Dr. Wernher Von Braun with President John Kennedy at the U.S. Army Redstone Arsenal in 1963, "feigning interest?"

Paul D. Spudis
The Once and Future Moon
Smithsonian Air & Space

The 50th anniversary of the tragic death of President John F. Kennedy has prompted examination of his presidential legacies and in particular, the role he played in our race to the Moon.  In an op-ed, Rand Simberg opines on how space buffs magnify and distort Kennedy’s space legacy – that in fact, JFK really didn’t care one whit for spaceflight and only challenged the Soviets to a Moon race for near-term, earthly political purposes.

No one conversant with the history of the Apollo program could seriously doubt that the impetus for setting the goal of a lunar landing within a decade was driven primarily by geopolitical considerations, rather than by a romantic notion of colonizing the Solar System.  But there’s a bit more to the story.  Simberg’s piece fails to recognize that close, hands-on experience with the unfamiliar often changes attitudes and that prejudices evolve over time.

Upon taking office, Kennedy had little interest in the space program but like Eisenhower with Sputnik, intervening events abruptly forced a change in his outlook.  In April 1961 Yuri Gagarin orbited the Earth  – the first flight of a human in space – engulfing Kennedy in a press feeding frenzy as a triumphant Soviet Union laid claim to one of the most important laurels of the space age.  With recriminations still echoing throughout Washington, a second national security disaster emerged – the Bay of Pigs fiasco, a failed invasion of Cuba by American-sponsored anti-Castro exiles.  The new administration appeared both inept and indecisive.  The Gagarin space flight and the U.S.-backed invasion of Cuba occurred during the build-up of a devastating nuclear arsenal by the Soviet Union, amid bellicose pronouncements from its bombastic leader, Nikita Sergeivich Khrushchev – “We will bury you!”

Against this high-temperature political background, Kennedy looked for a significant technical project with which to challenge the Soviets.  Kennedy thought that the large-scale desalination of seawater would help win the hearts of emerging “Third World” nations.  A key consideration was choosing an effort that the Soviets could not win in the next few years.  True enough, space was not his original choice but in order to give the United States enough time to build up and use its industrial and technical might (as well as provide payback on politically realistic timescales), Kennedy needed a challenging long-term national goal.

By assigning his Vice-President Lyndon Baines Johnson to look into possible space projects and report back to him, Kennedy had placed the decision in the hands of someone already committed to an accelerated and vigorous space effort.  As Senate Majority Leader, Johnson – a vocal advocate for large-scale space projects – had previously helped shepherd the 1958 Space Act (that created NASA) though the Congress.  It was Johnson who asked NASA’s James Webb and Hugh Dryden for options.

In a memo to Johnson, Kennedy specifically asked,  “Is there a space program we can undertake and win?”   With Johnson’s committee working closely with Wernher von Braun on what was technically possible in the near- and far-terms, it became apparent that the Soviets had a clear advantage in rocket boosters, making any attempt to match Soviet space accomplishments in low Earth orbit within the next few years likely to fail.  On the other hand, if the U.S. were to pick a goal which neither country could achieve in the near-term, America’s edge in technology and resources might give them enough of an advantage to win in the long run – making it a real race.

A manned mission to the Moon emerged as the logical goal and was duly reported to the President.  Kennedy was willing but hesitant – initial cost estimates for Apollo were on the order of $40 billion (this was in a saner fiscal era, when a billion dollars meant real money).  Committing to spend that much, while not unprecedented, would give politicians of any stripe pause.  Nonetheless, Kennedy moved forward with the Moon landing challenge, announcing his initiative in a special Joint Session of Congress on May 25, 1961.

So we now have a picture of a U.S. President, due to political circumstances, forced into and agreeing to a program he was reluctant to undertake.  According to Simberg’s piece, this is the meaning of Apollo.  What’s missing is that (as they like to say in Washington) Kennedy “evolved” in his beliefs.  While initially willing (but cool) to the space program, his continued attention to “the race” over the remainder of his presidency suggests that he became more keenly interested over time.  Kennedy, often guided by von Braun who would brief him on technical details, made multiple visits to the new NASA field centers.  Kennedy became a “buff” – just like so many of us in the 1960s, drawn up in the excitement of the new space effort.  Enthralled by events like a static firing test of Saturn engines at the Marshall Space Flight Center in May of 1963, he began soaking up space knowledge.  He was hooked and in it to win it.

Kennedy’s speech at Rice University on September 12, 1962 has become inextricably tied to the American can-do spirit and cited whenever someone wants to capture the inherent romanticism and steely determination of the American effort.  Apollo was not some tiresome political task or a pork-shoveling boondoggle to JFK.  It was about winning a battle in a very real Cold War.  It is in this context that President Kennedy’s September 1963 offer to go to the Moon jointly with the Russians must be understood. Yet, part of a speech given at the United Nations, has been interpreted to show that Kennedy was ambivalent toward space and was attempting to dodge the heavy political and fiscal costs of building the Apollo system.  This notion has led some to surmise that had he lived, Kennedy would not have been as ardent a supporter of the space program as we space cadets believe that he was.

Words were effective weapons during the Cold War.  At every opportunity, Kennedy contrasted the open, non-military nature of the American space program with the secretive and presumably bellicose nature of the Soviet one.

This contrast was made explicit in Kennedy’s initial rationale for the lunar effort when he said, “Whatever mankind must undertake, free men must fully share” (emphasis added).  By 1963, Kennedy knew Khrushchev’s mind-set as well as any foreign leader.  He knew that Khrushchev and the rest of the Soviet Presidium would never accept a proposal for a joint lunar mission – they were suspicious, paranoid triumphalists, as their never-ending blitz of space propaganda illustrated.  Moreover, at this stage of the space race, the Soviets were clearly ahead, having racked up a number of headline-grabbing “firsts” including simultaneous multiple crews and spacecraft, four-day long missions, and orbiting the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova.

By making an offer for a joint American-Soviet lunar mission, Kennedy appeared reasonable and forthcoming.  “See?  America has nothing but peaceful intentions for space.  If our Soviet colleagues have similar intentions, as they claim, why do they not join us when we ask them to?”  Jack Kennedy, a decorated World War II veteran and the consummate Cold Warrior, knew how to play the propaganda card.  His offer did not represent a desire to back away from his U.S. commitment to space.  It was a calculated move by the United States in the ongoing war of words, threats and confrontations that constituted the Cold War.

It’s tempting to retrospectively apply today’s intellectual template to past events, but by doing so it distorts the historical record.  A look at Kennedy’s approach to the Soviet Union shows that his inclination was to confront them when necessary.  The Bay of Pigs fiasco early in his presidency followed by the Berlin crisis led Kennedy to believe that Khrushchev and the Soviets must be opposed on the world stage, up to and including space.  Initially cool to the very idea of human spaceflight, Kennedy took the concept to new heights of accomplishment by setting – and ultimately achieving – a goal that captured the imaginations of war-weary people around the world.

