Need $3 Billion, Please

Yesterday the U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee, also known as the Augustine Committee, released its report on the future of NASA’s human spaceflight program. Although I’ve read some criticism of their report online, I think the criticism is all of the “Shoot the messenger” variety. The committee did its job really well.

The report sets out some basic and unpleasant truths that people have been averting their eyes from for a long time. It also laid out five reasonable scenarios for how NASA can move ahead. Even though this was not a decision-making committee, it did actually rule out a scenario that was unrealistic, which I thought was quite an accomplishment. The committee has provided in clear language the basis for the true decision-makers to make a decision. Now we’ll see if our leaders can step up to the plate — or, to use a more appropriate sports analogy since we have an ex-basketball player in the White House, we’ll see if they can sink the winning 3-pointer with the clock running out.

Here are four options that the committee has said are feasible, plus the one that it said was not feasible at this time. (The report actually split option 3 into two sub-options.) Some of the names are theirs, and some are mine.

1) Moon Never, aka Napoleon’s Retreat. In this scenario, NASA continues with both its current budget and current objectives, which are incompatible. The shuttle is mothballed in 2011. The International Space Station is ditched into the Pacific Ocean in 2016. We continue spending money for a moon program that will never happen: “There are insufficient funds to develop the lunar lander and lunar surface systems until well into the 2030s, if ever,” the report says. This option is basically a full-fledged retreat from manned space exploration, with a fig leaf of ongoing research to cover our embarrassment.

Don’t laugh. This is probably the most likely option. Napoleon didn’t want to retreat from Russia, but he did.

2) Moon Never, ISS on Life Support. Slightly more palatable, this option also abandons hope for sending humans beyond low Earth orbit, but it at least acknowledges that it would be a disgrace to build a space station for 25 years, operate it for 5 years, and then torpedo it. The Augustine committee said that we can keep the ISS going to 2020 by developing a smaller heavy-launch rocket and relying on commercial companies to generate cheaper alternatives for launching humans into orbit. A slightly larger fig leaf.

3) Moon First. The committee says that we can keep on track for returning to the moon in the mid-2020s (not 2020 any more) if NASA’s budget is increased by $3 billion per year, plus reasonable cost of living increases thereafter.  “At this budget level, both the Moon First strategy and the Flexible Path strategies begin human exploration on a reasonable, though hardly aggressive, timetable. The Committee believes an exploration program that will be a source of pride for the nation requires resources at such a level,” the report says. Again there are various options based on how big a launch vehicle we want and how much help we can expect from commercial space services.

4) Flexible Path. This option includes lunar fly-bys, visits to Lagrange points (which are the gateways to low-energy transportation to many other places in the solar system), near-Earth objects (such as asteroids), and eventually Earth’s moon or the moons of Mars. The committee clearly likes this option because it is new and different from what has gone before, but it does not actually endorse the Flexible Path over Moon First.

5) Finally, it’s notable that the report rules out the Mars First option, even though it had visible and outspoken advocates, such as Buzz Aldrin. “The Committee finds that Mars is the ultimate destination for human exploration; but it is not the best first destination.” Translation: We can’t do it yet. In spite of what Apollo did in the 1960s, you can’t just leapfrog over two or three generations of technology. (Apollo did leapfrog a generation or so, but only with an extraordinary outlay of money — and I don’t think anyone except Aldrin believes that can happen again.)

In light of the report, the U.S. government has two big decisions to make. The main one is: Do we want a manned space program or do we want a public relations agency? I think that if the question were posed to most Americans in that form, they would rather spend $21 billion for a bona fide human flight program with clearly stated and achievable objectives, rather than spend $18 billion for public relations and for plans on the drawing board that will never be achieved. To come up with those $3 billion, especially in these economic times and in this political climate, would be Obama’s version of hitting a 3-point shot at the buzzer.

The subsidiary question, which is nevertheless important, is: After we have made our choice, what is our strategy? If we can’t afford a manned space program beyond low Earth orbit, we have to decide on which fig leaf to cover up our failure with.

If we can scrape up $3 billion, do we opt for Moon First or the Flexible Path? The question is important because the choice will affect how and whether you can sell this option to the public.

The Flexible Path would give Obama more of a chance to put his own stamp on the space program, rather than following in Bush’s footsteps. I would think that would be very attractive to him. However, as Paul Spudis argues in his blog, the benefit of Moon First is that you are building infrastructure. You don’t have to stake your case on inspiring the public, part of which has never been enthusiastic about the space program anyway. You can work on uninspiring but nevertheless achievable goals, with a long-term aim of making space economically relevant. If you are trying to extend human presence to a new realm, one-time sorties won’t do it; eventually you have to set up a base or a colony. The moon is the only place for that in the near future or even the medium future.

As you can see, I think that Moon First is a little bit more sensible. But I completely acknowledge that I am biased because this is a moon blog. If the Flexible Path is the only way to sell a $3 billion increase to the American public, then I would be glad to support that instead.

Finally, let’s talk about that $3 billion. How much of a burden is it, really? A look at the history of NASA’s budget on Wikipedia is really eye-opening. As a percentage of the Federal budget, NASA’s budget is lower than it has ever been since John F. Kennedy was elected president in 1960. We are talking the talk of doing great, ambitious things, but we are not walking the walk.

