Astronauts Weigh In - ...Return to Moon or On to Mars

Palomar · 2003-12-26 08:11:09

*Lovell (my favorite astronaut) is a proponent of returning to the moon as a precursor for heading on to Mars. Included in the link to the Lovell article is information regarding the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation (personalized letters and autographs in exchange for flat-rate contributions). I'd like to have a signed autograph of Lovell especially (good-looking!)

Buzz Aldrin is also a proponent for returning to the moon prior to going to Mars:

http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1552415

Can't say I agree with them, but whatever.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2003-12-26 13:25:23

*Actually I was a bit surprised to read and listen to Aldrin's opinion that we should go for additional manned moon missions prior to heading out for Mars.

I wonder how many other cosmic celebrities are in agreement with Lovell and Aldrin. It could put Zubrin in a very unique position, as the spotlight goes. He may soon find himself standing pretty much alone (I hope not).

It will be interesting to get further "dibs" on the balance of opinion in the professional scientific community.

--Cindy

::EDIT:: I wonder how a divided opinion in the scientific community will be perceived/reacted to by the public (the part of the public which cares about these sorts of things...). My perception is that most people go with the perceived majority opinion...so I have an extra "sinking feeling" that means we're going back to the moon and Mars is on the "back-burner."

Rxke · 2003-12-26 16:55:50

Add to the list: Ed Lu. He desperatly would love to go to Mars, but thinks going firt back to the moon be th most practical next step.

(Don't remember where i read that, though)

Rxke · 2003-12-26 17:06:31

google to the rescue, again:

azcentral (Google cache, original has been pulled)

Shaun Barrett · 2003-12-26 21:48:02

I'm with Dr. Zubrin!
Much as I think further exploration of the Moon and the establishment of a permanent base there are very worthwhile projects, if it's all to become just a multi-decade, pork-barreling militarisation of cis-lunar space, then I oppose it.
The astronauts who advocate a return to the Moon are being naive if they imagine that such activities will be a test-bed for technology which will help take us to Mars. Although that certainly could be the case, it seems much more likely to me that it'll end up a black-hole for tax-payers' money and will delay the much more important exploration of Mars indefinitely.
The astronauts, like Jim Lovell, who want us to go back to the Moon are not stupid people; they can surely justify their opinions with logical and sensible arguments. But I fear these logical high-achieving individuals don't fully realise what they're dealing with ... politicians and the general public!
If President Bush's administration were to announce a return to Luna in a conservative, measured, carefully staged scheme lasting 20+ years, with the possibility of using the experience gained there to fly to Mars some time maybe 30 years from now, it would be a disaster. The Moon is potentially just another arena for the military to find excuses to spend enormous amounts of money because 'the Yellow Peril is coming". And all this talk about mining Helium-3 and sending it to Earth to power fusion reactors is the most incredible nonsense and yet it gets trotted out for an airing almost every time the Moon is mentioned. In "Entering Space", Bob Zubrin calculates that in order to get 1kg of Helium-3, you would need to strip mine and process 250,000 tonnes of lunar regolith ( i.e. you'd have to scrape up the top 10 cms of dirt over an area 1000m by 1000m ). This represents a huge mining operation, which is patently unlikely to become feasible for several decades. It also ignores the small problem that we've yet to achieve practical energy production from nuclear fusion and probably won't for at least 20 to 30 years.
Dr. Zubrin goes on to say that you don't go after Helium-3 first and hope a space-faring society will spring from it; you create a Type II space-faring society first and then resources like lunar Helium-3 become available to you.
As for building a radio telescope on the far side of the Moon, that is a noble goal and I agree with it wholeheartedly. But again, such a project will take a geat deal of money and political will over a lengthy period and will appeal to scientists, but not the general public.

The Moon will be seen as a 'been-there-done-that' drag for most of humanity and they're most unlikely to maintain any enthusiasm for the idea at all, assuming they can muster any in the first place!
Mars has mystique and a certain visceral allure to go with its natural resources and potential habitability. Not only is it scientifically far more attractive than Luna could ever be, it is politically a far easier sell than a ho-hum return to our dry, desolate rock pile of a satellite.

