In an op-ed published Tuesday in the Capitol Hill newspaper Politico, Scott “Doc” Horowitz, the former astronaut and former NASA associate administrator for exploration, called on both Republicans and Democrats to formally support space exploration in their party platforms. “Americans’ support for building on the ‘greatest generation’s’ achievements in space is so broad and deep that both political parties ought to include similar planks at their conventions this summer to commit the U.S. to continued and expanded space exploration,” he writes. Such a move, he adds, “would show Americans that their political leaders agree on a program that the overwhelming majority of voters vigorously support.”
The proof that Americans “vigorously support” space exploration comes from a series of polls, Horowitz writes: “In three polls taken from the middle of 2005 to the latter part of 2006, support for spending on space exploration at the current annual level of $58 dollars per U.S. citizen — or higher — fluctuated between slightly less than two-thirds and slightly more than three-fourths of the general population. But as noted here, there are mixed messages about just how strongly the public supports NASA, with some polls suggesting that space should be first on the chopping block, That’s a sign that while public interest in space (at least civil government spaceflight) is broad, it’s not necessarily deep.
Just in case readers aren’t vigorous supporters of NASA, though, Horowitz offers some reasons for continuing NASA’s exploration initiative. “Establishing a scientific outpost on the moon, for example, would substantially improve scientists’ understanding of Earth by providing a global view of our planet, showing how it is affected by the sun and the moon; such insight would increase our knowledge about changes in Earth’s climate,” he writes. More: “A lunar outpost would vastly increase our ability to monitor and respond swiftly to significant terrestrial volcanic activity.” That last option seems particularly odd (isn’t volcanic activity already well-monitored by terrestrial sensors and Earth-orbiting spacecraft?) but it turns out it is one of nearly 200 lunar exploration objectives NASA published in 2006 when it announced its long-term plans for a lunar base. Somehow, though, volcanic monitoring doesn’t seem likely to engender even more vigorous support for space exploration.
Space Enthusiasts –
We can only conclude that Doc has been wearing his helmet way too tight…
The polls quoted certainly do not address the financial situation expected in a couple of years – when the population may be asked to choose between Social Security (and other entitlements) and many things (including space). Don’t bet against entitlements there!
And all of this crap about lunar observatories helping us react to volcanos? And if you want to observe the Sun, do it from an observatory that will be less obscured than a Lunar one – a network of them around the Earth exists already and is a lot cheaper to operate.
This mainly causes me to question why Politico would accept this flimsy piece. If I was going to justify space programs I could do much better than this!
Doc just needs to get his head out of the clouds and join the rest of us in the real world.
Charles
While I don’t disagree that Earth observation is a poor reason to support a lunar outpost, the volcano monitoring actually makes a little sense to me (or, at least, no less sense than the rest). Volcanos are essentially point sources and are often located in very remote regions. I find it entirely believable that many are not observed, especially smaller ones without large associated earthquake signals, and that a global view (i.e., not LEO) in the infrared would locate some that are not now known.
However, I am more than willing to accept that I may be wrong in this argument. . . .
— Donald
You’ve got to be freaking kidding me. We are going to spend a trillion dollars to monitor volcanoes? Can’t we simply pay a thousand people $50,000 a year each and air-drop them with cell phones onto volcanoes? Then, they could call us if the volcano explodes. Sheesh.
Go – don’t forget you will need to also build cell phone towers in those remote areas so the phone works. That will cost a bit more then $50,000 a year.
No, Go, but if a lunar base is there for some other reason, you might as well look.
There is _no_ near-term economic justification for a lunar base. The only reasons to do it are idealogical, (e.g., some variation on “manifest destiny”), survival-of-the-species, incremental improvements in our spaceflight skills and geological knowledge of the moon, and learning to do things that may be economically valuable in the future. Nor is there ever likely to be any single justifiable reason to build a lunar base. But, if you add field science, oxygen and other resource exploration and production, politics and geopolitical competition, the simple human desire to explore, and, yes, Earth observation together and mix well — just maybe you can then justify a lunar base.
What is _your_ justification for wanting to do whatever it is you want to do in space — especially when it could almost certainly be done for less from the ground?
— Donald
A brief digression –
> Go – don’t forget you will need to also build cell phone towers in those > remote areas so the phone works. That will cost a bit more then
> $50,000 a year.
We have already spent megabucks on the Iridium system, so no additional cell phone networks would be needed.
Charles
“What is _your_ justification for wanting to do whatever it is you want to do in space — especially when it could almost certainly be done for less from the ground?”
