The [political] Battle for the Moon

Moon Viewed as Policy Battleground
By Leonard David
Senior Space Writer
http://www.space.com
posted: 05:30 am ET
17 July 2004



LAS VEGAS, NEVADA -- Left solely in NASA's hands the forecast is
cloudy for realizing a 21st century where the Earth's moon is a
bastion of creativity, economic growth, as well as a foothold for
humanity's greater leaps into deep space.

For attendees of the 5th annual Return to the Moon conference being
held here from July 16-18, it is up to the private sector to help
realize President Bush's new vision for space exploration and to
revitalize humanity's forays to the Moon and beyond.

It's not about just astronauts strutting across the lunar surface,
said Manny Pimenta, Return to the Moon Project Director of the Space
Frontier Foundation, the group that organized the conference. "We need
to create in people's minds that the possibility of space settlement
is actually possible with the technology that exists today," Pimenta
said. "It is inevitable that we will be living, working and playing on
the Moon someday.,"

Alternative space movement

Rick Tumlinson, founder of the Space Frontier Foundation believes we
are at the dawning of a "new American space age," calling attention to
the recent flight of SpaceShipOne, the privately backed effort that
lobbed a pilot to the edge of space last month.

SpaceShipOne -- and other entrepreneurial efforts now ongoing --
signal the emergence and fast-paced nature of a "new alternative space
movement," Tumlinson argued.

Another positive step is a major revamp of NASA, Tumlinson suggested.
That overhaul, he said, is due in part to the Columbia tragedy in
February 2003, as well as U.S. President George W. Bush's call last
January for a return to the Moon, then onward to Mars and beyond.

Tumlinson said that work is underway to "de-Bushify" NASA's visionary
call to arms, in order for it to be shared by both political parties.
"From the President's mouth to NASA's ears is one hell of a journey,"
Tumlinson said, one that demands a private sector-government
partnership or it will fail.

Business as unusual

"Hopefully, we are transitioning from old NASA to a new NASA," said
James Benson, head of SpaceDev, a private space firm near San Diego,
California. "We can still keep bashing NASA, but now we have to bash
the old NASA and hope the new one emerges," he said.

That coming out party for a new NASA is tied to contracts the agency
is soon awarding -- contracts intended to jell the President's space
initiative into a true action plan.

Benson said in the next six months, "either history will be written…or
we'll be back to business as usual."

Business as unusual would have NASA go beyond the traditional
aerospace prime contractor community, Benson said. Doing so would
assure more innovation, fast turnaround of products at lower-cost, he
said.

One early endeavor, Benson said, is ringing the Moon with microsats.
These would serve as a lunar Global Positioning System (GPS). For one,
this lunar GPS would guide spacecraft loaded with equipment and
science packages to safe, pinpoint landings at prime real estate on
the Moon.

"We need to start building the infrastructure around the Moon now, as
technology enablers," Benson explained.

Clear direction

"I sense a change in the wind…a disturbance in the force," joked Paul
Spudis, a planetary scientist at The Johns Hopkins University Applied
Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.

Spudis was also a member of the President's Commission on
Implementation of United States Space Exploration Policy that recently
reported on how best to put polemics into practice.

Spudis saluted the space vision statement by U.S. President Bush of
January 14th of this year, but the question remains: What NASA is
supposed to become? "This was a different kind of vision," Spudis
said. "For once we actually have a clear direction for our space
program."

To eliminate human spaceflight and do academic robotic space science
forever has been rejected by the White House, Spudis observed. What is
now on the table is to actually use space resources to leverage things
"to actually give you more than you have now."

Hidden agenda

Spudis said that there are people within NASA who are failing to see
what the President has asked to be put in motion. "This is as clear a
policy direction as we've ever had. And yet people at NASA persist in
misunderstanding it."

There are those at NASA with an agenda "to kill this or morph it into
something that it was never intended to be," Spudis warned.

The idea of a quick "touch and go" at the Moon, then get to Mars
"because that's where the real science is," is dead wrong, Spudis
observed, based on the President's directive.

"The point is to use the Moon to enable voyages elsewhere. Plus I dare
say we actually have a few things we might be able to do on the Moon
as well. It is an interesting place in its own right," Spudis said.

Tyranny of the rocket equation

There's a lot of spade work to on the Moon first to enable a humans to
Mars mission that is safe and easily done, Spudis told conference
attendees.

"The vision is about creating new capability," Spudis added. "Right
now humans are stuck in low Earth orbit. Robots are mass, power, and
bandwidth limited. We want to break that. We want to be able to break
the tyranny of the rocket equation."

That would be accomplished by using the resources that are available
in space. And the Moon is the closest place to put that into practice,
Spudis said.

"So, fundamentally, we need to play the hand that nature's dealt us,
Spudis concluded. "Since we're here in Las Vegas…think of it in
gambling terms. This is the hand we've got…can you play it or not?"