Lunar Exploration: New Manned/unmanned Concept, allows for both Options

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

There was hot debates about wether Moon exploration is to be achieved with manned crews or with unmanned robots. I think the mixed concept exposed here can use both, or be successful even with only one if the other fails.

First, only activities directly linked to lunar ground are useful on this ground: any other would require much less energy in free space. And things like telescopes are better in free space than fixed to a dusty and vibrating ground.

At first, a fixed crewed base on the Moon is useless: once the local geology explored, appears the need to move. (the only exception would be a large drilling project, which would require a fixed crewed base. But we are still far of this. And I don't speak of mining, a pure ideological view if we consider the cost of bringing back materials on Earth)

So we need to move. In order to be able to visit a significant number of targets.

A rover.

A rover like Oppy and Spirit. But much larger, several tons like the LEM, see 20 or 30 tons.

There was on another thread on this forum (I don't remember where) an extensive discution about an automatic remote controlled Moon rover, its requirements and inconveniences. Large solar panels, which need to be cleaned. Full lab for isotope, cristallography and chemical analysis. Even gas analysis (rocks often contain gas bubbles very interesting to study). Such a lab could be miniaturized, but it would remain very complicated to operate and maintain, some said it would be even impossible to made it remote-controled and reliable enough.

Considering all this, I though of a mixed mission concept which would be interesting:
-a large automated rover
-several crewed missions using a smaller LEM to service it.


In remote control, the rover would be able to
-rove on large distances on the Moon (some even suggested to "race the sun" so that to alway have solar energy)
-take samples and make simple analysis.


Manned visits could:
-come on spots of special interest.
-take samples and manipulate them for more complete analysis.
-maintain the rover, bring new instruments or replace damaged parts.
-take back to Earth choosen samples of special interest for most complete analysis.


Concretely, the manned encounters could work that way:
-the manned landing module lands on a spot of interest, while the rover comes along to rendez-vous.
-the rover has a kind or skip or lorry, so that it can haul and carry the manned return stage. The crew can stay into this return stage, or have a larger cabin into the rover. From here they can perform EVA on the ground or for maintaining the rover.
-in this configuration, the rover can stay on the spot or proceed to other places, carying the return stage and the crew.
-when the human presence is no longer required, of if there is an accident, the return stage is fired and it goes directly to Earth (this is a bit more difficut than with the former LEMs, which had only to come back in lunar orbit).


One of the major advantage is that the manned visits don't need to bring each time an heavy luggage of rover, power resources and instruments: once landed, the rover can remain available for many missions.


So the whole thing works like the Hubble space telescope, most of the time in remote control, but with manned service missions. It just has more manned missions, and not just for maintainance. But the number of manned visits can be tailored according to needs and to budgets, from many to zero. Even in the later case the rover still has its interest.


The concept is even politics-friendly, allowing "ideological" manned presence to be really useful, and opposed conceptions (manned/unmanned) to collaborate rather than excluding each other. We can even imagine that he rover (US made, I guess...) could receive manned missions of Europe, Russia or other forms of collaborations.


It would not be interesting to rebuilt a series of the old Saturn V rockets, but I think it would not be difficult to rebuilt a series of a modernized version, using already existing components such as shuttle boosters, reservoirs or engines, together with modern electronics.

A nightmarish automation problem would be a complex automatized sample analysis lab able to stand the comparizon with a real Earth lab. Concretelly the belly of the rover would be organized around a handling "charriot" moving on rails, and able to carry samples from any instrument to any other (analysers, saws, containers...) with the proper orientation and force. The instruments would be mounted on racks, and there would be enough space for an astronaut to operate safely between the instruments, and eventually easily replace any of them, including the charriot. (rails being passive, could be considered reliable). The only real (but really bad) problem in there would be dust.

[djellison]

I think it would not be difficult to rebuilt a series of a modernized version, using already existing components such as shuttle boosters, reservoirs or engines, together with modern electronics.

