As long as I’m having fun with YouTube’s “start here” feature, note this standard-issue awesome impassioned Shatner speech by Captain Kirk in “Return to Tomorrow”:
Do you wish that the first Apollo mission hadn’t reached the moon, or that we hadn’t gone on to Mars, and then to the nearest star?
As Torie Atkinson says, though, this is really quite cool, because the episode aired originally on February 9, 1968:
Here is a fictional future starship captain referencing a real-life scientific accomplishment that hasn’t happened yet but is accepted as part of human history.
In fact, it’s even cooler than that, isn’t it? For not only had the Apollo program not yet reached the moon, the episode was almost certainly written, shot, and definitely was aired during the grim hiatus between the lethal Apollo 1 capsule fire and the resumption of manned missions, when humankind’s arrival on the moon would have seemed even a shakier proposition than otherwise.
Atkinson goes on to say,
It’s presented as something that will happen, absolutely, without reservation, because men can do that. Because men will always reach beyond them for answers to “Why?”
Though “always” is maybe a bit overoptimistic. We still haven’t the slightest prospect of getting to Mars.
It illustrates my ignorance that I always thought Kennedy’s line, “We choose to go to the moon and do the other things” was merely awkward. I didn’t know until a recent visit to Kennedy Space Center with the kids that “the other things” was in there so he could omit repeating a goofy joke about “Why does Rice play Texas?”
Previously, on the space race being over and the awesomeness of William Shatner, Shatner, Shatner. Bonus, non-EotAW awesomeness of Shatner link. William Shatner, eco-warrior.
And, as long as I’m just linking away with bare relevance, in re JFK: this week On the Media re-aired a 2002 interview with Fred Kaplan about the various versions of what happened during the Cuban missile crisis. And, to dig really deep into the Internets, here’s me on the Cuban missile crisis from 2001 in (hey, I get, or got, around) the Mail on Sunday.
The Edge of the American West 
30 comments
August 29, 2010 at 8:27 pm
TF Smith
Blame Nixon; bastard cancelled Apollo 18-20 when 90 percent of the hardware was already built and the personnel costs were less than a day’s combat in Cambodia…
Saturn + LESA xould have made for permanent lunar settlement by 1980 and Saturn + NERVA could have yielded a Mars landing and return by 1990, all for a tenth of the cost or less of the SEA war, 1969-75.
August 30, 2010 at 4:43 am
Erik Lund
With all due respect, TF, that’s unicorn pony country you’re flying over right now.
August 30, 2010 at 9:33 am
jroth95
Saturn + REYNA would have had us in unicorn pony country by 2002.
August 30, 2010 at 10:05 am
Anderson
We still haven’t the slightest prospect of getting to Mars.
Only in the sense of “other things to spend the money on,” not “we couldn’t if we tried.”
August 30, 2010 at 10:11 am
Neddy Merrill
Manned missions to Mars are a stupid idea.
August 30, 2010 at 10:23 am
CaliFury
In 985 while sailing from Iceland to Greenland a merchant named Bjarni Herjólfsson was blown off course and sighted land west of the fleet.
Wait 500 years
In 1492 another visitor to the new place arrived.
It looks to me that we’re on the same kind of timeline for sending people to Mars.
On another note, John Varley (an SF writer, of course) suggests that it is biology that will conquer space, not physics. Once we can and are willing to make sentient humans that can live on Mars without too many special buildings, they will want to go there.
August 30, 2010 at 10:43 am
chris
Once we can and are willing to make sentient humans that can live on Mars without too many special buildings, they will want to go there.
Why limit it to humans? We can already make robots that can live on Mars without too many special buildings, but they’re not sentient yet. It seems like it would make more sense for robots to live on Mars than for oxygen-breathing, water-drinking meat sacks to try to live on a planet with very limited supplies of oxygen, water, and things edible by Earth animals.
Maybe it’s artificial intelligence that will really conquer space, and beings whose bodies are adapted to planets with oceans and 20% oxygen atmospheres will find it more convenient to stay on them.
