[meteorite-list] Space leaders work to replace lunar basewithmanned asteroid missions

From: mexicodoug <mexicodoug_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2008 00:12:39 -0600
Message-ID: <001701c85bf4$a0d57270$4001a8c0_at_MICASA>

Hi Sterling, List,

While the international politics of Iraq is out of my league to comment on,
I must comment how I was very saddened to read this article.

It was 2012, then 2015, then 2020 or 2025 ... there is a trend here and it
is crap for most all of us. Let me tell you IMO what's broke and really
needs fixing - and has little to nothing to do with whover has free rent in
the White House at the moment. (Yes, I think the rent should be declared as
income for the portion that is used as living quarters per IRS statues
whenever anyone receives free rent. Just not to be hypocritical about how
the tax code treats the rest of your hard working residents). I bet even
the Queen has to pay something for Buckingham Palace by now.

What's broke:
Here are the postulates:
 1. There is limited money to explore anything where people can't reach to
throw their garbage economically.
 2. The "Moon Program" sucks resources from the edge of exploration - the
sophisticated space probes we love.
 3. Bush is already going lame so it becomes in style to relate the concept
to establishing a base on the Moon with him.

The conclusion: Free for all, special interestes shouting "we can do it
better".
The result: Benchmarks get pushed even 5 years further into the future and
half of the list will be dead by the time anything might ever happen. I
remember reading about this bexact same dilemma with the Space Shuttle
program. Yes - 1960's technology but the bus that mostly is building the
ISS, delivering satellites like cutting cookies, and able to deliver Hubbles
etc.

The Moon is the safest, closest challenge to practice landing and liftoffs.
Things important for Mars, for example. We need ships and program and
career security, imagination and challenge - not budgets. What a grand
vehicle being developed capable to bring men and women to new worlds.
Destiny should be a given - people must colonize the Moon. If we screw up
the Earth which is very likely where are we going to find safe haven? On
the Asteroids and Mars? In some crater on Mercury? I think it is obvious -
the Moon.

The "scientists" who we all know are a very unselfish bunch, tell us what is
best which happens to time perfectly to get them through retirement. And
all of our money today, many who pay the highest taxes will never see
anything concrete as far as the next giant step for mankind. To die knowing
the fast paced world really never got off the ground like rodents in a ship
continually taking on more water...

Right about now, I am feeling defrauded. I grew up to believe that space
was our generations' frontier, and the result is that a luke warm support of
Bush or worse yet a bunch of dueling scientists who will push this way off
even more and screw up the funding already in place, which no doubt will be
earmarked as financial aid to "friends" during the whole delay and will
diusappear without a drop and the Discovery-class program will procede the
same as it would have anyways. Why must they cut down challenges instead of
go find their own. Sour Grapes, I think play a part in this, but not all.

I just hope the next leader of the States does something like JFK would.
Because the way things are going, the leadership of NASA and bosses have
failed utterly to grab the imagination of a country more schooled than ever
in history, and would prefer to spend its time infighting instead of putting
on the company shirts and contributing to a national effort of excellence on
all fronts. This is the complete failure and it is time o rake them over
the coals for their ineptitude. I can just see the message to Junior High
School children today. Those dudes have no direction, spend the day
arguing, money is difficult and your career isn't safe and the goal changes
every time you turn around. Where's the "I Dream of Jeannie" and excitement
gone?

Inspiration at its best. It is time to kick enough ass there to land them
across the solar system. At least when the Air Force controlled Apollo
successes and failures mesmerized the country monthly. I'm going to hang on
to my meteorites, because suddenly I'm realizing that they are the closest
I'll ever get and to trust a bureaucracy is just a pipe dream. Sorry, just
a personal opinion.