That's exactly what is being planned -
http://www.freemars.org/mnfan/MarsSociety/...ce/100_2889.jpg
http://images.spaceref.com/news/2005/cev.28.l.jpg

Doug

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

The flaw with Richard's proposal is that -- thank to the very short radio-signal time delay between Earth and moon -- you can run an automated rover almost as well directly from Earth, without the stupendous additional cost of putting humans on the Moon. You just have to do things slightly more slowly.

In the case of other planets, it's a different matter. At the Mars Strategic Roadmap meeting back in January 2005, a NASA spokesman told us that any manned expedition to Mars is going to take a radically different form from what most people think -- instead of having astronauts clumbering around on the surface in spacesuits (which was difficult on the Moon, and will be even harder in Mars' higher gravity), most of the exploration efforts will be done using robots remote-controlled from the central manned Mars base, or from inside the cabins of nearby pressurized manned rovers.

And then there's the variation on this, driven by the problem that any manned Mars lander will instantly and very seriously contaminate the very biological evidence which is virtually the only possible scientific goal that could justify something as vastly expensive as a manned Mars trip -- namely, the idea that any manned Mars ship will remain in Mars orbit (or on one of the moons), running a network of sterilized robots and unmanned sample-return vehicles by radio. This idea is becoming increasingly popular, assuming that we ever get to Mars at all.

[Bob Shaw]

A manned Mars flight to Mars orbit only is both cheap and quite doable in terms of current - indeed elderly - technology. Add better propulsion, a centrifuge module, and some shovels - then set up a base on one of the moons, dig in against the radiation, and get to work. As has been discussed elsewhere on UMSF, building a manned Mars lander which can take off again is going to be a bitch - so why bother, until the transport technology has reached Berlin airlift proportions!

Bob Shaw

[Phil Stooke]

What are you doing up at this time of night, Bob?

I think Bruce is dead right about this. Many people seriously underestimate the difficulty of a human Mars landing. Approaches like Zubrin's are very seductive, but the reality will be horribly difficult. Personally, I think a base on one of the moons is by far the best approach for scientific studies of Mars during this century. I don't expect to see footsteps on Mars in my lifetime... which I'm hoping will take me into the second quarter of this century!

Phil

[Bob Shaw]

Phil:

I'm allowed up late once a month, for the full Moon.

As for the human exploration of Mars, the joy of a Martian base on one of the moons is that it more-or-less kick-starts the asteroid mining scenario, and *that* could have serious long-term implications for our whole species. The only problem, though, is that we keep agreeing with Bruce, who now will have to go forth and prosletise in his unique manner, and we'll eventually get stuck with the thing being named MarsBase Moomaw in his memory. I demand that the waste-processing works be named the Proxmire Module!

Bob Shaw

[dvandorn]

Bob, I agree entirely with *anything* that will kick-start asteroid exploration/exploitation. Asteroids are a lot easier to get to than planets (in terms of landing on them or docking to them, anyway), they contain tons and tons of raw materials, and may provide resources to us back here on Earth once some of our more popular resources (like soft iron, for which terrestrial sources are nearly depleted) get so scarce here that importing them from asteroids becomes financially feasible.

I want to see manned asteroid explorations in my lifetime, and I'd like to see *mining* companies get involved. I want to see us start to figure out how to do mining operations in microgravity!

-the other Doug

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

The flaw with Richard's proposal is that -- thank to the very short radio-signal time delay between Earth and moon -- you can run an automated rover almost as well directly from Earth, without the stupendous additional cost of putting humans on the Moon. You just have to do things slightly more slowly.

I agree with that point. But:

-"certain" politicians will anyway and whatever WANT humans on the Moon. And humans on the Moon at only a given spot are of little use. But if their presence is made ubiquitous by the help of a rover, it is much more useful.