If we miraculously find $3 billion more for NASA, that will raise its percentage of the Federal budget from 0.52 percent to 0.60 percent. Such extravagance! Such profligacy! Would this take us back to the days of Apollo? Hardly. It would take us all the way back to the days  of 2008, the last time NASA represented 0.60 percent of the budget. By comparison, during the buildup to Apollo, NASA’s budget peaked at 5.5 percent of the Federal budget, or ten times as much as today.

So, all things considered, I really don’t think that $3 billion is too much to ask. In fact, I hope that the experts will scrutinize the full report, when it is released, to make sure that we understand that $3 billion figure and make sure that it will really do the job. If so, Obama and Congress should sign off on it gladly, because they are getting a bargain.

I’d like to end on a humorous note. Once a week, I drive senior citizens to doctors’ appointments. Today’s passenger, Lloyd, is a little bit hard of hearing but compensates for it with a great sense of humor. For example, I overheard his nurse asking him today, “Have there been any signs of bleeding lately?” To which he replied, “Signs of breathing? No, no signs of breathing!”

While we were in the waiting room Lloyd was reading a newspaper and came to a headline about the Augustine report: “NASA Told U.S. Can’t Pay for New Moon Flight.” He joked, “New moon flight? Why, there’s a new moon every month!”

September 9th, 2009  |  Posted in Just for Fun, Media, Missions, NASA  |  3 Comments »

Direct from the Moon

Besides the History Channel episode, “The Day the Moon Was Gone,” which I wrote about in my last post, another TV show about the moon aired recently on the National Geographic Channel. It’s called “Direct from the Moon,” and it was broadcast on August 23. Unfortunately, the National Geographic website is remarkably uninformative about future showings, so I can’t tell you when your next chance to see it will be.

The show is mostly about the Japanese Kaguya mission, which ended on June 10, about a week before NASA’s LRO and LCROSS missions lifted off. I was very glad to see an hour-long special about Kaguya, which I think did not receive nearly enough publicity here in the U.S. It’s easy to understand why. First, the mission was Japanese, and so the whole national-pride factor is missing (for American publications and readers). Second, the Japanese are very modest. And third, the Japanese speak Japanese, which means that it’s not always so easy for English speakers to understand what they have done.

Planetary scientists, however, certainly did appreciate how special the Kaguya mission was. When I went to the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston in 2008, the Kaguya team had set up a giant high-definition TV in the lobby that played a continuous loop of images from the HDTV camera on the Kaguya spacecraft. For most of the scientists at the meeting this was their first chance to see the Kaguya images, and they were absolutely blown away. It was like flying over the moon in the Apollo command module, only better because you had a wider field of view. One planetary scientist told me that he could teach an entire course of geology (or selenology) just based on the images that Kaguya was acquiring.

However, for a long time only a few bits and pieces of the HDTV videos were available to the general public — an earthrise here, an earthset there. (The Kaguya team evidently learned a lesson from the Apollo program: Earthlings really like to see pictures of Earth from the moon.) So I was really looking forward to an hour-long special that includes some of the best video from Kaguya.

The imagery of Tycho crater is probably the most spectacular sequence in “Direct from the Moon.” The HDTV camera team has now compiled the 3-dimensional data in such a way that you can swoop down through the crater and turn this way and that, as if you were in an airplane. This greatly improves the 3-dimensional effect of the images. Now, as you head over the rim of Tycho, you can see that it is in fact a huge cliff face. (According to the voice-over it is higher than the cliffs at the Grand Canyon). You gain a new respect for the immensity of this crater (which is only medium-sized by lunar standards) and the enormous impact that produced it.

It’s interesting that Tycho is comparable in age and size to the impact structure underneath the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico (the Chicxulub crater) that is believed to be where the dinosaur-killing asteroid hit Earth. Here are their vital statistics:

AGE: Chicxulub — 65 million years, Tycho — 108 million years

WIDTH: Chicxulub — 112 miles, Tycho — 52 miles

VISIBILITY: Chicxulub — buried under nearly a kilometer of sediment, Tycho — brightest crater on the moon, easily visible with the naked eye, with rays that extend almost a quarter of the way around the moon.

MEGAFAUNA KILLED BY IMPACT: Chicxulub — Dinosaurs and 70 percent of other species (though some paleontologists disagree), Tycho — None (Our lunar space defense shield worked!)

But I digress. Back to “Direct from the Moon.” Besides the stunning camera footage, the other thing I really enjoyed about this program was the chance to find out about some of Kaguya’s science results. I heard about three things that were new to me:

• On the far side of the moon, Kaguya mapped out regions of lower density, the reverse of the near side where there are several “mascons” or regions of higher mass density.
• Kaguya identified 40 places on the moon where we might find orange soil, similar to the orange soil that was found by Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt. This soil has recently been shown to contain trace amounts of water.
• By comparing crater sizes to asteroid sizes, Kaguya confirmed that the most likely source for the Late Heavy Bombardment, which produced most of the moon’s craters and large basins, was the asteroid belt (not comets).

There were several other things I liked about the program. It included some interviews with Apollo astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Harrison Schmitt. Aldrin is everywhere these days — he is the one astronaut who has most thoroughly embraced his role as an advocate for space travel. But this was the first time I had seen an interview of Schmitt, the only geologist to go to the moon. I also liked the great CGI animations of the giant impact and the accretion of the moon from the impact debris. I also liked the animation explaining why the near side of the moon has a disproportionate amount of denser material, while the far side has more than its share of lighter material.