Originally published November 24, 2013 at his Smithsonian Air & Space blog The Once and Future Moon, Dr. Spudis is a senior staff scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute. The opinions expressed are those of the author but are better informed than average.

Related:
John Kennedy's Final Address, Texas Hotel
Fort Worth, Texas, November 22, 1963

EDITORIAL : The Space Community experienced a minor brush fire late last week, set accidentally perhaps, by NASA administrator Charles Bolden and his reaction to the National Research Council's congressional-commissioned review of NASA’s "strategic vision."

It’s a sad fact of American politics that the release of the NRC report might have passed largely unnoticed had Bolden been as cryptic about the Moon’s place in NASA’s future as the rest of the administration has been from is beginning.

Instead he confirmed for us one line of reasoning into the administration’s actual rationale for erasing the Moon from National Space Policy, three years ago.

“I don’t know how to say it any more plainly,” Bolden said. “NASA does not have a human lunar mission in its portfolio, and we are not planning for one.”

He warned the next administration not to change course “again” back to the Moon. That would mean, he said, the U.S. would “never again see Americans on the Moon, on Mars, near an asteroid, or anywhere. We cannot continue to change the course of human exploration.”

“NASA will not take the lead on a human lunar mission,” Bolden said. “NASA is not going to the Moon with a human as a primary project probably in my lifetime,” because “we can only do so many things, and NASA’s focus will remain on human missions to asteroids and Mars.”

“All that was 'a given,' three years ago,” Apollo 17 commander Gene Cernan said afterward on Tuesday, perhaps forgetting along with General Bolden, that "going to the Moon as a primary project" has not been a goal of the American government since 1969, and this was never "a primary project" of the Vision for Space Exploration in 2004 or of those who recognize the Moon's strategic and scientific value and who still support restoring the Moon back into scientific context today.

On the surface there did seem little that was new in Bolden’s protests. All the superficial reasons for dropping the Moon as an intermediate objective on the way to Mars spread abroad by the administration and its supporters still make little sense. No one who seriously supported a return to the Moon as an essential objective on the way to Mars ever hoped simply to recreate Apollo. 

And if it’s asteroids you want, the Moon has been an asteroid magnet for about 4.575 billion years.

Aside from the glaring hole left by having had the Moon erased from National Space Policy, three years after the cancellation of Constellation, America's deep space efforts are really little different from what they were at the end of the Bush administration, with little actual progress having been made not already set in motion before President Obama's Inauguration.. 

Aside from the missing Altair lander, and the R&D required to build it, together with a simple recognition of the Moon’s clear strategic value in overcoming tremendous technological challenges facing any manned mission to Mars, very little has actually changed.

The end goal of landing astronauts on Mars, someday, some way, in budgetary “out years,” is still the same, as was retiring the Space Shuttle and planned development and use of commercial transportation to ISS. These were integral to the Vision for Space Exploration introduced in 2004. Though some seem determined to credit the administration with having dreamed up subsidized commercial space, and certainly for popularizing the idea, that too was integral to the VSE and as far as presidents go the initiative dates back to Ronald Reagan.

From a political perspective, with unwitting help from General Bolden, we no longer have to simply make educated guessed as to why the Moon was edited out of NASA’s strategy. As it turns out, it was not the “been there, done that” argument offered by the President, after all..

Bolden has finally confirmed for us one line of investigation into the mysterious missing Moon by simply telling us that the Obama administration just does not want the American government “to take the lead” on any manned return to the Moon.

Thus, it was a political decision, dressed up and oversold with some of the tired arguments originally heard forty years ago.

That's not a crime, of course. Thankfully Bolden has also communicated that the administration is not opposed to "leading from behind" on a manned mission to the Moon, perhaps lead by a different nation, nor does he rule out robotic exploration, though the nation has so far committed only to finishing or fulfilling the precursor robotic lunar missions that were either already underway or already long in the pipeline.

We are genuinely grateful the administration appears unwilling to stand in the way of any commercial manned or unmanned landings in the Moon.

But why this passionate and now very specfic opposition to America leading while exploring and using the Moon as a stepping stone to Mars and as a Rosetta Stone for the rest of the Solar System?

In light of all the other alterations made to the President's 'asteroid initiative' over the past three years, was the administration's unyielding position the original and still primary reason the whole Constellation program was cancelled?

The Moon, and those of us still urging policy makers to take another look at its advantages over manned asteroids exploration, are apparently occasionally being heard in the White House. In the past three years the administration has occasionally floated tantalizing trial balloons, future efforts involving the Moon, but specifically without any  human landing.

One thing is different in the past three years. The small flotilla of remote sensing spacecraft, from Japan, China and India, as well as the U.S. sent to the Moon, and inspired by the lead America had taken with in 2004, after a long national drought five American spacecraft in lunar orbit simultaneously for most of this past year, and planetary scientists have learned more about the Moon since 2004 than in the two decades previous.

This new look at the Moon has by now strongly confirmed the Moon's strategic importance and its usefulness to science, and as a logical support for future manned missions to Mars.

"Just after it has been relegated to a “been there, done that” status, the Moon again shows us we have a lot to learn about its history, physical state and the potential value of its resources. We must take the initiative to learn more as the Moon is crucial in developing and advancing a sustainable space faring infrastructure." -   Paul D. Spudis

Why then, like Arthur C. Clarke’s Europa, are American astronauts to “attempt no landing there?” If we are taking the lead going to Mars, our role in a return to the Moon along that path would seem to be irrelevant.

This much is clear. Leaving the Moon out as an intermediate goal, as a place where America already has a momentary and essential lead, is a stubbornly held position dear to the administration.From Bolden’s statements late last week one might think someone had suggested NASA’s strategy for building a path to Mars should be renamed back to “Constellation.”

Though only occasionally experienced, if America’s history and the nation's storied history of manned space exploration has succeeded in teaching us anything it has taught history has a very tight turning radius.

U.S. Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL) attending committee meeting in Washington earlier this year.

Jeff Foust
Space Politics
 
Sunday’s edition of Florida Today features excerpts of an interview with Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL), including some discussion of space policy issues. Posey doesn’t break much new ground here, defending his vote on an appropriations bill that included language calling on NASA to immediately downselect to one or two commercial crew providers. He compares it to building a house on a $100,000 budget: “Do you hire one contractor to build your $100,000 house? Or do you hire four contractors and say, see how far you can go for $25,000 each?”

Read the full post HERE.

A lunar base creates new capabilities [Pat Rawlings/SAIC].

