Space Leaders Work To Replace Lunar Base With Manned Asteroid Missions aviationweek.com By Craig Covault
Some of the most influential leaders of the space community are quietly working to offer the next U.S. president an alternative to President Bush's "vision for space exploration"--one that would delete a lunar base and move instead toward manned missions to asteroids along with a renewed emphasis on Earth environmental spacecraft.
Top U.S. planetary scientists, several astronauts and former NASA division directors will meet privately at Stanford University on Feb. 12-13 to define these sweeping changes to the NASA/Bush administration Vision for Space Exploration (VSE).
Abandoning the Bush lunar base concept in favor of manned asteroid landings could also lead to much earlier manned flights to Mars orbit, where astronauts could land on the moons Phobos or Deimos.
Their goals for a new array of missions also include sending astronauts to Lagrangian points, 1 million mi. from Earth, where the Earth's and Sun's gravity cancel each other out and spacecraft such as replacements for the Hubble Space Telescope could be parked and serviced much like Hubble.
The "alternate vision" the group plans to offer would urge far greater private-sector incentives to make ambitious human spaceflight plans a reality.
There would also be some different "winners and losers" compared with the Bush vision. If the lunar base is deleted, the Kennedy Space Center could lose additional personnel because there would be fewer Ares V launches and no lunar base infrastructure work that had been assigned to KSC. On the other hand, the Goddard Space Flight Center and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration near Washington, along with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California, would gain with the increased space environmental-monitoring goal.
Numerous planetary managers told Aviation Week & Space Technology they now fear a manned Moon base and even shorter sorties to the Moon will bog down the space program for decades and inhibit, rather than facilitate, manned Mars operations--the ultimate goal of both the Bush and alternative visions. The first lunar sortie would be flown by about 2020 under the Bush plan.
If alternative-vision planners have their way, the mission could instead be flown to an asteroid in about 2025.
Participants in the upcoming meeting contend there's little public enthusiasm for a return to the Moon, especially among youth, and that the Bush administration has laid out grandiose plans but has done little to provide the funding to realize them on a reasonable timescale.
Planners say the Bush plan is beginning to crumble, with only companies that have won major funding still enthusiastic about the existing plan.
"It's becoming painfully obvious that the Moon is not a stepping-stone for manned Mars operations but is instead a stumbling block," says Robert Farquhar, a veteran of planning and operating planetary and deep-space missions.
The prospect of challenging new manned missions to asteroids is drawing far more excitement among young people than a "return" (as in going backward) to the Moon, says Lou Friedman, who heads The Planetary Society, the country's largest space interest group.
The society is co-hosting the invitation-only VSE replanning session with Stanford. A lot of people going to the meeting believe "the Moon is so yesterday," says Friedman.
"It just does not feel right. And there's growing belief that, at high cost, it offers minimal engineering benefit for later manned Mars operations."
Under the alternative VSE, even smaller, individual lunar sorties would be reduced, or perhaps deleted entirely, says Noel W. Hinners, who had extensive Apollo lunar science and system responsibility at Bell Laboratories before heading all of NASA's science program development. He also led Lockheed Martin Spaceflight System.
Hinners believes the group should examine dropping all the lunar sorties to accelerate the human push to Mars in the revised VSE proposal to the new administration.
The James Webb Space Telescope, with a 21.3-ft.-dia. mirror, will be launched in 2013 to one of these "L" points. With little fanfare, it was recently approved to carry a lightweight Crew Exploration Vehicle docking system just in case a manned CEV has to make a house call a million miles from Earth for emergency servicing. A growing corps of scientists, engineers and astronauts are emerging to argue for this chance to accelerate manned spaceflight operations outward well beyond the Moon--faster toward Mars than can be done by using the Moon as a stepping-stone only 240,000 mi. away.