Best wishes,
Doug


----- Original Message -----
From: "Sterling K. Webb" <sterling_k_webb at sbcglobal.net>
To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 20, 2008 1:29 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Space leaders work to replace lunar
basewithmanned asteroid missions


> Hi, All,
>
> The U.S. is already spending an estimated
> 2.7 to 3.5 Trillion Dollars on a Lunar Base, an
> extensive outpost in a very hostile environment.
>
> The only problem is: it's located in Iraq.
>
>
> Sterling K. Webb
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Darren Garrison" <cynapse at charter.net>
> To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
> Sent: Sunday, January 20, 2008 8:35 AM
> Subject: [meteorite-list] Space leaders work to replace lunar base
> withmanned asteroid missions
>
>
> http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0801/18avweek/
>
> Moon Stuck
> Space leaders work to replace lunar base with manned asteroid missions
> PUBLISHED IN AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY
> RE-PRINTED HERE WITH PERMISSION
> Posted: January 18, 2008
>
> BY CRAIG COVAULT
>
> Some of the most influential leaders of the space community are quietly
> working
> to offer the next U.S. president an alternative to President Bush's
> "vision
> for
> space exploration"--one that would delete a lunar base and move instead
> toward
> manned missions to asteroids along with a renewed emphasis on Earth
> environmental spacecraft.
>
> Top U.S. planetary scientists, several astronauts and former NASA division
> directors will meet privately at Stanford University on Feb. 12-13 to
> define
> these sweeping changes to the NASA/Bush administration Vision for Space
> Exploration (VSE).
>
> Abandoning the Bush lunar base concept in favor of manned asteroid
> landings
> could also lead to much earlier manned flights to Mars orbit, where
> astronauts
> could land on the moons Phobos or Deimos.
>
> Their goals for a new array of missions also include sending astronauts to
> Lagrangian points, 1 million mi. from Earth, where the Earth's and Sun's
> gravity
> cancel each other out and spacecraft such as replacements for the Hubble
> Space
> Telescope could be parked and serviced much like Hubble.
>
> The "alternate vision" the group plans to offer would urge far greater
> private-sector incentives to make ambitious human spaceflight plans a
> reality.
>
> There would also be some different "winners and losers" compared with the
> Bush
> vision. If the lunar base is deleted, the Kennedy Space Center could lose
> additional personnel because there would be fewer Ares V launches and no
> lunar
> base infrastructure work that had been assigned to KSC. On the other hand,
> the
> Goddard Space Flight Center and National Oceanic and Atmospheric
> Administration
> near Washington, along with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in
> California,
> would gain with the increased space environmental-monitoring goal.
>
> Numerous planetary managers told Aviation Week & Space Technology they now
> fear
> a manned Moon base and even shorter sorties to the Moon will bog down the
> space
> program for decades and inhibit, rather than facilitate, manned Mars
> operations--the ultimate goal of both the Bush and alternative visions.
> The
> first lunar sortie would be flown by about 2020 under the Bush plan.
>
> If alternative-vision planners have their way, the mission could instead
> be
> flown to an asteroid in about 2025.
>
> Participants in the upcoming meeting contend there's little public
> enthusiasm
> for a return to the Moon, especially among youth, and that the Bush
> administration has laid out grandiose plans but has done little to provide
> the
> funding to realize them on a reasonable timescale.
>
> Planners say the Bush plan is beginning to crumble, with only companies
> that
> have won major funding still enthusiastic about the existing plan.
>
> "It's becoming painfully obvious that the Moon is not a stepping-stone for
> manned Mars operations but is instead a stumbling block," says Robert
> Farquhar,
> a veteran of planning and operating planetary and deep-space missions.
>
> The prospect of challenging new manned missions to asteroids is drawing
> far
> more
> excitement among young people than a "return" (as in going backward) to
> the
> Moon, says Lou Friedman, who heads The Planetary Society, the country's
> largest
> space interest group.
>
> The society is co-hosting the invitation-only VSE replanning session with
> Stanford. A lot of people going to the meeting believe "the Moon is so
> yesterday," says Friedman.
