Congress, NASA

Briefs: NASA a priority, and budget concerns

Could NASA be a renewed priority in the new Congress? That’s the suggestion of Joanne Padrón Carney, director of the AAAS’s Center for Science, Technology and Congress, SpacePolicyOnline.com reports. In an AAAS webinar, Padrón Carney said that the potential new House Science and Technology Committee leadership of Reps. Ralph Hall (R-TX) and Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) “could mean NASA will become a ‘high priority’ for Congress”, but did not elaborate beyond making oversight of programs a priority.

NASA did get a fair amount of attention in Congress in the last two years, including from the House Science and Technology but it seems more likely in the next two years that the center of attention will shift from authorizers to appropriators. With a three-year authorization bill enacted, the issue now is whether appropriators will fund the agency at those authorized levels, and if not, what programs will bear the brunt of cuts. And while some in the House might like to revisit the authorization bill (after somewhat reluctantly accepting the Senate version in September), the Senate might be less interested in changing the bill’s provisions.

And speaking of NASA and funding, the Orlando Sentinel calls the cost overruns on the James Webb Space Telescope “unbelievable” in an editorial Friday. “If NASA can’t get control of costs on this project and others, it has little hope of persuading Congress to give the agency the extra dollars it needs to maintain U.S. leadership in space exploration,” it adds. That may be especially true in an increasingly conservative fiscal environment in Congress.

80 comments to Briefs: NASA a priority, and budget concerns

  • Robert G. Oler

    a new priority…goofy…NASA funding is on the way down…

    Robert G. Oler

  • amightywind

    Let’s be clear. The JWST program will continue, even at the expense of other second tier NASA programs. JWST is the most important science mission of the first quarter of the 21st century. If you want an egregious example of bad program management look at the MSL. Somehow NASA took the most successful space science program of all time (the Mars Rovers) and ruined it.

  • Coastal Ron

    amightywind wrote @ November 12th, 2010 at 8:35 am

    Let’s be clear.

    An overrun is an overrun. In business, if you run out of money, you go out of business. For government programs, if you run out of money, you just get more money. Where is the incentive to not run out of money?

    JWST and MSL, though neat from a science perspective, are discretionary spending – they don’t lower taxes or improve services. I do like government investing in science, but there has to be budget accountability. Someone along the way needs to standup and say “it costs too much, so we’re taking it out of the program”.

    Success should be measured by what gets done after something launches, not by how long it took to build, or how much budget it consumed. That’s why I thought NASA’s “faster, better, cheaper” approach was the right one, but that it was ended too quickly – they never matured the approach, and fixed the simple problems that were at the root of the initial failures. They never closed the feedback loop to get lessons learned back into the system.

    Now they feel the lesson learned was that low-cost programs don’t work, and that high-cost ones are the only way to go – they are institutionalizing future failure.

    Throw in political machinations from both parties, and that’s why we’re having a hard time getting out of LEO…

  • John Malkin

    NASA has to find a better way to project program cost and if Congress will not fund the program at the proper level than NASA should kill the program and move on to something else.

    One cost issue is launch windows which can require very specific schedules that need to planned ahead of time sometime several years plus each program has a minimum idle overhead even if the project is waiting for a launch window or “technology” or a rocket or etc…

    Another is if you need to do R&D on some technology, process or design and it take longer than scheduled, it will cost you more money. The program either has to have alternative technologies or it needs to be left out or if the entire system is dependant on it than a technology demonstrator should be done before the program is started. An example is space based solar power, we need so much R&D that to start a program the size of ISS would be mindless. Constellation is an example of this approach of putting project before R&D. There are other factors but this is a big one.

    Underestimates + Scope Creep + Schedule Slip + R&D + (other factors) + Original Mission = program cost plus cost overruns

    Oh yea, NASA can’t kill a program with out the approval of Congress.

  • Alex

    I can sort of see this “new priority” business. Depending on which way they wake up in the morning, the new House Republicans will either see NASA as a gov’t waste or an extension of the military and our national greatness.

    Ironically, it’s more essential to the survival of not just NASA, but America’s space industry, if the new House GOPsters see the agency as gov’t waste, rather than a kind of fourth branch of the military.

  • Anne Spudis

    Space is very much in our national interests.

    http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1376

  • Major Tom

    “I can sort of see this “new priority” business. Depending on which way they wake up in the morning, the new House Republicans will either see NASA as a gov’t waste or an extension of the military and our national greatness.

    Ironically, it’s more essential to the survival of not just NASA, but America’s space industry, if the new House GOPsters see the agency as gov’t waste, rather than a kind of fourth branch of the military.”

    Even if NASA could be lumped in with defense spending, that wouldn’t save the agency from cuts. Six of the ten biggest cuts in the deficit commission’s blueprint are in military spending, including reducing military R&D.

    money.cnn.com/2010/11/11/news/economy/commission_top_10/

    If NASA is going to get cut, it’s going to get cut, regardless of how the agency’s spending is classified.

    FWIW…

  • Mark R. Whittington

    It would be funny if all of the sky if falling rhetoric about how those rascally Republicans are going to slash and burn NASA to the ground turned out to be wide of the mark.

  • common sense

    @ Mark R. Whittington wrote @ November 12th, 2010 at 2:13 pm

    “It would be funny if all of the sky if falling rhetoric about how those rascally Republicans are going to slash and burn NASA to the ground turned out to be wide of the mark.”

    Not sure how to read this, you know “subject verb complement”? Anyway.

    There is a flip side to that coin: How funny is it going to be if the Republicans (assuming they are all alone and Senate does not count and the WH neither), how funny if they actually slash NASA’s budget? Hmm?

  • MichaelC

    Human space flight at the crossroads,

    Path 1. Under the umbrella of National Defense NASA receives funding for a HLV and a nuclear powered spacecraft for Asteroid exploration.

    Path2. Under budget reductions commercial space is left with no subsidies or development funds and is expected to make a profit off….what?

    You regulars wanted cheap, now you are going to get it.

  • Path 1. Under the umbrella of National Defense NASA receives funding for a HLV and a nuclear powered spacecraft for Asteroid exploration.

    Path2. Under budget reductions commercial space is left with no subsidies or development funds and is expected to make a profit off….what?

    False choice. And Path 1 is ludicrous. It will never happen. NASA is not a defense agency, and there is nothing in its charter about that. If the US deals with asteroid threats it will be done by the Pentagon, or a Space Guard, if we create one. And asteroid defense does not require an HLV.

  • Major Tom

    “Path 1. Under the umbrella of National Defense NASA receives funding”

    National defense will be cut in upcoming budgets. Six of the ten largest cuts in the deficit commission’s blueprint came from the military.

    money.cnn.com/2010/11/11/news/economy/commission_top_10/

    “… a HLV and a nuclear powered spacecraft for Asteroid exploration.”

    Nuclear propulsion of some flavor is likely needed for human Mars missions, but neither nukes nor heavy lift are on the critical path to human NEO missions.

    “Path2. Under budget reductions commercial space is left with no subsidies or development funds and is expected to make a profit off….what?”

    Existing contracts, like SpaceX’s contract to launch the next generation Iridium satellites (the largest commercial launch contract in history) or SpaceX’s payload contracts supporting two DragonLab flights.

  • John Malkin

    Path 3. commercial space uses the reduced government resources available. NASA selects fewer commercial providers. “Commercial” launches U.S. astronauts by 2015. HL takes 20 years.

    America would like a successful, affordable, sustainable and fully funded space program.

  • Mark R. Whittington

    “Common Sense” Yeah, both would be funny, though the other in a more macabre way.

