New Mars Forums
You are not logged in.
- Topics: Active | Unanswered
Announcement
#1 2018-07-02 17:34:58
- EdwardHeisler
- Member
- Registered: 2017-09-20
- Posts: 357
Trump Wants a Space Station Orbiting Around the Moon
Trump Wants a Space Station Orbiting Around the Moon
NASA is quietly asking private companies to bid on the development of a new space station that would orbit the moon starting in 2022. But why?
David Axe
07.02.18 The dailybeast
If someone mentions space station, you probably are thinking of the one floating right above Earth, or perhaps a future one when (if?) we make it to Mars.
But the newest space station might actually circle a familiar celestial orb: the moon.
That’s according to a procurement request from NASA, which is asking private companies to bid on the development of a new space station that would loosely orbit the moon starting in 2022.
In theory, the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway could function as a jumping-off point for manned missions to the moon, including to its relatively unexplored far side. The station could also help prepare astronauts for Mars.
The Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway “will give us a strategic presence in the lunar vicinity,” then-NASA acting Administrator Robert Lightfoot said in a press release in February (PDF).
It might seem fairly straightforward to build a station orbiting the moon, but there are hiccups. The station would be too far from Mars to handle lunar missions on its own. It would need support from another, smaller moon-orbiting station and landers that NASA hasn’t even proposed to build. Meanwhile, the red planet is rapidly fading from NASA’s planning, potentially orphaning the Gateway station as far as Mars goes.
For that reason, experts warned that the Gateway station might not be very useful for productive space exploration. “It’s a mixed bag,” Matt Siegler, a former NASA scientist now with the Arizona-based Planetary Science Institute, told The Daily Beast.
But Siegler said that the moon and Mars aren’t really the point in building another space station.
The point, actually, is much more grounded than one might believe: China.
That’s because the Asian space power could be slinking ahead of the United States in the race back to the lunar surface. “China seems on track to send astronauts to the moon by the late 2020s, if not sooner,” Siegler said.
In that context, Siegler added, America’s new moon station represents a kind of extraterrestrial P.R. stunt—a significant piece of space hardware that NASA could launch before China’s taikonauts step foot on the moon. “The Gateway is basically a way to make a statement that the U.S. has a deeper space presence than other countries,” Siegler said.
Despite this logistical uncertainty, NASA is forging ahead, soliciting proposals from the industry for the initial Gateway components, and has asked Congress for $500 million to begin paying for them in 2019. NASA expects the station to cost $2.7 billion in total.
It’s not a new idea. The space agency first proposed a moon station in 2013 as a lunching pad for missions to intercept and redirect asteroids on a collision course with Earth. The asteroid-defense project ended in 2017, but the idea for the station survived.
NASA spokeswoman Cheryl Warner told The Daily Beast that the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway—in appearance, a sort of miniature version of the International Space Station that orbits Earth—could “be moved between orbits,” allowing it to “support lunar surface missions as well as exploration farther into the solar system, including Mars.”
For NASA, a moon mission is much more urgent. NASA and private companies hope to discover valuable gases and minerals that can be mined and shipped back to Earth, or processed on the moon for use by a Mars mission or some future lunar base.
And then there’s the “dark” side of the moon. Every past manned mission to the lunar surface has explored the moon’s more easily accessible near side. Owing to the difficulty in getting signals past the moon’s bulk, only a few probes have gathered data on its far side. (Sunlight actually does hit the far side, so it’s not really dark.)
Beijing launched the most recent far-side moon probe back in May. A new U.S. station, reliably circling around the entire moon, could make far-side missions more routine for Americans. “If we are going to explore the unexplored, the lunar far-side is our obvious target,” David Kring, a researcher with the Texas-based Lunar and Planetary Institute, wrote in a 2018 paper endorsing the Gateway station (PDF).
But the Gateway station alone can’t return American astronauts to the lunar surface—either the near or far side. That’s because the station would travel along what NASA calls a “rectilinear halo orbit” that would bring it no closer than 1,000 miles to the moon.
That’s too far from the moon for efficient exploration. To support human astronauts or a large number of drones, the moon station would probably need help from a smaller sub-station orbiting just 60 miles from the lunar surface, as well as from a new generation of moon landers that NASA hasn’t even begun to develop, Siegler pointed out.
“I personally would like to see many lunar landers and a new [low] lunar orbiter,” Siegler said. “So if the Gateway lets that be done, I would support it.” But he added that it might be better to simply boost drones and human explorers straight from the Earth to the moon. Stopping over on the gateway station is “not necessarily cheaper.”
As for Mars, William Gerstenmaier, a NASA associate administrator, said the agency’s experience with the Gateway “would ultimately translate” to a manned mission to the red planet.
In 2015 Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin developed a loose concept for Mars landings that involves training astronauts during layovers aboard orbital moon bases. A moon station could also function as a gas station for Mars-bound spaceships.