>
> "It just does not feel right. And there's growing belief that, at high
> cost,
> it
> offers minimal engineering benefit for later manned Mars operations."
>
> Under the alternative VSE, even smaller, individual lunar sorties would be
> reduced, or perhaps deleted entirely, says Noel W. Hinners, who had
> extensive
> Apollo lunar science and system responsibility at Bell Laboratories before
> heading all of NASA's science program development. He also led Lockheed
> Martin
> Spaceflight System.
>
> Hinners believes the group should examine dropping all the lunar sorties
> to
> accelerate the human push to Mars in the revised VSE proposal to the new
> administration.
>
> The James Webb Space Telescope, with a 21.3-ft.-dia. mirror, will be
> launched in
> 2013 to one of these "L" points. With little fanfare, it was recently
> approved
> to carry a lightweight Crew Exploration Vehicle docking system just in
> case
> a
> manned CEV has to make a house call a million miles from Earth for
> emergency
> servicing.
>
> A growing corps of scientists, engineers and astronauts are emerging to
> argue
> for this chance to accelerate manned spaceflight operations outward well
> beyond
> the Moon--faster toward Mars than can be done by using the Moon as a
> stepping-stone only 240,000 mi. away.
>
> "The notion that the Moon could serve as a proving ground for Mars
> missions
> strains credulity," says Farquhar, who holds the Charles A. Lindbergh
> Chair
> for
> Aerospace at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. He also was
> mission
> director for the Applied Physics Laboratory's Near Earth Asteroid
> Rendezvous
> mission that was the first to land a spacecraft on an asteroid.
>
> A return to manned Moon operations has become "a bridge too far" in the
> Bush
> administration's VSE, says Wes Huntress, another former planetary mission
> manager.
>
> Huntress is director of the Washington-based Carnegie Institution's
> Geophysical
> Laboratory and had a long career at JPL and NASA headquarters, where he
> led
> NASA
> space science development and operations--including the highly successful
> Discovery planetary mission series. He's also helping to organize the
> Stanford
> workshop that will have about several dozen participants, including
> several
> top
> NASA and contractor exploration managers.
>
> "There is little left of the 2004 Vision for Space Exploration except the
> real
> need to retire the space shuttle," he says. "Even this goal is being
> pursued
> with great sacrifice from all other parts of the agency because the
> administration has simply not put its money where its mouth is."
>
> "Inadequate NASA budgets are leading to collapse of the VSE Moon focus and
> to
> incredibly slow progress for the Moon," says Hinners.
>
> "The nation's space enterprise is under great strain even to build Ares I
> and
> Orion CEV," Huntress stresses. "There are alternate destinations for human
> deep-space missions that do not require building a lot of new hardware to
> [come
> and go between Earth and the Moon]. These are missions to near-Earth
> asteroids
> or to scout the Sun-Earth Lagrangian points for future space telescope
> construction and servicing," he notes.
>
> The Earth-Sun Lagrangian points (also called libration points) are at the
> very
> edge of the Earth's gravitational well, and a mission would represent a
> first
> excursion to the limit of Earth's influence in the Solar System--a
> significant
> step beyond Apollo, says Huntress.
>
> Missions sent to "L" points can stop just there, orbiting only above and
> below
> the ecliptic plane without any significant use of station-keeping fuel.
> Also, L
> points offer a much cleaner option for advanced astronomy than the dusty
> lunar
> surface, where you have to land everything in addition to launching it.
>
> "As the nation seems to be turning to environmental threats to our own
> planet, a
> mission to a near-Earth asteroid to assess their nature for good or ill
> would
> also seem to be a real winner," says Huntress.
>
> These stepping-stones would allow for the development of a broader vision
> of
> human spaceflight than simply reinventing Apollo.
>
> Major lunar-related contracts for the Constellation Crew Exploration
> Vehicle
> Orion command ship, a lunar lander design and Ares V launcher have yet to
> be
> awarded, giving the next administration some breathing room in post-Bush
> administration VSE contracting.
>
> Some basic asteroid mission design work--part of it volunteer--using the
> CEV
> hardware is already underway at the Johnson Space Center (AW&ST Sept. 25,
> 2006,
