It’s probably pointless to point it out, but Mark Whittington once again demonstrates his profound inability to comprehend English:
…last April, President Barack Obama was quite specific that the Moon would be excluded from any program of space exploration.
“Now, I understand that some believe that we should attempt a return to the surface of the Moon first, as previously planned. But I just have to say pretty bluntly here: We’ve been there before. Buzz has been there. There’s a lot more of space to explore, and a lot more to learn when we do”
Lori Garver herself pointedly excluded the Moon in a speech before a meeting of the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics about her vision for the next fifty years in space.
In Whittingtonworld, not going someplace first is an “exclusion” of it. No one familiar with logic would draw such a conclusion. No one in the administration has said that we are not going back to the moon. All that the new policy does is remove it as the first target (as the Augustine panel suggested last year, for good reason). In fact, that is the only significant difference between the new policy and the original VSE, which was distorted beyond recognition by Mike Griffin’s determination to redo Apollo. As for Lori neglecting to specifically mention the moon in her speech in Anaheim (for which I was present), that was also not a “pointed exclusion.” A “pointed exclusion” would have been something like, “We are going beyond earth orbit, to asteroids and Mars, but not the moon.”
And of course, Mark continues to delude himself that what any president (particularly a likely one termer) states as a goal in space is going to matter a decade later, and doesn’t realize that Americans are no better at ten-year plans than Lenin was.
But as I said, it’s fruitless to expect Mark to get simple things like this right.
So, under Obamaspace, when are we returning to the Moon? I would like to pin it down to a year, since we’re going to an asteroid, Obama says in 2025, NASA says in 2031. I can find nothing in any speech or document that suggests this. If you have inside, secret knowledge, the world would like you to share.
Just two points of correction.
First, the Augustine Committee also presented a number of Moon First options.
Second, I have been saying in a number of venues that this travesty is going to be revisited as early as the next Congress. I am tickled to see a reference to Lenin though.
So, under Obamaspace, when are we returning to the Moon?
No one knows. And no one knew under BushSpace, either. But it’s likely to happen sooner than it would have with Constellation, and be more sustainable.
Well, the official date for return to the Moon under Constellation was 2020. I had seen a 2029 date from various Constellation critics, which I assume is the one you would be more likely to agree with. Mind, the answer “no one knows” is a pretty revealing. In any case, under Obamaspace, I can safely say that it will not be before 2029 or 2059
Today’s Houston Chronicle’s lunar obit:
Good night, moon: The point of no return
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/7230097.html
[…When President Barack Obama signs the landmark White House-Congress compromise into law in coming days, it will kill any possibility of U.S.-only moon landings in the early 21st century. And it confirms the demise of a planned moon lander known as Altair and revises exploration so thoroughly that returning to the lunar surface will require foreign nations chipping in up to $2 billion a year – a collaborative scenario considered unlikely.
……..”Some believe that we should attempt a return to the surface of the moon as previously planned,” Obama told NASA employees on Florida’s space coast. “But I just have to say pretty bluntly here: We’ve been there before. Buzz (Aldrin) has been there. There’s a lot more of space to explore and a lot more to learn when we do.”
…Yet, as Obama has established, the moon today just doesn’t hold the allure it once did.
Barely 40 percent of America’s population today is old enough to remember Armstrong lumbering off the foot pad of the moon lander to plant his foot on the lunar surface. “That’s one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind.”
That moment was so weighted with national prestige and the fear of failure that President Richard Nixon had speech writer William Safire quietly pen a eulogy to the astronauts in case they didn’t make it, which didn’t become public until 1999.
“Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace,” the speech draft said. “For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.”]
I can safely say that it will not be before 2029 or 2059
You can certainly say that, but it’s quite foolish to think you can “safely” do so, if by that you mean there is any kind of certainty that you are correct.
In Whittingtonworld, not going someplace first is an “exclusion” of it. No one familiar with logic would draw such a conclusion.
In this case, I have to defend Mark. The logic follows:
In Whittingtonworld, NASA’s first (and only) goal must be to keep human spaceflight expensive so that no one except NASA can afford to go the Moon. That will have the side effect of making it too expensive for anyone, even NASA, to ever go beyond the Moon.
So, under Obamaspace, when are we returning to the Moon? I would like to pin it down to a year, since we’re going to an asteroid, Obama says in 2025, NASA says in 2031.
Who is “we” ?
Depends on what you mean by “we” i can give you a few answers : if “we” includes you personally, then the answer with very high certainty is “never”, which did not change with Obama’s policy.
If you meant to say “they” as in someone else, you have to specify very clearly who did you mean by that ?
For instance, the nearest term thing to return to the moon is Chang’e 2, i.e. chinese lunar orbiter.
