdom emerging, and to provoke competition amongst wise groups for fleshing out and accumulating more wise, refined perspective e.g. you encourage concerted, careful assembly of wise perspective that can instigate action.

        People get enthused when the see “a plan coming together”. If you can get 50-100 really good people carefully interweaving good ideas, thats enough to feed the blog mill to started reasonating over the blogosphere.

        I’ve done this before. Where it gets deconstructed is when people try to morph it into something to “sell” a position irrespective of it being wise … because it undercuts the “seller” …

        Real wisdom is obvious to all, comes in many forms, many walks of life. We simply have to recognize it and … key point … build upon it, like assembling Lego’s …

        add:

        Almost forgot – never underestimate how inconvienent, annoying, disruptive to certain “communities” real wisdom is. I was naive enough to think otherwise once.

        • Steve Whitfield says:
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          As to mechanism, many possibilities to enhance

          Mr. C.,

          Can you suggest examples? — examples which the average person can take advantage of, as opposed to only those with “inside” knowledge, since such insiders are probably the least likely to make statements committing themselves to a minority cause.

          Thanks,

          Steve

    • myth says:
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      Someone needs to write this book “Everything you thought you knew about space is wrong ( or severely dated )”

  5. Matt_Bille says:
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    I am puzzled by the statement that President Obama is the first leader to recognize our goal is a human voyage to Mars. What does the author think the goal of the Vision for Space Exploration was?

    • kcowing says:
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      Excellent point – just added more commentary.

    • muomega0 says:
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      The flaws in the VSE policy include:
      – allowed HLV to be built
      – stated incorrectly that the moon will prepare NASA for Mars and other destinations
      – provided a deadline to force lunar first at the expense of Mars

      Most everyone agrees that HSF cannot coexist with a HLV, and even with a larger budget, a much cheaper architecture exists.

      The technologies need for Mars have way more commonality with an asteroid mission *as a stepping stone not a destination* (think lunar fly by) than lunar missions.  It’s not even close.

      So Mars was clearly not the goal.

      In Summary:
          – No Constellation and asteroids (and with lower launch costs a few lunar missions can be flexibly added )

         *versus*

          B) HLVs and no lunar hardware being built.

  6. Matt_Bille says:
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    I’m puzzled that a writer with such experience could call the President the first leader to recognize our goal is Mars.  What does he think the Vision for Space Exploration set as a goal? 

  7. DTARS says:
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    “The Space Review, and half a dozen other space-related web sites aren’t really there to discuss advances in spaceflight”

    What if the people that came here, where here to share helpful possible ideas that could lead to others being motavated to come up with solutions.

    Below is my version of a dragon trunk beam which you could dock small space walking vehicles I call ticks. I was surprised to learn that NASA is scared to do space walks because they don’t have space suits with hatches in the back which would make space walking safe for the commercial industry.

    Just and Idea sorry to be off subject again!

    Not only did NASA never plan for the way to get to space after shuttle, They never planned to make space walking safer for us average folks.

    Isn’t a Tick (Safe Hatched Inflatable Space Suits) one of those boats that needs to be built at the shore of the mississippi??????

    I’m planning to make some rough pictures of Ticks just for fun.

    I don’t have any fancy software, so bare with me.

    Safe Space suits, what a novel idea lololol

    The picture is of 5 dragon trunks. lol I still need to add hatches and tick suits lol, the front dragon could be a dragon tug or it could be used as a node or air lock. The dragon in back is your safety capsule. Couldn’t we build such a beam out of junk trunks? Couldn’t we start small with spaceships by turning space suites into tiny spaceships?? The incremental approach to spaceship building lol.

    The Tick Pilot

    • Paul451 says:
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      Why do they need legs? The way you’ve drawn them, they’re classic “EVA Pods”, except the legs. Kind of like this…

      http://drell-7.deviantart.c

      …or any number of variations. The advantage is that it’s a hard-suit, runs at full pressure, so no pre-breathing before an EVA, just climb in and seal-up. The whole thing docks with the outside of the station, meaning you don’t have to depressurise a capsule to get out. But the life-support system can be internally accessed for easier maintenance while it’s docked.

      You have put tele-op claws in addition to spacesuit-like “sleeves”. Which is a reasonable variant. (Usually people do one or the other.) It allows a second astronaut in the station to tele-op the claws to help the EVA astronaut. Doubles up the man-power. (Although you’d want to holster the “sleeves” when the astronaut has his arms back inside the Pod, so they don’t wave around.)

      • DTARS says:
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        The idea of the robot arms is to asist the astronaut. Holding him in place or using heavy equipment tools. Seems to me that a design like this is as all purpose as possible. I wanted the astronaut to be able to use his feet for standing in a platform if he wants. His arms for fine work when needed. Also he could use a command where his robot arms move copy the movement of his human arms. Tinker check my last few posts on this subject. I agree with you about the 2001 pods and can’t understand why we don’t have mini ships today. Anyway the dragon beam and ticks, pods, or Paul’s trash can needs to be done soon!!!!!!!

        • Paul451 says:
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          The reason space-suits run at 1/4 atm pressure, and therefore require hours of pre-breathing before an EVA, is because the joints get harder to bend at higher pressure. “Hard suits” use constant-volume joints are eliminate that problem, but they tend to be bulky and hard to use anyway.

          Your design is essentially a regular space-suit with a big snail-shell on the back. But there’s no purpose to that extra “shell”. Look at the suits NASA designed for the SEV. They can be accessed through a hatch. Doesn’t require a huge snail-shell. (Even the robo-arms could be attached to the MMU, if required.)

          The point of EVA Pods is to eliminate as many of the joints as possible. That way they can hold a full 1 atm pressure, and the astronaut can just jump in, wearing his normal station overalls or shirt-sleeves, seal up and go. Reduces EVA prep time from 12 hours to 5 minutes.

          [I can see that there might be value in having a pair of arms, even with bulky constant-volume-joints, but not legs too.]

      • DTARS says:
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        Thanks for your input paul. I feel very stronging that we need a Eva/robot/spacesuit type vehicles soon. I feel the use of the shuttle for years and years has robbed use of this capabilty too. Seems like NASA didn’t want safe spacewalking, Not in their interest, same old crap.
        The arms can be removed to add different Arms or even legges. a few posts back I landed a tick on the moon from L1 lol how much fuel would one need to do that stunt???
        Going farther paul think of a tick like this bolted a surf board shield entering earths atomsphere and using dracos to stay stable and super Dracos to land just like a Dragon. lol Spacesuit reentry from LEO lol

        You could launch your RICHIE RICH thrill secker on a recoverable falcon and part of the farring is your return shield. And you fly in orbit like a Mercury capsule. Drop by a Bigelow station and surf home like silver surfer lolol. Dragon style lol
         Once its perfected you could launch ticks built for two for romantic orbital flights. Take a romantick walk in leo. lol the gemmi series lol.

        Once Elon relights that used merlin the tourism race will soon be on. Tick should be made to be fun!!!!! Not trash cans.

        • Paul451 says:
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          I think you’re missing the point. What makes space-suits difficult/time-consuming is all those joints. Minimise the number of joints and the suits are much easier to build, much safer to use, and vastly quicker to use. Hours of prep time eliminated. (And hours of post-use maintenance eliminated too.)

          So think tiny space-ship, not over-sized space-suit.

          Re: Landing on the moon/reentering Earth in a “Tick”.
          In the ’80s, I recall someone trying to design a (privately funded) Lunar mission that would be done entirely in a space-suit. (The “lander” would be a rocket backpack (with strap on drop-tanks), reentry would use an inflatable heat-shield.)

          “RICHIE RICH thrill secker”…”romantic orbital flights”

          Don’t think of space “tourism” like Earth tourism. Space tourism should be thought of as more like scientific field-work on Earth. Researchers travel commercially (or hire existing ships/planes/trucks) instead of building their own. (Even when they build their own, it’s usually just a modified commercial vehicle.)

          The idea is to get it cheap enough that small governments and large universities can fund their own “space program” without relying on the US or European governments. Even those “Richie Rich thrill seekers” will be more like James Cameron diving the Marianas Trench, or a rich guy funding a private archaeological expedition.

          Get human space-flight cheap enough and you also change the equation in robotics. It becomes cheaper to launch a couple of guys in a Dragon than to spend half a billion dollars building a specialised robot or a new satellite.

          [Question: Why “Tick”?]

          • no one of consequence says:
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             MMSEV

          • DTARS says:
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            MMSEV
            Those dogs, they stole me orginal idea lolol, but I still think my concept, my version is be better. I better get my scale out and show my versions better.
            make my case lolol.

            Target practice lol

            Any way fun to see an MMSEV
             
            Mr. C

            Thanks

            🙂

    • John Gardi says:
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       DTARS:

      Beautiful work there! Right out of the tinker’s handbook! Your Dragon trunk picture is kind of like the idea I had for selling Trunks to the Russians (although, I wouldn’t sell them the time of day considering their actions in the Middle East lately). As for your Ticks, great drawings there, but my favorite EVA vehicle is still the Pods in ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’, which still stand the test of time IMHO.

      tinker

  8. Steve Whitfield says:
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    There was a time when you could turn to Louis Friedman for an informed, unbiased and well thought out opinion.  Apparently things have changed with time.  I guess we all get somewhat less positive thinking as we get older.