A disappointment in the program was that the Japanese scientists got very little screen time and generally came off as rather bland and emotionless. However, there was one exception, a guy named Noriyuki Namiki of Kyushu University. When he was talking about the discovery of the lighter regions on the far side, he said something that sounded very much like the favorite expression of Hiro (on the TV show “Heroes”): “Yata!” (“All right!”) Since I know only about ten words of Japanese, it was cool to hear something that I understood right away!

In general, I was struck by the difference in tone between the National Geographic program and the History Channel series I have appeared on twice, “The Universe.” It showed me that popular science on TV doesn’t have to be sensationalized and enhanced by dizzying and eye-straining graphics. The National Geographic producers were willing to let the science and the scientists tell the story. I think that the History Channel must be aiming at a younger, hipper audience that might be turned off by a traditional documentary. But on the National Geographic Channel, at least, the art of the traditional documentary is alive and well.

September 3rd, 2009  |  Posted in Media, Missions, Science  |  2 Comments »

Who Flung the Moon?

I did, that’s who! And on national TV, no less. But let me back up and tell the story from the beginning.

As regular readers of this blog know, I recorded an interview in June for a program on the History Channel called “The Universe.” Here are links to my previous blog posts about the interview:

• History Channel, Part 1
• History Channel, Part 2
• History Channel and “This Week’s Finds”
• History Channel Appearance — Next Tuesday!

The episode, called, “The Day the Moon was Gone,” debuted Tuesday night. Kay and I both thought that this was one of the best episodes of “The Universe” that we have seen. In my previous posts, I expressed some apprehension — about errors of fact that seemed to be creeping into the script, and about the general tendency of the program to exaggerate things. However, I am happy to report that most of the concerns I had did not materialize.

There were lots of good things about the episode. I was very interested to hear what the other scientists would say, and I thought that for the most part they had interesting ideas, including some that I would never have thought of myself. I really enjoyed seeing Bill Hartmann again. Everything he says just sounds so cogent and well thought-out. To me, he has the same sort of avuncular, “That’s the way it is,” presence that Walter Cronkite did.

I got quite a bit more camera time than I expected, and that was nice in a vain sort of way. The coolest thing was that they added some CGI effects to a couple of my clips. One time, when I was explaining tidal friction, I made some hand gestures to pantomime the moon moving outward from Earth. They dubbed in a little moon graphic to move along with my hands, so that it looked as if I was swinging the moon around in a circle and then flinging it away. What a feeling of omnipotence! I told Kay, “I should have called my blog, ‘Who Flung the Moon’!”

Other good points about the program: The pacing was not as frenetic as some episodes of “The Universe.” There was much less repetition than there often is. Most, though not all, of the topics were presented in logical sequence. Fundamentally, I think the concept worked. And that was a surprise to me.

When I first heard about the topic, a program about how Earth would be different if we had no moon, I was very skeptical. How, I wondered, could scientists answer a question with a fundamentally unscientific premise? The moon cannot disappear. So in some sense, you can make any statement you want, and no one can really prove or disprove it.

Nevertheless, I think that the episode worked because it got the scientists to think in unfamiliar and unexpected ways about the moon, and to bring out facts that they knew that maybe the average person doesn’t. Case in point: When I tell you that the solar tide is about 1/2 the size of the lunar tide, you yawn and say who cares? But when I tell you that if the moon went away you would suddenly have a huge tsunami as the water redistributes itself, all of a sudden it’s kind of interesting.

There was one minor disappointment for me. The narration did, on three or four occasions, try to argue that the giant impact that formed the moon is also responsible for Earth’s plate tectonics. I have previously discussed in this blog why I do not think that conclusion is correct. However, in the context of the whole episode it really was not that big a deal. I think that 95 percent of the audience probably did not even notice or care. I’m afraid that I lectured Adrian, the director, on this point so many times that by the end I was sounding pedantic even to myself. So I’m letting it go. Don’t let it spoil your enjoyment of the episode!

If you missed “The Day the Moon was Gone,” according to the History Channel website the episode will air again on September 8 at 8:00 Eastern time. I suspect it will also air at least a couple more times this week, but the website did not have those times listed.

Tags: giant impact, History Channel, interview, tides, Universe, William Hartmann
August 27th, 2009  |  Posted in Media, Science  |  1 Comment »

“That’s Daddy’s rocket!”

In an earlier post I wrote about the LCROSS mission, which is due to make its crash landing on the moon on October 9. (Mark your calendars!) In July I talked with Tony Colaprete, the Principal Investigator for the mission. I apologize if there is a bit of unevenness in this interview, because I have cobbled it together from three sources — our conversation at the Moon Fest, an e-mail, and his presentation at the Lunar Science Forum. Answers have been edited for length but I have tried to preserve Tony’s wording.

Tony Colaprete (NASA photo)

DM: You told me that you were born the week before the Apollo 11 landing. So, happy birthday! How big an inspiration have the Apollo missions been to you?

TC: I was born July 16, 1969, the day Apollo 11 launched. My father was heavily involved in the Apollo program, and one of my early childhood gifts was the classic Snoopy dressed in an EVA suit. So, yes, the Apollo mission was a huge influence, not only because they were so amazing but also because of my father’s involvement. … I am amazed to think that the folks who did Apollo were on average around 25 to 27 years old! The commitment, devotion, and guts those people had is inspiring.  I just hope I can do things half as right as they did for the Apollo program.