Well, because many things are done better in space. If I’m going to monitor three volcanoes, I’ll put sensors on each one, or maybe send people with telephones to camp out at each one. If I’m going to look for volcanoes that might be anywhere, I’d kinda like to be perched where I can look anywhere. I think military recon satellites work the same way. They aren’t in space because of ideology or the desire to spend more money. By the way, there is NO interest in doing military recon of the Earth from the Moon.
The idea of effective Earth monitoring from the Moon keeps coming up, and is somewhat baffling. Why would you go so far, and endure dust, illumination variations, and downmass penalties, to monitor something you could much more conveniently see from LEO or GEO, or maybe even from a Lagrange point.
Hey, for volcano alerts, your warning from the Moon would be twelve hours late, if it popped off in the wrong place. Maybe a lot more, if you were looking from one lunar pole, and the Earth wasn’t going to rise for a few weeks.
With few exceptions, a lunar surface site is best used for looking at … the Moon. More likely, what is actually underfoot.
Doug: With few exceptions, a lunar surface site is best used for looking at … the Moon. More likely, what is actually underfoot.
This, I fully agree with. In fact (and unlike most people here), I think lunar surface geology is by far the strongest reason for spending our money on a human lunar outpost, rather than continuing robotic missions or other ways to spend our money in space.
I don’t disagree with your other points. No one in their right mind will deploy a lunar base to do Earth observation. However, I’ll bet money that once a lunar base is deployed, someone will mount a “backyard-class” telescope on the regolith to look back at Earth. My only point was that, even here, one of the few terrestrial applications of such a telescope on the moon that makes sense to me would be a volcano survey — I am not arguing that a lunar base should be deployed for that purpose or that a lunar outpost would be the best way to do such a survey.
— Donald
Horowitz’ piece reads like something I’d expect from a middle schooler. However, I don’t want to offend any middle schoolers on this thread. He should know better than to shoot off such lame “justifications.” As several posters noted, the potential military and security advantages of a lunar base were put to bed before Sputnik was launched.
Is this the best that NASA leadership can do for selling a lunar base?
I would write some words criticizing Horowitz (as others already have), but the reason this is so weak is because nobody else in NASA’s leadership has been able to come up with a coherent justification for a lunar base.
It is almost like somebody wants the lunar based to fail. Why else would they let Doc Horowitz flail around like this, spouting Earth & Sun observation as one of the justifications for a $100+ Billion initiative?
But maybe the real ANSWER is — Doc Horowitz is a rocket scientist.
– Al
“Politics is not rocket science, which is why rocket scientists do not understand politics”
“Doug: With few exceptions, a lunar surface site is best used for looking at … the Moon. More likely, what is actually underfoot.”
“This, I fully agree with. In fact (and unlike most people here), I think lunar surface geology is by far the strongest reason for spending our money on a human lunar outpost, rather than continuing robotic missions or other ways to spend our money in space. ”
—
That lunar surface geology is the strongest reason for spending our money on a human lunar surface outpost is true, but it isn’t much. While important lunar science certainly awaits, I don’t think I can name a single identified task that really requires human presence to do it. The rapidly increasing sophistication of telerobotics, especially for relatively low latency sites like the Moon, make human presence there of little scientific value for the risk. For the cost of a human mission, we could put one helluva robot up there or, credibly offering more science value, send several very good ones to different places.
What these robots find there might, I suppose, argue for eventual colonization, but even that’s a stretch, unless the goal is just to BE THERE. But that has never been an admitted priority of our space program.
Doug: I don’t think I can name a single identified task that really requires human presence to do it.
I can:
* Precisely date and map detailed volcanic layoring. Robots may conceivably be able to do this, but none have yet, and certainly not with particular scientific efficiency. Note that the Martian rovers, in spite of their extreme success, and particularly Spirit, have done remarkably little widespread stratigraphy, and no dating.
* Precisely date and map detailed debris apron layoring over wide areas to refine the crater counts used to date the rest of the Solar System.
* Locate and dig up pieces of Earth’s crust that pre-date anything that survives here, possibly providing hard data on the formation of life on Earth. Likewise, locate other debris from other planets, or even from outside of the Solar System, that probably were trapped and preserved after impacting during the moon’s lifetime as an essentially static trap. Such objects will be excruciatingly rare, and hard to find, but finding even one could revolutionize many fields of science. Robots will not be able to achieve the scientific efficiency required to do this in the foreseeable future.
