NASA’s Orion Program manager Mark Geyer discusses Orion EFT-1 mission. Credit: Ken Kremer - kenkremer.com
A ride into space, a high-speed re-entry and a safe parachute deployment. That’s what NASA is hoping for when the Orion vehicle soars into space for a planned flight test next month. Eventually, this spacecraft will carry humans on journeys around the solar system, if all goes to plan.
The dramatic video above shows some of the testing Orion has passed so far, culminating in an animation showing the plans for the flight test. For more details on what to expect, check out Universe Today’s Ken Kremer’s article from a few days ago. Below is a gallery of Orion images from over the past couple of years.
NASA’s completed Orion EFT 1 crew module loaded on wheeled transporter during move to the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility (PHFS) on Sept. 11, 2014 at the Kennedy Space Center, FL. Credit: Ken Kremer – kenkremer.comNASA Administrator Charles Bolden discusses NASA’s human spaceflight initiatives backdropped by the service module for the Orion crew capsule being assembled at the Kennedy Space Center. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.comDive teams attach tow lines to Orion test capsule during Aug. 15 recovery test at Norfolk Naval Base, VA. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.comOrion EFT-1 crew cabin and full scale mural showing Orion Crew Module atop Service Module inside the O & C Building at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
A composite image of Uranus in two infrared bands, showing the planet and its ring system. Picture taken by the Keck II telescope and released in 2007. Credit: W. M. Keck Observatory (Marcos van Dam)
Sometimes first impressions are poor ones. When the Voyager 2 spacecraft whizzed by Uranus in 1986, the close-up view of the gas giant revealed what appeared to a be a relatively featureless ball. By that point, scientists were used to seeing bright colors and bands on Jupiter and Saturn. Uranus wasn’t quite deemed uninteresting, but the lack of activity was something that was usually remarked upon when describing the planet.
Fast-forward 28 years and we are learning that Uranus is a more complex world than imagined at the time. Two new studies, discussed at an American Astronomical Society meeting today, show that Uranus is a stormy place and also that the images from Voyager 2 had more interesting information than previously believed.
Showing the value of going over old data, University of Arizona astronomer Erich Karkoschka reprocessed old images of Voyager 2 data — including stacking 1,600 pictures on top of each other.
He found elements of Uranus’ atmosphere that reveals the southern hemisphere moves differently than other regions in fellow gas giants. Since only the top 1% of the atmosphere is easily observable from orbit, scientists try to make inferences about the 99% that lie underneath by looking at how the upper atmosphere behaves.
“Some of these features probably are convective clouds caused by updraft and condensation. Some of the brighter features look like clouds that extend over hundreds of kilometers,” he stated in a press release.
Voyager 2. Credit: NASA
“The unusual rotation of high southern latitudes of Uranus is probably due to an unusual feature in the interior of Uranus,” he added. “While the nature of the feature and its interaction with the atmosphere are not yet known, the fact that I found this unusual rotation offers new possibilities to learn about the interior of a giant planet.”
It’s difficult to get more information about the inner atmosphere without sending down a probe, but other methods of getting a bit of information include using radio (which shows magnetic field rotation) or gravitational fields. The university stated that Karkoschka’s work could help improve models of Uranus’ interior.
So that was Uranus three decades ago. What about today? Turns out that storms are popping up on Uranus that are so large that for the first time, amateur astronomers can track them from Earth. A separate study on Uranus shows the planet is “incredibly active”, and what’s more, it took place at an unexpected time.
Summer happened in 2007 when the Sun shone on its equator, which should have produced more heat and stormy weather at the time. (Uranus has no internal heat source, so the Sun is believed to be the primary driver of energy on the planet.) However, a team led by Imke de Pater, chair of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, spotted eight big storms in the northern hemisphere while looking at the planet with the Keck Telescope on Aug. 5 and 6.
Infrared images of Uranus showing storms at 1.6 and 2.2 microns obtained Aug. 6, 2014 by the 10-meter Keck telescope. Credit: Imke de Pater (UC Berkeley) & Keck Observatory images.
Keck’s eye revealed a big, bright storm that represented 30% of light reflected by the planet at a wavelength of 2.2 microns, which provides information about clouds below the tropopause. Amateurs, meanwhile, spotted a storm of a different sort. Between September and October, several observations were reported of a storm at 1.6 microns, deeper in the atmosphere.
“The colors and morphology of this [latter] cloud complex suggests that the storm may be tied to a vortex in the deeper atmosphere similar to two large cloud complexes seen during the equinox,” stated Larry Sromovsky, a planetary scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
What is causing the storms now is still unknown, but the team continues to watch the Uranian weather to see what will happen next. Results from both studies were presented at the Division for Planetary Sciences meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Tucson, Arizona today. Plans for publication and whether the research was peer-reviewed were not disclosed in press releases concerning the findings.
