Back to the moon? When?

Hi everyone,

First and foremost, let me just say that I do believe that the United
States was actually on the moon.

However, I am in a debate with someone who wants to know why it's
taking us (or anyone else for that matter) so long to go back there.
After all, if it was done once before with 1960's technology and
know-how, what's causing the delay in the expedition this time?

My theory is that it must have something to do with politics and
budget, combined with the fact that it might not be as high of a
priority as it once was when the U.S. was in an overt space race with
the Soviet Union.

Any enlightenment that can be offered will help, because I'm not sure
how else to steer my argument.

Erich Kohl wrote:
Hi everyone,

First and foremost, let me just say that I do believe that the United
States was actually on the moon.

However, I am in a debate with someone who wants to know why it's
taking us (or anyone else for that matter) so long to go back there.
After all, if it was done once before with 1960's technology and
know-how, what's causing the delay in the expedition this time?

My theory is that it must have something to do with politics and
budget, combined with the fact that it might not be as high of a
priority as it once was when the U.S. was in an overt space race with
the Soviet Union.

Any enlightenment that can be offered will help, because I'm not sure
how else to steer my argument.

They're not quite as willing to risk killing people this time. Also,
they're still trying to think of a convincing reason for actually going.

Sylvia.

Erich Kohl wrote:
Hi everyone,

First and foremost, let me just say that I do believe that the United
States was actually on the moon.

However, I am in a debate with someone who wants to know why it's
taking us (or anyone else for that matter) so long to go back there.
After all, if it was done once before with 1960's technology and
know-how, what's causing the delay in the expedition this time?

My theory is that it must have something to do with politics and
budget, combined with the fact that it might not be as high of a
priority as it once was when the U.S. was in an overt space race with
the Soviet Union.

Any enlightenment that can be offered will help, because I'm not sure
how else to steer my argument.

The reason is budget. The total amount of money is comparable but it is
being spread out over sixteen years rather than eight. That forces
Constellation to do things serially that Apollo could do in parallel.
Constellation will also be a much smaller percentage of total NASA
spending than Apollo was, because NASA is continuing the shuttle program
($4 billion per year through 2010) and the ISS program ($2 billion per
year through at least 2016).

Also, you have to remember that much of the blueprints, all the
tooling, the assembly lines, and almost all of the people that
designed and built the 60's Apollo hardware, and all their skills, are
long gone or retired and advanced in age. Even if you know it has been
done before, that's not equal to being able to make it happen again
quickly or easily, if you've lost the capacity to make those things
exactly the same way. You have to reinvent a lot of the processes,
find modern materials to replace stuff that's no longer available, or
stuff that was not as safe (leather gaskets, anyone?) as modern
replacements. You have to lay down a whole lot of infrastructure and
start a flow of precursor materials, structures, and assemblies, a
pipeline of materiel, and train up a whole new highly specialized
workforce with skillsets that have been largely forgotten or have
changed radically over time. If society collapsed tomorrow, could you
build a laptop computer the week after? From scratch? and I don't mean
assembling a gaming PC from boxes of premade parts, but firging the
chassis, fabbing the silicon, etc. Even if you were an engineer and
posessed enough skills and knowledge on your own to do it, making that
item requires so many other inputs, processes, technologies,
materials... you would be lucky if you could cobble together a Babbage
mechanical calculator with what was on hand in your basement shop, if
you had to start from scratch. And NASA is close to that with the
Ares program. There are some old hardware examples to look at, but all
the infrastructure that built them is gone and not easily retrieved.

Much the same argument is often made when there is talk of losing a
major defense contractor for things like fighter jets and submarines.
Even if you don't have much need for those items right now, if you
don't keep at least a slow idling number of workers and facilites
going in peacetime, keeoing teir skills honed andthe lines and tooling
active, you've lost all the skilled people and machinery when you
suddenly need to swing back into high production for something. And
of course there is the argument that without at least two competing
suppliers for every key technology and system, your costs go up
without market forces acting to lower prices. And the lone remaining
contractor loses all need to innovate or try new and risky things that
might have a huge payoff.

And two may not be enough for market competition forces to work
either:

Apollo had enough work to keep every major and minor aviation and
aerospace defense and tech contractor busy and humming at full
employment for years. The spacecraft could have sported more sponsor
patches than a modern NASCAR racer. Today, we're down to two major
aerospace contractors, and they act like have a shakey unpoken
agreement that one controls fighters, the other, bombers and heavy
transports. One does missiles, the other does helicopters, only one
does satellites, the other, ships, and so on. There is little
motivation for innovation in such a setup, or cost containment.
Progress slows, and the lead goes to tiny upstart companies that do
all the heavy experimenting and development, only to be acquired by
one of the two giants once they come up with something valuable
enough.

While I'm not a hawk, I do believe in maintaining this peacetime
defense infrastructure and the technological and scientific lead it
gives our nation. I'm afraid we'll lose it if we don't nurture it. You
do that in peacetime by programs like NASA space exploration.