"The notion that the Moon could serve as a proving ground for Mars missions strains credulity," says Farquhar, who holds the Charles A. Lindbergh Chair for Aerospace at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. He also was mission director for the Applied Physics Laboratory's Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous mission that was the first to land a spacecraft on an asteroid (see photo, p. 27).
A return to manned Moon operations has become "a bridge too far" in the Bush administration's VSE, says Wes Huntress, another former planetary mission manager. Huntress is director of the Washington-based Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Laboratory and had a long career at JPL and NASA headquarters, where he led NASA space science development and operations--including the highly successful Discovery planetary mission series. He's also helping to organize the Stanford workshop that will have about several dozen participants, including several top NASA and contractor exploration managers.
"There is little left of the 2004 Vision for Space Exploration except the real need to retire the space shuttle," he says. "Even this goal is being pursued with great sacrifice from all other parts of the agency because the administration has simply not put its money where its mouth is."
"Inadequate NASA budgets are leading to collapse of the VSE Moon focus and to incredibly slow progress for the Moon," says Hinners.
"The nation's space enterprise is under great strain even to build Ares I and Orion CEV," Huntress stresses. "There are alternate destinations for human deep-space missions that do not require building a lot of new hardware to [come and go between Earth and the Moon]. These are missions to near-Earth asteroids or to scout the Sun-Earth Lagrangian points for future space telescope construction and servicing," he notes.
The Earth-Sun Lagrangian points (also called libration points) are at the very edge of the Earth's gravitational well, and a mission would represent a first excursion to the limit of Earth's influence in the Solar System--a significant step beyond Apollo, says Huntress. Missions sent to "L" points can stop just there, orbiting only above and below the ecliptic plane without any significant use of station-keeping fuel. Also, L points offer a much cleaner option for advanced astronomy than the dusty lunar surface, where you have to land everything in addition to launching it.
"As the nation seems to be turning to environmental threats to our own planet, a mission to a near-Earth asteroid to assess their nature for good or ill would also seem to be a real winner," says Huntress.
These stepping-stones would allow for the development of a broader vision of human spaceflight than simply reinventing Apollo.
Major lunar-related contracts for the Constellation Crew Exploration Vehicle Orion command ship, a lunar lander design and Ares V launcher have yet to be awarded, giving the next administration some breathing room in post-Bush administration VSE contracting.
Some basic asteroid mission design work--part of it volunteer--using the CEV hardware is already underway at the Johnson Space Center (AW&ST Sept. 25, 2006, p. 21). Other, more in-depth and long-standing manned asteroid analysis is underway under International Astronautical Assn. and Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum sponsorship.
Scott Hubbard, consulting professor in the Stanford Aeronautics and Astronautics Dept., conceived the reassessment meeting. Hubbard was previously the director of NASA Ames Research Center and, before that, NASA Mars program director. "We have planned this invitation-only workshop to elicit frank and open discussion about the future of the 'vision' as the administration changes," he says.
"The Stanford workshop will address a broad range of issues touching on many elements of space exploration. The attendees will discuss the balance between space science and human exploration, the need for continuing and enhancing Earth science observations, the relative utility of humans and robotics, and progress or impediments to human exploration of Mars, asteroids and the Moon," says Hubbard. "In addition, the workshop will discuss the status of access to space and the emerging entrepreneurial space industry. "This is the kind of debate that will go on--beyond whether a lunar base really makes sense. But manned asteroid missions first--ahead of a lunar base--are drawing strong attention," he says. Hubbard and Friedman are co-hosting the event, along with former astronaut Kathy Thornton, associate dean of the University of Virginia's Science, Technology and Society Dept. Thornton flew on four space shuttle missions, including the initial critical repair of the Hubble Space Telescope in 1993.
The alternative vision would also include far greater private-sector incentives for participation at all levels, an area public surveys cite as very important. Missions to asteroids and Lagrangian points, for example, are likely to carry along Bigelow-type commercial inflatable modules. A recent informal space program survey by The New York Times found substantial public frustration about NASA's doing what entrepreneurs could do better.