    MichaelC – I think we would be more likely to see a refocus on the Moon under a NASA as national security asset for obvious reasons (though not to a few who like to leave comments on this and other forums.)

  • “Six of the ten biggest cuts in the deficit commission’s blueprint are in military spending, including reducing military R&D.”

    Considering the top line estimates given in the FY2011 budget, every analysis I’ve read and all the coctail napkin numbers I’ve done suggest that there is simply not enough discretionary components of the budget to balance it on their own, if we turned off the taps on every single project labelled ‘discretionary’, including NASA, we’d still have a sizeable deficit.

    The cold, hard truth is that if we are to seriously cut the deficit we need to do one or several of four painful things:

    1. Cut Social Security (it’s not in the formal budget, but it is a component of the deficit)
    2. Cut Medicare (same situation as above)
    3. Cut Military spending
    4. Raise taxes

    There are creative ways to do those (raise something other than an income tax, up the soc sec retirement age, etc), but any honest solution to the debt problem will need to address them in some way. So the idea tossed around since the 90’s and earlier that the Military is a sacred cow is simply not gonna fly unless we want to fund China’s military so we can borrow on our own. Another cold, hard, truth is that given the current political climate, congress doesn’t look ready to do any of the above four things. Thanks to the commission for at least coming out and saying it.

  • “I think we would be more likely to see a refocus on the Moon under a NASA as national security asset for obvious reasons”

    I’ve yet to hear the Moon pegged as a destination for national security reasons. Listing pretty much anything beyond GEO as a potential national security boon is plain ridiculous as any military function of a rocket or vehicle capable of reaching the Moon is more easily, cheaply, and effectively met by assets in Earth orbit or below. It’s exactly the same reason why mining the moon for resources to use on Earth will always be more expensive and less effective than mining them here, no matter how scarce. The only possible uses in the arena of defense are defense against asteroids and solar storms, which are hardly the purvue of the military, at least to date.

    Until we are conducting actual wartime activities against assets beyond Earth orbit, the military will stay firmly rooted here at home. Not because we can’t put guns or spies on the moon, but because it doesn’t make any sense to do so.

  • Major Tom

    “I think we would be more likely to see a refocus on the Moon under a NASA as national security asset for obvious reasons…”

    And those “obvious reasons” are… what? What is the value proposition of this space “asset” to national security? What is the U.S. military going to be able to do at or from the Moon that it can’t do more quickly or cheaply from the Earth or Earth orbit?

    And why is this space “asset” more important to national security than, say, near-Earth asteroids, which pose actual people-killing, city-destroying, national-disaster-inducing threats to the U.S. and the rest of human civilization?

    Among other things, the chairs of the deficit commission are proposing to freeze military pay, eliminate certain weapons procurements, reduce overseas military deployments, and reduce military R&D:

    money.cnn.com/2010/11/11/news/economy/commission_top_10/

    Why, in that kind of budget environment, would anyone add or redirect military funding for human lunar missions?

    Do you really think that someone in the White House or Congress is going to propose (nevertheless get the rest of the executive and legislative branches or the public to go along with) human lunar missions in the name of national defense if they’re cutting military pay, deployments, weapons systems, and R&D?

    Really? Seriously?

    This forum is suppossed to be about space policy, not 1950s comic book science fiction. Let’s at least pretend to stay near the shallow waters of reality.

  • amightywind

    aremisasling wrote @ November 12th, 2010 at 3:48 pm

    The cold, hard truth is that if we are to seriously cut the deficit we need to do one or several of four painful things:

    I disagree. Increasing taxes is self-defeating and adds fuel to the spending problem. Implicit in Simpson/Bowles as that baseline spending stays at 25% of GDP. It should be rolled back to a more historical18% and fixed by law. That means a major government RIF and reduction in federal salaries. Then programs be funded proportionally. One can imagine NASA being funded at 1.5% of 18% of GDP. When we run out of money, we run out.

  • Martijn Meijering

    I’ve yet to hear the Moon pegged as a destination for national security reasons.

    The DoD thought about that in the sixties (hence DynaSoar), but concluded the moon had no national security value, hence the cancellation of DynaSoar.

  • MichaelC

    “And asteroid defense does not require an HLV.”

    I disagree strongly. You have nothing to back up that statement. Which Asteroid Rand? The one that will it us how long from now?

    What if one comes in undetected and we only have months or weeks to act?
    What if one is so big it will require dozens of our largest nuclear weapons to deflect? What it there are multiples like shoemaker levy?

  • MichaelC

    “The DoD thought about that in the sixties (hence DynaSoar), but concluded the moon had no national security value, hence the cancellation of DynaSoar.”

    Dynasoar had nothing to do with the moon.

  • Martijn Meijering

    I should have said the DoD concluded manned spaceflight had no military value.

  • I disagree strongly.

    Is there some reason I should care?

    You have nothing to back up that statement.

    I have studies describing how to do it without an HLV.

    As for the military utility of the moon, I’ve never heard Mark describe exactly how the Chinese will conquer it and demand to see our passports if we choose to go after they do. Or why, even if they could, that would be a problem that justifies Apollo on SteroidsGeritol. I suspect it’s because he can’t.

  • Byeman

    ” You have nothing to back up that statement.”

    Neither do you. You have yet to back up the need for an HLV. What say dozens of nukes are required? Or would even work? Simultaneous detonations of nukes is not even a given. A more likely scenario would be sequential detonations of nukes delivered by smaller vehicles

    “what if we only have months or weeks to act”

    HLV would not help either. It would not be responsive to quick reaction.

  • Doug Lassiter

    ““And asteroid defense does not require an HLV.”

    The NRC “Defending Planet Earth” report looked into mitigation strategies carefully. They found that … “In summary, current technology allows the delivery of payloads for purposes of mitigation to NEOs in a wide range of orbits. However, in cases of short warning (under, say, a decade), payloads are likely to be severely limited in mass but may often be sufficient to deliver a nuclear device. The development of the next generation of heavy lift launch vehicles will considerably improve the situation.”

    So while it maybe isn’t fair to say we need HLVs for asteroid defense, the significance of HLVs for asteroid defense has been pointed out by experts. Now, of course, for the larger, more dangerous NEOs, the most economical mitigation strategy BY FAR is a careful survey to identify them, allowing smaller launchers to deliver smaller deflection payloads long before a critical threat situation arises. Such a careful survey (whether ground-based, or by a Venus-orbit infrared imager) can be done with great confidence, and in less than the time required to develop an HLV. Having an HLV available for “one coming in undetected” would then never be necessary. In no way is HLV development justified by the need for NEO mitigation. Would you really want to be in a situation where you’d be depending upon one to save you?

  • MichaelC

    “Would you really want to be in a situation where you’d be depending upon one to save you?”

    Poor logic; the correct sentence would be, “Don’t you want to have an HLV if a situation requires one to save the human race from extinction?

  • Coastal Ron

    MichaelC wrote @ November 12th, 2010 at 4:27 pm

    What if one comes in undetected and we only have months or weeks to act?

    Then chances are that ULA, SpaceX, ESA, JAXA or the Russians will have a medium-class launcher ready enough that we can put a defensive payload on them. HLV’s will be so infrequently flown, that the odds one would be ready would be very doubtful. To raise the odds, you have to use what is use the most, and that is existing launchers.

    What if one is so big it will require dozens of our largest nuclear weapons to deflect?

    You haven’t made the case for one launcher – if anything you’ve made the case for multiple launchers, especially since you don’t want to “put all your eggs in one basket”. If the HLV fails, then so goes civilization. We’d be better off sending many launchers.

