Book Review: Blogging the Moon

I've had the pleasure of listening to Paul Spudis talk about his future vision for the moon several times, most recently at Marshall Space Flight Center, and this book--a collection of entries from his Air & Space Magazine blog--provides fleshed-out versions of arguments he makes in his standard stump speech. The short version of Spudis's take on the human future in space is simply to build capabilities for living and working in space, starting with the Moon as a base. Spudis makes the case that the Moon is the best place to start human expansion into the solar system because it's close, it's (scientifically) interesting, and it's useful. That's the short version. The longer version, addressed in various ways in this book, covers a variety of issues related to this cause, and it ranks with The Case for Mars, Mining the Sky, and The High Frontier as one of the major "visions" to be found in the space advocacy community.

As I noted in my earlier blog, there are several things I like about Spudis's vision for space development:

• He keeps his development program affordable by keeping the process incremental, using a combination of robotic and human activities to get the various jobs done.
• He concentrates on building technological capabilities and infrastructure that, while tested on the Moon, might be used at other destinations, such as asteroids or Mars.
• He focuses on a target that we know how to reach and that has become a lot more interesting in the last 40 years (more on that momentarily)
• He doesn't depend on hype or that overused word, "inspiration" to get the general public to support space--as he points out more than once, the general public really doesn't care about space unless there's something dramatic going on, and even then it's a 50/50 coin toss on whether they support what we're doing up there.
• He ties his program to realistic policy concerns that are ongoing, not flavor-of-the-year: national security, science, and economic development--and the Moon can support all three.

What was curious to me was how much the blog entries in this book felt like "deja vu all over again." Writing at the height of the debate over and subsequent cancellation of the Constellation Program, Spudis's blogs covered a particularly painful time in my life, as I faced several personal stresses resulting from the fact that my professional life was in a bit of doubt. Aside from reading about events and arguments that I'd forgotten--purposely or otherwise--what was curious to me was how many of the issues, discussions, and arguments Spudis addressed about Constellation have reared their ugly heads today as I support the Space Launch System. Does our space program have a mission? Is a heavy-lift launch vehicle necessary to accomplish said mission? Where are we going to go next? The arguments haven't changed, and neither has some of the "attitude" involved. What makes today different from 2009-2010 is that we know that Constellation ended--so what now?

Spudis's answers to the the first three questions are no, not necessarily, and, not surprisingly, the Moon. He is not shy about his dislike of the dismantling of the Vision for Space Exploration, which he differentiates from the Constellation Program. He saw the VSE as a strategic direction, designed to establish a permanent human presence in space, while he sees Constellation as a vehicle program that didn't necessarily follow the intent of the Vision. It might not make some NASA strategists happy--like Robert Zubrin, he's not shy about criticizing the government space agency--but it is well worth reading as an informed opinion on the topic of space.

This book is more timely now, perhaps, than the original entries that were published in them because they were written as several lunar missions were just beginning to collect new information about that battered sphere in our sky, including Chandrayaan, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), and others. The data that has come in from these missions--some of which is summarized in the video presentation included in the DVD at the back of the book--have made a solid case for water ice on the Moon. And water, as Spudis points out, is just about the most useful substance humans could find there, as it can be used for air, water itself, insulation material for habitats, and most importantly, rocket fuel. Spudis seems torn somewhere between frustrated in these entries, as he considers the current state of affairs unlikely to produce the vision he lays out, which is a permanent human presence throughout the solar system. Still, one never knows what will come next, or how the current program might be used to advance Spudis's vision.

If there is one disadvantage to the blog format of this book as opposed to the other big space-vision books I mentioned earlier, it is that the vision is not organized systematically. Often reacting to the events of the day, Spudis does not have the opportunity in a weekly blog to lay out a step-by-step argument for his vision. Still, his vision is there, and he makes his primary points again and again over the course of several years. If you want a more complete description of his approach to space development, you can always check out his website. I'd heard one person call Spudis a "one-trick pony," which is hardly fair, as his architecture is hardly simple. I might call his work principled or consistent, and he consistently concerned about our nation's future in space, as we all should be.

