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NASA Moon

Buzz Aldrin is Looking Forward, Not Back -- and He Has a Plan To Bring NASA Along (arstechnica.com) 76

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
schwit1 shares a report: Just after Memorial Day this year, I began talking regularly with the pilot of the first spacecraft to land on the Moon. We had spoken before, but this was different -- it seemed urgent. Every week or two, Buzz Aldrin would call to discuss his frustration with the state of NASA and his concerns about the looming 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing without a lack of discernible progress to get back. Even at 89, Aldrin remains remarkably engaged in the aerospace community, often showing up to meetings and conferences unannounced. Aldrin asks questions. He talks to the principals. In the last two years, the aerospace legend has been to the White House for major space announcements by President Trump, served as an adviser to the National Space Council, and supported the White House goal of returning to the Moon by 2024.

But what NASA has been doing to get back there, for the better part of two decades, just hasn't been working. President Bush directed NASA back to the Moon more than 15 years ago, and in one form or another, NASA has been spending billions of dollars each year to build a big, heavy spacecraft and a bigger, much heavier rocket as the foundation for such a return. Along the way, NASA has enriched a half-dozen large aerospace contractors and kept Congress happy. But the space agency still can't even launch its own astronauts into low-Earth orbit, let alone deep space or the Moon. "I've been going over this in my mind," Aldrin told Ars "We've been fumbling around for a long, long time. There has to be a better way of doing things. And I think I've found it."

[...] For all of the time and money invested in SLS and Orion, these vehicles lack the energy to fly a mission into low lunar orbit and back. Indeed, the engine powering Orion's service module has less than one-third of the thrust of the Apollo propulsion system that flew Aldrin to the Moon in 1969. This is a major reason NASA intends to build a Lunar Gateway -- a small space station -- in a distant orbit around the Moon. From there, the Gateway will come no closer than 1,000km to the lunar surface and spend most of its seven-day orbit much farther away. "One thing that surprises me is the lack of performance," Aldrin said, discussing these vehicles NASA has spent so long developing. "It forces NASA into this weird orbit. And how long is SLS going to last until Blue Origin or SpaceX replaces it? Not long. How long is that heavy Orion spacecraft, with an under-powered European service module, going to hang around in the inventory? Not long."
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Buzz Aldrin is Looking Forward, Not Back -- and He Has a Plan To Bring NASA Along More

Buzz Aldrin is Looking Forward, Not Back -- and He Has a Plan To Bring NASA Along

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  • I feel bad for him. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 11, 2019 @01:20PM (#58908864)

    He really wants to move forward and explore more of space but the rest of humanity is sitting on it's backside with a thumb stuffed right up there. It's sad he'll most likely never see much progress in his lifetime.

    • He really wants to move forward and explore more of space but the rest of humanity is sitting on its backside with a thumb stuffed right up there.

      He is literally promoting just going back to redo the same shit we've already done, because it is fun for the workers. instead of focusing on moving forwards and exploring things.

      Try spinning.

  • I'm in complete agreement with Buzz Aldrin (Score:5, Interesting)

    by steveha ( 103154 ) on Thursday July 11, 2019 @01:44PM (#58909032) Homepage

    Unhappy about dumping billions into Space Launch System... wanting to stage out of Earth orbit... wanting to make a reusable moon shuttle (I have found out that Buzz Aldrin calls it a lunar cycler [wikipedia.org]).

    Here's what I said before [slashdot.org] about this:

    SLS is massively over budget, very much behind schedule, and has never flown.

    SpaceX has shown that they can reliably and predictably and affordably deliver stuff to orbit. So I would favor a program where SpaceX rockets are the work horses for the moon project. If Blue Origin or anyone else can get their stuff flying reliably, they are welcome to the party also.

    There is an old saying, attributed to Heinlein, that goes something like this: "Once you are in Earth orbit you are halfway to anywhere in the solar system." If you can reliably put stuff into Earth orbit, you can accumulate supplies there, assemble modules there, and launch a well-equipped setup from there.

    The Apollo program was trying to win a race and put everything on one, single rocket. That's the most expensive and risky way you could possibly do it. Instead, send up some fuel tanks, and launch enough rockets to fuel them up. Send up the space equivalent of a shed and stock it with dried food and other stuff. Send up the oxygen and water.

    Send up a "moon shuttle" in pieces and assemble it. It could be ridiculously stark and simple: a long stick with points for attaching things and with rockets at one end. It doesn't have to be pretty. Also send up some kind of moon landers, maybe even two different designs made by two different companies, and send both on the mission. (In fact, before the first moon shuttle leaves, maybe build a second one and have it ready as a rescue craft in case something goes wrong with the first one!)

