I was going to bring up the subjectivity of this statement before I read Al using the word immediately above in a different context.

“Smart,” “mobile,” and “dextrous” are all subjective measures. Let’s reduce this to a simple question. “Can any foreseeable robot be expected to find a small number of difficult-to-locate samples — like pieces of Earth’s early crust — hidden in the regolith on Earth’s moon? Or a fossil on Mars?”

Given how difficult it is for geologists to do these tasks on Earth, I believe the answer is a fairly unambiguous, “No.”

You obviously believe otherwise. At this point in time, neither of us really knows, but if I am correct any relative “cheapness” of robots is irrelevant — they cannot find what we are after. Remember Viking, which, while a complete technical success, totally failed at its primary mission. Automating science — as opposed to “reconnaissance” — is really, really hard.

Astronauts have already demonstrated their ability to do this sort of thing, as when the Apollo astronauts managed to correctly identify and return a piece of the early lunar crust. This turned out to be much harder than was expected, and its a safe bet that no likely robot could have done it.

using science as an important justification for sending a real person there, and at considerable risk, is not justifiable.

That, too, is a subjective measure. If the science isn’t that valuable, why are we “wasting” so much money sending robots? If it is so valuable that it’s worth the lost opportunity costs of all that money, surely it’s worth a volunteered life or two.

Again, people have completely forgotton what the Apollo astronauts achieved. Partly this is because its lost in the mists of history, partly its because of an anti-lunar bias, and partly it’s because the infrastructure required by the automated science crowd was paid for by someone else, and robots therefore appear to be much cheaper than they really are.

Which brings us to the economics. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is rapidly proving that the operational costs of sending an orbiter to the moon still comes in at half-a-billion dollars. The operational costs of sending a crew is only some five times that. Even doubling that, I think the crew is more than worth it.

If we are going to bill the $100 billion needed to re-create the Saturn infrastructure, than the LRO and MER and so on need to start refunding all the billions taxpayers spent to develop their Deltas and Titans and Atlasses. . . .

Yes, the latter are already developed, but what would we have foregone had they not been developed? In purely scientific terms, what will we be giving up if we fail to develop the infrastructure needed to send geologists to Earth’s moon? I know I am in the minority, but, even in purely scientific terms, I think its a lot more than we’re giving up by reducing the growth in what we spend on robots.

— Donald

I agree with your mantra “science per dollar, science per dollar” within a process that establishes science priorities, and with the clarification that you mean “science *value* per dollar”, and that “science value” is a subjective measurement.

This subjective nature is why we have open deliberative science organizations (like the NAS) help establish science priorities.

That being said, I think the strongest arguments for going to the Moon have nothing to do with science. IMO, NASA already focuses too much on science. If we are seriously concerned about science in this country, let’s give the NSF or the NIH some of NASA’s science funding. NSF and NIH have much better “science value for the dollar”.

Right now NASA needs for focus more on a breakthrough in economics. (WHAT IF NASA had a $5 billion annual budget for for the purpose of developing breakthroughs in space economics? The space world would become much different in a short period of time.)

I believe that the White House is on the same page. Look at the recent statements by the White House Director of OSTP (Marburger) about using the resources of the Moon, such as in situ generation of oxygen (and hopefully water), as being critically important.

Here is the Director of the Office of SCIENCE and Technology Policy focusing not on the science of the Moon, but on the economic sustainability issues.

Gerard O’Neill was right. The in situ resources of the Moon, such as oxygen, are critically important to opening up the solar system to economically sustainable development.

On a similar issue, I also think Bob Zubrin is right . The in situ resources of Mars are critically important to establishing a permanent settlement on Mars.

– Al

I have no problem with the idea that a human geologist offers potentially more scientific perspective than a robot. Or, more precisely, a telerobot, since in that case human geologists on the Earth will be doing the real work. But until one can get that geologist to the surface of the Moon anywhere near as economically as we can get smart, mobile, and dextrous hardware there, using science as an important justification for sending a real person there, and at considerable risk, is not justifiable. That’s true at least for the Moon, where telerobotic latency is small. See, when that lunar astronaut dies in the name of science you said he was going there to do, one better be able to look to that science to honor his effort and not see something that could have been done robotically at lower cost. Should it be the case that a human wasn’t necessary, or even cost effective, that’s a big “oops”. I believe that’s largely why, post-Columbia, we never hear much about science as a justification for ISS anymore.

Thanks, Greg for your correction on Moore’s Law scaling. I accept the proposition that capability (processor speed, memory capacity) might not translate directly to usefulness, but I still think there is a compelling case that the latter bears strongly on the former. Are two scientists twice as good as one? Well,yes, I think so. For precisely that reason.

