Trust me. I'm still working on my "why we go to space" essay.

In the meantime, it looks like Transorbital will launch a mission to the moon later this year. Price: $2500 per gram. I wonder how many spots they will sell?

I like how Space.com frames this news in the context of President Bush's call for renewed government activity on the moon.

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Rand Simberg remembers the Challenger and feels the passage of time. I was a senior in high school, sitting in Latin class 18 years ago when I learned of the Challenger explosion.

Rand also remembers the Columbia and Apollo 1 accidents in this article. And thanks to an article linked by Stephen Green, I now have an even more chilling mental picture of the final minutes of the Columbia astronauts' lives.

I may be a contrarian about NASA and the politics and purposes of government-funded manned exploration of outer space, but that should never be taken as disrespect for the bravery of these astronauts.

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Looking at this picture from the Martian surface makes me hope that Opportunity will scrape away some dust and see something like this.

Some more cool sites to see what you might find in limestone beds on Earth are here and here.

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Jeff Foust has an interesting article today on the feasibility of missions to near-Earth-objects (mostly asteroids). He summarizes the justifications for studying these bodies as fear (of another dinosaur-killer), greed (for their mineral riches), and curiosity (because they're there). These objects are also fairly "inexpensive" in terms of delta-v:

While there are a number of good reasons for visiting NEOs, what makes the case for such missions -- human in particular -- so compelling is the accessibility of these bodies. The proximity of these objects and their small size sharply reduce the delta-v -- the change in velocity -- and thus the amount of propellant needed to reach them. In many cases, the total delta-v for a NEO mission is less than a mission to the Moon. At a September 2002 conference on mitigating asteroid impact hazards in Arlington, Virginia, Durda described an example of a mission to one NEO, 1991 VG. A round-trip mission lasting just 60 days would require a total delta-v of 6.1 kilometers per second, approximately the same as a one-way mission to the Moon. Extending the mission duration to 90 days decreased the delta-v to 4.9 km/sec. These factors put manned NEO missions almost entirely within the capacities and experience of human spaceflight today.

This last item reminded me of a science fiction story "gimmick" that I thought up about 15 years ago. As far as I know it hasn't been used in a story yet (and I haven't put it in a story yet, either!) The idea would be to use an asteroid or comet as a launching platform to the outer planets. I am too weak on orbital mechanics to work it out, but essentially the explorer craft would "lasso" an asteroid and then hitch a ride until it reached a good "jumping off" point to match
orbits with Mars, Jupiter, or some other destination. Do any of my technically-inclined readers think this idea has any merit?

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Martian Soil is on the story.

Major media that have picked this up include the AP (via USA Today), New York Times, CNN, and FoxNews.

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Or pre-teen sons, as the case may be.

I'm working on a personal webpage right now, and one of the background graphics I am considering for the title bar is a lunar excursion module.

Tonight my 9-year old son looked at my progress and started asking questions about Apollo -- how many people landed there and when. I told him and then he asked if the Columbia had ever landed on the moon. I said no, even though there was a command module named Columbia. But no, I told him, the space shuttles can only fly in low Earth orbit.

He looked puzzled and said, "but where do they go? What planet?" Good question, son. Good question. The answer, of course, is nowhere but in circles for the last 20 years.

My son's question I think encapsulates the immediate emotional response I had to the President's speech a week ago. It's a question of goals -- where are we going? And why?

Before my rational self kicked in, I had a primal thrill that we would be going back to the moon to stay, and then to Mars. A dream I've had since I was 9 myself. And now I'm conflicted between my desire to see America lead the way in exploring and settling the solar system and my certainty that NASA cannot and will not accomplish that. And worse, that if they do, it will be a flags-and-footprints show like Apollo. Good for pictures that my son can show his kids someday, but not much else.

But that's the cranky grownup, not the idealistic child. Unfortunately, we won't really go anywhere to stay until there's a reason for cranky grownups to go. When space is just another place instead of an idealistic goal, we'll be there to stay.

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In looking for his comments on the DC-X, I ran across some written testimony that Jerry Pournelle presented to the House Subcommittee on Space in 1995 posing this critical question.

Of course, a cynic might answer that we have NASA in order to employ some 18,000 government employees in space centers distributed throughout many powerful congresscritters' districts.

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As I first reported back in October 2003, the Japanese have been testing a reusable rocketship -- the RVT -- much like the DC-X for the last several years (since 1999 - here's a good background).

Today, Hobbyspace posts an interview of Prof. Yoshifumi Inatani, the head of the RVT program.

Of particular interest to this blog is the fact that Rocket Man Mark Oakley helped prepare some of the questions on vehicle design.

Read the whole thing, and then ask yourself where we might be today if the military had kept control of the DC-X (remember, as Jerry Pournelle points out, that the first thing NASA did with the DC-X was to crash it -- through incompetence rather than malice, but still. . .)

The interview has some links to pictures and video. You may also want to check out these videos of the DC-X before its untimely demise: Small (8MB) or Large (31MB).

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Not much blogging tonight, as I'm reading the speech.

