Are astronauts close to extinction?
Lunar dreams: Returning to the moon requires a lander spacecraft, but NASA has no money for one.
NASA
The International Space Station (ISS) is one of the most complex and expensive engineering projects ever undertaken. When it is completed in 2011, it will have cost nearly $100 billion. And then, just five years later, the space station will be destroyed when NASA deliberately takes it out of orbit and plunges it into Earth's atmosphere.
That, at least, is NASA's current plan. The agency would like to keep the station running, but funding for it is projected only through 2015, much to the consternation of researchers who are just beginning to use it and international partners who have invested billions of dollars in the project. Extending the life of the station would cost $2 billion to $3 billion a year. Even "deorbiting" it--dumping its remains safely into the ocean--will not be cheap, costing at least $2 billion.
The 2015 deadline means that after decades of largely directionless space policy, Congress will be forced to make at least one clear decision: it must allocate funds for either the space station's continued operation or its destruction. And that is just one of a number of urgent issues facing the country's human spaceflight program. The space shuttle is due to be retired by late 2010 or early 2011, leaving NASA without a means of sending astronauts anywhere for several years. And the key elements of NASA's exploration program, the Ares I rocket that will launch astronauts into orbit and the Orion capsule that will ferry them around in space, are several years behind schedule.
In October, the Augustine Committee, a panel chartered by the White House and chaired by former Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine, issued its report on the future of space travel. The committee examined NASA's plans and explored alternatives. Much of the report discussed the merits of different destinations in space and the rocket and spacecraft technologies that could be used to reach those destinations. But embedded in the report is a rationale for why there should be a human spaceflight program at all. "The Committee concluded that the ultimate goal of human exploration is to chart a path for human expansion into the solar system," it states.
Over the years, NASA and space advocates have put forward many reasons to justify sending astronauts into space. They have garnered support by offering something for everybody, especially the military and scientific communities; scientific progress, strategic superiority, and international prestige have been foremost among the promised benefits. On closer inspection, though, these justifications don't hold up or are no longer relevant. For example, robotic missions are increasingly capable of scientific work in space, and they cost far less than human crews. Satellites launched on expendable boosters allowed the United States to achieve strategic dominance in space. And Cold War motives disappeared with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Consequently, some have concluded that there is no longer any reason for human space exploration. A longtime critic of human spaceflight was the late James Van Allen, who in 1958 made the first major scientific discovery of the space age: the radiation belts around Earth that bear his name. In a 2004 essay, Van Allen wondered whether robotic spacecraft had made human spaceflight "obsolete." "At the end of the day," he wrote, "I ask myself whether the huge national commitment of technical talent to human spaceflight and the ever-present potential for the loss of precious human life are really justifiable."
But for most of the engineers and astronauts involved in the space program, astronauts can never be rendered obsolete by robots, because human spaceflight is an end in itself. They share the committee's belief that the purpose of these manned missions is to allow people to expand into, and ultimately settle, outer space.
Moon and Mars missions are scrapped, but radical new technology gets funding.
Engineers are developing a more flexible outfit--just the thing for a mission to the moon.
Why NASA will never have enough money
Nice informative article. The reason that NASA has insufficient resources to colonize the moon and other bodies in the solar system is simple: rocket propulsion is extremely expensive, limited and dangerous. The hard truth is that it will always be so because that is the nature of the beast; the spaceship must carry both propellant and energy for propulsion on board. This highly inefficient approach to propulsion severely limits the payload (this includes human passengers and their life support systems), the reach and the usefulness of space travel.
I am sorry but we will not colonize the solar system, let alone the star systems beyond, with rockets. But who says we are forever stuck with this dangerous and crippling beast fastened to our backs? Imagine if we had a propulsion system that made it possible to travel from Earth to Mars in hours or from New York City to Beijing in minutes. You may think this is impossible but space colonization and exploitation will forever remain primitive and overly expensive if that's the case.