    Steve

  9. Helen Simpson says:
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    This is a thoughtful essay by Lou Friedman, and an equally thoughtful
    response from Keith. In fact, it’s a refreshing new question about space
    policy that moves us forward from some of the simplistic questions
    we’ve been digging on for decades.

    The point that Lou makes, that human travels beyond Mars are
    unnecessary, makes some sense from the point of view of (mostly
    scientific) discovery. Our scientific intelligence can increasingly be
    built into robotic surrogates. In fact, one might well wonder why we
    even need to send humans to the surface of Mars for scientific
    discovery.

    But as Lou says, Mars has a long history of compelling space travel
    narrative. There are story lines associated with Mars that build our
    interest in having humans there. We see a challenge in not so much
    learning things about Mars as in fulfilling these narrative dreams. I
    mean, how many story lines do we have about colonists fighting for their
    freedom and defending their villages on Titan?

    But as for all of our human space flight efforts, as our robotic and
    telerobotic capabilities increase dramatically, what justifies human
    space flight is more and more precisely one thing. Colonization (or
    settlement). You can’t do that robotically. So as long as the ultimate
    goal is to move people somewhere else, robotic efforts are just a step
    in that direction. In fact colonization and settlement are goals that
    are entirely absent in NASA space policy. As our robotic capabilities
    increase, that’s increasingly an embarrassment for our space policy.

    But we have some visions of Mars colonization and settlement. We think
    we can see it. Yeah, it’s not a great place to live, but it’s a lot
    easier to live there than on the ice at Europa, or in the cloudtops of
    Neptune. We really don’t have any picture of human colonization and
    settlement anywhere beyond Mars.

    But the profound question that Lou’s essay raises is, if Mars if the end
    of the line for humans, what’s the ultimate purpose of human space
    flight? If it isn’t just to “go farther”, which is sort of a lame goal
    anyway, then what is it? How do we justify large investments in human
    space flight if the enterprise is fundamentally a dead-end? Very much a disconnect that needs fixing.

    • myth says:
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      The choice isnt only between science and settlement as the driving goal – and it rarely has been in history of new frontiers.

      Economic development is a much more powerful engine, and i hope Planetary Resources is not the last group that picks this as their goal. Incidentally, scientific advancement and settlement are often observed side effects of economic development of new frontiers .. 

      • Helen Simpson says:
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        Nope. Sorry. You don’t need humans running bulldozers and hefting pickaxes to develop resources on other planets. Sorry, but that’s a non-starter. Systems without humans underfoot will be emplaced faster, and reach profitability quicker.

        Scientific advancement and settlement USED to be side effects of economic development, because economic development USED to require people on site. Not at all clear it will any longer.

        If you decide to live in the past, you’re setting yourself up for a real disappointment.

        • myth says:
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          ::You don’t need humans running bulldozers and hefting pickaxes to develop resources on other planets.
          Absolutely agreed, i work in the field of robotics. Economic development of space, with the great example of comsat industry, will very very rarely call for human presence in space. And IMO there is nothing wrong with that. But then i consider robotics to be the extension of humans.

          However, if further economic development was the driving goal, and we actually had large scale activities aimed at that, _some_ human presence would very likely follow for several reasons – for some  tasks humans would probably simply work out to be more cost efficient. And i know a space repairman doesn’t sound as glamorous as a brave explorer, but it would definitely be justified. ( If you note, brave ISS explorers actually are space repairmen more often than not .. )

          • Helen Simpson says:
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            Poor argument. So IF we did economic development, then maybe we’d find a need for human space flight? That’s policy-lame.

            If you define exploration as learning about new places and assessing their value, humans in situ are simply unnecessary any more.

            The issue, which your words bring to mind, is that we actually don’t know what we need human space flight for. As I said, one clear role for it is colonization and settlement, to the extent colonization and settlement of space is important. But our Congress has never said it’s important.

            Lou’s point is a striking one. But what I find especially odd is that he draws the line at Mars. Why there? Why not the Moon? Why not LEO? Why not L-5, for that matter? It seems that Lou sees Mars as a potential site for colonization and settlement so indeed, his rationale is firmly grounded in that goal. He thinks that emplacing human civilization there protects it against disease, war, and natural disasters. So why isn’t that the rationale that we hear from Congress?

            When is our nation going to decide upon, and admit to, what we really need human space flight for? A disconnect that needs fixing.

          • myth says:
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            >>That’s policy-lame.
            Better than vague rhetoric about inspiring generations and dubious scientific value that can be never clearly demonstrated, or pretty weak spinoff claims or any other lame justification given for for HSF right now.

            >>When is our nation going to decide upon, and admit to, what we really need human space flight for?

            Thats exactly what i am trying to steer the conversation towards. And again, once a serious informed debate starts, a lot of space advocates don’t like where facts and logic takes it and fall back to waxing rhetoric.

    • John Gardi says:
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       Helen:

      You are right when you say ‘Space Policy’ is the root problem here. The only person I know of with a decent space policy is Elon Musk.

      NASA: We’ll ‘explore’ and do ‘science’ and if we eventually find a way for humans to live in space longer we’ll, maybe, think about, well…

      Elon Musk: We will colonize Mars. We’ll start now! We may run into problems along the way that will slow us down… but they won’t stop us!

      I’d put my money (and I will when it’s possible) behind Elon Musk, not a government agency that’s long outlived it’s original purpose, crippled by the self-seeking, petty infighting of it’s check signers.

      tinker

    • Rob says:
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      The ultimate purpose for spaceflight is that one day this planet will not be habitable anymore.  It could be bilions of years from now when the sun changes but more likely it will be much sooner from over population, volcanic activity, asteroid strike, nuclear warfare, climate change, etc.

      The real challenge long term won’t be spaceflight, it will be terraforming.

  10. Dewey Vanderhoff says:
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     I am in the camp of human exploration and exploitation of Mars being  overrated. All of space flight  revolves around trying to defeat various gravity wells…launching out of Earth , accelerating,decelerating, then going head -to-head with Mars’ gravity well and shedding all that energy to return to zero state….for what ?

    The only worthy goals I see are going to  asteroids and  some depleted comet cores and/or volatile bodies , setting up camp, and going to work. Much easier to get to and stay with ; much easier to get back from in the gravity ledger. Plus, they might actually have some useful resources  and a revenue opportunity.  Usinf solar power, even solar sails, and electric propulation or Ad Astra’s VASIMIR concept to sail between low-grav bodies suddenly becomes attractive.  Mars does offer some volatiles — atmosphere is thin and 99 percent CO2, but water ice is available…who’s working on a Mars surface fuel refinery.

    What we REALLY need are swarms of low cost mass produced robotic  prospectors backed up with communication relay sats…interplanetary drones for lack of a better term. The need to get out among the asteroids ( especially the two Jovian Trojan fields ) and start looking for minerals and fuel stocks.

    The first drone that finds a small metal-rich asteroid full of Rare Earths or titanium or beryllium or whateverium  will set off the equivalent of a Yukon-Klondike gold rush. And suddenly Elon Musk will be building Falcon 9 boosters like Allis-Chalmers once made tractors. And the Energia booster will have a mission to hurl huge payloads outwards. ( The Russians already know how to assembly-line rockets, so….)

    Mars is overrated. The Moon is only slightly more useful but only because of its proximity and maybe its water ice , and possibly Helium-3  if there’s anything to that. The real carrots for our space donkey sticks are the smaller bodies that surround us and permeate our local star system

    • Robert van de Walle says:
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      One thing Martian industry would have going for it is a MUCH lower delta-V to orbit and escape velocity, compared to Earth. The old SR-71 goes fast enough to reach orbit over Mars. Mass fraction for Earth rockets is a few percent. Martian rockets get mass fractions of tens of percent.

      Mars orbit would be an obvious choice for building a starship (when and if we ever decide to do so). All your arguments about those small bodies littering the asteroid belt are are valid. Gather those resources over Mars for processing, manufacturing and assembly!

      • Paul451 says:
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        What does Mars add to those activities? If you’re “gathering resources” from the asteroids, what is Mars for?

        [You get an even lower delta-V-to-orbit if you don’t build your industry at the bottom of another bloody gravity well in the first place.]

      • John Gardi says:
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        Robert;

        Mars also has two pre-built space stations (or starship hulls) in orbit. They’re call Phobos and Deimos! ☺

        tinker

  11. Ralphy999 says:
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    I am hoping that the necessary scientific and technological progress will make manned far space exploration possible. I am also hoping that this will transfer to our economy’s techological and manufacturing processes as well. This is and should be our most important goal.

  12. Anonymous says:
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    I found this site Rocketpunk and MacGuffinite at http://www.projectrho.com/r… which looks at 20th century sci-fi and the expectations of what 21st century will be like. A couple thought provoking paragraphs regarding Mars. But this was back in 1940s and 1950s with sci fi authors were all white men (now a shrinking demographic) and when USA was an industrial giant only serious threat was Soviet Union. And also back then there were lots more experimentalists (garage tinkerers), more high school metal shop and crafts classes, and kids can get things like home chemistry sets. 