-Yes we know to make a remote controled rover. But what about doing real sample analysis, like isotopic analysis, radioactive datation, polarized light crystals examination, X-ray diffusion? Of course we can design such a remote-controlled system on the Moon, but it would be very unreliable, with nearby all the time one of these instruments in failure. So the human presence can be useful, even in a few percent of the time, simply to maintain the system, replace an instrument, remove a stone stuck in the way or clean a camera lens. It the Hubble-style, where human presence, useless 99.9% of the time, was very useful 0.1% of the time, to better the mission (and even to save it).



By the way we could better the concept:

-one of the "instruments" in the lab could be a small sample return shuttle. There could even be several. When one one of them is full, it is fired back to Earth.

-the instrument bay in the lab has no bottom wall. The rails are close to the bottom, on the side walls, and the instruments above. The chariot presents the samples upward toward the instruments. If anything goes wrong, the sample falls on the lunar ground, and there is no further harm.

-A LEM type vehicle is rather narrow and it don't allow for a prolonged presence. We can accept this inconvenience to make the rover lighter. But we can also add to the rover a larger cabin, with an airlock able to connect to the LEM, allowing for a more prolonged stay.

-We can give the rover an overall flat form, so that it could accomodate for adding modules, at need or permanently, such as the above cabin, or the manned return stage. Starting from this simple design, we can decide later to add the cabin, or not.

One of the limitations of such a large Moon vehicule is solar power (Fusion power is still a future technology, and a RTG would not give enough power for long drives). So it needs large solar arrays. This could quickly make it large, cumbersome and unstable. The idea would be to make it drag a series of cariages, like a train.

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

Well, yes, if we're going to insist on sending humans pointlessly back to the Moon, we might as well at least greatly extend their effective range of exploration by setting down some long-range rovers to explore the surface and return samples to the human base for more detailed study. But one can also achieve the latter goal by landing a few unmanned sample-return landers on the surface and having the rovers -- after excursions of hundreds of km -- rendezvous with the SR landers on the surface and deliver a selection of samples to them for return to Earth. That is, a lunar version of exactly the same scheme now favored for Mars sample return. Indeed, NASA's scientists worked out the design for such a mission back around 1970 -- and concluded that an unmanned program consisting of two rovers, two SR landers, and a lunar polar orbiter could produce a total science return vastly bigger than that of the entire Apollo program, for just a few billion dollars.

Aviation Week also briefly mentioned back in early 1972 that NASA had toyed with the idea of designing the rover on Apollo 17 so that, after the manned mission was over, it could be driven a very long distance along the surface from Earth with an instrument package. This, however, would have very hard to implement at that stage -- and it would probably have forced elimination of most of the other science instruments on the mission. (It would probably have been easier to implement Harrison Schmitt's idea for a farside Apollo 17 landing!) I know no other details.

[dvandorn]

...Indeed, NASA's scientists worked out the design for such a mission back around 1970 -- and concluded that an unmanned program consisting of two rovers, two SR landers, and a lunar polar orbiter could produce a total science return vastly bigger than that of the entire Apollo program, for just a few billion dollars....

Yes, and NASA's scientists worked out back in the late '90s a design for a mission that would have pieces of Mars back on Earth right now, for only a half-billion dollars.

So much for studies by NASA scientists.

Seriously, unmanned sample return had not been accomplished at the time that 1970 study was done, and since then it has been done to the tune of only a few kg of rock and soil, at most. I'm not saying it couldn't have been done -- I'm saying that the odds of some mechanism becoming jammed by the ubiquitous lunar dust, ruining the mission, were high.

You can't even admit that Apollo ended up as a scientific windfall for exo-geologists, far moreso than *any* unmanned program of the time could have returned, can you, Bruce?

Frankly, this sing-song "there is and has never been a single good reason to put men into space" rant of yours is getting a little old, at least with me. And, again frankly, I don't want to live in a world where all humans are told to take a seat on the sidelines and leave the *real* exploring to the robots. That road leads to the end of *all* significant exploration, IMNSHO.