Under the alternative concepts, astronauts using an upgraded CEV would initially be sent on long-duration missions, not to the Moon, but to land on asteroids where they would sample terrain perhaps more ancient than the Moon's. These visits would also help develop concepts for diverting such near-Earth objects, should they threaten a potentially devastating impact on Earth.
Although it may be hundreds of years before used operationally, an emergency asteroid diversion would be "the ultimate 'green mission'--one that could save a large portion of the Earth from impact destruction," says Friedman.
To reinforce that point, he notes that on Jan. 30, a 150-ft.-long asteroid will pass close to Mars. The asteroid visit and Lagrangian mission concepts would use much of the same CEV Ares I and Ares V heavy-lift booster infrastructure, but in ways that would be much faster stepping-stones to Mars than developing a manned lunar base. Asteroid and Lagrangian point missions would each last several weeks or months. Both the libration points and asteroids would be about 1 million mi. from Earth, requiring operations more like much longer trips to Mars at least 40-100 million mi. away.
Robotic options for all mission elements also will be reviewed, and one working group will be devoted to better defining manned versus robotic tradeżżoffs. Another issue is international participation.
Aviation Week discussed an unrelated European International Space Station topic with NASA Administrator Mike Griffin last week, who in comments aside also addressed the basic Moon/Mars issues between the U.S. and Europe (see p. 28).
"A large portion of the scientific community in the U.S. also prefers Mars over the Moon," he acknowledged. But "interest in the Moon is driven by goals in addition to and beyond the requirements of the science community. It is driven by the imperatives that ensue from a commitment to become a spacefaring society, not primarily by scientific objectives, though such objectives do indeed constitute a part of the overall rationale.
"We continue to experience intense international interest concerning our plans for lunar exploration," Griffin told Aviation Week.
With Frank Morring, Jr., in Washington. This story appears in the Jan. 21 issue of Aviation Week & Space Technology, p. 24
Aviation Week & Space Technology Managing Editor awstletters@aviationweek.com
To the Editor: The opening paragraphs of "Moon Stuck," by Craig Covault and Frank Morning (AWST, Jan 18, 2008) create the misperception that the workshop we are organizing at Stanford University has already decided upon a new path for the human and robotic exploration of space. We wish to make it clear that the purpose of the workshop is to examine critically the Vision for Space Exploration in order to prepare for future space policy considerations in a new Administration and new Congress.
The article states that our purpose is "to offer the next U.S. president an alternative to President Bush's 'vision for space exploration'--one that would delete a lunar base and move instead toward manned missions to asteroids along with a renewed emphasis on Earth environmental spacecraft." This point of view is undoubtedly the personal opinion of some participants - but such an opinion is neither a premise nor a presumed outcome of the workshop. As stated toward the end of the AWST article, the workshop will address a broad range of issues touching on many elements of space exploration and the workshop has no predetermined conclusions.
We have deliberately included a wide range of participants with disparate views, including those who would maintain the status quo. We personally do not know what the conclusions of the workshop will be - or even if there will be a definitive consensus.
A new Administration with different political priorities will certainly consider the Vision for Space Exploration and NASA's spaceflight goals in light of those priorities. In organizing the workshop we hope to provide a valuable examination of the Vision so that whatever the outcome is, it will include consideration of both human and robotic exploration beyond Earth orbit.
Sincerely,
Scott Hubbard, Stanford University Louis Friedman, The Planetary Society
__________________
"A devotee of Truth may not do anything in deference to convention. He must always hold himself open to correction, and whenever he discovers himself to be wrong he must confess it at all costs and atone for it."
Monhandas K. Gandhi
Personally, an asteroid mission is more moving to me--because that is someplace we humans have never been to in person.
