China's Lunar Ambitions

I find it interesting that China's planning on a manned lunar return using only EELV-class rockets (four of them). Of course, in the US we decided to waste billions of dollars and the past 5 years towards building a new HLV due to claims that it would be impossible to explore the moon without heavy-lift.

From the article: "NASA sees China's strategy for a manned lunar landing as launch vehicle intensive. While America's notional Constellation moon project centers on a single - and still unbuilt - Ares-V "superheavy" lift booster for a direct ascent to the moon and two "lunar orbit rendezvous" operations, China will likely opt for two complex "Earth orbit rendezvous" maneuvers. ... This will require four "Long March V" rockets - in the same class as the Pentagon's [sic] Delta IV heavy lift launch vehicles - to put their cosmonauts on the moon. Launched in pairs over a two-week period from China's new Wenchang Space Center on the South China Sea island of Hainan, the four Long March Vs will each loft 26-ton payloads into low Earth orbits. The first mission will orbit the rocket for the translunar journey which will then join a second payload of an empty lunar module (LM) and its lunar-orbit rocket motor. Those first two unmanned payloads will rendezvous in Earth orbit and then fire off for the quarter-million-mile journey to the moon. Once the unmanned LM is in a stable lunar orbit, the second pair of missions will be launched into Earth's orbit; the first with another translunar rocket motor and the second with a combined payload comprising the lunar orbiting module, a modified service module, an Earth re-entry module and the manned Shenzhou capsule with three Chinese cosmonauts."

There is Obama's legacy, which is Chinese walking on the moon. Thanks for handing over our space program.

No, getting to the moon was not the rationale for the Ares V, the eventual next steps to Mars needed it so it was deemed to be an integral part of the move to the moon. Most of the money spent so far has not been on the heavy lifter.

The money will only be wasted if Obama gets his way with his Bold, Exciting and New plan to no where.

"There is Obama's legacy, which is Chinese walking on the moon. Thanks for handing over our space program."

Not if we stop him, and we will.

First, someone PLEASE explain to me why its so important to prevent the Chinese from doing a moonwalk (and lets be realistic - don't claim that doing the equivalent of Apollo somehow means they can then instantly start colonization)

Second, Constellation wasn't gonna get us to the moon before 2030, so we'd be screwed if we went down this path

Third, stopping the Replacement plan guarantees that we'll always be stuck begging for a chance to do something great, rather than doing anything great. We cannot repeat Apollo. Its time to realize that, and move on towards building a spacefaring society.

> There is Obama's legacy, which is Chinese walking on the moon. Thanks for handing over our space program.

A few answers:
* If the Chinese were planning on walking on the Moon, were you expecting ANY President to somehow stop them? I'm fairly certain that would be a violation of various international treaties.
* Why are people so worried about China performing a flags-and-footprints mission? All they'd be doing is adding another flag to the half-dozen American flags already planted there.
* If performing a 7th flags-and-footprints mission before China does their first is truly a concern, then you can copy their approach and use EELV-class rockets (which we already have and operate regularly, unlike the Chinese). JSC's "Human Lunar Return" study back in 1996 showed how you could land people on the Moon again using just $2.5 billion and 5 years, putting it well within the bounds of the new R&D initiative proposed by NASA. As an added bonus, you'd also be developing propellant depots and other crucial technologies, allowing you to make additional returns to the Moon and building lunar infrastructure much more sustainable.

http://www.nss.org/settlement/moon/HLR.html
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/humeturn.htm

All I have to say are two things:

One, who cares? In fact, I would absolutely love for them to commit vast resources for doing this. It would be a pretty convincing demonstration that the Chinese are vulnerable to hubris and are capable of extravagant useless endeavors. Hey, maybe this will be their Cultural Revolution of the 21st Century! Unfortunately, I don't think they'll do it. This is just a lot of hot air intended to egg us on. This is a much more plausible explanation, because I know that the Chinese are smart.

Two, if we we're talking about using EELVs and not going through all the BS to "man-rate" them according to NASA's "expert" standards, I'd say, let's give it a go! I'd have no problem with barnstorming to the Moon using this approach, which is completely different than DumbESAS.

With this attitude we have seen an illustration of what the problem is.

Here is another example.

"We don't need to climb Mt. Everest, it has been done before".

Its not that China can go to the moon, its that we can't.