-the other Doug

[ljk4-1]

What's a space agency for?
---

The newly-released 2007 NASA budget proposal, among other events,
has touched off another debate on the relative importance of robotic
space science and human space exploration. Jeff Foust examines the
arguments and suggests NASA needs to work harder to build a
compelling case for both.

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/557/1

Lunar platinum and alcohol fuel cells
---

One problem with hydrogen fuel cells is the difficulty in obtaining
hydrogen. William White argues that an alternative, alcohol-based
fuel cells, may stimulate significant demand for platinum and hence
spur efforts to look for it on the Moon.

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/555/1

The new humans vs. robots debate: introducing the FH Prize
---

What's the problem with people who advocate using robots rather than
humans to explore space? Simple, says Michael Huang: they're human.

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/554/1

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

Aviation Week also briefly mentioned back in early 1972 that NASA had toyed with the idea of designing the rover on Apollo 17 so that, after the manned mission was over, it could be driven a very long distance along the surface from Earth with an instrument package. This, however, would have very hard to implement at that stage -- and it would probably have forced elimination of most of the other science instruments on the mission. (It would probably have been easier to implement Harrison Schmitt's idea for a farside Apollo 17 landing!) I know no other details.

An argument toward unmanned robots is that, in the Apollo era, robots were fledgeling. Today we are much better, and robots could do today things we were unable to do at that time. But "my" man-serviced rover could also punctually help robots on the ground, for instance to repair or upgrade them.

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

Thank you for your arguments exchanges, Bruce and Dvandorn Other Doug.


But, you know, I am a guy of the 21th century, nourished from nearby childhood with logic, spirituality, non-dual mind, Yin Yang dialectics... So I am neither of the two opinions "pro-manned space flight" or "con-manned spaceflight".


Your arguments, Bruce, make sense: perhaps it would have be much cheaper to launch two, see three Hubble telescopes, rather than to maintain one at the tremendous cost of the whole shuttle program. If we think a minimum, there are in space many "ideological developments" (understand: projects which MUST be pursued whatever their cost and utility) and a more rational management would allow much more science return with a much lesser cost. Furthermore the tremendous development of robots and remote control makes than humans are less and less useful in space, and they will be soon completely useless. Not to speak of the alway present risk of accidents.



But, you see, I am not insensitive to the point raised by Dvandorn, and I can resist to quote what I would have said myself:

... And, again frankly, I don't want to live in a world where all humans are told to take a seat on the sidelines and leave the *real* exploring to the robots. That road leads to the end of *all* significant
-the other Doug

Yes, there is more in space exploration than just gathering science data. It is a philosophical and aesthetic challenge: to leave our Earth craddle and see stars from another perspective! To SEE and FEEL! What do you think if 18th-19th century explorers had brough only science data from Hawaï or Tahiti? Without a word of sensual beaches, marvelous flowers and strange people? Yes there are no sensual beaches on Mars, and we shall have to be satisfied with the accound of only some traveller. But this human contact, even scarse, is very important I think.
So Kenedy was not wrong when he set the goal to an human journey to the Moon: this feat struck the imagination of every people in the world when 1 billion more science bits would not. Certainly the basic motive was futile (showing that capitalism was better than communism!!!) and today Bush's motives for man on Mars are probably not better. But the idea of pursuing a manned presence in space is very significant for us all.




So what to do? The cost of a manned visit to the Moon would really be much bigger than the cost of eliminating misery and hunger in the world? I think not. In a world where so many people are ready to give tens or hundred bucks a year for humanitarian purpose or catastrophe relief, they will readily give one or two more for a manned mission. Certainly the ratio of manned budget versus robot budget will vary widely according to superficial political considerations. But if we are in a period wher it is high, so why not to use it wisely.

To use it correctly, with both science an philosophical/aesthetic utility.

My project, I said, is politics-friendly. This means that, even once started, it can accomodate with any variation of the manned budget, from many (many servicing missions, contacts with other manned ground missions...) to zero manned presence (entirely robotic rover). It don't constrain us into a costy program we cannot abandon once started, like the ISS.