One of the things that makes operations on the moon so difficult--with respect to a lunar base--is the general lack of volatiles. True, there may be a kind of 'permafrost' in shadowed craters near the lunar North and South poles, but the logistics of either moving the volatiles to the base, or locating the base there are substantially higher than just plunking a base down in "any ol' convenient place." Lunar gravity is just high enough that it requires substantial delta-V to land and takeoff--necessitating the expenditure of lots of those precious volatiles.
So what makes more ultimate sense to me--from an operations point of view--is to ask ourselves this: what is our reason for going to the moon? Are we going to do the same experiments we did before, or try some new ones? Are we going there to learn? Or are we interested in mining the thing?
If we are interested in exploiting the resources there--and there is a plethora of titanium, aluminum, and iron in "them thar hills," then without a doubt we are going to need volatiles...and the best places to looking for the volatiles that we will need will likely be in the asteroids...
A detailed reconnoiter of some of the near earth crossing asteroids will give us plenty of information we need to inventory resources; determine their location, composition and grade; and collect vital information needed to assess the best way to get at those minerals. Once we have that information, then we can seriously think about mining the asteroids.
We will need a high orbit materials and propellant depot--probably located at or very near one of the libration points near the moon. It will have to be large enough to process, refine, and store volatiles that are brought back from asteroid and comet nucleus mining sorties...one of the big ticket volatiles I can think of is water--perfect for seperating into hydrogen and oxygen. How big of a facility will this need to be? It needs to be designed with expansion in mind so that it can ultimately process 1000 metric ton and ultimately 10,000 metric ton cargoes. So the answer is: big.
We need a low orbit station or Gateway that will handle initial depot and construction duties--this station will be the construction yard for the bigger Lunar Orbit Depot facility, and also the construction and launch facility for the deep space craft will go out and get this stuff. It will also end up being the transhipment center for outbound crews and supplies...
Ultimately we will likely need the moon as a "Near Earth" source of titanium and aluminum for vehicle and station construction--just as Dr. Gerard K O'Neill proposed back in the early seventies.
So the short answer is: we need to do both kinds of missions. The larger answer is: we need a greatly expanded space program that will support our strategic and national security interests of becoming energy independent. How much will this program cost. Trillions of dollars. So what! We will be spending that money here on Earth--and that will create a bigger economic stimulus than any amount of stingy tax breaks. How much do we spend on foreign oil each year? About $350 billion per year off the top of my head. In just five years we have sent $1.5 Trillion US overseas just for oil. Would it not be better to spend that money here?
Enviromental concerns of Global Warming--atleast the human related part of it--are pretty extensive, pervasive and the evidence is substantial that human activities are accelerating a warming trend that started 12,000 years ago...We know enough to fear the consequences of extensive melting of landlocked ice sheets--the displacement of hundreds of millions of people along all coasts is a possible outcome. So it seems pretty obvious to me that we need to seek alternatives to fossil petroleum for energy production. Expanding our base of energy production to include intrinsically safe, modular nuclear plants based on a proven 'cookie cutter design' (i.e., mass manufactured) is essential. Transforming our petroleum industry to look at synthetics derived from plant matter. These are all things that a space industrialization effort can support--we will need vast quantities of platinum group metals for catalysts for synthetic fuel production and fuel cells for cars; to keep the cost of those metals reasonable, we must expand production far beyond what we currently produce. In the nickel iron asteroids PGMs are surprisingly between three and ten times more plentiful than gold--up to several hundred parts per million. Doesn't sound like much? A single 1 km diameter nickel-iron asteroid with platinum group metals at 100 parts per million will have 380,000 metric tons of the stuff--more than 50 times the entire historic production of all terrestrial precious metals combined!
We can do it. It will be expensive--certainly. But what cost is extinction?