The space propulsion community must look beyond its current understanding of physics if it is to come out of the rut it is stuck in. It's obvious that current physics is not going to solve this problem anytime soon. Physicists must retrace their steps and reevaluate their fundamental assumptions and practices to uncover a solution.
Our understanding of motion is a case in point. Every physicist seems to be under the impression that inertial motion is uncaused; two bodies in relative motion remain in motion for no reason. What if this is not true? What if Aristotle was right about the causality of motion? What if there is something (some form of energy) in the "vacuum" that acts as a causal substrate for motion? My point is that a correct and complete understanding of the true nature of motion would, without a doubt, uncover new avenues of research that would revolutionize transportation. NASA should encourage as many fringe avenues of research as possible, in my opinion, regardless of their expected payoffs. Who knows? Nobody is going to win the lotto if nobody buys a ticket.
Re: Why NASA will never have enough money
I strongly agree with this assessment. I would like whatever money is spent for space exploration to be used primarily to research alternate transport modes, which may include things like wormholes or other ways to make quantum leaps in distances. We are going nowhere significant with rockets. Isn't the ultimate goal to find a way out of here before the Sun collapses? Rocket ships will not do it.
I also believe that short term, exploring and researching our oceans is much more important to our species than the space program.
Re: Why NASA will never have enough money
Nonsense. Chemical rockets are perfectly adequate for access to Low Earth orbit, the Moon and (somewhat marginally) to Mars. Do not assume that we've reached the end of the line in their development, which is limited as much by politics and by economics/demand as it is by engineering and physics. Serious nuclear thermal rocket development hasn't been done since 1972, not because of insurmountable engineering problems, but because the mood and support of the times wasn't there to support the plans for larger-scale operations on the Moon in the late 70's, or continue to mars in the mid-80's. (I often hear the lament of what we could do if we still had the Saturn 5s, but it's usually from those who are too young to remember that we don't have them, because we consciously chose to stop doing the kinds of projects that required them...not the other way around. Same with NERVA.)
Nuclear electric propulsion shows great promise. Small reactors (not just RTGs) whose technology could be scaled up to power them have, been used in orbit a number of times (one of them, Cosmos 954,fell back to Earth in Canada). Ion engines have been used in space and the ESA has recently developed more efficient versions, plasma rockets, particularly VASIMR continue to be developed (A VASIMR prototype will eventually be tested on ISS, albeit for short runs, due to the limited power available from the station.)
And there's the potential of some form of fusion as either a power source for electric rockets, or as direct propulsion. (Yes, controlled fusion has always seemed far off, but we know, from a sunny day, to Bikini Atoll, that fusion does happen. It doesn't rely on completely unknown physics.)
The late Robert Forward wrote at length on what would be needed to produce antimatter in useful quantities (using solar powered particle accelerators of high beam currents...a low efficiency process, but the energy is free) that could be used in very high performance nuclear thermal rockets (a tiny amount of antimatter, injected into a reaction mass, annihilates and heats the surrounding mass) that might allow marginal, nearby interstellar flight in reasonable times.
And all the above is a form of rocketry. We've known for a very long time that Newton's Third Law works.
We most certainly should explore the limits of known physics for other possibilities, but precisely because of the unknowns, we cannot say at all that there will be anything there we can use for spaceflight, or that it will be attainable with any efficiency, if there is. (A 'reactionless' drive won't help if it should ultimately require a star's worth of energy to put a ton in LEO. We just cannot say.)
The analogy with a lottery breaks down when you consider that we know there will be a drawing, whether any one particular person wins or not. In this case, nature may not have anything else to offer us here. We can and should look, but we can't count on, or wait for what we utterly don't know.
We don't need anything radical (though I'll take it, if it exists), we need to do what we know, even better, and stop being excessively comfortable with the status quo...
...Starting with the idea that manned space flight will always be the province of NASA (or the space agency of any other government) and that the model we've lived with so far, is the only one possible.
