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Debating Manned Moon Missions

Experts provide opposing viewpoints on manned missions to space

  • By Kenneth R. Fletcher
  • Smithsonian magazine, July 2008

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    This year marks NASA's 50th anniversary, and the space agency is developing and testing vehicles, spacesuits and dwellings that will be able to stand up to the moon's harsh conditions, hoping to meet President Bush's goal of sending humans back to the moon by 2020 and eventually on to Mars. We asked experts in science and space policy to discuss their views on manned space missions.


    John Logsdon
    Director of Space Policy Institute, George Washington University
    John Logsdon will join the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum this fall.

    The main goal is sending people beyond earth's orbit starting with the moon, eventually getting to Mars, and perhaps beyond. The moon is the first step. We don't know how to go to Mars yet. The moon is a destination of value in its own right, because there is lots we can do there that will help us learn how to go to Mars.

    This is not primarily about science, and therefore not primarily about the discovery of fundamental new knowledge. It is to test the belief that humans are destined to live in other places in addition to earth. In order to do that, they have to be able to live off the land and do something worthwhile. Exploration lets us find out whether both of these are possible.

    We can learn whether there are valuable resources that can extend the sphere of earth's economic activity out into the solar system. We want to be doing lots of things between the earth and the moon that will require rocket fuel. It may be cheaper and easier to extract the oxygen needed for rocket propulsion from the lunar soil than it is to lift it away from the earth's gravity.

    Another idea is the moon's surface is full of an isotope of helium called helium-3, which at some point in the future can be the ideal fuel of a fusion reactor cycle and provide almost unlimited non-fossil fuel and non-radioactive fuel to produce energy on earth. We know it's there. The question is, could it be extracted in large enough quantities, and at what point in the future will we develop a fusion reactor to use it? There are also people who believe we can capture the sun's energy and convert it into laser or microwave energy and beam it down to earth. You can build a lot of that system using lunar material. All of this is verging on a centuries-long perspective of why we do this. It's not for some immediate gratification. It's not to go and plant a flag and come back.

    I am a supporter of the notion that there is value to human exploration. I believe that 50 years from now there will be permanently occupied outposts on the moon. Whether they are Antarctica-like scientific stations or a thriving industrial community remains to be seen. In 50 years I think we will have made our initial forays to Mars and have answered the question of whether life ever existed on that planet.

    Steven Weinberg
    Winner of the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics
    Cosmologist, University of Texas

    Manned missions to space are incredibly expensive and don't serve any important purpose. It isn't a good way of doing science, and funds are being drained from the real science that NASA does. Sending people to space may be a great show, so much of what you do has to be built around the necessity of keeping people safe and alive that science takes a second place. Above all, it's an incredible waste of money. For the cost of putting a few people on a very limited set of locations on Mars we could have dozens of unmanned, robotic missions roving all over Mars and still have money left over to allow the more astronomical sciences to go forward. Unmanned missions have been tremendously important in making this a golden age of astronomy.

    1 2

    This year marks NASA's 50th anniversary, and the space agency is developing and testing vehicles, spacesuits and dwellings that will be able to stand up to the moon's harsh conditions, hoping to meet President Bush's goal of sending humans back to the moon by 2020 and eventually on to Mars. We asked experts in science and space policy to discuss their views on manned space missions.


    John Logsdon
    Director of Space Policy Institute, George Washington University
    John Logsdon will join the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum this fall.

    The main goal is sending people beyond earth's orbit starting with the moon, eventually getting to Mars, and perhaps beyond. The moon is the first step. We don't know how to go to Mars yet. The moon is a destination of value in its own right, because there is lots we can do there that will help us learn how to go to Mars.

    This is not primarily about science, and therefore not primarily about the discovery of fundamental new knowledge. It is to test the belief that humans are destined to live in other places in addition to earth. In order to do that, they have to be able to live off the land and do something worthwhile. Exploration lets us find out whether both of these are possible.

    We can learn whether there are valuable resources that can extend the sphere of earth's economic activity out into the solar system. We want to be doing lots of things between the earth and the moon that will require rocket fuel. It may be cheaper and easier to extract the oxygen needed for rocket propulsion from the lunar soil than it is to lift it away from the earth's gravity.