    Quotes from site:

    The sad fact of the matter is that it is about a thousand times cheaper to colonize Antarctica than it is to colonize Mars. Antarctica has plentiful water and breathable air, Mars does not. True, the temperature of Mars does occasionally grow warmer than Antarctica, but at its coldest Mars can get 50° C colder than Antarctica. In comparison to Mars, Antarctica is a garden spot. Yet there is no Antarctican land-rush. One would suspect that there is no Martian land-rush either, except among a few who find the concept to be romantic.

    [ and ]

    I’ll believe in people settling Mars at about the same time I see people setting the Gobi Desert. The Gobi Desert is about a thousand times as hospitable as Mars and five hundred times cheaper and easier to reach. Nobody ever writes “Gobi Desert Opera” because, well, it’s just kind of plonkingly obvious that there’s no good reason to go there and live. It’s ugly, it’s inhospitable and there’s no way to make it pay. Mars is just the same, really. We just romanticize it because it’s so hard to reach.

  13. myth says:
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    The entire debate still assumes that the driving force behind it all is science ( or doing a science, as our good friend sarcasticrover  would say )

    If you step away from that, and assume either economic development of space and its resources OR human settlement, the debate would change drastically.

    But of course, then the entire way we are doing space would drastically change as well, and scientists would not like that too much – and neither would the HSF crowd.

    ( I am not a big fan of settlement argument – at no point in human history has anyone anywhere gone en masse with the explicit goal to settle, settlement has always been side effect of some other driving goal. Like getting rid of convicts or something )

    • Steve Whitfield says:
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      myth,

      Why does it have to be an OR situation?  Consider the possibility that each of these, and others which you haven’t listed as well, all have some level of merit and provide some level of justification for investing money in space activities.  Their combined worth is much greater that that of any single reason.  Besides, doing only one thing, or doing things for only one reason is poor risk management when alternatives exist.

      That leaves the question of determining your priorities (in time) since money is always going to be limited.  Myself, I think the most effective way to decide the priorities is the one that hardly ever gets mentioned — do things in the order that technology development and testing interdependencies make necessary, so as to expedite technology development.  In short, design and build your cart before picking out how big a horse you need to buy.  If you have multiple cart types, it may turn out that you don’t need a different horse for each one, since horses are reusable, which saves you time and money.  But if you don’t spec all of your carts first, you can never know this.

      The bottom line is that there are quite a few good reasons for “doing” space, and at least one of them should make a convincing argument for just about everybody.  To me, together they’re too important to ignore (or to treat in the casual way they currently are).

      Steve

      • myth says:
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        I mostly agree with everything in your post. The reason why i posted this is because these reasons get never clearly expressed stated by advocates – Friedman writes a long article about space where his science-motivated thinking clearly shows, but he never outright states it.
        Wouldnt it be awesome if there was an actual debate about the various ultimate reasons of “doing space” ? Somehow i don’t think a lot of space advocates want that though, for the fear of exposing some scantily dressed emperors.

    • Bernhard Barkowsky says:
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      Dumping convicts, escape from political strife, or the exploitation of resources. Yes…..”What is it for?” Is a good question to ask of anything one wishes to do. 

  14. James Lundblad says:
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    I really like Don Pettit’s “Tyranny of the Rocket Equation” that has been publish on the NASA site. I think we need to settle near Earth space or the Moon to avoid having to launch everything from the Earth  every time. Mars is smaller than the Earth, so I guess the Rocket Equation is better there? How much better? less than half the delta V to orbit versus Earth?

  15. Daniel Woodard says:
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    It’s depressing but proper that the debate is becoming more realistic. We don’t colonize the floor of the sea, or the Antarctic, though this was once proposed. But people do go there occasionally and live for moderate periods. As technology improves space may reveal similar opportunities, when technology makes them practical. We do travel by air. It just has to be safe and affordable. 

    I think there will in the future be less concern with whether exploration is manned or unmanned. Within a few decades AI will be our equal in reporting the facts and dealing with the unexpected, perhaps even as capable of experiencing the trill of discovery.

    • Paul451 says:
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      The situation with Antarctica is kind of artificial. There’s a treaty protecting it which has a 50 year ban on mining and commercial development. (China has shown strong signs it is looking at exploiting the mineral resources in Antarctica, so if they suddenly withdraw from the treaty, expect a gold rush.) The outer-space treaty is not quite so binding.

      • Alvaro says:
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         To Paul451 and Daniel,

        My 5 cents on this one is that as Paul451 mentioned, Antarctica is protected under several international treaties that can be enforced. Also there is the environmental factor, which affects the Antarctic continent and the ocean (right now is not good idea to think about moving people to the bottom or any place in the oceans due to environmental concerns).

        While, in space, environmental concerns do not make sense given the size of empty space (huge is definitively an understatement) compared to the volume of all the garbage in earth.  I am not sure if the concept of human garbage will make any sense if there is not an ecological niche out there (BTW in earth it does make sense, as it is a close living system).  The only concern right now is the number of debris is orbit and their possibility of impacting your satellite, space ship or station; but the moment you head out to other planets or Lagrange points, etc., then the sheer size of empty space makes this concern inconsequential.

        Treaties in space (affecting other planets, the moon, asteroids) are only valid if you can enforce them: try to enforce some mining rights in the asteroid belt; that means you need to get there to enforce them, and if you can do that, then this conversation is irrelevant, because you are already have an space faring society.

        Just my opinion.

        a2c2

        • Paul451 says:
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          “try to enforce some mining rights in the asteroid belt; that means you need to get there to enforce them,”

          If the people, company, market or finance is on Earth, then the treaty nations can get to them.

          • Alvaro says:
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            Going for the financing could do the trick but that is clearly belligerent.

            My post goes more inline to an Exxon or a Shell (name your company) trying to drill for  petroleum in Antarctica.  Right now that is a big no, no.  Several countries will try to enforce the treaties, and the rest of the world will not mind the companies being punished.

            Trying to mine Ceres or a similar planetoids will not get the same reaction.  Maybe you’ll get disdain or mockery, but not threats.

            Let me put it in another way: right now there are multiple disputes brewing in the south sea of China.  The disputes include China, Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand in one section; Japan and China in another one;, Japan and Korea in another one, and Russia and Japan in the last one.  All are claiming rights to islands for historical reasons, but they are really interested in petroleum, gas and fisheries (resources).

            At this stage, no one can claim any asteroid, or planet for historical reasons (without the rest of the world laughing at them).  The only ones that can claim these places are the ones who make it there, and it is clear that they are going for resources, and there is nothing wrong with that.

            a2c2

    • Steve Whitfield says:
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      As technology improves space may reveal similar opportunities, when technology makes them practical.

      Daniel,

      I agree with your statement, but I would like to point out that it also works in the opposite direction — pursuing ambitious opportunities often leads to practical technology improvements.  The prerequisite is the willingness to pursue difficult opportunities.  Today’s busines people (and NASA) are stuck in the mold of only going after a sure thing.

      Steve

  16. John Gardi says:
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    Folks:

    Build a ship or station large enough to spin up some decent gravity an we can live anywhere in the solar system! Obviously, Lou Friedman doesn’t know of the fine work of one Gerard O’Neill. -1

    tinker

  17. Marc Boucher says:
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    I’m not surprised by Lou’s comments. Do I disagree with him? Yes, on several fronts. His thoughts do fit with some of what he said when he was leading the Planetary Society though. 

    Mars is the obvious next step for human exploration. But to get there we need a plan in place that can survive administration changes. There are also tantalizing destinations beyond Mars. As with anything, if we put money and people behind a goal, we can make it happen. While robotics will and should continue exploring the solar system and eventually beyond, human exploration will follow soon enough.

    • Robin Seibel says:
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      Therein lies the primary problem that needs solved:  how to define and insulate a program–or an agency–so that it and its budget can survive multiple administrations and sessions of Congress.

      • Daniel Woodard says:
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        The answer to that is simple. Build sufficient public support for human spaceflight so that each administration considers it worthwhile. I spent a few years in the L-5 Society actually talking to the public, trying to build support at the grass roots; it isn’t easy but it can be done. Second, provide practical benefits for America, helping industry create value-added exports and manufacturing jobs, not just as a “free” byproduct of human spaceflight, but as a primary goal.

        • Robin Seibel says:
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          The answer may be “simple”, but the implementation of  that answer is proving problematic at best.  In fact, it’s something that hasn’t really been achieved in the history of manned space flight.

        • Alvaro says:
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          I agree with you.  IMHO, right now the space program is seen as an activity that only affects a small community (and some people will consider it elite community).  Instead it should affect everyone.  I can even venture (as an exaggeration of course), that if the US manage to go back to launch their own astronauts, it should start a lottery where every tax payer gets a chance to be selected every year or two to be launched to space.  Not sure if that is an efficient and rational way to use resources, but I can imagine that the US society will increase its interest in the space program (and I put my caveat, this is feasible, but and extreme option).  BTW: I would like to hear other options that will increase the interest of society in the space program.

          a2c2

          • Paul451 says:
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            If Commercial Crew providers succeed in launching astronauts at anywhere near the prices they are talking about, then that is an independent commercial manned launch capability. It’s likely that other nations will take advantage of that to have their own “space programs”.

            Similarly, once manned satellite repair costs compete with satellite replacement costs, and it will become standard.