    Besides, nuclear warheads are not that big, and they all fit on existing forms of terrestrial transportation (planes, missiles, torpedos, etc.), none of which couldn’t fit on a medium or medium-heavy launcher.

    What it there are multiples like shoemaker levy?

    How does launching warheads on an HLV help this?

    If anything, you’re pointing out the reasons to NOT use an HLV for planetary defense, because they won’t be available enough, and that translates into not being reliable enough.

  • Coastal Ron

    MichaelC wrote @ November 12th, 2010 at 7:18 pm

    the correct sentence would be, “Don’t you want to have an HLV if a situation requires one to save the human race from extinction?

    You just love to spend money, don’t you? Build an HLV to sit around “just in case”.

    Oh, and you still haven’t identified WHAT SIZE payload an HLV needs to be built to handle for planetary defense. 50 ton, 100 ton, 200 ton? What is the magical-mythical size that suddenly makes planetary defense doable?

  • DCSCA

    The cold reality is NASA is a Cold War relic which has resisted the kind of bureaucratic change necessary to adapt to the Age of Austerity. Some of this is natural to any aging bureaucracy but some of it is just a matter of entrenchment. An increasing number of American taxpayers are beginning to see that the NASA of today is more concerned with protecting its bureaucratic turf and securing funding from a shrinking discretionary budget pool. The cold calculus done by savvy cost cutters in their 40s, unemcumbered with the romance, pride and sense of achievement from the Apollo days, and who see a bleak future for space projects of their generation in an era of tight budgets will have to decide whether it’s better to partner with other nations and continue space exploration or shutter the civilian space agency completely simply because the United State cannot afford the luxury of having a civilian space agency that duplicates many of the functions, research and programs other Federal agencies perform. As it stands now, a good argument can be made for dissolving NASA, giving it a ‘well done’ and ‘mission accomplished’ and absorbing its assets into other agencies. The problems encountered vy STS-133 speak volumes and at this stage of the program, simply uinacceptable given decades of experience in flight operations. It is time to put the space shuttle program to bed and reassign the assets of NASA to existing agencies where they may be best adapted. The United States simply cannot afford the luxury of a civilian space program any longer.

  • DCSCA

    @Anne Spudis wrote @ November 12th, 2010 at 1:40 pm
    Space is very much in our national interests. Yes but duplicating space activities is not. The U.S. cannot afford it any longer. If you want to keep space as a part of the national interest, assign it to one area- military or civilian. We cannot afford both any longer. That’s just the way it is.

  • Doug Lassiter

    No, it’s not poor logic. It’s common sense. I’d much rather be in the position that I had invested in a complete survey that would keep me from ever having bad surprises, than instead relying on a launcher … probably just ONE launcher, to save civilization because I didn’t make such an investment. What, you think we’re going to keep an HLV and mitigation payload prepped to be ready in case of a bad surprise? Months or weeks to act? OK, what do you think the chances are for success of that rushed a mission? Gimme a survey any day, and a lead time of years instead of weeks or months to use an existing launcher to do mitigation.

    Given our present surveillance technologies applied to a careful survey (costing vastly less than that of a continuously prepped HLV), kilometer sized NEOs aren’t just going to pop out of nowhere.

    I’ll say it again. Would you really want to leave yourself in a situation where you needed to rely on an HLV to save you? The policy in that event would be to transport the legislators who vetoed the funding for such a survey to the predicted impact site as a welcoming delegation.

  • Major Tom

    “Don’t you want to have an HLV if a situation requires one to save the human race from extinction?”

    No, I want a robust space transportation and in-space infrastructure that allows us to rapidly and reliably mount a deep space mission of practically any size payload and delta-V necessary to counter all probable NEO threats. I don’t want to be reliant on one launch vehicle that has rarely (or never) launched. And I don’t want to find out that we should have developed in-space propellant storage years ago because we need to mount a large, critical mission that requires more delta-V than what one HLV can deliver.

  • common sense

    @MichaelC wrote @ November 12th, 2010 at 7:18 pm

    “Poor logic; the correct sentence would be, “Don’t you want to have an HLV if a situation requires one to save the human race from extinction?”

    I see. Poor dinosaurs! Had they had an HLV they’d still be around! Come to think of it some are still around! Nah, no need for an HLV. Just go ask the dinosaurs…

    Oh well…

  • Robert G. Oler

    Mark R. Whittington wrote @ November 12th, 2010 at 3:36 pm

    \

    MichaelC – I think we would be more likely to see a refocus on the Moon under a NASA as national security asset for obvious reasons (though not to a few who like to leave comments on this and other forums.)……

    but it is like Saddams’ WMD…people like you continue to state the conclusion above and claim “its obvious” why the military should use the Moon or the Moon is some national security issue, and yet you cannot state a single solitary reason why this is “obvious”…except in goofy terms. “Its the high ground”…sort of like Bush’s “dangers gather near our shores”…so we have to invade Iraq and if you are not for that then you are with the terrorist who are in Iraq even though we cannot see the evidence that there are terrorist groups like AQ planning attacks against us…in Iraq.

    here is something novel Mark. Tell us why the Moon is right now a national security asset.

    Then after that explain why the last administration thought so little of it as a national security asset that the program that they had to go back to the Moon…was two decades in the future.

    People like you make claims all the time that sound good and are designed to inflame rehetoric and passion but all you are doing is stating things for which there is no evidence and hoping the stupid will accept them…as fact.

    Robert G. Oler

  • aremisasling

    “It should be rolled back to a more historical18% and fixed by law. That means a major government RIF and reduction in federal salaries.”

    The problem with that logic is that we spend such a large portion of our budget servicing our debt, which we can’t scale back on without paying it off, that really, yes, we are stuck with one or several of the options I mentioned. I never said raising taxes was the only option, just that it was one of the few, admittedly painful, things we could do. The real answers will assuredly be in a form no one will entirely like.

    ” but concluded the moon had no national security value,”

    I expected it was suggested at some point, but as you mention, it was never followed up on. On a technicality I was incorrect, but realistically it’s splitting hairs. No one has ever, or will ever defend BEO destinations in congress for national security reasons.

  • Martijn Meijering

    On a technicality I was incorrect, but realistically it’s splitting hairs.

    I was disagreeing with MichaelC, not with you.

  • Gregori

    If the moon was important to national defense, the military would be focusing lots of energy on it, not NASA. The DOD has a massive budget for sending things into space! They concluded decades ago that there was no real strategic value to sending humans to LEO, never mind the moon. The security value in space is all in LEO and its all in automated unmanned systems!!

    The truth is, some people are trying to sell the Moon!! So they’ll come up with every single sales pitch to justify going there regardless of it’s rationality. I think this is dishonest and harmful to space advocacy.

    People want to go to the Moon…..because they want to go to the MOON!!
    Same reason people climb Mount Everest, explore the Mariana Trench, live in Antarctica, go on foreign holidays, re-enact history, circumnavigate the globe, make sculpture, have sex, split matter into smaller and smaller pieces……. its a very child like fascination with different, alien environments or abstract concepts of our place in the world. I think its totally healthy too.

    Over 30 000 people have signed up to Virgin Galactic… they’re not doing so for national defense, or economic or god… even science reasons!! They just want to experience somewhere totally different… even for 4 minutes!!! Its spiritual.

    Whats worse, pursuing exploration for the purposes of “economic” or “national defense” could not only be not effective and a waste of money…..it could also very damaging to the very thing you’re trying to help!! Money spent on deep space is money not spent on a real security concern or a really productive parts of the economy.

