It's been a long time

[kengr]

At 2:54 pm PST on this day in 1972, man left the moon.

No, let's be honest. We *abandoned it.

3 and a half years from the first landing and in 39 years we not only haven't been bacjk, we've lost the *ability* to go back.

To get back to the moon would require re-inventing damn near everything.

Heck, at the moment, the Russians are the only folks who can place humans in orbit.

Lest anyone raise the old argument about it being better to spend the money here on earth, keep in mind that it *is* spent here on earth. And that for the last 40 years we've been coasting on things created by and for the space program.

Comments

[stickmaker.livejournal.com]

It's never been about money, though some people think it is and others pretend it is. There are folks out there who simply don't like the idea of space travel. I actually heard a member of the US Congress (*not* Proxmire) about fifteen years ago dismiss funding for some new project by labeling all things space "that Buck Rogers Stuff." (You have to wonder how many of his constituents even had a clear idea of who Buck Rogers was.)

Space X has a contract to send supply modules to the ISS. Rutan and his new partner are working on another unmanned launch system with at least a first stage (which will be the largest and heaviest aircraft ever to fly) which is reusable.

I'm currently reading _1493_ about what happened when Europe started exploiting the New World. The nations of Europe involved needed a while to start showing a profit from this, but once they did...

We need someone to tell Congress "Because some day you will tax it."

People who know what they're talking about say we should have had a pause after Apollo 17 (or even 13) so we could improve the equipment and methodologies before we lost a crew. However, these same people say we should definitely not have *stopped*.

A few years ago I wrote a very cynical short story which had aliens - once they learned _why_ we stopped - run screaming from the UN to their space ships and flee the entire system. Because no sane culture had ever done that.

Yeah, I'm a space enthusiast. I wrote a spreadsheet for roughing out the preliminary design of launch vehicles. Doesn't get much geekier than that until you start bending tin.

Sorry for using your blog to rant.

[kengr]

Given that my post *was* a rant, and you pretty much agree...

Heck, one of the big things that killed the program was Nixon. Since it was a "legacy" from Kennedy & Johnson, and they were the other party, he really didn't want it around.

As for killing people, Congress was responsible for the Challenger disaster. They refused to pay to develop the liquid fueled booster design that was part of the original Shuttle design.

Heck, we abandoned the Saturns (we couldn't build one now without starting from scratch). There was no reason we couldn't have kept using them.

Likewise, we lost Skylab because to keep the Shuttle development (way behind schedule) we'd abandoned the Saturns, and couldn't send up a mission to re-boost it.

Hopefully, whoever gets us back to the moon (if anybody does) will do it *right* this time and use the Earth orbit rendezvous method.

Build a station in somewhat higher orbit than the ISS. Have space tugs that can launch and retrieve satellites. And use that infrastructure to build something that can go from Earth orbit to the moon and back.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[brockulfsen.livejournal.com]

And here gave engineers perhaps the ultimate stick with which to beat managers forever more. The concept of "Russian Roulette Risk Assessment."

Click-Click-Click-Click-Click
We've pulled the trigger 5 times before and everything was fine, so we have a proven track record that the procedure is safe...
BANG!

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was gonna say that the people who run things don't know enough about the history of the space program to see any profit in it.

And, like I saw in a picture the other day, "If voting changed anything, they'd outlaw it."

[seawasp]

I love the idea of space travel.

But it *IS* always about the money. We went to the moon as a specific, shock-and-awe grandstanding stunt. When we achieved that, there was no more reason to remain.

When someone has a REASON to go to the moon, then you'll get large-scale return. Right now, scientific exploration is being done very well -- and almost infinitely more safely -- by automated probes. These are doing absolutely astounding things, as James Nicoll points out quite often.

You want to send people into space, or do more development, you need to show someone -- a lot of someones -- the reason, OR wait until doing so is vastly cheaper by virtue of the growth of the overall economy and thus the amount of resources individuals can control.

I of course cheated in _Boundary_ -- I invented a reason that WOULD drive people to do the impossible. If someone discovers traces of lost civilizations on one of the bodies in the solar system, I'm reasonably confident we WILL send people out there. But barring that, you need either a very strong business case, or a method to make is vastly less expensive, or a very powerful NON business reason (i.e., the Cold War and the USSR as adversary to shake huge fists at).