            Get the price lower still, via reusability (Grasshopper) and private space-stations (Bigelow), and individual universities, hell, individual researchers, can pay their own way into BEO to do their own research. It stops being a  “space program”, and becomes individual “science projects”.

            Progress then becomes self-reinforcing. Public support is only relevant to get to that first level. Afterwards, public support is irrelevant, just as nobody fusses over “public support for flight” or “public support for shipping” or “public support for computers”.

            Level 1: Commercial HSF for NASA, to eliminate the launch monopoly.

            Level 2: Commercial HSF for non-NASA (and non-US) govt agencies. To reduce the monopsony.

            Level 3: Commercial use of commercial HSF. To completely eliminate the monopsony.

            After that, NASA is entirely optional. Human spaceflight will progress without them. Moreso, NASA will be obvious. No one will ask “what’s space for”.

            And this is why I despise SLS/Constellation type programs (and the shuttle before it. And ISS. And…) And partly why I object to a manned Mars program. NASA’s sole HSF goal should be to get us to that first level, that point of self-reinforcing progress. Everything else they do delays that. Decade after decade after bloody decade.

          • no one of consequence says:
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            But you won’t get the BFR that we need to intimidate other countries with. So we’d waste our money doing cost effective exploration, without putting a penny into the hyper expensive rocket with the theory of lobbing a insanely sized nuclear weapon, “one hit kill” for “fits all sizes” countries …

            What kind of “national security” space program would that be?

            Why … that would sound … sane.

        • Chuck_Divine says:
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          Daniel, I also did some volunteer work with L5.  I will point you to a long blog posting of mine I’ve titled A Tale of Two Space Days.  That posting points to Background of an L5 Society Activist

          Today I am not employed in any way, shape or form by the aerospace industry.  The powers that currently be don’t like my calls for needed reform (think Columbia).

          What does that tell you about the current space industry?

    • John Gardi says:
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       Marc:

      It seems that Elon Musk is handing a Mars Colonization Program to America on a silver platter. I’m afraid that the worst thing that could possibly happen to it… is for America to take him up on the offer!

      tinker

      • Robin Seibel says:
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        He’s doing no such thing.  That’s a wild exaggeration.  Proposing to land a mission of any sort on Mars is a very long way from colonization.  A case can’t even be made for colonizing Mars right now.

        • John Gardi says:
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          Robin:

          Elon Musk is actually proposing Mars colonization as his company’s goal. He says so at every opportunity and they are spending time, money and resources at Spacex to do just that. SpaceX plans to release publicly their plan for a Mars Colonization Architecture next year. The launch vehicles, spacecraft, landers, the whole works. It’s the main reason for their Grasshopper program for reusable launch vehicles. Say what your will, Musk is doing such a thing. You just haven’t cared to dig deep enough to know the facts is all. Lead, follow or get out of the way. “Oh, it can’t be done…” ‘talk’ just don’t cut it.

          With enthusiasm:

          tinker

          • Robin Seibel says:
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            There is zero economic justification for Mars colonization.  Further, you can announce any number of things without those things actually getting done.  Perfect examples are numerous in human history.  While I respect what Musk and SpaceX have accomplished so far, I see absolutely no reason to elevate him to demi-god status such that the answer to every question has to be “…SpaceX….” or “….Elon Musk will….”

          • Mark_Flagler says:
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            Economics is not the only reason for colonization.
            Species survival comes to mind.

          • Robin Seibel says:
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            Species survival as justification won’t work.  The government won’t support a Mars colony with that as justification, not will the public support such a project for that reason.  Further, we’re likely at least a magnitude short in funding to support such an endeavor as colonization of a planet.

          • Steve Whitfield says:
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            Robin,

            You say, 1) There is zero economic justification for Mars colonization; and 2) Species survival as justification won’t work; but you give no justification or support for either statement, just your opinion.  Care to give us any reasons for your beliefs?

            Steve

          • SpacerX says:
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            I haven’t seen how much SpaceX will fund a Mars colonization (settlements) project, a more specific timeline, and how much federal support SpaceX will need.

             

    • no one of consequence says:
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       Mars is the obvious next step for human exploration.
      Gee, every time I bring this up, people go nuts.

      I seriously doubt even 1/3 of respondents in any kind of poll would agree. And I think that is the heart of the problem.

      The term “human exploration” does not address motivation or objective in a political or economic context.

      That presumption of shared agreement on context governing motivation isn’t true at all. It is why much/many/all failures have occurred in HSF, and why its successes become circumscribed.

      For example, many in Congress see HSF as a means to feed mouths, big and small. A long run of very expensive vehicles being made adequately satisfies them. Many don’t like Mars because lunar aspirations provoke the Saturn V “memory of power” nee budget, while they talk up Mars like “next millennium in Jerusalem”.

      As with anything, if we put money and people behind a goal, we can make it happen.

      No. Because the money and the people can too easily be misdirected.

      What holds us back is “US”. And since Apollo, we’ve been going backwards in as a people being able to agree on how to proceed.

      Our technology, our capacity, our capability has risen. But the human equation hasn’t.  Certain pivotal decisions like LOR were rationally decided – now it is rare for reason and success to drive the decision making process.

      Too many believe in “choice of facts/reality” – no longer battling each other for the truth of ways to proceed, but instead have a conclusitory “way only” that just needs X billions and N people/years – just shove more into the cosmic vending machine and out will pop the magic toy.

      The defeatism is about a profoundly, pridefully ignorant culture that can’t get its act together to take on a solar system, let alone that of the nearest stars.

      Someone decades ago told me that if hydrocarbons were found abundant in the solar system, we’d move heaven and earth to get their and suck them dry. Well, we did find such on Titan – didn’t matter a bit.

      Too narrow minded a culture to do anything but putz around on Earth.

  18. Fredric Mushel says:
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    No nation on this Earth, by itself, will ever have the resources (money) to make such explorations possible.
    Until we humans of all countries start to live and work together for positiveprojects, such as the ISS, will humans be able to explore Mars and beyond.Gene Roddenberry had it right in that starships will have to be composed of all (or almost all) nations and peoples of this Earth, working together.Unfortunately, human nature hasn’t chnaged in thousands of years and it is doubtful it shall in the thousands of years to come (unless we become Vulcans).Our innermost beast (our still animalistic nature) shall prevent humans from achieving such a lofty goal.As Carl Sagan also one said, if we don’t find intelligent life out in the Universe, it may be that those intelligent beings destroyed themselves as we humans continue to do in to the 21st century.

    • John Gardi says:
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      Fred:

      No nation has the will to make that first leap. It’s not a matter of resources, which are to be had in abundance in space! What if a little company like SpaceX could get a contract for fifty launches from a lunar resource extraction business (read: mining), who’d need a government agency? There’s money there, believe me. Do you know how much a single oil rig costs?

      tinker  

  19. Fred says:
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    There are so many other reachable destinations for humans that he omited. L1, L2, L3, L4 and every other planetary libration point in the planetary system. If that doesn’t get you excited I can’t imagine what will… But really Friedman is right, at least until we find a different form of transportaion, the current technology limits us to Mars. Realistically,to go beyond Mars in the next 50-100 years requires a quantum leap in technology. Although some of our systems have significantly evolved since Apollo, the key interplanetary/interstellar ones haven’t. And the kind of technology required, requires funding, which comes without a guarentee of success, which makes it difficult to get any administration and congress to agree to make significant investments in. Thats why it will take decades if not centuries. IMHO, research like that performed at CERN and FERMILAB is the real type of breakthrough physics research that will serve as the basis for future technologies that will enable humans beyond Mars.

  20. bobhudson54 says:
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    Louis Freeman is the editor of The Planetary Society and has every right to voice his opinions on Space exploration. You may believe his opinions are deafest but that’s what opens debates on the subject and stirs,opens imaginations and interest in Space Exploration. He may have political connections with the present administration  and has to give them credit to remain in a positive “light” with it. I support Louis but take his opinions in regards to that with a grain of salt.
    Space exploration has been envisioned ever since mankind looked upon the stars and had the urge to explore beyond earth’s boundaries.As long as we have the urge and desire, it’ll continue to inspire all of us.   

  21. meekGee says:
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    Sorry folks – it’s just the inconvenient truth.

    It’s not physically impossible to venture beyond Mars, but if we’re talking about sustained human presence, there is a humongous gap in difficulty when considering all other targets.
    Mars is almost a gift planet, in the grand scheme of things, and is the only one (well, other than Earth) in the solar system.

    • Paul451 says:
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      Personally I see Mars as a trap, not a gift. If we try to colonise Mars then it will be the furthest we venture. If we can ignore it, bypass it, then the solar system is ours.

      • Steve Whitfield says:
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        Paul,

        I think I see why you see it as a trap — to do it we’d have to tie up all of Earth’s space investment money and effort in that one program, leaving nothing at all for anywhere else.  Yes / No?

        If that’s what your thinking, I’m afraid I have to challenge that idea, though.  Looking a little bit longer term, I feel certain — despite the pronouncements of the defeatists — that species survival will turn out to be a sufficiently compelling reason (in the eyes of the masses) to colonize off Earth (certainly not the only reason, but the one that tips the balance). And it won’t work unless you have a large enough gene pool, which means a large enough population.  Everything considered (everything currently known, that is), the surface of Mars is going to be the easiest, least expensive, and least dangerous place in the solar system to accomplish this for a long time to come, excluding any unforeseeable leaps in technology.  Assuming that it’s done properly, it is the place most likely to succeed in preserving the human race should life on Earth be wiped out.  It’s a better candidate than even the Moon despite being farther away. Do we go to the Moon first, for whatever reason(s)? That’s a whole other question.