Next, it could be a number of other options, including chinese planned lander in 2013, or one of the Google lunar X-Prize landers.
If you meant “they” as in humans, its really tough to say. Any number of rich philanthropists could probably book a $100M ride with Soyuz around the moon as of today.
Or if you meant “they” as in NASA-employed astronauts, its even fuzzier. Because under Constellation they didn’t have any chance of getting there in any predictable timeframe, and this hasn’t not changed with the new signed policy.
> Well, the official date for return to the Moon under Constellation was 2020. I had seen a 2029 date from various Constellation critics
I’m not sure about what “Constellation critics” have said, but last year the Augustine Committee’s blue-ribbon panel found that under the program of record, the Ares V wouldn’t be developed until “the late 2020s,” and lunar landers and surface systems couldn’t be developed until “well into the 2030s.” Of course, that’s only possible if you ditch the ISS into the ocean in 2016.
I plan to become a millionaire. With the uncertainty of wealth building in general and the current economy in particular, setting a particular year is a goal with no meaning.
Just because I have a plan to accomplish this particular goal does not mean that it is going to happen according to some particular timetable. Five years from the time the construction market recovers is very possible, but it is not a hard date that can be written in stone.
Guarantees are worth about what you pay for them, and in spaceflight, many people with no skin in the game seem to be demanding them as their God given right.
From Space Politics on a talk by Lori Garver in May:
http://www.spacepolitics.com/2010/05/30/rallying-the-troops/
“She later added that even though the new plan does not explicitly include a lunar landing, “we are not giving up on the Moon.” She said under the program of record we weren’t going to the Moon in the foreseeable future anyway because of those cost and schedule issues, and that the plans for lunar return that did exist were regressing to “flags and footprints” missions rather than something sustainable. The capabilities that would be developed in the new plan “will allow us to go back to the Moon and stay much earlier than the program of record.”
Bolden, Garver, and various other NASA representatives have been saying this all along. They’ve backed it up with the lunar data purchase, a robotic precursor mission to the Moon, lunar ISRU technology development, EDL technology development, and many other technologies of use on, or getting to, the Moon. Congress chopped off most of that, though.
Basically, before Congress got its say, they were moving up the date for the Moon and getting to a bunch of other destinations even before that by getting rid of the wasteful Constellation program, and replacing it with affordable commercial capabilities, robotic precursor missions, and technologies needed to reach these destinations.
The fact that a date isn’t attached to the Moon is meaningless for an approach that develops technologies before building a transportation architecture based on those technologies. We have to see what technologies succeed, what robotic precursor lessons are learned, and what level of success commercial providers achieve first. Making up a date is meaningless in such an approach, but Constellation shows how meaningless it is anyway with a NASA big iron approach.
We need to take steps in the right direction, not try to jump the whole way all in 1 big, multi-decade leap over a cliff.
If “we” means NASA astronauts, “we” will likely never return to the moon.
If “we” means “the National Geographic Society” or some other private adventure, I’d guess “we” will likely return to the moon within ten years.
Well, the official date for return to the Moon under Constellation was 2020. I had seen a 2029 date from various Constellation critics, which I assume is the one you would be more likely to agree with. Mind, the answer “no one knows” is a pretty revealing. In any case, under Obamaspace, I can safely say that it will not be before 2029 or 2059
Even if you are right about “Obamaspace”, that still compares well with Constellation. Same results for a lower price. The thing to remember is that Ares V is the “bait” part of a bait and switch. Griffin sold us Ares V and delivered a pork project (Ares I) for ATK. There’s no reason to expect that Ares V would ever be developed much less that it would lead to lunar missions.
Ares makes little financial or even technical sense. It does not deliver any new technology which could significantly change the economics of access to space and it duplicates capabilities which the EELV heavy vehicles already have.
There are two ways of proceeding. Either reduce the cost of access to space, which Shuttle attempted to do and failed, or improve ISRU to the point where you do not need to launch as much payload.
The private sector seems to be interested in working on reducing the cost of access to space. ISRU is much less developed. So it is just a matter of directing government spending to where it could be most useful.
NASA still could do work on space access technology but at this point it should be done together with the private sector. There still seems to be a need for testing facilities.
Space launch technology seems to have fossilized since the 1970s. The only thing which has improved are the control systems.
I refuse to think that propulsion is a done deal. The idea space has not been explored properly.
I also think the RLV idea can work but it needs more vehicle iterations. It was premature to expect the Shuttle design to be perfect without doing more small scale prototypes first. From my point of view Shuttle failed because it is not a true RLV and tried too much to be like an airplane.
No, Mark is right! We need a fixed date that we can missing horribly with no consequences to “motivate” people to waste their life achieving an unobtainable goal that would be completely irrelevant even if it was achieved.
