MarsBlog - Part 80

Aldridge Report: Science Aspects

Finding 7
The Commission finds implementing the space exploration vision will be enabled by scientific knowledge, and will enable compelling scientific opportunities to study Earth and its environs, the solar system, other planetary systems, and the universe.

Recommendation 7-1
The Commission recommends that NASA seeks routine input from the scientific community on exploration architectures to ensure that maximum use is made of existing assets and emerging capabilities.

Recommendation 7-2
The Commission recommends that NASA ask the National Academy of Sciences to engage its constituent scientific community in a re-evaluation of priorities to exploit opportunities created by the space exploration vision. In particular, the community should consider how machines and humans, used separately and in combination, can maximize scientific returns.

Recommendation 7-3
The Commission recommends a discovery-based criterion to select destinations beyond the Moon and Mars that also considers affordability, technical maturity, scientific importance, and emerging capabilities including access to in-situ space resources.

Aldridge Report: Education

Finding 8
The Commission finds that the space exploration vision offers an extraordinary opportunity to stimulate mathematics, science, and engineering excellence for America?s students and teachers ? and to engage the public in a journey that will shape the course of human destiny.

Recommendation 8-1
The Commission recommends the Space Exploration Steering Council work with America?s education community and state and local political leaders to produce an action plan that leverages the exploration vision in support of the nation?s commitment to improve math, science, and engineering education. The action plan should:

increase the priority on teacher training;
provide for better integration of existing math, science, and engineering education initiatives across governments, industries, and professional organizations; and
explore options to create a university-based ?virtual space academy? for training the next generation technical work force.

Recommendation 8-2
The Commission recommends that industry, professional organizations, and the media engage the public in understanding why space exploration is vital to our scientific, economic, and security interests.

Aldridge Commission Report Released

The President’s Commission on Moon, Mars and Beyond has released its report.

I will be heading to New Orleans tomorrow to deal with the movers, so I won’t have time to do much commentary on this until Monday — on the bright side, spending about eight hours in airports over the next couple of days means plenty of time to read it in detail.

In the meantime, I will be extracting the findings and recommendations and posting them here for commentary.

A Taste of Things to Come

Space.com has a sneak peek at the recommendations in the upcoming Aldridge Commission report.

Much of what is touched on in the article sounds good, at least at the level of detail presented: spinning off NASA centers as research and development centers akin to the nuclear labs, procuring LEO launch services competetively, and making organizational changes based on Pentagon experience to improve managerial and financial effectiveness.

But then they bring up the old eye-roller: enabling technologies:

The commission also identified 17 enabling technologies needed to accomplish the exploration goals. These include an affordable heavy lift capability, advanced power and propulsion, automated spacecraft rendezvous and docking capability, high bandwidth communications, closed loop life supports systems, better spacesuits for astronauts and others.

Some of these make sense…clearly we will need new suits to support extended operations on the lunar surface, for example, and we’re already working in improved power and propulsion. But are closed-loop life support systems really needed to accomplish the proposed exploration goals? Is a true closed-loop system even possible? Improving life support efficiency is certainly worthwhile, but wouldn’t it make more sense to develop ISRU methods for making up the “last 10%” from local resources?

Perhaps ISRU is part of the Commission’s full recommendations. I suppose we’ll know by mid-week.

Hiatus Update

Still on hiatus.

Bid on a house yesterday, though, so the disruption may not last much beyond the end of the month (but of course, the settling in will surely bring on a whole raft of disruptions of its own).

Provenance

Not quite gone yet. Found this (much to my surprise) while packing:

While I’ve met a handful of astronauts at Safety Days and the like, I can’t remember making note of a meeting like this for any of the others. I had forgotten about this meeting, in fact, though I vaguely remember being in the middle of something and getting unexpectedly interrupted by a group of astronauts, one of whom shook my hand and gave me these pins. What a coincidence.

Relo Hiatus

MarsBlog will be on hiatus for between two and six weeks, depending on how well the move to Denver goes.

Heads Firmly Planted

It should come as no surprise that, when even one of their own icons calls for an expansion of nuclear power, environmentalists reject it out-of-hand:

[Lovelock’s] call will cause huge disquiet for the environmental movement. It has long considered the 84-year-old radical thinker among its greatest heroes, and sees climate change as the most important issue facing the world, but it has always regarded opposition to nuclear power as an article of faith. Last night the leaders of both Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth rejected his call.

If they will so obstinately reject nuclear power as even a short-term solution to the “global warming” scenario they so fear, it should be interesting to watch the impending meltdown (!) over expanded applications of nuclear power in space exploration.

Überblimps to Orbit

Here’s a good overview on JP Aerospace, and their plans for taking airships to orbit: Airship groomed for flight to edge of space.

Moon-Mars Update

Frank Sietzen has an update on Congressional action on the funding for the Moon-Mars plan.

Under the terms of Wednesday’s action, the conference committee expressed support for the Bush space plan, and strong support for the space shuttle and International Space Station programs.

“The conferees support the president’s vision for exploration and believe the fiscal year 2005 funding … should provide sufficient funding to initiate the process,” the report that accompanied the resolution stated. It also said the bulk of NASA’s increase was dedicated to costs associated with returning the space shuttle to flight and continued construction and operations of the station.

“The conferees hope that these two must-fund requirements will be taken into account during their consideration of the NASA appropriations,” the report stated.

He doesn’t specify what the purview of the House-Senate conference committee was, however, and notes that the space committees in both chambers have been reluctant to act on the proposed spending without additional information — which, of course, should become available in about two weeks, when the Aldridge Commission issues its report. In any case, as he notes, the FY2005 NASA budget is unlikely to be passed until after the start of the new calendar year, even if the reauthorization bill for the agency is put to a vote before the fall recess.

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