    If history is a lesson, China will probably come to the same conclusion America and the USSR came to in the 1960’s. The Moon is a good publicity stunt to show your power in the world but of little economic or strategic benefit and a gross misuse of resources. It will be too expensive and tempting to cut or slowed to a snails pace. Same that happens to all other manned space program of the world powers, eventually. China landing people on the moon doesn’t prohibit others from doing so either, same way USA landing on the Moon didn’t involve taking it over and checking the passports of others!!!! These fears are totally misplaced.

    I think there is value in sending people to the Moon and Mars, but its beyond military, economic or even science reasons. Its a spiritual expression of our humanity. Like Art!! Hence the Apollo 11 plaque: “HERE MEN FROM THE PLANET EARTH FIRST SET FOOT UPON THE MOON JULY 1969, A.D. WE CAME IN PEACE FOR ALL MANKIND” That sentiment is beautiful.

  • vulture4

    During Apollo the marginal tax rate was 92% and we had the longest sustained period of growth in US history. Today people who work for NASA contractors demand tax cuts because “their income belongs to them”. It doesn’t even occur to them that taxes pay their salaries. Now the people they elected are going to slash the NASA budget so the Bush tax cuts can be extended, and the space workers have no idea why they are loosing their jobs and health insurance.

    Taxes are not evil, they are simply the way we collect money for the things we want our democratically-elected government to do. A business owner pays personal income taxes on the money she takes as salary, not the money she actually reinvests in the business, so high personal income taxes encourage reinvestment in R&D, new technology, and jobs.

    But today even rocket scientists believe their salary comes out of the air, and their taxes go down the drain. When it comes to their own taxes, they all believe in the tooth fairy. If you want the US government to continue to invest in human space flight, then you must also support increased taxes, starting with eliminating the Bush tax cuts. If the Bush tax cuts are continued, NASA will be slashed.

    It’s not rocket science.

  • vulture4

    Regarding the Webb telescope, the original plan was for a design evolved from the Hubble with a 4m mirror that could be launched fully assembled. Dan Golden apparently bumped it up to 8m without any real consideration of the cost. This is more than 10 times the area of the Hubble mirror. But no one questioned him because, in the “top down” NASA culture, if you’re given a bigger task, you get a bigger budget. Had one of the managers shown a streak of sanity and pointed out the obvious – that the huge deployable mirror and cryogenic detector would vastly increase cost and delay the program, and that a less expensive approach would get in space years sooner, that duplicate spacecraft could be built for about 10% of the cost of the first, they would have been laughed at. But had this route been taken we could have had at least two telescopes, each with twice the power of Hubble, already in orbit for years. The total observing time would have been much greater than the Webb will provide.

    Scientific data is valuable but it is not of infinite value. It would be senseless to borrow money from China to pay for the Webb. If we are so selfish with our money that even we, space enthusiasts, are not willing to raise our own taxes to pay for it, the Webb should be canceled.

  • @The truth is, some people are trying to sell the Moon!! So they’ll come up with every single sales pitch to justify going there regardless of it’s rationality.

    The truth is, a Moon base sells itself!

    1. Its cheaper to supply space depots with hydrogen and oxygen from the Moon than from the Earth, especially to the Lagrange points. Refuelable space tugs could lower the cost of placing satellites into geosynchronous orbit. Reusable crew vehicles could also and lower the cost of transporting tourist to the lunar surface. And the Moon is likely to be one of the primary destinations for space tourism.

    2. A Moon base could quickly tell us if a 1/6 hypogravity environment is either deleterious or harmless to human health over several months or several years time which would be one of the greatest discoveries in human history with immediate implications for Mars.

    3. A Moon base could be used to test various types of radiation shielding using lunar regolith, water, liquid hydrogen and even slush hydrogen which could tell us how much of these materials would be required to fully protect the brains and bodies of humans from galactic radiation during long interplanetary journeys.

    4. The Moon might be a good place for repairing and relaunching malfunctioning geosynchronous satellites or refurbishing old ones.

    5. The Moon might be an excellent place for manufacture aluminum mirrors and maybe even photovoltaic cells for space solar power satellites which could dramatically lower the capital cost of geosynchronous solar power satellites for supplying carbon neutral renewable energy to Earth. Well before the end of the century, the Moon might also be the primary place for manufacturing and launching all types of satellites into Earth orbit.

    6. Since the lunar poles appear to have hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen, the Moon could be the first place in the solar system where a permanent human colony could be almost totally independent of terrestrial resources.

    7. If an EMP nuclear device disables US military satellites orbiting the Earth, replacement satellites stored on the Moon could be deployed into Earth orbit using reusable lunar shuttles and space tugs in just a few days.

    8. A Moon base would be inspirational to our children since they could easily look up at the Moon in the sky and know that humans live there and then go home and watch people inside and outside a Moon base or at a private lunar hotel via the internet in real time and maybe even talk to someone on the Moon.

    Again, a Moon base easily sells itself both economically and strategically which is why China, Japan, Russia, and India want to go there. Watch the SSI conference video and you’ll see why American scientist also want us to return to the Moon:

    http://newpapyrusmagazine.blogspot.com/1999/11/moon-mars-or-asteroids-americas-next.html

  • Doug Lassiter

    “I think there is value in sending people to the Moon and Mars, but its beyond military, economic or even science reasons. Its a spiritual expression of our humanity. Like Art!! ”

    I agree with your assessment about China and publicity stunts, but c’mon. Spiritual expressions of humanity are great, but what you’re talking about are U.S. taxpayer-funded spiritual expressions of humanity. This isn’t “humanity” that’s trying to send people to Mars, it’s us! The only sensible reason for human space flight is to learn how to expand the human species. Why is that important? For self preservation, I guess. Where the U.S. taxpayer is investing in preserving “us”, and not “them”. But that being the case, it’s hardly something that requires immediate action.

    With regard to Webb, the rationale for a deployable telescope makes a lot of sense. Sure, we could have put a 4m telescope in an existing launch shroud, but that would be the end of the line. Unless we come up with an HLV (hardly something that seems assured), that’s the biggest telescope were ever going to field. Investing in a telescope that is deployable in-space, whether on hinges and actuators or by physical assembly of separate elements, is a truly extensible design strategy. One would like to believe that the investment in JWST will pay off in future generations of large space telescopes.

    That Dan Goldin suggested that JWST have “reach” goal of 8m is correct. That no one questioned him, or had a streak of sanity about how ambitious that might be, I’d simply point out the JWST is a 6m telescope. Not an 8m telescope.

  • E.P. Grondine

    Hi Rand –

    Thanks for taking the quiz, but your reply has some misconceptions. On the other hand, you correctly predicted some responses.

    1) I would assume that you agree that planetary protection is a legitimate and necessary function for the Federal government. True?

    “False. Protection of the nation is a legitimate and necessary function of the federal government, not the planet. For instance, if we knew that a city in (say) China was going to be hit by a smallish object, there would be no constitutional responsibility for the federal government to do anything about it. Which isn’t to say that we wouldn’t, of course.”

    Unfortunately, this is one situation where one can not redefine the problem and question to one that one wants to answer.

    The problem is that while we can find small ones headed Earth-wards, no one can predict early where they would hit. The larger ones will have a domestic effect no matter where they hit.