[stickmaker.livejournal.com]

The main antenna on the Galileo probe to Jupiter is a prime example of a situation where a simple mechanical fix - such as a human hand to yank the stuck antenna ribs loose - would have worked but was unavailable. The problem is, as things stood then - and still - we couldn't send a repairman that far, and don't have any space-capable machines suitable for that sort of work. (All credit to the folks who salvaged the mission by figuring out how to use the low-gain antenna to do so much.)

Right now, if a probe partially or completely fails, the only recourse is to send another probe. Either to replace the one with the malf or to repair it. Either would be very expensive, but if we could make the repair unit reusable...

We really need to get much, much better at telepresence for stuff close enough to home and autonomy for stuff further away. Perhaps we could build a handful of durable units with manipulators and storage bins for spare parts. They could sent wherever needed, do the job and then go back to the ISS for refurbishment. With several, it wouldn't matter if one needed several years to return.

That is only practical for damaged probes in space, though. For something on a planet or large moon, either send another probe, or count on losing the repair unit.

[kengr]

It's not even practical for orbiting probes. You have to remember that most probes beyond Nars require gravity assist maneuvers to get to their destinations. Those are only practical with certain planetary alignments. Which can occur *decades* apart.

Even if we get improve things enough to be able to use simple Hohmann transfer orbits, it'll take months to get earth into the right position for launch, and could take more months (to years) to get into position to *start* on the return trip.

For example, for Mars, you have to wait something like 600 days between arrival and being able to head back to earth. With a 300(?) day trip in each direction.

So you have to count the repair bots as out of use for years to decades.

Until we get *much* better drive systems, repairs just aren't going to happen.

[stickmaker.livejournal.com]

Keep in mind that most deep space probes are pretty large. If - a pretty big "if" I admit - we can make the repair units substantially smaller, the same size boosters will get them there pretty quickly.

Better drives are on the way. I know the guy who wrote the software for (and spent a huge amount of effort managing) the Deep Space 1 ion drive probe. (He's still at NASA, still writing probe software.) What finally killed that was running out of chemical propellants for attitude control. There's currently another ion drive probe underway; the Dawn probe to Ceres. (Which uses three of the DS1-type drives.)

There are vague plans for reusable "space tugs" using ion drives, which would put a satellite into the right orbit then refuel and go for the next one, all functions automated. There are proposals that at least some of these also have repair capabilities. Use something like that for the repair units - with depots of fuel and spare parts strategically placed around Earth (perhaps at middle-height orbits not normally used or geosynchronous orbits not used for communications) and these units could run for years.

Using this concept to repair a damaged deep space probe would be a special project, but with equipment built and in place it might be possible to assemble a rescue mission from what's already in one of those depots. Whether the repair unit can be returned afterwards would depend on the orbital mechanics of the situation.

I'm just indulging in some technically feasible wishful thinking, here. :-)

[kengr]

Sorry, but time from leaving earth orbit to arriving at planet is dictated by orbital mechanics. A bigger booster won't change it. Not until we have engines on the "probe"/"repair unit" that have a delta V in the 20+ miles per second range.

Remember, a Hohmann transfer orbit is using a *few* miles per second to change from Earth's orbit around the sun to an elliptical orbit with the perihelion at earth's orbit and the aphelion at the destination planet's orbit. Then another burn of a few miles a sec will match the destination orbit.

To do what Heinlein called a "cometary" orbit, you need to make a *huge* burn to change to an orbit that greatly differs from Earth's orbit, and ends up with an aphelion at the destination. Where (once again) a small burn will match orbits.

We are talking orders of magnitude higher delta V requirements.

Ion drives are (alas) low thrust. So it'll take really long times to get anywhere.

[dornbeast.livejournal.com]

Have you ever read Heinlein's essay, "Spinoff"? I think it has all the reasons to travel to space right there.

(In short: Nearly everything the space program creates in the process of increasing its reach can be used to solve at least one problem back on Earth. And the positive effects on morale - yes, even counting Apollo 1, Soyuz 1, Soyuz 11, Challenger, and Columbia - is incalculable.)

[seawasp]

Yes, and it's very convincing. For those who already want to believe.

It's useless for convincing people who have money, want to make more money, and know perfectly well -- with lots of evidence to hand -- that they can do directed research right here on Earth to solve specific problems that will make them money.

