ALL SCI-FI

[Gord Green]

FROM USA TODAY :

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/09/07/private-companies-leading-push-moon-return-early-next-year/642433001/

WASHINGTON — Moon missions are launching a comeback nearly 45 years after Apollo 17 astronaut Gene Cernan took the last human steps on the lunar surface.

While the holy grail of the U.S. space program remains sending astronauts to Mars by the 2030s, NASA also has been lending technical expertise to aerospace companies in their efforts to reach the moon.

As early as next year, Florida-based Moon Express expects to send its MX-1E spacecraft to conduct experiments in what could be the first of several efforts by U.S. companies to re-establish a regular American presence on the lunar surface.

Astrobotic Technology is planning to send a lander in 2019 capable of providing companies, governments and universities robotic access to the moon.

Blue Origin is developing its own Blue Moon lander, while United Launch Alliance and SpaceX have signaled their interests to operate in the lunar orbit.

"It's time for America to return to the moon — this time to stay," Bretton Alexander, director of business development and strategy for Blue Origin told members of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee during a hearing Thursday. "Enabling NASA and U.S. commercial activities on the Moon is a key step on the path to long-term exploration of the solar system."

A return to the moon was not a high priority of the Obama administration which focused resources on the expensive and complicated slog to Mars. Obama also had angered congressional Republicans when he scrapped the Constellation program — pushed by former president George W. Bush that would have returned astronauts to the moon — after an advisory panel declared a lunar lander cost prohibitive.

None of the commercial missions being discussed contemplate sending humans to the moon. But the rapid development of the aerospace industry over the past decade and NASA's willingness to share its knowhow have made Earth's cold, crater-pocked satellite an inviting destination again.

Here are three reasons why:

— The moon provides NASA a close, accessible setting to develop technologies.

Under a program dubbed Deep Space Gateway, agency officials want to deploy a small space port in the lunar orbit as a staging platform to build and test the infrastructure and the systems needed to send astronauts to Mars.

— A return to the moon would in essence lay a strategic claim in space at a time when other countries, notably China, are developing their own lunar missions.

— Companies are eager to mine potentially valuable minerals and extract the water believed to be under the lunar poles which could be converted to fuel for deep space missions.

"Water is the oil of space," George Sowers, a Colorado School of Mines professor who was United Launch Alliance's chief scientist, told the committee. "We should view the poles of the moon as the next Persian Gulf."

Much of Thursday's discussion would have been endorsed by Rep. Jim Bridenstine, a committee member who has called re-engagement with the moon "necessary" for the space program

The Oklahoma Republican, who was not present at the hearing, might have a lot to say about the future of moon missions. President Trump has tapped Bridenstine to be NASA"s next administrator.

[Bud Brewster]

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I've said it before and I'll say it again. Moon colonies make more sense than Mars colonies because the Moon is so much closer, and the Martian atmosphere is more trouble than it's worth!

I want a lunar city, located in the permanently shaded crater at the north or south pole, which my grandchildren can visit.







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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Brent Gair]

After years of lips service...correction: DECADES of lip service, I hope we are finally serious about this. And robots don't count as far as I'm concerned.

I'm tired of all the blabbing, proposals, studies and CGI.

There is a real, tangible big step in sight. If things stay on schedule (a big "if") Spacex will launch the Falcon Heavy before the end of November. It's a big rocket that can launch a serious payload to the moon. They even have plans...extremely optimistic plans...to shoot a couple of people around the moon before the end of next year.

NASA will continue to study this for several decades so they won't be a player

My first hope is Spacex.

My next hope is Blue Origin.

After that, take your choice.

[Gord Green]

I have to agree with you. I think the real future of the space program that we have looked forward to all these years will be realized through privite industry.

[Bud Brewster]

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I might be simplifying this, but I suspect that Kennedy's bold and inspirational pledge to put a man on the Moon, followed by his tragic death and Johnson's determination to keep that dream alive, was instrumental in making the space race so energetic in the 1960s.

But the leadership of the nation lost interest in the space program as successive presidents came along (right up to Obama and Trump), so we had no champion at the top who understood the economic and technological benefits of encouraging the nation to take pride in having a thriving space program.

That's sad.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Gord Green]

That's right Bud. There has been a slew of populist proponents of space travel from Sagan to DeGrass Tyson, but what is required is a political program with legs ( That can be sustained over time.).
The days of the New Frontier have to be ressurected, and just may be by visionarriees like Elon Musk et al.