18 thoughts on “Back To The Moon”

1. Pulham makes this interesting comment:

   We saw this in 1972, when the Apollo program was prematurely ended before accomplishing all of its goals.

   Which goals did Apollo fail to achieve?

   1. Good question.

      1. The government had already purchased the Saturn Vs for Apollo 18, 19, and 20. IIRC, there was some discussion of sending one of those missions to lunar farside. There were also other places on the moon they wanted to explore.

         One of those flight-ready Saturn Vs was used to launch Skylab. Had that failed (and it almost did), they could’ve used another to launch the backup Skylab. As it was, two flight-ready and paid for Saturn Vs (including the LMs and all related equipment) amounted to nothing. The rockets were placed on outdoor display for decades before eventually being brought indoors. By then, corrosion in the humid Texas and Florida environments had eaten away quite a bit of the structure.

         They could’ve flown those missions for a fairly low cost since all of the hardware was paid for. In reading Gene Kranz’s book, “Failure is Not an Option”, I got the impression he wanted the missions to be canceled because the risk of losing a crew was so high. He was more interested in protecting NASA as an institution than flying more moon missions. At least, that was my impression.

         1. They could’ve flown those missions for a fairly low cost since all of the hardware was paid for.

            I believe we saved less than $45 million by cancelling those missions. Of course, some of the incentive was safety – fear of losing a crew in cislunar space as Apollo wound down. Apollo 13 put the scare into Nixon, and NASA officials knew it. Still, it seems . . . a very great shame. Lost opportunities.

            But yes, Apollo achieved its stated goal, brilliantly: to land a man on the Moon before the decade was out – and before the Soviets! – and return him safely to the Earth. What happened was that NASA after Apollo 11 had plenty of hardware left, and decided to at least squeeze as much actual science out of it before the hardware ran out, or the program was cancelled. It was this follow-on objective that was not as fully met as many at NASA might have liked. But that was a strictly secondary, tack-on, objective. Apollo was first and foremost about beating the Russkies to the Moon, and that’s the basis it was sold to Congress and the public on.

            It might be better to say: “We saw this in 1972, when the Apollo program was prematurely ended before using up all of its hardware,”

2. There’s been a lot of talk of a moon base on the north or south pole. Everyone’s assuming there are rich deposits of volatile ices in the cold traps. However LRO’s LEND data doesn’t support Spudis’ optimistic predictions.

   If memory serves, the October 2010 issue of science reported the LCROSS ejecta was 5.5% water by mass. There were also other volatiles — carbon dioxide, ammonia, and so on. Then the November 2011 issue published a correction, the team LCROSS team said they had over estimated volatile abundance by a factor of 5.5.

   If the richest lunar water ice deposits are 1%, I’m not sure that’s enough to justify establishing lunar infrastructure.

   Before we place our bets we need to send prospector rovers to the cold traps and find out what the story is.

   1. By all means they should send rovers to look for signs of water ice. However, that will be very difficult. The ice is believed to exist at the bottom of craters that never see sunlight. That means not only are they dark (no solar power) but very cold. A nuclear powered rover like Curiosity would likely be the best bet but RTGs are quite expensive. Waste heat from the RTG would help keep the rover’s systems alive in the extreme cold. Communications from inside a polar crater would be difficult. You’d probably need some communications relay satellites in lunar orbit.

      1. Before we place our bets we need to send prospector rovers to the cold traps and find out what the story is.

         ***

         You’d probably need some communications relay satellites in lunar orbit.

         Perhaps a support station at a lagrange point or any number of things. It is ridiculous that we don’t have a more robust presence around the Moon, Mars, and other areas of interest. Everything we do are hyper-specialized one off creations that serve a narrow set of people.

   2. If it wasn’t for the SLS and JWST maybe there would be a budget left to do something else…

      1. ding ding ding, we have a winner.

3. The last Apollo crew contained the first scientist. I’d call that an aborted project. Or a tragically missed set of opportunities.

   Let’s also remember risk aversion (political) played a role in cancellation. Let’s not do that again. (Wishful dreaming.)

   1. That implies that Apollo was about science. It wasn’t. It accomplished its goal.

4. both the moon and Mars, in proper sequence

   He’s arguing destination while pretending he’s not.

   the essential work of learning to live, thrive and survive on the moon

   …Dr. Spudis on line 2…

5. P.S. Berger is right: The Obama Administration actually has a few space policy successes, mostly revolving around the expansion of commercial cargo and crew to ISS.

   But its role in planetary science has been pretty dismal. It’s a gutted shell of what it used to be, and we’ll feel the effects of that most fully by the end of this decade.

   The reason why isn’t ideologization of NASA, a la the tired trope about Muslim outreach, etc. No, the consistent thread through everything we’ve seen is simply a lack of interest in space, and concomittant lack of committing any political capital to even do much of what its nominal objectives were. It wound down Constellation because it was becoming way too expensive, and it had higher budgetary priorities. When congressional porkmeisters fought back, it folded and gave them what they wanted (SLS and Orion) rather than spend capital fighting them (and planetary science paid the price). It pushed commercial cargo and crew because it was a way of moving things off its plate cheaply. Mainly, it has followed the path of least resistance. In some stances that was actually beneficial. In others, not so much.

   In fairness, though, it’s not the first administration to give space a low priority. It will not be the last.

   1. It wound down Constellation because it was becoming way too expensive

      That was a good reason to do away with certain hardware programs, that ended up sticking around somehow. The programmatic goals were cancelled because they would have helped Bush’s legacy.

      1. The programmatic goals were cancelled because they would have helped Bush’s legacy.

         There *has* been that sense, unfortunately. This administration has shown a tendency toward political pettiness.

         But Bush didn’t help his legacy by backing an architecture that required a lot more funding that he was willing to give it. Because he did not, it provided an opening to his successor to kill the thing.

6. while some waste their time arguing that America is no longer great, others are busy proving it still is.

   There are many people in the science community that must be appalled at that statement judging by the reactions to people chanting USA at SpaceX launches. It’s fun to ridicule Trump but we should also recognize the anti-American sentiment that many people have that gives rise to the notion of making America great again.

7. A destination is not a purpose.

   1. Yes, but the notion that it is, is one of the tenets of the Apollo religion. Amusingly, we haven’t heard a review of my project from one of the high priests, Mark Whittington.

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