Why we need to go back to the moon

[sdsds]

Humanity doesn't need to send travelers to the Moon again anytime soon.  NASA certainly doesn't need to do so, and it doesn't seem like U.S. taxpayers want to pay for them to do it, either.

Alan Stern recently tried to make the case that Research and Education Missions (REM) would be "Next-Gen Suborbital’s Killer App."^[1] By that he means research and education missions will be the primary driver making next-generation sub-orbital spaceflight systems profitable.  The same case for REM as the killer app can probably be made for lunar surface operations:  there's a lot of research to be done and a lot of education value to be had.

At the same time, REM wasn't the application that motivated the creation of the new sub-orbital spaceflight systems.  That application, very clearly, was tourism.  The analogy probably holds for systems providing human access to the lunar surface:  the application that motivates them will be tourism.

Really, someone should do the market research and ask.  How much would Charles Simonyi pay to walk on the Moon?

[JohnFornaro]

And all of the above in preparation for colonization.  First the Moon, then Mars.

[veedriver22]

 I am not sure if the point of this topic is about the reasons we need to go back to the moon or teaching students.  On the first one here are my reasons:

 1.   Security.  If we let other countries take the lead and develop their space programs beyond ours, our very security could be compromised.   This is quite a ways down the road, but it will eventually happen if just keep going to LEO forever.

2.   To keep us on the leading edge.  We pride ourselves as a great nation that  has developed the most advanced skills and technology.   The space program is
a big piece of that.  Without even realizing it, our belief in our country is
validated by our accomplishments in space.   

3.   To lead us in developing resources.  Some believe there is nothing out there worth our time & effort to develop, mainly because it is so expensive.  I believe that if we keep pushing our goals (or maybe its returning to doing this)  and our technology we will be able to tap into vast energy and materials out there.  It will eventually become profitable. But we need NASA to lead the way, otherwise it never will happen.  .     

4.   Provide career path for our brightest students.   The space program provides inspiration to our best and brightest.   Ever shopped around for an Aerospace job?
I have & you need to be one smart cookie (with degrees to match) to even be
considered.   This includes Astronauts that are willing to risk their lives for it.
What other endeavor is there that is even close?  None that I am aware.

[JohnFornaro]

I think one of the things being said is that teaching students is one of the reasons why we need to go back to the Moon.  The attraction for operating some of these teleoperated robots is very captivating for some young minds and will open up new career paths for these students, who will then invent new economies, based on space.

[robertross]

I think one of the things being said is that teaching students is one of the reasons why we need to go back to the Moon.  The attraction for operating some of these teleoperated robots is very captivating for some young minds and will open up new career paths for these students, who will then invent new economies, based on space.

Well from my POV, involving students helps to SELL the idea. We can make all these claims for eventual colonization & such( which is WAY too far away imo), but for the short term it is a great stepping stone to Mars. What we learn on the moon helps us to go to Mars, whether it's teleoperated robotics, lander concepts, AG designs, ISRU systems (though I've been made aware here that doing it on earth makes more sense, but still nice to test a unit out in partial G), nuclear reactors...

Partial G, radiation, long distances, zero/partial atmosphere, sub-zero temperatures...we can test lots of these individually here on Earth, but a closer to real-world environment would be better, and potentially all at once would be best, imo.

[Robotbeat]

I think one of the things being said is that teaching students is one of the reasons why we need to go back to the Moon.  The attraction for operating some of these teleoperated robots is very captivating for some young minds and will open up new career paths for these students, who will then invent new economies, based on space.

Well from my POV, involving students helps to SELL the idea. We can make all these claims for eventual colonization & such( which is WAY too far away imo), but for the short term it is a great stepping stone to Mars. What we learn on the moon helps us to go to Mars, whether it's teleoperated robotics, lander concepts, AG designs, ISRU systems (though I've been made aware here that doing it on earth makes more sense, but still nice to test a unit out in partial G), nuclear reactors...

Partial G, radiation, long distances, zero/partial atmosphere, sub-zero temperatures...we can test lots of these individually here on Earth, but a closer to real-world environment would be better, and potentially all at once would be best, imo.

The biggest thing we need is to figure out how to make space travel relatively cheap. Physics doesn't prevent us from doing it, since the energy and fuel required isn't any more than a few trips to Japan and back. Building a monument every trip is how to make space expensive. I'm not saying it's easy to figure this out, only that it's not impossible to make it cheap.