Ah, to smell the moon dust and martian wet!

[dvandorn]

I like your overall concept, Richard, and I think something like that will end up being the cornerstone of our eventual manned Mars exploration strategy.

However, in addition to the many advantages you mention (immediate no-lag control of robots, ability to explore on more human timescales, etc.), there will be a more important and useful application for a Phobos or Deimos base.

At such an orbital base will reside Mission Control for the manned landing and surface operations.

We've seen just how well lunar exploration worked when we had a Mission Control back in Houston watching out for the technical details, allowing the surface crews to concentrate on the exploring. The Apollo J missions were a testament to just how effective such a combination can be.

So, for manned Mars surface operations, you can outfit a Flight Control Center within your orbital base, and have the orbital crew serve as flight controllers for the landing and surface ops. In fact, a majority of the people staffing the orbital base would likely have more primary concerns over telepresence robot ops and over manned surface ops than they would with any of the orbital base's functions, be they maintenance, engineering or scientific.

We could fly a set of manned Mars orbital missions which start developing an infrastructure on either Deimos or Phobos within the next 25 years. By the third or fourth orbital expedition, we could permanently man the Phobos/Deimos station, switching out crews every 18 months or so. Ten years of that kind of orbital ops, and we'll be *more* than ready to tackle manned surface ops.

Unfortunately, even with this relatively slow, simple, we-have-the-technology plan, we're looking at about 2040 for the first manned surface ops... *sigh*... Be a hell of a way to celebrate my 85th birthday, though!

-the other Doug

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

Seriously, unmanned sample return had not been accomplished at the time that 1970 study was done, and since then it has been done to the tune of only a few kg of rock and soil, at most. I'm not saying it couldn't have been done -- I'm saying that the odds of some mechanism becoming jammed by the ubiquitous lunar dust, ruining the mission, were high.

You can't even admit that Apollo ended up as a scientific windfall for exo-geologists, far more so than *any* unmanned program of the time could have returned, can you, Bruce?

Frankly, this sing-song "there is and has never been a single good reason to put men into space" rant of yours is getting a little old, at least with me. And, again frankly, I don't want to live in a world where all humans are told to take a seat on the sidelines and leave the *real* exploring to the robots. That road leads to the end of *all* significant exploration, IMNSHO.

-the other Doug

In reply:

(1) The astronauts themselves had serious trouble with dust. If it had led to a spacesuit failure or an PLSS failure, we would have something a wee bit more serious than the loss of a cheply replaceable unmanned rover. (By the way, by 1970 we already had undersea robots performing very complex underwater tasks successfully. Remember the Palomares H-bomb, and the Nimbus 3 RTGs? And the Moon is a much more congenial environment for robots than the deep sea.)

(2) Just "a few kg" of rock and soil would have been more scientifically valuable overall than the half-ton the astronauts brought back, if it been collected from regions covering hundreds of km across the Moon.

(3) If you think that "real exploration" will come to an end when robots allow us to take our eyes and minds to new locations rather than the difficulty and expense of lugging our bodies along, provide some evidence rather than just saying it, please. Lewis and Clark would have jumped at the opportunity to let their fingers do the walking through the western territories; Columbus would have done likewise. But they didn't have our technology. At some point, of course, new techonologies WILL make it worthwhile to send humans into space, just as new technology eventually made it worthwhile to return to the South Pole. If we do it before then, we will simply be seriously slowing down the progress of human exploration as a whole -- something the FY 2007 NASA budget makes excruciatingly clear.

As for the "scientific windfall" of the Apollo Program, let me add a footnote to my second point by quoting Norman Horowitz on the subject in the March 1990 issue of "The Sciences" (the magazine of the National Academy of Sciences), on Bruce Murray's arguments for a manned deep-space program:

"How plausible is all this? Not very, if one considers the assumptions on which it is based. One assumption is that Apollo was good for science and that therefore a manned Mars mission will also be good. The other is tht robotic science cannot reawaken the country's interest in space; allegedly, that can only be done by astronauts. With regard to the first, it is important to remember what scientists thought of the Apollo program when it existed. They detested it. They criticized it for the same reasons the shuttle is criticized today: it consumed funds that should have been spent on space science, and its claims of being a scientific program were unjustified.

