LRO development Options

[jamescanvin]

Just read this interesting article about LRO

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/28apr_lro.htm

"This is the first in a string of missions," says Gordon Chin, project scientist for LRO at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "More robots will follow, about one per year, leading up to manned flight" no later than 2020."

One per Year? Is this just wishful thinking or have any tentitve plans been mentioned for follow up missions after LRO? If the next one is going to be 2009/10 then I guess some desisions about it will have to be made fairly soon.

James

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

Judging from what I've read:

(1) There will indeed be an Announcement of Opportunity put out for the proposed 2009-10 lunar lander later this year.

(2) Judging from some of the background documents for the first meeting of the Lunar Strategic Roadmap Committee ( http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/apio/pdf/moo...rief_taylor.pdf ), it has been decided pretty firmly that this lander will investigate southern polar ice. The chief remaining question seems to be how ambitious it should be.

[JRehling]

Judging from what I've read:

(1)  There will indeed be an Announcement of Opportunity put out for the proposed 2009-10 lunar lander later this year.

(2)  Judging from some of the background documents for the first meeting of the Lunar Strategic Roadmap Committee (  http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/apio/pdf/moo...rief_taylor.pdf ), it has been decided pretty firmly that this lander will investigate southern polar ice.  The chief remaining question seems to be how ambitious it should be.

The document has a couple of key sentences that amount to the "original sin" of bad thinking upon which a bad megaprogram can be based. The first key question the document poses is "What will humans do on the Moon when they get there?" What an astonishing question! They will play chess, perhaps? Make quilts? It is 100% bass-ackwards to assume that you need to send humans to the Moon, then wonder what they will do when they get there! If you're not starting with a function that requires human presence on the Moon, and only then ask if it's worth putting humans there to carry that function out, then you've committed to poor planning.
Then, there is the related "assumption" that a sustained human presence on the Moon is essential to a dynamic program of robotic human exploration of the solar system. Why make an assumption of this kind rather than try to prove such a costly principle? How does a Neptune orbiter depend upon humans on the Moon? Will it pause there for a 248,000-mile checkup before continuing its cruise for the remaining 29 AU?
Some of the justifications for this nonsense are the ISS hobgoblins reincarnated, goals that amount to "learning how" to do such and such. Of course, many of the features of a human mission to Mars could be learned in submarines, if learning were the goal. Others are not learned from a lunar mission at all. (Seeing as how "living off the land" would be very different in the two places; the distance from Earth; even the local gravity is very different.) To gain experience, through lunar exploration, in 4 out of 6 technological challenges re: Mars missions; instead of 2 out of 6 that might benefit from a submarine mission requires an exceptional justification for the added expense.
At the back of which, there has yet to be an answer to the showstopper behind human exploration of Mars, which is how the risk of backwards contamination can be put to risk. With this thread left dangling, this entire tens-of-billions enterprise comes unraveled, and looks to be a way to spend an enormous amount of money pursuing a programatic dead end. Some nice lunar, and perhaps martian, science will come along the way, and sometime circa 2025, a new NASA Administrator will be able to look back on the stalled and failed and overbudget Bush plan, shake his head kindly, and promise a new satchel of bunk for the next 15 years' plan.

If there is truly a purpose for mankind that depends upon human lunar missions in the short run, it must be far more elaborate than furthering martian science. This entire program consists of a blindfolded person taking a stick and aiming for a pinata that is behind him and 5,000 miles away.