To The Moon

By Jan S. Gephardt

As I write this, the Artemis 1 Mission is still “go for launch” next Monday, Aug. 29, 2022. A lot of us are excited about the prospect of a new Moon program. But other voices, from both left and right, question whether we should go back to the Moon at all. Indeed, from the very beginning there have been questions about the priority we should give to our reach into Space.

We haven’t been to the Moon since the last Apollo mission in 1972. A full 50 years. Half a century. Dating myself, here, for the sake of scale: that was the year I graduated from high school. I’m retirement-age now, so that’s a working lifetime ago.

Why not? We’ve launched other missions – why not go back to the Moon till now? In my research, I’ve discovered several reasons.

That was then. Why haven’t we gone back for all these years? (Famous Quotes 123).

 

Politics

Consider the political landscape in the United States between 1972 and 2022. Control of the House, Senate, and White House has seesawed back and forth between Republicans and Democrats rather frequently, after two long periods of Democratic Party rule during the Roosevelt-Truman years and again during 1960s and the Kennedy-Johnson administrations.

This meant that each administration and Congressional majority got to make up their own rules. They felt free to set, re-set, abandon or continue the policies of their predecessors. As a result, there were never enduring, universally-established ideas about where, how, and even if, we might boldly go anywhere. Including to the Moon.

The last Apollo missions happened during the Nixon Administration, but while Nixon wasn’t exactly against space expansion, he was much more bullish on the idea of making space more affordable and accessible. The Space Shuttle project had its origins in the Nixon White House.

Isaac would undoubtedly have been disappointed to know it would take us 50 years to refocus on the Moon. (Quotefancy).

 

Focus, Refocus, and Lack of Focus

Space programs take a long time to develop, and they require a lot of money. People in power haven’t always seen it as a high spending priority, especially in times of economic difficulty. Many early programs ran into cost overruns of the sort that saw Skylab B mothballed in the mid-70s, about the same time the Soviets canceled the Almaz (space platform) project, possibly for similar issues.

In the latter 1970s the Space Shuttle program remained in the development stages, but continued to move forward. The Ford and Carter administrations were preoccupied by inflation, an energy crisis, foreign threats, and social upheaval. Ford greenlit the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). Carter emphasized the need to self-defense in space, but didn’t take the idea very far. You’ll notice that none of these ideas got us anywhere closer to the Moon.

Sagan’s sample-size did nothing to lend power to his words at the time. He died in 1996, at a time when NASA’s Space Shuttle fleet had begun to show its age and limitations, but new space initiatives weren’t in fashion. (Quotefancy).

 

Space-Based Defense

Ronald Reagan took that space-based defense idea and majored on it. He proposed a massive Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). But vocal observers complained it was unrealistic for the technology of the period. They nicknamed it “Star Wars” and painted it as over-priced science-fictional wish-fulfillment. At the time, they weren’t entirely wrong, although the idea of space-based defense both predated, and ultimately outlived Reagan’s idea.

George H.W. Bush was a space-development booster. On the 20^th anniversary of the our first Moon landing, he announced the Space Exploration Initiative (SEI), which included a space station called Freedom – but no plan to return to the Moon anytime soon. Congress couldn’t get past the idea of its $500 billion price tag, however. Not even if the spending was spread across 20-30 years.

Bill Clinton’s administration never brought “Freedom” to fruition, but did start construction on the International Space Station. He focused more interest on exploring the universe, and kept the door open on space-based weapons. Especially in his second term, however, divisions in the United States grew more extreme. The Republican-led Congress was unwilling to work with him on initiatives of most any sort.

The Clinton Administration created the National Science and Technology Council. They backed exploration and the ISS, but had little interest in a return to the Moon. (Quotefancy).

 

Advance and Retreat

George W. Bush reshaped NASA policy yet again, refocusing on space exploration (Vision for Space Exploration, 2004). He reintroduced plans to return to the Moon (by 2020), retire the Space Shuttle program, and start preparations to send humans to Mars. But Bush became much more heavily focused on waging two wars that did not produce predicted easy victories, and the onset of the Great Recession at the end of his term.

His successor Barack Obama had little time or energy for space, and certainly not for the Moon. Not in the depths of the Great Recession. His political capital went for economic fixes and the ACA. Faced in his second term with an oppositional, Republican-led Congress, few initiatives prospered. But he did use his executive power – to kill most of “W’s” space initiatives, including a trip to the Moon.

