After the giant post I did yesterday, I never thought I would be doing another massive, fully-explained post today, but the proposed new direction for NASA has spurred my brain again. My instant impression of the ideas, of course, were fairly positive when I first heard about the concept a month ago. Going to Mars and the Moon again are obviously worthy goals. But the more I ruminated about the concept of a manned base on the moon and missions to outer solar-system planets, the more I began to realize that the concept is fundamentally flawed in a way that will almost certainly sabotage the plan in the future.
NASA and the American Space Program have been funny beasts to get a handle on. Just when they seem to be succeeding beyond our wildest dreams, they suffer some of the worlds' greatest failures. The start of the Apollo Program and Apollo 1. Apollo 11 and Apollo 13. Putting a civilian in space and the Challenger. Mars Pathfinder followed by the 2 failed Mars probes. The ISS and Columbia. It's very difficult to look at NASA and be able to judge whether or not they'll be able to accomplish goals well and on schedule. However, I think that, with careful examination, we can take past NASA examples and apply them in a way that will allow us to judge both the worthiness and the chances of success of the project that is being proposed.
Let's start off by looking at the actual proposal that they're outlining. NASA would be somewhat reconfigured, with the new goal being created of setting up a permanent, manned base on the Moon, and using it as a jumping off point to other places in the Solar System, such as Mars, Asteroids, and so on. New vehicles would have to be introduced, systems for operating and supplying a base outside of Earth orbit would need to be developed, and so on.
These are enormous challenges that the Bush Administration is laying out for NASA; totally reconfiguring its system of goals, construction of new outposts, new vehicles, etc. Based entirely on the history of NASA, I think that we can conclude that these goals are being designed the wrong way and are consequently due to suffer substantial failures based solely on their design.
Off the top of my head, I can think of two different parts of this plan that are necessary and that NASA's history shows would have a success rate that would question the success of the entire plan; a new space vehicle and a sustainable manned base on the Moon. To examine these, let's look into the past at NASA's history with space vehicles and with sustainable bases.
To start, let's look at the history of what is now called the ISS. The initial ideas for a manned outpost in space were being floated at about the same time as the shuttle program was beginning, and by the mid-late 80's, there were fairly firm designs and ideas in place. From there, the history of the ISS has been one of mistakes, delays, and overruns, to the point that the usefulness of the station itself is today highly questionable.
The ISS started as plans in the 80's, something that would be constructed with the shuttle. Look what has happened during the time period that was initially laid out for construction. Assume for a moment that we could have started building it in the late 80's. In 1986, NASA was hitting its first period of complacency; shuttle launch was starting to seem normal, and it looked like NASA might be able to set up a regular construction program. And then an O-Ring got too cold, and 7 people died, may they rest in peace. If a space station was being planned, it went on hold for years after that, if nothing else just to give the shuttle program time to recover.
After that, the next big event in NASA's life was the Hubble Space Telescope. I don't remember much from the early 90's in terms of news, but I do remember the disappointment over the blurred images. After that failure, it's natural to wonder about the ability to build other finely tuned instruments, like a space station. More delays while people check designs.
Next, add in some political issues; the desire to have other countries help fund parts of the cost; negotiations with ESA, Russia, Asian nations, and so on. These take more time, and no construction can begin until they're done; no one knows what country is supplying which parts until they finish.
Then, in 1994 the infamous Contract with America hits, and there are substantial chunks removed from NASA's budget. Space Station; on hold again.
In the mid 90's, the Faster, Better, Cheaper mentality takes hold at NASA, and a couple of Mars probes are lost. More money lost. More delays while people wonder about the future of the project.
In the late 90's, we're finally starting to construct the parts, and then one of the major contributors has the bottom fall out of their budget, and almost everything Russia promised to deliver at first was coming in well late. More Delays.
And finally, in 2003; NASA suffers another complacency failure; a piece of foam does as much damage as an O-Ring did in 1986. May those 7 rest in peace. But this also gives us years more delays in construction.
What we see here with the ISS is a record of delays and failures. The drive in Congress wasn't there, NASA had too many problems, the political issues were difficult to resolve, and the project just had too many flaws at the start. Now, we're left with a very expensive orbiting platform that is difficult to resupply, won't even resume construction for another year, and is of very questionable scientific importance. Hardly one of NASA's greatest long-term successes.
Now, let's look at NASA's launch systems, and then we'll follow that by trying to draw conclusions on this planned project itself. In the past 35 or 40 years, NASA has used a large number of launch systems; the Gemini and Apollo capsules, the Shuttle, and other methods of orbiting satellites and probes.
None of these systems has proven to be reliable enough to support this kind of construction effort. In the Gemini Program, there were several problems, such as a stuck thruster that led to the end of a mission. If memory serves, there were at least 2 major missions that suffered problems that led to the end of a mission. That's about a 1/6 failure rate.
