ESMD's Good News Vs SMD's Politics

Water on the moon, Water on Mars, Water on Europa.
Looks like learning to use water on the moon makes the rest of the solar system accessible to human exploration.
Go Moon, then Mars, then the outer solar system and one day the stars.

"Science advances one funeral at a time."

Or one resignation/retirement at a time.

This will happen before we return to the moon:

Without using or investing in the overhead of lunar hardware three entrepreneurs in twin Dragon Puffs connected by a Bigalow hab/radiation-shelter will spend a month drinking beer, eating cold pizza, and watching YouTube while floating to a Near Earth Asteroid. Upon arrival, since they are not unimaginative NASA bureaucrats, risk-adverse academics, or scientifically illiterate politicians they will toss the protocol for collecting regolith samples and instead spend a week stuffing every nook and crevice of their craft with regolith, sorted or not, while inflating massive canisters filled with a slurry of volatiles and PGMs, all to be set slowly drifting on their own way to L1.

Then these three will do something truly remarkable, something which will be the most significant event to occur in space during our lifetimes. They will transfer their beer and buddies from the Dragon with a cushion base which had landed on the asteroid to the Dragon and Hab which had been hanging out in orbit a slight distance away. Following that, once the beer is safely ensconced, they will use duct-tape, velcro, and a few shoelaces to patch up whatever wear-and-tear the Dragon lander may have experienced. Then, just before heading home, they will initiate the What-the-Heck-Let's-Give-It-A-Shot-Before-We-Sober-Up procedure: remotely tit the unmanned Dragon lander with a cushion base on its side, and, as if it were an undersea craft slowly floating across a reef, drift it horizontally to one of the many massive multistory boulders strewn across the asteroid surface. After carefully resting its cushion perpendicular to the giant boulder they will gradually apply more pressure until velocities increase from centimeters per hour to kilometers per hour and so on, gently pushing a small mountain of PGMs and volatiles to L1. --Without fancy recycling systems, without exciting equipment, and certainly without anything associated with the moon.

Our 3 half-witted heroes will have accomplished 2 things, with or without NASA. They will always be able to buy beer and -- apart from fantasy future uses for He3 -- no one will ever mention lunar resources again. With vast resources at L1 we will finally concentrate on going to Mars by going to Mars. Dedicated Earth-based simulation of exact Martian thermal, atmospheric, and solar conditions will provide more realistic evaluation of Martian architectures than extremely expensive, unnecessarily dangerous "Martian/ISRU practice" on the moon; future construction and refueling of GEO satellites/interplanetary craft will be much more easily accomplished at L1 than on the moon. We will settle Mars and the rest of our solar system without lunar overhead, without lunar rovers, without lunar habs, lunar SBSP, lunar greenhouses, lunar life support, lunar recycling, lunar space elevators...or any other lunar nonsense. Apart from a few bored and boring grad students, odd tourists, and robot repairpersons, humans will never return the moon. Why?

Because the moon is rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrridiculous......

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/090902-orion-asteroid-mission.html
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2008/05/nasas-manned-mi.html
http://www.space.com/news/061116_asteroid_nasa.html
http://www.universetoday.com/2008/05/06/nasa-considers-manned-asteroid-mission/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Transport_Network

Yes, this is good news for lunar exploration, but coming up with fanciful stories about SMD being threatened and teeth gnashing about policy is really something that belongs with Bill O'Reilly on Fox TV. The announcement is being made by SMD because it is an SMD payload that made the discovery. That it has implications for ESMD is fine, but that's not what's being reported. What's being reported is the science.

If ESMD wants to have their own press conference on implications of lunar water for human space flight, they're welcome to do so.

ESMD is very excited (with good reason) and views these findings as being enabling in nature for its interest in conducting human lunar surface operations - especially when it comes in situ resource utilization. SMD is not interested in that and instead (understandably) has an interest in the scientific aspects of this from the context of how the solar system is constructed.

the yin & yang of NASA. To find the origin of life (SMD)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_life .VS. to create a human presence in the universe beyond earth.

sadly it is political... some people think NASA should only launch rockets

...Rather than pull together, the passengers in the lifeboat elected to fight among themselves. This fact was discovered from the diaries found with the lifeboat's wreckage.

Don't forget too that SMD is still stung by all of the "thin dimes" that were taken away from their out-year budgets when CxP/ESMD stood up - missions that were supposed to be cutting metal and silicon stayed on paper and in the lab.

I can't blame them for keeping the looters out of their sandbox.

When SOMD has a fancy shuttle press event about EVA's and servicing and repair on ISS, SMD doesn't elbow their way in to talk about how great this kind of work is for Hubble servicing.

I'd like to believe that the potential importance of this discovery to lunar exploration could be broadly pointed out by the scientists involved, but it's not an implementation judgment that they're really qualified to make, except in a really handwaving way. This is a science press conference, about science at work, and not a space exploration policy press conference. This MMM team did a confidential briefing to the Augustine committee two months ago, so the relevance of it to options for human space flight is not something that NASA needs to end-run the committee about right now. One would like to believe that it will be conspicuously referred to in the final report of that committee. So there is absolutely nothing curious about this.

Can't they all just get along?
This is an historic moment in the history of space exploration and need not be marred by internal bickering best left for High School recess time.

I'm actually tired of NASA sending robots to Mars. I'd rather focus on developing the critical technology to actually send people to Mars. I'd also like to see more focus on sending robots to the surface of Phobos and Deimos to determine what the regolith is actually made of.

Establishing permanent settlements on the Moon would actually finally end the Mars vs. the Moon debate in the future. As I've argued before, if we had established a permanent base on the Moon back in the 1970s, 80's or even 90's, we'd probably already have bases on Mars.

The Moon is a major stepping stone towards Mars and the eventual colonization of the rest of the solar system. So the sooner we establish a permanent presence on the lunar surface, the sooner will do the same on Mars.

So let's get goin'!

Somebody will take advantage of this in situ resource, just don't count that it will be the U.S. The time is at hand when other nations have space technology of sufficient maturity or has ways of partnering with those who do that the U.S. may well become irrelevant to this debate. Americans no longer set the agenda for the world-and in fact may well be overtaken by the determined programs of others who don't wax and wane with their enthusiasm for human spaceflight. Neither China, India or Brazil need to take a poll before selecting their space goals, for example.

Because SMD designs and runs these missions and instruments, analyses the data, and draws the conclusions (in short, does LL the EXPLORING), that's why. Most are just as happy to explore Mercury or Pluto, Mars OR the Moon. So except for a very few, over-Mars-specialized people, the idea that this is somehow unwelcome news just wouldn't even occur....

@Eric

I would love for a private commercial firm to do what you say; the private investment just isn't there without a significant return on that long-term investment. That is reality. Until such time, what you dream is still the domain of governments. The last few years may indicate that the environment is starting to change, but profit is still a long way away.

For the US, that means NASA (if anyone here). Regarding the Moon, that is the optimum destination iff the ultimate goal is to learn to live off-planet. The Moon is close, and less expensive than alternatives, and it allows one to emplace infrastructure. It allows one to "exploit" the local resources, and to do that, one must first develop this capability and test out new ideas and strategies. This is EXACTLY what NASA was developed for. One can argue that NASA has become too costly and beauracratic, but nonetheless that is what NASA needs to do. What NASA should do is redefine this not as "Exploration" but "Exploitation" or something similar. Exploration should be only 1 means to meet the ultimate goal, but not an End in and of itself. Exploration can much more cheaply be performed robotically, that that will be the key issue that will ultimately prevent any human missions to Mars in the near term without first learning how to live offplanet on the Moon.