Kennedy asked the question forty-eight years ago. Dennis Wingo, Paul Spudis and Gordon Woodcock answer it.
56 thoughts on “Why The Moon?”
Comments are closed.
Kennedy asked the question forty-eight years ago. Dennis Wingo, Paul Spudis and Gordon Woodcock answer it.
Comments are closed.
Great Essay of why the Moon.
However the problem as I stated before is NASA has neither the organizational culture, structure, will or ability to carry out such an economic focused development of the Moon. Its just not in NASA’s DNA.
And the people that created NASA understood this. That is why NASA was NOT given the lead on the first two space goals in Kennedy’s famous speech, comsats and weather sats. Instead a public-private corporation, Communication Satellites Corporation, was charged with the challenge of creating a global satellite communication system while the U.S. Weather Bureau was give the job of Weather Satellites.
We need to learn from the founders of NASA and create a Lunar Economic Development Corporation to carry out the lunar return and not try to transform NASA into something it will never be. Until then it will just be false starts and spinning wheels.
The next step in our space program is the development of a true space faring civilization using the Moon as a stepping stone.
I can agree with that but not the next sentence…
Elements of such a system include a lunar spaceport, settlement, and industrial infrastructure to support the further economic development of the Solar System.
I strongly believe that spending major resources developing the Moon beyond testing systems will adversely affect the economic development of the Solar System. It’s a diversion that will slow economic development and not just for decades.
What kind of spaceport does the Moon need? A fueling station for a lander? Maybe, maybe not.
Settlement means children being born. Temporary workers cycling through is not a (permanent) settlement. Any child born in Earth orbit (which includes the Moon) will be an earth child, not part of a growing settlement (not in this century.)
Industrialization means major infrastructure investment and a certain level of production beyond proof of concept.
If you agree that a settlement must be able to grow itself, then the moon is not the place to be spending resources. The Moon only makes sense if it’s an endpoint… either the begin or end point.
It makes no sense as a refueling stop as others have calculated and posted on this blog.
“Dennis Wingo, Paul Spudis and Gordon Woodcock answer it.”
I think they answer the question “Why the moon as opposed to Mars?” adequately but the question “Why the moon at all?” still goes begging.
It makes no sense as a refueling stop as others have calculated and posted on this blog.
No one has ever proposed that the moon be used as a “refueling stop.” That’s like saying that you use Venezuela as a “refueling stop” when you get gas at your local station.
But they have Rand, which is why others on this blog have done the calculations; however, I agree with your point. The Moon certainly could be a source for an orbital refueling station.
But they have Rand
Who has?
Great article, two concerns I would have are the tendency to use the prospect of spin off technologies to justify space (which is not sound) – direct economic arguments are required. And the emphasis on the moon instead of just getting into space. Sure I like the moon, but it is not the crux of the problem, and it is but one solution.
Ten habitats say twenty meters in diameter by fifty meters long in LEO might be cheaper and more interesting (orbital assembly). Then start buying and refining resources in LEO – sourced from the Earth, Moon, Mars, NEOs, etc., wherever is cheaper and easier (initial commercial prospecting mining expeditions?). Let the market decide, and grow. LEO is a far easier place to do R&D than the moon, it is also a far easier place to get a substantial space presence – much closer to Earth. And then, well, LEO is halfway to anywhere…
Pete.
Let me see if I can search your archives.
My blog doesn’t exist anymore (what should I expect for free?) so I can’t use it to find links (which I remember linking to at least one of the posts.) I don’t see how to search your old archives which is where I expect to find several cases where people have done the calculations. So I’m afraid I can’t answer the question of who. Your point is the important one, the moon can be a resource.
I would still emphasize that too big an investment in the Moon will seriously delay economic growth in the solar system.
I would still emphasize that too big an investment in the Moon will seriously delay economic growth in the solar system.
If there is potential for economic growth in the rest of the solar system, it won’t matter what’s happening on the moon.
Making an opportunity cost argument is always a difficult thing to do.
Making an opportunity cost argument is always a difficult thing to do.
I suspect that the market, if we let it work, will figure out how to allocate those resources better than you can.
I have suggested using lunar propellants for other use at times. A vehicle that is topped off in high lunar orbit can swing close to earth for a perigee burn to destinations elsewhere. Very effective propellant usage.