> p. 21). Other, more in-depth and long-standing manned asteroid analysis is
> underway under International Astronautical Assn. and Smithsonian National
> Air
> and Space Museum sponsorship.
>
> Scott Hubbard, consulting professor in the Stanford Aeronautics and
> Astronautics
> Dept., conceived the reassessment meeting. Hubbard was previously the
> director
> of NASA Ames Research Center and, before that, NASA Mars program director.
> "We
> have planned this invitation-only workshop to elicit frank and open
> discussion
> about the future of the 'vision' as the administration changes," he says.
>
> "The Stanford workshop will address a broad range of issues touching on
> many
> elements of space exploration. The attendees will discuss the balance
> between
> space science and human exploration, the need for continuing and enhancing
> Earth
> science observations, the relative utility of humans and robotics, and
> progress
> or impediments to human exploration of Mars, asteroids and the Moon," says
> Hubbard. "In addition, the workshop will discuss the status of access to
> space
> and the emerging entrepreneurial space industry.
>
> "This is the kind of debate that will go on--beyond whether a lunar base
> really
> makes sense. But manned asteroid missions first--ahead of a lunar
> base--are
> drawing strong attention," he says. Hubbard and Friedman are co-hosting
> the
> event, along with former astronaut Kathy Thornton, associate dean of the
> University of Virginia's Science, Technology and Society Dept. Thornton
> flew
> on
> four space shuttle missions, including the initial critical repair of the
> Hubble
> Space Telescope in 1993.
>
> The alternative vision would also include far greater private-sector
> incentives
> for participation at all levels, an area public surveys cite as very
> important.
> Missions to asteroids and Lagrangian points, for example, are likely to
> carry
> along Bigelow-type commercial inflatable modules. A recent informal space
> program survey by The New York Times found substantial public frustration
> about
> NASA's doing what entrepreneurs could do better.
>
> Under the alternative concepts, astronauts using an upgraded CEV would
> initially
> be sent on long-duration missions, not to the Moon, but to land on
> asteroids
> where they would sample terrain perhaps more ancient than the Moon's.
> These
> visits would also help develop concepts for diverting such near-Earth
> objects,
> should they threaten a potentially devastating impact on Earth.
>
> Although it may be hundreds of years before used operationally, an
> emergency
> asteroid diversion would be "the ultimate 'green mission'--one that could
> save a
> large portion of the Earth from impact destruction," says Friedman.
>
> To reinforce that point, he notes that on Jan. 30, a 150-ft.-long asteroid
> will
> pass close to Mars. The asteroid visit and Lagrangian mission concepts
> would
> use
> much of the same CEV Ares I and Ares V heavy-lift booster infrastructure,
> but in
> ways that would be much faster stepping-stones to Mars than developing a
> manned
> lunar base. Asteroid and Lagrangian point missions would each last several
> weeks
> or months. Both the libration points and asteroids would be about 1
> million
> mi.
> from Earth, requiring operations more like much longer trips to Mars at
> least
> 40-100 million mi. away.
>
> Robotic options for all mission elements also will be reviewed, and one
> working
> group will be devoted to better defining manned versus robotic tradeoffs.
>
> Another issue is international participation.
>
> Aviation Week discussed an unrelated European International Space Station
> topic
> with NASA Administrator Mike Griffin last week, who in comments aside also
> addressed the basic Moon/Mars issues between the U.S. and Europe.
>
> "A large portion of the scientific community in the U.S. also prefers Mars
> over
> the Moon," he acknowledged. But "interest in the Moon is driven by goals
> in
> addition to and beyond the requirements of the science community. It is
> driven
> by the imperatives that ensue from a commitment to become a spacefaring
> society,
> not primarily by scientific objectives, though such objectives do indeed
> constitute a part of the overall rationale.
>
> "We continue to experience intense international interest concerning our
> plans
> for lunar exploration," Griffin told Aviation Week.
>
> With Frank Morring, Jr., in Washington.
>
> This story appears in the Jan. 21 issue of Aviation Week & Space
> Technology,
> p.
> 24
>
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Received on Mon 21 Jan 2008 01:12:39 AM PST