The Spudis Lunar Resources Blog

Captivated by the Moon 47 years ago. Are we due for a repeat? (Mad Men/AMC)

Tomorrow is the 50th anniversary of the trailblazing robotic space mission to the Moon – Surveyor 1. With prophetic timing, a recent political development (along with various and sundry news reports and another anniversary) indicates a renewed interest in the Moon as a destination. This hodgepodge includes: specific funding and program direction by the U.S. House of Representatives in their 2017 NASA appropriations bill, news stories about Russian and Chinese lunar missions supposedly to be flown in the near future, and a piece on President Kennedy and the Apollo program (last Wednesday, May 25, was the 55^th anniversary of Kennedy’s special appropriations speech to Congress, asking for the lunar landing goal). Under ordinary circumstances, these disparate threads might be random noise, but taken together, they may signal a possible “new” direction for our civil space program.

The most significant event is the new House appropriations bill, which not only terminates work on the absurd Asteroid Retrieval Mission (“no funds are included in this bill for NASA to continue planning efforts to conduct either robotic or crewed missions to an asteroid”) but specifically directs NASA instead to “develop plans to return to the Moon to test capabilities that will be needed for Mars, including habitation modules, lunar prospecting, and landing and ascent vehicles.” This development should come as no surprise, as many witnesses at numerous Congressional hearings and some Members themselves have repeatedly expressed puzzlement, frustration and dismay with the ARM concept. Congress has repeatedly attempted to steer NASA back toward the lunar goals of the 2004 Vision for Space Exploration – in the 2010 Authorization, both cislunar space and the lunar surface were specified as destinations for human missions, direction that the agency adamantly ignored.

This new funding action follows earlier direction in this year’s authorization bill to develop a cislunar habitat – a small facility to be located somewhere near the Moon – either in lunar orbit, or at one of the Lagrangian points. The purpose of such a facility would be to learn about the difficulties and opportunities of deep space habitation – including life support, transport and operations, and mitigation of the hard radiation environment. Having near instantaneous radio response, crew members could control an exploration rover on the lunar surface. Such capability would allow us to conduct geological fieldwork by creating the sensation of telepresence – the simulation of existence (being there) at a remote location. Additionally, a deep space habitat could serve as a jumping-off point for future missions to low lunar orbit and to the surface. The facility could eventually host future re-fueling, servicing and other activities, and with them, the crucial beginning of a permanent spacefaring system.

While Congress has been working to re-vector America’s space program back on the correct path, other nations have not remained idle. News reports appeared this past week about both Russian and Chinese lunar efforts. Russia claims to be planning for human lunar landings within the next decade, culminating in a lunar base by 2030. As is often the case when space plans are revealed in the media, it is difficult to get a full picture of the planned Ryvok spacecraft from its description, but it will be launched in several pieces and marshaled at the ISS for assembly and departure. In an innovative and encouraging twist, on return to Earth, Ryvok will deploy an umbrella-like device and use aerocapture to slow itself back into Earth orbit, capability that could make the vehicle a reusable Earth-Moon transfer system. Although news stories describe trips to the lunar surface, I think the stories are exaggerated, or at best, incomplete. You need about 7 kg of mass (mostly propellant) in LEO to get 1 kg of payload softly onto the surface of the Moon. And to come home, you need to bring your return vehicle (and the fuel for it) with you – at least initially. The description in the news makes it sound like this vehicle is an orbital spacecraft – one that could take both cargo and crew to lunar orbit. A separate vehicle might be needed for decent to the surface and return, but without the technical details, it is impossible to fully describe the Russian architecture.

China has long planned a sample return mission from the Moon (currently scheduled to take place with the Chang’E 5 mission next year). But the new announcement calls for a follow-up sample return mission from “the north and south poles of the Moon.” It is not clear whether the intention is to collect material from both poles or simply from one of them. No landing sites were announced, but one must assume that they will attempt to land in some location likely to contain water ice, in order to examine and characterize those deposits. New interest in polar volatiles by the Chinese is highly significant. They have already demonstrated their intention to use cislunar space for a variety of purposes. It would be wise to carefully monitor their intentions and activities there.

