Ken Murphy / 2:51 am January 28th, 2011

Howdy everyone!

Having had my identity stolen, I tend to be a bit cagey about giving out private information, and take extreme measures to try to safeguard it so that I don’t have to deal with another instance of someone stealing $50,000 of stuff in my name. I’m also rather uncomfortable with the overbearing security apparatus that we’re building here in the U.S., so when my passport expired I was rather disinclined to get one of the new ones with the computer chip that can be read by nefarious parties. Besides, I’m really not flying at this point, as I prefer not to subject myself to the violation of my 4th Amendment rights that is the security theater. For the ISDC in May I’m driving to Huntsville, just like I drove to Chicago for last year’s conference.

Then the invite arrived. Rob’s getting married down in New Zealand. For those unfamiliar with Rob, he is the person who created the Out of the Cradle (OotC) website many years ago, and posted about SpaceX activities when they were flying out of Woomera [Oops - Clark points out I meant Kwajalein]. He is a big fan of the commercial space sector, and would very much like to see more of it down under. He’s also a bibliophile and was quite fond of the Lunar Bibliography that Clark Lindsey was kindly hosting at Hobbyspace. He asked me to move it over to OotC and put it into a blog format. I wasn’t too keen on the idea, but by September 2006 I had encoded a couple hundred ‘filecards’ and we were ready to go live. I have to admit, having it ordered chronologically makes research a bit easier in some regards, like the evolution of Moon fiction and what kind of stories were being written when. And so began my tenure here at OotC.

It’s hard maintaining a blog, and by early 2008 Rob was ready for a sabbatical. I was running the Lunar Library in one of the back rooms, and he handed over the keys to the website mid-year. He did get the invite from NASA to attend one of the Shuttle launch tweet-ups, and flew quite a ways to see it, something noted by most of the major media (and a few idiots who got their noses bent out of shape because they thought NASA had paid to fly him up. Idjits). We met for the first time up in D.C. just prior, where I was at an NSS Board of Directors meeting, and we also had some recent NASA Academy folks stop by (including the most recent RA from CNES, a transfer program I helped jump start in 2002) making for an interesting discussion all around. Afterward, Rob went and saw a Shuttle launch, something I have yet to experience.

Then, late last year, the invite to the wedding came. After much procrastination, as is my wont, I finally tried to dig up my expired passport, which had become buried in papers somewhere in my apartment. Which is full of books and papers.

Finally, the weekend of MLK, Jr. Day, I found it, filled out the paperwork, and put it in the mail on the 18th. I paid extra for an expedited 2-3 week turnaround, which on the outside would put its arrival in the week I needed to leave for NZ for the nuptials. Then I started the nervous wait. On the agenda - horseback riding and trawling the bookstores for Moon books for the Lunar Library.

Lo and behold, I already have my new passport. I have to admit that it is quite impressive, a work of art even. The pages have images from across the U.S., from the Saguaros of the Southwest that I remember from my early youth in Tucson, to the Rocky Mountains I’ve crossed many times back and forth. Independence Hall in Philadelphia, not too far from where I was born in Valley Forge, and the lighthouses of Maine I have yet to visit. The mighty Mississippi I’ve also crossed many times back and forth, and the farmlands of Kansas I’ve passed through during visits to Mom up in Leavenworth (the town, not the prison). A West Texas longhorn herd, and the Statue of Liberty which I’ve seen from the Windows on the World restaurant in the old World Trade Center. Then there’s the last page.

I’m probably going to get in so much trouble for this, but it is beautiful

Just…wow. On the facing page is a quote from Ellison S. Onizuka:

“Every generation has the obligation to free men’s minds for a look at new worlds…to look out from a higher plateau than the last generation”

You know, I think I may just be okay with this passport, even if I still don’t like the idea of a chip that can be read by nefarious means. And breaking it in with my first trip to the Southern Hemisphere is kind of cool.

Now, should I fly Qantas or Air New Zealand?

Ken Murphy / 1:56 am January 27th, 2011

Murphy, Ken
“EML-1: The Next Logical Destination”
The Space Review
01/24/2011

Librarian’s Note: A little something I put together to help explain how the first Earth-Moon Lagrange point is useful for future space activities. As I’ve been unable to post at The Space Review, I responded to the comments here

Ken Murphy / 4:43 am January 26th, 2011

Howdy everyone!

Some of y’all might be interested in an article I got posted over at The Space Review. It’s not my first article there, but it has been a while. A couple of weeks ago there was an article about EML-1 and one of the questions that kept getting raised was “What would you do at EML-1?”