On Fri, 09 Nov 2007 04:22:37 GMT, "Erich Kohl"
wrote:

Hi everyone,

First and foremost, let me just say that I do believe that the United
States was actually on the moon.

However, I am in a debate with someone who wants to know why it's
taking us (or anyone else for that matter) so long to go back there.
After all, if it was done once before with 1960's technology and
know-how, what's causing the delay in the expedition this time?

My theory is that it must have something to do with politics and
budget, combined with the fact that it might not be as high of a
priority as it once was when the U.S. was in an overt space race with
the Soviet Union.

Any enlightenment that can be offered will help, because I'm not sure
how else to steer my argument.

Mostly fear of failure. The surest way to never fail, is to never try,
and while I expect NASA will eventually get around to trying to put a
few more men on the Moon, they are going to delay as long as possible
before starting each new step.


In the 1960s, if you were tasked with putting a man on the moon within
a decade, and for whatever reason you couldn't quite pull it off, just
having made a decent try at it would probably have made your reputation.
After all, it was an impossible task, and nobody ever really expected
you to succeed.

In the 2000s, if you are tasked with putting a man on the moon and for
whatever reason you don't actually pull it off, there is no excuse that
will save your reputation, or your career. After all, we know it's a
possible task; it's been done before. OTOH, nobody in the government
ever loses their job just for being behind schedule and over budget...


The type of people being given the job, also makes a huge difference.
In the 1960s, there was no such thing as a veteran NASA engineer, much
less a veteran NASA manager. So the work was done by people selected
on the basis of, whatever it was they had done at places that weren't
NASA, suggested they might be able to pull off the impossible.

In the 2000s, we've got plenty of veteran NASA engineers and managers,
all of whom are by process of elimination selected for their ability
to tenaciously hold onto their jobs through a generation of layoffs
and budget cuts, in a climate intolerant of failure. And they're not
going to let anyone else intrude on their turf.


This isn't unique to NASA; most government agencies that outlive their
original mission (or last a generation regardless) wind up with the same
problem. The only way to avoid this is to penalize Not Trying at least
as severely as you do failure, preferably more so, and the rules of the
US Civil Service more or less prohibit anyone from being punished for
Not Trying. The most you can do is not promote them, which leaves them
stuck right there in the job they are not getting done.

There's actually sort of a good reason for that; it was the best solution
anyone at the time (late 19th century) could come up with for an even
worse problem - google "spoils system" for the ugly details.


--
*John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, *
*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" *
*Chief Scientist & General Partner * -13th Rule of Acquisition *
*White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute *
* for success" *
*661-718-0955 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition *

"Erich Kohl" wrote:

However, I am in a debate with someone who wants to know why it's
taking us (or anyone else for that matter) so long to go back there.
After all, if it was done once before with 1960's technology and
know-how, what's causing the delay in the expedition this time?

Others have mentioned budget - but a less obvious part of it that the
lunar mission effort actually began (in a diffuse manner) in some
cases years before Kennedy threw down the gauntlet.

The bit about "60's technology" is also a more than a little
misleading. Despite the fact that we have fast computers now-a-days,
it still takes time to build stuff. Especially big and complicated
stuff.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

"D. Orbitt" wrote:
Apollo had enough work to keep every major and minor aviation and
aerospace defense and tech contractor busy and humming at full
employment for years.

Nonsense. Boeing (for just one example) had its hands full with the
military and civilian aircraft it had in progress at the time. Apollo
was just one project among many others.

CSDL (for another) had (IIRC) nearly six times as many people working
on Polaris/Posiedon guidance _alone_ as it did on Apollo - and, like
Boeing, had a pretty full slate of other work beyond that.

Today, we're down to two major aerospace contractors, and they act
like have a shakey unpoken agreement that one controls fighters, the
other, bombers and heavy transports. One does missiles, the other does
helicopters, only one does satellites, the other, ships, and so on.

Nonsense. For just _one_ example... Boeing does Minuteman, while
LockMart does Trident II.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

On 9 Nov, 04:22, "Erich Kohl" wrote:
Hi everyone,

First and foremost, let me just say that I do believe that the United
States was actually on the moon.

However, I am in a debate with someone who wants to know why it's
taking us (or anyone else for that matter) so long to go back there.
After all, if it was done once before with 1960's technology and
know-how, what's causing the delay in the expedition this time?

My theory is that it must have something to do with politics and
budget, combined with the fact that it might not be as high of a
priority as it once was when the U.S. was in an overt space race with
the Soviet Union.

Any enlightenment that can be offered will help, because I'm not sure
how else to steer my argument.

Most of the other responses have been about the management of NASA. I
think they have a point but there is one very fundamental reason. This
is the fact of sophisticated computing and the advance of AI. If you
can gain all the information you need by robotic probes what is the
point of sending humans, risking lives etc etc?

