Posted on 08/03/2007 6:54:15 AM PDT by Fitzcarraldo
One of the most respected top managers of the Apollo program, Joseph P. Gavin, who led development of the NASA/Grumman Apollo lunar module, is airing sharp opposition to the Bush Administration/NASA goal of returning humans to the Moon as a stepping stone to Mars.
In a letter to Aviation Week & Space Technology, Gavin, former director of the lunar module development at Grumman, says he believes the near term Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle lunar plan and Moon base goal should be scrapped in favor of even more emphasis on Mars—especially robotic Mars exploration.
“I have been somewhat surprised to see the lack of active criticism of the administration’s vision for space exploration,” says Gavin in his letter to Aviation Week. “It seems to me to be more concerned with the 'how' as opposed to the 'why' he says.
The letter is carried in Aviation Week’s July 30 edition. The Apollo Grumman lunar module design is being used by NASA as an engineering starting point for the initial assessments of a the manned Lunar Surface Access Module (LSAM) that would return astronauts to the Moon in about 13 years under NASA’s new exploration vision.
“The argument that the Moon is a necessary training base for eventual manned expeditions to Mars is flatly unpersuasive,” says Gavin, who directed development of the first manned spacecraft ever to land on another body in space.
After manned test flights in Earth orbit by Apollo 9 and lunar orbit by Apollo 10, six more Grumman lunar modules landed 12 astronauts on the Moon between 1969-1972 ( see Apollo 15 photo below ). Another acted as a lifeboat to save the Apollo 13 crew.
After leading lunar module development and other programs at Grumman, Gavin became president and CEO of the company. Now retired and in his late 80s, Gavin remains active in aerospace forums and also with his alma mater, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Gavin says the new NASA lunar vision should be shifted to Mars immediately. He will turn 100 yrs. old in 2020, about when the first lunar landing since Apollo is envisioned.
“Inasmuch as we have been to the Moon—-yes I remember the Apollo days vividly—-it is unclear to me that there is any particular urgency to return, he says. “Past studies have indicated the complexity and the implied great expense of a lunar base operation.
“The application of Apollo style technology to replace the shuttle appears to be a desperate effort to save development costs. It also seems to be an invitation to the Europeans and others to jump ahead of us in pushing the frontiers of technology.”
Gavin says “our first priority” should be to fully exploit the International Space Station. But the second major U. S. space program priority “should be to undertake further robotic exploration of Mars to see if human exploration [there] is really warranted,” he says.
“Mars is becoming more interesting as we receive more data from the unmanned devices now in place and reporting back. The intriguing question of current or prior life on Mars needs to be answered,” he says.
While Gavin’s comments came in a letter to this Aviation Week editor, several other key Grumman lunar module engineers, who were led by Gavin, told a recent NASA return-to-the-Moon symposium that they have doubts about whether the national political leadership and public have continued will to undertake a major new manned lunar effort, as in Apollo. The symposium was not a forum about whether the U. S. should return to the Moon, but rather for a discussion between Grumman and NASA managers about how lessons from the Apollo lunar module program (begun 40 years ago) could aid development of the LSAM for the new NASA plan.
“Because in the 1960s everyone was conscious of Apollo, we were able to attract the best and brightest people to work on the program,” says Gerry Sandler who helped lead the Grumman lunar module Reliability and Maintainability Team. “If it is not recognized that [the NASA/Bush lunar plan] is a major national priority people are not going to be as anxious to work on these kind of things as they were in the 1960s, he told the NASA symposium in Washington on the new lunar effort.
“We talked about that being one of the major differences on the upcoming program as opposed to the past,” says Bob Schwartz, also a retired Grumman lunar module engineer. “We were being watched by the entire world and we were not permitted to fail. I am not so sure there is that drive now,” he said.
Lunar module engineer Joe Mule’ said he believed it would take 15 years to reconstitute an engineering team like developed the Apollo spacecraft.
