Moondark for July: Footprints and Tracks

It’s been 40 years since we first left footprints on the Moon. When Apollo 17’s astronauts left less than four years later, manned moon exploration was over. Only now is NASA launching a serious effort to return, first with robotic reconnaissance missions, then manned missions using Ares and Orion. The open question is whether we have the federal dollars and sustained commitment to send people back to the Moon. This task is made more difficult if we again go it alone or fail to commit to new ideas and technologies. Taking just five days from liftoff, NASA has just returned to the Moon. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) will map the lunar surface for landing sites and resources for a sustained human presence. The Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite’s (LCROSS) mission is to find water: its Shepharding Spacecraft will guide a leftover Centaur rocket to impact sometime this fall. The debris plume will be studied for water vapor and ice, evidence of resources needed for life, energy storage and rocket fuel to get back home. This country has been uniquely fortunate to afford and lead the world in both manned and robotic exploration of space. Recently, we’ve witnessed interesting conjunctions of the two technologies: the success of the final Hubble repair mission from Atlantis (man saves robot) and LRO/LCROSS scouts (robot paves the way). In the next decade, other countries are planning their own trips to the moon. Just as there is a symbiosis of robotic and manned spaceflight, there are numerous examples of international cooperation in space exploration. Also this month, Endeavour will fly to the International Space Station. Kudos to NASA and its global partners for this engineering milestone in space: you can actually see the space station from the ground! Via the ISS, we have maintained an international and geopolitical presence above for the last eleven years. Politics and engagement of the public, especially our kids, are all good reasons to spend money in space. We need to make sure we’re getting a worthwhile return on our investment. The history of aviation in the 20th century may point the way forward for space exploration and exploitation. Manned spaceflight and transport will become commercial and global, and high-end technology will only be justified by military, and national security concerns. Lone tinkerers can’t do it any more, they’ve gone the way of fuzzy black and white transmissions from the lunar surface. Space science will progress best by infusion of federal funds via an independent agency, driven by the competitiveness of peer review by teams of scary-smart rocket scientists. Think of a return to the Moon as “training wheels” for the next generation of space travelers. In the past 40 years, a lot has changed. Robots are no longer humanoid like the Jestons’ Rosie or C-3PO. Robots have gotten a lot smarter, capable and autonomous. On-board smarts are indispensible the farther out you go since the communication delays due to the finite speed of light become significant. I’d like to think that people too have gotten smarter, but we still require a considerable overhead: air, water and waste processing, food, protection and a successful return. Machinery can break, and risks can be managed, but catastrophes happen. Plus, almost half the US population was born after Armstrong’s moonwalk: it’s history, just a dusty, static museum exhibit to them. Robots are expendable, but are they exciting and inspirational enough? R2-D2 stole Star Wars, but it’s no longer us versus them (think Hal from 2001 or "Danger, Will Robinson!"). Very few individuals will ever experience spaceflight, and seats will always be expensive. Tele-presence touches so many more people. Multitasking and multiple synchronous modes of communication are familiar and routine. Nowadays, there is no real distinction between local and remote. It’s not the robot, but the destination. What will youngsters see in space exploration in the next 40 years? Will the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum, have a virtual Mars Station where visitors can drive rovers? Or perhaps a Trans-Neptunian Outpost where visitors plan robotic missions at the far reaches of the solar system? Moondark is written by Douglas C. Miller, published at the Moondark web site, and printed in the Delmarva Star Gazers' Star Gazer News. This document was last revised on 28 June 2009. Text and graphics on this web page are free for non-commercial use with attribution under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-commercial 3.0 License. Ask Doug about other uses.