Use robots, humans don't belong in space
The only possible value of a human presence in space that I can see is tourism and the production of weightless porn.
Seriously, I don't think a human presence in space makes any sense. Robotics and AI are advancing so fast that we can find any knowledge we need, or maybe mine asteroids or what have you, without risking human life. Human health quickly deteriorates in weightless conditions, and protection from radiation over a long term is very difficult. And the psychological issues are serious. Humans just aren't made for space. I think the idea of jaunting about in the Solar System ala Firefly is a long long way off, if it is ever possible. I just don't see the point.
Re: Use robots, humans don't belong in space
heard this argument many times, and it still doesn't carry the day. no matter how capable the robot systems, we have not explored until we have boots on the ground. it is the same in many things. in war, you can bomb as much as you want, but to win, you must put troops in place and take the ground. in farming, you can spray poisons or nutrients from the air, but you still need folks on the ground to assess ripeness of the crop and pick the produce. I could go on, but it doesn't matter - the bottom line is simple: any field of human endeavour is incomplete until the humans are there.
Re: Use robots, humans don't belong in space
I get your point, but what is there that humans would care about on a human scale? There's no place to settle, no food, no water, no air, etc. The things we are interested in finding out about, such as "are there microbes in the soil?", "is there frozen water?", "are there bacterial fossils?", and so on can be answered by robots at a fraction of the price, and with no risk to human life. Robotic technology is progressing at a tremendous rate, including robots that walk and run like animals and are capable of more autonomy.
Re: Use robots, humans don't belong in space
well all other arguments aside, I think the primary reason to continue manned space flight is to learn about manned space flight.
I think the ultimate long long term goal of any space program should be colonization of other worlds, be it planets or moons.
This rock we call home has a finite amount of space and finite resources, all being consumed by an exponentially increasing appetite. The solutions to this are A) limit population growth, which will probably happen through war. or B) expand the human race to other planets.
The sun itself has a finite life time, and in about 3 billion years is going to leave the earth a smoldering cinder.
Currently the human race has all of its eggs in 1 basket, and frankly that needs to change as soon as possible.
Re: Use robots, humans don't belong in space
The idea of colonization to put our eggs in multiple baskets is absurd for reasons I believe are quite obvious. Until we possess the technological prowess to terra-form whole planets, or alter the human form for space, Earth is all we have.
Let's stop wasting money and time on foolishness like returning to the Moon for no intelligent reason, and work instead on reducing population, exploring the oceans, and educating as much irrationality out of people as possible.
Re: Use robots, humans don't belong in space
And it's not very easy swimming 'cross the oceans blue... except folks have been continously braving the waves in ever enhanced vehicles for longer than anyone can truly know...
And if the Good Lord had meant for us to fly we'd have been issued wings at birth... except there's been some fraction of humanity in the air since the early 1930's perhaps earlier still... even the Air & Space museum doesn't know when this took place.
And it's way too hard to breathe underwater... except there's been folks constantly voyaging beneath the seas since no later than the mid 1940's... thank goodness too that they're still out there just in case iran or north korea gets too excited about their itty bitty toy nukes.
And it's way too cold for people to survive on the Antartic continent... except there's been folks there continuously since the mid 1950's or so... by the way did ya know you can direct dial there with your cell?
Clearly uncrewed prairie probes have their place in exploration everywhere... what I don't get is BHO's plans to build high speed rail in Florida for billions of dollars (that's the actual money he's planning for that) while China has even grander designs for the Moon?
Here's another question about robotics and the space program... If this were the best way to proceed then why did BHO stretch out JSC's in work, since Nov09, 1,000 day plan to put robonaut on the Moon out to as late as 2020?
http://nasawatch.com/archives/2010/02/video-jscs-proj.html
And oh yes... it's very difficult to sustain a continuous presence in space yet humanity did it for about eight days short of a decade ending in Aug99... then unbowed, started again in Nov00 and our brothers and sisters are still going strong even now as BHO is doing everything he can to make it all go away.
