A Rationale for a Human Lunar Pathfinder Mission
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A RATIONALE FOR A HUMAN LUNAR PATHFINDER MISSION Robert Lee Howard, Jr. University of Tennessee Space Institute Tullahoma, TN Abstract NASA must find them and validate them. There are resources in the lunar environment that will NASA is facing immense challenges. enhance our capabilities for missions in other Costs for the International Space Station are areas of space, both within the Earth-Moon' climbing into orbit; Mars is far too unknown for system anq further into the solar system. NASA human flight; robotic missions seem to fail nearly must identify these resources, learn how to tap as often as they succeed; and the shuttle is into them, and create the conditions to make their b.ecoming increasingly obsolete. What is the use a reality. This is why NASA exists. This focus NASA should bring to the new paper will define and justify the objectives of a millennium? Clearly NASA must maintain the pathfinder lunar mission intended to bring focus shuttle and work towards a new launch system. to some of these issues, and will investigate They must complete the International Space mission requirements and constraints to be Station, especially now that components.are in applied to the pathfinder project. orbit. Robotic exploration of the solar system must continue. But for all practical purposes, Introduction this might as well be a path to nowhere. While there are definite long-term payoffs - in the 20+ The call for a return to the moon has year timeframe - there is far too much room in been repeatedly given ever since the final lunar the near future for a loss of identity and purpose. landing. During the period from 1969 to 1972, Neither the scientific community nor the NASA landed six Apollo missions on the moon, American public will find much reward in a thus fulfilling President Kennedy's pledge to space program that spends the next five years land a man on the moon and return him safely to building a space station, the next ten years Earth. These six missions are the only times visiting it, and in the background launches human beings have left the immediate vicinity of occasional robotic probes into space, not to be the Earth to travel to another heavenly body. In heard from until years later. While these subsequent years, however, calls to return to the necessary tasks should by all means continue, moon have fallen largely on deaf ears. Many NASA must place them in the context of a bold times the response has been the question of why. vision for the future of spaceflight. This is not a Much of the space program has been criticized vision consisting of timetables, hypothetical for failing to communicate clear rationales for programs and budget projections. Those have space activity. In a sense, there are a series of been so over-used that they carry no meaning. three questions that must be resolved. Why Instead, this vision must go back to the 1958 should we be in space? Even if we should be in Space Act and reiterate why NASA exists; it space, why should we go to the moon? Ifwe go must create an inspiring image of a future in to the moon, what should that mission space where people beyond the agency and its accomplish? contractors are participants. I believe NASA has the responsibility of opening up the space Why are we in space? frontier. Simply investigating LEO does not constitute an opening of the space frontier; this Why do we have a space program? vision must include the moon as a near term Whenever technical difficulties or budgetary destination. There are valid opportunities for problems come to light, this is often the first commercial enterprise on the moon. NASA must question out of the mouths of critics. What is find them and bring them into reality. There are there about space that could possibly warrant the operational procedures and engineering expenditures and risks incurred in our technologies necessary to support lunar endeavors? What are some reasons to enter operations. We have no idea what they are. space? Why should we enter space at all? There 173 Copyright © 2001 by the Space Studies Institute (SSI) are several reasons that come to mind. It is our creating a major tourist attraction in that location. human destiny (or alternately, it is our human Yet someone found a way to develop a wildly desire/drive). There are commercial successful business plan. Hotel and casino opportunities in space. Finally, there is a operators now have no problem spending national mandate to explore space and develop incredible amounts of money to develop their its potential. facilities, for they know with confidence that they Throughout human history, mankind has can tum a profit. Space is where Las Vegas was exhibited a drive to reach beyond the boundaries a hundred or two years ago. It is a wilderness, of the time. Simple curiosity, desires to make seemingly with very little to offer. But to the new discoveries to improve the quality of life, proper visionary, it is the source of the next and a belief that it