Move on to Apollo; our greatest triumph also had some of our greatest failures. Apollo 1 and Apollo 13 were basically disasters. That's also 2 failures out of about 12 manned attempts; also about a 1/6 failure rate.
Now we move on to the shuttle. The space shuttle has flown more times, true, but it was also designed to supposedly fly over 100 missions without problems. The last mission was Columbia's 25th space voyage. Over the first 25 voyages into relatively safe (compared to long distance launches) Earth orbit, the Space Shuttle has shown a 40% failure rate over 25 launches. For the vehicle that was supposed to make space travel easier and more manageable, that's a pretty poor rate.
Then, let's look at some of NASA's other missions. I can remember just in the past few years examples of rockets blowing up on the ground and taking out Satellites. Then, we've also got long distance failures; the Beagle 2 seems lost on Mars. And do you remember the time that one engineer used inches instead of centimeters and it cost us another probe? There are inherently a huge number of risks in any space vehicle, even in the ones that are supposedly safe.
Now that we've laid out these, let's try to draw some conclusions.
The idea for this next mission is based on the idea of constructing a base on the Moon and using it as a launching point for both more exploration of the moon and for the rest of the solar system. It would involve new orbital vehicles, and new construction, working together. As shown above, these are the things that I would say NASA has had the poorest record at. Doing one remarkable thing one time, such as the moon landing, is NASA's strong point. But doing that same thing over and over, with all the political and technological problems, is a much bigger challenge.
Let's apply the model of the ISS to the planned Moon base. The ISS was planned in the 80's. Political concerns, funding problems, and so forth knocked construction back by years, if not decades. Say we start planning this lunar base today. We're relying on so many different variables it's not even funny. For example, what happens if 15 years down the line we hit another budget crisis and some Congressman decides NASA's budget is too bloated. Or what happens if other political concerns enter the game; like a lack of support from a participating country. These things would not be firsts.
There are even worse things that could happen too. These systems have to have enormously tight tolerances to survive. What happens if we launch a part for the lunar base, and someone forgets to carry a 1 in a calculation, and the part slams into the lunar surface? Or for that matter, what happens if 2 parts simply just don't fit together correctly once we get them to the moon. And finally, there's the big challenge; the vehicles going up wouldn't be of very good reliability easily. We saw Challenger explode in the 1980's. What if we had missed that mistake for a decade (entirely possible; all depended on the weather) and ended up in the late 1990's with a shuttle mission going up to construct the ISS? Say it was a key part, like a crew component or something like that. It could end up just like a lost satellite; gone before it ever enters orbit. These parts take years to construct; one single part suffers a failure, and the entire project falls years behind, or maybe even is scrubbed 1/2 way through.
I feel in the end that the entire concept of a Moon base as a jumping off point for further solar system launches is far beyond what we can reasonably expect NASA to be able to do in a decent time period. There are too many potential failure spots, and there are certainly many other traps I can't even think of.
The same problems fall into the mix for building a new orbiter. We've seen the shuttle dramatically under perform what it's original specs were; 100 missions. At less than 25 for most of them, we've already lost 2. NASA has in fact a history of, every so often, having something major go wrong with every single platform they've developed for launch. These are not the safest systems in the world we're running here.
To top that off; how long have we been planning for a replacement for the shuttle? Years. There have been dozens of designs, none of which have ever really gotten off the ground. NASA has a lot of great thinkers developing these designs. But what guarantee is there that we could build a highly-reliable system to accomplish the goal of carrying heavy payloads well outside Earth orbit at a manageable cost, and do it all before a deadline imposed by the future construction requirements? We've already seen the space program struggle for years just to try to find a replacement for the aging shuttles without success; can anyone sit here and guarantee me we will succeed in the future?
Next, the entire concept for a long-term survivable base on the Moon, and for moving beyond it, relies on having an utterly reliable system to get there and back. We've managed to keep the ISS running solely thanks to the Russian Soyuz craft. What happens when we have only 1 system built that can get to the moon and supply or construct this base, and it fails? Or even worse, what happens if we put a new system into place and it turns out there's an unforeseen design flaw; it doesn't work as was hoped. Costs skyrocket. Morale drops. The program itself maybe ends up on the scrap heap.
Even beyond this; NASA has now shown several times over that its greatest enemy may in fact be its own success. Challenger, Columbia, Apollo 13, and Apollo 1 almost all can be traced indirectly to the fact that, after a series of successes, NASA underestimated risks and became complacent. After so many launches before Challenger, no one at NASA thought the O-Rings were a major problem, they ignored warnings from Morton-Thiokol that they shouldn't launch in that cold, and a shuttle was lost. For Columbia; they'd launched so often that no one thought the foam was a problem. For Apollo 1, they'd succeeded several times and ignored design flaws so large that one astronaut took a lemon and placed it on the capsule while it was still on the ground. For Apollo 13, NASA had landed on the moon twice, had built several of those systems, and didn't do enough checks to discover a problem after an accident on the factory floor.
