Anthonares

It’s another big Monday for space discussion!

To Get Your Juices Flowing:
I’ll start with the article in this Sunday’s LA Times entitled “Shooting for the Moon, Once Again”. It provides a fairly enthusiastic overview of the mounting world effort to reach the moon again. The article’s author, John Johnson Jr., points out that the US, India, China, Japan, and the ESA either have probes orbiting the Moon, or are actively developing them. Those probes will produce detailed topographical, chemical, and mineral maps of the lunar surface. And two countries, the US and China, actually have stated goals of putting people on the moon within the next 12 years. It’s a great article, it’s an inspirational read, and the best part is most of it is pretty well founded in reality. For the first time in my (relatively young) life, the Moon and space seem like places I might actually someday get a chance to explore.

In The Space Review:
Jeff Foust makes a very important point in the humans vs. robots debate: NASA’s role is not to simply advance space science, but to explore space. Given that fact, he asserts that more needs to be done to communicate the role of humans in exploration to the general public. I don’t agree with every point Mr. Foust makes, particularly the points about the relative merits of humans vs. robotic science (this is coming from a scientist whose work could not be done at all by robots).

Taylor Dinerman looks at NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation System (COTS) proposal and find reason to be hopeful yet skeptical about the role of private enterprise in space. He points out that NASA has tried and failed at commercialization in the past, particularly with the Venture Star project, and that the biggest danger here may be that smaller companies will get burned when NASA, like Lucy in the Peanuts, pulls out the football at the last minute.

Bill White makes the case that mining platinum group metals (PGM) from the lunar surface could provide a near-turn economic return, unlike He-3 mining. As I mentioned in my blog entry on metals scarcity, there may be a market for PGMs for fuel cells that could be very profitable for extraterrestrial mining.

Michael Huang advocates replacing anti-human-spaceflight humans with robots that could write anti-human-spaceflight editorials cheaply and more efficiently than anti-human-spaceflight humans can. This way, too, the debate between humans vs. robots in space would be between humans and robots.

My vision of the future is to walk into a debate hall hosting a humans vs. robots debate, and see a human and a robot shouting angrily at each other. A real humans vs. robots debate. That would be a sign of true progress in our society.

Great satire!

Though not exactly space policy, Jeff Foust reviews a book about visualizations of extrasolar planets called “Infinite Worlds”. Mr. Foust’s review is highly positive, and I’ve already put it on my Amazon wishlist! For something to whet your apetite, here is a visualization of the planet OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb recently discovered through use of the gravitational microlensing technique.

Elsewhere in the Blogsmos:
Space Politics asks if NASA is becoming too politicized, and also points out that Transportation Secretary Norman Minetta’s statement that space tourism should begin in 2008 is not exactly as newsworthy as the AP and others seem to indicate. After all, Virgin Galactic announced last year that it would begin flights in 2008, so Minetta wasn’t really saying anything new.

Also, yesterday at Space Politics, Jeff Foust wrote that the Europa Orbiter and Terrestrial Planet Finder should not be lumped into one basket when talking about space science “cuts” at NASA. He argues that the EO mission is of higher immediate importance, and that scientific goals along the lines of TPF are already being pursued with the Kepler mission. I agree completely with this assesment, the EO mission is something that NASA should undertake, and the TPF mission is something that NASA should not have any control over (as I argued yesterday). Apparently NASA Administrator Griffin has come to the defense of the TPF and made clear that the 2007 budget merely delays it, though the delay is of indefinite length.

Finally, though this is not exactly new, last week Mark Sonter, writing for Ad Astra, put together a pretty nice article on asteroid mining. I am glad to hear chorus of voices supporting commercialization of space!

And before I go, keep your fingers crossed for the Falcon 1 over the next two weeks as they approach their fourth attempt at a maiden launch. Last week’s launch attempt was scrubbed due to problems encountered during hold down firing tests that were completed succesfully (link with video).