The Flexible Path Ahead

I think that the biggest advantage of Flexible Path is that it gets us out of LEO sooner than if we had to wait for the development of the lunar lander (in whatever form that eventually takes). As ESA seem very keen to develop a transhab module (possibly based on ATV) and the Russians already have a transhab module of sorts (the Salut/Mir/Zarya module was originally intended for that fuction), international co-operation thus might even pull the first mission further to the 'left'.

There's no reason necessarily to go to the asteriods as a first objective either. Go to EML-1 and study the lunar surface #plus the long-term effects of the exo-magnetosphere environment# for a couple of lunar 'days'. Useful scientifically, near enough to Earth for a quick bug-out if problems arise and it has a significant 'wow' factor of watching the Moon go through its phases from close-up.

As you then have already conquered the first bit - flying there - once the lander completes is budget-delayed gestation it is (relatively) simple to just load it onto the CaLV in place of the transhab and fly the mission. So, we then go on to lunar and asteroid landings having already been in the deep-space exploration biz for a number of years and having already debugged much of the technology and proceedures on less high-risk flights. It worked for Apollo, after all (Apollo 8-10 as debugging missions for Apollo 11)

Augustine-2 teaches us that, as bitter as it is, we must go for the easier-to-reach objectives in order to maintain momentum. This concept might suit that requirement.

"Flexible Path" sounds so cosmopolitan and elegant but not unlike "Apollo Applications" of the late sixties. It's just another way to sound like one is doing something when in fact one is not. Just as Apollo Applications became a one off program for Skylab, Flexible Path will come to nothing and the reasons will be familiar, because our leaders will need another committee and study to decide how we're going to do it and then another to determine why it's over budget and behind schedule and then another to determine how best to spend the money that's left over after more budget cuts.

A manned mission to a libration point? Where can I sign up to go and explore a destination with nothing there but empty space? This is another case of the U.S. deciding that there is no point in dreaming big. Just keep the bureaucrats employed whilst appearing to be doing something real.

I don't understand how switching to a path so "flexible" that we don't even know where we're going is going to be faster than Constellation's current plan for returning to the moon.

If NASA gets directed to flexible path, we can expect several years of arguing about where we're going, then arguing about whether we're landing or what we're going to do when we're there. If we're going to be doing this discussion with international partners, we can expect it to take even longer.

Then NASA will be back to doing top level architecture studies to figure out how many vehicles are involved and how they'll be launched. Again, with international partners, we can expect more time arguing about who is responsible for what, even if a single architecture were selected early.

All that is necessary before a requirements set can be generated. Trying to build a vehicle, or assume that an existing low TRL concept is going to be a good fit a priori of requirements is setting ourselves up for disaster when we actually try to use the thing.

How many presidents and congresses will have a chance to cancel the program or redirect NASA again in the time it takes to even get back to a System Requirements Review level of detail for the first element of the new plan?

I don't see how four more years of being back in the powerpoint engineering phase is more exciting to the American public than moving forward.

Ben,

As you've laid out what you feel are the advantages of FP, let me lay out what I think are its drawbacks.

As a tactical approach and as an architectural detail, FP has definite advantages, particularly the idea of fuel depots. But depots have little value unless you can fill them with fuel made from the resources of space. Otherwise, we are confined to the existing paradigm of launching everything from the bottom of the deep gravity well of Earth. The purpose of the Vision was to change that paradigm. The Moon is the nearest, most convenient place that has these resources in a usable and convertible form. Thus, it was made the first destination beyond LEO.

Adopting FP as the object of the program instead of a means to achieve another end is confusing tactics with goals. Moreover, we do not now have the subsystems that can support multi-month human flights in space whereas the systems to support flights to the Moon are within the existing State-of-the-Art. As for your "Wow!" factor, although I think the PR stunt value of space trips is vastly overrated, flights to empty, theoretical points in space are hardly the stuff of breaking news bulletins. There's nothing at the libration points except what we put there, so from the view of the public, it's Shuttle/ISS all over again.

