Today India launched its first mission beyond Earth orbit. After a 5-day elliptical semi-orbit of the Earth to place it on a lunar intercept, it will fire its rocket to enter lunar orbit. It will then train a huge array of sophisticated instruments, many with foreign (including American) participation, on the Moon's surface. It will map lunar topography, make precision images, and map uranium and helium-3, ice, and other potential natural resources. I write with excitement, as extraterrestrial resources is something I have written a fair amount about in the technical science and space development literature. Use of extraterrestrial resources is part of what I view as forming humanity's destiny.
China and Japan each launched their own lunar orbital missions recently, so a full-fledged Asian space race is on. The U.S. will also have an advanced lunar resource prospecting mission soon. Japan's media, and the media across Asia, is abuzz with talk about lunar exploration and the Asian space race. Everybody is interested in pushing toward human lunar exploration.
Not lost on anybody, the Moon is also viewed militarily as the ultimate high ground. In principle, ice mines at the lunar South Pole could supply ice from to low Earth orbit (LEO) far more efficiently than launches of water from Earth into LEO. Ice translates not just as water, but also oxygen and hydrogen-- rocket fuel. Ample rocket fuel in LEO means unlimited capability to maneuver around Earth, to shift the orbits of spy satellites when crises emerge, to shift the orbits of Earth resources satellites, to fuel rockets that will move astronauts to the Moon and Mars and beyond more efficiently than if all the rocket fuel had to be launched from Earth's surface. In short, the lunar South Pole is like Middle Eastern oil as far as space operations are concerned. There are more ominous possibilities related to the "high ground" aspect that need not even be mentioned, but there is no question that the Moon is a strategic place in many regards, and it could be used as a stepping stone to places farther afield, such as Mars.
The Moon is also supremely interesting scientifically, having merit in its own right as a unique planetary type object but also bearing clues to Earth's origin, as Apollo began to teach us. In terms of the 'gee-whiz' aspect of human exploration, the Moon represents an exciting target if you haven't already been there. If you have been there, as America has been, it is still a worthy place to explore by humans, but in pure scientific exploration terms, that can be done far more cost effectively by robotics. Yes, humans can do some things that robotics cannot, but robotics truly are up to the task of doing most of what humans can do, plus much more that we can't. Even mining of ice or helium-3 (if we ever get helium-3-based fusion electrical power generation mastered) would best be done robotically, if money is an issue. I would warrant that for America, money is an issue, and most voters and taxpayers probably would say so, too. We need to do things efficiently.
That said, if we do venture beyond LEO with humans, is the Moon the best place to go? To most planetary scientists, Mars is much more interesting place than the Moon and it is more apt to be a place that can be settled. There are severe challenges for sure, especially in getting there and returning; the transit is the biggest danger because of solar cosmic radiation storms. Some Near-Earth Asteroids (NEAs) have orbits close enough to Earth's that they can be reached in as little as a month or two instead of a year or more; thus, they are safer. NEAs represent a much more diverse and resource-rich set of objects, although I note that there are some peculiarities of the Moon (such as enrichment in He-3) that could drive particular, specific efforts at resource exploitation. None of this, not even the strategic aspects (for those military types pondering that), favors human-driven activity if getting the job done efficiently is what the goal is.
