Griffin on Loss of U.S. Space Leadership

h (Rand Simberg) wrote in
:

What I don't understand is why we aren't rushing an unmanned mission
to the lunar poles to resolve the water issue ASAP. It seems to me
that exploration architecture plans would be strongly driven by the
answer to that question.

LRO was initiated shortly after the VSE announcement and is planned for a
2008 launch. That is about as close as NASA can get to "ASAP".

--
JRF

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On Fri, 17 Feb 2006 18:16:32 -0600, in a place far, far away, "Jorge
R. Frank" made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:

(Rand Simberg) wrote in
:

What I don't understand is why we aren't rushing an unmanned mission
to the lunar poles to resolve the water issue ASAP. It seems to me
that exploration architecture plans would be strongly driven by the
answer to that question.

LRO was initiated shortly after the VSE announcement and is planned for a
2008 launch. That is about as close as NASA can get to "ASAP".

Sorry, I meant an actual prospector, not an orbiter. Is there a
consensus that LRO will completely resolve the issue?

h (Rand Simberg) wrote in
:

On Fri, 17 Feb 2006 18:16:32 -0600, in a place far, far away, "Jorge
R. Frank" made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:

(Rand Simberg) wrote in
:

What I don't understand is why we aren't rushing an unmanned mission
to the lunar poles to resolve the water issue ASAP. It seems to me
that exploration architecture plans would be strongly driven by the
answer to that question.

LRO was initiated shortly after the VSE announcement and is planned
for a 2008 launch. That is about as close as NASA can get to "ASAP".

Sorry, I meant an actual prospector, not an orbiter. Is there a
consensus that LRO will completely resolve the issue?

Dunno. NASA's site suggests it will:

http://lunar.gsfc.nasa.gov/missions/index.html

The third and sixth priorities seem to address the issue:

quote
The measurement investigations that respond to each of the following
measurement sets that have been defined as having the highest priority:

+ Characterization of deep space radiation in Lunar orbit
+ Geodetic global topography
+ High spatial resolution hydrogen mapping
+ Temperature mapping in polar shadowed regions
+ Imaging of surface in permanently shadowed regions
+ Identification of near-surface water ice in polar cold traps
+ Assessment of features for landing sites
+ Characterization of polar region lighting environment
/quote

--
JRF

Reply-to address spam-proofed - to reply by E-mail,
check "Organization" (I am not assimilated) and
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it wont provide the ground truth. Why could they not have just funded
the IceBreaker mission which was already designed and planned ?

-kert

On 18 Feb 2006 01:50:56 -0800, "kert" wrote:

it wont provide the ground truth. Why could they not have just funded
the IceBreaker mission which was already designed and planned ?

-kert

The lunar poles are still a large region. You need to know where to
land first. That's LRO's job: reconnaisance. The lander is set for
2010, two years later. That is pretty fast in NASA terms.

Brian

IceBreaker was originally set to launch in 2002, with landing site
selected near Peary cater, based on Lunar Prospector data. Total
mission cost ~ $100Mil, with robot design done in CMU led by their
robotics legend William "Red" Whittaker himself.

For the cost of LRO and its followups, you could have probably launched
five IceBreakers to different sites far earlier.

-kert