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| Science & Technology |
| Why a Moon Mission Is Worth the Money |
| 2007-03-02 |
| By Charles Krauthammer You might not have noticed, but we broke another space record last month when astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria logged 67 hours of spacewalking. If you consider that the equivalent of the Guinness record for pogo-stick bouncing (23.11 miles in 12 hours and 27 minutes) -- amazing but pointless -- I agree with you. There's nothing quite as beautiful as the space station and the shuttle that services it, and nothing quite as useless. Now, that can be said of many things: a balance-beam dismount, a Shakespeare sonnet, a chess problem by Nabokov. But none of these is financed by taxpayers and none makes a claim to utility. They are there for reasons of aesthetics, and perhaps amusement. You cannot justify a $17 billion NASA budget or $6 billion spent on manned exploration on such grounds. There has to be more than that, and the space shuttle never was. It will be remembered as one of the most elegant, most misbegotten detours in the history of technology. It was our Spruce Goose, Howard Hughes' gigantic, eight-engine plane that flew only once. But the Spruce Goose didn't cost $4 billion in taxpayer money to operate. Which is why the coming retirement of the shuttle is so welcome. Even more welcome was the Bush administration's decision to redirect the entire manned space effort to establishing a moon base. Not until about 2020, mind you, half a century since we first reached the moon. Future generations will have a hard time understanding the hiatus. But for two sets of critics -- the Luddite left and the science purists -- 50 years is not nearly long enough. They would not build a moon base at all. The Luddites have long opposed manned exploration as a waste of resources when, as the mantra goes, we have so many problems here on earth. I find this objection incomprehensible. When will we stop having problems here on earth? In a fallen world of endless troubles, that does not stop us from allocating resources to endeavors we find beautiful, exciting and elevating -- opera, alpine skiing, feature films -- yet solve no social problems. Moreover, the moon base is not pointless. The shuttles were on an endless trip to the nowhere of low Earth orbit. The moon is a destination. The idea this time is not to go plant a flag, take a golf shot and leave, but to stay and form a real self-sustaining, extraterrestrial human colony. Sure, Mars would be better. It holds open the possibility of life and might even have water on its surface today. But the best should not be the enemy of the good. Mars is simply too far, too dangerous, too difficult, too expensive. We won't go there for a hundred years. Nor is it true that there is nothing of use or even of interest on the moon. There are all kinds of materials to be exploited, observations of the cosmos to be made, and knowledge to be gained on how best to live off the land away from Earth. A century ago there seemed to be nothing in Antarctica too. We went there first for adventure, then for discovery. The concrete scientific advances Antarctica has yielded (regarding climate change and the ozone layer, for example) have been as important as they were unexpected. A more serious critique of returning to the moon comes not from the Luddites but the purists. They want science, and they are right that robotic exploration is a more cost-effective way to get it. The science yielded by unmanned vehicles, such as past and future probes of the ice surface of Europa and the hydrocarbon lakes of Titan, is indeed thrilling. And pound for pound, dollar for dollar, manned exploration does bring back less science than robots. But it still brings back science. Humans can discover things through intuition and pattern recognition that machines thinking in algorithms cannot. Imagine the scientific possibilities if today we had humans patrolling Mars rather than the brilliantly programmed but still limited golf carts now roaming the surface. And then there's the glory. If you find any value, any lift of the spirit in a beautiful mathematical proof, in an elegant balletic turn, in any of the myriad human endeavors that have no utility but only breathtaking beauty, then you should feel something when our little species succeeds in establishing new life in a void that for all eternity had been the province of the gods. If you don't feel that, you are -- don't take this personally -- deaf to the music of our time. |
| Posted by:ryuge |
| #20 I'd have to look into it in detail, but there are mining macvhines available that could probably be robotized and computerized fairly easily. As to the nuclear reactor cooling issue, well, the moon doesn't have much of an atmosphere to hold heat so heat would tend to dissipate very rapidly. Rather than using an air-or water-cooled reactor you could use liquid sodium or some other fairly volatile (in an atmosphere) liquid. And, if you're worried about that heat - put it to use! Melt those tunnels using the waste heat from the reactor. Plans are already on the table for all of the above ideas I believe (see the Planet Society, or any of about a hundred Science Fact articles from Analog Magazine over the last 25+ years). |
| Posted by: FOTSGreg 2007-03-02 22:22 |
| #19 I'm not convinced the Space Shuttle program will be so much "retired" as de-prioritized - IMO it is still more costs-effective, even in space, to use modes that can transport large quantities of cargo despite slow speeds; as opposed to using smaller faster modes that can carry only lite cargoes. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2007-03-02 21:43 |
| #18 Teflon is a flourine compound. The reason stuff doesn't stick is because flourine doesn't share electrons easily, it's stingy. The trick was getting the teflon to stick to the frying pan. That's why one must take extreme care to not use abrasives when cleaning or using metal utinsals while cooking. |
| Posted by: Deacon Blues 2007-03-02 21:01 |
| #17 The Atlas program was the best value for good stuff from space. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2007-03-02 18:16 |
| #16 Some bashing of Krauthammer here as if he was against a moon mission but reading his post I'm not getting that impression at all. Forget teflon, NASA technology gave us the tippy-cup. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2007-03-02 16:18 |