These reports are coming out around the occasion of the 55^th Anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s 1961 speech to Congress announcing the “man-Moon-decade” goal of the Apollo program. A recent analysis notes this anniversary and offers some policy conclusions from that effort. Author Eric Berger contends that while the Apollo program was a magnificent achievement, we have been “stagnant” in space since that time. A basic misunderstanding with this analysis is found in the title of the piece: Kennedy’s vision for NASA inspired greatness, then stagnation. The Apollo program was not a “vision for NASA” – it was a vision for the nation, one driven by goals and objectives totally unrelated to spaceflight. The idea that we have been “stagnant” in space for the last 40 years is only valid from the perspective of a national crash program (Apollo), underwritten by a blank check.

What was Kennedy’s vision? JFK was the consummate Cold Warrior, who believed that the Soviet Union must be confronted and overcome wherever and whenever they were encountered. Berlin, Cuba, and Vietnam were battlegrounds of ideas in the war for the hearts and minds of the non-aligned countries of the world. With the advent of Sputnik, Kennedy saw the Moon as a new battleground. The goal of Apollo was not to go there and then move onward to the planets – it was to be the first on the Moon, removing any doubt sown by Sputnik and Gagarin that the United States was somehow lagging in its technological capabilities. Given these Cold War origins, it does not follow that Apollo is, or should be, any kind of a template for future spacefaring efforts. It was a crash program designed to answer the requirements of a then-current, perceived world crisis, one that, through the victory of Apollo, saw the U.S. prevail years later, when we won the Cold War.

After Apollo, many in the space community believed that we could take the new capabilities given us by that template and go to Mars. That was never in the cards, then or now. Unlike Apollo, there is no geopolitical objective that would marshal the will of Congress and the nation to expend the resources needed to bludgeon the technical problems posed by such a mission into submission – as was done for the Moon. (Don’t know how to rendezvous in space? OK, we’ll learn how. Can’t build a computer small and light enough to navigate to and from the Moon? OK, we’ll design and build one.) That technical capability – and the Cold War industrial infrastructure necessary to support it – is gone (though it spawned much of today’s technology). To go into deep space today requires a different approach: the incremental building of a space-based infrastructure designed for permanence and reuse.

We’ve spent the last 40 years in LEO because after Apollo, NASA returned to the Wernher von Braun template of incremental extension of human reach. This model consists of four simple steps: LEO, space station, Moon tug, Mars mission. We’ve only completed the first two steps – building a cislunar transportation system is the next logical step. Those who advocate human missions to Mars as the “next goal” are abandoning the von Braun paradigm for the Apollo model (which so far, has given us 40 years in LEO). Von Braun himself recognized that Apollo was a side-step in the long-range exploration and permanence of humanity in space, but he supported it because he also knew the stakes of the geopolitical race. He believed we would use Apollo hardware to implement an incremental approach. But von Braun (along with many others) did not foresee that such a program was unsustainable without a political imperative (and the necessary fiscal resources). Although we have spent roughly the same amount of money on space in the last 40 years as we did on Apollo (and seemingly have gotten less for it), it is important to understand that in federal programs, it is not the total amount of money spent that is important; it’s the rate at which you spend it that counts.

Berger’s piece is a good reminder that Apollo is not coming back, barring some geopolitical, “Pearl Harbor-type” disaster. Thus, our task is to figure out how to slowly and affordably move beyond LEO. It is not a task suitable to arbitrary, irrelevant and impossible deadlines (e.g., humans to Mars in the 2030s). Spacefaring is a skill to be developed over decades, one that will return many benefits to a wide variety of space users, not simply for the scientists and not only for the “settlers.” Fortunately, more and more people recognize this reality and their ideas on how to implement such a movement are receiving serious consideration. Time will tell if reason prevails and we finally secure the ability to become true spacefarers.

NASA’s Space Launch System — A boondoggle?