Paul D. Spudis
The Once and Future Moon
Smithsonian Air & Space

Where does the Moon fit into plans for future human space exploration?  From reading the space media, you might get the idea that the very notion is dead and buried, killed by President Obama’s casual dismissal of the idea in a speech over two years ago at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, followed this year by Mitt Romney’s dismissive remarks on the Moon during the Republican primaries.

Nevertheless, many in the international community (and in the United States) are keeping the lunar flame alive for a variety of reasons, not the least among them being that it is understood that politicians aren’t rocket scientists – nor should we expect them to be.

The Global Exploration Conference (GLEX) held last month in Washington DC was remarkable for the fact that most of our international space partners are proceeding with plans for lunar return as though its abandonment had never occurred.  The Russians were particularly eager to express their desire to establish capability on the Moon at the meeting, while in recent months strong interest in permanent lunar return has been expressed by the Europeans, Canada, India, Japan and of course, China.  Moreover, unlike many within our own national space agency, the world sees the Moon not simply as a box to be checked-off on the way to Mars but as the enabling asset for space exploration.  As Vladimir Popovkin, head of the Russian Federal Space Agency Roscosmos put it, “It’s a new Moon,” pointing out that the recently confirmed discovery of water at the poles of the Moon enables sustainable, permanent habitation of that body and the creation of new capabilities for voyages to the planets.

Our international space partners believe that spaceflight beyond LEO should entail incremental steps that will gradually extend reach and capability.  Once such a paradigm is adopted, expensive designer missions to plant a flag or do a “touch-and-go” at an asteroid are seen as having limited value and making no economic sense.  On the other hand, the gradual expansion beyond LEO using nearby assets builds a permanent, lasting space faring capability.  The Moon fits into such a scheme by virtue of both its proximity and usefulness.  In the absence of some technical miracle, such as the discovery of new physics that fundamentally change the nature of spaceflight, we are wedded to rocket technology for the foreseeable future.  The rocket equation dictates that it will remain difficult and expensive to reach space and operate there.  Given such problems, some now recognize and conclude that the Moon offers provisioning capability and for this reason and many others, is a desirable destination and near-term goal.

Our pioneering (and current) model of space access requires launching everything from Earth’s surface, taking months to complete a mission, yet gathering minimal information (due to limited time in the vicinity of its designated target) and leaving no lasting or reusable infrastructure in space.  This template guarantees that human spaceflights will be infrequent, expensive and subject to abrupt cancellation due to political whims.   If one views the civil space program primarily as an annoying expenditure whose ambitions must be constrained by making a previously small portion of the program (such as “commercial” launch services) the raison d’être of the entire effort and deferring any real goals to an indefinite and nebulous future, our current path might seem completely reasonable.  However, it appears that the international community believes that space is a real theater of human endeavor and their goal is to make it part of their domain and utility – until recently, also a goal of the American space program.  Perhaps it still is.

Despite common perception, the Moon has not been officially abandoned as a goal for the United States space program.  The current NASA Authorization Act of 2010 lays out the goals and approaches to be followed by the agency in executing its mission.  The Findings by the Congress (section 301) outlines the rationale and goals of the space agency’s human exploration efforts.  As I have written previously, in the seven points dealing with future agency activities, cislunar space is mentioned in four and the lunar surface is called out twice as destinations.  Development of the ability to use the in situ resources of space to create infrastructure is specifically cited in Sec. 301a (4).  The entire section 301 is worth a careful reading.  It calls for a program that uses a gradual, incremental approach to the extension of human reach in space beyond LEO, specifically specifying both commercial and international participation.  There is nothing in the current law that is at odds with the plans and desires of the international community as expressed at the recent GLEX meeting.  The only place one reads about the Moon being abandoned as a national goal for America is in the press and such cases, it is always in the context of a single off-hand remark in one Presidential speech.

From the perspective of two years later, that off-hand remark sounds increasingly ill thought-out and hollow.  Given its context in the speech, the statement seems to derive from the idea that lunar return must perforce be a repeat of the Apollo experience of 30 years ago.  NASA itself has fed this idea, depicting the return to the Moon as the equivalent of a Gemini program within the Apollo-to-Mars fixation of many in the agency.  In their 2006 preliminary plans for lunar return, NASA started out properly by describing the development of an outpost at one of the poles of the Moon and emphasizing human presence and development, but over the next few years architectural studies increasingly drifted away from an outpost and towards the sortie concept, in which we would stage (entirely from Earth) and execute one-off missions to sites of scientific interest all over the Moon for visits of limited duration.  Such an exploration approach dissipates assets and thus increases costs and reduces surface capability and infrastructure.  It was this exploratory approach to lunar return that the Augustine committee evaluated and declared to be “unaffordable,” not the concept of building a centralized outpost that could support ISRU and space development (an approach that the committee did not even consider).

President Obama signed the NASA Authorization bill of 2010 – a bill crafted when his party controlled Congress – and the findings presented in that bill are now law.  So even though the agency and most of the media seem to be blissfully unaware of it, NASA has been charged by Congress to develop space systems capable of conducting missions to and throughout cislunar space, including to the lunar surface.  Our international partners agree with this intended direction, convinced that the Moon is the appropriate next destination for humans in space.

NASA’s reluctance to go in this direction, even while other nations are making plans, forfeits the opportunity for our international leadership in space.  Our space program has to demonstrate the feasibility of using lunar resources to secure us a place as participants and entrepreneurs in the vast economic future of space.

Originally published at his Smithsonian Air & Space blog The Once and Future Moon, Dr. Spudis is a senior staff scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute. The opinions expressed are those of the author and are better informed than average.

Spacecraft departs Earth-Moon L1 node for lunar surface mission [AIAA Houston/John Frassanito & Associates].

Paul D. Spudis
AIAA Houston Horizonscover story

"The real debate should not be about launch vehicles or spacecraft or even destinations, but about the long-term purpose of our civil space program. Different rationales have been proposed, including: scientific knowledge, technology development, creating enthusiasm for science and math education, societal inspiration and many others less tangible. Fundamentally, all of these ration-ales (not all of them mutually exclusive) may have merit to a greater or lesser extent, but in times of national fiscal uncertainty, only those projects providing clear practical value and understandable societal benefit have any reasonable expectation of long-term political and fiscal support."

Read the Horizons cover story, HERE..(PDF)

Controllers on Earth operate and maintain a propellant production plant on the Moon [AIAA/MIT/John Frassanito & Associates].

The current controversy over the direction of our national space program has many dimensions but most of the discourse has focused on the means (government vs. commercial launch vehicles) not the ends (destinations and activities).  Near-Earth objects (NEO, i.e., asteroids) became the next destination for human exploration as an alternative to the Moon when the Augustine committee advocated a “flexible path” in their 2009 report.  The reason for going to an asteroid instead of the Moon was that it costs too much money to develop a lunar lander whereas asteroids, having extremely low surface gravity, don’t require one.  The administration embraced and supported this change in direction and since then, the agency has been studying possible NEO missions and how to conduct them.