But cheap travel isn't all that's required for colonization. It is necessary but not sufficient.

This is part of the reason to go back to the Moon. If we can swing it by putting reusable spacecraft everywhere that is technically feasible, we will be well on our way to giving our kids something to be proud of.

[Patchouli]

The big problem with the ESAS plan is NASA has once again got the cart in front of the horse.
They need to scrap that plan.
The public won't buy it because they know it would just result in six landings and get the ax.
 Instead they need to return to the spiral development plan.
First work on making safe and reliable LEO access lower cost and sending teleoperated rovers on the moon to test out ISRU ideas before even considering sending a crew.

 NASA also needs engage private enterprise more and should buy items are are available off the self unless an improved and lower cost version can be made in house.
Ie don't reinvent the wheel unless you can make a better wheel.

An example there is no need at all for Ares I since a lower cost and more capable LV for that job already exists the Delta IV-H and upgrades to the Atlas V.

Even Orion it's self may or may not be necessary due to privately developed  vehicles.
This leaves ISRU, an HLV, rovers,and a lander as the only items that still absolutely need to be developed in house.

[Robotbeat]

You don't need a HLV if you are trying to do this sustainably. We can do on-orbit construction and/or docking. Heck, LOR is basically a form of on-orbit construction, just with the pieces launched together. We know how to loiter in space, that's not a problem like it was for Apollo. We also know how to refuel in orbit (hypergolics and water and food, the only things really needed). We have extensive experience with solar power systems and we have much smaller and more capable and robust electronics. We DON'T need to do it like Apollo. We don't even really need to send the capsule along with, since we have a space station and/or know how to build or operate space stations.

[William Barton]

We don't need to go back to the Moon, and didn't really need to go in the first place. The question now is, why do we want to go back to the Moon? (I know why we wanted to go in the first place, of course."

Do you mean even with robots?

Danny Deger

Actually, I do, though that wasn't the question, near as I can tell. In another thread, I pointed out the unmanned v. manned argument has a hidden assumption that unmanned space science has intrinsic value. No one has, in fact, demonstrated that to be true. Three billion dollars to find out there are methane lakes on Titan? The average American would find more value in a random drawing to give away three billion dollars to some lucky taxpayer every year, and the economy would quite likely get more out of that. You used the word "need," and I'm addressing just that. We don't *need* any of it. Comsats are nice, but cable could do the job just as well. Metsats? How much more will it cost before the weatherman can predict the weather successfully better than I can with a barometer and an eye out the window? Spysats? How many eyes on the ground could you have bought for all that money? A few hundred thousand "James Bonds" might have been a better value. Etc.

[Robotbeat]

We don't need to go back to the Moon, and didn't really need to go in the first place. The question now is, why do we want to go back to the Moon? (I know why we wanted to go in the first place, of course."

Do you mean even with robots?

Danny Deger

Actually, I do, though that wasn't the question, near as I can tell. In another thread, I pointed out the unmanned v. manned argument has a hidden assumption that unmanned space science has intrinsic value. No one has, in fact, demonstrated that to be true. Three billion dollars to find out there are methane lakes on Titan? The average American would find more value in a random drawing to give away three billion dollars to some lucky taxpayer every year, and the economy would quite likely get more out of that. You used the word "need," and I'm addressing just that. We don't *need* any of it. Comsats are nice, but cable could do the job just as well. Metsats? How much more will it cost before the weatherman can predict the weather successfully better than I can with a barometer and an eye out the window? Spysats? How many eyes on the ground could you have bought for all that money? A few hundred thousand "James Bonds" might have been a better value. Etc.

I was going to write a long-winded response, but this is simply ridiculous. Cable only works where there is cable in the ground (which is to say, not any rural areas), there's no way we could predict the weather like we do now if we didn't have both comsats and metsats, spysats have changed the very realities of global strategies without the kinds of diplomatic problems that hundreds of thousands of intelligence agents would cause (and spy UAVs rely on space assets as well), and GPS has made such a HUGE difference in: civil engineering, mapping, navigation, trucking, asset tracking, hiking/camping/fishing... to say nothing about military applications. GPS alone would be worth billions and billions of dollars every year, and we aren't even utilizing its full potential yet. In the last ten years, GPS has just EXPLODED, since it is now in virtually every mobile phone. Virtually all truckers in the US use and rely on it. Simply lowering fuel consumption from shaving off trip lengths by using GPS pays for the system every year.