But NASA has largely walked away from concrete plans to land astronauts on Mars. The agency’s official website vaguely states that a manned Mars mission should happen “sometime in the future.”
But there’s no real schedule. And NASA is no longer developing many of the key technologies for a manned Mars mission. A manned mission is “on total hold,” Chris Impey, a University of Arizona astronomer, told The Daily Beast.
Until NASA gets serious about a Mars mission, the Gateway station’s ability to support that mission is meaningless. “A fuel depot beyond the moon would be useful for further exploration and Mars missions, but that’s not part of the plan,” Impey said.
Too far from the moon to efficiently support lunar exploration and pointless for Mars without firm plans for an actual mission to the red planet, the Gateway has exposed itself for what it really is—a symbol, according to Siegler.
With China sending its own drones and people to the moon in the next few years, NASA and the White House appear to be spooked. They’re looking for a near-term moon station to send a message, even if that station is impractical. “The U.S. is obviously trying to make a political statement that they are the leaders in space,” Siegler said.
Offline
Like button can go here
#2 2018-07-03 18:19:31
- SpaceNut
- Administrator
- From: New Hampshire
- Registered: 2004-07-22
- Posts: 29,436
Re: Trump Wants a Space Station Orbiting Around the Moon
I think we all would want to do something other than to go to another station that sort does not go anywhere such as the deepspace description sort of indicates but going towards any other name seenms hard for Nasa. Waystation to the Solar System
It seems like everyone wants to go someplace in the Solar System. President Trump wants to go to the Moon. Elon Musk wants to go to Mars. Others want to go to an asteroid. Others just want to go someplace.
Offline
Like button can go here
#3 2018-07-04 03:56:01
- Terraformer
- Member
- From: The Fortunate Isles
- Registered: 2007-08-27
- Posts: 3,909
- Website
Re: Trump Wants a Space Station Orbiting Around the Moon
If the US wants to prove they've still got it, they need to throw money at SpaceX to get them to manrate Falcon Heavy, and then do a Lunar flyby.
Use what is abundant and build to last
Offline
Like button can go here
#4 2018-07-04 10:58:36
- GW Johnson
- Member
- From: McGregor, Texas USA
- Registered: 2011-12-04
- Posts: 5,823
- Website
Re: Trump Wants a Space Station Orbiting Around the Moon
You have to understand what NASA has morphed into. Partly an overgrown, bloated bureaucracy, partly a tool to distribute pork to the districts of powerful congressmen.
Bloat induces paralysis by means we all understand. All large organizations (public and private) suffer from this. In spite of it, they usually wish to grow instead of shrink. Money gets wasted maintaining the organization, instead of actually being used to do something.
Being a pork distribution tool is not restricted to NASA, many government agencies suffer from this in one form or another, and not just in the US either. It shows up as a network of favored contractors with new blood almost locked out, and projects and programs that become nothing more than corporate welfare. Nothing of significance gets done, with some exceptions of sub-organizations, such as JPL.
There would seem to be little we might want to do on the moon that would not be better done from a surface base instead of an orbiting station. Names like "gateway" are complete misnomers. You are better off launching from where the propellants are made, because then you don't have to transport the propellant, too. That would be the surface of the moon, if such really can be made there.
If propellants cannot be easily made on the moon, you are far better off just launching from Earth. Simple as that, guys! Therefore, any orbiting station about or near the moon is simply corporate welfare for the favored contractor network. Nothing more than that.
Such a thing will NOT be needed at all until a transportation network is established between Earth and moon that uses different vehicles for the transit versus the landing. Then, a place to debark the transit and board the lander actually makes some sense. And NOT before!
Why is this travesty so hard to recognize for what it really is?
GW
Last edited by GW Johnson (2018-07-04 11:01:18)
GW Johnson
McGregor, Texas
"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew, especially one dead from a bad management decision"
Offline
Like button can go here
#5 2018-07-06 16:21:09
- SpaceNut
- Administrator
- From: New Hampshire
- Registered: 2004-07-22
- Posts: 29,436
Re: Trump Wants a Space Station Orbiting Around the Moon
While I want international open use of a station that can be afforded by many as a tourist level costs but going it with internation partners might not be the best way to control costs to operate.
US Asks Russia to Fix Its Broken Toilet on ISS
The again this is just one problem as there is the other stuff that needs to be dealt with in NASA seeks new ways to handle trash for deep space missions
Life aboard the International Space Station requires extreme measures in efficiency to preserve resources, reduce waste, repurpose materials, and recycle water and breathable air. Regular cargo resupply missions deliver approximately 12 metric tons of supplies each year, which can lead to significant storage challenges in the orbiting laboratory.
When trash accumulates, astronauts manually squeeze it into trash bags, temporarily store almost two metric tons of it for relatively short durations, and then send it away in a departing commercial supply vehicle, which either returns it to Earth or incinerates it during reentry through the atmosphere.
Offline
Like button can go here