August 30, 2010 at 10:45 am
kevin
President Dave Chappelle would’ve had us on Mars years ago.
August 30, 2010 at 11:29 am
CaliFury
@chris
Maybe it’s artificial intelligence that will really conquer space…
That’s right. Put the burden on our descendants. How will they ever find time to go to Mars when they’re busy hunting us down???
August 30, 2010 at 12:03 pm
Anderson
I think we should let the private sector settle Mars. Maybe enough homeschoolers will decide the entire planet is too sinful and Rupert Murdoch will buy Mars and sell spaceship tickets. “Why live in a Red State when you can live on a Red Planet?”
September 1, 2010 at 3:21 am
ajay
Anderson: indeed. If only there were, in some advanced nation, a large, wealthy and politically powerful religion devoted to the idea that every virtuous man deserves to settle his own planet!
Of course, ideally such a religion would have settled in an area suitable for large-scale space launches. A desert would be best, because rockets tend to be noisy. And it would help if there were a very large flat area around, to use as a runway for returning shuttles: a salt flat would be ideal.
September 1, 2010 at 6:58 am
Anderson
Sorry, Ajay, nothing comes to mind.
September 1, 2010 at 9:46 am
ajay
Damn shame, Anderson. I suppose it does sound a little far-fetched.
September 1, 2010 at 11:34 am
Anderson
Yeah, Ajay. Instead of inventing far-fetched fictional religions so wacky that you might as well claim you discovered ’em by reading some metal tablets you found buried somewhere … well, best not quit your day job.
September 2, 2010 at 4:30 am
ajay
There’s an interesting plot idea, actually.
In the Dune books, there’s an aside that the Bene Gesserit have been seeding cultures all over the place with myths about the Mysterious Benevolent Women from Other Worlds whom it is Good to Help – if one of them ever finds herself in danger in such a place, the locals will be culturally primed to help her out.
(Rather like Cortez finding to his delight that there were existing Aztec myths about pale-skinned gods from beyond the eastern
seas.)
Who’s to say that Joseph Smith wasn’t part of a similar seeding effort, designed to encourage humans to spread beyond Earth? Of course, it didn’t quite go as planned, but some seeds always fall on stony ground…
September 2, 2010 at 7:40 am
oudemia
I like to say, “We will do these things and the other things” in the JFK accent just to amuse myself. (I really do this all the time. Sad, I know.)
September 2, 2010 at 4:18 pm
Erik Lund
What? Every word of Joseph Smith’s revelation is true. In a non-literal way, of course.
Also, am I the only person to see a parallel between Smith’s account and Fenimore Cooper’s _The Pioneers_?
Yes? Well, I’ll let myself out, then.
September 5, 2010 at 11:51 am
TF Smith
Erik – –
Um, which statement, exactly, is “unicorn pony country”?
Apollo 18-20 were planned, and hardware production was complete or near-complete for all three missions, before RMN was sworn into office in 1969.
Counting the Saturn V and CSMs used for Skylab, there were three Saturn Vs, three full missions sets of CSMs and LMs, and enough Saturn IB and CSMs for several more earth-orbital flights alone already in the supply chain…use of the Gemini/Titan architecture, which was very technically mature, for earth-orbital missions, would have freed up the Apollo/CSM production lines for the planned LESA phase of Apollo and potentially a Mars reconaissance and landing program.
LESA was well along the design path, and relied largely on Apollo or Apollo-derived vehicles, systems, and sub-systems – nothing planned (the LESA lander, for example, or the Grumman MoLab) were beyond state-of-the-art in 1969.
Mariner was already underway, for Mars observation – a “Mars Surveyor” lander launched by a Titan was also a potential observation path, much less the larger landers considered for Saturn IB launch.
NERVA was also real program, that had gone to ground-based hardware proof-of-concept under the AECs’ sponsorship; given consistent funding and a transfer to NASA, flight tests were well within the range of the possible by the mid-to-late 1970s and a manned Mars landing-and-return mission could have been underway by 1980.