DM: When and how did you decide that you wanted a career in space exploration? How did you prepare for it?

TC: When I graduated from high school I knew I wanted to either go into the sciences or art. Luckily for us all, I decided to go into the sciences. … Very early on, though, I loved being in the woods near Boulder, Colorado, where I grew up. I would go for hours by myself and just watch what went on around me. So very early on I knew I loved systems, how things work together and influence each other … I still do.

I worked on instrumentation at the University of Colorado through the Space Grant College and the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics for a few years after getting my bachelors degree in physics. I was taking a few graduate classes (including my first planetary atmospheres class, taught by a very inspiring David Grinspoon), when I realized I wanted to pursue a graduate degree in planetary sciences. Luckily, CU is a great place to do that!

While I was doing my graduate work I continued to work on instrumentation for sounding rockets, space shuttle flights, and small spacecraft. This combination of science and engineering (again, systems!) was key, I think, to helping me get where I am now.

DM: How did the idea for the LCROSS mission come about?

TC: When LRO moved up to a bigger rocket, they had room for an extra 1000 kilograms on board, and a call for proposals went out for a co-manifested mission. And by the way, they said, you have only 2½ years to get it done, and you can’t spend more than $80 million.

When the call was announced, we [at NASA Ames] formed a “Tiger Team” to come up with ideas. Early on in the process we considered an impact mission, but I concluded that with only 1000 kilograms to work with, the impactor mass would be too small.

Another person in the group, Geoff Briggs, suggested using the spent upper stage of the launch vehicle. He has since said that he got the idea from someplace else. I ran some numbers and convinced myself that an impact by an object of about 2000 kilograms would produce a cloud observable from earth.

At about the same time, Northrop Grumman submitted a [proposal] that was also using the upper stage and also had a small shepherding satellite that could make observations. An engineer on the Tiger Team saw the idea and told me about it. We had a couple Northrop Grumman scientists come up and we discussed our ideas and the rest was history. So I don’t think it was any one person’s idea, but just enough people with the same idea!

In the end, LCROSS was selected out of 17 proposals. We cheated the 1000 kilogram limit — it’s 3200 kilograms, because we held on to the spent Centaur [rocket stage], which is about 2300 kilograms.

DM: Have you ever watched a launch in person before? If so, how was it different, knowing that it’s your own experiment that is going up?

TC: I’ve flown payloads on sounding rockets and shuttle flights, and have seen those go before. This Atlas moved so slow at first! I thought to myself, “You’d better pick up some speed or you’re not going to make it!” The sounding rockets and the shuttle use solid fuel, whereas the Atlas V is all liquid — it’s a big difference!

My biggest concern at launch was whether we could get off on the 17th or the 18th [of June], because those two days result in very good impact observing conditions for the continental U.S. The 19th was not so good, and on the 20th [there were no good times] at all. So I was very glad the weather broke in time for us  to go on  June 18.

DM: Have there been any exciting moments since the launch?

TC: I held my breath when we turned on the instruments for the first time. That was a moment of sheer terror and anxiety for me. Also, I’ll hold my breath again on August 1, when we turn them back on. Radiation and vacuum can have effects on detectors, so they always degrade over time. Once we know that they are working, I will be very confident that the payload will survive until the impact with the moon. [According to the mission page, the checkout of the infrared cameras and spectrometers on August 1 went very well. They took spectra of Earth and -- stop presses! -- detected oxygen, water, and vegetation! -- DM]

DM: What are you expecting to see when LCROSS hits the moon?

TC: There are a couple different models of how the water gets to the south pole and two different predictions for how it is distributed. We describe them as the smooth versus chunky models. In the smooth model, the ice is uniformly distributed on the scale of this room, with about a 1 percent concentration of ice. If that model is correct, LCROSS will have very good chances of detecting it. LCROSS should be sensitive down to concentrations of half a percent.

However, if the ice is chunky, with smaller pockets of up to 10 percent ice, then we might have a 10 percent chance of hitting something. If we hit one of the “peanuts” in the chunky peanut butter, we’ll know. This would immediately distinguish between the two competing models.

My biggest fear is that we won’t see anything — that it will be a dud. But even in that case, then we’ve learned that the distribution isn’t smooth. That is important to know, because it means that your next mission [i.e., a lander to search for ice on the ground -- DM] had better be mobile.

DM: How does the LCROSS mission compare with other spacecraft that have crash-landed on the moon (Lunar Prospector, the European SMART-1, and the Japanese Kaguya)?

TC: None of those other missions were designed as impactors. The biggest difference is that they typically hit the moon at a low, grazing angle, because they were in orbit around the moon. LCROSS is not, it’s in orbit around the Earth. [This is a rather non-obvious fact that is illustrated on the flight director's blog at this link. LCROSS doesn't "go to the moon." It goes into an orbit around Earth that is the size of the moon's orbit, and then the moon just runs into it! - DM] So it will hit at a very steep angle, around 85 degrees. Also, we’re bringing quite a bit of mass. So those missions can’t be compared to LCROSS for visibility, size, and impact angle.

DM: How big a crater will the LCROSS impact make?

TC: We’ve done simulations using Apollo-era technology, and we expect the crater to be about 20 meters wide — the size of a tennis court. We expect the plume to contain about 300 to 400 metric tons of material.

DM: On the LCROSS website you have a list of several possible target craters. Do you have a favorite on this list?