And to think, the other week Mark was going on about Lori not dreaming big enough.
When the US entered World War II, it did not have a schedule giving the exact date and time for every bombing mission on Berlin and Tokyo. When Southwest Airlines was founded, it did not have a schedule for every destination it would fly to over the next 30 years.
Does the great historian Mark Whittington think there were never any bombing missions on Berlin or Tokyo, and Southwest doesn’t fly any commercial flights?
You people are weird. By this logic, if I say that I am going on a European tour and am going to London, Paris, and Rome, then you all would say that I must also be going to Brussels, Madrid, and maybe Copenhagen because I did not *specifically* rule them out.
Sorry, under Obamaspace, no American would go back to the Moon. Obama could not have been more clear April 15. He did specifically rule out the Moon.
By the way, my piece got picked up by Yahoo News.
That “first” in Obama’s speech is an important qualifier, Mark. You discredit yourself to ignore it, though I do think his “been there, done that” quip was off-the-cuff and unhelpful to the debate.
To borrow from your analogy, just because you say that you’re going to London, Paris, and Rome, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t or won’t go to Brussels, Madrid, or Copenhagen, as well. In fact, such excursions are quite possible because of the well-developed transportation network.
That’s the whole point behind the new plan of developing NASA’s portfolio of space technology and in-space transportation systems. The goal is to provide the vehicles and tools such that we can eventually go anywhere we decide is worth our time.
if I say that I am going on a European tour and am going to London, Paris, and Rome
How do you know you are going to these cities before you do so? If I know that you are flying to Madrid first, and will have $20 in your pocket left over to pay for visits to these locations, I would be justifiably skeptical about your ability to achieve you itinerary. Especially, if you have a reputation as a lousy planner.
If on the other hand, we know you’re going to be traveling for six months in Europe, it’s not unreasonable to expect that you’ll visit more places than the few that you told us you were going to visit.
Personally, I don’t know whether the US will return to the Moon by 2069. But I think it’s irrationally to look at the empty promises of the Constellation program and claim that we’d have been to the Moon by 2029 (or indeed by any time frame). Keep in mind that as of early 2009, the schedule had already slipped four years and they were still five or more years from reinventing the wheel (Ares I just being another version of the Delta IV Heavy).
I think from a space activities point of view, the plan was wholly unrealistic. There’s no indication that Congress will ever pay Apollo levels of money again, which is what we’d need in order to have an Ares V, an ISS, and a space program that uses that Ares V to do interesting things.
My take is that the actual outcome of continuing Constellation would have been development of a manned Ares I, some time in the latter half of the 2010s and little progress beyond that to an Ares V. At which point, NASA would go through, again, the spasms of developing a new launch vehicle. The only difference is that we’d be a decade further along than we currently are, with the same lack of result.
@Rand:
Abandoning permanent settlement of the moon goes well beyond a “significant difference.” Damn Constellation or no, everyone knew in 2004 that lunar return was the linchpin of the Vision and that the budget would reflect as much.
@Trent:
Irrelevant? Like ISS? Or space telescopes? Or “Earth science?” Or five sixths of your beloved budget request *not* chopped to see whether the private sector can deliver cheaper access to space?
Considering that Dragon at some point may have landing gear added for landing on solid ground; Could it land on the moon? Would it then have enough fuel to return to lunar orbit? Even without crew and cargo?
How hard would it be (after DC-X) to make a fully reusable lunar lander?
Abandoning permanent settlement of the moon goes well beyond a “significant difference.”
Sorry, I guess I missed the part where “Apollo on Steroids” was “permanent settlement of the moon.”
@Rand:
Nah, you didn’t. You missed the part where somebody leads us from the failure of Constellation in particular and Government Rockets in general to the notion that NASA should abandon plans for the indefinite future to return Americans–permanently–to the most immediately worthwhile destination. As your fond of pointing, the architecture is not the vision.
I get the so-called plan. Carve out enough for aeronautics and commercial crew and cargo over the next decade and pray that the kernel of an orbital industry emerges, an industry that can build outward and reach ultimately to wherever we want to go. Let enterprise decide when and how we get to the Moon. Sounds sexy as hell to the libertarian ear, until you realize how a similar story play out only two years ago. A story that differed only by a couple of words. Words like “green jobs” and “stimulus.”
I get the so-called plan. Carve out enough for aeronautics and commercial crew and cargo over the next decade and pray that the kernel of an orbital industry emerges, an industry that can build outward and reach ultimately to wherever we want to go. Let enterprise decide when and how we get to the Moon.
No, that’s not the plan, though it would be nice if it happened. The plan is to force NASA to start doing things smart instead of dumb, and wean it from the pork, so that it can explore affordably and sustainably.
Pork may be the only thing sustaining NASA. Not sure if that’s good or bad.