The arguments for going to NEAs apply to this completely. To advance the infrastructure, is it better to go to NEAs or the Moon, if we're up to looking for in-space resources beyond volatiles? It'd be nice to harness a nice icy carbonaceous chondrite with all the volatiles we'dd need, but if we then want metals, the Moon or another asteroid? If we can send more payload to an NEA, which has vastly better resources, then that's our source of metals. They call the Moon the slagpile of the solar system, because its "resources" are about what an asteroid miner would toss out as not economical to process further.
AFAIC, we re going to the Moon for more of the same. We've got to continue what we were doing before, but my take on this (and this original post article) is that the Moon is not a place to build up infrastructure -we'll need substantial in-space infrastructure to make access to the Moon regular and robust, and there's just not enough there for an early mission to be worthwhile. By the time we've got access to asteroids with the volatiles we'd need, we've got experience with mining asteroids, so it makes sense again to skip the Moon.
__________________
"A devotee of Truth may not do anything in deference to convention. He must always hold himself open to correction, and whenever he discovers himself to be wrong he must confess it at all costs and atone for it."
Monhandas K. Gandhi
My initial assessment is that volatiles would be mined first to initially stock a depot with propellant. Then metals, for fabrication of parts and expansion of the depot; then more volatiles...if more than one spacecraft was in operation then the two could be done simultaneously which would give the fastest return on investment. Once a steady supply of propellant was available, then it would make sense to go after a pure nickel-iron NEA--and mine the heck out of it. Extract the platinum group metals and bring them back to Low Earth Orbit in quantity--atleast 1000 metric ton lots. From there PGM's could be transhipped to Earth by using it as balast for returning vehicles. The PGM's will be used to help pay down the principle--while not completely destroying the market for these metals by saturation.
Of course the Devil is the details--and this project would have no shortage of details!
How about skip both and develop a second generation space shuttle that is better the good old one we have now? Secondly, we should develop a nuclear-electric space propulsion system. Then we can seriously consider going to both Mars and the asteroids. And, on second thought, we might as well go back to the moon with the Orion thing just to have some activity to fill the gap. The required developments will take at least a decade from the start.
As for the global warming, it's no real problem and the mitigation efforts won't do much good. China and India will more than make up for any reductions in our CO2 output. I would propose that after a certain interval for preparation we require that all new electric generation by from nuclear power. We have several options for cars including using the coal to make gasoline, second generation hybrids, i.e. electric cars with an on-board generator, pure electrics with EE Stor devise works out or a better battery is developed.
One idea I have which of course requires pretty extensive space industrial infrastructure is the construction of a large solar power array/sun screen on the sunward side of the Earth-Sun L-1 point. Placing a construct there which can decrease solar flux intercepted by Earth by up to 1% should cancel out any Global Warming we are experiencing until such a time when we can decrease human generated carbon emissions to essentially zero-net.
As far as initially establishing infrastructure: it is a real bear. I suspect that a second generation shuttle will only happen if there is demand for it...
And I am beginning to agree that the scientists and engineers who describe the space shuttle as a $4 billion reusable payload fairing do have a point. Even though there have been quite a few times when missions would have completely failed had it not been for the astronauts there on the scene who were able to intercede...The whole idea of the crew not being able to escape in an abort scares me...both Challenger and Columbia demonstrate the need for a true survivable crew abort system. Currently this philosophy mandates going back to launching payload and crews seperately, although Apollo managed to do it quite nicely with both. The proposal I have read regarding Direct 2.0 with a vehicle that has essentially all the legacy features of the shuttle transportation system--without the orbiter--is a very interesting one.
One idea I have for establishing the infrastructure needed for space industrialization is the use of something almost identical to Ares-V. By re-engineering the LOX/LH2 core tank--itself a very close derivative of the current Space Shuttle-ET--to be more 'orbital reuse friendly.' This is not as simple as it seems--the safing and safe removal of various pyro-systems are going to be tricky. The poly-urethane tank surface foam insulation is going to be a real bugger of a problem--I still haven't figured out how to effectively deal with that issue! Purging and recycling leftover propellants from the delivered tanks demands a high capacity (heavy and energy intensive) orbital cryogenics plant. But the results may be worth it: a large orbital 'tank farm' with spacious (cavernous!) pressurizable facilities for manufacturing, processing, etc. And a steady supply of construction materials in the form of spent tankage. A propellant, industrial and supply depot built thusly will be in a perfect position to recieve asteroid derived metals and volatiles for further expansion of operations.