The School of "If Only"

Dr. Paul Spudis, most recently from the Lunar and Planetary Institute, paid a visit to Marshall Space Flight Center yesterday and gave a lunch-and-learn presentation entitled "Using the Resources of the Moon to Create a Permanent Cislunar Transportation System." This was the sort of talk that one normally hears at an International Space Development Conference or other space advocacy event. It contained everything a space advocate could hope to hear: technical feasibility, visionary ambition, and a sense of political realism. It's been awhile since I've heard such talks--I was working during most of my ISDC--and it was a pleasure to hear Dr. Spudis's speech. Nevertheless, I had a few reservations, which I'll share after I summarize the talk.

Spudis began his talk by providing some background on the space industry, specifically its three "ages," the "Space Race" age (1957-1972), the "What now?" age (1972-Present), the "Beyond LEO" age (hopefully, from now into the future). He made the case early in his talk that if we lack an overarching beat-the-other-guys reason for space exploration, we need to find more pragmatic reasons, including national security, economic, and scientific, all of which space justifies in spades.

He next went on to discuss the operational challenges space efforts have faced, including a long habit of building customized, one-time-use platforms, which are then abandoned after one use. Spudis argues for a new template for human space activities, one involving incremental, extensible building-block components and systems that can be reused. He also argued (as his title suggested) for the use of space resources--but not for use here on Earth, but rather in space.

Another template or paradigm Spudis asked the audience to consider was a shift from an "Space Air Force" model, where there are small vehicles and small-scale, temporary visits to destinations to a "Space Navy" model where you see a large-scale, permanent presence in space and at destinations. It's sort of like the difference between The Right Stuff and Star Trek. However, instead of Star Trek, Spudis pointed to Arthur C. Clarke's Profiles of the Future.

It didn't surprise the audience that Spudis, a lunar scientist, advocated for using the moon as a base of operations and resources. As his PowerPoint bullets put it, the moon is "close, interesting, and useful." He got a little incensed by President Obama dismissing the moon with "been there, done that." Citing recent discoveries by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and Lunar Crater Observation Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), Spudis emphasized the usefulness of lunar resources, including local metals and most importantly water ice. For those unschooled in the matter, scientists have determined that under the rims of craters near the moon's north and south poles there are permanently shadowed areas where volatile materials such as water would not be able to boil off. This water, in the form of ice, comprises as much as 10 percent of lunar soil in these regions.

Water, as Spudis points out, is just about the most useful material available for human space exploration, as it can be used to drink, it can be split into hydrogen and oxygen for fuel, it can be used to provide oxygen for breathing, and it can be used as an insulating material for surface habitats. In short, water matters, and where we once thought the moon was bone-dry, we now know that there's enough water ice there to meet the needs of human settlements there for hundreds of years.

Having set the stage for "why the moon," Spudis next moved on to his architecture, which was developed in cooperation with Marshall Space Flight Center project manager Tony Lavoie. This incremental set of hardware includes (in order) communication and navigation satellites, polar prospecting rovers, in situ resource utilization (ISRU) demonstrator, digger/hauler rovers, water tankers, electrolysis units (for transforming water into hydrogen and oxygen), supporting equipment, and space-based assets, such as fuel depots in lunar and Earth orbit. Total price tag, about $5.5 billion per year for 16 years. That's an easier figure for Congress to swallow than the total pricetag, $88 billion, but it's MUCH easier than the $450 billion estimated for the Space Exploration Initiative, proposed by President George H. W. Bush in 1989.