TC: Faustini would be my preference. It’s a very old, large crater, so the material in there has been in shadow for a very long time — around two and a half billion years. We want to hit somewhere that is flat and fluffy, not blocky and steep. One thing against it is that it’s right on the limb of the moon. So the ejecta have to go up 2 kilometers in order to be illuminated by the sun. In some of the other target craters, the ejecta only have to go up about 500 meters. But for earth observers, a position on the limb means that you get high contrast [against the darkness of space -- DM], and that’s good.

DM: I think it’s interesting how you have been able to use the results of other recent missions to narrow down the list of targets for this mission. Can you talk a little bit about  the synergy between missions, and especially the Japanese Kaguya spacecraft?

TC: The topography from their laser altimeter has been invaluable. First, it lets us calculate the slope of the ground. You don’t want to hit a slope [because you would then lose the benefit of a high impact angle -- DM]. Kaguya also gave us amazing information on the depth of the craters. Some of the errors in the previous estimates were significant, on the order of 500 meters to a kilometer. From the Kaguya terrain camera we got information on the surface roughness and albedo [reflectivity] of the craters. So, overall, they matured our current data set.

Also, with new LRO data coming online, we’ll be refining our numbers continuously to make the wisest choice of target. We will finally make an impact site selection by 30 days before impact, roughly the first week of September.

DM: How can ordinary people contribute to the LCROSS mission?

TC: Amateurs have already contributed, and with an impact with the moon high and the skies dark as far east as Texas, I hope many more will continue to contribute.

One thing to realize is that professional astronomers typically don’t point their telescopes at the moon. To most of them, the moon is a source of light pollution. So when we asked the best in the world to look at the moon for a change, there was a steep learning curve. One thing they needed to learn was how to find the crater you want to point to amongst a hundred or so other craters that look very similar. The shadows and bright areas change dramatically with small changes in the sun angle, so finding one’s way around the moon can be difficult if one has never looked before. To help, we asked the amateur community to image the moon at all phases and tilts so that we had a library of sorts for the various light conditions.

During the impact, amateurs with a minimum of about a 10-12 inch telescope can observe the impact. We will be soliciting these observations and will share them with others. [There is a Google Group for amateur observers at this link -- DM.]

DM: Finally, do your kids know that “Dad is a rocket scientist”? If so, are they proud of it, and are they paying any attention to the LCROSS mission?

TC: I have a son who is two and a half and a daughter who is five years old. They came to the launch, and when they look at the moon now they say, “Daddy’s rocket is flying to the moon!” After the launch my wife and children took a different flight home than I did. During the layover, on one of the cable news channels playing at the gate, they showed a replay of the launch. My children both yelled, “Daddy’s rocket!” My wife says that the people around them looked with a bit of a skeptical stare until she said, “Actually, it is their daddy’s rocket.”

Tags: Ames Research Center, Apollo, chunky, craters, interviews, Kaguya, LCROSS, LRO, Northrop Grumman, smooth, telescopes, Tony Colaprete
August 25th, 2009  |  Posted in Missions, Science  |  3 Comments »

History Channel Appearance — Next Tuesday!

The episode of “The Universe” on which I will appear — though probably only briefly — has now been scheduled! It will have its first showing on the History Channel at 9:00 pm (8:00 pm Central time) on the History Channel. For those people who don’t get the History Channel, I think that it will also be available on the Web. Go to the main page for “The Universe” and click on “Watch Full Episodes.”

The title of the episode is “The Day the Moon was Gone.” It looks at various scenarios for what Earth would be like if we had no moon. What if we had never had a moon? What if the moon suddenly disappeared?

Also, for those of you who missed my first appearance on ”The Universe” in 2007, they are re-running that episode (simply called “The Moon”)  just before the new one — 8:00 Eastern time, 7:00 Central.

If you have been following my blog entries — this one, this one, and this one – you know already that I have some concerns about the upcoming episode. I have not yet seen the episode, but I am worried that the show is going to exaggerate certain claims.  Some ideas might be presented or emphasized not because they are good science, but because they are good TV. After the show has aired, please feel free to ask me what I think is good science, what is doubtful, and what is just plain bogus. Keep in mind, though, that anything I say is just one person’s opinion! I can be wrong, too.

By the way, I have no such reservations about the earlier episode. On the whole I think that the History Channel (or really, Flight 33 Productions, which has produced all the episodes of “The Universe” except one) did a really nice job with that episode, and I am proud to have appeared on it.

Tags: Flight 33 Productions, History Channel, television, The Universe
August 20th, 2009  |  Posted in Media, websites  |  No Comments »

Moon (the Movie)

So far I’ve stuck pretty much to science in this blog, but I have promised to write about the moon in our culture as well. I’ve been looking forward to seeing the movie Moon, starring Sam Rockwell, ever since I first read about it this spring. It has been out for two months now, and I managed to catch it at a local theater that had it for a one-week engagement.

I’m very glad that I had not read anything about the plot of the movie, so that during the movie I was as clueless about what was going on as the character(s) were. Kay, who had seen a review on TV, knew more about the basic premise. So she picked up on the clues faster but missed out on some of the surprise factor. Nevertheless, we both liked the movie.