Here’s a counterfactual: RFK is elected in 1968 on a campaign of ending Vietnam, beating the commies to the Moom and Mars, creating a truly Great Society, and overall carrying on his brother’s vision for “doing the other things” and we truly don;t have Dick Nixon to kick around any more – anyone really doubt it could not have been done?
Especially absent Dick and Henry’s magical three war strategy in SEA?
September 6, 2010 at 12:02 pm
Erik Lund
TF, you’re taking a whole lot of very old and never substantiated claims at face value.
(i) “Enough Saturn Vs could lift a city into orbit, and would cost less than the Vietnam War. Or maybe Vietnam plus Medicare.”
(ii) “LESA isn’t crazy!!1!” (Seriously: shovelling Moon dirt on the roof as a radiation shield? Powering it with an unshielded nuclear reactor? That’s leaving aside the fact that it was not a permanent moon base proposal.)
(iii) “NERVA will have the fastest and most trouble free development in the history of aviation engines because I need to get to Mars real soon now.”
I have not presented these as arguments because they were never arguments. They were love letters to an imagined future where all technical problems will have been overcome with a wave of a hand. Unicorn pony country.
By way of contrast, here’s the latest version of the NASA Reference Mars Mission. the one with the launch vehicle that can put a 200 tonne payload into LEO.
Click to access SP-6107-ADD.pdf
As for the Moonbase, ring me back when they find water ice and carbon.
September 6, 2010 at 1:22 pm
CaliFury
There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.” Genesis 6:4, King James Version
In latter times the Nephilim giants were drowned by the flood of madness brought down upon the anointed land by Nixon, born of the Evil one, who opposed humanity. With Henry the Deceiver at his right hand he sprinkled the wastelands with the peoples’ precious bodily fluids laying their lines low, trapping their souls in the mud of Earth, never to ascend to heaven unto the seventh generation of their seed.
September 6, 2010 at 10:06 pm
TF Smith
Erik, since you can’t be bothered, there’s not much point, is there?
Your and Califury’s opinions notwithstanding, I’d have to say there are those who were there and did that in aerospace who disagree – strongly.
For those like Califury who enjoy literary allusion, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of…
Once upon a time, I worked at a couple of places that each, in their own way, had a fair bit to do with Apollo; everything suggested above for Apollo 18-20, Apollo Applications/LESA, and a Mars mission with NERVA-derived technology could have been accomplished in the two decades between 1969 and 1990, given a lack of strategic idiocy in SEA…
There are no real technological showstoppers, certainly not for people used to running risks for a living; stranger things HAVE been done, and in less time – and certainly for far less cost in blood and treasure than what it cost the United States to withdraw from SEA in 1973, as opposed to 1969.
Ad Astra per Ardua
September 7, 2010 at 1:48 am
ajay
As for the Moonbase, ring me back when they find water ice and carbon.
Hello, Erik? It’s NASA here. We found 600 million tonnes of water ice on the Moon. http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/03/water-moon-north-pole/
Hang on a moment, I have Jim Irwin on the line.
— Hi, Erik, Jim Irwin here. Just wanted to let you know I found carbon on the moon forty years ago.
http://history.nasa.gov/SP-350/ch-15-4.html
That all? OK then! Bye!
September 7, 2010 at 2:00 am
ajay
You also seem a bit hazy about LESA. It didn’t involve using regolith as shielding, it didn’t involve an unshielded nuclear reactor, and it did involve a permanent moon base.
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/lesrbase.htm
Saturn V lifted 100 tonnes into orbit for $431 million (in 1967 dollars) – this is a minute fraction of the cost of the Vietnam War. In 1968, a single Saturn V launch would have bought you about a day of Vietnam War. Probably less than that. The war cost about $170 billion in contemporary dollars.