Instead, he opened the door for more private investment in space and a focus on commercially-exploitable asteroids and Mars. SpaceX, Blue Origin, and other initiatives began their dramatic rise.

The Clinton Administration created the National Science and Technology Council. They backed exploration and the ISS, but had little interest in a return to the Moon. (Quotefancy).

 

Taking the High Ground

I’ll refer you to my sister’s excellent essay on the Space Force for a look at the most recent iterations on the United States’ focus on space-based defenses. The Trump Administration further encouraged private space enterprise. They resurrected the National Space Council (continued under Biden and currently chaired by Vice President Kamala Harris). And they shifted the country’s efforts from the Obama-era focus on Mars back to the Moon.

The Biden Administration embraced and continued the internationally-supported Artemis project, which will (we hope) launch Artemis 1 on Monday. The long-delayed return to the Moon has finally begun in earnest.

Riding atop the Space Launch System (survivor of the “W” Bush-era Constellation project), the Orion spacecraft won’t carry humans this time (“Captain Moonikin Campos,” “Helga,” and “Zohar,” all varied types of sensor-equipped “manikins,” will ride in their place, along with NASA mascot Snoopy and ESA mascot Shaun the Sheep). Nor will it land on the Moon. but it will deploy CubeSats and orbit the Moon.

Looks as if the Artemis Project might actually get us there after all. (Quotefancy).

 

Artemis 1, 2, 3, and Beyond

Monday’s launch of Artemis 1 is an essential test of equipment and systems. If all goes well, in mid-October NASA will retrieve it from the Pacific Ocean. At that point, teams of scientists will start feverishly poring over its data. They must apply everything they can learn from Artemis 1, to ensure the safety of the human crew on Artemis 2.

Artemis 2 is currently planned for a May 2024 launch date. It, too, will orbit the Moon, but won’t land. The crew has a whole laundry list of systems checks to perform, both in Earth orbit and during the lunar flyby. The Artemis 2 crew hasn’t yet been named, but they’ll all be North Americans: three from the USA, and one from Canada. Whoever they turn out to be, the latter will be the first Canadian ever to travel beyond low Earth orbit.

We’ll get to Artemis 3 sometime in 2025 . . . we hope. There have been numerous delays already. This first crewed Moon landing of the Artemis Project (first humans on the lunar surface since 1972) also will see the first use of the SpaceX-built Starship HLS. If all goes well, this will be a true return to the Moon.

Artemis 1 through 3 are the beginning, not an end-point. Artemis 4 starts building another international effort:  a space station called Lunar Gateway, designed to orbit the Moon. And you can guess from the name where things are headed from there. It all starts with a return to the Moon.

Sir Arthur might be right, after all. (Quotefancy).

IMAGE CREDITS

For once, this section doesn’t have much to add. All of the quotes are attributed in the captions. Nearly all came from the Quotefancy page “Space Quotes,” with one ringer from Famous Quotes 123. All quote images were selected by this post’s author. 

Space Station DIY: Should we go Tubular?

NASA artist Don Davis gave us a vision of how
it might look inside an O'Neill cylinder with
reflected sunlight.

My quest to find a plausible, space-based home for the characters in my novels continued.

I needed a space-based habitat that would feel earthlike-enough for me (and my readers) to believe that humans could be comfortable there long-term. But it also must be believable, based on what we know or can reasonably extrapolate from physics, space, engineering, and technology.

So far in this DIY Space Station series we've considered space stations/colonies in general, Dyson structures, and Bernal spheres. The next design I considered was the O'Neill Cylinder, a design developed by one of the founders of this area of engineering and design, Dr. Gerard K. O'Neill, of Princeton University. 

The idea for this design evolved out of O'Neill's work for NASA and at Princeton. His Island One and Island Two designs were Bernal spheres, but the larger Island Three design proposed a paired-cylinders design that sought to solve several problems with the Bernal sphere design.

His 1976 book, The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space described the "Islands," and developed the concept of the paired cylinders. Why paired cylinders? So they can  cancel out a gyroscopic effect that would make it difficult to keep them aimed at the sun. Each cylinder was to be four or five miles in diameter and up to 20 miles long, with six sections: three "window" areas, interspersed with three "land" areas. Each cylinder could provide habitat for several million people.

