Space Flight Must Continue

The Kerrville Daily Times ^ | 6-13-05 | Gerald MacCrossan

[Liberty Valance]

INGRAM TEXAS— Space buffs packed the Elizabeth Huth Coates Theater Sunday to see the last man to walk on the moon, Gene Cernan, and the father of mission control, Chris Kraft, speak.

Joining them was current NASA Chief Scientist Jim Garvin and Kerrville resident Tom Moser, who was the first director of the U.S. space program. Kraft praised the turnout, which left not an empty seat in the room.

“NASA needs to know that we have 300-plus people in this room interested in space,” he said.

The panelists shared tales of their time working in the space program, from Kraft’s admission of the unreliability of some of the early spacecraft to his determination that there is a value from the space industry.

“We ought to go back to the moon if it can benefit the earth,” Kraft said. “There’s a design at the University of Houston for a solar panel system that will supply all earth’s electrical energy for next 100 years. Why doesn’t NASA say that?”

Kraft wasn’t so keen at continued Mars research, however, a program close to Garvin’s heart.

Garvin said that putting humans on Mars would allow scientists to accomplish much more than with the Mars Rover vehicles, which he said have been moving around on the red planet for more than a year and a half, despite being designed for only 50 days.

“We’re extending ourselves scientifically to basically crawl like babies on the surface of Mars. We’ve been driving 500 days on Mars and not gone as far as Cernan drove in 20 hours on the Moon.”

Earlier, Cernan, who has a home in Kerr County, recollected standing on the moon looking back to earth. He described it as a spiritual experience.

“(The Earth) was just too beautiful, too perfect, to have happened by accident,” he said. “When I stepped on the moon, all of sudden, I was stepping on something that was not earth.

“When I was standing on the moon, it was like standing on God’s front porch looking home,” Cernan said.

Moser, who worked on the Apollo and space shuttle programs as an engineer, held up a tile from the thermal protection layer on the outside of the shuttle. When those tiles were knocked off the shuttle Columbia by flying debris from a fuel tank in 2003, the spacecraft caught fire during re-entry, killing the astronauts on board.

He said there are 22,000, thermal tiles on the shuttle.

“Lose one tile and you lose the entire vehicle,” he said. “Those tiles have performed perfectly, but they are not designed to fly in a debris environment.”

The program at the Hill Country Arts Foundation was underwritten by Oceaneering International, which was founded by Ingram resident Mike Hughes. The company also has a space division, created after Moser asked for their assistance to develop a suitable living environment on the space station program using Oceaneering’s experience working in harsh conditions undersea.

Gerard MacCrossan may be reached at gerard.maccrossan@dailytimes.com

[Liberty Valance]

"When I was standing on the moon, it was like standing on God’s front porch looking home,” Cernan said.

Gene Cernan lives in our area and we're quite proud of him

[petpeeve]

And the world continues to stand watch....thanks for the great history. Looking forward to what comes next!

[cripplecreek]

Ive met our local astronaut (Jim McDivitt) a couple of times. When you're a kid meeting people like that it really drives your curiosity.

---

He was command pilot for Gemini 4, a 66-orbit 4-day mission that began on June 3, and ended June 7, 1965. Highlights of the mission included a controlled extra-vehicular activity period and a number of experiments.

He was commander of Apollo 9, a 10-day earth orbital flight launched on March 3, 1969. This was the first flight of the complete set of Apollo hardware and was the first flight of the Lunar Module.

He became Manager of Lunar Landing Operations in May 1969, and led a team that planned the lunar exploration program and redesigned the spacecraft to accomplish this task. In August 1969, he became Manager of the Apollo Spacecraft Program and was the program manger for Apollo 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16.

[Virginia Ridgerunner]

I'm an avid supporter of both NASA and manned space exploration. However, and I hate to say it, NASA lost its nerve after the Challenger explosion back in 1986. Since then, it has not done anything that is really innovative in terms of manned space flight. The International Space Station was a Clinton Administration mechanism for funneling billions to Russia to keep Boris Yeltsin's regime afloat, and is currently falling apart. NASA needs a major overhaul, and if it can't fix its internal problems, then perhaps space exploration should be handed over to the military, which might be more efficient and a bit more daring I think. The only reason that the Eisenhower Administration established NASA (from the old NACA) as a civilian agency anyway was to blunt Soviet accusations that America was trying to militarize space. The USSR is long gone and the Cold War is over, so maybe it is time for either the Air Force or Navy (or both) to take over manned space exploration. JMHO...