NTSB investigators are seen making their initial inspection of debris from the Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo. The debris field stresses over a fiver mile range in the Mojave desert. (Credit: Getty Images)
The surviving co-pilot of the Virgin Galactic crash was unaware that SpaceShipTwo’s re-entry system was unlocked prematurely during the flight test, according to an update from the National Transportation Safety Board.
In an interview with investigators, the board said Peter Siebold provided testimony that was consistent with other information gathered so far since the crash. The incident, which killed fellow co-pilot Mike Alsbury when the craft plunged into the Mojave desert, took place Oct. 31.
“The NTSB operations and human performance investigators interviewed the surviving pilot on Friday. According to the pilot, he was unaware that the feather system had been unlocked early by the copilot,” read an update on the board’s website.
“His description of the vehicle motion was consistent with other data sources in the investigation. He stated that he was extracted from the vehicle as a result of the break-up sequence and unbuckled from his seat at some point before the parachute deployed automatically.”
Inset: Pilot Peter Siebold of Scaled Composites. Photo of SpaceShipTwo, SS Enterprise, in flight with its tail section in the feathered position for atmospheric re-entry. (Photo Credits: Scaled Composites)
Accidents are due to a complex set of circumstances, which means the NTSB finding that the re-entry system was deployed prematurely is only a preliminary finding. The investigation into the full circumstances surrounding the crash could take anywhere from months to a year, according to multiple media reports.
Virgin was performing another in a series of high-altitude test flights in preparation for running tourists up to suborbital space early next year. A handful of ticket-holders, who made deposits of up to $250,000 each, have reportedly asked for their money back. The Richard Branson-founded company has not revealed when the first commercial flight is expected to take place.
Meanwhile, Virgin does have another version of SpaceShipTwo already under assembly right now, which is considered 95% structurally complete and 60% assembled, according to NBC News. The prototype could take to the skies before the NTSB investigation is complete, the report added.
After a ten year journey that began with the launch from the jungles of French Guyana, landing Philae is not the end of mission, it is the beginning of a new phase. A successful landing is not guaranteed but the ESA Rosetta team is now ready to release Philae on its one way journey. (Photo Credits: ESA/NASA, Illustration: J.Schmidt)
We are now in the final hours before Rosetta’s Philae lander is released to attempt a first-ever landing on a comet. At 9:03 GMT (1:03 AM PST) on Wednesday, November 12, 2014, Philae will be released and directed towards the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. 7 hours later, the lander will touch down.
Below you’ll find a timeline of events, info on how to watch the landing, and an overview of how the landing will (hopefully) work.
In human affairs, we build contingencies for missteps, failures. With spacecraft, engineers try to eliminate all single point failures and likewise have contingency plans. The landing of a spacecraft, be it on Mars, Earth, or the Moon, always involves unavoidable single point failures and points of no return, and with comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, Rosetta’s Philae lander is no exception.
Rosetta’s and Philae’s software and hardware must work near flawlessly to give Philae the best chance possible of landing safely. And even with flawless execution, it all depends on Philae’s intercepting a good landing spot on the surface. Philae’s trajectory is ballistic on this one way trip to a comet’s surface. It’s like a 1 mile per hour bullet. Once fired, it’s on its own, and for Philae, its trajectory could lead to a pristine flat step or it could be crevasse, ledge, or sharp rock.
The accuracy of the landing is critical but it has left a 1 square kilometer of uncertainty. For this reason, engineers and scientists had to survey the whole surface for the most mild features. Comet 67P has few areas that are not extreme in one way or another. Site J, now called Agilkia, is one such site.
When first announced in late September, the time of release was 08:35 GMT (12:35 AM PST). Now the time is 9:03 GMT. The engineers and computer scientists have had six weeks to further refine their trajectory. It’s a complicated calculation that has required running the computer simulation of the descent backwards. Backwards because they can set a landing time then run Philae backwards to the moment of release. The solution is not just one but many, thousands or millions if you want to look in such detail. With each release point, the engineers had to determine how, or if, Rosetta could be navigated to that coordinate point in space and time.
Arrival time of the radio signal with landing status: 16:30 GMT
Rosetta/Philae at 500 million km [320 million miles], 28.5 minutes light time
Arrival of First Images: 06:00 GMT, November 13, 2014
The gravity field of the comet is so weak, it is primarily the initial velocity from Rosetta that delivers Philae to the surface. But the gravity is there and because of the chaotic shape and unknown (as yet) mass distribution inside, the gravity will make Philae move like a major league knuckleball wobbling to the plate and a batter. Furthermore, the comet during the seven hour trip will make half a rotation. The landing site will not be in site when Philae is released.