        The human animal has a nasty habit of not preparing against calamities until it’s almost too late, and I suspect it will be the same again with this.  However, one or two close calls, which could come at any time, will be enough, I think, to get people demanding action in the name of preservation.  Even if it won’t save them personally, it might save their children and grandchildren, and despite the cynical streak with which we tend to paint ourselves, that will be reason enough for most people to demand such a commitment, and demand it be seen through to its conclusion.  The only down side I can see will be the endless chain of cloned second-rate TV shows based on it.

        Where reason has failed, emotion might yet prevail.

        Steve

        • Alvaro says:
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          I do agree with you, species self preservation is a strong motivator to move out of earth.  My main concern is that a bottleneck event (extreme decimation of population, limiting the species to a small group of people with barely or not enough genetic diversity) should occur and decimate us before we can do anything.  I can think of two or three events where we are left with small amount of time to react (e.g. highly contagious and virulent flue epidemic – Run-away green house, or vice verse a series of volcanic activities with extreme expulsion of ash that diminish natural resources and increases the chances of regional wars – you can add your scenario).  In reality the human race should not wait for an event like that, it should proceed to get out of earth.

          One plus of going into space is diversification of the human gene pool living and adapting to another environment, let it be in a space station, the moon, mars, or the asteroids. Each place will force a human colony to adapt and diversify its genes, making them less susceptible to the same deceases as the one we face now.  Also they will be less sensitive to the same environmental, volcanic,  asteroid, etc (you name it – well maybe not a super nova) catastrophe.

          We should not wait for a catastrophe to change the minds of governments and their people.  The space community should be changing minds by pointing all the pluses of turning their societies to an space faring one.

          That brings me to a point, where I hope Keith Cowing is reading.  He is better connected than I am.  This is the question: is there a way to create a debate between the political candidates about space, and science? a debate where we can learn their positions about those subjects.  The main point here is: if we know their stand about science and space, we can vote wisely (well that is the hope).

          I do know for sure that the candidates will not do a TV debate about these subjects.  But, I am thinking that a website with the correct set of questions and it is well promoted (maybe going viral), may force their platforms to address the questions. Just a suggestion.

          a2c2

        • Paul451 says:
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          (Split into two posts due to length.)

          “I feel certain […] that species survival will turn out to be a sufficiently compelling reason […] to colonize off Earth”

          Even if you consider species survival to be the ultimate goal of the space program, then having “Species Survival” as a goal seems to be a terrible way to get there. It isn’t sustaining, it isn’t urgent. Too abstract to actually maintain a program for the centuries necessary to reach that goal.

          And hence Mars colonisation is a terrible solution to species survival. Whether or not Mars is ultimately the best “second home” for humanity, to reach the point where it is a viable “back-up Earth” takes a vast (vast) amount of resources. And no step prior to that does Mars have more its scientific value. Which makes it highly likely that the effort will fizzle out before we get a fraction of the way to a viable colony, let alone a fully independent one.

          The path to species survival requires each step to justify itself. Commercial space and eventually asteroids may not be the ideal end point, but at least it stands a chance of reaching that end point.

          (To put it another way, a cluster of thousands of asteroid “colonies” may not be as good as a single planet-wide Mars colony, but we are much more likely to get there. A 70% chance of a 90% solution, still better than a 0% chance of a perfect solution.)

          It’s the same with NASA HSF in general… See my comment to a2c2 elsewhere in the thread.

          [Direct jump: http://nasawatch.com/archiv… ]

          Basically, the last paragraph…

          “And this is why I despise SLS/Constellation type programs (and the shuttle before it. And ISS. And…) And partly why I object to a manned Mars program. NASA’s sole HSF goal should be to get us to that first level, that point of self-reinforcing progress. Everything else they do delays that. Decade after decade after bloody decade.”

          That is, every major program, every Grand Vision, pushes us further away from ever reaching the ultimate goal of species survival.

          • no one of consequence says:
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            NASA is meant to be the CIA of space in short.

            Anything beyond that will likely take action by a commercial effort.

            Remember Lewis and Clark’s expedition – that’s closer to the role.

            And also why I’m highly wary of anything “arsenal space” like SLS/CxP. Because it’s too much a focus on a presumption of need that doesn’t exist, so as to consume funds/attention rather than to do the basic work of exploration.

            Plus, when they talk about inspiring youth, what they really mean is to “love the bomb” or BFR as a means by which the terror it might create can cow the world. That’s why talking sense about how to inspire youth goes nowhere.

            And why budgets get absurd.

            Because nothing’s really being done for the stated reason, but for subtext.

            You want to explore, then explore, … here’s a budget … use it best. Tell me what you found.

        • Paul451 says:
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           “the surface of Mars is going to be the easiest, least expensive, and least dangerous place in the solar system to accomplish this for a long time to come”

          MeekGeek said something similar in the Armstrong tribute thread (I didn’t reply there because it seemed off-topic) :
          “It is not clear to me that self sustaining economies can be set up in places other than Mars, but this does not mean people won’t try. Technologically, these other possibilities are much further into our future.”

          As you know, I disagree wildly with you both.

          Mars is one of the worst, most difficult places for long-term human settlement in the solar system. Looking at MSL’s readings, Mars’ atmosphere only blocks about half of dangerous solar radiation, and doesn’t seem to block cosmic rays at all. So to survive, your colony must be buried under many metres of soil. The atmosphere is just thick and thin enough to make it harder to reenter/land than either Earth or the moon. It’s why MSL’s descent was so Rube Goldberg. Likewise, the atmosphere is just thick enough to make heat loss an issue, making things like simple inflatable greenhouses impossible. The atmosphere is thick enough to kick up dust-storms, but thin enough that every trip outside is a full blown EVA, with all the risk and complexity (and 12 hour pre-breathe) that entails. And launching from Mars is vastly harder than a moon launch, requiring significantly more infrastructure, resources, and risk. (Which is why a mere sample return mission is so difficult, compared with the moon or an asteroid.)

          In other words, a Mars base has all of the expense of an asteroid base (buried base, risky EVAs), none of the benefits, plus a bunch of extra problems due to the atmosphere and gravity-well.

          Jupiter’s moons are bathed in radiation, requiring significant ship mass to protect your crew during approach (but you’d have that anyway), and require the burying of every installation (but that’s needed on Mars too). But once that’s done, water, air, fuel, etc, is everywhere. And descent is much simpler since there’s little or no atmosphere. (Trip time and delta-v are beyond our limits, but I’m not suggesting it as a current generation flags’n’footprints goal, just one on the scale of, but easier than, colonising Mars.)

          Even Venus… VENUS!… is more conducive to colonisation than Mars! Did you know that a bubble of Earth-like air (ie, N2/O2) is a lighter-than-air gas on Venus, providing positive buoyancy when floating at…. say 50-60km up… where the atmospheric pressure is around 1 bar, and the temperate averages 0-50°C. And you’re still deep enough to be protected from radiation. (Only the acid is a technological problem.) And it’s no harder to reenter than Earth’s atmosphere.

          And of course the asteroids. Everything from solid metal to comet remnants, and everything in between. NEOs with extremely low delta-v’s, to main-belt asteroids at about the same delta-V as Mars-orbit. And near-zero “launch/landing” delta-v. Indeed, I think learning how to live on/in an asteroid would be a great assistance towards a manned Mars mission anyway. (Nudge an asteroid into a Mars cycler orbit over the next 20 years while fitting it out, and you’ve got a permanent habitat. Enough room to tunnel a spin-station inside the asteroid. Gravity and mass-shielding at the same time. And, if you pick the right asteroid, fuel, air, water… You then also learn enough to repeat the asteroid-habitat on Phobos/Deimos. So you blast a small capsule from Earth orbit to the asteroid-cycler, live in comfort until you pass Mars, then (refuelled from the asteroid) capsule down Phobos-base. Again refuel in comfort. Switch to a dedicated Mars lander for the short trip to the atmosphere.)

          IMO, it is more technologically difficult to have a permanently colony on Mars than on/in an asteroid, or on (slightly under) the moon. Or even on (floating over) Venus!

          Species survival via Mars, is even worse, requiring terraforming Mars. And that is wildly beyond our technology. Whereas, while any single asteroid or moon habitat in space might not be independent, the whole interconnected mass could be; and they would develop in a much more organic way, with each stage (hopefully) paying the way for the next.

          • no one of consequence says:
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            I’ll add another downside of Mars. Likely there are perchlorates in abundance.

            Wouldn’t recommend relieving yourself on a nearby boulder … “boom”, “boom”, “boom”.

            We’re learning a lot about life and how to maintain it. Last visit I had to a NASA center, weeks ago, the thought was of Mars, Titan, and Europa for places to find and/or maintain life from indigenous sources.

            One of my students tracks this as a hobby, and she’s very experienced both as a physicist and a biologist, well versed in RTE and long term radiation exposure. In short, the studies/numbers support this. The above item is among the humorous surprise  hazards she’s treated me too.

