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NASA, Space exploration

Race to the Moon or Race to Mars

The Bush Government has of late been redirecting NASA’s efforts towards heading back to the Moon. But to many people, the term ‘heading back’ is exactly the problem. We’ve been there, and while everyone wants to get to Mars, the Moon is not the place to visit on the way. 

From the pages of the January issue #21 of Aviation Week & Space Technology, top U.S. planetary scientists, astronauts and former NASA division directors are meeting privately on February 12 and 13 at Stanford University to discuss an offer to the next U.S. President.

The offer: an alternative to George W. Bush’s “vision for space exploration” – one that would remove a lunar base from the near future, and target roaming asteroids instead.

According to the experts, leaving behind the Moon in our exploration of outer space and heading to manned asteroid landings will allow us to make earlier trips to Mars, and its companion moons Phobos and Deimos.

The problem, according to numerous planetary managers, is that a manned Moon base and various short visits to the Moon will bog the space program down for decades. And while a manned mission to Mars is the ultimate goal for all, the moon program will only inhibit, rather than facilitate those missions.

“It’s becoming painfully obvious that the Moon is not a stepping-stone for manned Mars operations but is instead a stumbling block,” says Robert Farquhar, a veteran of planning and operating planetary and deep-space missions.

Furthermore, according to Lou Friedman, top dog at The Planetary Society, manned missions to asteroids garner more support and excitement from the youth of today, when compared to a “return” to the Moon. The Society is hosting the invitation-only meeting at Stanford, a meeting with many people who believe that “the Moon is so yesterday,” says Friedman.

“It just does not feel right. And there’s growing belief that, at high cost, it offers minimal engineering benefit for later manned Mars operations.”

Another goal for the new plan is to send astronauts to Lagrangian points, those ‘five positions in an orbital configuration where a small object affected only by gravity can theoretically be stationary relative to two larger objects.’

Already the James Webb Space Telescope will be positioned in one of these locations, a fixed place in space without the need for an orbital configuration. And, at one million miles from Earth – the distance where the combined gravitational pull of the two large masses provides precisely the centripetal force required to rotate with them – the JWST has been equipped with a lightweight Crew Exploration Vehicle docking system just in case a stopover is necessary to repair the telescope.

Wes Huntress is another of the former planetary mission managers who is behind a reshift in NASA’s goals. Director of the Washington based Carnegie Institutions Geophysical Laboratory, and with a long career at JPL and NASA headquarters behind him, Huntress is helping to organize the Stanford workshop. The workshop will include several dozen participants, including several top members from NASA and contractor exploration managers.

“There is little left of the 2004 Vision for Space Exploration except the real need to retire the space shuttle,” Huntress says. “Even this goal is being pursued with great sacrifice from all other parts of the agency because the administration has simply not put its money where its mouth is.”

“The nation’s space enterprise is under great strain even to build Ares I and Orion CEV,” Huntress stresses. “There are alternate destinations for human deep-space missions that do not require building a lot of new hardware to [come and go between Earth and the Moon]. These are missions to near-Earth asteroids or to scout the Sun-Earth Lagrangian points for future space telescope construction and servicing,” he notes.

The proposed new version of NASA’s goals will create some losers, but overall the winners seem to outweigh. If the lunar base is relegated to past ideas then additional personnel may well be lost at the Kennedy Space Center, where there would be fewer Ares V launches and subsequently no lunar base infrastructure. However, the Goddard Space Flight Center and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, along with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California will all gain with an increase in space environmental-monitoring goals.

And the latter seems to be a real key factor to the new goals, if Huntress is to be believed. “As the nation seems to be turning to environmental threats to our own planet, a mission to a near-Earth asteroid to assess their nature for good or ill would also seem to be a real winner,” says Huntress.

The mastermind behind the reassessment meeting is Scott Hubbard, consulting professor in the Stanford Aeronautics and Astronautics Department. Previously director of NASA Ames Research Center and, before that, NASA Mars program director, he hopes for big things from the meetings.

“We have planned this invitation-only workshop to elicit frank and open discussion about the future of the ‘vision’ as the administration changes,” he says.

“The Stanford workshop will address a broad range of issues touching on many elements of space exploration. The attendees will discuss the balance between space science and human exploration, the need for continuing and enhancing Earth science observations, the relative utility of humans and robotics, and progress or impediments to human exploration of Mars, asteroids and the Moon,” says Hubbard. “In addition, the workshop will discuss the status of access to space and the emerging entrepreneurial space industry.

“This is the kind of debate that will go on--beyond whether a lunar base really makes sense. But manned asteroid missions first--ahead of a lunar base--are drawing strong attention,” he adds.

Hubbard and Lou Friedman are co-hosting the event along with former astronaut, and associate dean of the University of Virginia’s Science, Technology and Society Department, Kathy Thornton. An astronaut with four space shuttle missions, including the initial critical repair of the Hubble Space Telescope back in 1993, the three together add real credibility to the meeting.

Consider the news that man has landed upon an asteroid, possibly older than our own moon. Consider that what we learn there may one day save our planet from an asteroid collision, or provide crucial stepping stones in reaching Mars. It is no surprise that the Moon is part of our history, and should not be part of our future.