I am very much a fan of science fiction that takes place in a future we could conceivably get to, unlike such franchises as Star Trek and Star Wars that completely bend reality to suit the purposes of the storyteller. Moon has a very gritty, realistic feel. The lunar base feels claustrophobic. The space suits are always grimy. Things are broken and don’t get fixed. A central plot point, involving exposure to radiation, is a real possibility on the moon and something that the designers of lunar bases will have to contend with. (One hopes that they will never contemplate the solution portrayed in this movie.)

There are a few small holes in the plot that don’t spoil the overall story too badly. For example, any astronauts who go to the moon will certainly know about the danger of radiation and not be taken by surprise, as they seemed to be in the movie. Also, the astronauts are supposed to be on the far side of the moon, but one of them drives what seems to be a short distance and then he can see Earth.

One extremely cool thing about the movie is the computer, Gerty. It is obviously an homage to HAL, the computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey. I read one review on IMDb (after seeing the movie) that complains about the similarity, but I think it is delightful how the director plays with that cultural reference. Anybody who has watched 2001 will have certain expectations about how Gerty is going to behave — and let me just say that you will be very surprised.

Some of the visual elements of the movie are wonderful. I would nominate this movie for an Oscar in the following categories:

• Most Effective Use of Emoticons. A little bit reminiscent of the Jack-in-the-Box commercials, but much better!
• Best Use of a Full-Earth Shot. You’d think that we would be jaded, after seeing the Earthrise photos from Apollo, but the director gives us one look at Earth from the moon and uses the image very, very wisely. I was especially shocked at how huge Earth was — and, of course, that’s to be expected. Earth from the moon would look quite a bit bigger than the moon from Earth.

It’s interesting that the director, Duncan Jones, is the son of rock singer David Bowie, who of course had his own SF-oriented phase (“Space Oddity,” “Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars” and all that). I admire Jones for not shying away from his famous dad’s legacy, and exploring some of the same issues in a way that is completely different from his father. Also, as you might expect from the son of a musician, the music in the movie is very effective.

According to IMDb, Moon ranks in the top 250 movies (of all time!) in user rankings, coming in at #242, just above Rocky (#243) and just below Roman Holiday (#241). It has an average user rating of 8.4 out of 10. So a lot of people liked it! It probably won’t be in movie theaters too much longer, but if you can’t find it in a theater, perhaps you can catch it when it comes out on DVD.

Tags: dystopia, earth, fathers, lunar base, radiation, science fiction
August 12th, 2009  |  Posted in Just for Fun, Movies, Science  |  4 Comments »

LRO’s “BFF”

The second of the two moon missions that NASA launched in June is called LCROSS, an acronym for Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite. According to Tony Colaprete, the chief scientist for the LCROSS mission, “The younger folks at Goddard Space Flight Center have started calling it LRO’s BFF… at least until October 9.”

Hmmm… I can see some puzzled looks out there. Okay, I’ll explain. LRO is the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which launched on the same rocket as LCROSS on June 18. BFF is Internet-speak for “best friends forever.” (But you knew that already, right?) And October 9 is D-day for the LCROSS mission.  Unlike LRO, which will accumulate its results slowly and steadily over a period of one to three years, LCROSS will go out in a blaze of glory, and will do all of its most interesting science over the course of 5 minutes.

LCROSS consists of two main pieces — a spent rocket booster and a “shepherding satellite.” On October 9, around 4:30 AM Pacific time, the bigger rocket booster will slam into a crater near the moon’s south pole. Imagine an SUV crashing head-on into the ground at more than 5000 miles per hour! That’s what the impact is going to be like. It will be equivalent to the explosion of about a ton of dynamite. 

The explosion will be big enough, in fact, to be seen from Earth. That is the whole idea — to time the impact so that it can be tracked by all of the big telescopes on Hawaii, as well as the Hubble Space Telescope. Colaprete says that even a 10-inch telescope (well within the range of many amateur astronomers) should be able to see the flash, if it is pointed in the right place at the right time. If you don’t have access to a 10-inch telescope, you can also watch the impact over the Internet.

A minute or so after the big kablooie, the shepherding satellite will come swooping in, flying right through the debris plume. While it’s getting buffeted about, it will hopefully be able to sniff out any volatile compounds that have been excavated by the blast, including water vapor — the number one target of the mission.

We’ve seen tantalizing hints of water ice from orbit, but nothing that absolutely confirms it. We know that there is hydrogen in the permanently shadowed craters near the south pole, but there is no guarantee that the hydrogen is bound up with oxygen to make a water molecule. There’s only one way to find out for sure, and that is to “reach out and touch it,”  as Colaprete says. Or perhaps “reach out and blow it up” would be a slightly more accurate wording.

After it flies through the plume, the shepherding satellite will itself crash into the moon a few minutes later, creating a second and smaller blast. Colaprete is deliberately not building up any great expectations for this one, because it will be harder to control where the shepherding satellite lands. However, it will give scientists a second chance to look for signs of water, or at least to understand the mechanical properties of the ground that LCROSS is crashing into.

Last month I had a chance to interview Colaprete by e-mail and then in person at the Moon Fest. I also went to his talk at the Lunar Science Forum. In my next post I will try to reproduce these three “conversations” as if they were all one interview.

By the way, the LCROSS mission reminds me of something interesting I learned when researching my moon book. After Russia launched Sputnik in 1957 and when our scientists and politicians were debating what we could do to respond, one of the crazy ideas that was floated was to nuke the moon. That’s right, launch a nuclear missile at the moon and blow it up, thereby proving somehow that we were bigger and badder than the Russkies.

