The Story of Apollo 17 and Why We Never Went Back to the Moon

http://io9.com/the-real-story-of-apollo-17-and-why-we-never-went-ba-1670503448?curator=MediaREDEF

by dnetesn • 12 years ago

115 85 12 years ago

lukifer4• 12 years ago

The blunt reality is that us meatbags are utterly ill-suited in every way to exist anywhere other than Earth (or someplace very Earth-like), and it requires a staggering amount of resources to climb uphill against that fact. I'm happy that we went to the moon (a truly mind-blowing achievement), and I hope that a human someday walks on Mars; but in an age of robotics, manned space travel is no longer the optimal way to explore or conduct research. Even its utility as a PR stunt has rapidly diminishing returns.

The good news is that the ever-growing sophistication of mechanical devices gives our species incredible "virtual fingers" to probe and interact with the cosmos, whether for research, or industry (such as asteroid mining, and perhaps someday, long-term terraforming).

And of course, I hold out hope that our cyborg/android/AI great-grandchildren will someday roam the stars in a way that we primates can only dream of.

melling5• 12 years ago

I tried to make this case back in August after the Spaceship One accident.

"Someone dying is devastating. Trying to conquer space a handful of people at a time is the slow and dangerous way of accomplishing this task. We should be building machines to explore the solar system. This can be done for a fraction of the cost, time, and it will allow him to allow us to iterate quickly.

In 100 years, more humans will live off earth if we iterate with machines, etc now than if we move slowly trying to reduce the risk in order to keep humans safe."

If you read the threads you get a lot of people who don't buy it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8540279

magicalist2• 12 years ago

And as was asked in that thread, of all the human endeavors in which entire lives are spent and sometimes lost, why focus in particular on this one?

goodcanadian4• 12 years ago

I see this attitude a lot, and I suppose that there is a certain truth to it, but it always seems incredibly short sighted to me. I am never sure how to respond except:

-humans aren't meant to fly. -humans are incredibly unsuited to cross large stretches of ocean. -humans aren't built to travel faster than a horse's pace.

bnegreve3• 12 years ago

I see an important difference. Planes, boats and cars are technology. Before we had planes, there were scientific evidences that objects heavier than air could fly (= birds). This in fact was a strong motivation for people to develop the technology.

We can go on Mars, that's for sure, it's close enough. But intergalactic space travel is harder. Not because of the limits of our technology, but because of physics. Not only there is not evidence that it's possible but there are strong theoretical results that suggest that we can't simply "travel in hyperspace" as they do in Star Wars.

You seem to believe that science can solve these problems, but today science is what's stopping us from doing it.

lukifer4• 12 years ago

To be clear, I'm not making the case that humans aren't "meant" to be in space. I'm referring to the practical obstacles to us both getting to space and surviving there for more than short periods, which is orders of magnitude more difficult thermodynamically relative to airplanes.

If someday we can create enclosed self-sustaining ecosystems in space, maybe I'll eat my words, but as it is, we have to send along huge fixed quantities of bio-support materials, using an exponential proportion of fuel (thanks to the tyranny of the Rocket Equation). It simply doesn't scale. And that's to say nothing of the prospect of decades-long interstellar journeys, or living off-planet permanently.

erydo2• 12 years ago

That's a bit of a straw man argument. Nobody's claiming that we can't; rather that to accomplish many of our goals, having a human as the physical actuator is a bad choice. Robots have the potential to perform nearly any given mission better than their human counterparts.

That was not the case during the development of ships, automobiles, or flight. The alternatives to those were "don't fly/explore/travel fast", not "have a machine do it for us". It's a different question. Increasingly even on Earth, satellites and drones explore our planet, not explorers with hiking boots. The same analogy applies to many kinds of space exploration.

On the other side of the coin: Sentiment is what drives resources to fund our exploratory efforts, and we like seeing humans do things. Additionally, the goal of colonization requires human presence nearly by definition.

The longer-term question is whether we'll change that definition, or continue to require the presence of biological humans to consider a planet effectively colonized. That may not always be the case: if a given planet can protect our collective civilization from extinction, does it matter whether that's secured by human actuators versus robotic ones?

magicalist2• 12 years ago

There is no foundation for this argument to stand on.

Besides the fact that sending humans vs sending robots isn't a zero sum game, we're also sending robots out with decreasing frequency as well. "We should be happy to just send robots" would be great if we were actually sending robots. Here's hoping China and India pick up the mantle when Oppy and Curiosity finally shut down, I guess.