    Another idea is the moon's surface is full of an isotope of helium called helium-3, which at some point in the future can be the ideal fuel of a fusion reactor cycle and provide almost unlimited non-fossil fuel and non-radioactive fuel to produce energy on earth. We know it's there. The question is, could it be extracted in large enough quantities, and at what point in the future will we develop a fusion reactor to use it? There are also people who believe we can capture the sun's energy and convert it into laser or microwave energy and beam it down to earth. You can build a lot of that system using lunar material. All of this is verging on a centuries-long perspective of why we do this. It's not for some immediate gratification. It's not to go and plant a flag and come back.

    I am a supporter of the notion that there is value to human exploration. I believe that 50 years from now there will be permanently occupied outposts on the moon. Whether they are Antarctica-like scientific stations or a thriving industrial community remains to be seen. In 50 years I think we will have made our initial forays to Mars and have answered the question of whether life ever existed on that planet.

    Steven Weinberg
    Winner of the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics
    Cosmologist, University of Texas

    Manned missions to space are incredibly expensive and don't serve any important purpose. It isn't a good way of doing science, and funds are being drained from the real science that NASA does. Sending people to space may be a great show, so much of what you do has to be built around the necessity of keeping people safe and alive that science takes a second place. Above all, it's an incredible waste of money. For the cost of putting a few people on a very limited set of locations on Mars we could have dozens of unmanned, robotic missions roving all over Mars and still have money left over to allow the more astronomical sciences to go forward. Unmanned missions have been tremendously important in making this a golden age of astronomy.

    Very often the case is made that putting people into space pushes technology and that's good for technology on earth. I think that's nonsense. The kind of technological stimulus we would get from unmanned space exploration is much greater. It would involve developing robotics and computer programs that could deal with things in real time without people around. That's the sort of thing that's tremendously useful on earth. The only thing you learn by developing the technology to put people into space, is how to put people into space

    I've spoken to high officials in NASA and they are quite frank. They do not defend the manned missions on the basis of science. They feel that putting people into space has an independent or spiritual value that transcends anything purely practical. I don't think that the public realizes that what they are getting is kind of a spiritual exercise rather than a program for the development of science and technology

    Roger Launius
    Senior Curator, Division of Space History, National Air and Space Museum

    Establishing a base on the moon and sending humans on to Mars is something that I'd love to see us do. Becoming a multiplanetary species is what human space flight is all about. If that's not what it's about, I think we need to back off and ask ourselves the question "Why are we doing this?" That's a debate that we've not really had in any serious way. If our objective is to go out and gather scientific data, we have robots that do that very effectively. If our objective is to get off this planet, to become a multiplanetary species, to form colonies on the moon, Mars and other places, then we absolutely, positively must fly individuals. There's no other way to find out. We're not going to establish a colony on Mars if we don't go there and do it.

    We have to become a multiplanetary species so that we don't become extinct. Why would we become extinct? There are a number of possibilities. The best-case scenario is that several billion years in the future the sun will become a red giant. We know that's going to happen and it will engulf the earth and anything that's here will be dead. So we have to be elsewhere when that happens. But it's impossible to get members of Congress excited about something that's going to happen several billion years in the future. That's
    understandable. There are of course more immediate threats. We could annihilate ourselves with nuclear weapons or so foul the environment we can't survive here. You have to ask if spaceflight is the proper way to remedy those, and it probably is not. Do you create a colony on Mars to avoid global warming or do something here to try to resolve global warming? In this case, you try to do something here first. Becoming a multiplanetary species is a tough sell, but it is a certainty that this planet will become uninhabitable one day.

     


    Robert L. Park
    Physicist, University of Maryland
    Author of Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud

    What makes this all so tragic is that I regard space exploration so highly. We already have robotic explorers on Mars. They are doing fine. They never complain about the cold nights. They live on sunshine. You can't do that with humans. We have much better explorers there than we could conceivably imagine putting on Mars if we use humans. What are we after? What are we looking for in space? There is nothing that we can bring back from Mars that would begin to justify the cause of going there. The only thing we can bring back is knowledge, and we can bring knowledge back better with robots. When it comes down to it, we're after adventure. If adventure is that important to the public and they are willing to pay for it, then who am I to object. But it seems to me that in this day and age there are things that are more important to us. I'm not opposed to adventure, but I don't get a big kick out of two or three astronauts getting all the adventure. Let them go bungee jumping or something instead.

