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Fri. Jan 16, 2004

This Is Who We Are

Before he gave his speech at NASA Wednesday, astronaut Michael Foale welcomed the President, live from the International Space Station. A nice touch, but upon seeing Foale on TV, I thought, “Jeebus, man, you’re introducing the President, couldn’t you have run a comb through your hair?”

Then I remembered: gravity. In space, every day is a Bad Hair Day.

It’s a minor and petty one, but it is an example of the many adjustments mankind must make to a life off Earth. At least, the few men and women who will get the chance to make these travels over the coming decades. It should be clear to us all by now, we’re not going to get flying cars like they predicted back in the 50’s. I think this is the next best thing.

Bush’s speech raises as many questions in my mind as it answers. I’m no rocket scientist, so some of the questions may be dumb, but are the result of an intellectual curiosity in me that is at the very core of this entire enterprise. More on that later, but first the questions.

The first of them has to be about NASA itself. In the larger terms in which we must now speak, NASA has spent nearly three decades mired in low Earth orbit, massive cost overruns from plans to execution, and an extensive reputation of being eaten up with managerial cancer. Is this the team we want to give a Big Goal and a lot of money to accomplish it?

While that’s a worthy intellectual question, in the Real World it is nearly moot. NASA is what we’ve got. And if you want to change a once proud team that has a recent history of underperformance, what better way than to refocus them with a Big Goal? Part of the decline of NASA was due to the slashed budgets after Apollo, and the subsequent brain drain caused by a lack of funding and … Big Goals.

What better recruiting tools could you have to harvest bright young minds? Want to work on the team that is going back to the Moon and to Mars? Get your butt in school and get your skills, we’re going to be working on this for the next few decades.

This is the wake up call for NASA. You’re in the spotlight, with big tough goals, and a relatively blank slate. Rise to the occasion. Call me a quintessential Pollyanna, but I think they will. After all, Bush’s speech stripped them naked of purpose. By the end of the decade, it’s bye-bye to the shuttle, and what looks like a quick kiss off for the International Space Station. The President’s speech did say “The United States will launch a re-focused research effort on board the International Space Station to better understand and overcome the effects of human space flight on astronaut health,” but that’s it for “legacy programs.” It’s time for NASA to build a new legacy.

The next two questions are intertwined to me, the budget and the timeline. Bush’s proposal calls for relatively minor yearly increases in NASA’s budget, combined with a major restructuring of their existing program funding, and a rather long timeline to meet the stated goals. After Kennedy announced the first moon mission, NASA’s budget doubled the next year, and then doubled again the year after that.

We can’t afford that today, and of course, there’s also no context of a “race to space” with the Soviets. But there’s a real danger in going so far in the other direction. With the program spread out so long, over the course of a minimum of three and possibly five Presidencies, can it survive the typical budget battles in the Beltway through two decades and various administrations?

I have some real doubts about that. I also have some doubts about whether the goals can be properly met within the given budget. The shuttle has never come anywhere close to living up to it’s expected costs-per-launch, and the International Space Station has been scaled back repeatedly, yet still has cost three times the original estimate. I’d guess NASA will end up spending at least 10% more each year rather than the proposed 5%. Plus they’ll end up having to cut support for worthy programs, like the Hubble Telescope. And every year the new budget is being beaten into shape, for twenty years, NASA will be a ripe target. Even though that has the very real potential of strangling the program before it gets the new Crew Exploration Vehicle off the ground, I don’t know what you can do about it, except hope for the vision of future leaders (and boy, it hurt my inner cynic to type that last phrase).

This program has been laid out only in the broadest of strokes, but we have to start with the most important and difficult problem: the delivery system. Or as it is now being referred to, the “Crew Exploration Vehicle,” or CEV. Obviously, no one yet knows what the hell that is. Given the caveats of these broad brush specs, and “me no rocket scientist,” it seems like we are proposing cramming a lot of functions into one design. We must develop some way to link up with ISS in low Earth orbit, leave Earth orbit to travel to (and land on) the Moon (then return), and one would presume this CEV would be the basis for any manned craft someday launched at Mars. So this “system” has to be a design capable of lifting massive cargo (components for a Moon base), as well as be capable of carrying enough fuel to go to Mars (and back), but also suitable for a short hop to the ISS. And, oh, by the way, we’re closing down the Shuttle by 2010, so get busy.

Sounds like multiple systems, to me. And I’m not sure I buy the idea that it will be cheaper and easier to assemble a Mars mission vehicle on the Moon and launch it from there. I understand the benefit of the Moon’s lower gravity (less fuel used for a large craft to reach escape velocity), but every piece of that ship assembled on the Moon will have to reach escape velocity twice. Once from Earth, and then again from the Moon. If properly modularized, why couldn’t such a vehicle be assembled in Moon orbit, or maybe even better, at the L1 point of gravitational balance between the Earth and the Moon? In addition to fuel savings, you wouldn’t have to engineer into the vehicle protection from the stress of launch from any gravitational body.

I’d also like to know more about the plans for the Moon. Is it going to be an occasional pit stop and test bed for Mars tech, or will we try to establish a long term presence there? After all, any presence on Mars will be, by the definition of distance, a long term presence. Even on our very first short-term trip there, do we want to send equipment all the way to Mars and have it used solely for that expedition? Or do we want to leave behind something that is designed to last in our absence, and be of some function and use upon our return?

The way to do that is to go back to the Moon and develop the full capabilities of staying there. Of course, it will be a test bed for a host of mission technologies unrelated to a “long term presence” anywhere. But it’s also a place we can begin to build an “infrastructure” for other explorations (especially in conjunction with “infrastructure” at the L1 point), and test theories for human habitations, yet have a relatively short “lifeline” back to Earth. Because when you try to do it on Mars, your “rescue window” is measured in months, not days. And planning for a permanent presence on the Moon, that could thus some day lead to one on Mars, is one of the two reasons I’m all in favor of the core of this proposal.

Humanity needs a lifeboat. That’s hardly an original thought, it’s come from Stephen Hawking all the way down the brain chain to me. Someday, this planet may need an Ark, either due to our own human mischief, or a “Dinosaur killing comet” that’s come around the bend again. And what this program proposes hardly qualifies as an inner tube, never mind an Ark. But it’s the first step. And that’s very important.

The other reason I’m in favor of this proposal is because … this is who we are. Mankind’s greatest gift is his intellectual curiosity, his willingness to explore what isn’t yet know to him, and when it is known, to find another frontier where “no man has gone before.” Sorry, didn’t mean to go all Trekkie on you, but it’s the truth. If this wasn’t so, most of us would live in an airport-free Europe and still think the world was flat (“Beyond Here Be Dragons…”).

This is who we are. Think about the technological advances in your life in the past ten or twenty years. They’re becoming nearly exponential. Think about the technological advances of the next ten or twenty years.

It’s time for us to begin.