LPSC 2007: Fly me to the Moon - again...
Last night’s session about lunar missions felt a bit like a grand PR exercise. We were treated to presentations from senior NASA figures about plans to send manned missions to the moon and set up a habitable station there - very exciting it all looked too. But this isn’t news, so I’m not sure why there is a need to keep telling everyone what a good idea it is. The meeting room was certainly not as full as it was for, say the Mars rovers session that morning, so perhaps my cynicism is bordering on being correct.
The way NASA are selling manned missions to the Moon is by saying that they are a forerunner for going to Mars. “We have to re-learn the art of exploration,” NASA’s John Connolley said. And to do that NASA is building a massive rocket – Ares V.
When asked how much the giant Ares V would cost, James Green, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division enigmatically replied, "Yes, we do have an idea of how much Ares V will cost..."
Again, trying to reach Mars via the Moon isn't news, but it raised some interesting questions in the post-presentation grilling session. What i learned was that there is no specific crew training going on yet to prepare people to live on the Moon for long periods; the ISS will be supported by private enterprises and international partners once the Shuttle programme is decommissioned in 3 year's time; and a robotic precursor programme for Moon landings is also going to be an international effort, discusssed just last week at a meeting in Kyoto. (I wonder whether "international effort" is code for anything...)
There is money up for grabs to help us get to the Moon. Green repeated his call from Monday evening, by encouraging researchers to apply for money in the LASER (Lunar Advanced Science and Exploration Research) programme. 1,2 or 3 year programmes worth $2 -3 million per year are available.
But as the presentations wore on, i looked around the room to see that most of it's inhabitatants had sloped off early...