The Lunar Module veterans expressed concern about the current poor performance of U. S. students in math and science. But none of them openly expressed a preference for Mars over the Moon like their former boss Gavin, who did not attend the symposium because of a previously planned trip to Hawaii that conflicted with the timing of the Washington session.
How’s that 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty repeal effort coming? Just about got it done?
Required viewing for NASA and Sci Fi buffs before going any further MARS NEEDS WOMEN. Any questions?
Works for me. What benefits do you anticipate manned exploration will bring?
I thought that was what you were working on. Does anyone of any consequence pay any attention to the UN and their third world corruption?
Possibly true; however, wouldn't corporations be motivated to produce exotic materials for profit anyway if there were a demonstrated market?
Also, there will likely be innovative methods of generating and storing power which
Power generation and storage is a pretty hot topic for research now. I suspect that people are going as fast as they can in this area already. It's just that I think that anything the government does costs about 100 times as much as private enterprise to reach the same end. We've had robot rovers on Mars now for what 2 years? and the longer they stay there the worse the place seems Cold less than 1% of the air pressure of the earth and all they've found is rocks dirt, dry ice and some water ice. Nobody wants to colonize antartica, and compared to Mars antartica is a tropical paradise with pretty much the same features -except for the dry ice. (And it has air and costs one HELL of a lot less to get there)
Sure, but as soon as I get an ear they open an FBI file on the Congressman. I could use some help in this rather than the continual chorus of ‘how dare they spend MY money’.
UN is nothing. Just some braying donkeys. They aren’t even a country. The UN is nothing but a distraction so the ordinary people won’t notice what the Rockefellers are actually up to.
Well we're in agreement on the UN anyway. Expensive donkeys, though.
And not one thought of 'who'. As in 'who' should pay for it. Typical government nonsense. Let's see NASA budget, government fiddling around....maybe by 2050 they'll have sent one crew to Mars.
To visit the growing city already built by private industry 10 years earlier...
Very clever ruse by Rockefellers and other international bankers to not only distract us with such an ineffective institution but get us to pay for it.
True. The impetus for a moon base is the chinese space program. In the 1960s it was the russian competitors that got our dander up. This moon base is sort of retro in that respect. The REAL problem though is retro thinking that chemical rockets are the only way to get to space. EMSL is vastly more efficient as an STS to LEO. Beyond that are several propulsion concepts even more superior, it’s just that nasa doesn’t want anything to rock the boat vis-a-vis the federal funding flow.
I've heard this before, and it just isn't so. It simply isn't true. Look at it this way. If orbit is good then moon is better, right? (according to your high ground analogy anyway) and if moon is better than mars or Jupiter would be better still, right? Wrong. Orbits and other planets are not high ground. they're gravitationally separated entities with their own gravity wells to climb out of and long transit times. A weapon launched from mars would have to be shipped to mars and then sent back - truly silly. Likewise the moon; it took the Apollo what 3 days one way to get to the moon?
Ultimately, the nation that controls space, colonizes the solar system, and builds the ships and infrastructure to do so will have domination and possibly mastery of this planet.
You've been reading too much scinece fiction (The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is science FICTION) and not a physics text Just for fun remember how long it took the Saturn probe to arrive at Saturn and what it had to do to get there (7 YEARS and 5 gravitational assists) This is because there is solar gravity and orbital speed to overcome. The Saturn probe couldn't carry enough fuel to get there on it's own and it surely couldn't carry enough fuel to get there and back . It takes about a year to get to Mars and that is the limit of what spacecraft can do without gravitational assist. I could go on, but either you see my point or you don't
Would you prefer that mastery to belong to China, or the US?
China like the USA has limited resources. Every dollar they spend on a boondoggle like manned space exploration is a dollar (or yen) that does not directly compete with the USA Let them waste their resources on it, and we'll be better spending our resources on things that matter (like energy independence).
You didn't understand it. Oh well. Try reading some of the web postings on the physics of space flight - energy requirements etc. They might surprise you.
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