This is like Spain saying "so what if other European nations can go to the Caribbean. We got there first, that's all that matters...".
History would have proved them horribly wrong for what would soon become obvious reasons.

The moon is the closest celestial body. If anything big is going to happen in space, it will most likely involve lunar operations.
If China or another nation finds a reason to be there while we're still stuck on the ground mulling the paper rocket options, that gives them a decades head start on developing whatever it is. It also means industry and the international community will go to them first, since they own the shortest path to the objective.

...This wouldn't be a good position for the US to start from.

Why do it? I'll tell you why!! We need to get that Silver Medal now. We got a gold one 40 years ago, but we certainly have to make sure we get the 2nd place award too.

I say that we need to not only get Constellation back, but we need to morph Orion into a lunar troop carrier so we can defend our flags. These will also be useful for taking over the Chinese He-3 mining operations, that they'll have in place shortly after their first landing.

I'll echo some other comments and say I don't get the obsession with needing to beat the Chinese or anyone else to the Moon. First, the last I checked, we've already been there. Second, all the rabid nationalistic cheerleading might have worked in the Sixties, but we were in a cold war, then. Even then, such motivation certainly didn't keep Apollo from being cancelled. More importantly the reduction of any effort to go farther into space, to extend Man's reach in our solar system, or to push beyond what not limits us, to one dimensional thinking like "we need to beat the Chinese" or "we need to beat our enemies" diminishes the efforts of such adventures. I'd hoped that maybe we were a bit more grown up than that. If people would take their blinders off and put their flags down, they just might see that for man to push deeper into space with a greater presence will at some point require the cooperation of several nations, maybe even the Chinese. "Rah! Rah! USA!" ain't going to get it done.

With respect to the cancellation of Constellation, has anyone been paying attention? Does anyone remember that it was going nowhere with the funding that it had? Did anyone listen to the Augustine commission? Moreover, it's a bit misguided to place the blame for any space policy and funding on a president's shoulders, whether it was Bush or is Obama. They can only propose a general plan and funding. That plan goes nowhere without the approval of Congress, so if you want to look for people to blame, look at Congress. Even that's not completely right as the public and its demonstrated lack of enthusiasm for human travel share a large part of the blame, too. With that in mind, it's premature and peevish to kvetch now about the space program's future, especially when that future has yet to come.

For far too long NASA has been a bit of a lumbering giant and anything but flexible or easily adaptable to change. The complainers, here, show those same traits. We all need to be more flexible with our thoughts re: the space program. Without flexibility, the ability to adapt, and the willingness to try something different, we will fail and continue to go no further than we are right now.

Per another NASAWatch entry, the US could have a humanoid robot on the moon in less than 3 years. By 2022, there could be several there to greet the Taikonauts. If we decided that's important enough to worry about.

On another note, best wishes to my JPL colleagues, hoping that their loss in the La Canada mudslides was minimal. Fortunately, there were no deaths reported, at least not yet.

"There is Obama's legacy, which is Chinese walking on the moon. Thanks for handing over our space program."

Don't bullsh*t us. Obama's plan for space program is not ideal, but it's very flattering how rabid Obama-haters keep assigning him super powers: now he has the power to time travel and fool Bush, Griffin and his advisers not to use EELVs. Even if Obama requested the full additional $3 billion the Augenstine commish suggested, Constellation still wouldn't have gotten us to moon before 2022.

I don't hate Obama. In fact I supported him until he decided to put America's space program on the level of France.

I thought we had the next JFK early last year, instead we ended up with Jimmy Carter.

If Bolden had any spine he would resign. He betrayed the people he once worked with.

1. The first nation to colonize the Moon will dominate the multi-billion dollar a year telecommunications industry since it requires 95% less energy to launch a satellite from the lunar surface to Earth orbit. It also requires substantially fewer satellite launches since they could be placed in much higher orbits where only three networking satellites would be required instead of dozens of low Earth orbiting networking satellites.

2. The first nation to set up permanent bases on the lunar surface could dominate the emerging space tourism industry since the Moon would probably be the ultimate space tourist destination. And this could potentially be an over $10 billion a year industry.

3. The first nation to set up permanent bases on the Moon could dominate platinum prospecting and mining on the Moon. Platinum could be at the core of future clean energy fuel cell automobiles and also at the core of synfuel manufacturing. The liquid fuel industry in the US is a trillion dollar a year industry.