September 7, 2010 at 2:07 am
ajay
NERVA will have the fastest and most trouble free development in the history of aviation engines
Not quite. Going from first ground test in 1959 to first flight test in 1975 and first operational flight in 1980 is not, in fact, a terribly fast development for an aviation engine. To pick one example, it’s about three times as long as the jet engine took to go from bench test to combat use. It’s twice as long as the F-1 engine used on the Saturn V.
September 7, 2010 at 8:21 am
Erik Lund
Has anyone noticed that the Second World War was not fought by diesel aeroengined flying wings or zeppelins, as some technologists confidently predicted in the 1930s? That there are still no flying cars, intelligent robots, or food pills?
It almost seems like some predictions about the future of technology are inaccurate.
I know. It’s a radical conclusion to draw, but there you go. Now, it is particularly noteworthy that the boldest predictions are motivated. Aerospace advocates are especially motivated, like the ones who talked about “rocket mail” and strategic missiles in the 1930s, and went on to work for NASA in the 1960s.
These optimists indeed wanted to colonise the Moon and fly to Mars in the 1920s, and still in the 1970s. But they’re also the guys who thought that V2s could hit London if aimed at it, and that parcels could survive ballistic re-entry. And when they put these proposals before the President as NASA’s next big project, he rejected them in favour of the space shuttle, rather than more war in Asia. This in spite of the Moon colony being, to all appearances, tantalisingly close at hand. What went wrong?
Plans to colonise the Moon have fallen short over the years because it is too expensive to ship life support stuffs up there, and because there is nothing to do there. The first basically requires water and carbon.
Perhaps more importantly in the long run. Water and carbon could be made into rocket fuel, giving a Moon colony an economic rationale.
Unfortunately, the small amounts of carbon and hydrogen hitherto found on the Moon have been deposited by the solar wind at the rate of atoms per square metre, admittedly over billions of years, and do not rise to the quantities or concentrations needed for useful extraction.
They have also been deposited on the Moon in meteor strikes, to be sure. Unfortunately, it has all sublimated away. Fortunately, we are indeed coming ever closer to confirming the presence of water (and, who knows, perhaps methane) ice in the polar craters of the Moon where light does not reach. I have no doubt that it is there, and it sure would have been nice if one of the Apollo missions had been made to polar latitudes to confirm this much earlier.
Unfortunately, a polar mission requires a polar orbit, and space launches gain a significant boost from the rotational velocity of the Earth, requiring a launch into equatorial space in equatorial orbits. We can launch into polar orbits, but the amount of mass transferred to the Moon in this way is necessarily much less than can reach points accessible to equatorial orbits. Hence, no polar missions except by small orbital probes so far, and no Apollo missions to polar latitudes. And no moonbase. Moonbase now? I hope so, but see below.
It is true that a temporary moonbase, LESA, was proposed for the Apollo missions. Basically, the idea was that instead of six independent, manned missions, there would be a mix of unmanned missions depositing habitat modules and manned missions to populate the habitats.
The objections to LESA are not trivial. On the contrary, they scuttled the proposal in 1968 in favour of the Apollo missions of history. So perhaps we should not just brush them off. Specifically, because it gets to the heart of the matter, and contrary to Ajay’s assertion, lunar soil was the only proposed radiation shielding.
To clarify: we are talking about three distinct radiation threats. The first is from the nuclear reactor proposed to power LESA (since solar power would cease during the two week Lunar night.) Shielding was an impractical burden, and putting it underground represented a huge labour and cargo investment (see below). So it was instead decided to put it 3km from the LESA base and let distance do the work. The second is from cosmic radiation, which is significantly harder on the Moon than in low Earth orbit. This is the threat against which the “shovel dirt on the roof” proposal was made. Third is the much more significant flux produced by solar flare activity. This would kill LESA astronauts, and, in the long run, crossing our fingers and hoping it doesn’t happen is not a solution. Digging the Moon colony in underneath the surface is. But that is expensive enough on Earth. We have not got even the slightest grasp on the costs (and lift burdens) implied by doing it on the Moon.