The fact is that resources in space are limitless, once we can get used to space. It may take hundreds of years, but an investment in space travel beats Malthusian Collapse and extinction of the human race any day of the week.

Heck, GPS systems integrated onto tractors (etc.) help farmers be more efficient. Food is a basic human need. It's a direct case of space increasing a necessity to human life.

[sdsds]

The average American would find more value in a random drawing to give away three billion dollars to some lucky taxpayer every year,

Probably.  This isn't exactly rational on the part of the average American, but utility is intrinsically subjective.

and the economy would quite likely get more out of that.

Eh?  How do you figure?  Government spending, whether funded by revenue or deficit, has no greater economic value than private spending of the same dollars.  (Whether spending has greater value than savings is likely beyond scope.)

I was going to write a long-winded response, but this is simply ridiculous.

Right.  The irony is that military space projects (Corona, Navstar, DMSP) have spun off so much value to citizens (mapping, navigation, weather) and civilian space -- human lunar spaceflight in particular -- has spun off so little.

[JohnFornaro]

Well that's true also, Robert's observation that selling the robot program is a crucial step on the critical path to realizing the program.  And maybe closing the sale is in fact the most important aspect.  Closing the sale with the American people first, then with Congress.  Many of NASA's legacy programs, however, have been sold on false premises.  For a good snort, consider the idea that we can turn around the shuttle in a week.

Per:
http://books.google.com/books?id=W5UrAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA6&lpg=PA6&dq=shuttle+turnaround+time&source=bl&ots=Uad57HrDTb&sig=cT7SDB7MQgVIk5Wy09fNtjVvoRE&hl=en&ei=_QDfSvfeHMKn8Ab6_7l0&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CBYQ6AEwBQ

(Sorry, Google has decided that part of "do no evil" is providing links that are not human readable.)

To recap this report,"Assessment of Constraints on Space Shuttle Launch Rates", by thew National Research Council in April of 1983: "It is concluded that the most prominent constraints in the early year growth of the [shuttle] as an operational system may manifest themselves not as shortages of investment items such as the ET or the SRB, but as inability to provide timely repairs or replacement of flight system components needed to sustain launch rates."

However, a cursory search reveals any number of documents which promised "optimistic" launch rates predicated on "optimistic" turnaround times.  This one suggests 160 hour turnaround times: "The economic plan used to develop the operations scenario for the shuttle was a five orbiter fleet with a projected flight rate of forty flights per year from the John F. Kennedy Space Center (KSC) and an additional twenty flights per year from Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB). Early analyses confirmed that forty flights from KSC could only be achieved if vehicle ground turnaround could be completed within 160 hours, hence the 160 hour turnaround allocation."  Got that?  Early analyses "confirmed" these flight rates.  If I may slip into my characteristic penchant for sarcasm:  I bet these guys had some pretty cool clipboards, pocket protectors and white lab jackets!

Reference:
http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/nexgen/rlvhq10.htm

In my opinion, such suggestions were a deliberate effort to mislead Congress, in the effort to "sell" the shuttle.  We have seen various fallacies and I would say, deceptions, revealed in the Augustine proceedings.  As far as the idea of SELLING teleoperated lunar robots to our school system, what is there that keeps the process honest?

As to colonization efforts, it is vital that this goal is clearly differentiable from a claim, and this is more than just a semantic  mistake, I think, in Robert's post.  Colonization is the goal of HSF.  It is the spread of human life.  Science is gravy.  Science is one of the most important things we do in our, humanity's, quest to understand this universe.  All of the above ideas are steps along the way to this understanding.

Educating our children is one of the only things we can do.  Our school systems, for a variety of social and political reasons, is very near to failing its responsibility to our students.  HSF and these lunar robots could reinvigorate our school systems, if only we were allowed to "teach our children well".

All that said, I think Robert is absolutely correct: "What we learn on the moon helps us to go to Mars..."

Robotbeat makes the always valid, never overlooked, observation about the cost of space travel.  Thankfully, chemical rocketry has demonstrated that we can get to both the Moon and Mars, that we can land people on the Moon, and probably also on Mars.  Other propulsion systems are being developed, and in time, I think nuclear propulsion will see a resurgance, but perhaps not until they can be manufactured "topside".  The well held proprietary secret is that these actual costs are well under the published, congressionally funded costs, as our Russian friends demonstrate on a regular basis.