To convince people to spend billions of dollars, again, you need to convince them they will make billions more -- that they CANNOT make another way. Or have a threat, like the USSR, that drives space travel in another way.

Remember, I'm not one of the ones you have to convince. If *I* had a billion dollars I'd sink five hundred million of it into private space travel in an instant. (I have other things I want to do with the rest).

The ones you need to convince are the people *I* have to convince to give me money, and that involves very well researched technical proposals and very powerful business cases... or requires that they already WANT to do it, and just need me to describe HOW.

[kengr]

The problem with "directed" research is that it doesn't have many spinoffs.

That sort of thinking would have lead to really good buggies and some great means of dealing with feeding the horses and removing the "exhaust emissions". But wouldn't have led to cars, buses, trucks, etc.

[seawasp]

But all of those were invented without a space program, and the same kind of innovative thinking happens right here on Earth -- proven by your own examples. The argument for "spinoff" doesn't end up saying "do a space program" to anyone except someone who wants to do a space program to begin with. It says "try to think of new ways to do things" or "doing large complex projects will almost always lead to lots of other things". But you can do lots 'n lots of large complex projects right here.

[dornbeast.livejournal.com]

In my more pessimistic moments, I imagine two curves - one for available resources on a planet, one for technological level - where both have to be at a minimum level for a civilization to achieve spaceflight.

The second one is trending up; the first one, however, is trending down...

(In my more optimistic moments, I think of all the technology that I couldn't have imagined ten years ago that is commonplace now, and consider that perhaps somebody will figure out a way to achieve spaceflight before the resources run out.)

[seawasp]

I look at the planet and realize that "resources running out" is a silly idea unless you talk on the scale of thousands or tens of thousands of years. We have LOTS of resources. The ONLY resource I've seen anyone discuss that we are running out of that doesn't appear to have an obvious second source or replacement is, possibly, helium. And even that's debatable. Rare earth elements? Not really rare, and not running out -- it's just that the current DEVELOPED mines are in mostly Chinese hands. There's plenty available elsewhere if needed. Oil? Yeah, maybe, but that's not a big deal if you just start generating your energy from something else (i.e., nuclear); then you can synthesize all the oil you will ever want, from water and the CO2 in the air (bonus: synthesized gasoline/oil becomes carbon neutral, as you take out carbon to make it, and only that much carbon goes back out). There really aren't many, if any, resources here that are actually easily exhaustible AND irreplaceable.

[kengr]

Of course, there *is* the problem that we are already at the point where if things fall apart, the only iron ore workable with low tech is black sand or junkyards and dump sites.

The ores we are working for a lot of things *require* high tech to either mine or process.

So we are ok now, but if we ever "stumble" we may be in an "I've fallen and I can't get up" situation.

[seawasp]

Er... if we fall so far that we worry about THAT, you have millions upon millions of tons of easily-workable, ultra-high-grade iron ore. The old buildings and their I-beam structures. The ships moldering in the ports. Lots of iron.

Not that I'm worrying about falling THAT far. Ain't happenin'.

[mikkop.livejournal.com]

I used to think that space exploration was expensive. Then I worked for some years as a radio astronomer (in-training), mostly in an ESA project. One of my coworkers (a distinguished researcher) then wrote a book about, well, stuff, but in it he did calculate that the ESA space research budget is about on the scale of one pint of beer for each ESA member country citizen.

So, it isn't that expensive.

Also, even though I intellectually know that the Space Shuttle is not what it was meant to be, for various reasons, it's still *the* symbol of a space launcher for me. I was born four years after the last moon mission, and I was too small to remember Skylab except from some books, but I do remember the Challenger accident.

I've recently been reading Charles Stross's blog at http://www.antipope.org/charlie and he has written some posts about sending humans in space. I see his point that it's very, very difficult and not cost-efficient, but there are still valid reasons for sending people up into at least the Moon orbit, if not even to Mars.

I'm not sure what would be the best option: send humans up and use a lot of money and some lives, or just try to use the remote probes. The second option won't get as much money, though.

It might be that the next people on the Moon are Chinese, by the way. Even though they do have internal problems and I'm not sure what their main point of space research is - admittely most space research gets money from the military, so I'm not sure if they're in any way different than the US or Europe, or even India.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[acelightning.livejournal.com]