space flight Archives - The Spacewriter's Ramblings

The launch of Apollo 11 to the Moon on July 16, 1969, carrying three astronauts: Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins. Courtesy NASA.

Fifty years is a long time in space flight terms, although a very short time in the span of human history. But, a half-century ago this week, humans changed history in a few short minutes. They blasted off to land on the Moon. That seems like ancient history to the people born since that time. To those of us who watched it happen (no matter what our age at the time), it’s like it happened just a few years ago. It is very hard to believe that 50 years have gone by since that momentous week.

Most of us expected that we’d be much further along in space missions by now, although none of us could have predicted the current state of the world’s space programs from that vantage point so long ago. There are more than 75 countries with the capability of sending satellites to space, but only a handful can send humans. That will change, of course. But, our future in space — as imagined from that date in the 1960s — is not quite what we hoped it would be.

Spinoffs from the Apollo Missions

The run-up to the Apollo landings on the Moon required the Gemini missions, plus the precursor Apollo missions. But, it also required a lot of technological development. I’m not talking about the usual spinoff citations such as Teflon and so on. Those happened and we’re better for most of them.

To get to the Moon, there are whole fields of technological expertise and manufacture that didn’t exist before John F. Kennedy pointed us there. In addition, going to the Moon required a huge ramp-up in science education. There simply weren’t enough scientists and engineers to do the work that needed to be done.

Last week I was invited to appear on a radio show to talk about the buildup to Apollo. (The show didn’t happen for technical reasons at their end.) I prepared a lot of background material to discuss. One of the aspects that I really didn’t think too much about WAS that ramp-up in education. I think that’s, in part, because I was in the middle of it. My generation of kids who started school in the 60s benefitted from this vastly improved science education. That was thanks to the space program in the U.S. I wrote about that in my book called Space Exploration (see the link to the left).

In it, I wrote:

“During the Space Race, it was clear that more science and technical education was needed as the countries ramped up to meet the personnel needs of a space infrastructure that was being built almost overnight. In the U.S., the government passed the National Defense Education Act (NDEA), in 1958. Not only was it a response to Sputnik, but it became very clear the nation – which already had a very good educational system — needed to train even more scientists and technical experts than it already had. So, money flowed to school districts for curriculum upgrades and science teachers, to colleges for advanced courses of study. The National Science Foundation (NSF) was granted a half billion dollars over twenty years for math and science curriculum upgrades and teacher development.”

Education and Domes

One of the more interesting things that I found out in my research for the book is that the space race spurred the building of large numbers of planetarium facilities in the U.S. There was a big jump in the numbers of facilities built, particularly in the U.S. It starts in the early 60s and topped out around 1973 — with installations slowing down after that. This coincides fairly well with the rise of space development through the Gemini and Apollo programs.

We also saw planetariums play a part early in the space race. Places such as Morehead Planetarium in North Carolina and the Griffith Observatory in the US hosted astronauts for training. There were similar programs for cosmonauts at the Moscow Planetarium in the then Soviet Union.

Of course, planetarium facilities existed before the race. They continue to be built (albeit at a much slower pace than during those years). And, they remain in the public mind as places to learn the sky and about the space programs, which is a function they still serve today.

We Got to the Moon, Then What?

In the years after the successful Moon landings, for a variety of reasons, the Moon wasn’t quite such an inviting target for human exploration. Sure, we’ve been sending very successful robotic landers and orbiters and that continues today. But, going BACK to the Moon for good hasn’t been quite the draw it used to have. That will also change, of course. Not because someone in the U.S. White House (who can’t tell the difference between the Moon and Mars) said so. It’s bigger than that. It’s because the place is an interesting scientific (and very likely political) target. That’s what I’ve been talking about in my previous entries.

Obviously, I think we need to put some focus on lunar missions. It’s still the next logical step in outward exploration. We can quibble about whether a fabulously expensive lunar gateway should be part of the equation. In the end, just getting to the Moon is important. We can use it for its resources and scientific revelations, and as a steppingstone “out” to the rest of the solar system.

Mars and Beyond?

As for whether we SHOULD go to Mars, that has been a long-term goal since the earliest days of the space race. Wernher von Braun cited it as a goal. I took part in studies in the 1980s that looked at possible scenarios for Mars missions. Some of them included many of the robotic precursors we see today.

So, yes, I think we should go. We need to do it in a measured way, learn to live and work in space near Earth where we can make rescues if we need to during the early phases, and then when the tech is workable and we know we can subject humans to these missions, send them along. I have long said that the first generation of Mars explorers is among us — around the world. If we’re going to send them, we owe it to them to do good planning for safe, effective missions.

Celebrate Apollo

While what we are seeing today in terms of space exploration may not be what people expected when Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins made their journey 50 years ago this week, it’s still that step outwards. The questions we will want to answer for ourselves as time goes by are many and varied. The biggest one is, “Will we succeed in taking the big steps for humanity that Armstrong spoke of when he set foot on the lunar surface?”