    “But there is currently no agency in the federal government with a charter for protecting either the nation, or the planet, from extraterrestrial events, and none that I would trust with the job. I would propose establishing a Space Guard for such purposes, under DHS (or better yet, Commerce, if we can get rid of DHS), attach it to the Air Force in the same manner as the Coast Guard supports the Navy, and restructuring federal space policy in the process. It would pick up a lot of what NASA and the Air Force (and Commerce, and DOT) currently do, and have that new responsibility as well.”

    Actually, the NASA charter was changed with the George Brown Jr. amendment. There is also law establishing a Planetary Protection Coordination Office, and in his response the President proposed to establish the PPCO under DHS/FEMA, but NASA’s key role for 3 tasks still remains, with other organizations tasks modified and extended.

    “A clean-sheet organization would be much more focused on the task than giving it to NASA or the Air Force (this is why, for example, the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization was established in the eighties — because it was clear that the Air Force wasn’t interested in the job).”

    I agree that the Air Force should not be diverted from its role of terrestrial defense, but that’s just my opinion. As for NASA, planetary defense is now a key function, which greatly upsets manned Mars flight enthusiasts.

    Once again, thanks for taking the quiz.
    .

  • E.P. Grondine

    Here’s the quiz Rand took, if any of you want to give it a try:

    1) I would assume that you agree that planetary protection is a legitimate and necessary function for the Federal government. True?
    2) I would assume that planetary protection would have a very high priority for you as a space goal. True?
    3) I would assume that coming up with an accurate as possible estimate of the nature of the impact hazard would have a very high priority as a space research goal. True?
    4) What systems do you think would be adequate to deal with the hazard?
    5) I would assume that you would hope that the US would not have to pay for these all by itself – the old free rider problem. True?
    6) Cost/ Benefit: How do you translate that into a budget? Any numbers?

  • Vladislaw

    If a species gains a competitive advantage over another species or the same species, competing for the same resources the losing species either adapts to the new paradigm, dies off or goes exploring for a new home to reaquire lost resources.

    If a species eats up all it’s food resources it either adapts to a new food source, dies off or goes exploring for new food resources.

    If a natural disaster occurs and destroys it’s food sources, the species either adapts to a new food source, dies off or goes exploring.

    Let’s not try and turn exploration into some metaphysical exercise, exploration is about finding new resources to exploit, nothing more or less. To try and bring in other externalities is pointless because it just clouds the basic issue.

    A species generally does not explore for exploration’s sake, they are usually forced into the exploration. Any modern exploration, e.g. Columbus and Lewis & Clark, eric the red, Zheng He, is not the same as space. The ground they were exploring was not “new” and had not only already been explored by humanity, but had already been settled by humans for 11,000 – 13,000 years. Those early human explorers who came across the bering sea and the atlantic ice shelf 10,000 years ago had competitive advantages over the species on north and south america.

    The modern exploration from europe was one species with a competitive advantage exploiting resources controled by the same species without the competitive advantage of shipbuilding, metalworking and guns. They forced out the members of the same species without the advantage.

    So lets go forward with the idea that humans have gained the competitive advantage of space flight and if there are resources out there and they can be exploited without committing genocide let’s reduce the arguement to should we spend the money to bring those new resources into our sphere of economic activity and what is the least expensive and most productive way to do it.

  • Anne Spudis

    Marcel F. Williams wrote @ November 13th, 2010 at 12:08 pm

    Hi Marcel. I’ll add another one.

    9. The farside of the Moon is the only place in the near Earth solar system that’s permanently shielded from Earth’s radio noise. So the Moon’s farside is the perfect place for a radio telescope.

  • common sense

    @ vulture4 wrote @ November 13th, 2010 at 10:16 am

    Hey! Atre you trying to steal my “common sense” thunder?! ;)

    And btw, I am not a specialist of telescopes in space or otherwise but if you have say a half dozen Hubble sized telescope properly loacted in space does that not make the mega-giga telescope irrelevant? Akin to the HLV?… Just askin’

    Oh well…

  • NASA Fan

    I”m with Robert: NASA is going to be a priority, only in the sense that the new Republicans will see it as a priority to cut.

  • Gregori

    There are no resources in space that can’t be got much much more cheaply here on Earth. Space is just not the goldmine some people would like it to be. If it were true, there would be 100’s of companies lining up to get a piece of the action!!!! So far, there are just a few governments (doing nothing about resources) Its a terrible justification to go there.

    Even if the resources were a good reason, it could be done more cheaply with robots. There would be hardly any reason to send humans at all. But people are still want to go into to visit places in space, regardless of the economics of it. For the time being, it really is a metaphysical exercise. The space tourists who visited the ISS didn’t go to bring resources into our economic sphere. Nor are the 30 000+ who’ve signed up to Virgin Galactic!!!

    The only relevant thing about space resources for us right now is that they can potentially lower the cost of sending humans to places without having to bring everything with them. This makes things more affordable.

    Natural resources aren’t the be all and end all of economic power. Japan is the second richest country in the world and has practically no natural resources!!! The 21st Century won’t be determined by having the most resources, but how those resources are used intelligently. Which means recycling, smaller computers, reusable spacecraft, genetically modified supercrops, nanomachines, renewable energy…

  • Coastal Ron

    Marcel F. Williams wrote @ November 13th, 2010 at 12:08 pm

    In response to your list:

    2. 1/6 hypogravity environment … which would be one of the greatest discoveries in human history – Then the work for zero G must rise to the same level? I think you have a low bar for “greatest discoveries”.

    3. A Moon base could be used to test various types of radiation shielding using lunar regolith, water, liquid hydrogen and even slush hydrogen – Except for the regolith, the rest could be tested in orbit.

    5. The Moon might be an excellent place for manufacture – someday maybe, but not in our lifetime. Coming from a manufacturing background, I can tell you that even building simple products requires a very deep logistics supply line. It’s not apparent here on Earth, because it just happens, but anywhere off-world will take a very long time. You might as well be talking about cities on the bottom of the ocean – it’s just as far-fetched.

    6. Since the lunar poles appear to have hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen, the Moon could be the first place in the solar system where a permanent human colony could be almost totally independent of terrestrial resources. – it takes a vastly larger amount of elements to survive than those four. That would be survival – not thriving.

    7. If an EMP nuclear device disables US military satellites orbiting the Earth… – I’m glad you’re not leading the military. Why wouldn’t they set off an EMP over the Moon too? Besides, you can launch replacements from the Earth much easier. This has got to be the lamest one.

    8. A Moon base would be inspirational to our children since they could easily look up at the Moon in the sky and… see nothing. Unless you use a powerful telescope, and until we have started scraping the surface of the Moon severely, you won’t be able to see any activity. Especially if you live in the city, or there is a cloudy sky, or the Moon is waining… 2nd most lame.

  • Fred Willett

    I could make up a great list of advatages to having a base on the moons of Alpha Centauri. The only problem is, like our moon, we just can’t get there yet.
    We could get to our moon once, but not any more. And early next year when the shuttle goes away we are going to loose all possibility of HSF. That will be something only the Russians and Chinese can do.
    Before we worry about going back to the moon it might be a good idea to worry about how we get back to LEO.
    The congress is likely to reduce NASA’s budget.
    What gets cut?
    Most likely commercial crew. After all the heavy lift and Orion have lots of congress critters to fight for their funding. Not so Commercial crew.
    If commercial crew funding gets cut that leaves NASA with just a mythical HLV and the Orion.
    Can NASA bring either to completion on already cut down budgets?
    Based on recent performance that seems unlikely.
    5 years from now the HLV and Orion could have easily slipped way behind schedule and over budget, like so many other NASA programs, with an IOC of NET 2020.
    And NASA could have to continue paying the Russians $50M a seat to get to the ISS leavingNASA a distant 3rd in the space leadership stakes.
    Is this what you want?
    $300M or there abouts gets an existing Dragon upgraded to crew in 3 to 5 years.
    $1B gets Boeing’s CST-100 built and flying to ISS by 2015.
    That is funding commercial crew gives NASA 2 options (at least) of getting transport for crew to the ISS by 2015.
    These are peanuts in the context of NASA’s budget, but essential to put NASA back on par with the Russians and Chinese.
    This is what is at stake in the next few months as the House and Senate start cutting the budget, and cutting NASA
    Think seriously about what you want here guys.
    And lets stop worrying about the Moon or Mars and start worrying about loosing LEO.