| #15 If you find any value, any lift of the spirit in a beautiful mathematical proof, in an elegant balletic turn, in any of the myriad human endeavors that have no utility but only breathtaking beauty, then you should feel something when our little species succeeds in establishing new life in a void that for all eternity had been the province of the gods. If you don't feel that, you are -- don't take this personally -- deaf to the music of our time. Now that is one of the sweetest pairs of sentences I have ever read. Lovely turn of phrase. |
| Posted by: Mike 2007-03-02 13:38 |
| #14 The Luddites have long opposed manned exploration as a waste of resources when, as the mantra goes, we have so many problems here on earth. Bah. I'd say they created a good many of those same problems themselves. Now, that can be said of many things: a balance-beam dismount, a Shakespeare sonnet, a chess problem by Nabokov. But none of these is financed by taxpayers and none makes a claim to utility. They are there for reasons of aesthetics, and perhaps amusement. You cannot justify a $17 billion NASA budget or $6 billion spent on manned exploration on such grounds. There has to be more than that, and the space shuttle never was. Sometimes, reinvigorating the imagination is worth $30 billion. |
| Posted by: Ptah 2007-03-02 12:32 |
| #13 The first reactor at Oak Ridge was air-cooled. It put out more energy in winter than summer as a result. |
| Posted by: Deacon Blues 2007-03-02 11:20 |
| #12 Radiative cooling. Take a look at space based reactors like the SP-100. |
| Posted by: ed 2007-03-02 10:46 |
| #11 Closed loop circulating lunarthermal cooling system. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2007-03-02 10:43 |
| #10 A: It would be powered by a small nuclear reactor, which could be very light, not needing much shielding. How do you cool a nuclear reactor without water? |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2007-03-02 10:38 |
| #9 How you build a Moonbase is as important as why. A pre-fab base on the surface is problematic. It has to be small, like the ISS. It also has to block both cosmic and induced radiation. It has to have considerable heating and cooling energy use, and most of all, it must minimize moving parts. This is because Lunar dust is terribly abrasive. However, if you build your Moonbase below the surface, in tunnels out of rock, most of your problems become a lot easier. The rock is far less radioactive and insulates against temperature variations, protects against vacuum and can be cleaned of that dust. To do this, it would be best to use a tunneling robot, mining a horizontal shaft into the rock wall of a mountain. It would be powered by a small nuclear reactor, which could be very light, not needing much shielding. The Lunar lander that brought it could be cannibalized for pressure doors, flooring and other parts. The robot would not have to be fast, perhaps only cutting an inch a day. The broken rock would drop in front of it to be scooped up and removed from the cave through a "tail". At intervals, advanced lightweight ceramic reinforcing rod would be inserted to stabilize the ceiling. And finally a sealant liquid would be sprayed to fill micro fissures. Such a robot could operate independently, needing only periodic instruction from Earth. And even once astronauts arrived, it would continue to dig tunnel, to improve the Moonbase. By doing it this way, when the astronauts arrived, they would need far less habitation material, weight and space that could be used by other things. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2007-03-02 09:51 |
| #8 In a fallen world of endless troubles, that does not stop us from allocating resources to endeavors we find beautiful, exciting and elevating -- opera, alpine skiing, feature films -- yet solve no social problems. I'm sure the Film Actors Guild would strenuously object to the inclusion of feature films on the list of things that solve no social problems. I mean, just ask them. |
| Posted by: eLarson 2007-03-02 09:37 |
| #7 Teflon was discovered in 1938. |
| Posted by: Darrell 2007-03-02 09:28 |
| #6 Zhang Fei without WWI & WWII (and tens of billions of taxpayers dollars, rubles, pounds and marks) the top speed of a present day airplane would'be 50 mph. And it's range would be 100 miles. |
| Posted by: gromgoru 2007-03-02 09:06 |
| #5 Also for the airplane, US Mail routes are the only reason that national airlines exist : the way they paid the bills to build the airlines in the early days. Plus, all major airports are taxpayer-funded, at least during the construction phase. However, the Moon base may not be built by public money if NASA waits too long : lots of people are interested in LEO shots and are paying Virgin to reserve tickets on the commercial spaceflights. And there are a couple of very rich Japanese syndicates talking about a private space station, and then a private Moon base, all in a timeframe that may beat NASA to the punch. |
| Posted by: Shieldwolf 2007-03-02 08:05 |
| #4 The submarine and steam engine may have been invented without government funds, but the railroads would never have been built as they were without them or government land. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2007-03-02 07:07 |
| #3 A moon base will be built. It's a question of who and when, not if. A NASA bent on getting the best people and getting the job done rather than protecting their own income stream and dealing with ridiculous hyperregulation, politicizing, and affirmative action quotas would be required to do so. In other words, the NASA that brought back a damaged Apollo mission, not the NASA of today. |
| Posted by: no mo uro 2007-03-02 06:29 |
| #2 g: I wonder if Krauthammer watches satellite TV. Or has Teflon pans in his kitchen. The airplane, the submarine and the steam engine were all invented without the benefit of tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer funds. The space programs are neat, but they will have to be justified on grounds other than immediate utility. I think even the bit about mining is a little spurious. As Steve Den Beste wrote a while back, the big problem with extracting resources from anyplace other than earth is water - there's a lot of it in liquid form here, and very little elsewhere in the solar system. No (cheap and plentiful) water, no mining. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2007-03-02 06:24 |
| #1 I wonder if Krauthammer watches satellite TV. Or has Teflon pans in his kitchen. |
| Posted by: gromgoru 2007-03-02 05:00 |