The Spudis/Lavoie approach has several advantages:

• It is "vehicle neutral," meaning it is not dependent on any new or existing rockets to get its equipment into space (they start with the existing Delta IV as their baseline, but any existing rocket would do.
• Because the early missions--heck, the first 16--are robotically based, they can be developed more quickly, on shorter timelines than human missions. Multiple, short-term milestones and accomplishments are important because Congress runs its budgets one year to the next and is impatient with programs that they feel are not accomplishing anything.
• It allows transportation to be customized by function, much as Robert A. Heinlein envisioned it: Earth to LEO handled by one type of vehicle, LEO to the moon with another type of vehicle, and a reusable vehicle of another type to handle the lunar orbit to Moon run.
• It can identify an economic "break-even" point. In the case of water resources, any surplus above 150 metric tons of water extracted from the moon  would be sufficient for a lunar settlement to start paying for itself.

One question Spudis asked toward the end of his talk was, "Can NASA change the way they do things? That's one thing I just don't know." This sort of begs the question: what does need to change if NASA is to execute this vision?

And I should point out that this is very much a NASA type of vision, with the agency leading the activities. Why? Spudis's thoughts are much like mine on this: there is very little business justification for exploring the moon or building infrastructure. Basically, if this vision/architecture were left to the private sector, "it wouldn't happen." So another advantage of Spudis's architecture is that it concentrates government on activities that are unlikely to generate much initial commercial interest.

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It sounds like a cool, ingenious plan. But then so do a lot of the plans I've heard from the space advocacy community over the past 15 years. My comment (one seconded by Michael Doornbos when I mentioned the talk on Facebook) was, "All they need is an affordable launch vehicle." Other plans are equally ingenious, but they always have some missing unobtainium that hasn't been developed yet. All our problems would be solved if only we had...

• An affordable launch vehicle
• A reusable launch vehicle
• An ultra-light alloy that would make a reusable launch vehicle possible
• A new, high-energy propellant
• A new, high-strength material capable of building a space elevator
• A space station orbiting at the L5 Lagrange point
• A base on Mars
• Access to a nickel-iron asteroid with a trillion dollars' worth of platinum-group metals
• A Helium-3 reactor
• The political will to do [X]
• A heavy-lift launch vehicle
• A robust, low-cost commercial space industry

The U.S. is in the process of developing those last two, anyway. I wish Spudis well. It's a clever vision he has, and one of the more realistic visions I've heard articulated in recent years. Will it hold up? I guess it all depends on how many people stand up and start advocating for it. Being a lunar-centric guy myself, I suppose you could count me among them. What happens next is anybody's guess. If only.

Potpourri XCIII

Let's get to it. I've got French lessons to catch up on!

Thomas Sowell has a hard-hitting piece on Obama's inexperience.

A variety of stories from my AIAA news feed:

• A Boeing plant in South Carolina is voting on whether to keep the International Association of Machinists (IAM) union in their shop. That will not make Obama happy.
• NORAD is conducting an exercise to prepare for the Vancouver Olympics. I didn't realize al-Qaeda had an air force.
• NASA has selected the crew for what could be the last scheduled Space Shuttle flight. It's real, folks, regardless of what the Augustine Panel decides.
• French wine growers are benefitting from satellite imagery.
• NPR has a story today on NASA's Student Airborne Research Program.

Paul Spudis has a good editorial on sustainability in space exploration. The problem is that there are two kinds of sustainability in the space business: technical and political. And the technical, if "boring" to the electorate or their elected officials, will not be politically sustainable. However, a politically exciting and sustainable program might leave behind little that is reusable.

Liberal Camille Paglia, a still-strong Obama supporter, has torn into the Democrats' handling of the healthcare bill. This is not a good sign.

The United Nations Secretary-General says we have four months to act or global warming will doom us. By "act," he means sign a climate treaty in Copenhagen that will cut greenhouse gas emissions. Right. After one of the coldest summers in the history of modern record keeping.

I am in the process of reading the House healthcare bill, but it is a long, painful slog, and I have other things to read as well. In the meantime, I commend this analysis by a classics professor to your attention.

More on the Blue Brain project. Gotta wonder about the Singularity.