This supposes that collecting lunar propellants is economical.
Rand, you know I believe in the free market and agree. That doesn’t invalidate my opinion. As a matter of fact, my opinion (of little value though it may be) is part of that free market. I would certainly hope it would allocate resources better than you or I could because that’s the principle we hold in common.
But we’re not really talking about the free market here, are we? We’re talking about billions of dollars only partially coming from the free market, the majority coming from extortion.
I’d like to see the government trimmed to almost nothing, just defense with the three branches sticking to there job as outlined in the constitution. My hope is that while NASA is wasting money on the Moon, private enterprise will find it’s own markets beyond Earth orbit.
I’d like to see the government trimmed to almost nothing, just defense with the three branches sticking to there job as outlined in the constitution. My hope is that while NASA is wasting money on the Moon, private enterprise will find it’s own markets beyond Earth orbit.
Under this construction the Erie canal would not have been built and the development of the northeast would have not happened.
Under this construction the national railroad would not have been built and the development of the midwest and the farm belt would have been held up probably for decades.
Under this construction there would have been No Panama Canal, no national highway system and no interstate highway system. In other words we would be a lot like Russia with an economy of like size.
Dennis, you are assuming that large projects like these can’t happen without a government deciding what us poor serfs need or that alternatives might not have been even better. I think the argument that we’ve been held back is much stronger than the argument that government has moved us forward.
The reason we have had a greater economy than Russia is because of the attitude of our people, not the projects of our government.
Dennis, you are assuming that large projects like these can’t happen without a government deciding what us poor serfs need or that alternatives might not have been even better. I think the argument that we’ve been held back is much stronger than the argument that government has moved us forward.
For over 30 years people wanted to do the national railroad but there were no takers. The French tried the Panama canal and failed.
The problem is that the ROI for such ventures (including the interstate highway system) is on the order of decades. No venture capital has ever invested on this scale of time, even with the eventual return far larger than the investment. This is what governments do best. They are theoretically looking toward the long term.
There is absolutely zero evidence that private enterprise would have done these large projects. Even during the most rapid part of raliroad expansion in the U.S. in the 1840-60 time period, it was mostly funded by the states involved.
States competiting is the next best thing to free enterprise.
Do you really think the Panama canal wasn’t going to happen without big government? It just would have happened differently.
Do you really think the Panama canal wasn’t going to happen without big government? It just would have happened differently.
Again, where is your evidence of private enterprise doing this type of large scale effort (oh by the way, you had to split off Panama from Columbia to get the project started at all).
I do agree that states competing with economic incentives is a good thing and I wish more of it would happen.
Ken,
For the record. Private enterprise tired to build the Panama Canal for nearly 30 years and failed. The U.S. government came in and built it in less then a decade, and over a year ahead of schedule.
Since 1914 there have been a number of private schemes to build another canal. None have succeeded.
There are things that private enterprise is very good at. And there are things the government is good at. The key is to understand the advantages and disadvantages of both.
Rand,
Interesting story.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/090629-uranium-moon.html
Uranium Found on the Moon
By Clara Moskowitz Staff Writer
posted: 29 June 2009 05:59 pm ET
Of course the question is what would it take to mine it and refine it.
But nuclear rockets are the key to the solar system. The problem is the greens go psycho if you try to launch radioactive material from the Earth.
Matching nuclear rockets built and placed unfueled in lunar orbit by chemical rockets with nuclear fuels from the Moon would open up the solar system and reduce travel time to Mars to weeks instead of months. One more reason the moon is first.
We need to learn from the founders of NASA and create a Lunar Economic Development Corporation
It sort of exists already ( http://www.8cproject.com/ )
Not that I am any sort of an expert in the field, but I think the Moon is simply a means to and end. The idea is that the government steps up and orders the outpost/expedition/(insert goal here). By picking the right architecture for the goal several important milestones are reached that apply to a space faring civilization in general such as lower cost access to space and such. Its the milestones that are important almost more so than the goal. The wrong architecture leaves the milestones unreached and us, 30 years later, still in the spot we are today. The free market will pick the winners as far as what happens over the long run using what we have learned in the attempt to colonize our nearby neighbor.