4. The Moon offers an opportunity to test habitat modules and other machinery over long periods time that will probably be similar to habitat modules needed to live on Mars.

5. If beaming energy to Earth from space ever becomes a viable option, then launching these satellites from the Moon into Earth orbit would be substantially cheaper than launching them into orbit from Earth.

6. The EMP (electromagnetic pulse) effects of just two thermonuclear weapons exploded in Earth orbit by terrorist or a rogue state in the future could instantly wipe out all of the world's satellites all the way to geosynchronus orbit! However, a lunar satellite manufacturing and launching facility could quickly replace those satellites. Of course if only China has such capacity then we in the US would be dependent on China to help us replace our satellites since Chinese lunar launch companies would have already pushed us out of the satellite business.

Marcel F. Williams

The next Desert RATS out is sure to be punctuated by the sound of cannon fire and missile launchers as the competition heats up!

So would an armed and armored robotic lunar rover with an RTG power source be counted as a nuclear weapon under the Outer Space Treaty?

@Marcel F. Williams

>The first nation to colonize the Moon

BRILLIANT! Well stated!

@newpapyrus

OK. I am not going to disagree with you about the points you make. But notice that there is no correlation between being the first there and being the one that ultimately takes best advantage of the new world or environment. Look at England. It was a Johnny-Come-Lately to the New World. Jamestown wasn't founded until 14 May 1607, 114 years and 5 months after Columbus' first sighting of the New World. England became the economic powerhouse in the New World because it didn't rush in. As in other industries, it learned from the mistakes of others and took a more deliberate approach.

I see a real future in space commerce, but to do this most effectively, we should let someone else lead the charge, and learn from their mistakes. We can take pride in knowing we had the technical prowess to beat everyone else to the Moon. Now, let's don the hats of our crafty limey/yankee ancestors and take advantage of other people's mistakes.

How could people not disagree about those points? 5 and 6 were hilarious.

It took the terrorist 8 years to get from putting a bomb in a shoe to putting a bomb in someone's underpants and Marcel's talking about them nuking the sky TWICE?

Fine, let's assume that's a worry. So we need to be able to quickly replace satellites.

In the scenario presented, China spents eleventy billion dollars on a Moon base, where - once on site - their manufacturing capability involves living in a cave, hunting for water and trying to master this so called "brick" technology. They can do some very cool things like get fuel and maybe even metal, but they're 150 years from actually building and launch a satellite.

Meanwhile, the US does something boring and totally lame like commit to buying from local launch vendors to make them more competitive so that we have redundant, frequent and cheap access to LEO.

Who's more awesome here? Clearly China, by a mile.

But if the problem is not awesomeness, but rather, replacing satellites hit by the underwear nuker space tourist, I think we're set.

How does he get them up there, anyway? Do they have flying unicorns in Afghanistan? Did I miss that episode of National Geographic? Does he build an Ironman suit in a cave? If they have arc reactors, can't they use that with VASIMR then fly to Callisto and declare it an all-muslim planet?

While Hickam's piece is certainly moving, I'm a bit puzzled about the references to concerns about plasma rockets exploding. I mean, I know a lot of our politicians (regardless of party or alignment) are not particularly renowned for their scientific acumen, but compared to chemical rockets, plasma rockets are downright non-volatile, and it shouldn't be too hard to make a case for them subsequently. And yes, nuclear reactors in space are a politically hot topic, but isn't this administration authorizing further production of plutonium for RTGs?

Also, has there been any other source other than the Washington Times? At the risk of sounding like I'm shooting the messenger, as a D.C. native, the Times does not exactly have a sterling reputation. More importantly, last time I checked Astronautix, it was reported that the Chinese were quietly moving their schedule back. I have no doubt they'll eventually make it, but given their track record with other projects (Three Gorges comes to mind), it will probably not happen on the timeline reported by the Chinese government.

A rouge state, Iran, that is currently working on a nuclear weapon, just launched a satellite into orbit a few days ago! A nuclear armed Pakistan is just a revolution away from being under the control of the Taliban (an organization so religiously fanatical that they almost make Al Queda look sane). The ruling oligarchy in China will launch their first military space station into orbit next year.

It would be extremely foolish of the US to continue to confine our civilization solely to Earth during the rest of this century. Extremely foolish!