As to the functional comparison of MER and Lunokhod, reach for that reset button again again. I know rather little about Lunokhod, and know quite a bit about MER, but saying that the capabilities of the latter are superior to the former in just a “limited” way seems a long stretch. Perhaps someone that knows about Lunokhod smart navigation, multijoint precision dexterity, and high resolution imaging and spectral sensors can enlighten me.

As to comm bandwidth and functionality, the main way an astronaut can benefit from Mb/s to do science is if she is playing the role of a robot, sending detailed info back for analysis to be carried out by remote intelligence. So I don’t think bandwidth at levels much higher than needed for voice comm counts as much as it does for a non-human agent as it does for a machine. In that context, the Mercury astronauts could certainly have assembled the ISS. I don’t think they were less intelligent, or less physically dextrous than those who actually did. But they needed good tools and well engineered components, both of which apply to robots as well. Mb/s comm links would not have helped them a lot, except to the extent that we use the astronauts as telerobotic agents. “Show us what your problem is Mr. Shepherd, and we’ll tell you what to do about it.”

As to the importance of science, I think we all agree. (Thank goodness.) As to the value of lunar science, I think we also agree, though perhaps not completely with regard to relative value. As to the importance of human spaceflight, I think we agree as well, but it’s just a question of how humans in space can best contribute to science.

I thank Don for his excellent summary of lunar science questions. All well understood questions. But the existence of those questions is not the issue at hand. As I recall, the question was whether science could be considered a compelling reason to send people back to the Moon, not whether there would be some science for them to do once they got there. Fine to say that as long as we’re going back to the Moon to do X,Y, and Z (things that we couldn’t do otherwise), we might as well do some science. But not fine to say that science can justifiably drive that return.

Back to work!

I believe that it is widely accepted that this must have happened. Recall that the bombardment must have stuck both Earth and our moon at the same time. Both bodies probably had impact-generated lava oceans with a “scum” rising to the surface that became the first crust. This may have happened repeatedly, although even on the moon, the record of this has largely been destroyed by later impacts and covered by debris from the last basin-forming impacts. Apollo had great difficulty locating samples of this first deeply-buried crust, although they are believed to have succeeded.

Life on Earth appeared immediately after the final solidification of the crust, and may have appeared independently in the (possibly) multi-million year inter-impact periods.

Just like samples of Mars and the moon have been found on Earth, the giant basin-forming impacts on early Earth would have splattered the moon with debris. The trick on the moon will be to look at layers of the “scum” preserved under the impact debris, and amongst the debris itself.

Finding such material would be of immeasurable value to geology, biology, palaeontology, and other sciences, but finding it will be extremely difficult. It will involve searching through great quantities of material at great depths.

However, there is hope. Large modern impacts excavate material to great depth, and secondary impacts can leave much of the excavated material more-or-less intact. Explorers should look for areas where modern craters have excavated the “scum” crust and lower layers of early impact debris and distributed it on the surface. Material from the deepest layers will be on the rims and central peaks of the craters, so the ability to climb steep slopes covered with lose regolith and talus will be required. Astronauts can do that with relative ease (even Apollo astronauts handled more than twenty-degree slopes, and new-generation spacesuits will have far greater mobility).

— Donald

“Science happens to be the tool that has created every other tool you have ever used, every tool since we began shaping rocks, and sharpening sticks.

That pretty much elevates it to the highest position possible in my book of methods.

I think you should give it a little more respect.

*************
Dear Mr. Elfritz,

Donald had the appropriate response.

I am a big supporter of the scientific method. Our society could make do with much much more use of reason and logic that is encapsulated in what we call “science”.

But there is a general tendency among advocates (of any kind) to hype their approach as “THE SOLUTION”, and to ignore everything else. Many science advocates are no different. Since scientists are highly intelligent, they are fully capable of making a logical case of their work that is based on the value of the end result. Since they can do it, not doing it is just laziness.

The average tax-paying citizen intuitively understands that not all science is valuable. I can use science to answer questions about the number of atoms of fuzz in my navel, but that does not mean it is important. To argue that we should just support science “because scientists (and their supporters) say we should” is circular logic, and does not connect science to the end objectives that would be supported by the tax-paying public.

This is a recipe for failure.

Scientists have an responsibility to communicate what the end purpose of the proposed science is, to communicate why this is important to the general public, and to explain why this justifies use of the taxpayer’s hard-earned money.

– Al

The “most important” reason you suggested, in MY opinion, is that early forms of Earth-life may have been deposited on the Moon, and are just waiting for our discovery. Now, that is a very interested possibility. I don’t know how “possible” it is that this has happened, but that is interesting.

I also happen to think that “exploring” the Moon to discover potential sources of PGMs near the surface from asteroids, as suggested by Dennis Wingo is another good science-based reason.

As we all know, we have a limited budget. I am always partial to investing in science that has a higher probability of turning space exploration & development into a “self-sustaining” activity that produces positive economic returns on investment. The White House understood this when they put “sustain” in the White House policy about the VSE. (Answering fundamental questions about life & the universe is also very good.)

