Thank you for your post.

I understand how you view this but if we continue to do one-off missions, routine space infrastructure will be pushed back.

I see the use of space resources (beginning on the Moon) as vital to developing this infrastructure.

Technology will be developed as needed and that need will be accelerated with the Moon as a base of technical operations. Commercial will also be spurred as people again realize the potential and excitement of space.

As bad as I want America on Luna, asteroids and Mars I first want sustainablity.

I would rather see a sustainable LEO2GEO ‘gas n go’ , space based vehicle that could routinely travel 25,000 miles to geo that could solve a lot future problems we have to conquer then a couple one off missions to the moon and a back to the future of what happened after apollo because it was unsustainable.

For me, the economics of bringing costs down is increasing the flight rate of commercial concerns so that there will be actual competitve pressure to invest in reusable earth to leo launch vehicles. There is basically three things to launch that increases flight rates. Humans, perishables to sustain them and fuel. Reusablity will not be human centric first .. it will be cargo.

For me, America should pursue the technology more so than to just get ANY form of lunar program going. I do not believe we can do gas and go to the moon yet because all additional infrastructure makes the costs go so far above the budgets we can expect there is no point in pursuing it yet.

By creating a vehicle for the hop to GEO and the gas station to service it we create launch demand at the same time we get to pursue the technology we need for the future.

But is was (is) the keystone Vladislaw. And robotics figures heavily in it — always did. But that fleet never materialized.

If we are to migrate into space, we must learn to use what is in space.
To do that we need robotic scouts and machines. The Moon is the logical place to begin learning these skills. And once it has been demonstrated that it is possible, commercial involvement will explode.

Goal and Objectives
The fundamental goal of this vision is to advance U.S. scientific, security, and economic interests through a robust space exploration program. In support of this goal, the United States will:

• Promote international and commercial participation in exploration to further U.S. scientific, security, and economic interests.

The return to Luna was just a small part of the overall goals.. it was not the keystone.

One aspect that I never see get discussed about the vision is this:

“NASA will launch dedicated robotic missions that will demonstrate new technologies and enhance our scientific knowledge of these destinations. These new technologies and discoveries will pave the way for more capable robotic missions and eventually human missions. The first human explorers will be sent to the Moon as early as 2015, as a stepping stone to demonstrate sustainable approaches to exploring Mars and other worlds.
To support these missions, a number of key building blocks are necessary. These include new capabilities in propulsion, power, communications, crew transport, and launch,”

and

“The Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter is enabled by Project Prometheus, NASA’s program to develop space nuclear power and propulsion technology. The nuclear power and nuclear-electric propulsion technologies that support this mission are also key to enabling other advanced robotic missions and human missions beyond Earth’s orbit. In addition to mapping new oceans, the systems on the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter will be a forerunner of the systems needed to send humans to other worlds, to supply power for human expeditions on these worlds, and to pursue other challenging robotic science missions.”

and finally:

“In the days of the Apollo program, human exploration systems employed expendable, single-use vehicles requiring large ground crews and careful monitoring. For future, sustainable exploration programs, NASA requires cost-effective vehicles that may be reused, have systems that could be applied to more than one destination, and are highly reliable and need only small ground crews. NASA plans to invest in a number of new approaches to exploration, such as robotic networks, modular systems, pre-positioned propellants, advanced power and propulsion, and in-space assembly, that could enable these kinds of vehicles.”

Granted, we all know Griffin went off the reservation with constellation but how anyone can read the VSE and NOT come to the conclusion that it was TOTALLY technology driven is beyond me. The 2011 budget, as proposed by President Obama included more aspects of the VSE than anything being talked about in the house and senate.

How anyone can read the VSE and not come away with ‘gone are days of large ground crews’ meaning NASA was being cut out of the launch business is once again, beyond me.

President Obama called for advanced power and propulsion, aerocapture and fuel depots… without those .. all the rest is moot anyway. Until America finally comes to it’s senses on having gas stations in space we will continue with unsustainable exploration.

The last 3 paragraphs are a quote that is linked.
The part at the top isn’t.
Why don’t you make a general announcement to all posters about limited space on this site.

Re:
http://blogs.airspacemag.com/moon/2010/04/16/%E2%80%9Cwe%E2%80%99ve-been-there-before-buzz-has-been-there-%E2%80%9D/

You’re copy & pasting again Anne. If you’re going to link, then you don’t need to duplicate a massive amount of text. You’re contributing to global warming…

For anyone following the link, don’t forget to look for the comments I made (Coastal Ron), which provide balance to a number of the issues discussed.