And as Philae is on final approach, it will use a small rocket not to slow down but rather thrust it at the comet, landing harpoons will be fired, foot screws will try to burrow into the comet, and everyone on Earth will wait several minutes for a message to be relayed from Philae to Rosetta to the Deep Space Network (DSN) antennas on Earth. Philae will be on its own as soon as it leaves Rosetta and its fate is a few hours away.
Why travel to a comet? Comets represent primordial material leftover from the formation of the solar system. Because cometary bodies were formed and remained at a distance from the heat of the sun, the materials have remained nearly unchanged since formation, ~4.5 billion years ago. By looking at Rosetta’s comet, 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, scientists will gain the best yet measurements of a comet’s chemical makeup, its internal structure created during formation, and the dynamics of the comet as it approaches the warmth of the Sun. Theories propose that comets impacting on Earth delivered most of the water of our oceans. If correct, then we are not just made of star-stuff, as Carl Sagan proclaimed, we are made of comet stuff, too. Comets may also have delivered the raw organic materials needed to start the formation of life on Earth.
Besides the ESA live feeds, one can take a peek at NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN) at work to see which telescopes are communicating with Rosetta. JPL’s webcast can watched below:
Mathew McConnaughey wades through an ocean on another planet. This is not a fishing expedition. He is out to save his children and all humanity. Image courtesy Paramount.
Science fiction aficionados, take heed. The highly-anticipated movie Interstellar is sharp and gripping. Nolan and cast show in the end that they have the right stuff. Nearly a three hour saga, it holds your attention and keeps you guessing. Only a couple of scenes seemed to drift and lose focus. Interstellar borrows style and substance from some of the finest in the genre and also adds new twists while paying attention to real science. If a science-fiction movie shies away from imagining the unknown, taking its best shot of what we do not know, then it fails a key aspect of making sci-fi. Interstellar delivers in this respect very well.
Jessica Chastain, the grown daughter of astronaut McConnaughey takes a torch to the cornfields. Interstellar viewers are likely to show no sympathy to the ever present corn fields. Image courtesy Paramount.
The movie begins quite unassuming in an oddly green but dusty farmland. It does not rely on showing off futuristic views of Earth and humanity to dazzle us. However, when you see a farming family with a dinner table full of nothing but variations of their cash crop which is known mostly as feedstock for swine and cattle, you know humanity is in some hard times. McConaughey! Save us now! I do not want to live in such a future!
One is left wondering about what got us to the conditions facing humanity from the onset of the movie. One can easily imagine a couple of hot topic issues that splits the American public in two. But Nolan doesn’t try to add a political or religious bent to Interstellar. NASA is in the movie but apparently after decades of further neglect, it is literally a shadow of even its present self.
Somehow, recent science fiction movies — Gravity being one exception — would make us believe that the majority of American astronauts are from the Midwest. Driving a John Deere when you are 12, being raised under big sky or in proximity to the home of the Wright Brothers would make you hell-bent to get out of Dodge and not just see the world but leave the planet. Matthew McConaughey adds to that persona.
Dr. Kip Thorne made it clear that black is not the primary hue of Black Holes. His guidance offered to Nolan raised science fiction to a new level. Image courtesy Paramount.
We are seemingly in the golden age of astronomy. At present, a science fiction movie with special effects can hardly match the imagery that European and American astronomy is delivering day after day. There is one of our planets that gets a very modest delivery in Interstellar. An undergraduate graphic artist could take hold of NASA imagery and outshine those scenes quite easily. However, it appears that Nolan did not see it necessary to out-do every scene of past sci-fi or every astronomy picture of the day (APOD) to make a great movie.
Nolan drew upon American astro-physicist Dr. Kip Thorne, an expert on Einstein’s General Relativity, to deliver a world-class presentation of possibly the most extraordinary objects in our Universe – black holes. It is fair to place Thorne alongside the likes of Sagan, Feynman, Clarke and Bradbury to advise and deliver wonders of the cosmos in compelling cinematic form. In Instellar, using a black hole in place of a star to hold a planetary system is fascinating and also a bit unbelievable. Whether life could persist in such a system is a open question. There is one scene that will distress most everyone in and around NASA that involves the Apollo Moon landings and one has to wonder if Thorne was pulling a good one on old NASA friends.
Great science fiction combines a vision of the future with a human story. McConaughey and family are pretty unassuming. John Lithgow, who plays grandpa, the retired farmer, doesn’t add much and some craggy old character actor would have been just fine. Michael Cane as the lead professor works well and Cane’s mastery is used to thicken and twist the plot. His role is not unlike the one in Children of Men. He creates bends in the plot that the rest of the cast must conform to.