What a stupendously bad idea this would have been, because we would have learned nothing from it. The response we chose instead — sending men to the moon — was vastly more difficult, but we got so much more out of it, including a real understanding of the moon’s origin and makeup, plus the fleeting goodwill of all of the rest of the world.

It’s just a tiny bit ironic, then, that on our second round of missions to the moon, one of the first things that we are doing is slamming a rocket as hard as we can into the moon to create a big explosion. I mention this parallel with some hesitation, because I don’t want to make LCROSS seem like just a stunt. That is exactly what it is NOT. There are two huge differences between this mission and the stunt that was proposed back in the late ’50s:

1. A spent rocket booster is not a nuke.
2. The LCROSS mission was designed with a specific scientific purpose in mind: to excavate water ice, to see first of all if there is any ice there and secondly how much there is and how easy it is to get it out. These are vital things to know if we are ever going to set up a permanent moon base.

Maybe these points are obvious and didn’t even need saying, but I just wanted to explain why the LCROSS mission is not just about some engineers blowing things up for fun.

(Still, blowing things up is fun … See any episode of Mythbusters for proof!)

Tags: blaze of glory, hydrogen, ice, kablooie, LCROSS, Mythbusters, nuke, Tony Colaprete, water
August 3rd, 2009  |  Posted in Science  |  2 Comments »

History Channel and “This Week’s Finds”

Just a little update on the History Channel program … I must have talked with Adrian, the writer/producer, about fifteen times this week. Today was his deadline for the script, and he kept on checking little details with me. Even as recently as Monday he said that persons unknown had snuck some words into the script about the giant impact creating the oceans, which is NOT TRUE!!

I am not in the television biz, but it amazes me that anyone would have the audacity to put statements of fact (especially false ones) into a writer’s script without checking with the writer first. I write for the print media, and I don’t think that any of my editors would ever do that. If they did, they wouldn’t be my editor for long!

Anyway, I’m confident that Adrian is trying his best to get the story right, and I hope that he will get the last word.

Today I found a reference to the giant impact theory in an unexpected place on the Web: Physics World magazine. The article is called “The Earth — for physicists,” and it talks about four catastrophes that Earth has been through, including the giant impact that formed the moon and the “late heavy bombardment” that formed most of the moon’s large impact features. The article says complimentary things about my book, so I’m happy to reciprocate with a link to it!

I found the article intriguing for a reason you might not expect. The author, John Baez, was perhaps the first blogger on the World Wide Web. He was certainly the first physics blogger. I interviewed him one time (for reasons that I have now forgotten), and he pointed out that he had been writing his blog since before the word “blog” existed! It’s called “This Week’s Finds in Mathematical Physics,” and he has kept it going since January 19, 1993. It is now up to Week 276.

If you do the math, you’ll see that he has not written an entry every week. Nevertheless, his blog is a fantastic place to learn about math or really theoretical kinds of physics, because he thinks hard about how to explain difficult concepts in the most straightforward, informal, intuitive way. Usually, the only way you can get this stuff is to talk with someone at the blackboard. That’s what John Baez’s blog is like. A really great blackboard session. And somehow he manages to do it over and over … not every week, but pretty darned often.

Anyway, Baez is usually into very cerebral math-y stuff, and so it amazed me to see him writing for Physics World about something as concrete as how the moon formed, how we got an oxygen atmosphere, etc. It amazed me in a good way, I hasten to add.  After all, I was also in a previous life a card-carrying mathematician, and look what I’m writing about now!

Tags: blogs, giant impact, John Baez, late heavy bombardment, physics, television, world's first blogger?
July 31st, 2009  |  Posted in Media, Science, websites  |  No Comments »

A colder and wetter moon?

Yesterday I went to the Lunar Science Forum at Ames Research Center, which was the scientists’ version of a Moon Fest – a chance for all the recent and current moon missions to unveil their latest and greatest findings. According to the organizers, more than 500 people registered, including 200 just since last Friday. I don’t think that all these people actually came — the main meeting room holds 300, and it was not filled to capacity. Nevertheless, it was a well-attended (and well-Twittered) event.

Yesterday the science teams of the LRO and LCROSS missions, which just launched last month, presented their data publicly for the first time. As David Morrison, the head of the Lunar Science Institute, said in his introductory remarks, “Last year most of the papers reported plans, but I’m delighted to say that most of the talks this year are about results.”

All of the LRO results are very preliminary, because LRO is still in its “commissioning orbit,” when they are still warming up and checking out the systems. By the way, I mean warming up quite literally. Most of the instruments have residual moisture in them from their time on Earth. (So do most tourists, after a few hours in the humidity of south Florida!) So they have to go through a “bake-out” period to dry out all of that extra moisture. The LRO camera finished its bake-out on July 10, but even before then (as mentioned in this entry) it started sending back fabulous pictures.

Also, scientists from two other moon missions spoke yesterday. There was one presentation on the Japanese Kaguya mission that just ended a week before LRO lifted off, and three about the Indian Chandrayaan-1 mission that is still ongoing.

The most interesting news yesterday all had to do with results that we can’t really talk about yet! One of them is so preliminary that no one can really interpret it yet. The other two are results that are going to be published soon but are currently under “embargo,” meaning that the scientists aren’t supposed to talk about them until the publications come out.