    When it's time to go, you just attach landers, supplies, living modules, and fuel modules to the moon shuttle, and it leaves Earth orbit and goes to Moon orbit. Landers drop and return. Then the shuttle returns to Earth orbit. The shuttle can be reused many times; if designed right, maybe the [landers] can be reused many times (or maybe those really need to be disposable, I don't know).

    I am not any kind of expert but it seems to me that this plan is way better than getting a heavy-lift cargo rocket built, and launching a moon mission on it.

    And I would propose that the government finance all this with a series of bounties. Pay some large sum for the first company to put a fuel tank in orbit. Pay a smaller sum for the second and third companies. Pay a nice amount for each kg of fuel delivered to a fuel tank in orbit. Pay a really large chunk for the first lander to safely land on the moon and return. And so on.

    The best thing about bounties is that the government is only paying for success. (Dumping money into big government projects like SLS doesn't guarantee success.)

    The above program would require developing expertise in assembling things in orbit, but once all the pieces were in place visiting the moon could become as routine as SpaceX launches are now.

    • The big problem is not technology. The big problem is that it's a) very expensive, and b) rather pointless.

      Winning the space race was a goal, but once that was achieved, there was no point in doing it again.

      • The big problem is not technology. The big problem is that it's a) very expensive, and b) rather pointless.

        Winning the space race was a goal, but once that was achieved, there was no point in doing it again.

        Mind telling me when countries will stop trying to win the nuclear arms race?

        You seem to have grossly underestimated our ability to piss away billions on rather pointless shit.

    • Your comment is nonsensical. Because SpaceX launches satellites into LEO, they should be the "workhorses" for GOING TO THE MOON? You people are idiots. Delivering junk to LEO is trivial and that is what SpaceX is focusing on. We have been doing that for 60 years. I blame Musk for getting all the ignorant tech kids over excited.

      • Re:I'm in complete agreement with Buzz Aldrin (Score:5, Informative)

        by steveha ( 103154 ) on Thursday July 11, 2019 @05:07PM (#58910440) Homepage

        I'll explain it again, simpler this time: Multiple launches to Earth orbit to assemble a mission is better than piling all of a mission on a single giant rocket.

        If you had to move goods from a warehouse to a big store, you would load those goods onto multiple semi trucks; and those trucks could be used over and over again. But hey, maybe a big government contractor could build you a giant vehicle that would carry all the goods in one trip and is destroyed in the process! What do you say, is a single giant disposable vehicle the better idea, or the reusable vehicles that aren't big enough to carry the whole load in one trip?

        Now imagine you had a reusable vehicle that could carry that much cargo in one trip! The BFR is promised to deliver 100,000 kg to LEO [wikipedia.org], which is actually more than SLS is promising for Block 1 [wikipedia.org].

        Delivering junk to LEO is trivial

        Sure, organizations other than SpaceX are capable of putting things into low Earth orbit. But SpaceX launches for a fraction of the price [airspacemag.com] of anyone else (per that link, they are already at about 1/5 the cost and are promising to cut the cost in half again to hit 1/10 the cost); and they had 21 launches [wired.com] in 2018. When was the last time SLS launched anything? Oh that's right, never.

        and that is what SpaceX is focusing on

        Huh, that's funny, if you ask Musk what SpaceX is focusing on, he would say "reusable rockets" (which aren't just for LEO). Just where is Elon Musk's Roadster? Not LEO. https://www.whereisroadster.com/ [whereisroadster.com]

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Agripa ( 139780 )

          I'll explain it again, simpler this time: Multiple launches to Earth orbit to assemble a mission is better than piling all of a mission on a single giant rocket.

          I suspect part of NASA's thinking is that if multiple launches are required for a given mission, then the mission fails if any of the launches fail unless duplicate payloads and launchers are available. And if the duplicates are not required, then they are wasted effort.

          Meanwhile if the mission only required one massive launch, either it fails completely or not at all so nothing extra is lost.

      • Your comment is nonsensical. Because SpaceX launches satellites into LEO, they should be the "workhorses" for GOING TO THE MOON? You people are idiots. Delivering junk to LEO is trivial and that is what SpaceX is focusing on. We have been doing that for 60 years. I blame Musk for getting all the ignorant tech kids over excited.

        Tech kids? Also... NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine [cnbc.com], who booted the head of human exploration and operations [spacenews.com] out of his job less than 24 hours ago.