Space Robots vs human missions
My blog is a collection of answers from various scientists, academics and laymen for my question:
Present day robots are easily overhauling early human ancestors! Are flesh blood humans necessary to boldly go where no man is necessary?
http://my.technologyreview.com/mytr/social/blog/post.aspx?wuid=111447&bpid=544
Why not take dust of Apollo misilles
Why doesn't NASA just refurbish the old moon lander and Apollo rockets? They already transported humans to the moon and returned and this at the time when computers where the size of a chamber. I say they clean them, give them a new paint job, fill the missiles up and boldly go where no one else had gone before. Much more likely they are and were not trustworthy enough for such a voyage so they never were used to go to the moon at all and mankind has yet to set foot on the moon.
Re: Why not take dust of Apollo misilles
Because the production facilities for Saturn 5 rockets and their parts for the most part do not exist anymore. And to produce them again would require about the same effort as producing a new rocket. The potential advantage of the Ares rockets and a few of the other replacement ideas is that they are variants of existing rockets currently in production or which still are producable with minimal retooling.
Personaly I think the Ares 1 design is a little crazy. (The term bottle rocket comes to mind) And the news on it has not exactly been glowing.
Re: Why not take dust of Apollo misilles
I am curious. if you don't believe in a technical achievement as important and as obvious as the moon landing, why are you lurking around a technological site? seems like you should go hang out with the other Luddites, living in a grass shack and picking lice off one another.
Let's see, it costs $2-3 billion a year to keep the space station operating. That's about 1% of the defense budget, about half what we gave GMAC last week to keep it going, 1% of what we gave AIG because it was "too big to fail," and about what has been spent on lobbying Congress in the last year on healthcare.
SO TELL ME WHY WE'RE HAVING THIS DISCUSSION!
Approaching 70 I recall the early space excitement and the birth of America's new cowboys. NASA found the human engagement with the unknown, the explorer, as solution to marketing their future. The birth of human spaceflight was tied to the Cold War and America's triumph. It's time we wake up from this dream and acknowledge the future of spaceflight is for scientific purposes where astronauts are of little value, certainly not in our current budgets. Putting humans on top of rockets is so 1950s!
If getting into orbit weren't so expensive many of the issues that arise over space developement and exploration, strictly speaking, would become far more manageable, but our current focus is on the highly engineered and very expensive system we have, rather than vastly more practical and cheaper and smarter ways to get lots of material at least into low earth orbit for a lot less money. We did not develope the nuclear rocket for a number of reasons, some more based on emotion rather than scientific objectivity, but we likewise went on another direction from the one recommended by Robert Truax whose design maxim was "big, easy, cheap and durable" as exemplified by his concept of the "sea dragon". So big it would be made of steel and constructed as a huge tubular tank, floated to the launch site, fueled with something cheap and easy to obtain, and launced right out in the ocean...where anyone could see it. It would have little appeal to a military intent on developing space in parallel with a balistic missile program vital to defense as it was being played out in the depth of the cold war with it's emphasis on nuclear delivery systems and countermeasures.
Alternately, great advances in technology have made the idea of high-gee force loads being shot into space using launch systems that apply electromagnetic forces to accelerate mass along a vacuumed tunnel on a rail system like a rocket powered high velocity gun hurling payloads of a couple of tons every few minutes that would create a fuel depot and cargo line for reaction mass, massive materials for shielding and just plain water cheaply, in tandem with the very real potential of piloted space taxis for delicate payloads like humans and apparatus, such as the systems being developed by Rutan and his fellows.
Clearly space developement is going to take a long time if we continue to see our primary delivery system as being very expensive for fuel and operations, dangerously complex, capable only of relatively small, delicate and complex bits of tentative projects, that are so expensive they eat up the budget for anykind of new but ultimately more effective system...that and the culture of inertia inevitable in every big sprawling endeavor where careers hang in the balance.