On the surface, it might seem that NEO missions answer the requirements for future human destinations.  NEOs are beyond low Earth orbit, they require long transit times and so simulate the duration of future Mars missions, and (wait for it)… we’ve never visited one with people.  However, detailed consideration indicates that NEOs are not the best choice as our next destination in space.  In this post and two additional ones to come, I will consider some of the operational, scientific and resource utilization issues that arise in planning NEO missions and exploration activities and compare them to the lunar alternative.

Most asteroids reside not near the Earth but in a zone between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, the asteroid belt.  The very strong gravity field of Jupiter will sometimes perturb the orbits of these rocky bodies and hurl them into the inner Solar System, where they usually hit the Sun or one of the inner planets.  Between those two events, they orbit the Sun, sometimes coming close to the Earth.  Such asteroids are called near-Earth objects and can be any of a variety of different types of asteroids.  Typically, they are small, on the order of tens of meters to a few kilometers in size.  As such, they do not have significant gravity fields of their own, so missions to them do not “land” on an alien world, but rather rendezvous and station-keep with it in deep space.  Think “formation flying” with the International Space Station (ISS) without the option to dock.

The moniker “near Earth” is a relative descriptor.  These objects orbit the Sun just as the Earth does and vary in distance to the Earth from a few million km to hundreds of millions of km, depending upon the time of year.  Getting to one has nothing to do with getting to another, so multiple NEO destinations in one trip are unlikely.  Because the distance to a NEO varies widely, we cannot just go to one whenever we choose – launch windows open at certain times of the year and because the NEO is in its own orbit, these windows occur infrequently and are of very short duration, usually a few days.  Moreover, due to the distances between Earth and the NEO, radio communications will not be instantaneous, with varying time-lags of tens of seconds to several minutes between transmission and reception.  Thus, the crew must be autonomous during operations.

Although there are several thousand NEOs, few of them are possible destinations for human missions.  This is a consequence of two factors.  First, space is very big and even several thousand rocks spread out over several billion cubic kilometers of empty space results in a very low density of objects.  Second, many of these objects are unreachable, requiring too much velocity change (“delta-v”) from an Earth departure stage; this can be a result of either too high of an orbital inclination (out of the plane of the Earth’s orbit) or an orbit that is too eccentric (all orbits are elliptical).  These factors result in reducing the field of possible destinations from thousands to a dozen or so at best.  Moreover, the few NEOs that can be reached are all very small, from a few meters to perhaps a km or two in size.  Not much exploratory area there, especially after a months-long trip in deep space.

That’s another consideration – transit time.  Not only are there few targets, it takes months to reach one of them.  Long transit time is sold as a benefit by asteroid advocates:  because a trip to Mars will take months, a NEO mission will allow us to test out the systems for Mars missions.  But such systems do not yet exist.  On a human mission to a NEO, the crew is beyond help from Earth, except for radioed instructions and sympathy.  A human NEO mission will have to be self-sufficient to a degree that does not now exist.  Parts on the ISS fail all the time, but because it is only 400 km above the Earth, it is relatively straightforward to send replacement parts up on the next supply mission (unless your supply fleet is grounded, as currently it has been).  On a NEO mission, a broken system must be both fixable and fixed by the crew.  Even seemingly annoying malfunctions can become critical.  As ISS astronaut Don Pettit puts it, “If your toilet breaks, you’re dead.”

Crew exposure is another consequence of long flight times, in this case to the radiation environment of interplanetary space.  This hazard comes in two flavors – solar flares and galactic cosmic rays.  Solar flares are massive eruptions of high-energy particles from the Sun, occurring at irregular intervals.  We must carry some type of high-mass shielding to protect the crew from this deadly radiation.  Because we cannot predict when a flare might occur, this massive solar “storm shelter” must be carried wherever we go in the Solar System (because Apollo missions were only a few days long, the crew simply accepted the risk of possible death from a solar flare).  Cosmic rays are much less intense, but constant.  The normal ones are relatively harmless, but high-energy versions (heavy nuclei from ancient supernovae) can cause serious tissue damage.  Although crew can be partly shielded from this hazard, they are never totally protected from it.  Astronauts in low Earth orbit are largely protected from radiation because they orbit beneath the van Allen radiation belts, which protect life on the Earth.  On the Moon, we can use regolith to shield crew but for now, such mass is not available to astronauts traveling in deep space.

When the crew finally arrives at their destination, more difficulties await.  Most NEOs spin very rapidly, with rotation periods on the order of a few hours at most.  This means that the object is approachable only near its polar area.  But because these rocks are irregularly shaped, rotation is not the smooth, regular spin of a planet, but more like that of a wobbling toy top.  If material is disturbed on the surface, the rapid spin of the asteroid will launch the debris into space, creating a possible collision hazard to the human vehicle and crew.  The lack of gravity means that “walking” on the surface of the asteroid is not possible; crew will “float” above the surface of the object and just as occurs in Earth orbit, each touch of the object (action) will result in a propulsive maneuver away from the surface (reaction).

We need to learn how to work quickly at the asteroid because we don’t have much time there.  Loiter times near the asteroid for most opportunities are on the order of a few days.  Why so short?  Because the crew wants to be able to come home.  Both NEO and Earth continue to orbit the Sun and we need to make sure that the Earth is in the right place when we arrive back at its orbit.  So in effect, we will spend months traveling there, in a vehicle with the habitable volume of a large walk-in closet (OK, two walk-in closets maybe), a short time at the destination and then months for the trip home.  Is it worth it?  That will be the subject of my next post.

People at an asteroid: What will they do there? [Lockheed-Martin]

Part II:  Scientific Considerations

In my last post, I examined some of the operational considerations associated with a human mission to a near Earth asteroid and how it contrasted with the simpler, easier operations of lunar return.  Here, I want to consider what we might do at this destination by focusing on the scientific activities and possible return we could expect from such a mission.  Some of the operational constraints mentioned in the previous post will impact the scientific return we expect from a human NEO mission.

Asteroids are the left over debris from the formation of the Solar System.  Solid pieces of refractory (high melting temperature) elements and minerals that make up the rocky planets have their precursors in the asteroids.  We actually have many pieces of these objects now – as meteorites.  The rocks that fall from the sky are overwhelmingly from the small asteroids that orbit the Sun (the exception is that in meteorite collections, some come from larger bodies, including the Moon and Mars).

