The Orlando Sentinel has what is apparently a draft of NASA’s roadmap for the VSE.
Perhaps unavoidably, given that it’s a government program and it’s being run by an agency with an aversion to both risk and new thinking, the VSE is looking more and more like Apollo II…even down to the Apollo-like capsule (capsule?) riding on a Saturn-like rocket and crew access to the surface with a LEM-like lander.
Unlike Apollo, however, the crew is larger, the planned surface stays longer, the planned activities on the surface more constructive and interesting, and there is a follow-on destination as part of the package. So, perhaps it would be more accurate to think of it as a “back to the future” Apollo redux, picking up where Apollo 17 left off and forgetting the long national nightmare that has been the Shuttle program.
The article and schematic are disappointingly Apollo like, but I’m hoping that is because they just focus on getting humans there and back. Please tell me that we will be leaving more behind than just the spent descent stage. A habitat for follow-on missions would seem appropriate, and perhaps that would fall under “construction of a base” once the initial scouting missions are complete, but I fear that if you fail to make that part of the mission architecture from the start it is too easy to cancel.
I was hoping for more than just Apollo II.
1. This report smells a bit dated and incomplete, focusing on the choice and design of the launch vehicles and the initial CEV. Other reports I’ve seen preview establishing a small lunar base, perhaps at the South Pole.
2. I don’t see the point in lamenting that the architecture is reminiscent of Apollo. Why wouldn’t it? The 747 is reminiscent of the 707, which shares a basic configuration with the DC-3. Unless you intend to fly the thing back to a runway landing (something that, as you may have heard, introduces some serious issues of safety and risk with no compensating advantage) a conical craft with a heat shield at the bottom is the way to go. Simplicity is good. If a vehicle never enters an atmosphere, it can look as ugly as need be, with function ddeterming form. (In any case, we need to start thinking of getting crews to and from LEO as the most basic part of a mission. A ferry ride, in other words, before the real trip starts.)
3. NASA is getting beat up from both sides of the risk aversion issue. On the one hand, a lot of space advocates criticize NASA for overemphasizing safety; on the other hand, the popular press takes NASA to task for not insuring the Shuttle is as safe as commerical aviation. The reality is that commercial aviation is as safe as it is only because we’ve been flying people in airplanes for more than 100 years, and commercially for most of that. The Wrights crashed a lot. Comparisons of Shuttle risk factors to aviations risk factors would make more sense of they looked at the state of aviation in, say, 1909.
Do we really need to go back to the moon?
We don’t need to go back to the moon, but establishing ourselves there will at least guarantee us some off-earth presence. It’s a “near-term” goal. Mars is out at 2030 and that’s as good as saying we’ll get there by 2200. Small steps.
Of course, we need to go back to the moon, this time to stay. Whoever your ancestors were, odds are they died in a place at least some distance from their place of birth. Moving, migrating, learning, developing and applying new techology is the essence of being human. It is the essence of what made us human. Asking for reasons to explore and exploit space is tantamount to asking why we’re all not sitting in the forest with the chimps.