In contrast to your suggestion, we will not develop any technology by virtue of going to FP that we would not also develop by going to the Moon, as the VSE intended. But on the Moon, we have the additional advantage of its material and energy resources, which we must learn to collect and change into usable forms. If humans are to have any future beyond LEO, we simply must learn how to extract what we need from what we find there.

Although NASA produced an unsustainable architecture for lunar return, that does not mean that it is unachievable within existing technical and fiscal constraints. The high-level commission that was really needed was one to evaluate how to accomplish the VSE in a mode different from the standard Apollo template with which the agency is familiar. There is nothing inordinately difficult about reaching the Moon -- it may require some ingenuity to do it cheaply, but given that time was the free variable for the Vision (not money, as was Apollo), there are many paths to our end goal. To give but one example, much of the needed resource demonstrations and lunar outpost emplacement can be done robotically via live, direct teleoperation from Earth. This is not possible with asteroid or Phobos missions, which have multi-light minute communications delays.

Our real object in space is to be able to go anywhere at any time with whatever capability we need to do any task we want. We are light-years away from such capability now and will be until we learn how to use what we find in space to create new space faring capability. Going to the Moon allows us to do that. Trying to find new "space thrills" to fill the program of some bread-and-circus PR extravaganza creates nothing and leaves no legacy.

The question is, do we really want lunar return as the first objective of the new beyond-LEO program? Do we want the first thing we do is drop ourselves down a gravity well onto a planet that may have resources that we can employ but will need to get back out of the gravity well to be any good?

To me, Flexible Path is a means to an end. It is required to get the HSF program out of LEO at the minimum cost possible. It also allows NASA and its international partners to develop the experience and technologies needed for long-duration exo-magnetosphere HSF (something that we lack at present).

Now, don't get me wrong. Ultimately (and fairly quickly too), we will want to land on the Moon and other FP destinations. That is necessary to complete the science objectives of visiting these bodies. However, by waiting for that capability before starting, we would be unnecessarily inflating the useful mission gap, leaving us with nothing except marking time in LEO in a manner not dissimilar to early shuttle missions. Momentum is needed to stop the politicians from cutting the legs out from underneath the program.

Getting there is half the challenge. Prove that you can get there and it is that much easier to convince the politicians to fund that last 50-100 miles down into the gravity well.

Sorry Ben, but we proved that we could get to the surface of the moon forty years ago. The same political mentality that cut off funding in 1969 is not going to be impressed with getting to an empty libration point now and neither will the taxpayers.

But what do I know? With the current vacuum of leadership at least we can keep bureaucrats, contractors and armchair rocketeers busy conducting studies and arguing ad nauseum over the best architecture for these flights of fancy. The only momentum that politicians have is used on the beaten path back to square one.

Just "getting out of LEO" as you put it is completely pointless unless you have some object or task to be accomplished in mind. What I've seen of FP is largely blue-sky doodling, whereas we already have a rational and logical plan of work on the agenda for the lunar surface.

Getting into and out of a 2 km/s gravity well isn't really that much of an issue. It's not the cost of Altair that's keeping us from going to the Moon -- it's the (rather questionable) need to develop a whole new family of rocket launchers. NASA has turned the VSE into a rocket-building program and that problem remains whether you do FP or not. Moon or L-1 point, Ares and Orion are still gonna eat your lunch.

We need new thinking and new ways of conducting space business. FP is just the latest talisman in the endless NASA campaign to "do something NEW in space." Instead, they should be focusing on changing the rules of space flight. Using lunar resources does that; going to an L-point doesn't.

surferastra is correct, Bush's "first the moon, then Mars" plan was a reasonable approach, crafted to provide a long-term goal that the public might support. And since I never expected NASA to accomplish more that half of the plan, it was perfect - go back to, and this time exploit lunar resources, to expand our presence in space.

Because Mars is a dead end.