The problem is that the ROI for such ventures (including the interstate highway system) is on the order of decades. No venture capital has ever invested on this scale of time
Constantly repeating something doesn’t make it true, Dennis. If you did some research on highway financing, you’d discover how wrong you are.
To give just one example:
TX – On June 29, 2006, Cintra-Zachry signed a $1.3 billion, 50-year lease agreement to build 40 miles of toll roads from Austin to Seguin. The company will collect most of the tolls during the time of the lease.
That’s from a website (http://www.naftasuperhighway.info) devoted entirely to screaming about the sort of highway projects you say have “never” existed.
John Stossel just did a 20/20 report that completely refutes your claims about highway funding.
Also, no matter what you believe, the Erie Canal was not built or financed by the Federal government. Neither were the railroads.
This is what governments do best. They are theoretically looking toward the long term.
That’s a nice theory, Dennis, right up there with Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.
What you refuse to recognize is that there are plenty of space projects whose ROI is not decades in the future. They may not be as sexy as an immediate sprint to the Moon or Mars or Epsilon Eridani, but they will develop the capability to live and work in space affordably, which will make it possible to go to those places sustainably and affordably. That’s something your dream of another Apollo program cannot do. If it could, the children of Apollo would be living on the Moon right now, just like in Mark Whittington’s fantasy novel.
You’re like a man standing on the beach at Kitty Hawk, screaming and shouting that all aircraft development must cease until after you generate a market for 747s by building a huge international airport and gambling resort in the Nevada desert. You want to jump over all the intermediate steps because you think that will be faster. It won’t be. It never is. Without realizing it, you’re undermining the very steps that are necessary to obtain the goals you want.
By the way, Dennis, the Japanese just found uranium on the Moon.
It will be interested to hear what your “greatest natural supporters” say about that.
the Japanese just found uranium on the Moon.
Very impressive. The rest of us have known about it since Apollo 11 returned the first samples from the Moon in 1969.
The French tried the Panama canal and failed.
The Irony here is that failure is the greatest advantage of free enterprise and why it works. When government fails they fail big and people are hurt. When private enterprise fails (as many always will) the pain is isolated and often points to a way to succeed. I seem to remember government competing with two bicycle makers from Ohio. How’d that turn out?
To say that short term ROI is all that matters is to insult histories innovators. It’s easy to point to big projects and ignore all the little projects that are much greater in magnitude when combined.
Once we start exploiting the resources in our solar system I believe you will see many projects done by private companies that many would think only governments could do. We’re already seeing it and much more will come.
Our very existence as a nation, something I never thought would happen, is now at risk thanks to a guy that never managed anything in his life and is now community organizing every aspect of our life, damn the cost, as fast as he can.
In space we can probably expect the abuses of company towns to occur, but I’m hoping enough diverse companies compete that such is limited.
Competition is the key to freedom. May tens of thousands of companies find their niche in space. May millions of individuals make property claims off Earth and be able to defend them.
I look forward greatly to the coming land rush.
Paul, did we know where the ore was concentrated in 1969?
So it’s not lost in this discussion, Dennis and Paul, you wrote a great article and I look forward to reading others by you.
did we know where the ore was concentrated in 1969?
No, we found that out in 1971, when the Apollo 15 command module carried a gamma-ray spectrometer in lunar orbit. That data showed three areas of high concentration of the heat-producing elements U, Th and 40 K. The results became global in 1998 with the flight of Lunar Prospector. All orbital results to date (including Kaguya) rely on ground truth from samples returned by Apollo.
The Kaguya result is merely the identification of a new U line in the spectra; we knew already where the high concentrations of U were; we just had to infer its presence from the combined U-Th-40K gamma ray line.
Just curious, did those posts address what john stated:
I remember that was a key component in Heinleins “The Rolling Stones”, though it was mostly lunar surface launches. But the theory seemed pretty sound, and Heinlein almost always used his engineering background to keep his stories grounded.
TX – On June 29, 2006, Cintra-Zachry signed a $1.3 billion, 50-year lease agreement to build 40 miles of toll roads from Austin to Seguin.