Currently I am working on an initial design assessment for TRITON's big brother: a 22 GWt NTR which I think I will call GOLIATH--because in its LANTR mode it should deliver just about 3.3-3.4 million pounds of thrust in vacuum. A couple of Goliath motors modified for sea-level start should effectively create a Single Stage to Orbit Heavy Lift Vehicle. Such a vehicle may be able to support the Earth side of a large space indrustrial infrastructure.
The deepspace side could be supported by a huge vehicle with 3 Goliaths inline for moving mostly volatiles from spent comets to the High-Earth Orbit Depot.
Anyways, this study keeps my off the streets at night!
I'm not sure what you mean by "skipping both." Return to the moon and the asteroid mission that has been proposed.
My though is that what is required now is a big push on propulsion technology which has been largely frozen for about 40 years now. With the cancellation of the X-33 we haven't even flown an aerospike engine yet. The have been some small Ion engines flown and the lab work on VASIMR. Nuclear thermal hasn't flown either. The existing shuttles will have to be retired either on the current accelerated schedule or if someone comes to their scenses a few years later. I'd like to see one Orion flight before we retire the shuttle.
So rather then grand standing I'd like to see some big time R&D and production of a new generation of space systems. It's too late to go straight to a next generation shuttle (Bush missed that chance his first year in office. Although it's Clinton who should have started the effort.). So we have the Orion (Apollo Redux) as an interim to support the ISS. This can keep manned space alive until the necessary development are made.
While all of the criticisms of the existing shuttle are not without merit is also true that we can't become a true spacefaring race with throw away vehicles. I can't really see space industrialization being based on such technology either. Also, we can evolve from cost-inefficient first generation shuttles to cost-efficient nth generation shuttles by going back to 1970. This is the way Russia is running their space program and they are still in 1970 and not progressing.
A new design may well provide crew survival options not present in the current shuttle. But, I can see how we can send people to the moon or the asteroids belt in Orion-type vehicle if we aren't prepared to faces loses of life. Figher aircraft do have zero-zero ejections seats and we still lose pilots in training exercises. We also lose ground crewmen when they on rare occasion screw up and eject themselves through they ceiling of an aircraft hanger. (The latter has happened.)
I'd like to at least go through a full competative concept demonstration phase on a next generation shuttle to at least see what 40 years on general technological progress could give us. We need a better general layout, heat shielding, higher sortie generation, and cheaper support costs than the current version.
Advanced propulsion based on nuclear energy is required for broader exploration of the solar system. Nuclear thermal and nuclear-electric (most likely VASIMR) should be developed and tested. Then we can take on Mars and the asteroid belt, etc.
It occured to me about a year ago that a CEV type capsule could just about fit into the spot that is occupied by the orbiter's flight deck and middeck. One could kludge together a design, essentially 'wrapping' an orbiter around a CEV command module to give a much needed all aspect abort mode. Blowing off a couple of panels, and with the aid of a cluster of 50,000 lbf solid motors, the command module can be blown completely free of the orbiter giving the crew a much better chance at escape. It is my feeling that if we go for a 2nd generation orbiter then it had better have as good of an escape system as money can buy. An internally seperate CEV capsule could fit this bill quite nicely.
Increased R&D on many different aspects of propulsion--a completely solid idea. Infact, if it were up to me, I'd initially double NASA's budget, with a steady ramp up to about $100 billion per year after 8 years...but then again, Congress doesn't bother to consult me on my ideas either! And my threats of not voting for them when they don't comply with my wishes go completely unacknowledged.