* Locate unsuspected scientific or exploitable resources, like the oxygen-rich glass beads found under a lava flow by Apollo-17.
Or anything else requiring difficult field or survey work. A more detailed discussion is here,
http://www.donaldfrobertson.com/science_just.html
The theory that robots can do these tasks at all, let alone with the kind of efficiency that would answer our questions in our lifetimes, remains just that.
– Donald
But maybe the real ANSWER is — Doc Horowitz is a rocket scientist.
No, Scott Horowitz is a former astronaut with a vested interest in solid rocket technology and ATK Thiokol. No proper rocket scientist in their right mind would promote something like Ares 1.
“The theory that robots can do these tasks at all, let alone with the kind of efficiency that would answer our questions in our lifetimes, remains just that.â€
This misses the point.
If we have hands, eyes, legs (and or wheels) and local analysis equipment that a sophisticated agent could access, all with reasonably high bandwidth control of brains back on Earth, we don’t necessarily need those brains onsite in a can. We have not seen a tool like this yet, but we haven’t seen an outpost yet either, nor the kind of extended EVA times that these ambitious tasks would need. Such telepresence tools are actually quite realizable, and in many respects already exist. There is strong commercial and defense push to develop this technology further. In the Apollo era, we couldn’t do this kind of thing. Not even close. We can now.
I suspect you’re confusing autonomous robotics with teleoperated robotics. Teleoperation is more challenging on Mars where the latency is substantial, but it’s easy on the Moon.
“* Locate unsuspected scientific or exploitable resources, like the oxygen-rich glass beads found under a lava flow by Apollo-17.â€
Nope. There is nothing about finding “unsuspected” stuff that necessarily requires boots on the ground. C’mon. That comment is a hail-Mary pass. It certainly might help, however, to have the ability to do sample return, which is how the oxygen-rich glass was actually identified as such from Apollo 17.
This in no way discounts the skill or value of field geologists. Those field geologists are needed, but in many respects their lunar presence can be virtual.
The lunar science community has identified precisely these (and other) high priority science needs for lunar research, and all of them are understood to be credibly achievable without humans. This isn’t a matter of what humans can do, it’s a matter of what you need humans to do. Unless bravery and heroes are what this is about, or “transmitting the human spirit†as Noel Hinners just told House Space. Robots can’t give you that. Now, showing courage is perhaps justified from the perspective of national pride, but that’s not what we’re talking about here.
“Or anything else requiring difficult field or survey work.”
So that’s what it comes down to, eh? If it’s difficult, then one necessarily needs people on site? Hmmm. In many respects, just having people on site makes everything difficult.
Again, we need to go there robotically, and find the stuff that justifies human presence. Sure, it’s a “theory” that a robot could do all this. Seems to me it’s a theory that is well worth proving.
Doug: which is how the oxygen-rich glass was actually identified as such from Apollo 17
This is wrong. It was identified by an astronaut on site who instantly recognized it as unusual and important.
We have not seen a tool like this yet
Exactly. I am not confusing telerobotics with automation. The former is, in many ways, far harder than the latter, at least to a certain point. The thing that people who think robots (in the broad sense) will “soon” be able to do much that humans can do (funny how “soon” never seems to actually arrive) is that it is the smooth integration between our brains and bodies that makes us unique, at least as far as field work is concerned. In spite of decades of work and billions of dollars, we have made next to no progress in duplicating the kinds of tasks that humans can do without even thinking, that are important to field work, with machines. (An unintentionally funny comment in AvWeek last week was that astronauts had to use an improvised crowbar to pry the arms for the Canadian teleoperated robot out of its packing case, and that the robot will be useless for the key task on the Space Station — fixing the solar array joint.) To put it another way, after all these years and billions of dollars, where is the set of telerobtic hands that can cook a meal for me? The current hands can barely fill a glass of water, and then it is a difficult task that often fails.
but we haven’t seen an outpost yet either, nor the kind of extended EVA times that these ambitious tasks would need
Haven’t we? Go back and read what Apollos-15 – 17 actually achieved, and recall that this was first generation equipment and practice. Robotics is up to n generations, and cannot compete.
Seems to me it’s a theory that is well worth proving.
On or off Earth, why? We have perfectly good people and tools for the job, that already exist. All we have to do is get them there. Once you’ve paid for the up-front infrastructure, it doesn’t even cost that much. (Ironically, the LRO alone costs half the estimated incremental cost of sending an ESAS flight to the moon, which is itself outrageously more expensive than it needs to be.) How much money are you going to waste failing to automate this stuff before you do it the easy way?