Talk to me Ed when a private company actually goes beyond marketing materials for a cross country interstate. Even the one that you note could not exist within the existing national infrastructure. You would do better to use some of the private canals in England built in the 1700’s as your proof. Oh wait, the King and parliment provided a guaranteed ROI for those as well.
Rome? Nope.
Turning to more fruitful topics, I do think that the uranium thing is interesting (I do agree with Paul that we have known about it for a long time). We had a germanium detector on our proposed Lunar Resource mapper in 1992 but our dear congress took the money back after the contract was awarded. Bill Boynton later used the same device to find all that water on Mars.
The bottom line is that there are tremendous resources on the Moon and for those who think that robots can do it all, there is a new website dedicated to cheerleading JPL to get the Spirit rover out of a sand hazard on Mars.
Ken,
Interesting story of the failure of French Canal. Note that the entrepreneurs were sentenced to 5 years in jail for misleading investors. The failure basically crashed the Paris market.
http://www.pancanal.com/eng/history/history/french.html
The reasons the French failed was they tried to do it on the cheap. So they ignored the problem of mosquitoes and Yellow Fever. They also ignored logistics.
When the American government came in the first thing they did before turning a shovel of dirt was to eliminate the mosquitoes by paving roads and eliminating breeding sites. Then they transformed the rickety one line railroad the French were using for supplies to a modern high volume two line railroad. THEN they started work on the canal.
Faster and cheaper is not necessary either. The same story occurred when private firms tried building railroads in Alaska. Then the U.S. government came in and did it right. Instead of starting at Seward they just established an anchorage as close to Fairbanks as they could fine. Yes, Anchorage AK. You could also look at the western irrigation projects that started as farmers co-ops then had to be fixed by the U.S. government.
The key is you use the organization model that gets the job done, what used to be known as American Pragmatism, instead of worrying about the political ideology behind it, something I find space advocates spend far too much time on. American was not built 100% by private effort – if that had been tried Illinois and Wisconsin would still be wilderness. Nor was it built 100% by public efforts. It was built by combing the best of both.
BTW the American engineer, John Frank Stevens, who started the Panama Canal cleaning up the mosquitoes and rebuilding the railroad, may have gotten a government paycheck, but he made his fortune building Jim Hill’s Great Northern. Yes, he didn’t need the job, he made a fortune working for Mr. Hill, nor then he need to risk his life to Yellow Fever that killed so many of the French, but he took it because he felt the canal was important to the nation’s future. You see 100 years ago America was too focused on building the future to worry about debating the ideology of how it was done. Come to thing of it that was the attitude during Apollo as well. Perhaps there is a lesson there for space advocates?
Apollo was not “building the future.” It was a big first step on a dead-end highway.
Talk to me Ed when a private company actually goes beyond marketing materials for a cross country interstate. Even the one that you note could not exist within the existing national infrastructure.
You’re sounding more and more like Robert Oler every day, Dennis.
If you did a little reading, you would discover that these aren’t just marketing materials. Private highways can and do exist, whether they fit your idea of political correctness or not.
If you can’t take the time to read, maybe you can at least watch television?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtwdVInR1Gw&feature=related
The bottom line is that there are tremendous resources on the Moon and for those who think that robots can do it all, there is a new website dedicated to cheerleading JPL to get the Spirit rover out of a sand hazard on Mars.
What’s your point, Dennis? I tried telling you that years ago. I’ll tell you know — you aren’t going to build a complete mining and manufacturing infrastructure on the Moon with four people sitting in a Constellation capsule. It’s going to take a lot more people than you think. You don’t have a way of getting humans to the Moon cheaply enough, in sufficient numbers, to do anything economically effective, and in your madness you’re determined to make it even *more* expensive to send humans into space. You guys are your own worst enemies!
Uranium Found on the Moon
By Clara Moskowitz Staff Writer
posted: 29 June 2009 05:59 pm ET
Of course the question is what would it take to mine it and refine it.
Mining uranium on the moon makes very little sense. There is no great shortage of uranium on Earth, and it will be a very long time before putative lunar mining and enrichment equipment could turn out their own mass in enriched uranium. It makes more sense to just ship enriched uranium into space directly, if there is a demand for it there.