For some reason I don’t seem to be able to post comments or vote over there, so I decided “Why not throw an article together and offer some suggestions of useful things to do there?”

Since I still don’t seem to be able to post there, I thought I’d offer up some additional commentary here at Out of the Cradle that addresses some of the criticisms raised in the comments.

[Update: Huh. Now the comments are up. Maybe Jeff checked the spam filter and okayed them?]

CharlesHouston notes the very real difficulty of “explaining to the voting public that you are going to a point that does not have “anything” there. The technical challenges are miniscule in comparison to the task of getting people to understand what you are doing.”

I know this first hand from talks I’ve given here in the metroplex. It’s quite a sight to see a room full of Mensa folks with their minds blown. When I talked at a Rotary Club it went right over most heads. The talk at Moon Day went well, but it was a much smaller audience and so more personal and interactive. If only I had access to a TV station and super-duper CGI technology, I could convert millions.

DerekL sniped: “Yep. And we’re ‘blind’ on the sunward side because a) it’s *much* harder to look in that direction, and b) the lighting on the objects we’re looking for is *much* less than ideal. Being at EML-1 does nothing to solve either of those problems.

Before proposing a mission/function, the author would be advised to know much more about the ‘how and why” of said mission/function before blithely going on about it.”

To address DerekL’s argument:

a) Of course it is much harder to look Sunward. Were it not the video in the article would look a lot different. For some folks, though, the ‘hard’-ness of space stuff is what gets them interested in the field, a challenge to tax their intellectual capabilities. My off-the-cuff suggestion would be a de-spun portion of a spin-stabilized spacecraft that would hold a sunshield between the instruments and the Sun.

b) Of course the lighting of objects sunward of the instruments would be much less than ideal - in the visible wavelength. Objects on the other side of the Sun would of course have varying degrees of illumination - in the visible wavelength. I’m not sure why the commenter seems to think that’s the only wavelength to which we’re constrained. Especially given that I mention looking across wavelengths. I am, though, assuming that the objects are spinning, and that we can look for infra-red traces on those rotating objects.

Harris Tweed further piled on with:

“The idea posed here, that you need a pole sitter to enable communication with the lunar far side, is pretty ridiculous. In fact, a relay satellite in a halo orbit around Earth-Moon L2 does that very nicely. A pole sitter is irrelevant to the lunar farside.”

This is a misreading of what I wrote, but I think less due to the language of the writing and more to the preconceptions of the commenter. At no point did I indicate that a pole sitter would be needed for communication with the far side, only that a pole-sitter would enable such. However, the commenter needs for me to have said ‘need’ for his criticism to have support, so that’s how he frames it.

Interestingly, over at Transterrestrial Musings, the same commenter notes:

“This idea has been floated by many others, including in very recent papers in the Space Review. This piece doesn’t add anything new. In fact, a habitat at Earth-Moon L1 was the notional architecture for the Decadal Planning Team ten years ago. This particular piece is somewhat unfortunate, though, because it makes a few mistakes with regard to optimal NEO sensing (L1 is really a pretty poor place from which to do that) and the prospects for pole-sitters (which are certainly not needed for farside communication, and don’t look anything like terrestrial pole sitters).”

The commenter indicates that I made a “mistake” regarding “optimal NEO sensing”, as apparently he considers EML-1 a “pretty poor place from which to do that”. A careful read indicates that what I actually wrote was that looking for NEOs would be an “ideal “first mission” for instruments emplaced at EML-1″. Not the same thing at all, and I would aver that anything out past the clutter of cis-GEO space is way better than anything we’ve got now. If the commenter has an optimal location for looking for NEOs, he does not identify it.

In the same paragraph in which he asserts that I offer nothing new, he also derides the pole-sitter suggestion for farside communications, indicating they’re not needed when I made no so such claim. He does at least offer up the usual trope of a comm sat in EML-2 orbit, an idea I try to avoid, as I would prefer that at least part of the farside be relatively quiet for the radio astronomers, and having a big old comm sat parked above the farside kind of defeats all of that. And yes, I know computers can filter interference.