            Some interesting stuff also on the ability to grow crops on simulated soil from elsewhere from earth. In short, doable but with interesting problems again.

            Life is very pernicious.

  22. newpapyrus says:
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    Expensive and dangerous stunts like brief visits to a NEO asteroid or an Apollo style mission to the Martian surface will probably continue to confine human space activities mostly to LEO (ISS forever).

    But if NASA’s long term goal is to have a– permanent human presence–  at the Earth-Moon Lagrange points, the lunar surface, Mars orbit, and on the Martian surface and to utilize extraterrestrial resources for water, air, and fuel then the technologies required to do that should also enable humans to survive very long trips almost anywhere in the solar system.

    Interplanetary spacecraft simply need to be appropriately shielded (several hundred tonnes of ice?) from cosmic radiation, micrometeorites, and  solar events. Habitats on the surfaces of places like Mercury, Ceres, Vesta, Callisto, Rhea, etc. will also require appropriate shielding by using  in-situ resources. Such manned interplanetary vehicles will also need some type of simulated gravity to keep the passengers healthy during  multi-month and multi-year long trips. 

    Moving that kind of mass through the solar system will probably require titanic light sails  or some type of  nuclear propulsion to achieve the appropriate delta-v requirements.  But there’s no reason why humanity shouldn’t be able to do such things by the second half of this new century.

    Marcel F. Williams

    • 2814graham says:
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      Overall you are pretty much right on this one. Really, we ought to be developing in a step-by-step fashion, new technology and capabilities based on what we have in hand already today. What we have today is a long duration orbital vehicle. Next step would be to develop a vehicle that could travel cis-lunar space using systems based on ISS. This is what makes sense. The US space program loves to throw away hardware and capabilities and start from scratch. That was the Constellation approach and is still what Orion aims at. What you’ve described here is the Augustine flexible path.  

  23. Christopher Larkins says:
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    Baby steps. Moon, then Phobos.

  24. Steve Whitfield says:
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    Lots of people here with strong opinions, which is to be expected at NASA Watch.  But the consensus seems to be, on the whole, far more pessimistic than I would have expected.  The one notable omission in these comments is time.  Without specifying a time frame, a prediction has little meaning.  Even the most cautious among us, I’m sure, would make a different prediction for “within this century” than for “within the next two decades.”

    Friedman says, “at least for now, and I argue, forever,” but then he’s older than most of us here (an assumption on my part) and so less inclined to think that the future (which he won’t live to see) will be significantly different from his own lifetime.

    I wonder how different these comments would be if we asked: Within the next two centuries, how far into the solar system will human exploration or settlement be capable of going, and how far will it actually have gone?  And while people are thinking about it, let’s also ask: What will have turned out to the the biggest incentive in accomplishing this exploration or settlement and, in the long run, did it make a net profit or remain overall a cost?

    Personally, I think in two centuries we’ll be well past Mars and doing things that today we can’t even imagine.  In 1812 who would have predicted carbon nanotubes, sequencing the genome, or buildings 100 stories tall?

    Steve

    • Synthguy says:
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      Steve,

      I’d like to hope that in two centuries we’d be well on the way to mastering viable interstellar travel – one way – to nearby planetary systems, let alone crawling our way past Mars.  I’m not predicting warp drive, or wormholes, or hyperspace – I’m talking relativistic sub-luminal travel that is fast enough to exploit time dilation for the crew, so making a one way expedition viable – preferably to a nearby system with an exoplanet – or an exomoon – in a goldilocks zone.

      I’d like to see by 2112 that not only do we have a substantial permanent human presence in Earth Orbit, on the Moon, in Cislunar Space and on Mars, but we are sending manned expeditions to Jupiter and Saturn, and are looking at how to establish a permanent presence on Ganymede and Titan. That we are mining the asteroids, and making a fortune in the process. And that we are taking the first steps towards making the interstellar travel for 2212 possible. 

      Malcolm Davis,

      Gold Coast, Australia

  25. Engineer_in_Houston says:
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    Actually, Cessna_Driver, this is the statement I wish I had written (including the qualifier “known”, that is).

    I hope we do bring the solar system within our economic sphere and grow a vibrant Sol system civilization. We can barely get astronauts into LEO, now, though. While we have to work within the physics that Nature has dealt us instead of the physics we wish we had, it’s not just the physics that is the impediment to venturing farther than Mars.

    Nobody can say that crewed interstellar flight will never happen. Everyone is fully aware of the oft-used, trite, past predictions of technological brick walls that later fell. But a pragmatic engineer can be pretty confident that predicting it won’t happen within a couple hundred years – if it ever does – is a good bet.

    http://www.space.com/6316-h

  26. dano35 says:
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    We will never go back to the moon let alone Mars.  Get used to it.  People are more interested in texting to each other on their iphone rather than exploration.   Politicians don’t care anything about manned exploration because there are no votes to be had on the moon or Mars.

  27. kcowing says:
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    I am an aging man too. I am only 2 years older than the space age. In due course what Lou, I, Gene – or you – think will have decreasing relevance. There are young people who will take the ‘space program’ and make it theirs. Luckily they do not yet see limits or boundaries. They will prove us all wrong so long as they do not let people tell them what they cannot do.

  28. DTARS says:
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    Thanks again still thinking 🙂

  29. DTARS says:
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    Wondering what hard deep sea suits leg joints are like??

  30. Bernhard Barkowsky says:
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    NASA has lost it. The Shuttle was supposed to have opened a new means of getting into space. In an attempt to sell it as everything to everybody it failed to achieve its promise however, it did work. Now NASA has declared the entire shuttle concept a failure and demands we return to mega rockets and capsules. Not only for the sort term but for the next 50 years. Mega Rockets and capsules will NEVER be a viable transportation system. NEVER! All you will get a re flags and footprints and nothing more, even if that. There will never be true exploration until a viable space transportation system is developed.

    • Steve Whitfield says:
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      Bernhard,

      You attribute these demands to NASA, yet they were not NASA demands, but rather those of a handful of Congress people who mandated this course and refuse to move from it.  What NASA “has lost” is the autonomy necessary to do the scientific and engineering tasks that we would much rather see instead of “Mega Rockets and capsules.”

      As for the Shuttle, even though it is undeniably one of the most incredible machines man has ever built and accomplished some amazing feats, from the perspective of how the concept was sold it was a failure.  There were specific numbers claimed for things like costs, reliability and turn-around times that were the basis of the decision to fund the Shuttle program and allowing NASA to proceed.  The realities were nowhere near the proposed numbers.  The Shuttle was, in nature, an X program, but it was promoted, managed and evaluated as if it were a product, which has an entirely different and much more demanding set of expectations.  They took an experiment and tried to treat it like a scheduled train.  So, promises unkept, it was a failure (but one of the most impressive failures of all time).

      Steve

  31. Vladislaw says:
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    Actually the first President that talked about going to mars was President Kennedy:

    ” 11.] Q. Mr. President, after your trip to Los Alamos Laboratory,New Mexico, is it your intention to ask for more money to speed upProject Rover, or for nuclear propulsion in space?

    THE PRESIDENT. We’re going to let these tests go on, of the reactor.These tests should be completed by July. If they are successful,then we will put more money into the program, which would involvethe Nerva and Rift, both the engine and the regular machine.We will wait until July, however, to see if these tests are successful.
    It should be understood that the nuclear rocket, even under the mostfavorable circumstances, would not play a role in any first lunar landing.This will not come into play until 1970 or ‘71. It would be useful forfurther trips to the moon or trips to Mars.”

    http://www.presidency.ucsb….

  32. Anonymous says:
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    In the current space program, however, it is chic to consider Mars as only one of many destinations. After all, there are six other planets, many moons and even more asteroids in our solar system, and some people dream of travel to other stars, and their planets and moons. We have been exploring robotically and remotely investigating as many other worlds as possible, and we want to continue. But for humans, we’ve only touched down briefly on the moon, and Mars is the only place we might repeat that triumph. Traveling to other worlds — for example, to hellishly hot Venus, or the far, cold and radiation-battered environs of Jupiter — is beyond our ability, at least for now, and I argue, forever!

    Hi y’all, been on vacation for a week and look at all the stuff that happens!

    When I read the above part of Lou Friedman’s article about the glories of Mars and the impossibility of doing anything anywhere else I shake my head.  It reminds me of the saying about old scientists whereby if one of great stature in his old age is asked about future advances.  If he says yes it is possible he is more than likely to be right.  If he says “impossible!” or in this case “beyond our ability forever!”, he is most likely to be wrong.

    The key not only to Mars, but to colonization anywhere in our solar system is energy.  Energy to run the lights.  Energy to allow us to build buildings (unless Lou thinks that we will transport from the Earth all of the materials necessary for a colony which is possible but not practical), to build industrial machinery, vehicles, and to process the resources of wherever we go for our uses.

    Lou dismisses advanced propulsion systems yet we already have examples of advanced propulsion systems in the form of Franklin Chang Diaz’s VASIMIR.  The only holdback today for a VASIMIR powered deep space ship is ENERGY.