With enough mass in orbit the creation of space platforms that can be robust enough to spin and create artificial gravity can be a reality. With enough water, cheaply sent by some electrodynamic catapult or rail gun, were we to get serious on developing it, we would have adequate shielding, but at the current price, even if deeply discounted, using the current systems, it will way too expensive for any serious developement for a long time to come.
In the mean time, just how small and compact can satellites and robots get and still be useable for research in space? That too is a worthy approach and might give us the kinds of awareness that will spur humans to keep building in space, which I guess I consider our destiny in so far as it seems to me it is the kind o' technological civilization we've been and seem destined to continue being.
Threat to US space supremacy exists, but is at this point asymmetric
Thanks for a very informative text, Mr. Foust. I'm trying to understand how much of our military might and economic well being depends on the communication and GPS satellite network. The article mentions that
"...Satellites launched on expendable boosters allowed the United States to achieve strategic dominance in space. And Cold War motives disappeared with the collapse of the Soviet Union."
I'm not so much concerned that another country might soon achieve dominance in space - but that a foe might be capable to bring down our satellite infrastructure, thus eliminating our advantage. Here is an analysis by Geoffrey Forden:
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2008/01/inside-the-chin/
Forden writes: "...if the short term military consequences to the United States [of a theoretic sneak attack by China on US military satellites] are not that bad, the long term consequences to all space-faring nations would be devastating. The destruction of the nine satellites hit during the first hour of the attack considered here could put over 18,900 new pieces of debris over four inches in diameter into the most populated belt of satellites in low Earth orbit. Even more debris would be put into geostationary orbit if China launched an attack against communications satellites. In the immediate aftermath of the attack, the debris from each satellite would continue to “clump” together, much as the debris from last year’s test. However, over the next year or so—well after the terrestrial war with China had been resolved—the debris fields would fan out and eventually strike another satellite.
"These debris fields could easily cause a run-away chain of collisions that renders space unusable — for thousands of years, and for everyone."
I'd also like to respond to a previous comment, that said "...it costs $2-3 billion a year to keep the space station operating. That's about 1% of the defense budget, about half what we gave GMAC last week to keep it going, 1% of what we gave AIG because it was "too big to fail," etc"
All excellent points, the difference however is that the insane amounts of money 'given' to GMAC and AIG were simply created out of thin air, moved from one balance sheet to another by the Fed, whereas the expense of the Military and the Space Program are 'real' in the sense that they must be covered by economic production.
Re: Threat to US space supremacy exists, but is at this point asymmetric
It is clear that both, China and the United States, are developing the ability to weaponize space without actually deploying such weapons. This is probably the best way to be prepared in case relations degrade between the two countries without bringing space operations into contention between the opposing nations. Therefore, from a defense perspective it makes all the sense in the world to increase our robotic space capabilities for space exploration since there are many inherent dual use purposes in space robotics for space exploration and defense. With NASA budgets waning in comparison to GDP I see no other choice for human spaceflight than to explore commercial contract alternatives with companies like SpaceX and Orbital Sciences. Such a course would free up NASA to explore the use of advanced artificially intelligent robotic mining systems that could journey to comets and asteroids to mine those bodies for water and, or other minerals, and bring those resources into rendezvous with human spacecraft, particularly the ISS, which can develop new ways to sustain human life purely from space resources. Water could also be used for in-space refueling for smaller commercially launched manned vehicles, providing deep space capabilities at much lower costs than Ares V-type vehicles. With such robotic capability would come enormous dual use capabilities in space defense without actually producing the "gun". NASA could turn its attention toward this Robotic Mining System while private companies forge ahead in launching vehicles with life-support systems developed on the ISS. It is clear that keeping the ISS indefinitely, by providing new modules as existing ones age, would secure our current partnerships while providing much needed research on the effects of space on human health. And clearly human spaceflight will demand greater, more advanced use of robotics - thereby raising the bar while bringing humans closer to the goal of settling and exploring beyond Earth. Eventually robotics can build it, then we will go.