There was one piece of advice I read in previews of Interstellar. See it in Imax format. So I ventured over to the Imax screening at the Technology Museum in Silicon Valley. I think this advice was half correct. The Earthly scenes gained little or nothing from Imax but once they were in outer space, Imax was the right stuff. Portraying a black hole and other celestial wonders is not easy for anyone including the greatest physicists of our era and Thorne and Nolan were right to use Imax format.
According to industry insiders, Nolan is one of a small group of directors with the clout to demand film recording rather than digital. Director Nolan used film and effects to give Interstellar a very earthy organic feel. That worked and scenes transitioned pretty well to the sublime of outer space. Interstellar now shares the theaters with another interesting movie with science fiction leanings. The Stephen Hawking biography, “The Theory of Everything” is getting very good reviews. They hold different ties to science and I suspect sci-fi lovers will be attracted to seeing both. With Interstellar, out just one full day and I ran into moviegoers that had already seen it more than once.
Where does Interstellar stand compared to Stanley Kubricks works? It doesn’t make that grade of science fiction that stands up as a century-class movie. However, Thorne’s and Nolan’s accounting of black holes and worm holes and the use of gravity is excellent. Instellar makes a 21st Century use of gravity in contrast to Gravity that was stuck in the 20th Century warning us to be careful where you park your space vehicle. In the end, Matthew McConaughey serves humanity well. Anne Hathaway plays a role not unlike Jody Foster in Contact – an intellectual but sympathetic female scientist.
Jessica Chastain playing the grown up daughter of McConaughey brings real angst and an edge to the movie; even Mackenzie Foy playing her part as a child. Call it the view ports for each character – they are short and narrow and Chastain uses hers very well. Matt Damon shows up in a modest but key role and does not disappoint. Nolan’s directing and filmography is impressive, not splashy but one is gripped by scenes. Filming in the small confines of spaceships and spacesuits is challenging and Nolan pulls it off very well. Don’t miss Interstellar in the theaters. It matches and exceeds the quality of several recent science fiction movies. Stepping back onto the street after the movie, the world seemed surprisingly comforting and I was glad to be back from the uncertain future Nolan created.
Rosetta, the scientific mission to explore a comet's surface. "Ambition", a short Sci-Fi film, set in the near future, and Rosetta, the children's fable, to encourage the next generations to undertake on the great adventures still to come. (Photo Credits: ESA, Platige Image, ESA Communications)
In the recently released Rosetta short film called “Ambition”, the master begins a story to his apprentice – “Once upon a time.” The apprentice immediately objects to his triteness. But he promises that it is worth the slight tribulation. Who could have imagined ten years ago that Rosetta would become so successful in two such contrasting approaches to telling a tale.
The Rosetta mission is part franchise and part scientific mission. In five days, Rosetta will reach a crossroad, a point of no return as epic as moments in Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings. A small mindless little probe called Philae will be released on a one-way trip to the surface of a comet. Win or lose, Philae will live on in the tale of a comet and a mission to uncover the mysteries of our planet’s formation.
ESA did not promise a good mission as Aidan Gillen promises a good story in Ambition. A space mission is never put in terms of a promise but rather it is thousands of requirements and constraints that formulate a mission plan and a spacecraft design. The European Space Agency put 1 billion Euros ($1.3 billion) to work and did so in what now looks like one of the greatest space missions of the first century of space exploration.
The Rosetta mission is actually two missions in one. There is the comet chaser, the orbiter – Rosetta and then the lander Philae. The design of Rosetta’s objectives is some part, probably in large part, was conceived by dismissing the presence of Philae. Make a space probe to a comet that just orbits the small body. Select your scientific instrumentations accordingly. Now add a small lander to the mission profile that will do something extraordinary – what Rosetta cannot do with its instrumentation. Finally, make sure that Rosetta has everything needed to support Philae’s landing on a comet.
Here is what they have as the game plan on November 12th (the sequence of events begins while its still November 11th in the Americas). These two times are absolutely non- trivial. They are finely tuned to a timepiece called 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. If calculations were made in error, then Philae’s ultimate fate is unknown. Start exactly on time and Philae will be given the best chance at making a successful touchdown on the comet.
Separation of Philae from Rosetta: 09:03 GMT (10:03 CET)
Touchdown on the comet: 16:02 GMT (17:02 CET).
During this time, comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko will complete over half a rotation on its axis. To be exact, it will rotate 56.2977% of a full rotation. Comet 67P will have its back turned towards Rosetta as it holds the diminutive Philae for the last time and releases Philae for the first and only time.