    I was just reading last night a 1965 report by General Dynamics on an ion powered (before VASIMIR was known to exist) cycling space craft for Lunar and Mars missions.  The reactor that they were going to use was already being designed.  It was called the SNAP-50, a 1.2 megawatt reactor.  This would be plenty of power for VASIMIR engine as it would raise its efficiency well above 50%, its principle limitation for lower powered systems.

    This level of power, coupled with a VSIMIR engine and a system put together in space, would allow voyages to Mars in a short period of time as well as further deep space missions.

    Megawatt class space reactors will enable civilization anywhere we want to put it, whether it be Mars, the Moon, the asteroids or beyond.

    Lou Friedman is wrong.

    • John Gardi says:
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       Dennis:

      Good to have you back! Would the ‘Snap 50’ by any chance be a zero G adaptation of a nuclear sub reactor? The analogy is close enough to speculate on. Months (if not years) of cruise time, closed loop environmental control and so on. If nuclear subs can do it, why not use the same tech for a long range human spacecraft, right?

      tinker

    • no one of consequence says:
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      If you think the politics of HSF are bad, the politics of nuclear energy are 100x worse.

      In combining them, unfortunately they tend to exponentiate.

      Never been a case of “capability to use it”. Always been a case of actually using it.

      Aerospace engineering by default is weapons systems engineering. Now, lets take something that can lob a weapon, and put some fissionable material on it … even just kilograms. Whoops, everyone thinks of mushroom clouds.

      Can’t do this in a fear culture. Might do it in a courageous culture.

      I guess we have to wait longer for mankind to grow up. We might have a wait on our hands, glancing at the news.

      Note, even if you were to place a automated lander that generated propellant + water + LOX, lobbing its production to EML 1/2, you’d get all kinds of resistance to using its products for decades, from many different parts of the international/domestic political spectrum.

      Even if it opened the door to 1/10th cost exploration of the solar system.

      Why? Because you’d scare / insult too many people.

      • Anonymous says:
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        I like Chris Christie’s response.

        You don’t allow polls to dictate your policy, you provide the leadership that changes the polls. (paraphrasing).

        Nuclear power is too important to our future to allow the neo-luddites to win.  This is true here on the Earth as well as beyond.

        There is both Thorium and Uranium on the Moon.

        Aerospace engineering by default is weapons systems engineering.

        No more than a car designer is a designer of tanks and mobile weapons systems. The simple fact is that if we are ever going to live anywhere but the Earth nuclear power is necessary. We can get started with solar but the energy multiple is far too low to count on for real development.

        • no one of consequence says:
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          Nah, I don’t buy it. You’re a closet Obamaton too, cause  I’ve heard you say nice things about the Commercial Space guys.

          Don’t you know that in order to keep to the rules, you’re forced to abandon anything smacking of reason, if the big bad Obama touched it first. You must disable any pragmatism and pledge loyalty … or they’ll yank your card. 🙂

          Seriously, I wasn’t talking about polls, or luddites, or the econuts … I was talking about politics INSIDE the government / congress / industry  with regards to nuclear.

          There’s a long history of politics just at ORNL alone, where amazingly successful technologies have been sunk … because of industry pressure.

          Back when I was studying nuclear engineering as a senior analyst, needing to learn about it for policy advisement, GE Mark 1’s – 1A’s were to be shutdown for the same safety reasons as happened in Japan recently. If that doesn’t say enough about the difficulty in getting effective nuclear propulsion in space, where you do need a highly pragmatic (for ISP  etc) approach, I don’t know what can demonstrate this.

          Having been labelled an Obamaton myself (my students love this BTW), while still having considerable connections to “arsenal space”, the nuclear industry, national labs (once called the “rad labs”) … stands in contrast with my attempts for rational use of nuclear energy in space for 40 years.

          Great fun.

  33. Synthguy says:
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    I’m sorry but this perspective on the future of human spaceflight is an incredibly limited and short-sighted one, for someone of Mr. Friedman’s background. Basically he is advocating that physical human spaceflight be confined to the Moon, the Near Earth Asteroids and to Mars, and go no further. He seems to advocate that ‘humans’ remain largely Earthbound and send out probes – albeit extremely advanced ones – further out, utilising advances in IT, communications, and even the confluence of biotechnology and maybe artificial intelligence to travel beyond Mars. 

    I have no problem with the idea of building faster, more advanced unmanned probes which can communicate more information directly to humans in a manner that makes it easier for more people to participate in the experience of exploring Space. The landing of Curiosity shows this to be a good thing. But I would urge he re-think his argument about not sending humans out to follow the trail blazed by these advanced probes.

    Firstly he argues that humans travelling beyond Mars is impossible because propulsion systems and life support won’t allow it. Agreed current propulsion and life support will limit us to the Moon, the near Earth Asteroids, and get us to Mars with some difficulty but not allow us to look beyond Mars. Venus is a non-starter for humans given the incredibly adverse environment, and Mercury is difficult – but not impossible – for current spaceflight technology to get to, and I think there are more important priorities – I’m happy to leave Mercury to the probes for the foreseeable future. I instead would focus on the main-belt asteroids, and the moons of Jupiter as logical ‘next steps’ in human spaceflight’ that should be considered in parallel to consolidating a permanent human presence on the lunar surface, in Cislunar Space, the Near Earth Asteroids, and on Mars.

    How to get there? Yes, we do need to actually start doing significant work on more advanced propulsion – particularly nuclear-electric and solar-electric propulsion. We simply can’t send humans beyond Mars on old fashioned chemical rockets, which do not have enough thrust that cannot be sustained for long to get high speed. Sustained high thrust propulsion is vital. We are starting to scratch the surface with Ion propulsion, and Solar-Sailing may be useful out to Mars, but to go beyond, we need higher ‘isp’ for longer. Mr. Friedman’s assertion that such journeys are impossible are wrong because the physics and engineering of such propulsion systems are well known and the engineering is already being developed at a very early level. We are not talking warp drive – as he seems to suggest proponents of outer-planet human space flight want. Those of us who favour humans looking beyond Mars argue for propulsion systems that should be possible to develop within the next 30 to 40 years. So the Starship Enterprise is not necessary to put humans on Ganymede or Titan. 

    Life support is the other big challenge, and may be more of a challenge than fast propulsion. In particular dealing with space radiation hazards is going to be the major goal. We either need to develop some form of shielding, or get there faster. Even nuclear-electric propulsion can propel a spacecraft only so fast, so a combination of more sophisticated shielding built into the design of the spacecraft, with fast travel times is the best path forward. How do you stop cosmic and solar radiation from harming the bodies of astronauts inside the vehicle should be an urgent goal for research. Secondly, sustaining a crew out to the Outer Planets will demand paradigm change in how we design spacecraft. Simply put, an ‘Orion’ type capsule just does not cut it anymore. We will need to develop the technology and skill to assemble large spacecraft in Earth orbit, which can accommodate a crew, provide them with a viable enduring food source, and give them suitable conditions on board to allow a relatively normal environment and thus avoid the more intangible psychological challenges associated with exploring deep space. Once again – not a Starship Enterprise – but a vehicle that is designed to remain in Space, be reconfigurable, and be fully reusable for multiple tasks. 

    If this more traditional approach to outer-planet space exploration is unachievable, then two other options could be considered. The first is the stepping stone approach. We use the Moon to send spacecraft to objects in Cislunar and Solar Space, near Earth, including Asteroids, and that means building up infrastructure on the surface and in lunar orbit, or the Lagrange Points, to sustain a continuous human presence. So a moon base is the foundation for expanding human spaceflight – and exploiting space resources and thus generating massive wealth which can then be reinvested in space exploration to do more. As the Moon is a stepping stone, so is Mars. Once we have a human presence on Mars, we base our outer-planet exploration efforts from Mars – not from Earth. We use Mars as a stepping stone to explore the Main Belt Asteroids and Minor Planets like Ceres. We exploit the resources in the asteroids to generate wealth and do more, and establish human infrastructure as we go. From either Mars, or the Main Belt Asteroids, we then aim for Ganymede as a base for exploring the Jovian system, with the obvious candidate being Europa where life may be possible below its icy surface. From Ganymede, we send the next spacecraft out to Titan…and so on, and so forth. 

    Rather than going all the way from Earth in one mission, we go in a series of stepping stones, establishing a human presence and supporting infrastructure, and utilising the resources for sustaining that presence and generating wealth, which is reinvested into space exploration, both in terms of developing even more advanced technology, and for funding new missions. 

    That’s the first alternative to traditional outer-planet mission concepts. The second might be called ‘the Space Colony’ approach. You take a typical near-Earth Asteroid, and using solar-electric propulsion you ‘carefully’ manoeuvre it into a Lagrange Point near the Moon. There, you hollow it out, and within the asteroid you establish a space colony, using the remaining outer material to shield you from radiation. This is going back to Gerard K O’Neill in the 1970s so its nothing new. Obviously, the engineering for hollowing out an asteroid is something that would need to be developed, but I’d argue its not impossible. Once you have a space-colony inside the asteroid, which can be designed to house a crew, life support, labs, etc, you attach an appropriate propulsion system – nuclear-electric propulsion – and send it out to Jupiter. Its in effect a Spacecraft which can then be parked at a Lagrange point near Ganymede. From the asteroid, humans can then take other spacecraft down to the surface, or explore other moons in the Jovian System. 