The Moon is a dangerous side-show which will eat money for years and achieve little else. Mars is the main event and we don't need the Moon to get there.

[My two cents worth! ]

Shaun Barrett · 2003-12-30 01:09:45

Anyhow, I remember reading somewhere that Eugene Cernan, Commander of Apollo XVII and the last man to leave the Moon, advocates leaving Luna alone and getting on with sending people to Mars.
So there ... !!!

jadeheart · 2003-12-31 14:36:21

This moon vs. Mars thing seems to be popular, keeps cropping up all over NM.

A lot seems to be riding on the holiday Mars armada. The findings of Spirit & Opportunity (& Beagle if it ever calls home) should play a big part in deciding this issue. I truly believe that the Bush administration is waiting to see the returns from them-- as well as the public's reaction-- to help decide the future course of NASA.

There is another thing I think is worth pointing out. It seems to me that since Mars is the target of so many more of our robotic probes than is Luna, shouldn't it be the target of choice for a manned mission? There are so many more questions begging answers on Mars than on the moon. I must reiterate that I'm squarely entrenched in the Zubrin camp on this one. Luna will be good for large scale optical interferometric astronomy. But I really feel Mars is the jackpot. Dr. Z is right in his assertion that Mars provides the biggest potential payoff based on our current knowledge of it. And I believe this will be so EVEN if we do not go there to stay. I hear a lot of people drawing parallels with the Apollo program-- how we went for show and didn't stay, etc. IMO it was the nature of Luna itself that was partially responsible for this. It just doesn't have the broad-based appeal over many fields of science that Mars has. We didn't stay, in part, because it wasn't interesting enough for us to do so. (And I'd be interested to hear how the aforementioned astronauts would rebut this.) I have a feeling Mars will be different. As more missions go there I think we'll keep being tantalized enough by findings that we'll keep sending more. Mars has much more in the way of resources, appeals to a much wider array of scientific disciplines, and has a much firmer grasp on the human imagination. We have yet to even get any good pictures of some of the spectacular vistas Mars has to offer. Once people get to see views of places like Tharsis and Valles Marineris as they might appear to the human eye, the moon will be forgotten. It's a pale, meteor-beaten chunk of rock and dust with no appreciable landforms, no atmosphere to provide picturesque sunrises and sunsets, and nothing for the average person to identify with. Mars is soul food. The moon is a Saltine cracker.

Again, the rovers will be pivotal in determining the fate of the pro-Mars arguments. With these landings so close on the horizon I'm ready to suspend further speculation on Moon vs. Mars until we see what they tell us.

Shaun Barrett · 2004-01-01 04:40:16

Jadeheart:-

Mars is soul food. The moon is a saltine cracker.

Ha-ha!! :laugh:
Very nicely put, Jadeheart!

And you may well be right that President Bush isn't sold on one plan or the other just yet. If everything depends on the success of the Mars Express satellite and the two MERs, I suppose we'd all better start praying for some spectacular results in the coming weeks and months!

Aetius · 2004-01-01 15:37:05

I don't honestly believe that any democratic nation will be interested in sending humans to Mars for a long, long time. As much as I'd love to see a human mission to Mars, the failure rates for robotic probes (whatever the true reasons for the failures) and the staggering costs involved dictate the Moon as humanity's next destination for permanent habitation. I find it difficult to believe that modern-day politicians who understand the risks will take them to send people to Mars.

To reiterate, I'd love to see humans on Mars in my lifetime, for most of the reasons mentioned above. But I'm doubtful that the Americans or Europeans will be the ones who bankroll it. Perhaps the Chinese will step up to the plate after they've sent yuhangyuan to Luna.

America's future in human spaceflight will be limited to X-vehicles and Earth orbital space stations of questionable utility, in my opinion. Frankly, I don't see a return to the Moon, never mind Mars, anywhere on America's horizon. Hopefully I'm wrong.