Tremendous strdes have been made in terms of walking robots. In the
view of recent developments the Mars rovers look dintinctly low tech.
You will (in a short time) be able to stroll across Mars at a typical
human walking speed. The robot will also be capable of making some
pretty complex decisions, even without reference to Mission Control.
Don't get me wrong, the Mars rovers have been extremly successful, it
is just that technology is advancing.

As other correspondents have said it still takes time to build a
rocket large enough to take humans to the Moon, test et etc. etc. If
you want to find anything out about the Moon an agile robot, as
described, can probably be built quicker and sent there in a much
smaller rocket.

In the late 60s there was the "Cold War". This was a motivator, but
not the sole one. At that date only humans could perform complex
tasks. That is the essential difference.

In the 60s people thought of having telescopes on the Moon. Now we
realize that fragmented telescopes floating in space are far easier to
buld and have far better performance.

Can robots process lunar material. Yes, of course they can. The idea
of automatic processing in space is an interesting one. A fully closed
system, of course, has a name. It is a Von Neumann machine.

Is there any point in manned spaceflight at all? Logically no.
Everything can be done by robots at a far lower cost. The only point
in manned spaceflight is if colonization is on the table. Personally I
feel this to be a pipedream as far as the foreseeable future is
concerned.

This is how I would steer my argument.


- Ian Parker

Ian Parker wrote:
Is there any point in manned spaceflight at all? Logically no.
Everything can be done by robots at a far lower cost. The only point
in manned spaceflight is if colonization is on the table. Personally I
feel this to be a pipedream as far as the foreseeable future is
concerned.

The Apollo missions actually proved why everything can't be done by
robots. The astronauts were able to pick and choose which lunar
samples to send back, and so much more was learned from their samples
than those sent back by the Lunokhod missions.

But what robots _can_ do, indeed, they do accomplish at much lower
cost. And given the great advances in computers since the 1960s, I
suppose that a Mars sample return mission could return samples picked
up by a Mars rover in response to instructions from Earth.

But those Mars samples really ought to be studied in a lab on the Moon
or in orbit, because there could be life on Mars.

John Savard

D. Orbitt wrote:
Also, you have to remember that much of the blueprints, all the
tooling, the assembly lines, and almost all of the people that
designed and built the 60's Apollo hardware, and all their skills, are
long gone or retired and advanced in age. Even if you know it has been
done before, that's not equal to being able to make it happen again
quickly or easily, if you've lost the capacity to make those things
exactly the same way. You have to reinvent a lot of the processes,
find modern materials to replace stuff that's no longer available, or
stuff that was not as safe (leather gaskets, anyone?) as modern
replacements. You have to lay down a whole lot of infrastructure and
start a flow of precursor materials, structures, and assemblies, a
pipeline of materiel, and train up a whole new highly specialized
workforce with skillsets that have been largely forgotten or have
changed radically over time.

It certainly is true that it isn't possible to start putting together
F-1 engines at Canoga Falls next week.

If, though, the desire were present to send astronauts back to the
Moon to perform Apollo-like missions again as quickly as possible,
rockets are still being built, and the Space Shuttle Main Engine could
be pressed into service. The Shuttle, though, achieves thrust
comparable to a Saturn V through the use of solid rocket boosters. So
a new class of heavy-lift boosters will have to be designed almost
from scratch, and it took time originally to proceed from the Gemini
program's Titan to the Saturn.

After all, rockets and missiles are still being built. Building
something like the Lunar Module could be done without the need for
special knowledge lost in the 1960s.

So, while you have noted an important reason why it's taking longer
than one naively might expect - since we already did it "from scratch"
in nine years, we should be able to do it now in five. (And, after
all, Titan rockets, like those used in Gemini, are still being made.)
But a lot of things are not available off-the-shelf.

Other posters have noted that the program is being done on a limited
budget while NASA is busy with other activities. I suspect that is a
larger part of the problem than the obstacle of having to repeat some
work that was allowed to go to waste. But another part of it is that
there is a desire to do it "right" this time.

What was "wrong" with Apollo was simply its hasty discontinuance, and
the failure to follow it up. These things weren't inherent flaws in
Apollo itself, but in a way they can be seen as arguments against
simply doing more of exactly what Apollo did, and then stopping again.

So the plan is this time to send larger Moon missions, as part of an
effort to build a permanent base on the Moon. And to use the same
hardware to send men to Mars.

But since even the first step is being taken on a 20-year schedule,
the chance of it being cancelled before anything happens... makes it
hard to take it seriously. The fact that G. W. Bush's popularity is
sagging has an effect on those odds.

So the goal is to take at least a small step beyond Apollo - sending
more people to the Moon, and for a longer mission. And to do it as a
side pastime instead of a crash project. The wonder isn't that it's
taking so long; the wonder will be if it ever happens.

John Savard