The reality is also that we don't learn much science with practical benefits for the hundreds of millions to billions of dollars we spend on these probes. Of course, we also get wildly poor returns on investment for the hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars we spend (in the US) on defense and health care. What we've decided is that it's worth it to spend a small amount of our money on the exploration of our universe, that discovery can be its own reward (and if there's a small chance in practical payoffs down the line, even better). We don't need to see what the surface of Pluto looks like, but I'm pretty excited to find out about it. Dismiss that as PR, but apply it equally.

This argument functions similarly to the one demanding we solve all the problems on earth before we start spending money on space. It assumes a way of allocating funds that doesn't match reality and demands unrealistic requirements not imposed on the favored approach.

rgbrenner• 12 years ago

the fact that sending humans vs sending robots isn't a zero sum game

only if we pretend there's infinite money available. if sending a single human being to mars/moon is so expensive that NASA isn't capable of doing anything else.. then it is a zero-sum game.

The reality is also that we don't learn much science with practical benefits for the hundreds of millions to billions of dollars we spend on these probes.

It's unfair to compare one probe against sending a human. The moon landing cost $150 billion. Is a human more valuable than 100 or 500 of these probes?

lukifer4• 12 years ago

Besides the fact that sending humans vs sending robots isn't a zero sum game

This is a good point. I'm certainly not advocating against humans going to space; I just think sending robots is a vastly better long-term ROI. And whether it's a hundred years away or ten thousand, someday a form of intelligent life will exist on this planet that is much better equipped (if not actively designed) to seek its destiny in the stars.

a8da6b0c91d4• 12 years ago

What would you suggest as a manned mission that isn't merely an expensive stunt?

As I understand it an Apollo style mission to Mars or Mercury is presently more like an early death sentence to cancer due to radiation exposure.

As best I understand the situation we really need to pull off a five year Biosphere 2 style mission here on earth in a hermetically sealed chamber deep underground. That is the current next step. But nobody has really tried.

WalterBright• 12 years ago

We should be sending probes packed with extremophile bacteria to Mars and hope something takes hold.

xenophonf2• 12 years ago

As ever I find myself inspired by Kerbal Space Program. I hate flying my kerbals anywhere, because irrationally I don't want them to die horrible flaming explosive deaths due to some error or miscalculation on my part. Instead I nearly always send probes - it's definitely cheaper, and it's totally guilt-free in the face of my almost-certain screw-ups.

That said, there's something deeply satisfying about flying my little green men somewhere, landing, and having a good walkabout. It isn't at all rational. I think real life is the same. There are plenty of places on Earth inimical to human life---Everest's death zone springs immediately to mind---and yet people travel to these places purely out of a sense of adventure. So too with space. "Because it's there" is a damn fine reason to go to the stars.

teddyh• 12 years ago

“If scientific knowledge was all we were after, then the Federation would have built a fleet of probes, not starships. Exploration is about seeing things with your own eyes.”

— Captain Kathryn Janeway, One Small Step, Star Trek Voyager Season 6, Episode 8

bane2• 12 years ago

manned space travel is no longer the optimal way to explore or conduct research

With one exception, research into how people can travel in space.

In my mind, that research goal trumps every single other possible research target. Getting our species off this rock and spread out like so many seeds is the single most critical long-term goal for all humanity. No amount of soil surveys or robot comet missions will achieve this. No number of star maps, extra-solar planets, or infrared skycharts will actually get our species up and out.

Imagine all the science that Opportunity has performed. Now think what six astronauts with shovels and a mobile lab tent on Mars could do in the same time. Would it require more resources? Sure, I require more resources than my electronic keyboard here on Earth. But I'm more important.

Imerso• 12 years ago

You can do the same experiments inside the gravity well of Earth, without the extra cost of sending humans and all the survival equipment required.

With all the money that you save you can experiment with humans close to Earth and use the money you save to send many robots to do the actual exploration, which will survive longer than humans and do much more work.

Of course you won't get the same publicity. So maybe just for that it's better to send humans, but not for scientific reasons.

pi-err• 12 years ago

I was as excited to see Phillae land on a comet as I would have been if it were a human. It feels irresistible to me that robots are human's presence outside Earth. We're sharing the same network.

Still I'm not surprised if a permanent Moon base replaces ISS in the future. At that point, doesn't it make more sense to build on solid ground rather than in a low-orbit mecano bound to burn in the atmosphere?

Pretty sure as well that we are all underestimating leisure and entertainment as a driver of future space exploration. This is the true Jurassic Park. Air travel didn't become routine for science but thanks to tourists.

marcosdumay• 12 years ago

To be fair, air travel become routine because of a couple of wars.

