Will We Really Go Back To The Moon?
With a recession, an oncoming Obama administration, Shuttle post 2010 utilization rumors, and other national flux, we ask ourselves: will we really go back to the moon?
The answer is yes, in only for one simple reason: We have nothing else to do. The Shuttle has enjoyed 100+ great missions. Mankind has lofted 12 space stations (9 Salut, 1 Skylab, 1 Mir, and 1 ISS,) we have built two fully reusable shuttleing spacecraft (Buran and Shuttle,) done space tourism, reusable suborbital craft, and most other things that people dreamed about back in Von Braun’s time. The marginal utility in discovery and inspiration decreases with each dollar spent. The price to launch a government kilogram to orbit remains the same, and in some cases increases. We have done every major accomplishment the ancients have dreamed about; well, everything they dreamed about doing in LEO.
However, most of Man’s dreams in space have not been in LEO, but beyond. How many science fiction books and movies are set orbiting the Earth? How many computer games, movies, or TV series are set around Earth? Thumb through the periodicals in the space section at your local university library. Count the number of articles dealing with the environment and activities in LEO and activities and the environment around other planets in our Solar System. The pull of interplanetary flight is so strong in the human mind that most of the justification for our LEO activities have been their promise to enable interplanetary flight and civilization. The station as a hanger to construct interplanetary craft… The shuttle to loft interplanetary stages… Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo to bring us to the Moon… and Skylab to teach us how to survive in space for the length of time to leave Earth.
We have yet to consummate our investment and destiny in space. We have yet to take that leap of faith beyond consumable supplied flights an abort button away from the Pacific Ocean. Flights to the Moon, Mars, asteroids, and further are literally the only worthwhile crewed activity that NASA has left to do with our increasingly negative balance of national cash.
Don’t get me wrong. All of these other activities have value, but if we ask ourselves if we are really going back to the moon, we are really asking ourselves if we will have a government funded manned space program. NASA either sets up a permanently manned outpost on the moon, or engages in activity that the policy makers and public yawn about till they shut off funding.
I have to believe that Obama, presented with the alternatives, will agree. Do you?
3 Responses to “Will We Really Go Back To The Moon?”
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Jessy on December 9th, 2008
hi john!
if those were the only alternatives, then i’d tend to agree with you. but i actually think if nasa was more effective at partnering with, enabling, and acting as a champion for, *independent* space activities, we would have humans on the moon (not to mention elsewhere) faster and more efficiently, from both a cost and an engineering perspective.
the Obama administration is the first one i’ve been alive for that i could imagine not only appreciating that, but being bold enough to do something about it.
that said, i dont know that space is high enough on anyone’s priority list right now, as anything more than a showpiece for america’s STEM activities, that it will bubble up to a place where such bold steps could be thoroughly analyzed, motivated and taken.
how could we cause such bubbling to happen??
rquintanilla on December 10th, 2008
I agree the next frontier is a colony on the moon. What better way to invest in the long term green economy. In order to have an effective colony on the moon we will need to develop energy effeciency technologies that allow us to survive in space.
If we get the next administration to invest in such a venture we will have to let them see that it will help keep our lead in space , develop green technologies, and stimulate the economy.
Michael Moore suggested on CNN that we put the American auto worker to work on helping the country develop infrastructure. I believe the work that NASA does is infrastructure.
We can get out of this economic slump and NASA has a historically pivotal role. If we choose.
John Benac on December 10th, 2008
You are right. There are certainly more alternatives, and NASA would have been wildly more successful than they already have been if they had always been more open and collaborative. If NASA had brought COTS online decades ago, for example. Perhaps if NASA had contracted ZeroG 15 years earlier, when it was founded. Perhaps if they had done more with the 1999 congressional dictate that they explore the use of using Shuttle External Tanks for commercial purposes. If only Nixon hadn’t strangled the cash out of the Apollo program and follow ons. The list goes on.
Would have, could have, should have… Despite missed opportunities and false starts, NASA has done amazing things worth more than every penny they have been allocated. As an agency literally on the frontier of knowledge and exploration, I would expect nothing different than some inefficiencies.
But now it is time for improvement. Changing corporate culture is hard, but not impossible. We do well to remember that the demographics of NASA are different from the gang of twenty somethings that blazed their trail to the moon in the 60s. All organizations mature and naturally tend to stagnate. I think it has something to do with human nature in groups.
NASA is at a wonderful crossroads where young people are filling the ranks (based on retirement of the workforce and of shuttle and station development work.) NASA also is in an interesting position where it has done all of the easier, less exciting alternatives to building a moon base or going to Mars. It is a perfect storm forcing NASA to sink or swim.
I believe that it will swim. Obama, Gen Y, and a more thrill seeking American public push NASA to do something spectacular and worth it’s billions.
In my mind, the best-case scenario is to see NASA launch some big Ares V mama-jama payloads to the moon like a power plant or ISRU plant and then pay companies like SpaceX to send NASA astronauts there. In the meantime, private companies and other nations would send anyone else to the Moon that they wanted to and use NASA’s infrastructure. I think that this is somewhere along the lines of what NASA intends to do anyway, sans SpaceX.