GCNRevenger · 2004-01-01 22:13:16

I'm going to have to learn tward a return to the Moon first... although most of the technology, the physics and engineering to make efficent rocket engines, good flight computers, long-term life support exsists, there is a pretty big chasem between being able to build an integrated, robust, operational system and just having some of the bits and pieces that resemble what you need. A trip to the Moon will force Nasa to do somthing that it hasn't done in a long time... build new manned space ships, which they will have to get good at before we ought to even to consider putting the lives of astronauts in them for a year or two with no abort option. And, sending out unmanned test flights first is of limited worth, since you aren't testing the ship with its most vital system "installed." Dr. Zubrin's estimation about the ease that we can regain this skill is woefully over-optimistic. It doesn't matter if most of the Moon hardware isn't useable on a Mars trip, it gets us back in the swing of things more easily because it is easier and safer to use current tech to go to the Moon than it is Mars.

Secondly. Simply because Mars is big and mysterious and would employ more planetary scientists is not a sufficent protection from flags/footprints end-of-mission syndrome OR somthing almost as bad, turning Mars into the new Antarctica, where only a few scientists go. The Moon had a pretty good grasp on the imaginations of people in the 60's too, and telling average people about all the cool rocks you find and the pretty pictures is not sufficent insurance for human colonization, the ultimate goal. Even finding microscopic life or past evidence thereof is not enough; people will get bored and will be little more impressed than the finding of bacteria in Antarctic ice.

Third: Although the technology exsists to go to Mars on a small scale, and in this respect just barely, the technology to go to stay on anything more than an little outpost scale does not. If we go now and set up a little research station that costs a decade and umpteen billions to build and operate operate, that is time, money, and political capital that is being wasted in reguards to the development of higher performance technology and hardware that can serve the science mission more effectively and for the REAL mission to Mars... To go and not come back

Aetius · 2004-01-08 21:42:30

I have seldom been so happy to be wrong.

Let's hope the funding really does materialize for a return to Luna, and that the commitment to the program outlasts this president.

YEAH BABY!

jadeheart · 2004-01-09 14:25:16

I'm distressingly unable to let go of my skepticism on this. I'd grudgingly support a return to the moon over nothing at all, but... a renewed assault on space whose culmination is 25+ years down the road? I don't see it happening. The American political climate is too unstable for the program to survive until fruition. Kennedy did the right thing in calling for Apollo to be accomplished in a decade-- by the time the White House was won by the Repubs in '68 the program was ready to blast off in earnest.

But there is no way anything initiated by W. will last until 2030 (except, of course, the debt he is amassing). At some point between now and then the Repubs will be yielding the White House. It seems unlikely that the program will continue unless some miracle happens to pare down our huge deficits, freeing up the money to continue in space. And possibly not even then.

You can bet that, no more than two days from now, large sectors of the politcal left will be having conniptions over W.'s looming proclamation. Where's the money gonna come from? What about health care? The rotting American infrastructure? The environment? And they will have a point.

One more thing, and this is what bothers me the most. How will NASA's priorities have to be rearranged to allow this manned program to be expanded? What will happen to robotic missions, planetary or otherwise? General astronomy programs that NASA funds?

I hate to be the proverbial wet blanket, but I'm uneasy about this whole thing.

Saltine crackers for lunch today...

GCNRevenger · 2004-01-09 22:58:50

Do not underestimate the power of buracratic inertia and pride...

To "do Mars right," and not have it become Antarctica II where nobody really lives there, it will take that long to develop the nessesarry technology anyway.

What really should perk you up though, is Bush may order Nasa to drop the "we're going to finish no matter what" attitude and pull the plug on Shuttle/ISS (they really are the same program) earlier than planned, which alone would furnish big-time dollars for other uses.

Bill White · 2004-01-09 23:30:57

What really should perk you up though, is Bush may order Nasa to drop the "we're going to finish no matter what" attitude and pull the plug on Shuttle/ISS (they really are the same program) earlier than planned, which alone would furnish big-time dollars for other uses.

