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How cool is this ?!?!
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.moon06dec06,0,4656697.story?coll=bal-home-headlines
From the Baltimore Sun
For NASA, a plan to colonize the moon
A permanent base to pursue science, prepare for Mars
By Frank D. Roylance
Sun reporter
December 6, 2006
NASA's concept for a permanent settlement on the moon goes far beyond a mere habitat where people can live for extended periods, such as today's International Space Station.
The space agency's detailed Lunar Exploration Objectives, released Monday, provide a soup-to-nuts outline for a 21st-century colonization of a vast and remote new world without air.
It's great news for science fiction buffs and other space enthusiasts who have dreamed for generations of a lunar base.
"This is NASA making plans for a long-term human settlement off the planet. That is a big deal. That's historic, and I think it's great for the country," said George Whitesides, executive director of the National Space Society, a nonprofit advocacy group whose goal is "the creation of a spacefaring civilization."
The 200 U.S. and foreign experts NASA enlisted in April to brainstorm the nonfiction realities of lunar colonization considered the obvious prerequisites - safe places to live and reliable transportation home.
But they also tackled the mundane: how to recycle human and manufactured waste, regenerate the outpost's air and water and establish lunar agriculture to provide food and oxygen for residents.
Members of a lunar colony will also need ground and "air" transportation, fuel depots, power generation and storage, telecommunications, and a lunar positioning and tracking system, planners said.
The NASA document proposes the creation of lunar regions protected from development - lunar parks and reserves - and for the preservation of historic places such as the Apollo landing sites.
"This is the best estimate of the smartest possible people, as of 2006, of what we'll do on the moon," said John Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University and a participant in the deliberations.
The months-long process engaged "potentially everybody who has any credentials to think about these issues," he said, including scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs and representatives of 13 foreign space agencies. "It makes a pretty compelling case for why there's good reason to go back to the moon."
Absent from the discussion, however, was anyone who thinks that sending people back to the moon is a needless, ruinously expensive thing to do.
"The goal was set by President Bush on Jan. 14, 2004," Logsdon said. "This process was not about whether to go back to the moon, but to state for the public - and for NASA - the top-level reasons why we're doing it." It also engaged the experts on what must be done to make it happen.
Although the NASA outline calls for a moon base as early as 2024, it is not a fixed plan.
"This is a planning document against which much more specific plans can be developed, ... a step in a long process," Logsdon said
Still unresolved is the question of whether the United States and other countries that choose to participate can muster and sustain the political will - and the money - over the decades required to carry out the project.
"That's the question that's on everybody's mind," said Logsdon, who spoke from the second Space Exploration Conference, in Houston. "It's a totally serious concern, and there's nothing we can do about it except convince the public and the political community that this is such an obviously correct thing to do ... and develop enough forward momentum that it has the look of a fait accompli by the time the next president gets around to the decision."
NASA's lunar plans, as released, carried no price tag. But estimates run to the hundreds of billions of dollars.
"The fundamental question you have to ask is whether this will be something that can be sustained as being in the public good," said Roger Launius, chairman of the division of space history at the National Air and Space Museum.
"What's the compelling rationale for it? I have not seen that articulated," he said. "Until there's a conviction ... a buy-in by the public that this is a good thing to do, it's probably not going to gain much in the way of funding, if any at all."
Exploration "themes" developed by NASA's experts attempt to answer the question, "Why go?" Their reasons include:
• To extend the human presence to the moon.
• The pursuit of scientific knowledge about the origins of the Earth, the solar system and the universe.
• To test technologies, systems, flight operations and exploration techniques needed to carry and sustain expeditions to Mars.
• To promote international partnerships through challenging, peaceful work involving common objectives.
• Expansion of Earth's economic activity, with benefits for life on the "home planet."
• To engage the public, encourage students and develop "the high-tech work force that will be required to address the challenges of tomorrow."
Of these, Launius regards preparation for a manned Mars mission as the most important, "because it allows us to try to live in a very foreign environment for long periods."
The least enticing rationale, for now, might be the economic lure.
"I don't think anybody's doing it because it makes economic sense at this point in time," he said. "If they had found anything economically worthwhile [during Apollo], we would have been back there many times. They didn't, and that's the reason a lot of people would like to bypass it."
Still, Launius believes that NASA could sustain public and political support as long as its budget does not rise appreciably as a percentage of the federal budget - now about seven-tenths of 1 percent.
"We have made a decision as a society that we're willing to spend about that amount," he said. "If you can do this quite ambitious program ... within the confines of a standard NASA budget, then I think there's a public acceptance."
That is why NASA's plan is to move big money into lunar exploration only as it shuts down the space shuttle program in 2010 and space station funding after 2014. And as NASA's lunar exploration objectives make plain, there will be plenty of demand for that cash on the moon.