– Al

— Donald

Science (geology) on the moon is important for (at least) the following reasons.

As I said above, and based on the book I advertised above, the surface of the moon is a far more complex place than most of us realize. This is partly because the actual geologic traverses done during the Apollo missions were largely ignored at the time because people were more interested in the success of actually getting there, and scientists wanted to hare off to Mars. I argue that this wide-spread ignorance of what Apollo actually accomplished resulted in a great distortion of the value of human exploration versus robotics that has damaged our space program ever since.

The stratigraphy of the cratering can be used to date the basin-forming impacts, and thus more tightly constrain the largely unknown history of the early bombardment.

The moon’s surface is a very common type of surface in the Solar System, while Earth, Venus, and to a lesser degree Mars, are all special cases. In many ways, it is more important to understand the moon’s surface than the special cases; and once you do, the special cases will make more sense. Impact breccia’s are virtually unknown on Earth and the early ones will be heavily modified on Mars, yet their behavior probably determine the surface properties of the vast majority of bodies in the universe. As such, understanding them and their behavior over time is probably more important to understanding the universe than is even understanding the (special case) Earth, and certainly Mars.

Detailed exploration of the surface is the best way to map exploitable resources. The asteroids that we may be able to exploit in the relatively near future will have breccia-dominated surfaces. Understanding them is important both for understanding asteroids, and understanding how to separate usable resources, especially early on when the latter will of necessity be on a small scale.

There are bound to be surprises (e.g., Apollo-16) which are totally unexpected from what we believe today.

The moon probably contains preserved materials from the earliest terrestrial continents, long since destroyed on Earth. These materials may preserve records of the earliest formation of life and its precursors. As such, they have a value (to us) beyond measure. However, they will be rare, scattered, and probably deep. Yet, they could never be found by robotic missions, and it would take an extensive geologic infrastructure to find them with human expeditions. The latter must be capable of traveling great distances and drilling great depths at many locations. Such an infrastructure could not be placed anywhere but on the moon in the near future — but it can be there.

Similar preserved remains may survive from the earliest periods from the other planets, particularly Mars and Mercury and the asteroids. The same may be true of interstellar materials and even the outer planets. Earth’s moon has been a static trap for most of the history of the Solar System, and its accessibility makes it far more valuable (to us) than the other such traps.

Finally, Mars surface may contain a poorer record of early breccias and processes in the early Solar System than does Earth’s moon, but otherwise the surface of Mars probably is dominated by modified breccias and thus has much more in common with the moon than with Earth (or Venus). As such, understanding the lunar surface will teach us more about Mars than understanding Mars will about Earth. If we are ever going to go to Mars, Earth’s moon probably provides a good analog.

Combine that all this with its extreme accessibility, and I think there is an excellent case for returning to Earth’s moon and conducting detailed exploration before we get ahead of ourselves haring across the Solar System with robots. Doing the latter has given us great information about the easy stuff and the surfaces — reconnaissance — but in the long-term, our successes have probably done us a disservice.

The history of science is replete with the wrong conclusions being drawn because you took a quick-and-dirty look at broad areas while failing to take a detailed look at the sites you can reach. We can reach the moon. We can do detailed geology of a type that we cannot do anywhere else for decades to come. That’s what we should be doing. It would be most valuable done with continued automated reconnaissance, but if you have to choose, you should do the former before you do that latter.

— Donald

That pretty much elevates it to the highest position possible in my book of methods.

I think you should give it a little more respect.

So let me interject a potentially controversial viewpoint in all this.

“Science” is NOT an end in itself. Science is not, and can not be, self-justifying.

Science is a tool, and only a tool (albeit an effective tool) to answer questions. The value of those answers is “depends”. Answers to some questions are generally accepted by most people to be extremely valuable (e.g., Is there other intelligent life in the Universe?) Others are much less so. (In many cases, as Donald says, it is a matter of subjective opinion for each person. In other cases, we can acutally put an economic value on the answer, as some scientific answers lead to economic growth and development (e.g., the scientific theory of quantum mechanics led to many breakthrough developments … such as transistors, which led to the semiconductor revolution, which has transformed human society in many many ways.)

Ipso facto, to understand the value of the proposed science, you need to know the purpose.

As such, when anybody asserts that “science on the Moon” (or insert favorite place) is valuable, or extremely valuable, they should back it up by explaining what the end purpose of that science is. Or what questions they propose to answer with the proposed science.

Donald, what kind of science could humans do on the Moon? What is the end purpose of that lunar science? What questions could this science answer, and what is the value of those answers?

After you answer, I will be able to formulate an opinion on whether this has any significant value. Without this, I have no real opinion.

– Al

PS — I can think of lots of “engineering” projects on the Moon that would be valuable. But that is a different subject. Please distinguish “engineering projects” from “science” in your answer.