As an aside about launch costs, which to me imply landing costs as well, there's an interesting video online of Guy Laliberte's capsule landing on about 10-11-09.  A bunch of Russian guys rolled the capsule around on the ground and then righted it.  That has simply got to be less expensive than a naval flotilla being sent out to retrieve a capsule.  Can't find the link tho.

To William:  I totally agree that the "hidden assumption that unmanned space science has intrinsic value", and there are many more examples like his.  I think it was Confucius who advised his monarch: "Call things by their right names".  Telling the truth about reality is the only way to deal with it.

I think Robotbeat misses the point that William is trying to make.  There's nothing technically stopping cable from reaching every rural home with electricity, and any other terrestrial home, for that matter.  Before GPS, there was nothing stopping any truck from reaching any destination.  I think the cost argument is largely a shibboleth.  Pretty much everything used to cost less than it does today.  Technology is always more expensive in a closed system, such as Earth.  The argument about computing power, to the average person, holds no more than a few drops of water.  The only difference between watching NBC, CBS and ABC in the fifties versus watching TV on a computer is the massive distrubution of computing power required to handle so many channels today.  The inanity of common TV and the utility of educational TV is more or less about the same now as it was then, I think.  Individuals make judgements about these things.

About the weather.  It is sunny and warm outside right now.  Part of the compulsion of taxes is to pay for many people to see a larger portion of the weather than I can see with my own eyes for free.  That's not a judgement, it's a fact.  Judgements can be certainly made about those facts.

Fundamentally, space resources are indeed limitless.  It is this aspect to which one of my pet theories portends.  We haven't been back to space in part because those resources can't be taxed.  But I gotta go.

[William Barton]

We don't need to go back to the Moon, and didn't really need to go in the first place. The question now is, why do we want to go back to the Moon? (I know why we wanted to go in the first place, of course."

Do you mean even with robots?

Danny Deger

Actually, I do, though that wasn't the question, near as I can tell. In another thread, I pointed out the unmanned v. manned argument has a hidden assumption that unmanned space science has intrinsic value. No one has, in fact, demonstrated that to be true. Three billion dollars to find out there are methane lakes on Titan? The average American would find more value in a random drawing to give away three billion dollars to some lucky taxpayer every year, and the economy would quite likely get more out of that. You used the word "need," and I'm addressing just that. We don't *need* any of it. Comsats are nice, but cable could do the job just as well. Metsats? How much more will it cost before the weatherman can predict the weather successfully better than I can with a barometer and an eye out the window? Spysats? How many eyes on the ground could you have bought for all that money? A few hundred thousand "James Bonds" might have been a better value. Etc.

I was going to write a long-winded response, but this is simply ridiculous. Cable only works where there is cable in the ground (which is to say, not any rural areas), there's no way we could predict the weather like we do now if we didn't have both comsats and metsats, spysats have changed the very realities of global strategies without the kinds of diplomatic problems that hundreds of thousands of intelligence agents would cause (and spy UAVs rely on space assets as well), and GPS has made such a HUGE difference in: civil engineering, mapping, navigation, trucking, asset tracking, hiking/camping/fishing... to say nothing about military applications. GPS alone would be worth billions and billions of dollars every year, and we aren't even utilizing its full potential yet. In the last ten years, GPS has just EXPLODED, since it is now in virtually every mobile phone. Virtually all truckers in the US use and rely on it. Simply lowering fuel consumption from shaving off trip lengths by using GPS pays for the system every year.

The fact is that resources in space are limitless, once we can get used to space. It may take hundreds of years, but an investment in space travel beats Malthusian Collapse and extinction of the human race any day of the week.

Heck, GPS systems integrated onto tractors (etc.) help farmers be more efficient. Food is a basic human need. It's a direct case of space increasing a necessity to human life.

Your response is not fully thought out. I am, of course, playing Devil's advocate here (I am a dyed in the wool space enthusiast from day zero [a third-generation science fiction reader]), but you haven't proven anything except you too are a space enthusiast. For starters, I was referring to submarine telecomunications cable, not the oh-so-splendid vehicle for 200 chanels of unwatchable-crap TV.* The point is, there is *nothing* being done in space that cannot be done some other way, and *all* other advocacies are either spinoff-derived (e.g., GPS**), or quasi-religious in nature (humanity must explore or die, etc.). And, of course, none of the things you site have anything at all to do with why we "need" to go back to the Moon.

* I have a rural property, as well as offices and house in a city, so I'm familiar with the issues.