If having humans do something interesting in space is the goal, the Moon is interesting indeed; but in post-Apollo era, there are other places we should go. If there is a sense of a space race, I would urge America's leaders to consider a space race in a different context, more like the framing context that JFK used to send us to the Moon. We should do something spectacular, partly because it is hard. We can go to the Moon, but it will be hailed as a return to the past. If there is no pressing reason to have humans on the Moon, but instead can have robotics take care of our scientific and engineering/resource exploitation objectives there, then I'd say let's skip the Moon and go to Mars, but do so in a logical sequence. If we need a stepping stone, near Earth asteroids would provide a more interesting one that would not entail years and years of staying there (at a cost of maybe $100 billion beyond the cost to get to that first return to the Moon). We could go to 3 or 4 asteroids, learn a lot, and be done with that phase of the program, and then focus on Mars. In some regards asteroids would be safer than the Moon, if we can select some that would entail only a month or so of transit time each way. We could have small solar storm radiation shelters onboard the craft, and not worry about osteoporosis and other severe maladies that we will have to worry about when we finally go to Mars. We could conduct these missions and use manned maneuvering units to make the landings; no need for extremely complex lunar landing craft, no need for a lot of things that would cost us dearly to get to the Moon and which would not be directly applicable to Mars landings. We could get to the asteroids rapidly, I would guess before 2016. With 8 years of doing one mission every 2 years or so, we could learn a lot, and then by 2024, if we aimed for it now, we could be on Mars. Otherwise, we will be busy trying to pay off our Apollo-Plus bill and not have really made much progress toward getting to Mars. We'll have China and who knows who else as neighbors, and we will be seen as competing directly with them.
Why try to steal the Chinese (or Indian or Japanese or European) thunder? Let them do what will give them national pride and international prestige. Let's not race them at all. Let's dedicate a strong robotics effort at the Moon, especially one dedicated toward natural resource exploration. If the Chinese are willing, we could ride with them to the Moon; and they could ride with us to asteroids. This would create openness and confidence that the more threatening possible uses of the Moon (and asteroids) would not elapse. We certainly do not need a militarized space race and hostile land grabs and paranoid approach to space exploration.
We should not accede to any territorial claims by any nation, nor make any claims, as international law now warrants. We should create a legal framework for resource exploration and exploitation, but astronaut involvement should not come to be seen as the legal basis for staking claims. The asteroids will be able to provide water to LEO even more cheaply than the Moon can (it sounds counter-intuitive, but the Moon's gravity well makes this statement true). On asteroids there is abundant platinum, carbon compounds, semiconductors, and all sorts of things that the Moon doesn't have. We can exploit those materials robotically, and we can involve humans in their exploration much more quickly and less expensively than going to the Moon; and the asteroids certainly represent stepping stones to the greater beyond, for which the Moon does not serve so well.
The cost of this proposed revised goal of the coming decade would be far less than the cost of the human lunar program. The savings (probably several billion dollars per year) could be split in quarters between (1) developing advanced planetary robotics, (2) reducing the taxpayer's burden (or our debt to China), (3) rebuilding our Earth observation program, and (4) preparing for Mars settlement by humans. By 2020 we can start ramping down expenditures for this asteroid program and sharply ramping up Mars settlement preparations if that is our nation's aspiration. Nearly all the hardware developed for the asteroid effort would be directly transferrable to Mars exploration, and by 2020 hopefully we will have an economy that reflects a decade of efficient and wise federal expenditures.
In any case, resource exploration should be the focus of NASA's extraterrestrial robotic exploration program.
It is pretty roundly reported that both Barack Obama's and John McCain's spending and tax cutting plans would increase an already dismal budget deficit situation. It can be argued, and I think Barack has the best arguments, that McCain's budget would be worse in terms of a ballooning deficit. Given that two debates in a row, candidates were asked to offer up some ideas of controlling spending, lackluster responses were given by both candidates. Barack Obama has some obvious places to reduce spending, such as in Iraq (though a post-occupation containment and muscle-down on extremist militant groups in Iraq will not be inexpensive, so savings there do not equal the cost of the war now). And McCain is obviously weaker in terms of revenue raising. However, the well-publicized questions about what priorities would be deferred or scaled back is indeed a good set of questions, and either candidate will have to grapple with an answer soon after arriving in office. So much the better to start grappling now. There is a real opportunity here for either candidate to make some points with undecided voters. McCain could seize the initiative if Obama is not careful. Barack Obama should be proactive on the issue. Nobody wants to cancel or defer a promise or a long-standing program. But we must have fiscal discipline. "Pay as you go" has to be rigorous policy, not just words.