I think robotic precursors is what we need. I just posted this to another thread:

[Let’s just begin by getting serious and sending some precursors. Let’s get a couple of communication satellites orbiting the Moon. Let’s work out some way to get a radio telescope on the far side. How about a solar array field? Begin processing the lunar regolith to create and build on the Moon. Start using the water. Begin to understand what it will take to live off Earth and use what you find in space. The Moon offers something for many disciplines of research and development beyond human presence but exploration, resource exploitation and human migration is ultimately why we’re going.] And I’d like to add that the Moon holds impact and solar wind history that we can study to understand our own history and possible future.

You ask: [if the Moon is so interesting then why is there no robotic exploration on the ground? For some reason it seems lunar scientists are uninterested or unable to get even one robotic rover on the Moon.. whereas the Mars scientists have gotten 3 in the last 15 years. This is simply baffling as, for a variety of reasons, the Moon is much more suitable for robotic exploration.]

To be brief, we didn’t know about water on the Moon from Apollo (actually it was believed a bone-dry rock by many). We didn’t have a Cislunar space filled with national and economic resources. Space science blossomed following Apollo and they saw Mars as a “livable” destination. The “search for life” grew to be their theology. For decades they’ve built academic departments and space societies around getting to Mars — huge departments that bring in federal dollars and they need to keep being fed. They do not want to take a detour to the Moon.

Lunar scientists have had to battle for everything they’ve gotten. Even the discovery of water was fought against in science publications. It’s been 16 years since Clementine radar got an ice signal. But Clinton line item vetoed Clem II. Lunar Prospector followed 4 years later and confirmed ice on the Moon. Then came getting a ride for 2 NASA instruments on an Indian mission and even more varieties of water-ice were identified — some almost pure. LCROSS/LRO was a battle but something had to give besides “the” rocket Griffin wanted. If the VSE had been followed as planned, there would be a lot of robotic exploration of the Moon working and in the works.

You don’t think this threatens Mars people? Of course they’re going to do anything to avoid the detour and delay that they believe developing a space transportation infrastructure on the Moon would do to them and their funding.
I actually believe they want to send probes not people into space. The Moon is too dangers because of all that it offers and they can’t chance getting “stuck” on the Moon.

The Moon:

It’s close. Unlike virtually all other destinations in space beyond low Earth orbit, the Moon is near in time (a few days) and energy (a few hundreds of meters per second.) In addition to its proximity, because the Moon orbits the Earth, it is the most accessible target beyond LEO, having nearly continuous windows for arrival and departure. This routine accessibility is in contrast to all of the planets and asteroids, which orbit the Sun and have narrow, irregular windows of access that depend on their alignment with respect to the Earth. The closeness and accessibility of the Moon permit modes of operation not possible with other space destinations, such as a near real-time (less than 3 seconds) communication link. Robotic machines can be teleoperated directly from Earth, permitting hard, dangerous manual labor on the Moon to be done by machines controlled by humans either on the Moon or from Earth. The closeness of the Moon also permits easy and continuous abort capability, certainly something we do not want to take advantage of, but comforting to know is handy until we have more robust and reliable space subsystems. If you don’t believe this is important, ask the crew of Apollo 13.

It’s interesting. The Moon offers scientific value that is unique within the family of objects in the Solar System. The Moon has no atmosphere or global magnetic field so plasmas and streams of energetic particles impinge directly on its surface, embedding themselves onto the lunar dust grains. Thus, the Moon contains a detailed record of the Sun’s output through geological time (over at least the last 4 billion years). The value of such a record is that the Sun is the principal driver of Earth’s climate and by recovering that detailed record (unavailable anywhere on the Earth), it can help us understand the details of solar output, both its cycles and singular events, throughout the history of the Solar System. Additionally, because of the Moon’s ancient surface and proximity to the Earth, it retains a record of the impact bombardment history of both bodies. We now know that the collision of large bodies has drastic effects on the geological and biological evolution of the Earth and occur at quasi-regular intervals. Because our very survival depends on understanding the nature and history of these events as a basis for the prediction of future events, the record on the lunar surface is critical to our understanding. A radio telescope on the far side of the Moon can “see” into deep space from the only platform in the Solar System that is permanently free from Earth’s radio noise. The Moon is a unique, rich and valuable scientific asset.