I’ll add the concentrations of uranium we’re talking about them observing on the moon are far lower than in terrestrial ores. There might be concentrated lunar ores somewhere (although uranium ore forming processes typically involve fluids that would be hard to find on the moon), but satellite gamma ray sensing would have only detected averages over broad areas.
It makes more sense to just ship enriched uranium into space directly, if there is a demand for it there.
In a sane world, yes. But I can just imagine the battles we’ll go through to convince people that it’s safe to launch enriched uranium as a payload to space.
If we want to establish ourselves permanently we can’t be building things that are easy to abandon. Now everybody sing along… DUH!
Leave the machines, bring the people home… that’s how easy it is to abandon most places. Really easy if the plan all along was to bring the people home. The Moon being the example of been there, done that. Now it’s 40 years later.
So permanent strongly suggests that a percentage of the humans travel one way, which greatly simplifies requirements so more can go.
Robots are wonderful, as are other machines that give us leverage but humans are not yet obsolete. If you expect industry, you need lot’s of humans.
A few humans are trailblazers, they find out what it takes to survive and many trailblazers will die as a result. This is part of the frontier spirit. Happily there are no shortage of volunteers.
What’s hard to abandon? A thriving city with families. The ONLY thing preventing us from starting now is the will to do it. Everything else that people argue for begins to happen at a faster pace after a colony has been established. We need to establish it in the place best suited for independent survival (even if that independence may take some time.) I don’t believe that means a can of humans (even if it’s a big can) drifting in space which requires a constant input of outside resources (energy may be abundant, but you need hundreds or thousands of other things as well, constantly.)
I want humans everywhere in the solar system, free and pursuing there happiness. This is why I say “Colonize Mars Now” not by government, but by people with or without the support of governments.
“A few humans are trailblazers, they find out what it takes to survive and many trailblazers will die as a result. This is part of the frontier spirit. Happily there are no shortage of volunteers.”
Curiously, there *is* a shortage of colonists.
“I want humans everywhere in the solar system, free and pursuing there happiness.”
You apparently don’t care to be numbered among them.
“This is why I say “Colonize Mars Now” not by government, but by people with or without the support of governments.”
Have you considered leading by example?
>Curiously, there *is* a shortage of colonists.
Wrong. Try again.
>You apparently don’t care to be numbered among them.
Wrong. Strike two.
>Have you considered leading by example?
Strike three… yer outa there. I’d love to lead by example.
Mining uranium on the moon makes very little sense. There is no great shortage of uranium on Earth, and it will be a very long time before putative lunar mining and enrichment equipment could turn out their own mass in enriched uranium.
The same can be said for Helium 3, platinum group metals, etc. A full-scale mining operation is going to require a lot more infrastructure than the Moonies believe.
Building the research base at the South Pole required hundreds of flights, each one carrying about as much cargo as a Saturn V (or Ares or Jupiter or Shuttle C) can land on the Moon. That’s in a place where resources like air and water are free for the taking. Building a mining camp on the Moon is clearly going to be a much bigger deal, and Congress is clearly not going to give NASA enough money to buy hundreds of Shuttles C no how badly Senator Shelby wants it.
It isn’t clear whether the Moonies know that. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of arrogance in the space community. People who have never done mining, operated a transportation system, or built a base think that they are experts on all those things, and they refuse to listen to people who have actual experience.
I once had breakfast with the guy who designed the South Pole base. He called NASA and offered his services, right after Bush’s big speech. They wouldn’t even talk to him.
As another example, Spudis, Wingo, and Woodcock claim “Reusable space vehicles, described below, can be introduced even before reusable launchers since their development is less challenging and less costly.”
Humans have built rockets that are capable of reaching Earth orbit and rockets capable of landing on the Moon. Those things are not new. What’s new is making the rockets reusable, so they can be maintained between flights.
Common sense suggests that it will be easier to maintain a rocket on Earth, where there is easy access to spare parts, tool bins, machine shops, etc., than on the Moon, where there’s nothing except what you bring with you. Yet, the Moonies think it will be easier to maintain and reuse rockets on the Moon?! How’s that again?
I once made Dennis angry when I pointed out that a lunar lander was a complex machine, comparable to a jet fighter, and maintaining it would require a similar range of skills. He thinks it can be done by a robot and one guy with a wrench. It can’t. If it could, the Air Force would have only one mechanic per fighter squadron.