My immediate reaction is somewhat negative, beginning with the setting. First, the President is at NASA and is addressing NASA employees, not the American people: "This will be a great and unifying mission for NASA, and we know that you'll achieve it. I have directed Administrator O'Keefe to review all of NASA's current space flight and exploration activities and direct them toward the goals I have outlined."

I don't want to watch superhuman astronauts exploring on my nickel. I want to do exploring for myself. And what's up with this? -- "We'll invite other nations to share the challenges and opportunities of this new era of discovery. The vision I outline today is a journey, not a race, and I call on other nations to join us on this journey, in a spirit of cooperation and friendship." Just what we need. Another feel-good international boondoggle like the ISS. I am afraid that these
steps will turn outer space into an Antarctica -- another preserve for PhDs and noone else.

Rand Simberg has some preliminary thoughts on this. Check out Jerry Pournelle, too. His prize proposal, and his favoring a higher-profile military role both parallel my thoughts on federal government involvement in space.

I would actually like to see several "dreamer fithp" (read this, if you don't get the reference) on the President's commission -- Jerry Pournelle, Larry Niven, Burt Rutan.

Most other space policy bloggers are getting in on the action:

Rocket Man.

Fred Kiesche, who should put up a tipjar on his site.

Jay Manifold, who is promising more details real soon.

Still waiting to read Chris Hall's assessment of the speech.

Coming soon: my opinion of why we need to go (prompted by Anne Applebaum's execrable spew), and some thoughts on how I think we ought to go.

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Thanks to Chris Hall for listing me as one of the "pundits" he will visit regarding President Bush's expected announcement of a bold new vision for NASA: a return to the Moon to stay and a manned mission to Mars. But I'm going to go at this punditry in a roundabout way.

Charles Paul Freund, in the current [February 2004] issue of Reason, reviews a book entitled Where's My Space Age? by Sean Topham (see Freund, Charles. "Goodbye, Space Child: The space age's bureaucratic dreams sputtered out." Reason. February 2004: 55-61). As reported by Mr. Freund, Where's My Space Age? presents the material artifacts of the future as envisioned at the dawn of the space age -- from toybox illustrations, to comic book art, metallic dresses, and modular architecture -- and follows their development. Freund places this development in a dynamist context:

"[T]he Space Age stands out among various futures because, like the Atomic Age that it overlapped, it seemed to be taking shape. But only some of it -- communications satellites, for example -- reflected people's desires. Much of it was a state program established for geopolitical reasons. . . which meant that it was to follow the trajectory of the state's needs. As those needs shrank, . . . the Space Age that depended on the state's shrinking dreams got ever smaller too. Politically mandated futures don't develop, because the forces behind
them are artificial."

You can see a hint of this in William Gibson's The Gernsback Continuum, where a modern person falls into the alternative world where the idealized vision came true. As Freund writes, "the actual future turned out to be one of material, individuating plenitude and not at all of minimalist class conformity."

But old fashions have a way of resurfacing. Which brings us to this. Or should I say this. My initial reaction is "how cool." But my immediate emotional response is moderated by the fact that I remember the frustration of waiting for the shuttle Columbia to take off after years of delays and cost overruns. Shuttle has not delivered on the promises made to justify its construction.

I can also distinctly remember Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" speech, and his Space Station speech. We now have a barely habitable white elephant of a station. I also remember writing a space law paper a little more than 10 years ago that cited Bush 41's ambitious Space Exploration Initiative, which was a dead letter by the time the paper was done being edited just a few months later.

All that being said, I generally agree with the reported staging. I strongly believe we need to return to the moon first -- this time to stay. We cannot (and should not expect to) identify all hazards and risks before a multiple-year mission in deep space, which is what a manned landing on and return from Mars would entail. The moon is relatively close, but is the perfect "proving ground" to learn construction techniques, resource extraction techniques, and other skills that would be necessary to survive on Mars.

Also, if we do it right, the moon could be a great tourist destination (not much further away, timewise, than an ocean cruise). If we do it right, then the settlement of a moon base will be done in such a way that leads to cheaper access to orbit for ordinary people. If we do it right, parts of the Mars mission could be built and launched from the shallower lunar gravity well.

But notice all of the "if we do it rights. . ." I unfortunately have little confidence that the same agency that produced Shuttle and the ISS (and that crashed the DC-X as soon as it got it from the BMDO) can do this right. I'll have to reserve final judgment until the President makes his speech and there is something in writing to review. I tend to agree with Rand Simberg on these matters (and have been following his policy postings for some time). If you haven't already done so, read his preliminary post on this topic (he is sure to post more as more details become available) and read the comments left by his readers.

I'll update, too, as more details come out.

Update: I deleted a redundant sentence above. It seems from this article that President Bush agrees with my idea about going to the moon first as a "proving ground" for Mars.

Update: The article is now online here.

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I've added a short list on the left of links that I am checking daily to keep up with the progress of Spirit (and, I hope, Opportunity, soon). I will augment this as I discover other good sources of information and commentary.

These are in addition of course to Rand Simberg, Professor Hall, Rocket Man Mark Oakley, and The Eternal Golden Braid, all of whom you should be checking on a daily basis anyway for more than just coverage of Mars.

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Looks like the Martians failed to repel this landing attempt.

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