    There is nothing that has been learned on the space station or on the shuttle that has made any significant impact on any field of science. Nobody will contradict that. We are squandering all our money right now on these manned adventures that will avail us absolutely nothing. For the cost of a manned mission to the moon we can build a telescope that can study the atmospheres of distant planets.

    The plan for extracting helium isotopes from the moon is almost funny. Cosmic rays striking the moon create nuclear reactions. As a result, you get helium isotopes that are rare on earth. But what do we want these isotopes for? We have never created one watt of energy by using those isotopes. Maybe we ought to do that first. To get usable quantities would have to create a huge mining operation that would process vast tons of moon soil in order to extract that stuff. The cost is staggering.

    There's a huge lobby for manned space exploration. The space industry depends on it. Sending humans, because it's more expensive, is exactly what they want to do. The more money we spend the more they like it. So they look for the most expensive way to do it.


     
    Comments

    Hi - So if we need to drink our own body fluids on the moon, why not make our own water! - Water measures out about 8Lbs. per gallon - How much does Oxygen and Hydrogen weigh? - Do the math! - Howard of Elkton -

    Posted by Howard kiefer on June 24,2008 | 05:47PM

    Howard - you should really do the math. If you have 8 lbs of water you'll need exactly 8 lbs total of hydrogen and oxygen (that would be approximately .89 lbs of hydrogen and 7.11 lbs of oxygen). It doesn't weigh any less (or have any less mass to be more accurate) if it's stored as hydrogen and oxygen compared to storing it as water - after all water is h2o! All the same stuff just combined. Now if you could extract oxygen from the lunar surface you would save a significant amount of mass traveling to the moon! And it may be possible to do just that.

    Posted by ralph on June 27,2008 | 01:03PM

    I see two different points of view: one group is about getting someone (a person, human and whole) to someplace way out there, and the other group is about collecting data. Yes, it is more cost effective to use robots and remote sensors to gain information, but what does that information do for us? Will it be useful here on Earth, or just end up as (for the great masses) scientific trivia, seen on the news, the computer screen, here today, forgotten tomorrow? It doesn't touch us the way human exploration does. Putting people on the Moon and beyond involves a personal connection that a robot cannot provide. Two weeks ago, I looked up and saw two bright objects moving across the sky: the ISS and the Shuttle. My first thought was "Wow, they're bright!". My second thought was more profound: we have people living up there in space, not a part of this world.." I am humbled by that thought.

    Posted by MikeT on June 28,2008 | 01:19PM

    MikeT, your comment is right on point. There are indeed two very different philosophies expressed here. The academic community thinks that the space program is "theirs," to with as they wish. They have complete control over the robotic program; they decide the destinations, the experiments, and receive a comfortable living studying data and publishing results. Human spaceflight is ultimately about human communities living on other worlds. We're going to the Moon to learn the skills necessary to do that. In the long run, it will ensure the survival of our species. One note for "expert" Robert Park -- most lunar helium comes from the solar wind, not as spallation products from cosmic rays.

    Posted by Paul Spudis on July 1,2008 | 07:10AM

    Do we need to develop an extremely expensive expansion of civilization in such a hazardous environment? I do not think so. It is a romantic venture with scientific justifications. We need to use our "brains" to solve the big problems of society on the planet earth.

    Posted by Hal Rienstra on July 3,2008 | 08:21AM

    I think space trips are exciting. Now that I think about it, it just may be for the spirit and adventure but that just makes it more exciting. Also, sending man to the moon actually brings back more information than any robot can bring. You know what man can bring back that robot can't? The information about survival. The whole point of the manned space trips (which the cons failed to argue) is to see if we humans can live on another planet besides earth. What kind of robot can tell us if humans can survive the cold nights? What kind of robot can learn how to survive on the moon with only earth materials? Besides, I think there should be a little bit of both, send some robots out to see if man can survive based on numbers, and then send some men to REALLY see if man can survive.