Cuts getting into the hundreds of billions of dollars over 4 years (cumulatively) are going to have to be found. Tax increases on the wealthy have to be part of the solution, but there must be cuts in spending, and more than a sparse razor slicing off the edges of some programs. Otherwise, by the time midterm elections come, with an already disastrous budget deficit multiplied further, the Republicans will retake the House and whittle back the Democratic majority in the Senate, and by 2012, all will be lost back to the Republicans. But it would be even worse for America, and that's why the Democrats would lose the position of leadership they may be about to be handed.
More dramatic cuts must be offered up, but if Barack wants a further razor shaving, here's one:
International Space Station (ISS) and Space Shuttle. Mothball them. Spend one more shuttle mission flying a Japanese crew to their recently installed science module, then spend one more shuttle mission installing whatever needs installing to mothball the ISS. This could include a means to adjust the ISS orbit and a redundant means of attitude control and internal environmental control, attach a long-life low-thrust rocket motor, raise its orbit, and close and lock the doors. Remember how bad shape Skylab was in, and still it was turned into a useful station once we went back to it; that was a space station where actual science was done on a huge scale, in myriad experiments-- nothing of the sort is being done with ISS. It's a white elephant. When mothballing the ISS, there will have to be some kind of dealing with international partners, but America is not going to be a good partner if we go bankrupt and are so budgetarily strapped that we can't make anything useful come from the ISS. We should spend one or two years studying our return to the Moon, and rescope or redirect that effort to something that makes sense. We don't want to have an Apollo-like adventure and then come back and be done with it. It needs to become a self-sustaining effort-- a colonization in a sense. So rescope and redirect, and then by the time the ISS and shuttle are mothballed, we'll have the funds saved from those programs to be serious about a safe and effective next step in space. This thing about just orbiting the Earth endlessly for astronaut make-work has to end. We need to go somewhere real and future-seeking, or just forget the idea of human space exploration. I don't think the latter is what we want, but that's what will happen if we lose the economic capability to be a space faring nation. The way things are going, that is fast happening. We need to get our economic house in order, and we need to proceed smartly in space, not on some reprise of the past. Between the savings from mothballing ISS and shuttle, and the increase that would be needed to have a serious lunar (and Mars!) effort, I am not sure what we'd save, but it would be only a few billion dollars. But we need to make some cuts somewhere, and this could be a contribution from NASA.
Other things: Scale back the flight pace of Mars missions to half. Coordinate with Europe so that every launch opportunity (every 2 years) is utilized, but each agency does one mission or campaign every four years. Keep science data analysis budgets high, keep engineering teams together, but scope back flight intensity to a pace where scientists can make most effective use of the data. Cutting back flight activity by half will not save half the Mars exploration budget, but it will save about 30% (a guess). Then reinstall the barriers between human and robotic exploration and guarantee that planetary robotic exploration and Earth satellite observations will be protected from the human exploration effort. In the near term, this is where a "rethinking" of the lunar human exploration effort could be funded. Spend $100M annually to develop a concept for "living off the land" (Moon, Mars, asteroids) and developing preliminary engineering concepts. How can robotic exploration be geared increasingly toward natural resource exploration and in situ propellant production? Bring in our most reliable foreign partners-- mainly from Europe and Japan and Russia if they come back to a sensible relationship with the West-- and explore how ISS might be recommissioned around 2015 in support of a truly dramatic and realistic human space exploration effort. But don't spend any more than two more shuttle missions to ramp down what is currently an utter waste: ISS and shuttle. I would keep our astronaut corps-- at least those likely to fly beyond 2015-- together. I would expand astronaut training in geologic field work and lab analysis, in engineering related to natural resources processing, in economics of emerging technological societies (that's what they will be when they go to the Moon and asteroids and Mars) and doing the things needed to push our agenda in space forward. (Readers--if there are any out there-- may wish to read my book, "Mars: A Warmer Wetter Planet," Praxis-Springer, and books by John Lewis on the topic of space settlement.)
All together, this would save maybe a couple billion dollars a year for a few years while putting the long-term human and robotic exploration effort on a more realistic and sustainable basis and provide more dramatic ambitions for our nation. It's a serious razor shaving in the near term only, not an undoing of the budget deficit. But it's where my area of the government could contribute.