An endlessly repeated media trope is that NASA’s new launch vehicle program, the Space Launch System (SLS), is some kind of entitlement boondoggle, a gigantic “make-work” project for the agency – a derision summed up through the use of the derogatory phrase, “jobs program.” Mocked as a “rocket to nowhere,” the current SLS program takes a substantial fraction of the agency’s exploration budget, about $2 billion out of the $8.5 billion per year designated for human spaceflight. It is designed to launch massive payloads (initially, about 70 metric tons to low Earth orbit, later up to 120 metric tons) into space, allowing the use of pre-fueled departure stages to send payloads beyond LEO into deep space. In contrast to some misleading promotional slight of hand, the SLS will not “take astronauts to Mars” but it could launch ready-to-assemble pieces for a human Mars mission into space (it would take between 8 and 12 launches of an augmented SLS to get a fully fueled manned Mars vehicle into space and prepared for departure to Mars).

Why does the SLS draw such invective? It is claimed by space advocates that commercial launch can do the same job as SLS at a fraction of the cost. Less often spoken directly, but clearly part of this meme, is that the part of the money NASA currently spends on SLS should instead be given to “New Space” private companies to develop and produce heavy lift launch services at lower cost (predominantly, but not exclusively, to SpaceX for their “Falcon Heavy” launch vehicle), thereby freeing up money that NASA could spend on hardware such as habitats, landers and other peripheral equipment needed for future human deep space missions.

How much of this story is true? Why are we building a rocket whose mission and destination are uncertain? Would it be better to use “privately developed” heavy lift launch vehicles (HLV) for human deep space missions? And why is a heavy lift vehicle desirable anyway? Could we not do the same thing using smaller launch vehicles and space-based propellant depots?

Human missions to deep space destinations require large amounts of mass in LEO because we need to protect and preserve the lives of the crew, take all consumables and fuel for the journey, and carry the equipment and supporting machines needed to carry out the mission objectives. The main benefit of using an HLV is that fewer individual launches are needed to get the same amount of mass into space – with fewer launches of larger payloads, a lower launch cost per unit mass is realized. A few larger pieces are more easily assembled in space than are a multitude of smaller ones. The cost buy down is mitigated somewhat by the assumption of more risk, as the loss of a single HLV will more greatly impact the mission campaign than the loss of a single smaller vehicle. But the benefits of fewer launches overall and less complex on-orbit operations are usually judged to outweigh these drawbacks.

There are also historical reasons for the use of an HLV. The agency’s experience with the Apollo program created the mindset among many mission designers that very heavy lift launch vehicles enable deep space missions. Even the Space Shuttle was sized to Saturn V proportions; although its gross liftoff weight (2000 metric tons) was comparable to Apollo-Saturn (2950 metric tons), it had much lower payload capacity because of the requirement for the 100-ton orbiter to return and be reused. With modifications, the Shuttle stack was able to use launch infrastructure created for the HLV Saturn V. Likewise, the existing Shuttle support systems and infrastructure are now being modified for the forthcoming SLS program.

Complaints against the SLS come from several streams of thought. It is argued that building the SLS is merely a program to make a rocket, but one having no place to go. In fact, this arrangement was exactly the course recommended by the 2009 Augustine committee, who contended that the agency should become “destination agnostic” and focus on a “Flexible Path,” in which systems would be developed first and destinations chosen afterwards. President Obama seemingly embraced that recommendation in 2010 by terminating the Moon as a destination for the American human space program. We were going to visit an asteroid instead (sometime), but finding no suitable targets for human missions, the “Asteroid Redirect Mission” concept was embraced. SLS can certainly support that mission, for what it is worth (which is not much).

Another criticism of SLS is that NASA should not be spending its budget making rockets – especially a new launch vehicle system – and instead should purchase launch services from the “private” sector. Certainly NASA does this already for robotic missions and satellites, so why not let commercially available launch vehicles serve the human program as well?

No existing commercial launch vehicle (nor any anticipated in the near future) has the launch capacity of the SLS. The largest extant commercial LV is the Delta-IV Heavy, which can put a bit less than 30 metric tons into LEO, less than half the capacity of the core SLS. Critics of SLS claim that the advent of SpaceX’s “Falcon Heavy” vehicle will render SLS unnecessary, but that launch vehicle was announced in 2011 and we have yet to see even a structural test article of it. It is stated that this vehicle will be able to put about 53 metric tons into LEO, significantly less than the 70 ton payload of the SLS core. The acceptance of this lower performance by its advocates is predicated on a proclaimed vastly lower cost, but as no Falcon Heavy has yet to fly, we have no idea of what its cost would be. Moreover, there are good reasons to question the technical viability of the Falcon Heavy. Released design details show that it consists of 3 Falcon 9 rockets, strapped together and burning simultaneously. Such a configuration would consist of 27 engines, all of which must burn for the same duration and thrust level. The Soviet Union once had a launch vehicle (the N-1) that had 30 rocket engines; it flew four times, each flight ending in a catastrophic fireball, largely as a result destabilizations following an engine-out condition.

