B and B

Schirra's death leaves only Glenn and Carpenter left of the original Mercury 7

More death, alas.  Wally Schirra, one of the original Mercury 7 astronauts, is gone.  Only two now remain: John Glenn and Scott Carpenter.

Schirra's last spaceflight, the first Apollo mission, launched the day after I was born, but my youth was steeped in the lore of the early space program, so I feel the death of each one of the pioneer astronauts keenly.

A quote of Schirra's from his obituary in the L.A. Times:

"I look back on those missions and I remember looking at the spaceship Earth," he told a reporter in 1998. "It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. We need to take care of it."

Challenger plus twenty years

Yikes. Has it been twenty years already since the tragic launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger?

I was a space nut high-school senior at the time. Too young to have witnessed the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and Skylab expoints of the 1960s and 1970s, I had latched onto the space shuttle program with a gusto bordering on obsession—an obsession that had begun before even its long-delayed first mission flew, piloted by moon-walker John Young and rookie astronaut (at the time) Robert Crippen back in April 1981.

In the nearly five years since that maiden voyage, I had watched the shuttle program slowly build up momentum, finally appearing to break through with a glimmer of its original promise of routine access to low-Earth-orbit in the year 1985, when it flew a breathtaking nine missions, nearly twice as many as it had flown the previous year. Combined with President Reagan's directive from early 1984 to complete a manned space station within a decade, the dreams of the post-Apollo space program appeared well on the way to fruition at last.

It was an embarrasment of riches for me that last week of January 1986. On the previous Friday, the twenty-fourth, the unmanned probe Voyager 2 had flown by the planet Uranus, an encounter five years in the making since Voyager's last planetary flyby at Saturn. It gave us the first close-up pictures of that exotic, previously unexplored world. Then, on Sunday the twenty-sixth, my beloved Chicago Bears completed a dream season by demolishing my second-favorite team, the New England Patriots, in the Super Bowl. To top it off, just two days later, the space shuttle prepared to make its second trip of the young year, launching barely two weeks after the end of the previous mission.

The flip side of all the shuttle's recent success for space nuts like myself was that space travel was becoming far too routine for the general public to pay attention to. After the plethora of shuttle missions over the previous couple years, TV networks were no longer willing to devote much coverage, even to launches, anymore. In those pre-internet days, that made it very hard to follow all the day-to-day details of the space missions that I had become so hooked on in the first few years of the shuttle program. Thankfully, the new phenomenon of cable television and CNN tried to fill in that gap. The inclusion of an everyday school teacher on the Challenger mission also promised to attract much more attention from the networks than the last few missions.

In retrospect, virtually all our notions about the space shuttle back then were a mirage. The shuttle simply was too complex to maintain that kind of launch schedule, much less the even busier ones imagined for the future. With the deaths of seven heroes on NASA's hands, their expectactions came back down to ground and the shuttle never again flew as many missions in a year as it had in 1985—and never will.

But that was all still in the future that bright, cold, hopeful Florida morning.

So why are we going back to the Moon?

So NASA has plans to send humans back to the Moon in the next 15 years or so (pending funding, of course). Why do this? Isn't the Moon so 1960s?

Lunar scientist Paul Spudis comes to the rescue and tries to answer these questions in the Washington Post yesterday. How convincing is he?

The essence of his argument:

The moon is important for three reasons: science, inspiration and resources.

The scientific extravaganza of sending humans to the Moon, according to Spudis, consists of learning the history of our corner of the Solar System and using the Moon as a platform for radio astronomy.

Spudis has been studying the Moon for decades, so it would be understandable for him to play up the importance of the Moon to learning about the early history of our planetary neighborhood. The broader community of planetary scientists does not appear to agree, however, as there have been virtually no scientific missions sent to the Moon in the last three decades, while numerous ones have been sent to every other corner of the Solar System. If science at the Moon has not been worth sending unmanned robots, why is it worth sending humans on missions that have a significant risk to life and limb?

Is it for the inspirational value?

In 21st-century America, our existence depends on an educated, technically literate workforce, motivated and schooled in complex scientific disciplines. Tackling the challenges of creating a functioning society off-planet will require not only the best technical knowledge we can muster but also the best imaginations. One cannot develop a creative imagination, the renewable resource of a vibrant society, without confronting and surmounting unknowns and challenges on new frontiers.

Yet we have plenty of unknowns and "new frontier" challenges here on Earth, which is a far more fascinating, complicated, and lively place than the Moon. The idea that our society would be relegated to a creative desert without the challenge of doing something our grandfathers did is nonsensical—and insulting.

So perhaps it's all those great, valuable resources the Moon holds, just waiting to be tapped?

Water is an extremely valuable commodity in space -- in its liquid form, it supports human life, and it can be broken down into its two components, hydrogen and oxygen.

Indeed, if there's one thing where the Moon beats Earth, it's with water. The Moon, aka "Water World". Wait! The Earth already has water. In place, it's miles deep! Why in the world would we go to the Moon, where the "Sea of Tranquility" refers to a bone-dry lava bed, for water that may not even be there? Because, according to Spudis, we can use it to make fuel. Fuel for what?

The ability to make fuel on the moon will allow routine access to Earth-moon space, the zone in which all of our space assets reside.

Ah, so we would go to the Moon to make fuel for going to the Moon! Or to get back to Earth after going to the Moon. Or something like that.