Now, ask everybody else in government where they can contribute cuts, which may be painful in the short term but will make a more robust America.
Bolingbrook Babbler: McCain feuds with the interstellar press corps
A manned visit to Mars is a good eventual goal. Great civilizations need great goals to thrive. However it strikes me that our space policy should be a little more focused on near term need. After reading the article in the June issue of The Atlantic, The Sky is Falling (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200806/asteroids), I have come to the conclusion that we need to really start thinking about this as a real issue. I know this sounds chicken littlish, but you should read the article. The probabilities associated with a significant impact event have been increasing dramatically over the last few decades. I quote from the article:
Part of the rethinking comes from the rather obvious observation that if you are going to be looking for crater impacts you need to also look at the ocean floor. (Since most of the planet is covered by the oceans.) The next observation is that not all impact events will leave a crater behind at all.
So I have been thinking about what I would like for the next president. I'm not sure if I have ever thought hard about it because I never thought my views would ever be heard from anyone outside of my friends and family but maybe someone will hear this.
My Wish List:
Create incentives to consumers to have a car/truck/boat that can go over 60 mpg or use some other means of energy that won't be counterproductive to the environment.
A Human manned outpost on the Moon and Mars. Have colonies there to have the starts of real starts of next phase our civilization.
To: Steve Robinson, space policy spokesperson for the Obama campaign.
Dear Steve,
Thank you for your long time support of Barack and your service in advising him on science policy. I am primarily interested in energy independence issues, but as a close follower of Space Policy (I admin the Space and Aeronautics Policy blog on democrats.org), I would like the opportunity to offer some observations about the recent debate you participated in at the International Space Development Conference.
Thanks for your time in considering these options for future confrontations with space spokespersons representing the Bush-McCain " Vision for Space Exploration" that will doom us to a 30 year delay in space exploration. An example of how I employ these themes and rhetoric may be found on the democrats.org space and aeronautics policy blog. Link to a recent post here. Although I am for reconsideration of Constellation/Ares in favor of heavier investment in climate change monitoring and remote exploration of space, contrary to the appearance given in this post, I am not an opponent of manned missions. In fact I fiercely believe this gets us a significantly more aggressive space policy using the same resources budgeted by the Republicans. I foresee manned bases on the moon and mars, but see the base construction and extraction of local resources largely conducted by vehicles operated remotely by humans on earth. I personally believe it is the fastest and smartest way to extend humanity's dominion to the inner and outer planets.
Warm regards,
John
Hey everyone,
This is kind of a small group, but I hope that I have a fair number of space exploration lovers here. I know Barack Obama has already been willing to at least question the status quo (although definitely in such a way as to put at least a small dagger in my Mars-loving heart). There is a strong element of truth in what he said about NASA not inspiring as much as it has in the past. Once upon a time, when we heard we were going to the moon, we gave out a cry of "hell yes." Now, talk of Mars usually returns a "yeah, right." Even in my own program, I am often derided as a dreamer for hoping for something more than a comfortable job with a fat and complacent contractor.
After the jump, I'd like to bring up a proposal that I've chewed on for some time:
I realize this isn't the mainstream of issues but it's something I'm very interested in. We need to encourage commercializing of space and give incentives to space company startups like there was for the aviation industry in it's early stages of development. That would free NASA up to take on larger goals and technology development.
- Does Barack plan on supporting the current plan on sending astronauts back to the Moon and eventually onto Mars?
It's important to keep continuing our understanding of space thru exploration and development of space technologies.