“transmitting the human spirit†as Noel Hinners just told House Space.
Actually, this is an important part — in the bigger picture, probably the most important part. We, as a culture and a species, need people like Ansel Adams to understand the Solar System, and as you imply yourself, that is something that cannot be automated anytime soon, even in theory.
Here’s a prediction that I am willing to bet money on: If it’s done in the lifetimes of anyone reading these words, it will prove far easier and cheaper to send geologists to Earth’s moon than it will be to successfully automate the tasks they would do, especially with comparable efficiency.
— Donald
Every civilization that gives up exploration disappears. When you are no longer challened – you fade into oblivion. Earthly challenges such as education and hunger are the number one priority. Much more is being spent in this sector than on space.
Less than 1% of the US Budget is spent on NASA. Pathetic.
If you will begin to see beyond your nose – you may realize this.
Also, for every dollar spent on NASA – less than 1% of the budget, 8 returns to the market. Like your GPS Navigation? Stand-up MRI? Like the Television and signals you are receiving? Even if it’s not directly related, most if not all technology can be attributed to NASA? How did we get this global warming debate? NASA observed ice cap melting.
NASA could do many more wonderful things if given the chance. For 2 months we spend in Iraq – we could more than fund NASA – for a good cause…did you ever consider this?
Before we talk about NASA – the DOD, during the same fiscal year NASA received 17B – the DOD received almost 600B…..
Tell me who you’d rather have spending your money – scientists and engineers discovering new frontiers and developing technologies to help our daily lives – or death by desert in Iraq?
Your call
“Doug: which is how the oxygen-rich glass was actually identified as such from Apollo 17″
“This is wrong. It was identified by an astronaut on site who instantly recognized it as unusual and important.”
We weren’t talking about “unusual and important”. We were talking about oxygen rich. No obvious reason why a tele-geologist might not have seen the same unusual and important things. And the astronauts themselves did not assay for oxygen.
“To put it another way, after all these years and billions of dollars, where is the set of telerobtic hands that can cook a meal for me?”
I guess we need to put meal cooking on the technology development roadmap for NASA. But maybe there are higher priorities …
“but we haven’t seen an outpost yet either, nor the kind of extended EVA times that these ambitious tasks would need”
“Haven’t we?”
No we have not. Period.
“We have perfectly good people and tools for the job, that already exist.”
Yep, and the nation would kinda like them to remain perfectly good. As for robots, we’re willing to make sacrifices in the name of science.
“All we have to do is get them there. Once you’ve paid for the up-front infrastructure, it doesn’t even cost that much.”
Whaaaat? That’s a screamer.
Let’s move on.
Doug: I guess we need to put meal cooking on the technology development roadmap for NASA. But maybe there are higher priorities …
You (no doubt wilfully) miss the point. Cooking a meal — a single, known location, with known objects, known interfaces between tools and objects, limited and known requirements for motion, et cetera, is fantastically simple compared to doing any detailed geology — finding a deeply buried sample of Earth’s early contenents, say — on the moon. If we can’t do the former, we certainly cannot do the latter, however much people like you may wish and dream and pretend otherwise.
No we have not. Period.
Dead wrong. In only three days, Apollo-17 astronauts did a detailed geologic survey of a large section of an entire alpin valley. The outpost was extended and detailed enough, especially for a first-generation system. Establishing a longer stay time with more mobile suits and equipment will be far, far easier than developing automated survey geology. We know how, in detail, to do the former; the latter is far beyond our reach.
— Donald
Every civilization that gives up exploration disappears.
Even assuming that this statement is true (I would contend that you can’t support it) that doesn’t mean that it disappeared because it “gave up on exploration.”
I wish that space advocates would come up with some arguments that make sense.
Its simple: When nations stop exploring they stop expanding. When they stop expanding they decline.
Thank you. Well said. History never lies – and it should be remembered and studied – therefore, you repeat it!
Let’s put the federal budget in a $1000 monthly income.
Every month bills are due.
We spend a little less than $3 a month on the space program.
I guess you’d rather be in Iraq than exploring and understanding the universe.
The debate rages on Greenhouse gases. Did you know Venus has runaway Greenhouse effect. Not a very nice place. Too bad we cannot study this. Too bad we cannot better understand this process.
The Space Program should be of greater importance. For ourselves. For our children’s future. And, for those who have gone before us. Things do not imporve through repetition or ignorance. Knowledge is key. Understanding of the unknown.
Just give NASA 4 months of Iraq – and see what could be done…