Now that the ESA, with help from the graphic artists from Platige Image from Poland, has released something entertaining for the science fiction minded among us, they have again released a next episode in their children’s fable of Rosetta and Philae (video below). This cartoon of the final moments of Rosetta and Philae together preparing for the descent which could well be the final moments of Philae.
Philae could fail, crack like an egg on a sharp rock or topple over a cliff or into a crevasse on the surface of 67P. What happens to Philae will make for a Grimm’s fairy tale ending or something we would all prefer. In either case, the ESA is using graphic arts and storytelling to inspire the next generations to join in what our JFK called “great adventures of all time” [ref].
Through a contest something NASA and JPL have used several times to involve the public, the ESA asked the public to come up with a name for the landing site, site J. Out of the thousands of entries, 150 people suggested the name Agilkia [ref]. Alexandre Brouste from France, the designated winner, has been invited to watch the landing activities at Rosetta’s mission control in Darmstadt, Germany. It follows from the Eqyptian theme of the mission’s two probes. “Rosetta” comes from the clay tablet discovered in the 1800s that led to the deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphics. Philae” is a island on the Nile which held magnificent Eqyptian temples. With the operation of the Aswan dam starting in 1902, the island of Philae was repeatedly flooded and the temple was at risk. UNESCO beginning in 1960 started a project to save the islands historic structures. They were all moved to a nearby Nile island called Agilkia [related U.T. article]. This becomes a part of the Rosetta story – a lander named Philae in reference to the obelisks used along with the Rosetta stone to decipher Eqyptian writings, departing its mother ship on a short but critical voyage to a final resting place, the landing site now called Agilkia.
Upon landing, a landing confirmation signal is expected from Philae via Rosetta at about 8:02 AM PST (11:02 AM EST, 17:02 Central European Time). Alexandre Brouste of France, the designated winner of the landing site naming contest will be in Darmstadt, Germany in mission control to watch the landing unfold with the Rosetta engineers and scientists. Surely, millions of citizens of the European Union and people worldwide will be watching via the World Wide Web.
The timeline and events to unfold as Philae, the lander is released from Rosetta, the comet orbiter. (Illustration Credit: ESA)
Previous Rosetta and Philae articles at Universe Today
Expedition 40 astronauts Reid Wiseman (left) and Alexander Gerst as viewed in a water bubble surrounding a video camera on the International Space Station. Credit: NASA/YouTube (screenshot)
What does the view look like from inside a water bubble? Earlier this year, astronauts on the International Space Station completely submersed a GoPro video recorder inside liquid and filmed the view — which is quite amusing.
Look below for some distorted views of then-Expedition 40 astronauts Reid Wiseman and Alexander Gerst … and an awesome 3-D video besides!
NASA’s goal in tasking the astronauts with this is to better understand how water behaves in space. (It’s actually quite a serious matter, as a lack of understanding of the physics was one factor leading to a dangerous water leak during a spacewalk in 2013.) In this case, the astronauts were looking at how surface tension works in microgravity.
As for that 3-D video, the agency says it is going to offer more of these from space as it gets people even closer to actually being there. Here’s a neat phenomenon: typically the higher radiation levels in space damage video cameras to the extent where they need to be replaced every 8-12 months.
A 3-D camera sent up in 2011, however, had virtually no dead pixels in the images, prompting NASA to investigate. Officials requested the camera come back to Earth on a Dragon splashdown in 2012. That’s when they discovered the way the 3-D camera is structured — with stereo images layered on top of each other — lessens the appearance of any damage.
But there’s also less damage in the first place, NASA said, because the 3-D camera doesn’t use charge-coupled imaging sensors that are susceptible to radiation. The newer system uses a metal-oxide semiconductor sensor, which doesn’t get hurt as badly. We guess that’s more argument for bringing 3-D images from the final frontier.
Expedition 40 commander Steve Swanson (left) and Reid Wiseman view a water bubble surrounding a video camera on the International Space Station in summer 2014. Credit: NASA/YouTube (screenshot)
The International Space Station as seen by the departing STS-134 crew on May 29, 2011. Credit: NASA
A spacecraft attached to the International Space Station did an “emergency maneuver” to push the complex, which now houses six people, away from a threatening piece of space debris Oct. 27, the European Space Agency said in a statement.
A hand-sized shard of the Russian Cosmos-2251 satellite, which collided with a U.S. Iridium satellite in 2009, would have come within at least four kilometers (2.5 miles) of the orbiting outpost. This was close enough for the space station partners to agree to a move six hours before the potential impact.