The problem lies not with the rocket that we are building – it lies with the mission that we do not have. SLS did not cause the destinations for human spaceflight to go away – that was a considered and deliberate decision by the current administration. In response, the Congress (who had twice voted their overwhelming support for the goals of lunar return, in two different authorization bills) mandated the construction of SLS, largely because NASA was dragging its feet on doing anything about it. Congress was concerned that an important national resource – the industrial and technical infrastructure (including its human resources) to build and fly HLV rockets – was being lost through neglect and attrition. They asked the agency to come up with a specific design for an HLV system but received no cooperation. So, they consulted external technical experts to derive the specifications of a general purpose HLV and mandated this design in the authorization. Its purpose was to make sure that the vehicle would be built and to assure that our national capability in this area would not be lost.

Congress reasoned that the SLS could be used for any deep space mission a future administration might consider. The reinstatement of the lunar surface as a prime candidate for future missions is clear from the language of the 2010 NASA Authorization, which specified the technical details for SLS, and at the same time, listed a variety of destinations for America’s human spaceflight program. In the preamble to that bill, cislunar space is listed as a destination in 4 of the 7 provisions of that section, while the presence of humans on the lunar surface is mentioned in 3 of those sections. These declarations were ignored by the agency.

A final ridiculous criticism of the SLS program is that it is simply a “jobs program” for NASA. Well, of course it is! Federal programs create jobs for the people who bring them to fruition. The unstated implication of the “jobs program” epithet is that it is useless “make-work,” like a work crew digging a ditch and then re-filling it, all simply to collect a paycheck. But “jobs programs” are now a fundamental part of our national existence (Try Googling the phrase “jobs programs” and see how many hits you get). However, some federal “jobs” aren’t make-work, but instead create or maintain national capabilities that are determined to be important or vital to the security and prosperity of the nation. We supported an elaborate industrial and technical defense establishment for the 50 years following World War II not to “make jobs” but because we believed that such capabilities were critical to the national interest. The SLS program was created because it was feared that once lost, the ability to make and operate a heavy lift launch system might vanish forever. There are always repercussions when you create a power vacuum.

No one but NASA (Saturn, Shuttle) and the Soviets (Energia) have successfully operated an HLV System. Such a system is needed for deep space human missions – at least until we can transition to a space-based transportation system provisioned by lunar resources, rather than one which requires that everything be brought up from the deep gravity well of Earth. The SLS is not perfect – it certainly isn’t the system I would have chosen to build (Shuttle side-mount could have been flying now for a fraction of what we have spent to date on SLS). But it exists and it will provide a capability that we can use to go back to the Moon and to the planets beyond.

Yesterday, while I was 38,000 feet above the Atlantic on the way home from London, I was to have received the 2016 American Society of Civil Engineers Columbia Medal.  I am very honored to receive this award and note with awe the company of past recipients of this medal.

To quote directly from the award letter,

You have been selected by the Aerospace Division of the American Society of Civil Engineers to receive the 2016 Columbia Medal For outstanding service as a geologist specializing in the terrestrial planets, with extensive background in geology and planetary science, including interpretation of remote-sensing and image data and integrated studies with information from planetary samples.  In selecting you for this award, the committee particularly noted your contributions that advance aerospace engineering.

I knew that I would be out of the country during the meeting and thus, unable to accept the award in person, so I prepared a short acceptance and technical talk video to play at the meeting.  I have posted this video on YouTube.  Comments and feedback are welcome.

Also, next Tuesday (April 19, 2016) is the publication date of my new book The Value of the Moon: How to Explore, Live and Prosper in Space Using the Moon’s Resources.  It is a history, a memoir and an advocacy of using the Moon to create new space capabilities.  Blogging has been light because of my attention to this and other matters, but with the book launch accomplished, I should soon be back to writing those wonderful commentaries that you have come to know and love.