Also do not under-estimate the power of job. From the New York Times:

But the political handiwork needed just to end the shuttle program would be significant, requiring major assaults on entrenched interests: When up and running, the spaceport in Florida employs some 14,000 people and each year pumps $1.4 billion into the state's economy.

14,000 potential voters is HUGE with November 2004 looming ahead.

Palomar · 2004-02-01 11:18:09

[http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/lovell_031225.html]Jim Lovell
*Lovell (my favorite astronaut) is a proponent of returning to the moon as a precursor for heading on to Mars. Included in the link to the Lovell article is information regarding the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation (personalized letters and autographs in exchange for flat-rate contributions). I'd like to have a signed autograph of Lovell especially (good-looking!)
Buzz Aldrin is also a proponent for returning to the moon prior to going to Mars:
[http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1552415]http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1552415
Can't say I agree with them, but whatever.
--Cindy

[http://www.space.com/news/commentary_lovell_040201.html]Commentary by James Lovell(able)

*Yes, yes...my favorite astroheartthrob (and yes, I know he's in his mid-70s now...so what).

He's in favor of returning to the moon first, as indicated in the first post with which I started this thread.

He's very eloquent. I like this line in particular:

"Like Lewis and Clark two centuries ago, future space explorers will learn to live off the land."

Doesn't that sound familiar?

--Cindy

P.S.: This photo of the Apollo 8 crew hangs, signed by Frank Borman (on your right), in a restaurant my husband and I occasionally dine in. Lovell is to your left. Frank Borman, by the way, owns a huge car dealership here in southern NM (although I've heard a rumor he only "lent" his name to the company, for prestige, and doesn't actually own it...beats me):

Shaun Barrett · 2004-02-02 01:23:22

It's hard to argue with someone as famous and knowledgable [and Lovell(able)! :laugh: ] as Jim Lovell but I still agree with Dr. Zubrin that the Moon is not a necessary step on the way to Mars.
I know I may sometimes sound like I support President Bush's initiative but all I'm really doing is trying to make the best of a bad job. At the same time, I'm hoping the plan can be 'subverted' as we go along, so as to shift the emphasis away from Luna and toward Mars. Dr. Z's comments encourage me in this because his logic is inescapable and it must surely become clear to everyone eventually that very little of what we learn on the Moon will be of any use on Mars. The two environments are just too different; the problems are different and the resources available are different. (I have grave doubts about the availability of water in polar craters on the Moon. The Clementine results seem more consistent with ice crystals spread out thinly over a huge area than with a 'lake' of readily accessible solid ice. But I could be wrong, I suppose.)

The logic of going to the Moon first honestly escapes me but, when I realise people of the calibre of Jim Lovell think it's a good idea, I worry that I must be missing something. Unless he's also thinking we can 'subvert' the initiative and get to Mars before 2020!!

Palomar · 2004-02-02 11:41:00

The logic of going to the Moon first honestly escapes me but, when I realise people of the calibre of Jim Lovell think it's a good idea, I worry that I must be missing something. Unless he's also thinking we can 'subvert' the initiative and get to Mars before 2020!!

*I understand where you're coming from Shaun.

As for James Lovell(able), I'm not clear why he wants us to go back to the moon either. I've read 2 commentaries by him now...maybe I'm missing something as well? He's so accomplished and intelligent, it can't be mere nostalgia on his part (I hope). Maybe you're right about possible "subversion!"

Hmmmmm, I wonder if James Lovell ever reads at these message boards. I suppose we couldn't hope for a response from him (he'd be inundated with questions, etc...of course, that wouldn't be me...ha ha).

--Cindy

jadeheart · 2004-02-02 16:32:01

Lovell just wants to go back because he never got to walk on the moon . I met him a few years ago and he seemed like a nice enough guy. Just needs to look a little further out in his astronautical ambitions.

I'm with Shaun, luna's kind of a waste of time/resources. As the Mars Society 'steering committee' mentions, the moon should only be visited by hardware that has ALREADY been engineered for Mars capability-- and preferably has already been to Mars.