Moreover, we have flown by almost a dozen small bodies, orbited two, impacted one and “landed” on two others.  Thousands of images and spectra have been obtained for these rocky objects.  The chemical composition of the asteroids Eros and Vesta have been obtained remotely.  We have cataloged the craters, cracks, scarps, grooves and pits that make up the surface features of these objects.  We have seen that some are highly fragmental aggregates of smaller rocks, while others seem to be more solid and denser.  In addition to these spacecraft data, thousands of asteroids have been cataloged, mapped and spectrally characterized from telescopes on the Earth.  We have recognized the compositional variety, the various shapes, spin rates and orbits of these small planetoids.  We now know for certain that the most common type of meteorite (chondrite) is derived from the most spectrally common type of asteroid (S-type) as a result from the Hayabusa mission, the world’s first asteroid sample return.

Annotated rubble-strewn surface of Asteroid 25143-Itokawa. Circles outline debris-flow sources, arrows indicate debris flow channels, white/black circle indicates a possible hydrological sink. Talus accumulations can be seen between the two sets of arrows with southeasterly orientation on an arbitrary grid. Anastomosing shallow channels to right of the Muses-C fine debris area, outlined in white tone, may indicate release of meltwater from permafrost and emplacement of slope wash. Parabolic lines outline stone-banked lobe ridges. Two fairly recent impacts, judging from tonal contrast, are labelled A and B. IAG Geomorphology Working Group, Oct. 2009 [JAXA].

In short, we know quite a bit about the asteroids.  What new knowledge would we gain from a human mission to one?

Although we have (literally) tons of meteorites, extraterrestrial samples without geological context have much less scientific value than those collected from planetary units with regional extent and clear origins.  Many different processes have affected the surfaces of the planets and understanding the precise location and geological setting of a rock is essential to reconstructing the history and processes responsible for its formation and by inference, the history and processes of its host planet.

Most asteroids are made up of primitive, undifferentiated planetary matter.  They have been destroyed and re-assembled by collision and impact over the last 4.5 billion years of Solar System history.  The surface has been ground-up and fragmented by the creation of regolith and some details of this process remain poorly understood.  But in general terms, we pretty much know what asteroids are made of, how they are put together, and what processes operate upon their surfaces.  True enough, the details are not fully understood, but there is no reason to suspect that we are missing a major piece of the asteroid story.  In contrast, planetary bodies such as the Moon have whole epochs and processes that we are just now uncovering – in the case of the Moon, water has been recently found to be present inside, outside and in significant quantity at the poles, relations that have enormous implications for lunar history and about which we were nearly totally ignorant only a couple of years ago.

Most NEOs will be simple ordinary chondrites – we know this because ordinary chondrites make up about 85% of all meteorite falls (an observed fall of a rock from the sky).  This class of meteorite is remarkable, not for its diversity but for its uniformity.  Chondrites are used as a chemical standard in the analysis of planetary rocks and soils to measure the amounts of differentiation or chemical change during geological processing.  In themselves, chondrites do not vary (much) except that they show different degrees of heating subsequent to their formation, but not enough heating to significantly change their chemical composition.

This composite image shows the comparative sizes of eight asteroids. Until the arrival of NASA's DAWN in orbit around Vesta, Lutetia (130 kilometers) was the largest asteroid visited by a spacecraft. Vesta dwarfs all other small bodies in this image with diameter of 530 km [NASA/JPL/ESA].

Some NEO asteroids are pieces of bigger objects that experienced chemical and mineral change or differentiation.  Vesta (not a NEO, but a main belt asteroid) has reflection spectra similar to known, evolved meteorites, the eucrite group.  These rocks suggest that some asteroids are small, differentiated planetoids, having volcanic activity that dates from the very beginning of Solar System history.  Moreover, since we have pieces of the Moon and Mars as meteorite fragments, some NEOs may consist of material blasted off these planets.  However, given that most NEOs are inaccessible to human missions, the likelihood that we could visit one of planetary derivation is small (curious that the most interesting of the NEOs appear to be those derived from some bigger (planet-sized) object.)  In broad terms of meteorite science, multiple small samples from a variety of asteroid types are preferable to many bigger samples of a single specimen, exactly the opposite of what a human mission will provide.

What specifically would a crew do during a NEO visit?  An astronaut on a planet typically would explore the surface, map geological relations where possible, collect representative samples of the units and rock types that can be discerned, and collect as much mapping and compositional data as possible to aid in the interpretation of the returned samples.  In the case of a NEO, many of these activities would not be particularly fruitful.  The asteroid is either a pile of rubble or a single huge boulder.  Chondritic meteorites are uniform in composition, so geological setting is not particularly instructive.  We do have questions about the processes of space weathering, the changes that occur in rocks as a result of their exposure to space for varying lengths of time.   Such questions could be addressed by a simple robotic sample collector, as the recently approved OSIRIS mission plans to do.

One question that could be addressed by human visitors to asteroids is their internal make-up and structure.  Some appear to be rubble piles while others are nearly solid – why such different fates in different asteroids?  By using active seismometry (acoustic sounding), a human crew could lay out instruments and sensors to decipher the density profile of an asteroid.  Understanding the internal structure of an asteroid is important for learning how strong such objects are; this could be an important factor in devising mitigation strategies in case we ever have to divert a NEO away from a collision trajectory with the Earth.  As mentioned in my preceding post, the crew had better work quickly – loiter times at the asteroid will probably be short, on the order of a few days at most.

Although we can explore asteroids with human missions, it seems likely that few significant insights into the origins and processes of the early Solar System will result from such exploration.  Such study is already a very active field, using the samples that nature has provided us – the meteorites.  Sample collection from an asteroid will yield more samples of meteorites, only without the melted fusion crusts that passage through the Earth’s atmosphere creates.  In other words, from this mission, scientific progress will be incremental, not revolutionary.

In contrast, because they yield information on geological histories and processes at planet-wide scales, sample collection and return from a large planetary body such as the Moon or Mars could revolutionize our knowledge of these objects in particular and the Solar System in general.  Many years prior to the Moon missions, we had meteorites that showed impact metamorphic effects but the idea of impact-caused mass extinctions of life on Earth only came after we had fully comprehended the impact process recorded in the Apollo samples from the Moon.  The significance of impact-related mineral and chemical features were not appreciated until we had collected samples with geological context to understand what the lunar samples were telling us.

Of course, science being unpredictable, some major surprise that could revolutionize our knowledge may await us on some distant asteroid.  But such surprises doubtless await us in many places throughout the Solar System and the best way to assure ourselves that we will eventually find them is to develop the capability to go anywhere in space at any time.  That means developing and using the resources of space to create new capabilities.  I will consider that in my next post.

SEV, the Space Exploration Vehicle variant on the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) originally developed as part of the Constellation program [NASA].