  • Doug Lassiter

    “Let’s not try and turn exploration into some metaphysical exercise, exploration is about finding new resources to exploit, nothing more or less. ”

    I think you’re sort of agreeing with me, but you don’t say who “us” is. The only reasonable reason for HSF is expansion of the species. Nothing more, nothing less. If we run out of food, then I guess the species has to get something to eat from somewhere else.

    The metaphysical exercise here is a presumption that humans are required to go out and bring that food back to earth. That may or may not be true. If that can’t be done, then sure, humans have to go to where the food is.

    As to finding resources to exploit, we just found water on the Moon, and astronauts had nothing to do with that discovery. In fact, the astronauts who were there never found any water. That’s an excellent example that “exploration”, by your definition, doesn’t require astronauts.

  • Doug Lassiter

    “but if you have say a half dozen Hubble sized telescope properly loacted in space does that not make the mega-giga telescope irrelevant? ”

    Sure. Let’s define “properly located”. If you cut a JWST into half a dozen pieces (or maybe 18?), and “properly locate” them, you’d have a JWST. But to “properly locate” them, you’d need to do constellation management of 10 mt spacecraft to within a few nanometers. We don’t know how to do that. Not by a LONG shot. That’s what the deployable truss on JWST is for. To “properly locate” the 18 primary mirror segments. So what’s irrelevant here is the idea of “properly locating” them.

    Now, the right strand here is to consider on-orbit construction of a large telescope with pieces sent up in multiple launches. Do it telerobotically, or do it with astronauts. I don’t care. But the scalability of such construction means that you can conceive of a telescope that is far larger than can ever be put, or folded into, an existing launcher.

  • Anne Spudis

    Fred Willett wrote @ November 13th, 2010 at 7:21 pm [Think seriously about what you want here guys. And lets stop worrying about the Moon or Mars and start worrying about loosing LEO.]

    The point is to have it all. You better start worrying about losing Cislunar space.

  • Anne Spudis

    Doug Lassiter wrote @ November 13th, 2010 at 11:33 pm [As to finding resources to exploit, we just found water on the Moon, and astronauts had nothing to do with that discovery. In fact, the astronauts who were there never found any water. That’s an excellent example that “exploration”, by your definition, doesn’t require astronauts.]

    What a stretch. Just leave out where the astronauts were sent on the Moon.

    Perhaps if the science community hadn’t become the “Search for Life” charge code cult, the Moon might have been given more attention after Clementine and Lunar Prospector data signaled ice on the Moon. But better late than never.

    A point about Apollo astronauts and exploration: They did select and bring home some nice rock samples that gave us just an itsy bitsy nugget of information: The important and major role impact has had in the formation of the Solar System.

  • David Davenport

    Path 1. Under the umbrella of National Defense NASA receives funding for a HLV and a nuclear powered spacecraft for Asteroid exploration.

    Path 3. Under the umbrella of National Defense, the USAF gets additional $ for EELV upgrades, an X-37 follow-on, and space-based missile and asteroid defense platforms.

    “And asteroid defense does not require an HLV.”

    Asteroid defense sounds like Air force work. Putting NASA in the biz of launching nu-kleer weapons would destroy the original rationale for separating NASA missions from the Air Force.

    The problems encountered vy STS-133 speak volumes and at this stage of the program, simply uinacceptable given decades of experience in flight operations.

    What, you don’t suspect that the good citizens at Kentucky Fried Space Center aren’t deliberately stalling in order to collect a few more months of paychecks?

  • Doug Lassiter

    “What a stretch. Just leave out where the astronauts were sent on the Moon. ”

    No stretch. The astronauts did some great stuff, and brought back important samples. But they did NOT contribute to our discovery of water on the Moon which, in many respects, may be the most important lunar discovery for the future of exploration. No question that 50 years ago we needed those astronauts to bring back those important samples. Would we need them now to do the same? Not so sure.

    “Search for life code cult”, eh? I guess it took that code cult to get Congress and the American taxpayer really excited about space science. When is lunar exploration going to find as successful a code cult? Maybe a helium-3 code cult? Awesome! We can all wear necklaces with isotopic models, speak in high pitched voices, and bow down in front of reactors that don’t exist.

  • David Davenport

    erhaps if the science community hadn’t become the “Search for Life” charge code cult

    You’re saying that NASA is part of the Vatican’s Da Vinci Code conspiracy and cover-up?

    Even I wouldn’t go that far.

  • Vladislaw

    Gregori wrote:

    “Space is just not the goldmine some people would like it to be. If it were true, there would be 100′s of companies lining up to get a piece of the action”

    There is a huge difference between mining terestrially and offworld. The first thing you have to do on terra firma is either aquire the land you want to mine or obtain the mineral rights. Once you have obtained either of those you have an asset in the accounting books. You can use that asset as collateral for a loan, sell or lease some of it etc. You can not do that on the moon. You are therefore without two of the markets you need for mining, a real estate market and a mineral rights market. Neither exist for Luna.

    There is more of a market for fake lunar land deeds than there is for real commercial opportunities. If the 1967 outer space treaty was revisited and the UN provided land grants for luna we would immediately create new wealth and it would create those two markets you need to actually start mining.

    You can not “line up for a piece of the action” because it is impossible to buy a piece of the action.

    Fake lunar land is worth 30 bucks an acre, that investment has actually doubled in price if you bought early. i wonder how much 500,000 acres of luna would worth for real. what would the regolith mining rights be worth? Gold? Silver? Nickel? Platinum? Even if it was selling for pennies on the dollar it would at least be the beginnings of a market and you would see what the market values those resouces in real time.

    There are coal mining mineral rights claims that have floated around the country for over a century, being bought and sold decade after decade where not an ounce of coal has ever been mined. But they are an asset for whatever company happens to be holding them and can be used as a financial instrument for collateral.

  • MichaelC

    “The point is to have it all. You better start worrying about losing Cislunar space.”

    There is water on the moon and this suddenly made the moon important for a couple reasons- the main one being water is the best radiation shield for spaceships. Another reason being that bottled water would cost 18,000 dollars a liter if it had to be flown there.

    But the regulars here do not like to even acknowledge the problem of cosmic radiation.

  • Martijn Meijering

    But the regulars here do not like to even acknowledge the problem of cosmic radiation.

    Nonsense, they deny dealing with it requires an HLV. Because water is easily divisible and can perhaps be shipped from the moon.

  • MichaelC

    Nonsense?

    You are the one talking nonsense Martijn. All anyone has to do is go back into the archives.

    So “easily divide” the water required to shield a crew from heavy nuclei- several hundred if not thousand tons of it. You propose launching hundreds of times carrying…..water?

    That is nonsense.