Mankind will not get into space until someone figures out how to make money in space. And nothing will be produced on Mars and sold for a profit on Earth this side of 2100 - after the exploitation of Lunar/NEO resources establishes a space transportation infrastructure.

NASA has evolved into an organization as dynamic and innovative as the Veteran's Administration - the eventual fate of all government bureaucracies.

I have more faith in Burt Rutan than NASA.

Pace Paul and Ben, but it seems to me that the rational and logical plan we need is all about capabilities and that destinations are secondary. As a destination EML1 may be pointless, but not necessarily as a waypoint on the capability roadmap. Once defined, such a roadmap can probably be travelled in many different ways, leading to many possible destinations, which is how I see 'flexible path'. Whether the moon is first or not depends on what capabilities we want to develop first and how we can best do that.

The most important thing in a long project is often early deliverables. Something has to be produced to build and maintain momentum, get people on board, find funding, manage project risk and justify further expenditure. Few people have the patience for really long projects, and politicians in democracies can excercise no such patience. Even the nearest physical destination is way too far in the future if you face re-election in 4 years time.

NASA would have to work hard to promote these more intangible accomplishments but that can surely be done, and each accomplishment will change peoples' expectations. With humans living and working in deep space, close to the Moon or Mars, everyone would see landing as an obvious progression and support would be much easier to grow.

The challenge here, I submit, is engineering public and international support - with commercial engagement being key to sustainable progress - while technical capabilities are slowly and steadily developed despite the fact that the obvious physical accomplishments are so far off in time.

The 'empty liberation point' is only empty for as long as we leave it that way. Frankly, I can think of several uses for that 'empty liberation point' that we might want to make use of if we want sustainable lunar access and human spaceflight beyond the Earth-Moon system.

NASA is a big organisation. It can send robots and test ISRU machines to the Moon. In a parallel programme the men and space station can be sent to L1 or L2. Just make sure both programmes use compatible fuel connectors.

The problem with Bush's plan was not the "First we go to the moon, then we go to mars, then we go other places and be AWESOME!" part, it was the "...and we start doing this ten years after I've left office" bit on the end.

He didn't earnestly fund or pursue the new objectives. The onus would be on following administrations to follow through on his plan.

At this point I think flexible path is following along similar lines. putting off the big investments for later by choosing easier missions now. But what do we learn by sitting at L2 or in lunar orbit and soaking up radiation?
Nothing about the ship, as we'll still need new vehicles to carry out landings. Nothing about the planet that we couldn't have learned with an unmanned satellite. Nothing about the human body that the ISS doesn't already teach us.

Flexible path is politically convenient, bit it makes more sense to follow through on the moon/mars direction. Even if it takes a few years more to fit it within the budget.
We're going to need similar machines at the end of a flexible path mission series anyway, so why not make an end run and build them now?

The flexible path is a silly diversion away from the next logical step in space.

We need to start building permanent settlements on the surface of the Moon in order to take full advantage of the emerging commercial space tourism industry. Once permanent bases are on the lunar surface, wealthy tourist and lunar lotto winners will soon follow.

Space tourism could eventually dwarf NASA's annual manned spaceflight budget.

Marcel F. Williams

Flexible Path translation: Bold words with no money and redirection every four years.

It will be cheaper to haul tons of water to the Moon for decades than try to extract it. It will cost a half a trillion or more dollars to build any kind of lunar base and develop and deploy mining equipment. That is, as long as NASA is doing it. Hell, it's going to cost $200 billion just to rebuild the capability to get back to the lunar surface. With NASA's budget, it will take 40 years before we can take advantage of that water. Building a mining colony and factory on the Moon to convert water to rocket fuel in order to go to Mars from the Moon? That is a stupid Vision that makes no business sense whatsoever. Our best bet is to develop technology to get out of Earth's gravity well more economically, then we can go anywhere much more easily. What we need is research into better materials, better propulsion technology, and better power sources. We've been spending all our money on operations with none left over for R&D.