In Part I and Part II of this series, I examined some of the operational and scientific issues associated with a human mission to a near Earth asteroid (NEO) and contrasted them with the simpler operations and greater scientific return of a mission to the Moon.  To continue the discussion of what we might do at an asteroid, I will now consider using the local resources offered by asteroids, how they differ from those of the Moon, and offer some practical considerations on accessing and using them.

To become a truly space faring species, humanity must learn how to use what we find in space to survive and thrive.  Tied to the logistics chain of the Earth, we are now and always will be limited in space capability.  Our ultimate goal in space is to develop the capability to go anywhere at any time and conduct any mission we can imagine.  Such capability is unthinkable without being able to obtain provisions from resources found off-planet.  That means developing and using the resources of space to create new capabilities.

One of the alleged benefits of asteroid destinations is that they are rich in resource potential.  I would agree, putting the accent on the word “potential.”  Our best guide to the nature of these resources comes from the study of meteorites, which are derived from near Earth asteroids.  They have several compositions, the most common being the ordinary chondrite, which makes up about 85% of observed meteorite falls.  Ordinary chondrites are basically rocks, rich in the elements silicon, iron, magnesium, calcium and aluminum.  They contain abundant metal grains, composed mostly of iron and nickel, widely dispersed throughout the rock.

The resource potential of asteroids lies not in these objects, but in the minority of asteroids that have more exotic compositions.  Metal asteroids make up about 7% of the population and are composed of nearly pure iron-nickel metal, with some inclusions of rock-like material as a minor component.  Other siderophile (iron-loving) elements including platinum and gold make up trace portions of these bodies.  A metal asteroid is an extremely high-grade ore deposit and potentially could be worth billions of dollars if we were able to get these metals back to Earth, although one should be mindful of the possible catastrophic effects on existing precious metal markets – so much gold was produced during the 1849 California Gold Rush that the world market price of gold decreased by a factor of sixteen.

From the spaceflight perspective, water has the most value.  Another type of relatively rare asteroid is also a chondrite, but a special type that contains carbon and organic compounds as well as clays and other hydrated minerals.  These bodies contain significant amounts of water.  Water is one of the most useful substances in space – it supports human life (to drink, to use as radiation shielding, and to breath when cracked into its component hydrogen and oxygen), it can be used as a medium of energy storage (fuel cells) and it is the most powerful chemical rocket propellant known.  Finding and using a water-rich NEO would create a logistics depot of immense value.

A key advantage of asteroids for resources is a drawback as an operational environment – they have extremely low surface gravity.  Getting into and out of the Moon’s gravity well requires a change in velocity of about 2380 m/s (both ways); to do the same for a typical asteroid requires only a few meters per second.  This means that a payload launched from an asteroid rather than the Moon saves almost 5 km/s in delta-v, a substantial amount of energy.  So from the perspective of energy, the asteroids beat the Moon as a source of materials.

There are, however, some difficulties in mining and using asteroidal material as compared to lunar resources.  First is the nature of the feedstock or “ore.”  We have recently found that water at the poles of the Moon is not only present in enormous quantity (tens of billions of tons) but is also in a form that can be easily used – ice.  Ice can be converted into a liquid for further processing at minimal energy cost; if the icy regolith from the poles is heated to above 0° C, the ice will melt and water can be collected and stored.  The water in carbonaceous chondrites is chemically bound within mineral structures.  Significant amounts of energy are required to break these chemical bonds to free the water, at least 2-3 orders of magnitude more energy, depending on the specific mineral phase being processed.  So extracting water from an asteroid, present in quantities of a few percent to maybe a couple of tens of percent, requires significant energy; water-ice at the poles of the Moon is present in greater abundance (up to 100% in certain polar craters) and is already in an easy-to-process and use form.

The processing of natural materials to extract water has many detailed steps, from the acquisition of the feedstock to moving the material through the processing stream to collection and storage of the derived product.  At each stage, we typically separate one component from another; gravity serves this purpose in most industrial processing.  One difficulty in asteroid resource processing will be to either devise techniques that do not require gravity (including related phenomena, such as thermal convection) or to create an artificial gravity field to ensure that things move in the right directions.  Either approach complicates the resource extraction process.

The large distance from the Earth and poor accessibility of asteroids versus the Moon, works against resource extraction and processing.  Human visits to NEOs will be of short duration and because radio time-lags to asteroids are on the order of minutes, direct remote control of processing will not be possible.  Robotic systems for asteroid mining must be designed to have a large degree of autonomy.  This may become possible but presently we do not have enough information on the nature of asteroidal feedstock to either design or even envision the use of such robotic equipment.  Moreover, even if we did fully understand the nature of the deposit, mining and processing are highly interactive activities on Earth and will be so in space.  The slightest anomaly or miscalculation can cause the entire processing stream to break down and in remote operations, it will be difficult to diagnose and correct the problem and re-start it.

The accessibility issue also cuts against asteroidal resources.  We cannot go to a given asteroid at will; launch windows open for very short periods and are closed most of the time.  This affects not only our access to the asteroid but also shortens the time periods when we may depart the object to return our products to near-Earth space.  In contrast, we can go to and from the Moon at any time and its proximity means that nearly instantaneous remote control and response are possible.  The difficulties of remote control for asteroid activities have led some to suggest that we devise a way to “tow” the body into Earth orbit, where it may be disaggregated and processed at our leisure.  I shudder to think about being assigned to write the environmental impact (if you’ll pardon the expression) statement for that activity.

So where does that leave us in relation to space resource access and utilization?  Asteroid resource utilization has potential but given today’s technology levels, uncertain prospects for success.  Asteroids are hard to get to, have short visit times for round-trips, difficult work environments, and uncertain product yields.  Asteroids do have low gravity going for them.  In contrast, the Moon is close and has the materials we want in the form we need it.  The Moon is easily accessible at any time and is amenable to remote operations controlled from Earth in near-real time.  My perspective is that it makes the most sense to go to the Moon first and learn the techniques, difficulties and technology for planetary resource utilization by manufacturing propellant from lunar water.  Nearly every step of this activity – from prospecting, processing and harvesting – will teach us how to mine and process materials from future destinations, both minor and planetary sized-bodies.  Resource utilization has commonality of techniques and equipment, the requirement to move and work with particulate materials, and the ability to purify and store the products.  Learning how to access and process resources on the Moon is a general skill that transfers to any future space destination.

There was a reason that the Moon was made our first destination in the original Vision for Space Exploration.  It’s close, it’s interesting, and it’s useful.  Establishing a foothold on the Moon opens up cislunar space to routine access and development.  It will teach us the skills of a space faring people.  It makes sense to go there first and create a permanent space transportation system.  Once we have that, we get everything else.