Oh, there is such a thing as bad publicity
Just a few months after Barack Obama announced his intention to seek the Democratic nomination for president, Mars, Inc. launched a campaign to remake the image of its iconic Uncle Ben, the face of the Uncle Ben's brand. The rebranding, which elevated the character from smiling servant to a worldly business executive, was clearly intended to blunt criticism the company has faced over the years that the 1940s character portrays a derogatory stereotype. The reinvention was meant to modernize and personalize the brand in a way that was respectful of his African American heritage and provided a unifying umbrella for new and well-established products. Unfortunately for Uncle Ben's and its parent Mars, some multicultural-marketing observers saw it differently. They viewed it as patronizing treatment of a symbol associated with repression and slavery. The estimated $20 million Web and print campaign recast Uncle Ben as the wealthy head of a fictional rice company. The site's landing page, by TEQUILA, a division of tbwaChiatDay, became Uncle Ben's wood-paneled executive office, where users could read his newspaper, look at his e-mail and peruse his journal. Left intact was his trademark bow tie - and the moniker "Uncle," a frequent target of critics.The new Ben, unveiled in April 2007, aimed to realign some long-held perceptions about the character. It didn't quite go over that way - at least not without a few hitches.Parboiled BacklashThe March 30 announcement of Ben's "promotion" on the Web site caught the attention of the mainstream and spread throughout the blogosphere. That day, The New York Times ran an article about the launch, headlined "Uncle Ben, Board Chairman," and National Public Radio reported on mixed reviews from multicultural marketing specialists. On Comedy Central's The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert quipped, "Now that you are a big shot, Uncle Ben, you're going to need your own private chef. I recommend the Cream of Wheat guy."Carmen Van Kerckhove, co-founder of firm New Demographic - tagline: "Better than diversity training" - wrote on her blog, racialicious.com: "This rebranding campaign is really the epitome of putting lipstick on a pig. Uncle Ben is still grinning and wearing a bow tie. There's nothing Chairman of the Board-esque about that image. Uncle Ben still has no last name. When's the last time you heard a powerful man referred to by his first name? No matter what fantasies you weave about him being the Chairman of the Board, his very name still comes from the culture of slavery." A few weeks later, David Segal, a Washington Post Style section writer, posted in Slate, "What's amazing about this Uncle Ben is that he still has a job at all. Uncle Ben is a rare survivor in the once-crowded world of racist spokescharacters. Most of his contemporaries were fired a long time ago." Just after that, interactive agency Organic's Daniel Turman wrote on the company's blog, threeminds.com, "This strategy might have worked better if there was some substance behind the smoke and mirrors. He still is called 'Uncle' in spite of the fact that this title was a Jim Crow-ism used to avoid the use of the honorarium Mister? Really!? By refusing to own up to the divisiveness of the character, the [campaign] falls flat." The initial response from the company was sort of underwhelming. According to Mars, the Ben icon comes from American folklore - stories of a legendary farmer known for his quality rice. When farmers went to market, they would claim their rice was "as good as Uncle Ben's." The portrait of Uncle Ben was introduced in 1947, and it's said that it's the likeness of Chicago chef and maitre d' Frank Brown, who died in 1953.But still, some say this explanation comes off as laughably tone-deaf. How could a group of sophisticated marketers have been blind to the backlash, which seems somehow inevitable? Howard Buford, founder and CEO of multicultural ad agency Prime Access, says, "Over time, the Uncle Ben character had gone from a concrete person to an abstract logo, which had lessened its racial baggage." Mars' move to personalize Ben partially backfired and just reminded people of the logo's history, just as media coverage began to focus on the possibility of electing the United States' first black president. "This was not the time to call attention to that problem," Buford says.Proof Is in the (Rice) PuddingThe controversy seemed to increase consumer interest in the brand: Traffic to the site soared during the summer of 2007 as criticism and online discussion peaked. Unique visits ballooned 1,800 percent, from 191,000 in the third quarter of 2006 to 3.6 million in the same period of 2007, per comScore. Mars uses BuzzMetrics to track brand references on blogs, communities and news sites. Tracking showed that in the month after the launch, the Uncle Ben's brand got more online attention than it has ever experienced, and ended up with three times as much "buzz" as its biggest competitors, says Bryan Crowley, vice president of marketing and sales for Mars Food U.S.The concept of a virtual office gave consumers a way to interact with the character's world, says Austin Hurwitz, TEQUILA management supervisor. "The office setting allowed us to talk about products, offer nutrition facts about rice, showcase recipes and describe the company's philanthropic efforts to end hunger - all in one unified setting," he says. Ads by tbwaChiatDay in celebrity, women's, food and African American magazines focused on Ben as chairman of the board and drove traffic to the site. But Web traffic does not equal brand loyalty or sales (or votes - just ask Ron Paul). So, did the move score for Mars? Crowley says yes. Since the campaign broke, growth in sales and market share has accelerated, he