Marcel F. Williams

"A rouge state", eh? I wonder if the turtles applied a good foundation layer before going for the color accents? And it's got to be good news for the budget when your space marines come with armor already installed...

And Pakistan will seize control of the Moon... if we don't do it first!

And lastly the arrival of armed and armored communist battle stations on orbit is... old news.

Brilliant!
and newpapyrus: Hysterical!

zapkitty, with all due respect, I'll suggest to you that it is foolish to quickly dismiss the militarization of space. You would be shocked -- utterly -- at how quickly your quality of life would degrade should a nation decide to eradicate communication and navigation satellites. From an orbiting battle platform, it would not be all that hard to do so.

Moreover, I'll suggest to you to study the history and culture of China. They are a very patient people who are quite capable of working on long-term plans, unlike, say the United States, whose corporations change their whims quarter-by-quarter and whose government is run by politics of mutually-assured-destruction.

In short, it's a fool's errand to not take a Chinese orbiting fortress seriously.

"The first nation to set up permanent bases on the Moon could dominate platinum prospecting and mining on the Moon."

I'm much more worried about the He-3 reservoirs. If we let the Chinese and Pakistanis establish bases on the lunar maria, we stand the risk of losing our access to He-3 forever. This would be a tremendous blow to our future economy and something that we can't let happen. All the more reason why we need to send more ESAS missions to the Moon to scare them away!

I thought the whole point of the Shuttle's design was so it could deorbit once around, since an "orbiting battlestation" is blatantly visible and extremely vulnerable to missile attack.

We've gone from terrorist nuking the sky to invincable satellites in just how many posts???

"We don't need to climb Mt. Everest, it has been done before".

We certainly don't need a government-sponsored expedition to climb it just to plant a flag! You've inadvertently hit the nail on the head, just like those who say Columbus wouldn't have "discovered" America with govt help. People cross the ocean all the time without govt help these days, apparently some still think they need that help. Don't give commercial reasons for government spending. Its time for NASA to get out of the way on things they've already paved the way for and refocus on exploration. Don't people understand that Obama is increasing NASA's budget!!?? How is that "ruining the space program" as Mr. Hickam's dramatic blog post states?

As for prestige in being a world leader - how come no one brings up things like the US being in 33rd place (out of 224) in infant mortality? Wouldn't it be prestigious to beat countries like Singapore, Slovenia, and Cuba in such an important statistic?

The United States of America is going to Mars. If anyone wants to come along, they can, but we couldn't care less about the moon as our next immediate destination beyond the moon. Thanks, have a nice day.

BTW, because we're going to Mars we're developing technology that will make exploiting the moon very easily. So while you may be landing a flag there, we will be operating a base.

1) So we're not going to the Moon, so what. So China is, again, so what. They will try, some will die, they will plant a flag, and then find something else to do. Going to the Moon is easy compared to staying on the Moon for any length of time. They won't stay.

2) CxP is dead. Please stop whining. So your going to lose your job, so what, find another. If you look back on history, NASA has been on a roller coaster ride since '65 (first budget cut for Apollo, more to follow). How many programs have come and gone, so many I've lost count. That's what you get for being on the cutting edge. Live with it.

3) Will we go back to the Moon in the next 40 years or so, maybe. How bout Mars, again, maybe. Until we find something in space (Moon, Mars, elsewhere) to make money on (large amounts of money), we will visit, but not stay. Better find a way to get those robot probes going and give us a reason.

4) Last, why do you think China is willing to try to go to the Moon without heavy lift? Cost. Think about how much a Saturn V would cost in today's dollars. Also don't see China landing on the Moon before 2025, if not later. Remember, they are not in a rush, unlike the Apollo program.

As for prestige in being a world leader - how come no one brings up things like the US being in 33rd place (out of 224) in infant mortality? Wouldn't it be prestigious to beat countries like Singapore, Slovenia, and Cuba in such an important statistic?

This statistic is thrown out there a lot but it is misleading. U.S. records include premature births (some quite premature). Not all of them live but many of them do. The fact that we make heroic efforts to save the lives of such premature newborns effects the U.S. tally for infant mortality.

fwiw

I guess we can hope constellation survives until the next administration. Hopefully, in 3 years the whole program won't be one big disaster.

Lets stop talking about the moon and mars for now. After the shuttle retires we won't even be able to get into orbit. Maybe this is the deminished expectations the Obama administration is hoping for.