"This neglected bit of history is recounted in 'Beyond the Atmosphere: The early Years of Space Science', by Homer E. Newell, who was associate administrator of NASA until his retirement in 1973. Newell reminds us that Philip Abelson, editor of 'Science' magazine, thundered at the Apollo program, arguing that it was not worth the effort and expense and that much more could be achieved at far less cost with unmanned spacecraft. At one point Abelson polled some 200 scientists o the question and reported their overwhelming agreement with his viewpoint. Newell also recalls the criticisms of Eugene Shoemaker, a member of the U.S. Geological Survey who spent years on the Apollo project developing instruments for lunar exploration and training astronauts in field geology. But before Apollo ended, Shoemaker excoriated the program for its inattention to the needs and interests of science and for wasting opportunities to accomplish more lunar science than it did. These criticism and those of other scientists finally resulted in the inclusion of a geologist, Harrison Schmitt, on the last Apollo flight.

"Murray's second assumption -- that only human involvement can interest Americans in further explorations of Mars -- is also questionable. The cost alone of sending humans would surely cool the enthusiasm opf many citizens and congressmen who thought they favored the venture. In contrast, an advanced robotic mission would cost one or two percent as much. Further, the new technology in robotics and artificial intelligence that would be generated by such a mission would be useful for mcountless tasks at home, so the mission would help pay for itself. One of the arguments advanced by Murray and others who favor sending men to Mars is that man has explored every place within his reach -- Earth, Earth orbit, the moon -- and now it is time to go to Mars. This whimsy has become a central tenet of the new Martian dream. The truth is, however, that much of our own planet -- the bottom of the seas -- is still unexplored by man. It has always been too difficult a place for humans. Now it can be done robotically. Manned exploration of the unknown world was necessary in the 15th century, because there was no other way to do it. But in our time the only reaon to send humans on voyages for which robots are better suited is to entertain the television audience.

"The American public has repeatedly shown its interest in the question of life on Mars and the look of faraway places. Most recently that interest was demonstrated in the popular resposne to the adventures of Voyager 2. It is also seen in the eager public anticipation of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope. Given such evidence, is it unreasonable to suppose that Americans may decide they prefer robotic missions to Mars for the foreseeable future? Anything is possible, once they have reflected on the costs of a manned mission in dollars and in lives. (Judging from our Apollo and Shuttle experiences, a loss of life is probable.) Of course the public must be told why scientists think Mars is an interesting place to study: What can we learn from Mars that we cannot learn at home? Why does it seem possible that life existed on Mars in the past, and how do we propose to search for evidence of it? Why are robots, controlled by artificial intelligence (and ultimately by humans on Earth), better suited than astronauts for pursuing these questions? Let us hope that the nation will not have to waste many billions of dollars and a crew or two before it changes the direction in which it is currently headed."

You don't have to completely follow Horowitz' belief that robots will ALWAYS be better at exploring worlds beyond the Moon than humans are to agree with his main argument. The switchover to robotic exploration of the deep sea has not "ended that era of exploration"; it has tremendously accelerated it. Unless we can come up with concrete reasons to pump gargantuan amounts of money into manned deep space expeditions in the near future -- and we can't -- their only possible purpose, as Horowitz said, is as public entertainment. And the public is consistently telling the pollsters that they aren't willing to spend more than a total of "a few billion dollars" of their tax money for manned lunar and Mars expeditions -- which is to say that they don't think they're worth doing at all for entertainment value. But they MIGHT be willing to spend that same "few billion dollars" on really interesting unmanned space exploration, in which case it actually WOULD get some results.