Originally published August 31, September 1 and September 2, 2011 at his Smithsonian Air & Space blog The Once and Future Moon, Dr. Paul Spudis is a Senior Staff Scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston. The opinions expressed are those of the author and are better informed than average.

The President announced a "bold approach for space exploration and discovery," to quote the White House. In considering his FY2011 budget proposals for NASA, Congress rightly should ask just how "bold" is this approach vs what America requires in the intense geopolitical environment of space.

In addition, Congress should ask for specifics as to why this approach would be better than the Constellation program already approved by Congress, and whether it truly "Advances America's commitment to human spaceflight and exploration of the solar system," to again quote the White House. Congress also should question if the proposals support the primary constitutional rationale for funding NASA, that is, as a contribution to "the common Defence."

The current United States space policy, twice approved by the Congress in response to President George W. Bush's FY2005 and subsequent budget requests, calls for focused technology development and mission formulations that would 1) enable a return to the Moon not later than 2020; 2) be consistent with future Mars exploration; 3) complete the construction of the International Space Station; and 4) replace the Space Shuttle with a new crewed vehicle not later than 2014.

The Constellation program's design would achieve these goals subject to the projected run-out funding for NASA in that original FY2005 budget.

Unfortunately, the Bush White House submitted annual budgets for FY2006-10 that funded Constellation $11 billion less than originally deemed necessary to maintain the proposed schedule. This includes the effects of an Office of Management and Budget error of about $3.8 billion in 2004 budgeting for the run-out cost of the Space Shuttle. Congress exacerbated this continued under-funding for Constellation through inflation-related cuts of about $1.5 billion in its 2006 and 2008 Continuing Resolutions.

In spite of these budgetary complications amounting to under-funding of some $12.5 billion over six years, and contrary to the Augustine-Crawley Commission's allegations, Constellation remains "executable" albeit with some delay relative to the original schedule. The Augustine-Crawley Commission did not look at the reality of the existing Constellation program and its previously approved funding, but constrained itself to the cumulative cuts of $28 billion for FY2010-20 submitted in the Obama budget for FY2010. Clearly, Constellation would not be "executable" with such drastic cuts to the original funding plan.

New funding of about $3 billion per year for the next five years would maintain the current schedule for Constellation and possibly remove dependency on Russia in 2014 for Space Station access (NASA's FY2010 budget of $18.3 billion is about 0.5 percent of total federal spending.). If this budgetary adherence to current space policy were undertaken, the United States could indefinitely maintain its dominant position as the world geopolitical and technical leader in space.

With this six-year long period of intense design and development already behind us, President Obama's budget proposals would stop Constellation and substitute the following policy elements:

1. A NASA budget increase of $6 billion over five years. These new dollars would be used largely to increase expenditures for space, Earth, and climate science. (This same $6 billion increase, if dedicated to Constellation, would give the U.S. its own Orion spacecraft and Ares launch vehicle for access to Space Station.)

2. A "commitment to decide in 2015" on a specific approach to a heavy-lift rocket. Such a launch vehicle would be required if future policy added flights to "lunar orbit, Lagrange Points, Asteroids, moons of Mars, and Mars." (With no commitment to any specific objective for new heavy-lift, this policy position is made to order to be abandoned. It contains the technically and philosophically ludicrous suggestions that Lagrange points could be fuel depots, without getting fuel from the Moon, and that a mission to an asteroid has greater historical value than a base on the Moon.)

3. Technology development and test to increase space capabilities and reduce costs. The objective would be to "establish the technological foundation for future crewed spacecraft for missions beyond Earth-orbit." (As with heavy-lift, the policy gives no focus for these technology efforts as valuable as they could be, particularly with the development of a domestically produced, large hydrocarbon fueled rocket engine like we had for Apollo. Claims of providing "more jobs for the country" are disingenuous, however, as many more thousands of jobs would disappear with the cancellation of Constellation and the retirement of the Space Shuttle.)

4. A "steady stream of precursor robotic exploration missions." (A steady stream of such missions has been underway for two decades so this is nothing new.)

5. Restructuring of Constellation with the Orion spacecraft downsized to an emergency escape vehicle for the Space Station. (Orion development has progressed to the point that this proposal amounts to its termination and the start of a new spacecraft program that will cost more that completing Orion. Contrary to White House claims, this logically does nothing to reduce dependence on Russia to carry Americans to the Space Station. Major additional costs would be incurred to fly the new Orion to the Station and replace it periodically.)

6. An increase in "astronaut days in space by 3500 over 10 years." (No obvious means of doing this exist based on available Russian Soyuz flights to the Space Station and current biomedical limits on crew exposure to the space environment.)

7. A "jumpstart" to non-NASA, "commercial space launch" capabilities for human space flight. (With no known business case that would justify referring to such a capability as a "commercial" venture that private investors would support, and no definition of the final level of requirements and specifications NASA ultimately would demand, this fully subsidized initiative amounts to another, probably under-funded program by government. It is not clear how much funding will be requested for this subsidy, but a total of about $3 billion of new money each year over ten years would keep Constellation on track for a 2014 availability of Orion and a 2020 return to the Moon.)

8. Placing the space program on a more ambitious trajectory. (Clearly, the President's proposals are not as ambitious as the Constellation return to the Moon/Mars exploration program. Rather, the President takes American human space flight out of the calculations of other nations.)

Although many inherent logical, technical, and implementation flaws in the Obama policy are evident, it is important to examine the consequences for the United States if the President's promises could be kept in their entirety:

1. The United States' human space flight capability will rapidly atrophy and then disappear by about 2020. With this atrophy would come the disappearance of the psychological geopolitical edge from which we have benefited immensely since World War II and particularly since Neil Armstrong stepped on the Moon.

2. China will control lunar resources for terrestrial energy and space flight as well as dominate the Settlement of the Moon and eventually Mars. China repeatedly expresses interest in harvesting helium-3 fusion fuel present in the Moon's surface materials. A lunar settlement, sustained by the by-products of helium-3 production, constitutes the most cost and politically effective means of gaining this critical future energy resource.

If the Moon comes under China's control, long-term geopolitical reality would be changed in the same way that the Middle East's control of oil dominates our current national security vulnerabilities.

3. Russia will control access to the International Space Station. Prices per astronaut visit to the Station, including the astronauts of our non-Russian partners, will escalate from the $50 million today to whatever the traffic will bear. After the Space Station must be abandoned due to aging, probably no later than 2025, any future station will be left to China and/or Russia to build, crew, and use.

4. Europe, Japan, and other nations with limited space capabilities will cut deals for space access with China and Russia. A clear loss of international interest in space and other partnerships with the United States will result.

5. Without a clear set of space objectives, NASA will be reduced to a Space Science Agency. Past strong technical and professional synergism with national security will disappear.