And I bet there won't be plans for any trips to the lunar poles, water or not.

Palomar · 2004-02-02 17:24:41

Lovell just wants to go back because he never got to walk on the moon . I met him a few years ago and he seemed like a nice enough guy. Just needs to look a little further out in his astronautical ambitions.

*Actually, that kind of occurred to me too.

You met him...kewl! Care to tell us in what context, where, etc.? I'd like to know.

I really enjoyed his book (co-authored), _Lost Moon_. Those guys maintained their composure right after that nasty bang and shudder...yipes (yes, I know people will say, "Well, they were highly trained to maintain their composure and cool"...but still!). Really impressive.

--Cindy

Michael Bloxham · 2004-02-03 23:29:45

Wouldn't it be just as easy (easier?) to go to mars than a return to the moon with todays technology anyway? Especially if Bush is calling for long stays on the surface, and all the trouble that entails... Sure, we might need atleast a little practice first, but anything we can do on the moon we could do much easier in orbit. Eh? What am I saying??!!

Edit: Notice how NewMars posts are a lot like chinese whispers? Sorry Cindy...

Palomar · 2004-03-13 07:08:44

[http://www.space.com/news/armstrong_nasa_040311.html]Neil Armstrong

*He supports Bush's plan too. "...said Thursday the plan is economically sustainable and the country must accept the risks that accompany space exploration in order to reap technological rewards..."

What an honor to have been the first human being to ever step foot on another celestial body. I wonder if he's ever overwhelmed by that fact; I should think so!

--Cindy

Palomar · 2004-05-12 10:20:29

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.h … 952]Former astronaut Don Peterson weighs in

*He's not opposed to humans to Mars. Check out his ideas (in the bulleted questions section) regarding how use of the ISS may assist with to-Mars technologies. I'd like to see NASA's answers to his letter and questions.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2004-05-21 13:22:53

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/li … tml]Nelson, Yang Liwei, Aldrin

*Meeting of the three. Expressing desire to go to Mars.

Hopefully it will be "for the benefit of all mankind"...I'm feeling a bit cynical and tired of platitudes.

--Cindy

REB · 2004-05-21 13:41:59

I want to see permanent bases on the Moon and Mars. Does it really have to be an either/or?

If I could set the goals for NASA (and make them stick to them) here is what I would do.

Goal #1: Study the asteroids. This goal has 2 parts;

Part 1: Study the Asteroids for their resource potential. Also tacked on to this goal is to study and develop machines for mining and processing the asteroids resources. These machines could also be modified for the Moon and Mars.

Part 2: Study the asteroid for ways to move them out of harms way. I prefer potential hazardous asteroids be mined until there is nothing left to be a hazard.

Goal #2: Set up a space station that acts as a way-station between the Earth and NEA’s, Moon & Mars.

Goal #3: Study the Moon for potential resources and how to mine them and process them.

Goal #4: Depending on the results of the Moon and NEA’s resources and how to mine and process them, build a space base industry for using space based resource to build ships, probes, or whatever we need up there. This could be located in LEO, on the Moon or in orbit around the Moon.

Goal #5: Continue to study Mars for human habitation.

Goal #6: Used the information, technology and space based industry to get humans to Mars to stay.

NASA’s main goal should be devolving a space bases infrastructure that utilizes as much space base resources as possible. I call this the Living-off-the-land goal.

clark · 2004-05-21 13:47:12

An excelent suggestion and long term plan REB, and exactly what the Vision for Space Exploration gives us.

A return to the Moon.
Development of skills to utilize space based resources (we try it out on the Moon, which is really an over sized asteroid).
Construction of a space station at L1 (it is implied by the overall goals of the entire program)
Mars, and beyond, using the skills learned and the technology developed previously.

Going straight to Mars gives us Mars. Going to the Moon and L1 gives us the stars.

I might mention, with asteroid mining, Mars makes more economic sense.

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#1 2003-12-26 08:11:09

Re: Astronauts Weigh In - ...Return to Moon or On to Mars

#2 2003-12-26 13:25:23

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