I don't see people spending that much on leisure. People spend on food and energy, then tools they need for work. If any money (or credit) remains, then they spend on anything else.

atlantic• 12 years ago

Agreed. And this in turn implies that the best way to advance space exploration is not by doing space exploration, but by investing in AI development. When AIs become smart and autonomous enough, then money spent on actual space travel will again be well spent.

sillysaurus32• 12 years ago

I've been trying to get this article some attention on HN, but it's fallen flat the three or so times I've submitted it. "The case for nuclear propulsion for spacecraft (2003)": http://www.spacedaily.com/news/nuclearspace-03h.html

The article's points are (a) there were some realistic strides towards long-term sustainable space exploration before the Apollo project, (b) the Apollo project was directly responsible for canceling funding towards these long-term projects, and (c) the Apollo project was nothing more than a machine to convert a huge quantity of cash into a one-time use spacecar to stick a pole in the moon.

It was particularly surprising to realize that there are, in fact, feasible ideas for real space exploration. Humanity just has to remember and decide to pursue it.

jes• 12 years ago

With respect, the comment that "the Apollo project was nothing more than a machine to convert a huge quantity of cash into a one-time use space-car to stick a pole in the moon" seems to drop an incredible amount of context.

I think the Apollo project (and Mercury, and Gemini, the programs which preceded Apollo) resulted in a massive amount of learning, technology development, progress in manufacturing know-how, etc.

Your thoughts?

sillysaurus32• 12 years ago

How do you feel about the idea that microcontrollers would have been invented anyway, even if Silicon Valley hadn't established the industry? It's that kind of situation. The learning, technology development, and manufacturing know-how may still have came. We'll never know for certain, and I'm not trying to imply that the Apollo project did nothing for any of those things, but it was largely a political decision to cancel these long-term space exploration projects in favor of the US being able to thumb their nose at the Russians for a bit. (As opposed to those projects being canceled for scientific reasons like feasibility.)

ctdonath• 12 years ago

Any form of adventure first need perform the "stick a pole somewhere" process (if returning home is expected). At the time, just getting there is an extraordinary act, requiring a supreme effort leveraging advanced technology and taking great risks. Several of the allegedly first discoveries of America (Lief Erikson, Christopher Columbus, others) were content to arrive, take a brief look 'round, and return home. Topping Mt. Everest involved little more than planting a flag and heading back down. Apollo, indeed, planted a pole - and even took time to drive around a little before heading back with a few rocks.

Early on, just getting there and coming back intact is hard enough. Get that process down first, then see what else can be done.

Methinks the real hindrance to further manned space exploration was: after great effort, we stood someone on a dead rock. Yeah, sorta interesting, but not really compelling; no really dramatic scenery, no minerals worth the cost of mining, too exhausting to think (after that huge effort) of the place of a jumping-off point for an orders-of-magnitude harder effort to go somewhere else not much more interesting when you actually get there. Fascinating, yes, but few people want to contribute vast sums, if not their very lives, to a long boring trip in a can (even with a Morale Officer) to a giant rock quarry. We're not talking the planet Pandora or some such here.

And per another poster's detailed list: it's very, very expensive to send a meatbag somewhere.

lifeisstillgood• 12 years ago

Why, in good old Keynesian terms, did spending 4 % of the total budget on what could be described as a New Deal for engineering and scientists, was there supposedly so little ROI? That seems to be the argument from this article - we did not go back because it was too expensive. But if it brought more benefits than it cost, surely the expense is worth it?

I would have assumed economists would be all over NASA's accounts and the impact on the national debt?

It just seems a great natural experiment for spending as an economic influencer.

a8da6b0c91d4• 12 years ago

The telos of America is not ROI. The conquest of the continent was not really about monetary returns. You should think of space as a new manifest destiny.

Spooky23• 12 years ago

That's not really true. Many people and our nation became very rich by conquering the continent. What's the upside on the moon?

omot• 12 years ago

It's easy we never got to the moon in the first place.

arikrak• 12 years ago

It was a great achievement to send humans to the moon, but I don't really see the point in going again. Or in sending humans to Mars. It won't be a place where people can live. No matter what happens to Earth, there will still be areas on it (or in it) that are more habitable to life than anywhere else in the solar system (and beyond). We could spend more time exploring the inside of Earth (and maybe creating small colonies there) than on the moon or mars.

visakanv• 12 years ago

We should go to Mars for the same reason we should climb Everest- because it is there. Neil Tyson has spoken very eloquently about this. Having something to strive for inspires people. It inspires children to become scientists, engineers, people who do something that nobody has ever done before, go somewhere that nobody has gone before. And that has untold, unimaginable benefits for all of humankind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUbOjZWjTLU

avmich3• 12 years ago

If both robotics and human spaceflight will become cheap enough, even the fact that, say, robotic flights are fixed times cheaper won't matter. You don't always refuse to get a cup of coffee just because it's several times more expensive than some alternatives. The absolute difference is small enough for you to just ignore the fixed relative difference.

avmich3• 12 years ago

I don't believe we have a solution to human-vs.-machine question, which is better to go to space. On human side, many times both opponents and proponents of space robotics pointer out that for big exploration programs humans become more economical - as you still can't reproduce human abilities in space with robotics while spending the same resources, if you have big enough goals.