It’s useful. In my opinion, this is the most important and pressing argument for making the Moon our first destination beyond LEO. Because of the detailed exploration of the Moon undertaken during the last 20 years, we have a very different understanding of its properties than we did immediately following Apollo. Specifically, the Moon has accessible and immediately usable resources of both energy and materials in its polar regions, something about which we were almost completely ignorant only a few years ago. For energy, both poles offer benign surface temperatures and near-permanent sunlight, as the lunar spin axis obliquity is nearly perpendicular to the plane of Earth’s orbit around the Sun. This relation solves one of the most difficult issues of lunar habitation – the 14-day long lunar night, which challenges the design of thermal and power systems. In addition, once thought to be a barren desert, we have recently found that the Moon contains abundant and accessible deposits of water, in a variety of forms and concentrations. There is enough water on the Moon to bootstrap a permanent, sustained human presence there. Water is the most important substance to find and use in space; not only does it support human life by its consumption and provision of breathable oxygen, in its form as cryogenic liquid oxygen and hydrogen, it is the most powerful chemical rocket propellant known. A transportation system that can routinely access the lunar surface to refuel, can also access all of cislunar space, where all of our national strategic and commercial (and much of our scientific) assets reside (many satellites reside above LEO and are inaccessible for repair). Such a system would truly and fundamentally change the paradigm of spaceflight and can be realized through the mining and processing of the water ice deposits near the poles of the Moon. Space exploration should be a driving force in our economy not merely a playground for scientists or a venue for public entertainment.

http://blogs.airspacemag.com/moon/2010/04/16/%E2%80%9Cwe%E2%80%99ve-been-there-before-buzz-has-been-there-%E2%80%9D/

Having being spoiled by the horribly expensive lunar sample return of Apollo, the majority of lunar scientists have become precocious. The few who are interested in the gaps in the field won’t accept robotic exploration, as trying to argue against theories based on samples with only remote sensing data is too much like hard work.

If the Moon is of economic value, so what? Sending humans to exploit it is never going to be cost effective. Mining operations on Earth are becoming more economical to run by teleoperation and automation.

In regards to it being “close”, that’s not an advantage. LEO is close and, because of this, the ISS can’t go 6 months without resupply. The Moon will be no different. The best we can hope from a NASA operation on the Moon is another ISS. Instead of studying “zero-g adaption”, they’ll be studying “reduced gravity adaption”.. and because of the prohibition on animal testing (only Italy has flown mice on the ISS) virtually no important questions will be answered. Certainly, *the* most important question – can mammals reproduce on reduced gravity – will *never* be answered by NASA.

“Can you amplify the details of this . . .

I think occupation of the Moon will come as an outgrowth of our expansion into space.

Who will be writing the checks for this expansion into space, and why?

And where will the expansion be to, if not the Moon?”

Aside from NASA & other space programs, the only money for expanding into space is going to come from commerce. We already have a commerce base for commercial satellites and launchers.

What I hope will happen next is that commercial crew gets going for ISS support, and between that and commercial cargo to the ISS, non-ISS crew and cargo business starts growing. This will take some amount of years to develop and grow, mainly because of the dollar amounts involved, and that doing stuff in space with humans is still fairly new (outside of governments).

At some point though, travel to LEO will be considered routine, and where it once took years & years of planning, now it could be less than a year. Between easy access to LEO, shorter planning horizons, and the decreasing costs in getting payloads to LEO, that will allow groups to consider missions in space that were once only doable by governments. The Google Lunar X PRIZE could finally “take off” and try out their landers, and who knows what other uses of space will be tried out because the cost & availability barriers have been lowered. As in any marketplace, these types of activities create their own sources of excitement and further interest/investment.

At some point too, I would imagine some private group is going to try trips around the Moon, and that’s when public excitement about the Moon will start rising again.

Bottom line, is that commerce and capability expanding off of Earth to LEO, can then expand past LEO to the Moon or wherever.

I think this will take years to happen, and that NASA and other governments can help it go faster, but I know that NASA has too small a budget to do it by itself, and really, when was the last time NASA ran a big program that finished development? The ISS is pretty much done, but if not for having outside partners/investors, who knows if the U.S. would have stuck it out on it’s own. It may have even ended after Columbia without Russia.

Though I have preferences about where I think NASA should spend it’s space mission money, I foresee many groups wanting to land on the Moon and exploit it for what ever they can – and the U.S. Government will go along too for exploration and other reasons (too many to list).

My $0.02