Commenter Tom D does add that bouncing the signal off a pole sitter would shorten relay times to the farside versus off a sat in a halo orbit out at EML-2, something I hadn’t considered.

fritz wants to know why I don’t mention a Lunavator, a space elevator that would ascend through the Lagrange point to a counterbalance in the Earth’s gravitational sphere of influence. It’s a good idea for testing out the space elevator concept with minimal risk to Earth (other than, you know, the counterbalance, which would likely be mounted with rockets to kick it into Earth orbit if something goes wrong. The idea gets treatment in Schrunk et al’s “The Moon: Resources, Future Development, and Settlement” (which also notes the “sitting” capabilities of solar sails). In all honesty, while I like the idea, I think it’s a bit further in the future than what I was talking about

spacechampion wants to know “So how many years constructing things at EML1 would we have to do before we can go some place interesting? 20? 30?” spacechampion doesn’t indcate what he/she thinks is an interesting destination, but as far as I’m concerned we’re not in a race anywhere. We’ll get there as fast as we have the will, and the more options we build in in the interim the better off we will be in the long run.

astronist counters “But its utility for manned access to the Moon and beyond is limited. The key requirement driving any architecture for a safe passenger-carrying system above LEO is shielding against solar storm radiation, and this forces the solution of Earth-Moon cyclers (or, for Mars, Earth-Mars cyclers).”

I disagree that any solution is “forced” by the presence of radiation, and 24/7 access to the entirety of the Moon’s surface is not something to be dismissed lightly. One byproduct that has been proposed for oxygen processing is cladding for crewed assets in space to address that very issue. It’s not like no one has ever thought of the idea of radiation in space, and countermeasures. By the same token, nothing in an EML-1 architecture precludes the establishment of a cycler, and the first thing I’d look into would be a taxi service between the cycler and any crewed EML-1 facilities.

YetAnotherBob points out that:

“One problem with L1 that I didn’t see mentioned in the Article. The Lagrange Points L1, L2 and L3 are dynamically unstable. Gravity pulls everything there away from the point. There would need to be near constant station keeping. that means fuel. L4 and L5 are dynamically stable, meaning that an object inserted there will be pulled back into the Lagrange point. It’s a weird orbit, but it is an orbit. ”

I actually do mention it in the article, though indirectly. The whole point of the halo orbit is to induce some stability into something staying there. There are station keeping requirements, but as I note, it’s orders of magnitude less than for the ISS or other stations in LEO. He’s right that L-4 and L-5 are stable, though it’s more like wandering around on top of a gravitational mesa. Unless something changes the energy of the object, it’s going to stay in that general vicinity. Getting nudged around by the gravitational influences of the large bodies of the Solar system the whole while, but generally constrained to a particular volume of space.

He continues “And yes, the gravitational manifolds do connect the Lagrange Points for all of the planets. But, it can take decades to arrive there. Probably not good for passenger service.”

Which I don’t propose at all, though I have heard talks of using modified IPS trajectories for crewed trips to Mars, which I’m rather skeptical about.

He further adds “Finally, NASA has proposed a satellite for finding sun ward asteroids. However, it is at the Earth Sun L1, not one of the Earth Moon ones. That point is further Sun ward, and so would see more of the asteroids between Earth and Venus. With station keeping requirements, it would be able to stay on station for about 2 years.”

Which, in the tradition of NASA, is likely going to be another throwaway mission, another very expensive tool tossed into the void, just as they’ve done in the past. What I tried to suggest was that we can have ongoing data if we do things differently.

I think the problem really is the depth to which ‘traditional’ thinking in the space sector focuses on optimized solutions to specific issues. Want to put 20 metric tonnes at the South Pole of the Moon? An engineer can provide an optimized solution. Need a reason for that 20 mT? A scientist can provide a specific solution. Need some fundage? There’s a politician willing to look for a pork angle. Need an explantion of how value is added to the commonweal? Well, ummm…

There’s the rub. One thing I tried to address in my article was particular problems and possible solutions that address those problems.

1) If a crewed vehicle for exploration is being put through its paces on some test runs, EML-1 is a great location for a test run - close to home, but with a bit of a challenge to the mission - the establishment of a halo orbit.
2) While you’re there, might as well drop off some instruments. ‘Cause, you know, you’re there. Why wouldn’t you?
3) One thing that the instruments could do is look for NEOs in an unusual way.

1) There’s a lot of junk floating around in GEO space. Dead sats, expended kick stages.
2) From EML-1 it is way easier to get to GEO and back than to try to stage such missions from LEO.
3) So over the long term, you get a lot of benefits from staging such missions from EML-1.

I don’t know. Maybe my logic’s too complicated. Nevertheless, I do want to thank Jeff Foust for including the article in The Space Review.

Ken Murphy / 1:35 am January 5th, 2011

“Back to the Moon” by Travis Taylor and Les Johnson. Published in 2010 by Baen Books, it weighs in at 303 pages with Afterword. Three editing errors noted.

