NASA, private industry pact best path to moon
Kenneth Hicks
What would you envision as the next spacecraft that NASA plans to land on the moon?
It would be easy enough to copy the plans from when astronauts first set foot on the moon 50 years ago. However, technology has advanced dramatically since then, and a redesign makes sense.
To put this in context, think about how ships
crossing the Atlantic Ocean changed from the first trip by Columbus to the time of the Pilgrims. The Santa Maria was just 58 feet long, and could carry about 100 tons of cargo. By contrast, the Mayflower was about 100 feet in length and could carry twice the cargo. Navigation tools also improved between those two historic events. The telescope hadn’t even been invented when Columbus crossed the Atlantic!
The next trip to send Americans to the moon is scheduled for 2024, just five years from now. I don’t think the designs for the moon lander are final, and NASA just announced plans to partner with private industry to test novel ideas.
For example, they are thinking of having a reusable moon lander that could be refueled, perhaps using propellant (hydrogen and oxygen) made from water ice deposits known to exist at the moon’s poles. Solar power could be used to produce the electricity to split apart H2O, giving the raw materials of rocket fuel.
Building such a refueling station on the moon would not be easy, and certainly one would be foolish to depend on having 100% success the first time. But think of the leap in technology and infrastructure to have this kind of system when going back to the moon.
New materials, faster computers and numerous other technologies could make trips to the moon cheaper and perhaps more reliable than the Apollo missions. Partnering with industry is a way to bring new ideas to the table.
NASA has always been ultra-conservative in designing manned space flight. That makes sense: With human lives at stake, it’s better to use systems that have known reliability and that won’t bring surprises.
For those who remember the Challenger space shuttle, which blew up shortly after launch in 1986, this delayed the manned space program by many years. So, any new technologies would need to be fully vetted, or NASA might revert back to older, known systems.
But without the conservative approach, private industry might get too ambitious, and not reach the reliability needed for human space transport. Again, that’s why a partnership with NASA is the way to go.
Working together, we can expect that industry and NASA will come up with an innovative and reliable design for the next moon landing. I look forward to reading (and writing) more about this in the near future.
Kenneth Hicks is a professor of physics and astronomy at Ohio University in Athens. hicks@ohio.edu