[FPSPACE] FW: Centauri Dreams - Reflections on Space Policy in Washington

[LARRY KLAES]

>From: Centauri Dreams <gilster at mindspring.com>
>Reply-To: Centauri Dreams <gilster at mindspring.com>
>Subject: Centauri Dreams
>Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2007 14:05:22 -0600 (CST)
>
>Centauri Dreams
>
>///////////////////////////////////////////

>Reflections on Space Policy in Washington
>
>Posted: 15 Nov 2007 09:37 AM CST

>http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=1580
>
>
>About the only thing that went wrong on my Washington DC trip (noted 
>earlier here) was having to fight a persistent head cold and trying to 
>avoid shaking hands with our eminent panelists so as not to contaminate 
>them (I want these guys healthy, and working!). But the fates smiled 
>Wednesday morning when I moderated The Future of the Vision for Space 
>Exploration, my voice back from what had been near-laryngitis the evening 
>before, and we had a fascinating discussion in the Rayburn House Office 
>Building on Capitol Hill talking about where space exploration is going and 
>what policy decisions loom large at the moment.
>
>Louis Friedman, executive director of The Planetary Society, presented a 
>look at current projects to explore the Solar System, many of which are 
>somewhat off our radar, including Indian lunar missions like Chandrayaan-1 
>and the Chinese lunar orbiter Change I (images expected by the end of this 
>month). Japans space activities beyond the ongoing Hayabusa asteroid return 
>mission also drew attention recently with the Kaguya spacecraft, orbiting 
>Luna since mid-October. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is 
>sending back high-definition videos that should, as Friedman noted, be in 
>their own way as spectacular as the first Apollo 8 images we saw of a newly 
>risen Earth.
>
>What Steven Squyres wouldnt do with high-definition equipment on his Mars 
>rovers! Squyres, principal investigator for the science payload on the Mars 
>Exploration Rover Project, showed the kind of unforgettable imagery weve 
>almost come to take for granted of the Red Planets battered surface. At 
>least, we start to take it for granted until we stop and think the matter 
>through. I can remember, as a graduate student, pacing the floor waiting 
>for that first TV image from Viking to come through (the one where they 
>thought they were looking at a blue sky, but subsequently had to re-program 
>to derive the now familiar salmon-colored atmosphere). So I found myself, 
>as others in the room doubtless did, becoming energized about Mars through 
>Squyres images all over again.
>
>I think Steven Squyres is a man who has found the exact niche he wanted in 
>life. He is so enthusiastic about what he does, even irrepressible, that 
>when he speaks of addressing an audience of 20,000 students in Detroit (at 
>Ford Field, where the Lions play), you realize how much good he is doing 
>not just as planetary scientist but educator extraordinaire. And he told me 
>that having that constant stream of new Mars imagery coming in each and 
>every day is just what he and other mission planners had in mind. No 
>sequestering of data that would only reach the public in dribbles much 
>later. Instead, a communications-age feast of imagery that gets the 
>attention of even the least space-minded.
>
>Edward Belbruno is going to be doing an interview with me that Ill publish 
>on Centauri Dreams in installments (well schedule that soon), but for now 
>Ill note how interesting is the synergy between what Dr. Belbruno does with 
>chaotic orbits (applying chaos theory to spacecraft trajectories) and our 
>plans for moving further into the Solar System. This is the man who got the 
>Japanese Hiten spacecraft to the Moon after the failure of the Hagoromo 
>mission, with which all communications had been lost. Hiten was never 
>intended to go to the Moon but was designed solely as a communications 
>relay for Hagoromo. With scant fuel, only a Belbruno-style low fuel route 
>would turn Hiten into a lunar voyager.
>
>The subsequent success brought Belbrunos work front and center for future 
>mission concepts. You may recall that ESAs lunar mission SMART-1 used 
>similar orbital strategies. And one thing Belbruno brought up in the panel 
>discussion was that as we move deeper into space, low-energy orbits could 
>play a role in providing the needed supplies. You wouldnt want to put a 
>human crew on a vehicle that took years to reach a destination like the 
>Moon, but if youre talking about sending supplies to stock an initial base  
>or re-supply to a manned outpost on the Moon or Mars  such orbits make 
>immediate sense. What Belbruno described sounded to me like a 
>self-sustaining space-based infrastructure, rather than a series of 
>one-shot missions that would never be repeated.
>
>More on all this when I interview Dr. Belbruno for these pages, and I also 
>have a similar interview lined up with Gregory Matloff, whose talk on solar 
>sail technologies ran through the basics and touched on more exotic uses, 
>such as solar sail methods to assist in asteroid deflection. I thought Dr. 
>Matloff had the best line of the session when he opined in our panel 
>discussion that anyone voting not to fund Arecibos planetary radar should 
>be arraigned before the World Court in The Hague for crimes against 
>humanity. Thats how strongly some of us feel about losing Arecibos watchdog 
>capabilities to help us find potentially dangerous asteroids, and it was 
>good to hear this being said on Capitol Hill.
>
>For many people (though probably not regular Centauri Dreams readers), 
>solar sails are purely theoretical constructs, so I was glad to hear 
>Matloff explaining the history of the concept, dating back to 1974, when 
>the Mariner 10s mission to Mercury used the radiation pressure from solar 
>photons for attitude control. That ad hoc demonstration said all that 
>needed to be said about the utility of the momentum imparted by photons, 
>and later missions, like the Russian Znamya reflectors or the 1996 thin 
>film antenna unfurled from the Space Shuttle, kept the concept in play (the 
>Znamya missions, to be sure, had their share of problems).
>
>Louis Friedman, of course, had put huge amounts of time and effort into 
>COSMOS-1, which would have been the first sail to go fully operational in 
>space, but that 2005 launch failure was but a temporary setback. The 
>Japanese had already demonstrated sail deployment in 2004 from a suborbital 
>rocket  were learning how to do these things. Thinking back, too, to Dr. 
>Friedmans talk and the array of international missions now in the works, 
>its striking that countries less concerned about democratic participation, 
>like China, have in some ways an easier time at articulating a long-term 
>space goal. Democracy is sprawling, messy, and it assumes the publics 
>support is a major factor in building space policy. Governments without 
>elections to contend with set their own agendas.
>
>Ponder the solar sail itself as seen through the prism of NASA. Work at 
>Marshall Space Flight Center has progressed to the point that the solar 
>sail is close to or at the status of operational viability. In other words, 
>it wouldnt take much to launch and deploy an actual sail mission in terms 
>of technology. But without the needed funding, such missions dont happen, 
>which is why space policy can be so difficult to sort out, and so 
>frustrating. Thats one price you pay for democracy, and while I certainly 
>would never want to live under any other form of government, it does 
>account for the fact that our ventures into space sometimes seem to proceed 
>by fits and stars rather than in a stable continuum.
>
>More on all these matters later, but for now, thanks to those who put this 
>session together, especially Lee Billings and Sarah Glasser at Seed Media 
>Group, and thanks, too, to a panel that gathered on relatively short notice 
>and made it all happen. Lee tells me we may have video available of part or 
>all of these sessions, so Ill plan to link to that whenever possible. Im 
>struck (once again) by the enthusiasm and vitality space professionals 
>bring to the job at hand. Despite its sometimes daunting setbacks, our 
>venture into space seems unstoppable to me if we can move beyond our focus 
>on the immediate and place it in the context of a gradual, inevitable 
>migration that will help to preserve our planet while opening up vistas 
>that one day will make the Moon and Mars seem tame.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>