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NASA Phones In Summary of Deep Space Gateway Workshop

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
March 7, 2018
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NASA Phones In Summary of Deep Space Gateway Workshop

Scientists Share Ideas for Gateway Activities Near the Moon, NASA
“In late 2017, the agency asked the global science community to submit ideas leveraging the gateway in lunar orbit to advance scientific discoveries in a wide range of fields. NASA received more than 190 abstracts covering topics human health and performance, Earth observation, astrophysics, heliophysics, and lunar and planetary sciences, as well as infrastructure suggestions to support breakthrough science. Although it is too early to select specific research for the gateway, the workshop marks the first time in more than a decade the agency’s human spaceflight program brought scientists from a variety of disciplines together to discuss future exploration.”
Keith’s note: This short blog posting is apparently all that the public will ever see as a result of the Deep Space Gateway workshop that NASA and LPI held in Denver last week – the one where media participation was hidden from the media and no one cared enough to even bother to webcast for others to hear.
Deep Space Gateway Event Ends But No One Knows It Ever Happened, earlier post
Stealthy NASA Deep Space Gateway Meeting Underway, earlier post

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

11 responses to “NASA Phones In Summary of Deep Space Gateway Workshop”

  1. Donald Barker says:
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    This is how bridges to no where get made….

  2. Vladislaw says:
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    Keith any possible link to the 190 proposals?

    Also, have you talked to anyone that attended and learned what was talked about?

  3. Vladislaw says:
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    Found the link to the abstracts:

    https://www.hou.usra.edu/me

    It looks like the whole meeting was just reviewing these 190 proposals.

    Some of note:

    Alexander L. Lunar and Planetary: Samples, Wed, a.m., Boxelder Meeting Room

    Anderson C. M. 3125 Lunar and Planetary: External Instruments, Tue, p.m., Boxelder Meeting Room

    a LOT of papers on samples..

    • fcrary says:
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      Formally, those are not proposals up for review. That would mean NASA actually said they planned to do something and pay people to do it. (And the process for proposing involves rules which preclude meetings of this sort.) This was just exploratory and, as the phrase goes, “non-decisional.”

      I’ve been to meeting like this before. (The one for the Jovian Icy Moons Orbiter, for example. That was also a bit surreal.) They are all about hearing what sort of things scientists would want to do if NASA decided to do X. The scientists stand up and give a ten or fifteen minute talk about whatever they would like to do. The abstracts you found are the one-to-two page version of the same thing. No decisions are made, or even discussed. The NASA project management and headquarters people use the presented ideas and concepts to guide their plans on what they actually do.

      For the scientists, that can be critical. If you’ve got a great lunar experiment that has to be mounted outside the “gateway” (e.g. something about detecting dust particles ejected from impacts on the Moon), you want to make sure the ultimate plans allow for externally mounted instruments. And externally mounted in the right way. But from the NASA management point of view, it’s just useful input and a way to show scientists are interested in this “gateway” station.

      • Vladislaw says:
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        Thanks for the clarification on “review” I understood this was just a meet n’ greet and NASA looking for input. But regardless there does seem to be some interesting work could be done. If funded of course..

        • fcrary says:
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          Definitely. Looking over the abstracts, I see a whole lot of good, scientific work. But I don’t see a whole lot which actually requires a manned station on lunar orbit. Most of the planetary and heliophysics idea (the ones on topics I’m most familiar with) sound like things you could do from an unmanned platform. In some cases, they sound like things that would be _better_ if done from an unmanned platform. From those scientists’ point of view, using this Gateway plan as the platform is just using whatever platform NASA is thinking of providing.

          • Vladislaw says:
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            The only reason to utilize a manned platform in my mind is if you want to utilize equipment that is going to be built so that upgrades can be incorporated easily and a faster iteration rate. Or that it actually requires hands on ..

  4. NArmstrong says:
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    I reviewed a lot of the proposals. Most are in the category of, “well if someone pays us, we can come up with an idea of something to do”. I have not found any that say, ‘we really need to do this and this is the best way and the best place….’ In fact most that I reviewed would be far more beneficial if there were routine frequent inexpensive access. Hopefully NASA did not pay anyone for these ideas?

    • fcrary says:
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      Generally speaking, NASA doesn’t pay people to present at meetings like this. The NASA officials running it would be paid for the trip, and they sometimes subsidize travel for early career scientists (defined as having gotten a PhD within seven years.) But other than that, people were (or should have been) paying their own way. Of course, that’s usually with funding from their employer, as an investment in getting future NASA contracts. And that institutional funding comes, in part, from overhead on NASA contracts and grants.

    • Nick K says:
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      I have visions of deja vu all over again. NASA spent a lot of time and money coming up with ideas for the kinds of experiments and payloads to fly on a space station, all through the 1960s, 70s, 80s and into the 90s. The station program had blue books and green books and red books loaded with ideas. They spent hundreds of millions of dollars sponsoring PIs and payload developers, commercial development centers, universities all over the US, and then when they decided they wanted more money for their contractors back about 15 years ago, they cancelled the science they were sponsoring. They had one program, biotechnology, which was going to be the answer to everyone’s prayers on valuable research that could only be done on a space station. Those biotech payloads flew on dozens of Shuttles, Spacelabs, Spacehabs, Mir, and then somebody decided no more money for that. Never been heard from since……

  5. james w barnard says:
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    Given the data that Scott Kelly’s near-year in space has produced compared with the control from his brother, we are going to need a manned lunar base where we can determine if LOW gravity will ameliorate the problems that result from long-term exposure to zero-g. Another zero-g manned station orbiting the Moon is going to teach us NOTHING! If 1/6g doesn’t do it, we may need to set up a centrifuge on the Moon to expose crew members to 3/8g. Otherwise, we are going to wind up with a lot of Mars-bound astronauts in bad shape or worse! Somebody better put that in the form of a “proposal”, and get it past Congress!