says. And according to Information Resources Inc., sales have indeed swelled in some sectors: The brand's biggest product category, dry rice, showed sales growth of 6 percent in 2007 compared to 2006, per IRI. The year before, sales growth was 4 percent. Sales of ready-to-eat rice mixes, which are about one-seventh the dollar volume of dry rice, rose 8 percent in 2007 compared to 2006, per IRI. But that's less impressive than the year before. Ready-to-eat rice sales in 2006 showed a 21 percent rise compared to the previous year. "We respect the views of the critics and we want to keep open the lines of communication with them," Crowley says. "We also understand that for many people in our target market, the Uncle Ben character stands for trust and quality. Both of those viewpoints are important, and we are working with advisors to figure out how to strike a balance." Mars started conducting research about the Uncle Ben's brand at least 18 months before the campaign's launch, around January 2006. The mission was to "find a big idea that could tie the content of the site together and bring the brand experience to life," says TEQUILA's Hurwitz. Research identified the target as 35- to 54-year-old mothers who are devoted to their home environment, have attended college, are avid readers and are interested in health, Crowley says. About 80 percent are white and most of the remaining 20 percent are African American, plus a small percentage of Hispanics and Asians. "Focus groups, one-to-one meetings and other qualitative research uncovered that consumers had a tremendous amount of respect for the Uncle Ben icon and that he represented quality, trust and family," Crowley says. "To leverage the respect and values of the brand, we decided to present Ben as chairman of the company and use him as the center of the marketing." The campaign itself was in development for about seven months, starting in the fall of 2006, before the launch hit and the brouhaha began. By October 2007, the Web site's traffic dropped almost to normal levels, but not quite. While the site saw 3.6 million unique visits from July to September 2007, it attracted only 114,000 uniques from October to December, according to comScore - but that was still almost double the visits during the same period the year before. In the last several months, the company scrapped some of the plans for the site that were touted at the launch. Gone are plans to further personalize Ben with voicemail messages from him and a full-length picture of him in a business suit. (Only his portrait is currently used on the site and in the ads.) Since tracking shows most visitors use the site to find recipes, the company is expanding that content and tweaking the landing page to give direct links to recipes, Crowley says. Hurwitz says the recipe section continues to get about 20,000 visitors a month and average three minutes per visit. Crowley declines to say if any of the changes are related to the criticism. Dust, CautionThere are no easy answers here. Possibly the best solution is to dissolve the brand, eliminating the inflammatory iconography. Of course, this is a catch-22, so the task became a salvage job. Industry experts find the eventual campaign's costs and benefits complicated."The admirable part of this effort is that they generated Web traffic and attention to the brand, and the company looks like it is trying to be positive and proactive," says Larry Vincent, group director of strategy, Siegel+Gale. But he questions the wisdom of using such a strategy to shake the dust off an antiquated image. To change the backstory of Uncle Ben "is a risky branding move even without the race issue. It is difficult to reinvent history in a way that is different than what consumers perceive. When a brand pulls an about-face, people subconsciously get the feeling [that] it is trying to pull the wool over their eyes," he says.Some multicultural marketing experts were hoping for more of a response from the rice company. "I'm flabbergasted that they didn't change the existing site after the press criticism," says Luke Visconti, partner and co-founder, DiversityInc Media. That shows the failure of the company "to have respect for American history. Since launch, Obama has hit the scene, uniting the political and racial discourse," says Visconti. "For Mars to be so recalcitrant at this point seems blockheaded; it does not reflect the audience's mood," he says. Ron Campbell, president and chief strategist, Campbell-Communications, which specializes in multicultural marketing strategies, is more blunt: "It is a marketing faux pas that is paternalistic and condescending. It's like something out of Mad magazine." But so far the backlash seems to be mainly from "gatekeepers," says Campbell. Whether the decision to focus on Ben turns out to be "a big branding mistake and a big revenue mistake depends how much the noise from the gatekeepers reaches consumers who buy the rice because they need a quick meal for their families," he says. If Mars' objective was to get exposure, it was a good move to be bold, rather than changing the icon subtly over time, as the Quaker Oats Company has done with its Aunt Jemima brand, says branding expert Vincent. But with "online social media and the rumor mills, criticism of a brand can take on a life of its own," he warns. In exchange for an incremental lift in sales, Mars could be harming the brand's reputation and permanently relegating its rice to a commodity product, he says, echoing other experts.Crowley won't admit to a downside. The company is "thrilled with the results of the campaign and considers it to be working well," he says. Perhaps a more telling question is whether Uncle Ben - the icon and the chairman - will keep his bow tie. "Yes," says Crowley. "The bow tie stays."