A lunar habitat will have to provide astronauts, electronics and materials with protection from dangerous blasts of radiation. That might require building habitats deep in lava tubes - if explorers can find any. Or they could bury the base under lunar soil, which would require transportation of earth-moving equipment (or in this case, moon movers).
Moon dwellers and their gear also will need protection from abrasive dust, micrometeorites and 250-degree temperature swings, experts say.
They'll need to communicate with each other and with Earth, even when they're on the far side of the moon or deep in a lunar crater. That might require relay stations on the surface or in orbit.
They'll need power generators that can capture and store solar energy for use through the two-week lunar night. Perhaps, nuclear generators or energy beamed from Earth via microwaves could sustain the base at night. Some participants suggested that a commercial utility could provide the juice.
Under NASA's plan, the first permanent base would be situated at one of the lunar poles. That could provide perpetual solar power. A polar base might have access to buried water that could be used for drinking or be split into hydrogen and oxygen for rocket fuel.
But that would depend on whether further exploration confirms the presence of water frozen beneath perpetually shadowed polar craters.
NASA's objectives also describe a need for emergency rescue, repair and refueling services, with transportation access across the lunar surface and to lunar orbit.
Planners expressed the need for vehicles capable of precision landing without human intervention, for fueling depots, landing zones and traffic management.
Lunar crews will need better, more flexible spacesuits and robot assistants to serve as "porters, secretaries, gardeners, laboratory assistants and task aides," the experts concluded.
Planners said a lunar base could contain "an archive of life on Earth," including a seed bank, historical, cultural and other data, to preserve it from calamity.
"In the event of a catastrophic planetary event on Earth, the remains of civilization could potentially reconstruct society as it was before the disaster," the NASA objectives state.
And experts from around the world would have the opportunity to participate in lunar science.
"You have to look at this kind of like we do Antarctica," Launius said. "Antarctica in many respects is a place that doesn't have resources people want," but it provides a valuable place to study phenomena that can't be observed anywhere else.
"I think a moon base will ultimately be an international effort," he said, "a prestige project, and an opportunity to learn things, hopefully useful things, ... about how the universe works."
frank.roylance@baltsun.com
Read Frank Roylance's blog on MarylandWeather.com
Copyright © 2006, The Baltimore Sun | Get Sun home delivery
Get news on your mobile device at www.baltimoresun.com
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.moon06dec06,0,4656697.story?coll=bal-home-headlines
From the Baltimore Sun
For NASA, a plan to colonize the moon
A permanent base to pursue science, prepare for Mars
By Frank D. Roylance
Sun reporter
December 6, 2006
NASA's concept for a permanent settlement on the moon goes far beyond a mere habitat where people can live for extended periods, such as today's International Space Station.
The space agency's detailed Lunar Exploration Objectives, released Monday, provide a soup-to-nuts outline for a 21st-century colonization of a vast and remote new world without air.
It's great news for science fiction buffs and other space enthusiasts who have dreamed for generations of a lunar base.
"This is NASA making plans for a long-term human settlement off the planet. That is a big deal. That's historic, and I think it's great for the country," said George Whitesides, executive director of the National Space Society, a nonprofit advocacy group whose goal is "the creation of a spacefaring civilization."
The 200 U.S. and foreign experts NASA enlisted in April to brainstorm the nonfiction realities of lunar colonization considered the obvious prerequisites - safe places to live and reliable transportation home.
But they also tackled the mundane: how to recycle human and manufactured waste, regenerate the outpost's air and water and establish lunar agriculture to provide food and oxygen for residents.
Members of a lunar colony will also need ground and "air" transportation, fuel depots, power generation and storage, telecommunications, and a lunar positioning and tracking system, planners said.
The NASA document proposes the creation of lunar regions protected from development - lunar parks and reserves - and for the preservation of historic places such as the Apollo landing sites.
"This is the best estimate of the smartest possible people, as of 2006, of what we'll do on the moon," said John Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University and a participant in the deliberations.
The months-long process engaged "potentially everybody who has any credentials to think about these issues," he said, including scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs and representatives of 13 foreign space agencies. "It makes a pretty compelling case for why there's good reason to go back to the moon."
Absent from the discussion, however, was anyone who thinks that sending people back to the moon is a needless, ruinously expensive thing to do.
"The goal was set by President Bush on Jan. 14, 2004," Logsdon said. "This process was not about whether to go back to the moon, but to state for the public - and for NASA - the top-level reasons why we're doing it." It also engaged the experts on what must be done to make it happen.
Although the NASA outline calls for a moon base as early as 2024, it is not a fixed plan.