First, David Paige, principal investigator for LRO’s Diviner experiment, showed some of Diviner’s first measures of the temperatures in the moon’s permanently shadowed craters. Remember that these are supposed to be “cold traps,” where water molecules could perhaps accumulate as ice because they are too cold to float away. The first temperature readings in Amundsen crater turned out to be even lower than expected: around 33 degrees Kelvin (or 33 degrees above absolute zero).

No one had predicted such a low temperature; I think that 70 degrees Kelvin was closer to what they had expected. As Paige said, “If this is true, it’s colder than the poles of Pluto!”

From his wording, you might correctly infer that Paige is not really sure this measurement is right. The instrument has been calibrated, but he said there are some possible reasons why the instrument-measured temperature may not be the same as the physical temperature. (For example, they don’t really know what kind of surface they are looking at — rocky or soft and fluffy — and that can make a difference to how they estimate the temperature.) The instrument is still too fresh and new, and the finding too unexpected, to put a lot of stock in it yet. But what it could mean is that the permanently shadowed craters are a better cold trap than we thought.

Two other surprising results that can’t be talked about yet came out of the Chandrayaan-1 mission. Carle Pieters of Brown University reported on the Moon Mineralogy Mapper, and said that her team had made a new discovery on lunar volatiles that she can’t discuss yet. Of course, the most important potential  ”lunar volatile” is water. But, she said, “Don’t give me wine and try to dig the secret out of me.”

Then Paul Spudis, whose Once and Future Moon blog is always thought-provoking, talked about the results from his mini-SAR (synthetic aperture radar) experiment, which is also on the Indian Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft. Like Pieters, he has a result that he can’t talk about yet, but he said, “I may be susceptible to being plied with drinks!”

Mini-SAR is also looking for water ice; the idea is that ice will reflect a circularly polarized radar beam differently from rocks. (The radar wave will actually go into the ice before bouncing back, because ice is transparent.) This is similar to the way that ice was first detected at the south pole, by the Clementine mission in 1994; Spudis was the deputy leader of the Clementine science team. However, the Clementine satellite only got one brief peek at the south pole, and so its results were very ambiguous. You can’t do very much in science with one data point. Chandrayaan-1 should do much better. We will have to wait to find out just how much better it’s done.

Nevertheless, I will transcribe a fascinating exchange that occurred during the audience-questions period after Spudis’ talk. Clive Neal, the chair of NASA’s Lunar Exploration Analysis Group (which advises NASA on the choice of moon missions) went to the microphone.

NEAL: You said there were some things that you cannot talk about, but then you proceeded to talk about some of them… (Laughter from audience.)

SPUDIS: You don’t know that! (Laughter.) You’re making an assumption, and maybe it’s warranted, maybe it isn’t.

NEAL: So I’ll ask my question as delicately as I can. You showed data that seemed to be consistent with the presence of water ice on the moon. Would you care to comment on that? (Loud laughter.)

SPUDIS. No! (Laughter.) But you’re welcome to draw whatever conclusions you care to.

NEAL: Can I just rephrase the question? If I buy you a beer, would you comment?

SPUDIS: It depends on what kind of beer and how much. (Laughter.)

DAVID MORRISON: I think all of us are beginning to assume that in a month or two we’ll have a wetter moon than we do now.

SPUDIS: Well, the moon isn’t going to change. (Laughter and applause.) Our perceptions might change. But, you know, some of us have had this perception for a long time.

Make of it what you will! Just don’t blame me for breaking any embargoes.

Other tidbits and factoids from the first day of the meeting:

These roads are so confusing.

• Google released its new version of Google Moon on Monday, and there was a large screen in the tent demonstrating it. It’s a huge improvement over the previous map-based Google Moon. This one has all the latest imagery from the LRO mission, and will continue to be updated constantly — so look for it to continue improving by leaps and bounds over the next year.
• The LRO launch was perfect, and that is very good news for the scientists, because it means that there is more fuel left for an extended mission than they could previously count on. Craig Tooley said that this could extend the life of the mission by a year. (The spacecraft has a planned one-year life span, followed by a two-year extended science mission. I interpret Tooley’s remarks to mean that it could continue orbiting for a fourth year.) I would think that the extra time would be especially valuable for the narrow-angle camera, which can only image about 10 percent of the moon in any given year.
• I asked Sam Lawrence, of the LRO camera team, whether they had felt under any pressure to get the pictures of the Apollo landing sites out early. He said, “I won’t lie to you. Several people in Headquarters simultaneously and independently came up with the idea of taking pictures of the Apollo landing sites. But Isaac Newton is in the driver’s seat. It was largely serendipity that we happened to be in the right place to image them.” In fact, the Apollo 12 landing site has not been imaged yet, but it should come around into the camera’s view in a couple of weeks.
• There was lots of Twittering going on at this conference. I sat behind someone whose laptop had a screen full of twitters. I have so far refused to get on twitter.com, but those of you who are might want to check out what the scientists are twittering about.
• Yes, there is such a thing as a free lunch! Registration for this conference was free (which is already unusual for a scientific meeting) and the Lunar Science Institute provided the lunch and refreshments free of charge, too! Shhh… Don’t tell Washington that they’re using your tax money to feed starving scientists …

Tags: Ames Research Center, beer, Chandrayaan, cold trap, free lunch, Google, ice, Kaguya, LCROSS, LRO, Lunar Science Forum, Lunar Science Institute, Twitter, water
July 22nd, 2009  |  Posted in Just for Fun, Missions, Science  |  1 Comment »