Then there’s the matter of how you test the vehicle. A suborbital or Earth-to-orbit RLV can be tested incrementally. A lunar lander pretty much has to work perfectly, all the way down to the lunar surface, the first time.
That’s why the Lunar Lander Challenge is testing vehicles on Earth instead of the Moon.
If Dennis wants to get serious about lunar development, he should talk to people who’ve successfully built bases, worked in the mining industry, maintained aircraft, competed in Lunar Lander Challenges, etc.
Of course, if he did that, he might no longer be welcome in Huntsville. 🙂
Then there’s the matter of how you test the vehicle. A suborbital or Earth-to-orbit RLV can be tested incrementally. A lunar lander pretty much has to work perfectly, all the way down to the lunar surface, the first time.
That’s nonsense, Ed. A lunar lander can easily be tested incrementally–it just has to be done in space.
for those who think that robots can do it all, there is a new website dedicated to cheerleading JPL to get the Spirit rover out of a sand hazard on Mars.
Dennis, I tried telling you that when Marshall wanted to spend $2 billion developing an unmanned lunar lander.
I pointed out that for less than that, you could probably buy the Russian lunar lander, refurbish it, and send a human *and* a robot.
Do you remember your response?
By the way, how’s that robotic lander coming along? 🙂
That’s nonsense, Ed. A lunar lander can easily be tested incrementally–it just has to be done in space.
A lander, by definition, is a machine that lands. How you test that in space?
You could go part way to the lunar surface and come back, like Apollo 10, but that’s not an easier, incremental landing. It’s no landing at all.
Then there’s the ascent phase, where you either you stay on the Moon or you make it into orbit. Anything in between is fatal (at least until there is a lunar rescue capability). Not much opportunity for incremental testing there.
A lander, by definition, is a machine that lands. How you test that in space?
A lander is just a space vehicle that has to deliver delta vee and attitude control in measurable and controllable increments in a vacuum. If you were talking about Mars, you might have a point but this is the moon.
It’s not in any way comparable to a launch system. There is no atmosphere to deal with, it’s a very low delta-vee mission. It’s just not that hard. NASA managed to get it right the first time, forty years ago, and got better with every mission.
Ed
In its simplest form, a lander is no more moving parts than a few valves and a means to vary the thrust. It does not have to be complicated, especially when you have an analog meat computer to control it.
A lander is just a space vehicle that has to deliver delta vee and attitude control in measurable and controllable increments in a vacuum.
By that definition, Gemini was a lander.
I was using it to mean “a space vehicle that has to land on a solid body.” And usually take off again, if it’s a human lander.
NASA managed to get it right the first time, forty years ago
Thanks to a large degree of luck. There was a significant pucker factor in the first landing.
a lander is no more moving parts than a few valves and a means to vary the thrust. It does not have to be complicated,
Dennis, NASA is planning to spend $10 billion developing the lander. For reference, that’s twice what MSFC estimated it would cost to develop 2GRLV and several times what McDAC estimated it would cost to develop DC-Y.
Do you really think that NASA’s going to spend that much money on a lander and it *won’t* be complicated.
A lander needs to have a lot more than “a few valves and a means to vary the thrust.” There’s life support; communications; guidance, navigation, and control; docking hardware, payload interfaces, seats, windows, doors, landing gear, rocket engines. Even the Gemini “bug” was more complicated than “a few valves and a means to vary the thrust,” and the Apollo LM was a *lot* more complicated.
I’m delighted to see you arguing for simplicity (although you overdo it here). If you remember the last XPC, I was trying to convince you NASA should build the simplest, cheapest lunar lander possible; you were doing a study that argued for the 747 of lunar landers.
especially when you have an analog meat computer to control it.
You’re now admitting humans make better pilots than the HAL 9000?
There may be some hope for you yet. 🙂
By that definition, Gemini was a lander.
Obviously, it also has to have a sufficient T/W on the planet on which it’s landing. This both goes without saying, and is irrelevant to the point.
Dennis, NASA is planning to spend $10 billion developing the lander.
Since when did you consider NASA a reliable source on the difficulty of doing something?
Give it up, Ed.