** GPS is a spinoff benefit we could do without. If we *had* to have something equivalent, computational geomagnetic compasses and/or inertial tracking units would do just as well, and be just as cheap. Yes, they're also space program "spinoff" benefits, but whose to say, if we really *needed* them, they wouldn't have developed anyway. That's why alternate history and counterfactuals are so much fun.

[William Barton]

One other thought, when it comes to quasi-religious entities: Of all the possible human extinction events, Malthusian Catastrophe is probably the least likely. Asteroid strike? Supernova? Flood-basalt eruption? Hyperplague? Sure. And of those, only asteroid strike has a first-order space-based solution (plague and flood-basalt have a second order solution: we can't prevent them, but we can run away--supernova, though, and we're probably done for). I'd probably worry about an alien invasion before I'd worry about a *Soylent Green* future, howevermuch I may have enjoyed the movie. (Ben-Hur *and* Little Caesar? Can't beat that combo!)

[JohnFornaro]

I'm not so sure about the unliklihood of Malthusian Catastrophe.  On some other thread, some guy was lecturing me about the difference between exponential growth and logistic growth:

<<
Title: Re: Why manned spaceflight
Post by: Hop_David on 06/26/2009 07:38 PM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Quote from: JohnFornaro on 06/26/2009 01:45 PM
... But at the same time, dP/dt=rP does not tell the whole story [end quote]

I didn't say that equation tells the whole story. In fact I've been saying dP/dt=rP is wrong for describing population growth.

dP/dt is change in population over change in time.

dP/dt = rP is the equation for exponential growth.

dP/dt = rP(1 - P/K) is the equation for logistic growth. K being the maximum population that can be sustained with available resources.

Look at the term (1 - P/K).

When P << K,  (1 - P/K) is almost 1
and rP(1 - P/K) is approximately rP.
So when the population is well under K, logistic growth is close to exponential.

As P approaches K, (1 - P/K) approaches (1 - K/K) which is 0.
rP(1 - P/K) approaches rP(0) which is zero.
So when the population nears K, logistic growth slows down to nothing.

In a natural biological population, growth slows down as the population reaches it's max. Sometimes famine slows growth. Sometimes disease. Sometimes hostile behavior. These all can contribute to the shrinking of dP/dt as P approaches K. The rat behavior you mention has been considered when trying to explain apparently logistic growth.
>>

Sorry that I don't have a better link to this post, but Hop_David was wrong above, I think in his analysis.  He quietly assumes that he knows already what "K" should be, and he doesn't.  The "rat behavior" mentioned refers to an experiment of a large, finite rat cage where there was always sufficient food for the population, but no bigger cage.  Sort of like we have here on Earth.  While Hop_David may be correct in that the mal-effects of crowding may have been "considered" in logistic population growth scenarios, this consideration is by no means correctly modeled.  Witness our current American crime rates and its relationship to population density, wealth and education, all of which I think are linked to human behavior and population models.

My point here is that I think William is incorrect about a "Malthusian"  catastrophe.  This problem, I think, is inevitable on a fixed planet.  The Earth may never get to standing room only, but after killing all the life here except for say, corn, cows, rats, mosquitos, and humans, we would still fall prey to a catastrophe of this sort.

While I don't know all the numbers here, neither does anyone else.  It seems intuitively though, that human population is overcrowding the planet, and that we are nearing some sort of tipping point.  While off-planet solutions to this problem are very distant, distance alone is not the reason we should not be considering these solutions actively.  Pluto is very distant, yet we go to great lengths to see it.

Education is a necessary, and I think, sufficient early step towards this end.

Rallying cry: Space is better than pizza!

[A_M_Swallow]

For the human population K is a function rather a constant.  The improvements in agricultural techniques and sanitation associated with the industrial revolution produced a big increase in K.

[JohnFornaro]

True, but it would not be correct, I think, to extrapolate that this trend can continue indefinately.  Plus, K is a number that cannot be known, I think.  Its postulation would be presumptuous, of a great many things.  For example, who in this forum would agree that I and the appropriate number of virgins (12? 72? who knows?) should be the value of K?

[cgrunska]

128 billion i think was a projection i remember reading about.
so we have a ways to go

[JohnFornaro]

Uhh... wait a minute.  Is that the population of Earth, or just the number of virgins?

[cgrunska]

haw haw
128 billion people can live on earth
if they can live to the standards of american citizens all of them? well, that's a different topic entirely