“This is the first time the station’s international partners have avoided space debris with such urgency,” the European Space Agency wrote. The push to a safer orbit took place using the agency’s automated transfer vehicle Georges Lemaître, which docked with the space station in August.
The International Space Station in October 2014, with the European automated transfer vehicle Georges Lemaître attached. Credit: Alexander Gerst/ESA/NASA
While many collision threats are spotted at least days before impact, occasionally ground networks aren’t able to see a piece until 24 hours or less before the potential impact. Since 2012, the space station has normally done last-minute maneuvers using Russian cargo Progress vehicles, but this time around none were docked there. This is where the ATV came in.
Controllers at the ATV control center in France then did a four-minute preprogrammed move that raised the station’s orbit by one kilometer (0.6 miles), enough to get out of the way.
The ATV is expected to remain at the station until February, when it will undock and burn up in the atmosphere. This is the last of the series of ATVs that Europe agreed to make as a part of its space station agreement.
How much would it cost to establish a space base close to Earth, say on the Moon or an asteroid? To find out, Universe Today spoke with Philip Metzger, a former senior research physicist at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, who has explored this subject extensively on his website and in published papers.
UT: Your 2012 paper specifically talks about how much development is needed on the Moon to make the industry “self-sustaining and expanding”, but left out the cost of getting the technology ready and of their ongoing operation. Why did you leave this assessment until later? How can we get a complete picture of the costs?
PM: As we stated at the start of the paper, our analysis was very crude and was intended only to garner interest in the topic so that others might join us in doing a more complete, more realistic analysis. The interest has grown faster than I expected, so maybe we will start to see these analyses happening now including cost estimates. Previous analyses talked about building entire factories and sending them into space. The main contribution of our initial paper was to point out that there is this bootstrapping strategy that has not been discussed previously, and we argued that it makes more sense. It will result in a much smaller mass of hardware launched into space, and it will allow us to get started right away so that we can figure out how to make the equipment work as we go along.
Moonbase rover concept – could be used for long-term missions (NASA)
Trying to design up front everything in a supply chain for space is impossible. Even if we got the budget for it and gave it a try, we would discover that it wouldn’t work when we sent it into the extraterrestrial environments. There are too many things that could go wrong. Evolving it in stages will allow us to work out the bugs as we develop it in stages. So the paper was arguing for the community to take a look into this new strategy for space industry.
Now, having said that, I can still give you a very crude cost estimate if you want one. Our model shows a total of about 41 tons of hardware being launched to the Moon, but that results in 100,000 tons of hardware when we include what was made there along the way. If 41 tons turns out to be correct, then let’s take 41% of the cost of the International Space Station as a crude estimate, because that has a mass of 100 tons and we can roughly estimate that a ton of space hardware costs about the same in every program. Then let’s multiply by four because it takes four tons of mass launched to low Earth orbit to land one ton on the Moon.
That may be an over-estimate, because the biggest cost of the International Space Station was the labor to design, build, assemble, and test before launch, including the cost of operating the space shuttle fleet. But the hardware for space industry includes many copies of the same parts so design costs should be lower, and since human lives will not be at stake they don’t need to be as reliable. As discussed in the paper, the launch costs will also be much reduced with the new launch systems coming on line.
The International Space Station in March 2009 as seen from the departing STS-119 space shuttle Discovery crew. Credit: NASA/ESA
Furthermore, the cost can be divided by 3.5 according to the crude modeling, because 41 tons is needed only if the industry is making copies of itself as fast as it can. If we slow it down to making just one copy of the industry along the way as it is evolving, then only 12 tons of hardware needs to be sent to the Moon. Now that gives us an estimate of the total cost over the entire bootstrapping period, so if we take 20 or 30 or 40 years to accomplish it, then divide by that amount to get the annual cost. You end up with a number that is a minority fraction of NASA’s annual budget, and a miniscule fraction of the total U.S. federal budget, and even tinier fraction of the US gross domestic product, and an utterly insignificant cost per human being in the developed nations of the Earth.
Even if we are off by a factor of 10 or more, it is something we can afford to start doing today. And this doesn’t account for the economic payback we will be getting while starting space industry. There will be intermediate ways to get a payback, such as refueling communications satellites and enabling new scientific activities. The entire cost needn’t be carried by taxpayers, either. It can be funded in part by commercial interests, and in part by students and others taking part in robotics contests. Perhaps we can arrange shares of ownership in space industry for people who volunteer time developing technologies and doing other tasks like teleoperating robots on the Moon. Call that “telepioneering.”