        Delivering junk to LEO is not trivial, or Arianespace wouldn't have fucked it up yesterday [spacenews.com]. SpaceX does a nontrivial task regularly and well, and yes, that's all you need to get to the Moon. Some poor sucker of an astronaut is going to be cursing a blue streak trying to do an EVA from a capsule in order to bolt together a bunch of junk in orbit to take her t

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Megane ( 129182 )

      a fuel tank in orbit

      Oh? So what kind of fuel? No, really, you can't hand-wave this, rocket engines don't burn a generic "fuel", both the engines and tanks have to be designed for a specific fuel. Yes, the tanks. You need to account for the volume ratio of fuel vs oxidizer to determine tank sizes. So you have to decide on which fuel first. There are at least three main engine fuels: hydrogen, methane, and kerosene. (Kerosene is right out for in-situ manufacture.) And on top of all that you have to design a refueling system, pre

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by steveha ( 103154 )

        So what kind of fuel? No, really, you can't hand-wave this

        There are lots of tradeoffs in rocket design. I'm arguing that we should accept less performance if it means we can have a fuel depot in orbit, but beyond that I don't have enough knowledge to say "we should use methane" or whatever. Frankly it sounds like you know more than I do on this topic.

        We don't need the max possible performance if we can simply launch extra fuel. Space operations will look very different if we start designing for reusable

  • Not surprising (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Brett Buck ( 811747 ) on Thursday July 11, 2019 @02:09PM (#58909234)

    For all of the time and money invested in SLS and Orion, these vehicles lack the energy to fly a mission into low lunar orbit and back. Indeed, the engine powering Orion's service module has less than one-third of the thrust of the Apollo propulsion system that flew Aldrin to the Moon in 1969. T

            Of course it does. The Apollo SM engine was grossly oversize for the mission they flew. It, and the rest of the SM, was sized for a "direct ascent" mission, where a huge stack was launched straight to the moon, the entire think landed, then the SM lifted off from this to return and came straight back. The propellant tanks were sized for a huge amount of delta-v, and the engine had to be big enough to lift the entire SM/CM off the moon in 1/6G. That was abandoned in 1962, I think for LOR.

            In practice, it required a tiny fraction of the fuel needed, and usually flew with half the possible propellant load. It doesn't need a gigantic engine just to do orbit injection, so putting one on there would be absurd. No one is going to be landing an entire Orion stack on the moon, there will be a dedicated landing module for that purpose. Orion, to start with, uses far-better-proven Shuttle OMS engines, and those are perfectly adequate for the planned missions,

    • Of course it does. The Apollo SM engine was grossly oversize for the mission they flew. It, and the rest of the SM, was sized for a "direct ascent" mission, where a huge stack was launched straight to the moon, the entire think landed, then the SM lifted off from this to return and came straight back. The propellant tanks were sized for a huge amount of delta-v, and the engine had to be big enough to lift the entire SM/CM off the moon in 1/6G. That was abandoned in 1962, I think for LOR.

      Doctor Aldrin's thesis was on techniques for LOR. [wikipedia.org] If the Apollo SM was oversized for that mission, he should know.

  • NASA's real purpose (Score:2, Interesting)

    by green1 ( 322787 )
    I think people misunderstand the real purpose of NASA. Their purpose is not to explore space, or anything remotely related to that. That's all just a side effect. The real purpose of NASA is to distribute billions of dollars of tax revenue to the "right" congressional districts and corporate donors. When you understand that, you can see that NASA is working exactly as intended.

    Every project needs to be accomplished in as many states as possible, and by the most powerful companies possible. Anything else is

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by k6mfw ( 1182893 )

      to distribute billions of dollars of tax revenue to the "right" congressional districts and corporate donors.

      both yes and no. Yes, gotta keep those elected officials happy. No, NASA is to research and develop technologies, and expand aero and space science. But then it began for political reasons (Sputnik) and Apollo (Gagarin).

      50th anniversary of Apollo and we still debate if we can put a man on the moon, why can't we put a man on the moon? Lots of discussion on that one. First, I'd like to see some work done on a lunar lander and EVA suits. Real work like spending money, building prototypes, doing tests to see

  • It doesnâ(TM)t care about space exploration (any more), and hence wonâ(TM)t fund it adequately.

    Compounding the issue currently is Trump. He has declared he wants the USA back in the bleeding edge of space exploration. So, of course the Democrats controlling the money are going to say no... because itâ(TM)s Trump.

    Congress has had no plot, plan, or thought for circa 50 years. The current lot (over the last 5 years) are probably the worst.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      For Trump, the bleeding edge of space exploration doesn't involve looking back at the Earth and comprehending the dangers it faces. It is merely a way to distract the slack jawed space nutters.

  • ...is punch the lights out of another moon landing denier. I can't get enough of that.

  • Highly recommend the just published book, ONE GIANT LEAP by Charles Fishman on the Apollo 11/NASA/Moon Project!

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