Humans have other advantages too. Majority of people in modern NASA workforce say that they become interested in space when watching human space programs. So far no robotic achievements have psychological impact equal to humans in space. Next, there is eternal "explorational" argument - you don't really "get" space into your domain until you're actually maintain physical presence in it. Unless you at least fly on LEO, you aren't in space. Until you fly to the Moon, you don't "use" it. Etc.

Next, while robotics is advancing with leaps and bounds, human spaceflight doesn't stand still. In 1990-s Dan Goldin, NASA administrator, ordered an evaluation of some options of going back to the Moon. The cheapest was using existing rockets - less than 30 tonns on LEO per launch - and the program was for less than a billion dollars. Note that a bunch of technologies used today in manned spaceflight are vastly superior to those used during Project Apollo.

Getting to orbit becomes cheaper and safer - SpaceX is another evidence to that, but it's not at the end of technical possibilities. When you get spaceflight cheap enough, there is no stop for curious individuals to go to the Moon in person. Same for Mars - at least.

What technologies will be employed for traveling in space - that's another matter. With cheaper and cheaper energy it will progressively make sense to make more and more safe - even if heavier - human spacecrafts. The more infrastructure in space we have - be it LEO stations, fuel depots on orbit, Moon-based fuel production, Mars navigational network etc - the easier it will be to launch both robots and humans. It's hard for me to see why we won't want to go.

ars2• 12 years ago

We didn't go back to the moon for the simple reason that there is nothing there for a human.

Mars is the same way, and there is little reason to send a human there - there's just nothing there for a human to do.

vorg2• 12 years ago

Some media company (Google, Alibaba?) might fill up the sunny side of the Moon with a grid of photovoltaic cells 1 kilometer apart, then charge money to flash advertisements back at the Earth. They'd make a killing during solar eclipses, it would be like the Superbowl!

logfromblammo3• 12 years ago

You would also need batteries that can charge for two weeks of lunar day, and then last for the two weeks of lunar night. And you would need at least 15 million of them at that scale.

If you could squash each unit down to just 1 kg and reduce your cost to only $1M per kg to the lunar surface, the whole project would only cost $15 trillion, which is only about a sixth of the entire global economy.

It would probably be cheaper to erect a giant space-screen that selectively redirects incident sunlight through optical fibers in a nearer Earth orbit. Rather than turn the Moon into a billboard, build an orbiting billboard that is the same apparent size as the Moon. Or bigger. Really spoil the view.

vorg2• 12 years ago

Batteries on the moon could be used incrementally, sending only 100 up at first in a 10 x 10 grid, and flashing back crude pictures or ideograms, even basic movies of McDonalds burgers, so there's free cash flow early on. An orbiting billboard, however, needs to be built all at once before it's useful, so it's a bigger upfront investment. Moon batteries can also be placed strategically to blend in with the topographical features already there, so instead of a Man in the Moon, we see a Man in the Moon drinking a can of Coke.

LunaSea• 12 years ago

Sadly, the planets around us are pretty boring. There's no point really to go there.

rootbear• 12 years ago

Lots of interesting discussion here about space exploration, but I'd like to add a personal note. I grew up in Huntsville, Alabama, during the 60s, NASA's glory years. Huntsville is home to Marshall Space Flight Center, where my father, an electrical engineer, worked as a contractor, with Chrysler. He worked on parts of the Saturn V and, I think, Gemini. When the Apollo program shut down and NASA had to retrench, he was laid off at about age 50, along with many other scientists and engineers. Huntsville imploded. Some of the unemployed started high-tech companies, some found jobs elsewhere, many left aerospace entirely. Chrysler moved some operations there, but nothing was available for my father. Fortunately, he heard through a friend of a job at Goddard Space Flight Center, in Maryland. He got the job and we moved, taking a loss on the house we'd owned for twelve years. He spent the last 17 years of his career at Goddard. Aside from the bigger issues of Humanity's Destiny in Space, the end of Apollo had significant human costs and changed many lives, including mine. I work at Goddard now and have spent over twenty years of my career here. That probably wouldn't have happened had we not moved to Maryland in 1971, when Apollo ended.

The Story of Apollo 17 and Why We Never Went Back to the Moon

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