Why do we have to send humans into space?
Simply because we have to. It's nothing to do with cost, exploitation of resources out there, nationalistic jingoism, it's because the alternative does not bear thinking about.
It's in our very being to explore, to ask questions, to find out, to experiment: travelling into space for real is what we should be doing, what we should be striving for. Otherwise, why did we bother to leave the oceans all those millions of years ago?
Come on, let's at least try to get to Mars! Take a listen to this song I wrote which tells it better than I just did:
http://www.jango.com/stations/214119529/tunein?proxy_id=39780625&song_id=318960
Noel,
Arbelos
http://www.arbelos.eu
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Mekhong Kurt
13 Comments
The Future of Human Spaceflight
Mr. Foust:
This is beyond doubt the best summary of where we stand as 2009 closes, and it covers all the bases. I don't know how you crammed so much solid info into such a compact package.
Born in 1951 and raised in the country in Texas, I was already entranced by the night sky when Sputnik was launched and my Dad took me outside to see it (well, its booster) orbiting above. My love of the night sky now included, for life, spaceflight, especially human spaceflight.
I have the utmost respect for the many shuttle astronauts; that somehow NASA lost its way after Apollo -- because we, the American people, lost ours -- is in no way their doing, much less their fault. Ditto the spacefarers of other nations.
Robotic exploration has much to recommend it, and certainly shouldn't be abandoned. Look at the wonders we've learned from Hubble, the Mars Rovers, and numerous other missions. And such missions are, beyond dispute, far cheaper and safer than human exploration.
But baby boomers of a certain age recall with me enjoying getting into the car and driving around aimlessly, poking down new lanes and streets, along county roads, oveer to that little town 40 miles away just because we had never been there.
Exploring. And exploring is not just part of our DNA. It's part of our psyche.
It's part of our souls.
I fully understand that right now is hardly an opportune time to be trying to convince people to suck it up and make further sacrifices to fund a program with no assured promise of some concrete payoff. And we don't have the spur of the Sputnik era -- the Cold War -- to drive us.
It's time, I believe, we do more to pull the private sector more front and center into this. Share our space program's experts with them. Smooth the bureaucratic roads down which the necessarily must travel.
And set a series of concrete goals, beginning relatively close in time. Those should include extending the life of the ISS, as you say, for starters. Maybe develop an even broader consortium than the one involved in the ISS to set up a small, long-term base on the Moon. And not in the 2030's. If China can get there well before then all by itself -- and I believe it can and will -- such a consortium sure ought to be able to do so. After all, we Americans have nearly half a century manned spaceflight experience, and have landed men on the Moon over a generation ago.
By maybe 2040, a manned expedition to an asteroid, the Moons of Mars, or Mars itself. With an eye on colonizing The Red Planet.
Maybe that last is the most difficult to sell; that's a full generation in the future. But at least it's a specific, targetable goal.
Yes, human exploration has *always* been an end in itself . . .
and is one of our most glorious ends.
Thanks for a brilliant article, Mr. Foust.
Reply
Gaetano Marano
246 Comments
Re: The Future of Human Spaceflight
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"Are astronauts close to extinction?"
NO, not ALL astronauts... ONLY the american astronauts launched with american spacecrafts... and NOT forever... the US human spaceflight on US vehicles will have only an 8-12 years delay
that, especially if the US politics will take their decisions (about the future of NASA and US spaceflights) starting from the WRONG proposals of the USELESS Augustine Commission report, as explained in this article:
http://www.ghostnasa.com/posts2/056hsfreport.html
and the result of these (upcoming) wrong decisions will be to give away the leadership in space to China, that will (also) WIN the new "commercial" Moon race:
http://www.ghostnasa.com/posts/049chinamoonrace.html
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