  • Coastal Ron

    MichaelC wrote @ November 14th, 2010 at 5:55 pm

    There is water on the moon and this suddenly made the moon important…

    Not really. There is no need for the water on the Moon today – we have plenty here on Earth. Water on the Moon only becomes important when we need water somewhere near the Moon (on the ground, in orbit nearby, etc.). Someday it will be economically beneficial to use water from the Moon, but we’re not there.

    But the regulars here do not like to even acknowledge the problem of cosmic radiation.

    There is a time and place for every concern, but it’s not the time or place for being concerned about cosmic radiation. Someday, but by then we’ll be that much more knowledgeable about the problems and solutions.

    It’s good to think ahead, but until you have funding to actually do it, it’s an academic exercise – not a real need.

  • @Coastal Ron

    1. Yes, the discovery that a microgravity environment is inherently deleterious to human health was extremely important. But we learned that back in the 1970s. So we certainly didn’t need the ISS to learn what we had already learned with Skylab. But we still don’t know whether or not a hypogravity environment (gravity lower than the Earth’s) is harmful to human survival beyond the Earth. And we need to know.

    2. Testing radiation shielding in orbit would require such test to be conducted beyond the Earth’s protective magnetosphere, probably at a Lagrange point. An HLV could probably place about 40 tonnes to L4 or L5 for such a test per launch. But radiation shielding against brain damaging heavy nuclei would probably require 150 tonnes of hydrogen or 500 tonnes of water mass shielding for a tiny crew module. That would require about 4 HLV launches for liquid or slush hydrogen and about 13 launches for water shielding. So to test both hydrogen and water shielding for tiny crew modules at a Lagrange point would probably require at least 17 HLV launches. It would obviously be a lot cheaper to test hydrogen and water shielding on the Moon using hydrogen and water resources that are already there. And when the time comes to provide mass shielding for large interplanetary crew modules, it would be cheaper to import slush hydrogen or water from the Moon to an L1 launch point than from the Earth.

    3. The ability to gradually manufacture more and more complex items on the Moon will depend on how wealthy the lunar economy becomes from space tourism and the simple manufacturing and export of oxygen, hydrogen, and water to Earth orbit. Manufacturing simple aluminum mirrors on the Moon for space solar power satellites might also be lucrative in the near future.

    4. Once you add hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen resources to the mix of other lunar materials, then the Moon has practically all of the major elements needed for human survival and for raising and growing food.

    5. It takes only a few minutes to deploy an EMP weapon into Earth orbit. But it takes several days to send an EMP device to the Moon. Plus, back up satellites on the lunar surface would probably be shielded from gamma radiation by several meters of lunar regolith. Plus it would be pretty easy to intercept such EMP devices coming from Earth with vehicles launched from the lunar surface under the Moons low gravity well. Glad your not a military strategist:-)

  • @Anne Spudis

    “Hi Marcel. I’ll add another one.

    9. The farside of the Moon is the only place in the near Earth solar system that’s permanently shielded from Earth’s radio noise. So the Moon’s farside is the perfect place for a radio telescope.”

    Thank you Anne! Hopefully, any industrial development on the lunar far side will be banned in order to take advantage of the Moon’s far side for radio telescopes.

    I also think even relatively small and simple optical telescopes are going to be surprisingly useful on the Moon since they would be able to gather starlight for 14 continuous nights before the next sunrise. At the lunar poles, of course, such telescopes could exist in an almost eternal night– gathering light from the stars. Lunar astronomy could be revolutionary.

  • Anne Spudis

    [ Marcel F. Williams wrote @ November 15th, 2010 at 4:49 am ] Lunar astronomy could be revolutionary

    It certainly will.

  • Doug Lassiter

    “I also think even relatively small and simple optical telescopes are going to be surprisingly useful on the Moon since they would be able to gather starlight for 14 continuous nights before the next sunrise. At the lunar poles, of course, such telescopes could exist in an almost eternal night– gathering light from the stars. Lunar astronomy could be revolutionary.”

    Relatively small and simple optical telescopes are (not surprisingly) useful in free space since they are able to gather starlight for pretty much their entire life cycle, unlike on the Moon. And they can do that while the Sun is shining on their solar panels! That argument about the Moon being a good observing site because of the long nights is old and dead. No one believes it anymore. It used to be true when we didn’t know how to point telescopes in free space. We do now. Really well. Lots of other reasons why putting optical telescopes on the Moon is an awesomely BAD idea. Put down your thirty year-old books and do some contemporary reading.

    Radio astronomy from the far side does appear to have important science potential, but astronomically it is a niche application. Keeping the far side radio quiet is going to be a huge problem. Thinking that industrial development and telecommunications will be banned on an entire hemisphere in the interest of astronomy is ridiculous.

    The business of “eternal night” for optical telescopes is also laughable. With no atmospheric light scattering, “night” in space is just a matter of not pointing near the Sun. Hubble does half of it’s tremendous work on the faintest sources with the Sun shining fully on it. Please, don’t pretend to have any expertise about this. You don’t.

  • Martijn Meijering

    So “easily divide” the water required to shield a crew from heavy nuclei- several hundred if not thousand tons of it. You propose launching hundreds of times carrying…..water?

    That is nonsense.

    Not at all, it is what is required to get to the flight rates that will make commercial RLVs profitable, thus reducing NASA’s costs by an order of magnitude and opening up space for commercial manned spaceflight.

  • Coastal Ron

    Marcel F. Williams wrote @ November 15th, 2010 at 4:38 am

    The premise that “Moon First” proponents like you depend on is like the cartoons depicting a massively complex formula, and in the corner, just before the answer, they state “Then A Miracle Happens”.

    Same with your list of reasons why the Moon is needed so badly. You’re fictitious reasons depend on a 100-1000X increase in the number of people in space, and since people can’t survive without lots of help in space, a commensurate increase in the amount of spending for hardware and supplies.

    That’s not happening anytime soon, so really what you’re debating is the world of the far future, not one that will be within the lifetime of you and me, or our children.

    From that standpoint, who knows whether there will even be satellites (could be replaced for future technologies), or even humans for that matter (virtual reality androids).

    You’re problem is not in getting people to spend money on the Moon in a hundred years, but spending to get to the Moon in the next 20. And so far no one wants to. Because of that, all your reasons why the Moon is so valuable can be added to the list of reasons why Mars and Alpha Centauri are so valuable.

  • byeman

    “Plus it would be pretty easy to intercept such EMP devices coming from Earth with vehicles launched from the lunar surface under the Moons low gravity well. Glad your not a military strategist:-)”

    Wrong. There is no advantage due to lunar gravity in intercepting vehicle transiting cislunar space.

    Your backup idea is nonsense also. Spacecraft on earth can also be stored undergound to protect them from EMP.

    An EMP device could be sent to the moon within hours, see Pluto New Horizons.

    Glad you are not a military strategist or an engineer.

  • Martijn Meijering

    An EMP device could be sent to the moon within hours, see Pluto New Horizons.

    Just out of curiosity, wouldn’t you need an EELV-sized vehicle on standby for that? Or could you remove a number of warheads from an ICBM instead and launch just one?

  • @Coastal Ron

    Being too lazy to invest in lunar resources will not make this country richer. It will make us poorer and possibly dependent on other nations for extraterrestrial fuel resources for our space vehicles and fuel depots in the future.

    We’d be a much richer nation today if we had invested in a Moon base back in the 1980s instead of investing hundreds of billions of dollars going around in circles above the Earth for the last 40 years. And we’d probably already be on Mars thanks to that lunar base.

  • Rhyolite

    Doug Lassiter wrote @ November 15th, 2010 at 8:31 am

    Two more reasons that the moon is a bad place for optical astronomy:

    First, putting a telescope next to a planetary body blots out half of the sky at any given time.