Perhaps most importantly, the technologies we will be developing – advanced robotics and manufacturing – are the same things we want to be developing here on Earth for the sake of our economy, anyway. So it is a no-brainer to do this! There are also intangible benefits: giving students enthusiasm to excel in their education, focusing the efforts of the maker community to contribute tangibly to our technological and economic growth, and renewing the zeitgeist of our culture. Civilizations fall when they become old and tired, when their enthusiasm is spent and they stop believing in the inherent value of what they do. Do we want a positive, enthusiastic world working together for the greater good? Here it is.
The Japanese Kibo robotic arm on the International Space Station deploys CubeSats during February 2014. The arm was holding a Small Satellite Orbital Deployer to send out the small satellites during Expedition 38. Credit: NASA
UT: We now have smaller computers and the ability to launch CubeSats or smaller accompanying satellites on rocket launches, something that wasn’t available a few decades ago. Does this reduce the costs of sending materials to the Moon for the purposes of what we want to do there?
Most of the papers about starting the space industry are from the 1980’s and 1990’s because that is when most of the investigations were performed, and there hasn’t been funding to continue their work in recent decades. Indeed, changes in technology since then have been game-changing! Back then some studies were saying that a colony would need to support 10,000 humans in space to do manufacturing tasks before it could make a profit and become economically self-sustaining. Now because of the growth of robotics we think we can do it with zero humans, which drastically cuts the cost.
The most complete study of space industry was the 1980 Summer Study at the Ames Research Center. They were the first to discuss the vision of having space industry fully robotic. They estimated mining robots would need to be made with several tons of mass. More recently, we have actually built lunar mining robots at the Swamp Works at the Kennedy Space Center and they are about one tenth of a ton, each. So we have demonstrated a mass reduction of more than 10 times.
But this added sophistication will be harder to manufacture on the Moon. Early generations will not be able to make the lightweight metal alloys or the electronics packages. That will require a more complex supply chain. The early generations of space industry should not aim to make things better; they should aim to make things easier to make. “Appropriate Technology” will be the goal. As the supply chain evolves, eventually it will reach toward the sophistication of Earth. Still, as long as the supply chain is incomplete and we are sending things from Earth, we will be sending the lightest and most sophisticated things we can to be combined with the crude things made in space, and so the advances we’ve made since the 1980’s will indeed reduce the bootstrapping cost.
Building a lunar base might be easier if astronauts could harvest local materials for the construction, and life support in general. Credit: NASA/Pat Rawlings
So can we get off of Earth already and start building bases on the Moon or an asteroid? As highlighted in a recent Office of Science and Technology Policy blog post, one way to do that quickly could be to use resources on site. But how do we even get started? Can we afford to do it now, in this tough economic climate?
Universe Today spoke with Philip Metzger, a former senior research physicist at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, who has explored this subject extensively on his website and in published papers. He argues that to do space this way would be similar to how the pilgrims explored North America. In the first of a three-part series, he outlines the rationale and the first steps to making it there.
UT: It’s been said that using resources on the Moon, Mars or asteroids will be cheaper than transporting everything from Earth. At the same time, there are inherent startup costs in terms of developing technology to do this extraction and also sending this equipment over there, among other things. How do we reconcile these two realities?
PM: Space industry will have a tremendous payback, but it will be costly to start. Several years ago I was frustrated because I didn’t think that commercial interests alone would be enough to get it fully started within our generation, so I asked the question, can we find an inexpensive way for the governments of the world (or philanthropists or others who may not have an immediate commercial interest) to get it started simply because of the societal benefits it will bring? That’s why my colleagues and I wrote the paper “Affordable Rapid Bootstrapping of Space Industry and Solar System Civilization.”
We are advocating a bootstrapping approach because it helps solve the problem of the high startup cost and it enables humanity to start reaping the benefits quickly, since we need them quickly. A bootstrapping approach works like this: instead of building all the hardware on Earth and sending it into space ready to start manufacturing things, we can send a reduced set of hardware into space and make only a little bit of what we need. We can send the rest of the manufactured parts from Earth and combine them with what we made in space. Over time we keep doing this until we evolve up to a full manufacturing capability in space.
On a clear day, astronauts aboard the ISS can see over 1,000 miles from Havana to Washington D.C. Image Credit: Chris Hadfield / NASA
This is how colonies on Earth built themselves up until eventually they were able to match the industry of their homelands. The pilgrims, for example, didn’t bring entire factories from Europe over on the Mayflower. Now it took hundreds of years to build up American industry, but with robotics and advanced manufacturing and with some intentionality we can get it done much more quickly at still an affordable price. We have done some rudimentary modeling of this bootstrapping approach and it looks as though it would be a small part of our annual space budget and it could establish the industry within just decades.