The time is the near future,sometime late in the 20-teens or early 2020s. NASA is engaged in an a dry-run of the Altair system for a Lunar return. Probes are mapping the surface with increasing resolution in preparation for the next landing. On the private sector side, Space Excursions is about to embark on their first free-return trip around the Moon with paying tourists in the Dreamscape. Things are looking up for the space industry, and that has some folks jealous.

China launches their own probe to the Moon, but it apparently crashes. This leaves the media free to focus on the Dreamscape flight. Five paying customers, each for their reason, are going to where few others in the human race have been - out to the Moon. It’s a fairly run-of-the-mill trip with various and sundry egos jostling for position, until they start passing behind the Moon. The pilot forgot to turn up the squelch on his radio, and in the static he hears a faint voice:

“sssssssss Emergency! Please help! ssssssssssss SOS! This is the crew of the Chinese exploration ship Harmony calling for help! We’ve crashed and are ssssssssssssssssssssss”

WTF? That wasn’t in the mission briefing. (the pilot is a Millenial, or Gen Y) They make brief contact, and a passenger is able to spot the crashed vehicle. Four people, little power, depleting air. It seems hopeless, as the Dreamscape can’t land on the Moon (yet), and its homeward-bound trajectory was set three days prior. And why did no one know there were people on board the Chinese craft?

Well, the Yankees, or at least Uncle Sam, is here to help. That Altair that was set to fly in a month? You’ve got a week. If anyone can do anything to help save the day, it’s the Americans. We’re just crazy like that. And off to the Moon scrambles a desperate rescue party from NASA.

Certainly an interesting premise. I think it takes the Chinese philosophy of “saving face” a bit to the extreme, first in their silence regarding the presence of a crew, and second in the rebuffing of U.S. offers of assistance. We’re assured of a technically accurate description of the Constellation transport architecture (Ares I, Ares V, Orion, Altair) by both authors’ close association with NASA, but the assumption at that all of the components would be available in the early 2020s seems to strain credulity a bit given that the Augustine Committee looked at the budgets and progress and didn’t see the Altair coming online until the late 2020s, early-to-mid 2030s at best.

The storytelling also suffers a bit from the focus on technical accuracy. Character development is okay, but really not much more than is needed to move the story. Pretty much every crisis or moment of danger is foreshadowed well-prior and easily spotted by astute (or ISU-trained) readers. At times the prose was dry enough that I felt like I was reading an engineering debrief rather than a fiction story.

I think the focus on the Constellation architecture works against the book, in that it will quickly date it as ‘just another Moon story’ (of which there are hundreds), rather than as a timeless work to be enjoyed again and again by succeeding generations. Sort of like with Erik Seedhouse’s “Lunar Outpost” (wait, or was that Michael Carroll’s “Seventh Landing“?), which was less about setting up a Lunar outpost and more about the Constellation project. Which is effectively de-funded, and moribund at best at the moment. Something that Mr. Taylor has words about in the Afterword.

Unfortunately, Constellation was an answer to a question that wasn’t being asked. The Vision for Space Exploration promulgated by President Bush in 2004 specifically stated that NASA was not going to build a new rocket. By September 2004 there were a number of industry players promulgating transport solutions for crew and cargo to the ISS through the Concept Exploration & Refinement (CE&R) studies which were supposed to have led to a flyoff amongst at least two solutions in the 2008 (prob. 2010) timeframe. That was all out the window when Michael Griffin came on board and announced ESAS in early 2005. The Ares I and Ares V were around in 2004 (check out SafeSimpleSoon; I have a marketing CD from ATK with videos of the stuff dated August 2004), but didn’t compete in the CE&R studies (although there is an Ares I in the Boeing presentation). In essence, with the adoption of Constellation, NASA was building their own rockets that no one else could use, or perhaps dare to use in the case of Ares I. The Russians had a 100 mT to orbit rocket they used for the Buran, but seeing no other market for the rocket in the world they mothballed it. Ares V would serve only NASA, with the taxpayers footing the bill for something they couldn’t have - a chance to go to space.

The reader should definitely check out the CE&R studies, as they are going to start looking familiar again (as with the CST-100 from Boeing).

Mr. Taylor reaches different conclusions in the Afterword, though his professional proximity to the Constellation project may influence him as much as my personal dislike of the Constellation architecture (engineering optimization gone overboard, giving us an expensive system for limited tasks, with little applicability to any other purpose) may influence the tone of my writing when reviewing books that tie their objectives to that particular architecture. Let’s just say that I found the Afterword a bit of a sour pill after an otherwise okay story.

And okay kind of sums it up. I’ll go with a waxing half Moon for “Back to the Moon”.