    Both approaches are challenging and complex, but the indirect payoff is that we gain valuable experience and knowledge in how to use space resources to enable further human exploration, and how to ‘live off the land’ rather than sending everything from Earth. In-situ resource utilisation (ISRU) is vital if we are ever to go beyond Mars, or even get to Mars, I would argue. 

    These ideas may not work, but something else may come up. I’m not a aerospace engineer, I’m a strategic analyst with a deep interest in Space. So I’m happy to be corrected if any of these ideas are impossible. But at least I’ve proposed some ideas to think about, and taken a positive, forward approach of ‘lets see if it can be done’, rather than Mr. Friedman’s ‘its impossible’, which glibly dismisses a human future in space, and condemns human beings to only being able to participate in the greatest human adventure in the history of our entire civilisation by watching it on the iPhones. How depressing a future would that be!!!

    Dr. Malcolm R Davis,
    Assistant Professor in China-Western Relations,
    Faculty of Humanities, Bond University,
    Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia

    [email protected] 

  34. lanegab says:
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    NASA should give all Americans the experience of space exploration via robots and telescopes – and let private enterprise give humans joyrides in space.

    It’s time to shed the romance and get practical. With the cold war long over, the US needs to consider what are the reasons for sending humans into space. I strongly suspect that in the current era the standard rationale of NASA’s human exploration program driving technology and innovation is a tenuous one. I also do not buy the romance of human exploration. It is just too expensive right now. I believe the best – and financially viable – reason for space exploration is to inspire young Americans to do their math homework.

    True, Apollo-era excitement got me started in space science as a teenager. But over the Shuttle and Station eras the excitement has waned. Young people are still excited by the _idea_ of humans in space – but their view is based more on movies and video-games than reality.  Moreover, while the Apollo missions were extraordinary feats, we have learned in the intervening 40 years that humans really are very expensive to keep in space – humans are heavy and  they require water, food, air, and shelter that are heavy, bulky and very expensive to launch and maintain in space. 

    On the other hand, advances in robotics have shown us that we can explore space vicariously through our robots. I argue that the current generation, instead of watching middle-aged men lumber around on the Moon, would be more excited and expired (and encouraged to do their math homework) if they could put on goggles and artificial-intelligence-gloves that let them explore distant worlds via cameras on robots across the solar system. NASA should populate the solar system with robots and engage the CGI-wizards of Hollywood and/or the gaming world to provide truly exciting interactive interfaces that allow any taxpayer to experience the exotic worlds of Europa, Venus, Titan, Miranda – and, yes, the Moon and Mars. Similarly, we have barely begun to exploit the possibilities for using images from space telescopes to allow taxpayers to explore the Earth below and the Universe above. Google Earth is just the beginning.

    Does the US taxpayer need to fund human exploration of space? I believe there are other higher priorities right now. Space-X is showing how private enterprise is pushing the human space frontier. If there really is a human desire to venture into space, let the commercial world provide it.

    • Helen Simpson says:
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      This is a largely sensible perspective, with one major exception. No, the most financially viable reason for human space flight, and probably even for space exploration in general, can’t be to inspire kids to do homework. You could get kids to do a LOT more homework if you split up the $18B budget for NASA, and started writing checks to bribe kids. Let’s see. That would be about $300 per school age kid. Yeah, that would buy a lot of homework.

      But it is exactly right that ever since human space flight became less about exploration and more about adventure, I don’t particularly want my taxes to pay for someone else’s adventure. Let that be done commercially. Human space flight not about exploration? You bet. The main exploration return on human space flight these days is how to do human space flight. It’s been that way ever since Apollo.

      To the extent that this nation decides that species expansion is a national priority, human spaceflight, and the exploration it enables, is highly defensible. But that priority has NEVER been asserted. To the extent someone can show that bringing the solar system into our economic sphere requires human space flight, then go for it. But that has never been clearly shown, and is less compelling as the years go by and our robotic technology increases.

      This thread is getting kind of old, but it’s a wonderful fresh question that Lou has raised, and there are lots of good responses.

    • Birotae says:
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      Lanegab is right on the ball. For a NASA led Mars mission it will take about $1T for a three person visit to the surface of Mars. The current NASA has a very high regard for human life hence the high price. The current NASA budget is $20B and congress has no where to find $1T.
      Lou Friedman has worked hard for years to get Mars funding via the public voice and has seen the difficult road ahead. He is a realist and certainly not a defeatist. So you dreamers and fantasiers support the commercial world with your donations or volunteer for a one way trip to Mars.

  35. DTARS says:
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    Man will have to go beyond Mars for resources. That simple!

  36. David_McEwen says:
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    Human exploration is continuing a rapid clip. Just not in the direction most of us here would wish for.

    I read a long time ago now (can’t remember where), that the 20th century was the century of physics, and the 21st century will be the century of biology. Additionally, I would add information. Look at what people, and money, are exploring. All things biology, computational and virtual worlds. 

    If there had been one other easily habitable, migration-ready planet in the solar system. Don’t think for a moment that there wouldn’t have been a gold-rush like experience to expand there as soon as the technology could take us there. For example, if the fanciful canals on Mars had been proven true, we would have probably been there in the 70s. We would have been a space faring civilization very quickly. But this wasn’t the case. As awesome as the recent Curiosity landing on Mars is, it’s just more rocks. Who, other than geeks/scientists can get excited about that? Our particular solar system is a real pain to explore outside of our home planet because of the extremely harsh environments no matter where we go. The percentage of humans that will likely live on other worlds/moons in this solar system will be exceedingly small no matter what technical program or policies we put into place. So, for the foreseeable future, expanding into the solar system is going to be problematic at best for a variety of reasons.

    Look at where society is headed. On a personal note, I have a friend who’s son is brilliant in math. He graduated high school at 16. I’ve tried to encourage him to go into some kind of engineering profession, but he wants to be a doctor and make lots of money. When he gets a chance, he is building his own personal computers and spends lots of time in online gaming with his friends scattered around the local region where I live. The sad reality for people like us who care about space, this is where our society is heading. Humans are exploring virtual worlds.

    Obviously, there are young people who think NASA, SpaceX, and space exploration are cool. And there are people in the younger generation trying to make careers in space technology and exploration. The reality seems to be that this is fighting the trend of the age we live in.

    I’ve said for a long time now that our future looks more like the Matrix or Minority Report than Star Trek. To draw this rather lengthy post to a conclusion, I will reiterate that we live in a time when human exploration is just following a different path than what most of us here would have hoped for. Our inquisitiveness as a nation or a species has not changed, just it’s direction.

    • Alvaro says:
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      I have to say: that this is a future that I dread (IMHO).  All of us locked in the same planet, working on medical developments to extend our lives while we immerse ourselves in the web? Yikes.

      The problem with this situation is that the online discourse is showing the worst of human behavior (I have to say that the exchanges in this forum are extremely civilized) and it is spilling to our real lives.  The way I will describe it is: the human species is starting to suffer from “Cabin Fever.” If you wonder about this, just go to CNN and check the comment sections for any news (the “breaking news” and the political ones are the worst).

      We are about 8 billion people (and increasing), highly interconnected (and increasing), with plenty of doomsday devices (and increasing) and not so doomsday, but still harmful devices (and increasing).  And we are not getting along online (where supposedly enlightenment is attained).

      The human species right now is like a family of 12 inside a house designed for 5  after a week of snow and no place to go but your own room, which probably has to share with some one else.  The worst of all, one of the uncles is getting stir crazy and has a gun collection, the cousins bicker all the time and you had been eating turkey for five days and there is no more options.  Maybe that is a bad analogy, but maybe we want to send the uncle to hunt for game, get the bickering cousins to go ice fishing, send others to check for neighbors and the reminding family members take care of the house.

      I know that sending people to colonize planets and asteroid is too early in our technical capability, but we may want to start thinking on those terms.  Not only to help relive the pressure on earth ecosystem and resources, but also on the species societal/emotional condition.

      Just my opinion.

      a2c2

      • DTARS says:
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        Good thing Mr. Musk is working on it!!!!

        Any more Mr. masks out there????

        parallel Lines

      • David_McEwen says:
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        Cabin fever is probably as good an analogy as any. The word “fever” is more accurate than you might think. Unfortunately, we are living in a time when global environmental (ECOlogy) and financal (ECOnomics) problems are compounding at a rapid rate and a potential meltdown is within a multi-decade timespan.

        Space advocacy can’t be done outside of the context of the times. Hard realities and choices are ahead. Can we have a vision for human exploration of the solar system? Sure. Can we put a program of research and development in place to make it happen? Sure. Is there any hope of this happening with any long term political consensus and financial support? I’m not holding my breath.

        My teen years were in the 70s. I cut my teeth on the classic sci fi masters, Asimov, Clark, Heinlein, and others. The universe was my mental playground. What I’ve seen since the days of the early 70s is, on the one hand, an impressive robotic exploration of a solar system’s dead and hostile planets/moons, and on the other hand, the explosion of computing technology, human/machine interfaces, and the internet here on earth. While the nation tried it’s best to create a version of 2001 A Space Odyssey with a working shuttle and orbital space station, the national imagination and interest has, in fact, been headed toward some sort of Cyberspace Odyssey. For better or for worse.