http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=79730
Who's your favorite space explorer? Armstrong? Glenn?
Mine is the Opportunity (Mars exploration) rover. 4 years after setting down on Mars, it is still toiling away, uncovering more of Mars' secrets. In terms of science return on dollar invested, it has been a magnificent investment.
Sure- it doesn't get any mention in the news any more. But though science can be dramatic, drama is not the point. Unfortunately, Bush believes it is, and so set Nasa on a track towards re-asserting America's manhood in space- designed to land men on the moon again by. That's what his man in space policy to send astronauts to Mars is about.
Landing men on Mars will be a huge distraction and resource hog for Nasa. Other than the fleeting drama it will provide, such a goal makes very little sense from a science or business (spin off technology) perspective. It's not complicated to figure out why. Unlike technology of the 60's, robotic exploration means engineers can push the envelope in experiments of new approaches. Manned exploration forces engineers to be extremely conservative. The risk taking necessary for breakthrough technologies means dead astronauts- so guess what. It's a bad bet to count on the breakthroughs coming from manned programs. So really, it doesn't take a genius to realize which approach generates more new technologies. That means fewer growth opportunities for Florida and Texas businesses hoping to generate spin off technology products for global markets.
Next consider the cost of proving our manhood in space. 90% of the equipment necessary for manned missions are useless baggage on Telerobotic missions. Telerobotic explorers are on a one way trip. No return fuel needed. No human crew being present on the vehicle means massively redundant systems are not necessary, nor is the bulky life support systems required. Reliable airbag landing systems can be used because machines can be subjected to 40G stresses.
Sure- let's build bases on the Moon, Mars and Europa that "live off the land", we return samples from the outer planets and send high velocity ion propulsion probes outside of the solar system. We can do all of this dramatic stuff a lot faster if we don't have to be 100% sure that every mission will be a success. Ok- the eyes that see all this will be separated from the mars environment not by a piece of clear plastic in a helmet, but by the silicon of a high resolution camera. The distance from the human explorers face to the mars environment will not be measured in inches but in millions of miles.
Is that difference worth waiting 30 years or more for and spending 10 times as much money that could be spent on 10 times more Nasa exploration in unmanned form? For what? So we can do then what we can do today on mars minus the in situ hemoglobin? The price of human vanity is indeed very high.
The nice thing about Telerobotics space exploration is that we can be there without having to wait 20 years to develop the technology to safely move our bodies there. It's good for American businesses that can profit from accelerated risk taking engineering efforts that the telerobitic approach allows. It's good for science because we get an order of magnitude more science bang for the buck. Lastly, it's even good from the perspective of the drama of exploration because we don't have to wait decades to make baby steps to the planets. Instead we can move their boldly and use space as a vast proving ground of radical new technologies that on earth will make our country more competitive.
(Disclaimer- I am not in any way associated with the space or aerospace industry or an inhabitant of Florida or Texas or anyone so connected. I am a former software engineering manager at a well known company and hold a handful of patents in the field. Now I mostly change my children's diapers.)