    Second, the moon is dusty, which would wreck havoc with the optics. Look at how dusty the Apollo EVA suits became. Servicing the telsecopes or even siteing them near a maned base would be a nightmare.

    A lagrange point telescope can access almost the entire sky all of the time and the space enviroment in much more benign.

  • @byeman

    “Wrong. There is no advantage due to lunar gravity in intercepting vehicle transiting cislunar space.

    Your backup idea is nonsense also. Spacecraft on earth can also be stored undergound to protect them from EMP.

    An EMP device could be sent to the moon within hours, see Pluto New Horizons.

    Glad you are not a military strategist or an engineer.”

    You do realize that a major EMP attack would knock out more than just all of our satellites in Earth orbit as far as GEO? The pulse would also knock out most of the electricity in the US, disabling our electrical infrastructure for several weeks if not several months.

    Trying to quickly launch back up satellites from Earth to LEO and GEO under such conditions would be extremely difficult.

    On the Moon, however, reusable vehicles could easily launch such back up satellites from the lunar surface. And, of course, the delta v requirements to launch a satellite from the Moon to GEO or LEO are substantially less than launching such devices from the Earth’s surface.

    And the lunar base itself will serve as a limited back up telecommunications satellite until the replacement satellites from the Moon are deployed.

    Lunar shuttles operating from the Moon to L1 combined with cis-lunar shuttles operating from L1 to Earth orbit could also rescue people trapped in EMP disabled space stations in Earth orbit (astronauts, scientist, and space tourist) and shuttle them safely to lunar bases.

    So far, you’re loosing the space wars very badly:-)

  • Coastal Ron

    Marcel F. Williams wrote @ November 15th, 2010 at 4:02 pm

    Being too lazy to invest in lunar resources will not make this country richer.

    How much of your life savings have you invested in a Moon venture? If they answer is less than 50%, then you are a hypocrite.

    And why would anyone invest in an enterprise that has no customers? You may not know this, but investors want to see a return on their investment, and the vast majority of them only invest when they see the risk is worth the reward. No one has put forth a credible business plan that shows an ROI for lunar investment. No one.

    The ratio of people seeking investment versus those that actually get them is close to 1,000 to 1, so investors don’t have a shortage of places to invest their money. The Moon has to become compelling before anyone puts significant money into it, and so far it hasn’t been. And yes, that may be a chicken-and-egg situation, but that happens with many emerging markets, so don’t feel special.

    We’d be a much richer nation today if we had invested in a Moon base back in the 1980s

    Richer in what way? What does the Moon have that we can’t get less expensively on Earth?

    I don’t think you understand how much money it takes to do anything in space. The ISS has been very educational, and should tell you how hard it would be to just keep 3 (much less 6) people in LEO. Supporting that number of people on the Moon would have broken the bank before the first inhabitants finished their first deployment.

    You’re living in a fantasy world my friend. No one has the money you need for your Moon dreams.

  • Doug Lassiter

    “Two more reasons that the moon is a bad place for optical astronomy”

    Yes, there are a lot. But to a Moon-cultist, especially one who gets his information from thirty year old treatises, reasons don’t mean much.

    But … but … oh wow, with all the resources we could mine on the Moon, we could build a huge telescope!! Imagine how cheap steel, glass, and aluminum would be on the Moon!! I can do an assay of lunar soil and find precisely those constituents!! Just laying there on the ground!! I don’t have to carry them from Earth!! I just have to carry a refinery, but, hey …

    They don’t call ‘em lunatics for nothing.

  • MichaelC

    There is water on the moon and this suddenly made the moon important…

    “Not really. There is no need for the water on the Moon today – we have plenty here on Earth. Water on the Moon only becomes important when we need water somewhere near the Moon (on the ground, in orbit nearby, etc.).”

    Yes, that is what we are talking about- “needing water somewhere near the Moon”

    You regulars are just plain ridiculous sometimes. Do you understand at all what a completely stupid statement you just made?

  • Coastal Ron

    MichaelC wrote @ November 15th, 2010 at 7:07 pm

    Yes, that is what we are talking about

    I can see that you and Marcel should hook up, and be the lead investors in Moon Inc. I’m sure you’ll make a killing, since you’ll have first-mover advantage – unless you run out of money before the market develops.

    Let us know if you succeed…

  • @Coastal Ron

    For some reason, you think that NASA’s budget is somehow crippling the American economy. NASA expenditures represent less than 0.6% of total Federal expenditures. And studies continue to show that our investment in space has created a lot more wealth than its consumed. And its certainly created more technological advancement.

    Lunar hydrogen and oxygen could reduce the cost of placing satellites into geosynchronous orbit. Satellites, of course, are at the core of a $100 billion a year world wide telecommunications industry.

    Lunar water and hydrogen and oxygen could also dramatically reduce the cost related to space tourism– especially to the Moon. Polls have shown that 7% of those wealthy enough to travel into space would actually pay $20 million do so. That’s about 7000 people world wide. If just 10% of that number traveled into space every year, that would represent $14 billion in annual revenues. Terrestrial tourism, by the way, is nearly a trillion dollar a year global industry.

    Lunar hydrogen and oxygen could someday help to reduce the cost of deploying solar power satellites into geosynchronous orbit.

    The ISS program cost the US about $2 billion a year. If you include the shuttle flights then I guess you could argue that it cost about $5 billion a year (about 2 weeks occupying Iraq). Air, water, food, and oxygen, of course, have to be shipped from the Earth’s immense gravity well.

    A Moon base, however, could provide its own air and water extracted from the lunar regolith. And now that we know that there are also carbon and nitrogen resources at the lunar poles, we should be able to grow food at lunar facilities also.

    The fact that you continue to perpetuate the idea that NASA’s relatively tiny budget is somehow hurting the US economy is the ultimate fantasy. Our investment in space has made this country richer! And our long term investment in the natural resources of the solar system will make us even richer!

  • Coastal Ron

    Marcel F. Williams wrote @ November 15th, 2010 at 11:52 pm

    For some reason, you think that NASA’s budget is somehow crippling the American economy.

    No, I think that the amount of money you want spent on your Moon plans would exceed the amount of money that NASA currently gets.

    studies continue to show that our investment in space has created a lot more wealth than its consumed

    Old studies. Gone are the days where space technology lead the way for transferable technology. Look around you today, and try and identify a product or service that was created by direct technology spin-offs from the last 20 years. What is driving innovation today is consumer demand, both in technology and biotechnology, and no significant part of it is from the space program.

    Lunar hydrogen and oxygen could reduce the cost of placing satellites into geosynchronous orbit.

    So could a new generation of low-cost launchers (Falcon 9 being one of them).

    The difference is that for lunar supplies to become an economic alternative, hundreds of billions of dollars have to be expended first over a period of decades (infrastructure creation, transportation, logistics, crew facilities, etc., etc.). The payoff would not come for generations.

    It takes a long time to go from resource discovery to profitability in a harsh environment – and throw in the complications of 1/6 gravity and an airless environment, plus a logistics supply line 238,857 miles long. Oh, and there is no market demand for resources on the Moon at this time.

  • DCSCA

    @Anne Spudis wrote @ November 14th, 2010 at 5:12 am
    ” You better start worrying about losing Cislunar space.”

    My God, Anne, Americans are worried about losing their homes, their jobs and their healthcare, not ‘cislunar space.’ Is everybody in the Beltway trhis disconnected from the realities of life in the United States today? Good Lord.

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