NASA’s moon plan raises questions

Reasonable, pending detailed definition
NASA’s ambition to hurl astronauts back to the moon prompted thoughts from one person that can already claim “been there, done that” bragging rights — Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt, a geologist and former U.S. senator from New Mexico.

“I have great respect for President Bush’s moon-Mars initiative and for Administrator Michael Griffin and his maturing management and engineering team in NASA,” Schmitt told Space.com. “The broad architecture would appear to be reasonable, pending detailed definition of the major technical and budgetary issues,” he said.

In an alternative universe, Schmitt added, the country would have maintained the Saturn 5 booster capability — the huge rocket used to propel crews to the moon — rather than being forced to work with the space shuttle booster technology. “That, however, does not appear to be a viable option for NASA at this time.”

Critical-path caution
In taking a preliminary look at the NASA architecture, the geologist in Schmitt provoked a worry.

“One caution at this point is to not put the presence of ice at the lunar poles in the critical path to success for the architecture,” Schmitt said. “It is not a proven resource, in spite of reports to the contrary. On the other hand, elemental hydrogen implanted by the solar wind — in contrast to water ice that has come from cometary impacts — is clearly concentrated in the polar regions over that present in lower latitudes,” he said.

Schmitt said, however, that there is enough hydrogen everywhere on the moon to produce water and oxygen. “Thus, selection of a site for semi-permanent lunar base should be approached with an open mind until we know for sure that ice is present and economically accessible at the poles.”

In his forthcoming book, "Return to the Moon: Exploration, Enterprise, and Energy in the Human Settlement of Space," published by Praxis-Springer, Schmitt spotlights the role of the moon in supporting an energy-hungry Earth. That prospect appears to be a missing-in-action aspect within NASA’s new architecture, Schmitt said.

“Another consideration for site selection not yet apparent in the architecture is verification of regional concentrations of helium-3, a potentially highly valuable, commercial energy resource for use in terrestrial fusion power plants,” Schmitt pointed out.

Schmitt also argued that the long-term architecture related to flights to Mars “must eventually contain a full, scientifically credible understanding of the long-term effects of the space environment on human performance and health.”

No Apollo replay
Paul Spudis, a lunar and planetary scientist at the Applied Physics Laboratory, a research and development arm of the Johns Hopkins University in Laurel, Md., takes issue with those who see the NASA vision as an Apollo replay.

There are significant differences between the Apollo of yesteryear and the NASA plan of today, Spudis said.

In the first place, the systems making up the vehicles are being designed for maximum leverage: long-life, cryogenic-based propulsion, with potential reuse in space, Spudis explained.

Secondly, the mission is different.

“In Apollo, the mission was to prove we could land on the moon and return safely to Earth. In this case, the mission is to determine the best site to collect and use the resources of the moon and to emplace the necessary infrastructure to do so,” Spudis said. “Admittedly, the early missions will be very much like a ‘super-Apollo.’ However, they have potential to grow into something very different.”

Use of off-planet resources
In point of fact, Spudis continued, “Apollo, for all its beauty, was essentially a technical dead-end … one-use systems, storable propellants, a paradigm of launching everything from Earth.”

Spudis told Space.com that this system, as blueprinted by NASA, is designed from the beginning to adapt to a different paradigm: the use of off-planet resources — lunar-manufactured propellants — to create a permanent transportation infrastructure in cislunar space, the territory between Earth and the orbit of the moon.

Should some things have been done differently?

“Possibly,” Spudis suggested. “You can never satisfy everybody by making architectural choices. However, it’s a system that will get us back to the moon with the minimal possible extra investment.

“It’s a start back on the road to real space capability,” Spudis advised. “And it’s better than the alternative, which is extinction of human exploration.”

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