There would be a separate section for agriculture, designed much like the so-called "Crystal Palace" of the Bernal sphere design. As I pointed out in my Bernal sphere post, today we know far more about the pitfalls of industrial-style agriculture than we did in the 1970s. I'll go into more detail about space-based agricultural issues in a future post.

O'Neill cylinders utilize a shape identified by the creators of Kalpana One as the most efficient for a space habitat (more about Kalpana One in a different future post), but I ultimately found it difficult to imagine living in one, for many of the same reasons as the Bernal sphere.

Also, I didn't like the slight Coriolis effect that would occur if the habitat was built the size O'Neill originally proposed. There were economic reasons for that size: O'Neill was trying to get the US Government to consider funding one of his "Islands." Their size was dictated by 1970s-based calculations. Unfortunately, the head of the Senate subcommittee that handled NASA's funding considered a large-scale space habitat a "nutty fantasy," and the project was killed.

Senator William Proxmire (D-WI) thought Gerard K. O'Neill's space-settlement ideas were a "nutty fantasy." Proxmire was famous for identifying government programs he thought were silly, and awarding them the Golden Fleece Award. Fear of his wrath led NASA to kill O'Neill's project.

Of course, there's no reason to think a larger version couldn't be built, if the economics of the builders supported it. Rama, the space habitat described by Arthur C. Clarke in his 1973 novel Rendezvous with Rama, is about 50% larger than the classic O'Neill cylinder, but as I understand it, it's based in part on O'Neill's design. I found a video that offers a 3D-animated "tour" of Rama. I enjoyed it, and I hope you do too.



Side note: yes, my own Rana Station's name was chosen with a nod to Rama, although I ultimately chose a different design configuration for my space habitat. The name "Rana" (with an n) means "attractive, eye-catching, elegant," which is what cinched the choice for me. I'm an artist: it had to appeal to my eyes, too!

Besides Clarke's Rama, other famous O'Neill cylinders in science fiction include the space station Babylon 5 and the space habitats (sides) in the Gundam Universe.

Babylon 5--but where are the windows? And are those solar panels, or heat exchangers?

Animators of the Mobile Gundam series paid close attention to the design of O'Neill cylinders. This is an interior view of Loum (Side 5).

IMAGES: Many thanks to Wikipedia/Wikimedia Commons and Don Davis for the upper image of the cylinder interior; for the High Frontier first edition cover featuring art by Rick Guidice; for the 1970s rendering of an exterior view of paired cylinders, also by Guidice; and for the photo portraits of Senator William Proxmire and Gerard K. O'Neill. 
I am indebted to the Maveric Universe Wiki for the GoetzSheuermann image of Island One. 
Many thanks to YouTube and Eric Bruneton for the Rama animation, to Science Fiction & Fantasy Stack Exchange for the image of the Babylon 5 Space Station, and to The Universal Century, for the interior image of Loum (Side Five) a space colony from the Mobile Gundam universe.

10 Ideas about Future Tech that may change our lives

What does the future hold?
As a reader and writer of science fiction, I like to keep an eye on what people are saying about the technological innovations that may fundamentally re-shape our world in the future. 

Science fiction itself has opened windows on many ideas that later became reality--think about Arthur C. Clarke writing about geostationary satellites, for example.

Sir Arthur C. Clarke was one of many sf authors who have correctly predicted future innovations.

Other things apparently were less predicted. Few people really seemed to foresee and understand the potential for massive changes that would ripple out from the advent of personal computers, the Internet, wireless technology, and smart phones, before they our lives forever.

Few of us realized what a revolution these represented, when they first came on the scene.

Nowhere is the wireless revolution and the advent of smart phones having a greater impact than in the developing world. Here's an image from rural Bihar, India.

I've been looking at recent videos on YouTube that attempt to answer this "what future tech is being developed?" question. I shared one in Bionic Sensory Enhancements that I thought looked interesting. 

Here's a video that explores "The Top 10 Future Technology That's Here Right Now." Published in early October by the Top Ten Archive, it predicts a range of innovations from sunscreen pills to personal nanotech factories.


The video's show notes include a full list of the ten technological developments profiled, as well as links that offer more detailed information about each.

IMAGES: Many thanks to the Telegraph Media Group for the image of Sir Arthur (unfortunately on his obituary). The photo of popular smart phone brands is from a TechReviewPro article about the top smart phones of 2015. The photo of mobile phone users in Bihar, India, is from an excellent article on the Design Public Blog. The video is from Top 10 Archives on YouTube.