The difference here between Ajay, TF and myself here is not over the existence and parameters of the LESA mission. I am calling it “temporary,” not just because that is what the actual proposed mission was. I am also highlighting the support and hability issues that led to its rejection in the first place. Those problems do not get any less serious if we suddenly take LESA out of its 1968 context and reposition it as a post-Apollo project. On the contrary, they just highlight why LESA was _not_ the post-Apollo project, and why, even granted much more money for NASA in the early 70s, it would not have been attempted then.
Finally, there is the Mars mission. I have already linked to the NASA Mars Reference mission. This long report quite clearly explains where its weights come from, and why the base launcher has to be twice the size of the Saturn. Not because of convenience, but because… well, read it yourself.
The Mars Reference plan does not address the solar flare issue, but perhaps the cross-your-fingers approach is not the show-stopper it is for a moon base. I personally consider that it is, for we are talking about a multiyear expedition to Mars that has to be solar flare free in order for the astronauts to not die of radiation poisoning.
Now, I do propose considering NERVA a little further. It is not, as you can see from the Reference plan, a necessary component to a Mars mission, but it sure would make things easier. It is a thermal nuclear rocket in which hydrogen propellant is streamed past a solid core, which heats it, and is then ejected through nozzles to propel a vehicle. Apart from environmental concerns, its thrust-to-weight ratio is too low for it to be a surface launch system, but is specific impulse is high enough that it would substantially ease the costs and efforts entailed in the Mars Reference Mission (as above.)
The specific problem that I have with NERVA in TF’s original comments is not that I think that it is impractical, but that I think a 1990 timeline for a Mars mission with NERVA is unrealistic in the light of the history of aeroengine developments. Ajay replies with a timeline (first testing in 1959 to in service flying in 1980) that he suggests is in line with the development of a typical jet engine.
I disagree. I have already conceded what I regard as a very generous analogy. (In reality, we might want to consider the generations-long development history of the ion engines and solar sails as a baseline.)
But I am not going to walk it back now.* The state of NERVA in 1959 is not that of a preliminary engine design. It is closer to the gap between Griffith’s 1923 proposal for an axial turbojet. That said, I will point to the development history of the F135, 1986–2009 and counting. The notion that a system so revolutionary, cleared for flight testing in 1972, could have been ready for a highly demanding Mars mission in the late 1980s is unrealistic.
Again: some predictions about the future of technology do not come true. That is especially the case for highly motivated ones. This is an important lesson for policy makers to learn, because they will have highly motivated development programmes pitched to them all the time. Heretical as it may seem to argue, faced specifically with the question of what should follow Apollo, President Nixon made the right choice, and, in my opinion, chose the right scale of effort.
Now, space exploration is the greatest technological challenge has ever faced. I am inclined to pitch the importance of meeting technological challenges much higher than most advocates do. (For example, I think MacIntyre is successful in giving this effort an ethical dimension.) But importance does not equate to urgency, especially pointless urgency that will waste lives and money to precious little gain. An incremental approach is perfectly satisfactory.
*Notice how I said I wouldn’t walk it back, even though I just totally did? I should be an Internet blog commentator!
September 7, 2010 at 8:33 am
CaliFury
For those like Califury …
You mean those who agree with you? It is clear that something changed in 1960-70 that changed the direction of the country and resulted in postponing extensive manned space travel.
Between the discovery of the Americas by Europeans (10th cent) to the second discovery and invasion (15th cent) was a very long time–for an individual. However,the Moon and Mars will still be in their orbits when the yet unborn decide again to go there.
I also agree that the NERVA project could have been successful if the efforts expended on the Vietnam War had been redirected even in part. I’m not sure it would have been the best idea to have more flying fission bombs (in addition to the ones in the B52’s) but it could have been done.
The most important issue for manned space flight is the question of how can a company profit from it? If there were a way to make money from manned flight, we would be doing a great deal more of it. As it is, the profits in space flight look to be from billionaire tourists (kudos to Branson)and the occasional satellite repair. Otherwise, the effective method for profiting is similar to that used in deep water oil drilling where most of the technology is as low-tech as possible and repairs in situ are performed using remote manipulator robots.