After a period of success, NASA will always be bound to have a failure. These are fundamentally risky systems; and the farther we go from Earth the more risky things get. With such an involved program as the one being discussed, these risks will jeopardize the entire program, and the more success that we have the more chance there is for an unforeseen failure. It's just human nature.
So now, what would be the solution? We've seen the problem's; NASA's history shows that it may in fact simply be incapable of doing some of the tasks that would be required by such a massive undertaking. Do I have an alternative to offer? I might. It involves some of the same risks, but I think we can dramatically improve the chances for success by simplifying our plans somewhat.
Buzz Aldrin in a New York Times editorial last year spelled out a version of this plan; a base at a position called L1; where the earth's gravity exactly cancels that of the moon. Construction here in fact offers several advantages over a moon base; 1, it's a lot simpler than having to successfully land on a massive body and do construction there, 2; we've already done something very close to it with the ISS, and 3: if someone wanted to leave this station, they wouldn't have to overcome the Moon's gravity in the way we would have to if we launched a vehicle on the moon; it would substantially reduce the amount of fuel any spacecraft would need to leave the Earth-Moon system.
This setup would offer other advantages also. For example, there are some advantages to going back to the moon before we go to Mars; training in lower gravity environments, testing equipment on a truly alien surface, and even doing further analysis of some of the moon's features. What this setup would allow us to do is try that anyways, but not get bogged down on the moon. We would have a stopping point halfway; we could then jump from there really quickly down to the moon instead of having to start at the moon to move on. This would leave us with less of a presence on the moon, but it would also cut the risk of loss in any of the trial stages. And if we want to practice for long-term presences in space on another world; a small manned outpost on the moon becomes even more practical if we can do construction free of the moon's gravity field. Nothing can crash into the moon until you've checked & prepared stuff first, you don't have to worry about engines not firing, and so on. For a perfect example of how to do this training; look at Skylab in the 70's. A small, temporary manned space outpost that allowed for training for the future. Something very similar could be done with the Moon.
I will also note one more thing here; some people on other pages have suggested that the real advantage to building an outpost on the moon is helium-3; an isotope of helium that is rare on Earth but abundant on the Moon. I talked about this to people with more expertise in this field earlier in the day; Helium 3 does undergo fusion easier than Hydrogen and in the long term might make a useful energy source, but there are many problems. First, we're still decades away from being able to use He3 as a fuel. Second, we're also decades away from being able to recover it; it would require something like a strip mine on the Moon, and the idea of moving heavy construction equipment to the Moon seems even more unlikely than the idea of a manned base there. In the very long term, it might be practical, but then it's still more beneficial to stop at L-1. When that technology finally was developed, L-1 would be a perfect jumping off point to develop any kind of industry on the moon.
Finally, this proposal actually does cut some of the risk of developing a new launch vehicle. We don't know if that can be built on time to proper specs, so happily, we've already seen before that we have the technology to take pieces of a craft and launch them out of Earth's orbit. We did it all the time back in the 70's; on our way to the moon. Say that there's a problem with the new launch vehicle and it gets delayed; we wouldn't have to worry about not having a proper means to land on the moon, we'd only have to worry about building a rocket to shoot it out of orbit. We can do that a lot easier than having to shoot something out of Earth's orbit and then land it safely. Cut out the landing step and it will make things simpler all around. We could even work past a problem easier; in the event of another catastrophic failure, things would be a lot worse if we were on the Moon than if we were still in Earth orbit. It's a lot easier to launch supplies that don't have to land successfully. It's easier to launch parts if they don't have to survive an impact with the moon's surface. And so on.
In conclusion, it's certainly a good thing that Mr. Bush wants to expand our presence in space. But other than the somewhat-alluded to mentions of military reasons for a presence on the moon, there is very little to suggest that the course planned here would be the best way to move out of Earth's orbit. A manned base on the moon is far riskier. It risks problems with landings and takeoffs. It risks losing equipment due to the Moon's gravity field. It risks losing time and money by being too big of an intermediate step. And most importantly; it is risky because it follows exactly the lines of the things that NASA has done poorly in the past.
It requires every single part to succeed. A single failure could jeopardize the entire project. It's not nearly as flexible as a base at L-1 would be. It's also far more ambitious; we've built the ISS here, we can build L-1 there. The best option I can see at this point is to go half-way. Make it to L-1, build up there, and then see what you can do from that point on. Don't trap us in the gravity field of the Moon. Many of the same risks do remain; risks of budget cuts, risks of lack of political will, and so on, but by taking smaller steps, we may minimize some of those risks and in the end save the entire project through simply being more careful.
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