is simply our purpose have all financial empire. Whether through tourism, fueled this drive. Ancient explorers set sail - at manufacturing, scientific discovery, or some out tremendous expense and risk - seeking to her source of income, multitudes of new traverse vast, unknown oceans and explore newly industries await development. discovered continents. Even today, we still Finally, in Title I, Sec. 102 (d), the explore these oceans and continents, driven to National Air and Space Act imposes the discover and understand parts of this planet that following rationale for American space activity: remain a mystery to us. In the days of American ( d) The aeronautical and space expansion, people believed it was literally God's activities of the United States shall will - or a Manifest Destiny - for the country to be conducted so as to contribute span the continent. This is similar to the beliefs materially to one or more of the of emperors and kings throughout history who following objectives: created vast nations. In a sense, space is the (1) The expansion of human perfect "Manifest Destiny." Unlike the more knowledge of the Earth brutal expansions in the world's past, there are and of phenomena in the no native inhabitants to be oppressed by atmosphere and space; expansion. Space is vast. No matter how far (2) The improvement of the outward we expand there is still new, unexplored usefulness, performance, territory. speed, safety, and efficiency The National Air and Space Act of 1958 of aeronautical and space states in Title I, Sec. 102 ( c ), "The Congress vehicles; declares that the general welfare of the United (3) The development and States requires that the National Aeronautics and operation of vehicles capable Space Administration (as established by title II of of carrying instruments, this Act) seek and encourage, to the maximum equipment, supplies, and extent possible, the fullest commercial use of living organisms through space."1 space; We have only barely begun to fathom (4) The establishment oflong commercial possibilities in space. Just fifty years range studies of the potential ago, only the shrewdest of visionaries could have benefits to be gained from, even imagined that space could be a potential the opportunities for, and the source of profits. Yet today, the commercial problems involved in the communications industry is dependent on utilization of aeronautical orbiting satellites to provide a communications and space activities for infrastructure. While commercial profiteering is peaceful and scientific limited at present to communications in Earth purposes; orbit, an unwritten future contains an incalculable (5) The preservation of the role domain of business ventures. of the United States as a A point of inspiration is the city of Las leader in aeronautical and Vegas, and really most of the major cities in the space science and American southwest. Las Vegas is an island of technology and in the financial profiteering in the middle of the desert. application thereof to the When explorers first reached the area where conduct of peaceful activities Vegas now stands, there was nothing but sand. within and outside the {\.nyone would have laughed at the idea of atmosphere; 174 ( 6) The making available to concentrate on terrestrial space stations and Mars agencies directly concerned exploration? with national defense· of discoveries that have Why the moon? military value or significance, and the Some critics of lunar exploration would furnishing by such agencies, ask why go to the moon? They would say that to the civilian agency we've been there with Apollo, so there is nothing established to direct and new to gain. Their logic, however, is flawed. control nonmilitary From Salyut to Skylab, to Mir, and now to ISS, aeronautical and space we are establishing a human presence in Earth activities, of information as orbit. With each program we are learning new to discoveries which have things and accomplishing more than its value or significance to that predecessors. Yes, we have been to the moon agency; before, but only in the most minimal fashion. (7) Cooperation by the United Simply put, we have not accomplished much of States with other nations and significance on the moon. It is true that the groups of nations in work Apollo program provided incredible done pursuant to this Act and breakthroughs and discoveries, but only a tiny in the peaceful application of fraction of what can ultimately be gained from the results thereof; the moon was accomplished through the Apollo (8) The most effective program. To say, "why go to the moon since utilization of the scientific we've been there with Apollo," is comparable to and engineering resources of saying, "why build a space station since.we've the United States, with close been in orbit with Mercury capsules." Just as cooperation among all Mercury was incapable of performing the interested agencies of the missions ISS will accomplish, Apollo was also United States in order to incapable of conducting the missions a return to avoid unnecessary the moon would perform.