6. Subsidized human space flight development for national space projects will see cost escalation and schedule slips. If this nebulous alternative to traditional NASA contracting received adequate funding, including needed reserves, then this potential problem might disappear; but, since Apollo, that is too much to expect in modern federal budgeting. Inevitable cost and schedule problems will follow inadequate initial funding, unanticipated or unknown technical issues, requirement and specification creep, and progressive NASA intrusion into design and implementation. As taxpayer dollars will fund this effort, cost increases will be driven by the unfortunate and overly risk-adverse nature of mainstream media reporting, and political reactions by the Congress, White House, and NASA bureaucracy.

7. Inevitable shrinkage and loss of innovation of the aerospace and defense industrial base will occur. Combined with the Administration's and Congress' unconstitutional under-funding of advanced research, development, and testing for national security systems, the lack of funding and focus on specific space objectives will worsen this progressive weakening of our essential development and manufacturing foundations.

8. Engineering and science education and research will lose another major stimulus. The governmental and academic establishments continually underestimate the importance of national human space flight initiatives in stimulating academic education and research; but it is nonetheless still as real in the minds of young people today as it was after the launch of Sputnik in 1957.

In the light of these obvious adverse consequences even if all the President's promises are kept, and much worse if any are not, why would the President not just budget to properly fund and manage Constellation?

Compared to trillions of dollars of other spending he has asked for, this would have added a relative pittance. Would not President John Kennedy, or Presidents Eisenhower, Johnson, and Reagan, have moved forward in space rather than backward, given the global challenges we face?

The depth of the current Administration's antagonism toward the historical vision of America, as well as toward a preceding President, is unprecedented. The philosophical wedge driven between citizens and their government reaches deeper than any time since just before the Civil War. Our national future on Earth, as well as in the ocean of space, requires that this negative view of America, its people, and its future be overturned in upcoming elections.

Harrison H. Schmitt is a former United States Senator from New Mexico as well as a geologist and former Apollo Astronaut. He currently is an aerospace and private enterprise consultant and a member of the new Committee of Correspondence.

Jason Rhian
Tampa Space Program Examiner

The average citizen will often pose the question, "If we landed on the moon in the 60s, then why haven't we gone anywhere or done any exploring in the last 37 years?" They will also point an accusatory finger at NASA's Orion spacecraft and Ares rocket and ask why the space agency has not developed something more inspiring. Where are the moon bases? Why aren't we out exploring the solar system? If you've ever asked these questions, don't blame NASA - blame yourself.

NASA lives at the will of politicians - who are elected by the American people. Therein lies the tragic comedy that is NASA's funding situation. The public rails against NASA for not doing all sorts of amazing things and then becomes indignant when funding goes toward the agency's efforts. In short, we want it both ways. The public also goes insane when they hear that NASA's annual budget is $17.8 billion. When you have a populace that is willing to spend $80 billion a year on cigarettes and an estimated $14 billion in pornography, yet unwilling to spend one fourth of its annual smoking expenditure and near the same amount as its annual porn expenditures for one of the most important endeavors a nation can undertake - then we as a people have fallen extremely low.

In 1971, mostly in denial concerning a sparsely populated gap in U.S. manned space flight after Apollo 17, Congress settled on the promise of a Space Shuttle. The fire that destroyed Apollo 1 and her crew on the pad in 1967 and the breathtaking close call of Apollo 13 three years later made the future safety of manned spaceflight every bit as much of a paramount concern at the time as today, with only five Space Shuttle missions scheduled before its retirement a year from today, even as we approach the fortieth anniversary of Apollo 13 next April.

It would belabor the point to review the Space Shuttle's record, its surprising capabilities, needed more today in no small part because of its 130 missions. And it only seems obvious that the Shuttle never lived up to its primary selling points decades ago, those of convenience, lowered cost and primarily safety, because of those missions since 1981. The Hubble Space Telescope was also a product of that same difficult and clumsy long-term planning so typical of Washington, built to accommodate the two-year election cycle of the U.S. House of Representatives, with its power of the purse.

It's a good idea to look back and to ask how we got here, and to consider America's present dilemma concerning manned spaceflight to be a clear repetition of a similar process that unfolded almost four decades ago, once again in a age-old political dynamic built around short-term planning. In 1971 no one believed a decade would pass before the Space Shuttle flew, or that aside from the surprisingly useful Skylab missions and the Apollo-Soyuz rendezvous in 1975, that first gap in manned spaceflight would last until 1981. The missions underway had NASA's attention, as an institution where lunar travel never lost its novelty.

A similar situation is underway once again, with tight budgets and a host of nested institutions and stockholders prepared to argue over what, in an age where entitlement obligations exceed double the value of all the assets of America and Americans, mere table scraps. A unified vision articulated finally, after the loss of Columbia, is hanging by a thread. And partisan adversaries are squaring off for a bruising fight, each accusing the other of being unrealistic.

Jeff Foust has been following an almost invisible set of congressional hearings, that seemed to suddenly crop up, ostensibly dedicated (once again) to "safety" of one vision of NASA's future over another.

From his writings on his Blog "Space Politics," Jeff offers "A few notes on the human spaceflight hearing," Thursday.

Meanwhile Mark Whittington, writing for the Houston Space News Examiner in "Ares 1 vs.commercial launchers - how to replace the space shuttle?" and points to "Two recent editorials in the journal Space News, one by Congressman Ralph Hall opposing a commercial solution to Earth to low Earth orbit space flight," and "the other by Patti Grace Smith, a former FAA associate administrator" writing for commercial space transportation, and supporting commercial space flight, illustrates development of a new and quite unnecessary controversy in space policy. "

And Keith Cowing for NASA Watch details where prepared statements can be read and the scheduled rebroadcast of the House committee hearings this coming weekend, HERE.

Jeff Foust
Space Politics

A few other notes from Alan Ladwig’s talk Friday at the University of Nebraska space law conference in Washington:

Ladwig acknowledged the uncertainty that many have felt over the last year about the future policy direction of the new administration. “The space community has been a little on edge during the past 11 months, waiting to see what the Obama Administration has in store for us,” he said, calling the agency currently a “work in progress.” “The space community is not a patient lot, and we’re not putting up well with the pace, the priority, and the inconvenience of having to wait for the new administration to determine our direction and level of resources committed to the civil space program.”

Some changes might be visible soon, though. Ladwig noted that new administrator Charles Bolden is now free to make organizational changes and realign personnel in the agency now that he’s passed the 120-day mark in his tenure there. “We expect an announcement on that to be coming before Thanksgiving.”

"Overall, it’s hard to see this discovery of water as a reason in and of itself for humans to go to the Moon. However, from the standpoint of making a human presence there potentially easier and less expensive, it may improve the odds of justifying other reasons to return to the Moon—if advocates can put together a compelling case."