What I think is even more important than the cost is that with a bootstrapping approach we can get started right away. We don’t need to complete the entire design and development up front. It also spreads the cost over time so the annual expenses are very low. And it allows us time to evolve our strategy, to figure out what works and what will have more immediate economic payback, as we go along. Many people are looking for the immediate ways to get a payback in space, and there are some great ideas and I am sure they will be successful. One example is to set up a mining operation that refuels communication satellites in geosynchronous orbit. These sorts of activities will contribute to, and will benefit from, the effort to start industry in space, and they will generate revenue to fund their portion of the effort.
UT: Why do you feel the Moon is a good spot to start operations? What would be some activities to start with there? How do we move from there into the rest of the solar system?
When my colleagues and I wrote the paper, we were focused on the Moon in part because that was during NASA’s Constellation program to establish a lunar outpost. However, it is equally possible to use near-Earth asteroids to start this space industry, or to use both. In any case, we need to start space industry close to the Earth. That will keep transportation costs low during the startup. It also enables us to work with much shorter time delay in the radio communications, which is important in the early stages before robotics become sufficiently automated. Ideally the industry will be fully automated; we want robots to prepare the way for humans to follow.
The cancelled Constellation Program. Credit: NASA
However, if we think we will need humans during initial start-up of the industry – for example, to fix or troubleshoot broken hardware, or to do complex tasks that robots can’t yet do – then starting near Earth becomes even more important. It turns out that both the Moon and asteroids are excellent places to start industry. We now know that they have abundant water, minerals from which metals can be refined, carbon for making plastics, and so on. I am glad there are companies planning to develop mining in both locations so we can see what works best.
Another reason to start industry close to Earth is so it can have an early economic payback. In the end, when everything including spaceships and refueling depots are made in space by autonomous robotics, then industry becomes self-sustaining and it will pay us back inestimably for no further cost. Getting to that point requires some serious investment, though, and it will be easier to make the investments if we are getting something back. So what kinds of payback can it give us in the near-term? I keep a list of ideas how to make money in space, and there are about 19 items on the list, some crazy and some not so crazy. A few of the serious ideas include: space tourism; making and selling propellants to NASA for exploration and science missions; returning metals like platinum for sale on Earth; and manufacturing spare parts for other activities in space.
Artist’s rendition of a Moon Base. Credit: John Spencer/Space Tourism Society.
Some of the initial things we will do on the Moon or asteroids includes perfecting the low-gravity mining techniques, learning how to make solar cells out of regolith, and learning how to extract useful metals from minerals that would not be considered “ore” here on Earth. All of these are possible and require only modest investment to make them work.
It will take decades of effort to make space industry self-sustaining. Maybe 2 decades if we get started right away and work steadily, or maybe 5 decades if we have a lower level of funding. But if robotics advance as fast as the roboticists are expecting, soon there will be no manufacturing task a robot cannot do. When that day arrives, and we have set up a complete supply chain in space, then it will be an easy thing to send sets of hardware to the main asteroid belt to begin mining and manufacturing where there are billions of times the resources more than what we have on Earth.
Then, the industry could build landing craft to take equipment to the surface of Mars where it can build cities and eventually even terraform the planet. When we have machines that can use local resources to perform work and build copies of themselves, then they can perform the same role on dry worlds that biological life has performed here on our wet Earth. They can transform the environment and become the food chain so those worlds will be places where humanity can work and live. I realize this sounds too ambitious, but 20 to 50 years of technology growth is going to make a huge difference, and we are only talking about manufacturing – not rocket science — and that is something that we are already quite good at here on Earth. With just a little extrapolation into the future it is not a crazy idea.
Artist concept of a Moon base. Credit: NASA/Pat Rawlings.
UT: What are the main pieces of equipment and robotics that we need up there to accomplish these objectives?
PM: There is an interesting open source project developing what they call the “Global Village Construction Set.” It is 50 machines that will be capable of restarting civilization. It includes things like a windmill, a backhoe, and a 3D printer. What we need is the equivalent “Lunar/Asteroid Village Construction Set.”
A study was done by NASA in 1980 to determine what set of machines are needed in factories on the Moon to build 80% of their own parts. The other 20% would need to be supplied constantly from Earth. In our paper we argued that we can start at much less than 80% closure, making it more affordable and allowing us to start today, but the system should evolve until it reaches 100% closure. So the first set of hardware might make crude solar cells, metal, 3D printed metal parts, and rocket propellants.
Having just that will allow us to make a significant mass of the next generation of hardware as well as support the transportation network. Over time, we want to develop an entire supply chain which would be more extensive than just 50 different types of machines. But before we put anything in space we will want to test them in rugged locations here on Earth, and in the process we will discover what set of machines makes the most sense for the first generation. The idea is to learn as we go, so we can get started right away.