I’m hoping we will, but there’s a LOT of work to be done. Science education is under attack, as its science itself, in the U.S. NASA is constantly underfunded. It is criticized for nearly everything it does, good or bad. Some complain it’s just a jobs program for wealthy defense and aerospace contractors. Others feel that it’s not doing enough to engage MORE people in the workforce. The list goes on and on. Yet, NASA still remains a good return on investment, and is one of the few programs that should remain in place. Perhaps it needs to change somewhat with the times, but that’s a subject for another discussion.

The world we work in today is not the world of the 1960s, and the incentives for space exploration are somewhat different. The cost of space flight is high, both in terms of money and human risk. Even the private space industry feels constrained by these factors. In the case of safety, it should be. Can we beat these (and other) challenges? Of course. If we want to. That’s the operative idea.

Take some time this week to celebrate the accomplishments of the 1960s space efforts. They put us on an interesting path. It’s worthy of your attention.

This December 2017 false-color image of KBO 2012 HE85 is, for now, one of the farthest from Earth ever captured by a spacecraft. Courtesy: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

Between outer solar system exploration and the flight of the Tesla, space news has been interesting this week. There was another green light signal from the New Horizons mission on Monday as the spacecraft gets ever closer to its next target 2014 MU69. As of Valentine’s Day, it was 400 million kilometers away from this little world. It will fly by the target on December 31, 2018, a special kind of planetary science New Year’s celebration.

A few days earlier, the NH team released images of two Kuiper Belt objects that it spotted on its way to 2014 MU069. They were taken from a point farther out than any other spacecraft or telescope has ever imaged the universe from, and represent a big milestone for discovery in the Kuiper Belt. They also extend our view of this distant region, adding to the excitement of exploration “out there”.

The Flight of Tesla and Starman:

Chattering Classes Chatter

So, anybody who reads social media or pays attention to TV or newspapers can’t have missed the launch of the Falcon Heavy last week with a dummy payload made up of a … well, a dummy in a spacesuit riding Elon Musk’s personal Tesla Roadster out to near the orbit of Mars. I found it to be tremendously cool and loved the salute to David Bowie, Isaac Asimov, Douglas Adams, and other references to modern-day culture. It captured people’s imaginations and excitement.

The whole venture also seems to have stirred up a wasp’s nest of conflicting commentary. Most people recognized the reasoning behind sending the Tesla to space: it was a test launch of an untried rocket with a test payload. It’s always a good idea to use a “throwaway” payload when testing an untried rocket. Most of the time, these are concrete or metal blocks to simulate weight and mass. That’s pretty much what the Tesla was, but with a lot more flair than simply a giant blob of “stuff”.

What It Really Means?

In the days since the launch, the “punditocracy” seems to have taken the whole thing to heart. I’ve been reading some amazing (and sometimes very head-scratching) analyses of the launch. They probe the meanings behind sending the car, the dummy, the references to Bowie, and so on. After reading some of these articles, I wanted to yell, “Sometime’s a launch is just a launch!”

Some commentary misses the mark because the writers simply didn’t realize it was a test launch. Other analyses relate it to pursuit of social justice, or condemn it as a boost to Elon’s ego, and there were many other clearly subjective interpretations. The articles I enjoyed the most were the ones that recognized the meaning of this test launch and what it says about humanity’s desire to travel to space.

I get that not everyone follows space as closely as some of us do. So, it’s understandable that some writers might not have caught the hint that this was a TEST launch and there are certain things you don’t do when launching a big booster for the first time. To put it clearly, nobody in their right mind would send up a multimillion-dollar satellite or experiment on a test rocket and risk losing it. I did hear that there were informal offers made to the DOD and NASA, inviting payloads, but understandably, they declined to risk a payload on the test launch of the Falcon Heavy.

Not Every Idea Flies Well

One writer suggested that Elon Musk could have sent up student experiments instead of “wasting” the launch on a car. Well, I suppose he could have. Anything’s possible. But, even that suggestion doesn’t make sense for the same reason it didn’t for the Air Force or NASA. Who wants to risk the payload? Somehow, I got the feeling that the writer didn’t think it would matter to the kids if their nanosat got blasted to smithereens during a failed launch. After all, it’s just an educational payload, right?

Think about that. It’s a lousy message to send: that some payloads aren’t as important, so let’s risk ’em. Elon wasn’t willing to risk somebody else’s hard work if THEY didn’t want to. And so, the selection of the Tesla Roadster with cool cultural references was a good one. It captured people’s hearts and minds. Sure, there’s a lot of nattering about how it does or doesn’t represent the best of human thinking, or that it’s an ego boost. Some see it as an art piece or a philosophical statement. Still other commentary casts it as a stark representation of capitalism. I saw one article that turned it into an indictment of the patriarchy. Another blasted it as corporate thinking. Yet another cast it as a thoughtful commentary on the human condition.

All that’s fine. Everybody gets to think about it what they want. But, let’s be realistic about the one reason we KNOW it was sent: as a dummy payload. That was its function. As a test. All the other reasons flow from or complement that one. Now, we move on to other rockets and other launches. It’s all good.

The Spacewriter's Ramblings

Category Archives: space flight

On the Way to the Moon