[Liberty Valance]

I don't disagree with your above post. I'm just glad to see Cernan and Kraft out in public promoting spaceflight and all the technology and benefits that are a bi-product of it. Today's young folks need inspiration from those who have gone before.

[Antonello]

Behold, the future of Space.

[Atlas Sneezed]

I'm a supporter of space exploration, but humans add so much cost to the mix that you get less exploration done for far greater cost.

If you want to inspire schoolchildren and taxpayers, send a dozen Imax cameras to Mars, instead of a few inarticulate former fighter pilots.

Why not send dozens of Mars sample return missions, for the cost of merely thinking about a manned mission?

If you don't think that times have changed since Apollo, keep in mind that the entire Apollo stack had less computing power than an ordinary cell phone does today.

Until the 1960s, space travel was impossible because of the lack of suitable computers. In the 1960s and 70s, computers were necessary, but so primitive that humans were required. Now, humans are not required.

[Liberty Valance]

Fine with me. I'm just glad anybody is talking about space at all. Manned...unmanned....NASA....Military....private sector...ANYBODY...preferably AMERICAN!

[anymouse]

Space ping

[Virginia Ridgerunner]

What really is discouraging is the fact that based upon the actual computing power that NASA first used to send Apollo 11 to the moon's surface, the agency should have launched the Enterprise by now, with Cray technology and even more now available. I think that NASA has simply become just another government bureaucracy, and just like other bureaucracies, it now is completely content with the status quo as long as its budgets are approved annually. What the agency needs is drive and energy that has not been seen since the days of Craft, Kranz, Webb, and the first astronaut classes. Heck, the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo astronauts were crack, seat-of-the-pants pilots and engineers who captured the public's imagination, a la, "The Right Stuff." Now, even though the pilots still come from the ranks of the military, they are largely middle aged technocrats or scientists with almost no charisma, and as a result, the typical NASA missions (beginning in the 1980s) have simply become boring. There is no longer any excitement or adventure, at least until lately with the Mars rovers. In short, I guess I'm saying that NASA needs a shake-up rather badly and to inject some younger blood into its astronaut program to reenergize itself and make space exploration an exciting endeavor again. Just my .02.

[r9etb]

“Lose one tile and you lose the entire vehicle,” he said. “Those tiles have performed perfectly, but they are not designed to fly in a debris environment.”

False. Shuttles have lost even black tiles and returned home safely.

[KevinDavis]

[Fitzcarraldo]

It's possible the whole technological/industrial paradigm will shift before we send humans to Mars.

You might start thinking of your life as a Duracell battery or worse.

bootstrapped-brain early warning station

[RightWhale]

Solar power, in orbit or on the moon is still an excellent idea. However, it is a non-starter in a democracy just as it was 1/4 century ago.

[af_vet_rr]

I'm an avid supporter of both NASA and manned space exploration. However, and I hate to say it, NASA lost its nerve after the Challenger explosion back in 1986.

NASA was in trouble before then, and Congress shares the major portion of that trouble, for pushing various programs on it (i.e. pork barrel - give the folks back home jobs building stuff we don't need).

I was lucky enough to attend a lecture/talk last fall that Burt Rutan gave, and he gave an interesting analysis of the history of NASA's manned space program. He pointed out something that I never thought about, because I never looked at the whole picture - time and again, as soon as a new vehicle was on the scene, the previous one would be immediately retired, no matter how safe/cheap/practical it was.

He focused a lot on Saturn and the Shuttle and how there was no need to retire the Saturn series simply because the Shuttle came out - except to justify the Shuttle's costs. By retiring the Saturn, the debate died quickly, because it was a "this is the only program we have, we have to use it no matter the cost"

Had the Saturn series continued to evolve (and it would be incredibly efficient these days, what with the advances in materials, engines, and avionics over the past thirty years), then if somebody took a close look at the cost/safety/performance ratio of the Saturn vs the Shuttle - there would be no justification for the Shuttle.

I don't have the exact numbers, but had we stayed with the Saturn, for the same amount of money spent on the Shuttle program, we would have had like 5-6 times as many Saturn launches (the number was a lot higher - I'm thinking 10 times as many, but I'm being conservative).