Back in December I started bothering Rick Tumlinson to get me a copy of the book Return to the Moon for review on this blog. At the end of February, the publishers - Apogee Space Books, kindly routed a copy to me. Since the book is a collection of short essays, I had promised Rick that I would review the book essay by essay over numerous blog posts. This is the review of the first essay in the book, by Tumlinson himself, simply entitled The Moon.If there are any spelling errors in the quotations I give, then these errors are entirely mine, as I am copying from the book rather than cutting/pasting.
Rick Tumlinson is a visionary - one of those guys who sees a direction that mankind ought to be going, who then leaps to the front of the pack and tries to persuade others to follow. As founder of the Space Frontier Foundation, he has long been reaching out to an increasingly interested public, convincing them of the need, or destiny, of mankind to return to the moon to stay.
In the first essay of Return to the Moon, Tumlinson briefly covers the history of Man's first tentative forays onto this new world - and subsequent abandonment of the new frontier for more than thirty years. He then segues into President George W. Bush's January 14th, 2004 announcement of a new direction for the long-rudderless National Aeronautics and Space Administration: the Vision for Space Exploration, which entailed a return to the moon, a journey Mars, and then, to points beyond.
When NASA (and by extension, the United States and the rest of the world) abandoned the moon in the early 70's, they left a vacuum behind - not just a literal vacuum on that airless world, but also a vacuum of leadership in space. And that vacuum is being filled not by governments and gigantic corporations, but by individuals and small businesses around the world:
You see, since the mid-1970s a small but growing movement has been planting the seeds of a revolution in space. A revolution based on people opening space for themselves, by themselves and with their own money, sweat and ingenuity. I call this the space frontier movement, and since the late 1990s it has begun to show itself as a force with ever-growing momentum. They are led by a NewSpace industry of visionary people who are rolling up their sleeves and making it happen. They are inspired by the same dream and the same core goals, expressed in the writings and political actions of their fellow activists, and supported by investors, workers and volunteers who believe. This is a true revolution. It is not just about the Moon, or Mars or any single destination. It is a revolution in the way we not only see humanity, but directs how we should act in relation to our world, our future and indeed our destiny as a species.Tumlinson goes on to predict that the first commercial orbiting facilities, serviced by commercial spacecraft, will be operational in a five to six year time period.
From my perspective, the core concepts of this movement are simple. Earth is a cradle of life in a potentially hostile universe. Humanity is the caretaker of that life. It is our job to not only save this world but to do so using the resources of the space around us, and to take life to worlds now dead. To expand the human species and life forms of Earth beyond the limiting confines of this tiny world and out into the universe.
To those in the movement this is not far-out rhetorical and poetic fluff. It is what we are about. It is who we are. It is what we are doing. And now, in the last few years, we have arrived.
If Tumlinson is correct in this prediction (and based upon the work being done by Bigelow Aerospace on the likely first such facility, and by SpaceX on the transportation services with their upcoming Falcon 9 booster and Dragon manned capsule, by Scaled Composites and Virgin Galactic with their SpaceShip2 program, by the amazing work of Armadillo Aerospace, JP Aerospace, and many others, I tend to think he's going to be right), then commercial interests will beat NASA in developing some major components of the Vision for Space Exploration by several years, and at a fraction of the cost: indeed, they will do so at a profit. And in the process private companies will render NASA redundant:
... at that moment the government program is no longer needed if our goal is the opening of space to humanity. ...Faced with a Presidential challenge to take Americans to the Moon and Mars on a budget, our space agency has predictably chosen to answer what is really an economic or business management question with an engineering solution. NASA could have taken the long view, wherein the leverage of national exploration dollars are used to catalyze an industrial and transportation infrastructure that would both dramatically lower the cost of getting into space, and also allow us to stay and expand our presence over time. Instead, rather than seize the opportunity to be truly creative that is offered by trying to develop a permanent human presence on the Moon and Mars within a tight budget, NASA has combined its worst central design bureau instincts with short-sighted timidity in its goals for its plans when it arrives (if ever) at its destinations.For the remainder of his essay, Tumlinson states what can be summarized by Albert Einstein's famous quotation:
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.He offers a solution, however. If the moon can be thought of as the edge of a bubble surrounding the earth, the edge beyond which lies the Far Frontier where human beings have never travelled, then let NASA concentrate on doing those things that extend the limits of the bubble and go beyond the edge. For everything within the bubble, NASA should look to private industry to provide the desired results, and pay only on delivery of those results. This would mark a radical change for NASA: whereas up to now they have paid mega-corporations for effort (through cost-plus accounting which assures a profit to those companies whether results are achieved or not, and which encourages cost overruns - the higher the costs, the higher the guaranteed profit), henceforth they would pay for achievement.
Tumlinson's essay is really a call to arms, imploring the American people to force NASA to change the way it does business: from NASA as the be-all and end-all of American human activity in space, micromanaged to the last detail at a cost of tens or hundreds of billions of dollars, to instead being a partner and customer of private industry, expanding the bubble of human presence beyond low earth orbit (at a profit!) - this time, to stay.
Technorati Tags: Space, NASA, Moon, Mars, Books, Return to the Moon, Vision for Space Exploration
No comments:
Post a Comment