But are there are other resources that may be useful?

Solar power, collected on the moon and beamed to Earth and throughout the space between the two, can provide a clean and reliable energy source not only for space-based applications but ultimately for users on Earth as well.

Clean and reliable energy for us stuck here on Earth. Sounds great! But is that realistic, or just a pipe dream?

Lunar solar power solves the apparent "showstopper" of other space-based solar power systems -- the high cost of getting the solar arrays into space. Instead of launching arrays from the deep gravity well of Earth, we would use the local soil and make hundreds of tons of solar panels on the moon.

This would be great if the infrastructure to make hundreds of tons of solar panels on the moon just magically appeared and didn't have to be launched from the deep gravity well of Earth itself.

Typical of boosters of NASA's new lunar vision, Spudis clearly feels there is an element of manifest destiny involved:

To become a multiplanet species, we must master the skills of extracting local resources, build our capability to journey and explore in hostile regions, and create new reservoirs of human culture and experience. That long journey begins on the moon -- the staging ground, supply station and classroom for our voyage into the universe.

Yet the justification for why becoming a "mutiplanet species" is necessary, feasable, or even desirable is, as we have seen, feeble.

Maybe there is indeed a reason to send humans back to the Moon—to avoid the national embarrassment of ending this country's experiment with manned space travel with the fizzing out of the troubled Space Shuttle program over the next few years. (In fact, Spudis himself was quoted to this effect in a September article: "[I]t’s better than the alternative, which is extinction of human exploration.")

Perhaps that reason fits in Spudis' "inspirational" category. But I disagree. Whatever its other shortcomings, a goal of sending humans to a far more fascinating and challenging destination—the planet Mars—would be inspirational. Returning to an airless, waterless, lifeless world first visited nearly two generations ago is not.

The Space Relic

The Space Shuttle couldn't get off the ground today, two-and-a-half years after its last, tragic, mission. To me, the shuttle seems a relic of a past age. It's been nearly a quarter of a century since its maiden voyage, commanded by Apollo 16 moonwalker John Young—who will turn 75 later this year. A quarter of a century prior to the first shuttle flight was 1956. Sputnik had not been launched yet. NASA did not exist.

In manned spaceflight, we certainly haven't accomplished nearly as much over the last 25 years as over the 25 years previous. Given the Shuttle program's age and high fatality rate, are the benefits of continuing worth the risks? Of course, say some; exploration is a human imperative. Not in this case, say others, including Bill of All Things Conservative:

The shuttle should be mothballed. It costs too much in both money and lives. In 2002, the cost per mission was well over $600 million. In 113 flights 14 astronauts have died. Moreover, at this point in time the only mission it has is to provide service to the International Space Station; again, it isn't worth it. We should end the shuttle program now.

Indeed, the ISS, in its downsized, half-completed, barely-functional state, is not worth it. But how can this pioneering country give up its only manned space vehicle when it may be the better part of a decade before its successor is ready to go?

Well, we've done it before. Between 1975, when the last Apollo mission docked with a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft in orbit, and 1981, when Young and Crippen took the Columbia into orbit for the first time, the U.S. did not possess a functioning manned rocket. We survived.

As Bill pointed out, shuttle launches are hugely expensive. Terminating the program sooner rather than later will save a lot of money. Money that can then be devoted to accelerating the pace of development of its successor, currently known as the CEV. Money that can also be devoted to ensuring that NASA does not decimate its Earth and space science programs over the coming years as the inevitable cost overruns in both the Shuttle and CEV programs occur.

So there's a compelling case for axeing the shuttle sooner rather than later. Already, this administration plans to terminate the shuttle program in 2010, period, no matter whether ISS is complete or not, and it probably won't be.

And they are thinking of ways to ensure that someone doesn't come along and overrule this decision later (via NASA Watch):

NASA is considering retiring a Space Shuttle orbiter in 2007 and beginning modifications to one Shuttle launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center under a plan now being reviewed at NASA headquarters, according to senior agency sources.

Driving the idea of a phased retirement of the space vehicles are two concerns. The first is a desire for finding new sources of funds to pay for advancement of the President's moon-to-Mars plan. And secondly NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin's fears of a third Shuttle accident.

A source familiar with Griffin's thinking said he is worried that an age-related malfunction would trigger a Shuttle catastrophe. As a result, the space chief is seeking to retire the individual Space Shuttle orbiters as quickly as possible.

No final decision has been made - but discussions continued as Discovery was being prepared for launch.

The idea of phased Shuttle retirement is being promoted both by planners involved in the ongoing Exploration Systems Architecture Study and the Bush White House. Concern is mounting that delays in the operational status of an Earth-orbit version of the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) and Congressional pressure to keep the Shuttles flying until the CEV is available might result in extension of the Shuttle retirement date beyond the fall of 2010.

Anti-Shuttle staffers in the Bush administration want to make certain that the shuttle fleet stops flying in 2010. A phased retirement of the Shuttle vehicles helps make that possibility more likely, according to a NASA source. According to knowledgeable sources, elements in the Bush White House had first sought in 2004 to curtail remaining Shuttle flights to as few as 15 and to reduce the content of the final configuration of the International Space Station.

It looks like we won't have the Space Shuttle to kick around for much longer.

As for the CEV, I'm afraid it will turn into the "next-generation" Shuttle in more ways than one. But that's a subject for another post.