September 7, 2010 at 10:15 am
ajay
Er, Erik, V2s actually did hit London when aimed at it.
And the baseline LESA plan included integral shielding for the SNAP reactor. Check the link.
And lunar carbon is present in 100-200ppm, not “atoms per square metre”. Low-grade carbon ore, if you like. If carbon were copper, that’d be worth mining. Check the link.
And you don’t need carbon to make rocket fuel anyway: LH2/LOX, H202 or silane/LOX would be possible candidates.
And the Reference Plan doesn’t require a 200t lifter. It was revised to require an 80t lifter. Check the link. (Your own link!) There’s certainly no reason why it should be utterly impossible to reach Mars with anything less than a 200t lifter.
And I fail to see why you think that relatively low-energy solar flare protons are such a threat – NASA doesn’t. All the astronauts would have to do is stay inside during a flare, apparently. http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2005/07oct_afraid/
Nor am I entirely clear why “shovel regolith on the roof” is such a self-evidently ridiculous and impractical idea.
Landing on Mars, frankly, is the bit I have most difficulty with: the atmosphere is wrong for every other method we’ve ever tried for manned flight, and so you have to try something complex and new and it has to work very fast indeed. The atmosphere’s shallow so there’s little room for error.
Both sides of this debate have a tendency to cling through faith to their positions, and make stuff up and ignore evidence if necessary.
September 7, 2010 at 2:31 pm
chris
The Mars Reference plan does not address the solar flare issue
Mars is both further from the Sun than the Earth or Moon are, and has some atmosphere of its own. That would, at least, reduce the amount of shielding required for a permanent or semipermanent Mars base.
You still have to protect the crew during the journey (as well as anyone who stays on the part of the ship in Mars orbit, if any), but perhaps this could be dealt with by orienting it so that less-radiation-sensitive cargo was on the sunward side?
September 7, 2010 at 6:09 pm
Erik Lund
Ajay:
I’m mistaken on the size of the Revised Reference launcher, you’re mistaken on the radiation threat outside the Earth’s magnetosphere (unlike the International Space Station). It really is, honest to gosh, a serious concern. It won’t stop a big enough spaceship, but recall that I’m arguing against the idea of a Saturn+NERVA Mars mission being pulled off by 1990, not against any Mars mission at all.
On the subject of the LESA nuclear reactor, I quote:
“A nuclear reactor based on SNAP technology would power later LESA bases, producing 100 kWe to 200 kWe, with a mass of 11,700 to 13,500 kg, including integral shielding (it would not have to be buried under regolith). Tube radiators folded within the nose fairing during flight and deployed after landing on the surface. It would have to be located one to two kilometers from the shelter to keep personnel radiation doses within acceptable levels. The reactor would have a 10,000-hour lifetime and was expected to be ready by the mid-1970’s. Landed atop a 4.72 m – 5.59 m diameter LLV stage, it would have a basic height of 2.54 m, a diameter of 6.22 m, and a height with the radiators folded of 8.89 m.
Happily, we’re both right! But, mainly, I’m right. This is another crackpot “atoms for peace” scheme.
And a pretty visionary development of anything that the SNAP programme had yet achieved, too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_for_Nuclear_Auxiliary_Power#Even_number_SNAPs_-_compact_nuclear_reactors
On the question of protecting a lunar habitat with a few inches of lunar soil spread over the roof, I can only suggest that you get a refrigerator box, layer an inch of dirt over it, get inside, put on a snow suit (or a spacesuit, if you’ve got one), and see what happens in the process.
And on an entirely tangential note, can I interest you in some penny shares in a new copper strike testing out at 68ppm?
PS: Not to end on a note of snark, look what NASA’s put up on the intertubes! http://history.nasa.gov/monograph21.pdf
September 7, 2010 at 6:11 pm
Erik Lund
Italics mine, of course.
(Hey, I did the tags right! Who’s your Daddy, HTML?)