"This is a planning document against which much more specific plans can be developed, ... a step in a long process," Logsdon said
Still unresolved is the question of whether the United States and other countries that choose to participate can muster and sustain the political will - and the money - over the decades required to carry out the project.
"That's the question that's on everybody's mind," said Logsdon, who spoke from the second Space Exploration Conference, in Houston. "It's a totally serious concern, and there's nothing we can do about it except convince the public and the political community that this is such an obviously correct thing to do ... and develop enough forward momentum that it has the look of a fait accompli by the time the next president gets around to the decision."
NASA's lunar plans, as released, carried no price tag. But estimates run to the hundreds of billions of dollars.
"The fundamental question you have to ask is whether this will be something that can be sustained as being in the public good," said Roger Launius, chairman of the division of space history at the National Air and Space Museum.
"What's the compelling rationale for it? I have not seen that articulated," he said. "Until there's a conviction ... a buy-in by the public that this is a good thing to do, it's probably not going to gain much in the way of funding, if any at all."
Exploration "themes" developed by NASA's experts attempt to answer the question, "Why go?" Their reasons include:
• To extend the human presence to the moon.
• The pursuit of scientific knowledge about the origins of the Earth, the solar system and the universe.
• To test technologies, systems, flight operations and exploration techniques needed to carry and sustain expeditions to Mars.
• To promote international partnerships through challenging, peaceful work involving common objectives.
• Expansion of Earth's economic activity, with benefits for life on the "home planet."
• To engage the public, encourage students and develop "the high-tech work force that will be required to address the challenges of tomorrow."
Of these, Launius regards preparation for a manned Mars mission as the most important, "because it allows us to try to live in a very foreign environment for long periods."
The least enticing rationale, for now, might be the economic lure.
"I don't think anybody's doing it because it makes economic sense at this point in time," he said. "If they had found anything economically worthwhile [during Apollo], we would have been back there many times. They didn't, and that's the reason a lot of people would like to bypass it."
Still, Launius believes that NASA could sustain public and political support as long as its budget does not rise appreciably as a percentage of the federal budget - now about seven-tenths of 1 percent.
"We have made a decision as a society that we're willing to spend about that amount," he said. "If you can do this quite ambitious program ... within the confines of a standard NASA budget, then I think there's a public acceptance."
That is why NASA's plan is to move big money into lunar exploration only as it shuts down the space shuttle program in 2010 and space station funding after 2014. And as NASA's lunar exploration objectives make plain, there will be plenty of demand for that cash on the moon.
A lunar habitat will have to provide astronauts, electronics and materials with protection from dangerous blasts of radiation. That might require building habitats deep in lava tubes - if explorers can find any. Or they could bury the base under lunar soil, which would require transportation of earth-moving equipment (or in this case, moon movers).
Moon dwellers and their gear also will need protection from abrasive dust, micrometeorites and 250-degree temperature swings, experts say.
They'll need to communicate with each other and with Earth, even when they're on the far side of the moon or deep in a lunar crater. That might require relay stations on the surface or in orbit.
They'll need power generators that can capture and store solar energy for use through the two-week lunar night. Perhaps, nuclear generators or energy beamed from Earth via microwaves could sustain the base at night. Some participants suggested that a commercial utility could provide the juice.
Under NASA's plan, the first permanent base would be situated at one of the lunar poles. That could provide perpetual solar power. A polar base might have access to buried water that could be used for drinking or be split into hydrogen and oxygen for rocket fuel.
But that would depend on whether further exploration confirms the presence of water frozen beneath perpetually shadowed polar craters.
NASA's objectives also describe a need for emergency rescue, repair and refueling services, with transportation access across the lunar surface and to lunar orbit.
Planners expressed the need for vehicles capable of precision landing without human intervention, for fueling depots, landing zones and traffic management.
Lunar crews will need better, more flexible spacesuits and robot assistants to serve as "porters, secretaries, gardeners, laboratory assistants and task aides," the experts concluded.
Planners said a lunar base could contain "an archive of life on Earth," including a seed bank, historical, cultural and other data, to preserve it from calamity.
"In the event of a catastrophic planetary event on Earth, the remains of civilization could potentially reconstruct society as it was before the disaster," the NASA objectives state.
And experts from around the world would have the opportunity to participate in lunar science.
"You have to look at this kind of like we do Antarctica," Launius said. "Antarctica in many respects is a place that doesn't have resources people want," but it provides a valuable place to study phenomena that can't be observed anywhere else.
"I think a moon base will ultimately be an international effort," he said, "a prestige project, and an opportunity to learn things, hopefully useful things, ... about how the universe works."
frank.roylance@baltsun.com
Read Frank Roylance's blog on MarylandWeather.com
Copyright © 2006, The Baltimore Sun | Get Sun home delivery
Get news on your mobile device at www.baltimoresun.com