    Posted by Josh S on July 8,2008 | 05:27PM

    I agree with all of the above comments. We do need the data that the robotic missions can provide - and we do need to make them useful not reside in some archive open to only a few. We do need to find the parameters - if there are any of living off earth - we may need to one day and it may make perfect sense to do so by choive a hundred years form now. We are evolving and we most certainly will think differently in the future BUT we shoud start taking care of our Earth problems now so that living off Earth is a choice not a necesity. Last but certianly not least we hsould all be able ot make decisions about the goals of space exploration not those comparatively few who profess to be the one's who should decide. You serious types may think this too frivulous but watch Star Trek-Next Generation -and learn.

    Posted by akthryn murdock on July 9,2008 | 01:18PM

    When I look at space I see the future of man. It's more than a quest for knowledge and that alone hasn't served us well in the past. When the Chinese treasure fleet sailed the world looking for knowledge the decided there wasn't anything worth knowing out there. They turned inward to solve there problems at home and their beurocrats burned their fleets. The Europeans on the other hand were looking for gold, property, souls, etc, and were driven by pressures at home. In short - they were looking for someplace to go - and stay. The odds were horrific as were the losses - and gains. Its for this reason that we call the "new world", North and South America. I have no doubt that man will colonise space but NASA should note that they are no longer the only show in town. When my American kids go to space, I hope they don't need a visa to get there.

    Posted by Chris Gay on July 24,2008 | 07:26AM

    John, Nice to see we are on the same "team". Good luck with your new posting at The Smithsonian Institute! P. Edward Murray Xavier University Class of 1980

    Posted by P. Edward Murray on July 26,2008 | 05:25PM

    Why are we waiting until 2020 to send someone back to the moon?

    Posted by Albert on August 1,2008 | 06:05AM

    Let's spend money on marine biology. It is a vast area yet to be fully inspected miles beneath the ocean surface. Let's just send an eye in the sky to crawl around on the moon. Thanx.

    Posted by L.Mark McAfee on August 7,2008 | 11:16AM

    Humans have been explorers since the days when our earliest ancestors left Africa and fanned out across the globe. As they went, they developed the technology and the skills they needed to survive in new habitats, and to travel across fathomless oceans and vast land masses. Had we not had this urge to explore and expand, our species might well have been extinguished in an African drought 60,000 years ago. Leaving Earth is no different from leaving Africa. We will develop the technology to survive independently in space, on the Moon, and eventually on Mars. Science will be a tool in this mission, and it will greatly expand our understanding of the solar system and the universe beyond. But the acquisition of scientific knowledge is not THE mission. It is a means to the larger end: our continued expansion and survival as a species. audaces fortuna iuvat

    Posted by Roger Cooper on August 9,2008 | 06:56PM

    How many millions goes to research and development of new technologies because of space exploration? Another way to develop lots of new technologies is war. You decide what you preffer.

    Posted by Marco Mugnatto on September 19,2008 | 08:55AM

    interesting matter! very useful!! tamanna

    Posted by tamanna on October 23,2008 | 02:39AM

    The question of man inhabiting te Moon, and travelling to Mars and beyond is the most important question facing humanity today. Let's face it, we humans have just about destroyed our planet, and if thats not enough, the chances of a Asteroid crashing into Earth is very good. If for no other reason than the ones I've stated, exploration is pa big part of what being human is about. Whatever obsticles we have to overcome to acheive our goals is worth the time, effort, and money.

    Posted by Anthony Bryson on October 29,2008 | 03:18PM

    I agree more with the comments of John Logsdon. I think the main reason of sending manned vehicles to the moon or mars is not about sience. The apollo missions for example were aimed mainly to win the space race with the former Soviet union, in that time, the main concern was to show to the world who was the first in everithing. Today is different tough, now, there are another factors that play a big rol in sending back manned misions to the moon and beyond. Today, china, japan and india are now in the game too, and they are considering mining explotation, touristic development and space industrial engineering as a way to justify permanet outposts on the moon. After all, there should be an interest to justify these very expensive human exploration, and I think that the most importatnt is guess what "money".

    Posted by Omar on December 16,2008 | 11:43AM

    In the future we could inhabit other planets and have spaceships like in Star Wars and Star Trek.We could live on planets galaxies away and establish colonies on different planets not in this solar system.Doesnt that blow your mind. That would be so awesome.Think about it.

    Posted by Isaiah Bohin on January 12,2009 | 10:47AM

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