In March, VP Pence told NASA that they would return to the moon by 2024. Seemed pretty definitive, using words like “urgent”, “stated policy of this administration”, “accelerate the agenda.”
So this sounds pretty cool. As someone interested in space, rockets and exploration, I was thinking, “Great”. Recently, NASA has released some tentative plans:
However, some recent thoughts:
Where is the funding coming from? Recent buzz has it that some of the funding will come from the Pell Grant program - which seems… stupid.
The timeline seems rather… ambitious. (read; impossible)
Accomplishing this task will require not just technical expertise, but also coordinated political effort and cooperation. I don’t see that happening.
In short, my prediction is that we will NOT see an American astronaut on the moon before 2030 at the earliest, if ever.
I’d much rather we were going someplace new (i.e. Mars), but I’ll welcome any serious space exploration effort. But not at the expense of very important and helpful programs like Pell Grants.
The likelihood seems very low since it would probably require the parties to cooperate.
Valid point. I’m not entirely sure what the benefits are for this program. I have not seen them articulated. All Pence seemed to be about was that it was all about national pride - making sure nobody else got there.
This worked in the 1960’s “space race”, but is not a compelling reason today.
What exactly is the return on investment for landing humans on the moon - again?
I would have to agree with you. Just look how behind schedule & over-budget the SLS is. I know a lot of that has to do with the friction-stir welding process that is fantastic for helping to save weight but it’s a bit more complicated to use and plan for the fabrication procedure. I have my doubts enough funds will be found but I guess if some other country shows noticeable ambition to do a manned landing, perhaps things will change.
Btw, found this interesting pdf about the lunar dust and how much of a problem it for the Apollo landings:
Is it? They used friction stir welding for the Space Shuttle’s Super Lightweight Tank which first flew in 1998 and used for almost every flight after that. And that was completed on schedule and under budget, as I understand.
NASA and the rest of the scientific community involved with these types of projects might view creating a first manned outpost on the moon as a wise step in a more ambitious colonization program.
But yeah, 2024 seems unrealistically ambitious. Particularly for this administration’s Confederacy of Dunces.
Speaking as one of the “scientific community,” human spaceflight doesn’t help our science except as a free ride to space. For example, the ISS is a horrible place* to put a science experiment, but NASA pays for experiments to be flown up there and provide power and communications, so we begrudgingly design experiments to fly on it. It will be the same for any lunar exploration program.
*At least for science that don’t benefit from human operators, like experiments with live animals. The ISS isn’t very good micro-gravity (lots of bumps and vibrations), it has a lot of structures that get in the way of observing the earth & space, it doesn’t go over high latitudes, its attitude isn’t fixed, there is contamination from arriving/departing spacecraft, there are very strict safety rules that normal satellites don’t have to worry about (e.g. sharp edges that can damage a spacesuit), etc.
From what I understand, returning to the moon is part of a larger NASA effort to reach Mars by the 2030s/2040s, where the moon aspects of it would be more along the lines of learning how to live in space, develop useful technologies, etc…
How much would a moon colony work as a “practice” for Mars?
In the event of a problem it wont be that hard to resupply the moon or to even help astronauts to leave. Communications is in seconds. Solar panels work great.
There are plenty of engineering challenges, but engineering and science are two different things.
I suppose there are sciences directly associated with constructing a lunar base - biochemistry of the human body under low G, ecology of a sealed habitat, etc. But those are sciences necessary to build and maintain a space outpost, not the purpose of building the outpost.
There’s very little scientific benefit to putting humans in space (as opposed to putting unmanned payloads in space, which has great scientific benefit). It is, however, wicked cool. The amount of wicked coolness is, in fact, quite sufficient to justify the monetary costs. So let’s justify it on those grounds, rather than trying to pretend that it’s for science.
The Moon is a good place to experiment with, and practice, In-Situ Resource Utilisation (ISRU). That is to say, using the resources on the Moon to produce fuel, propellant, building material and as ores. This will all come in useful for future Mars missions. Note that we don’t actually have to send astronauts to do this; tele-operated robots (with a signal delay of around 1 second) should be adequate.
Seems to me, if science and engineering doesn’t overcome the challenges of building and maintaining a manned lunar base, the scientific purpose of building a more ambitiously located outpost will remain an academic exercise.
Good point. But the thing is we should give a moon colony several years to see if we can really make a go of it. So if a moon colony was established in say 2025, we really should give it 20 years or so to really see how things work out.
Think about how long it took before we really had a successful station at the south pole.
IIRC, none of the vehicles that are in the running to go to the moon have had any human flights. Is 4-5 years enough time to do adequate testing? I assume it might be if there are no flaws in the designs, but if there issues 2024 probably isn’t going to happen.