Here’s an aerospace story that hasn’t generated much notice. The Trump White House is apparently pushing NASA to consider making the first flight of the new Orion manned space system a circumlunar flight, rather than an unmanned test mission. That has a nice, if somewhat melancholy, resonance to it. Fifty years after the fact, we would be repeating Apollo 8.
Reportedly, President Trump is much taken with John F. Kennedy’s bold declaration to put a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s decade. He’s applying similar reasoning. Kennedy proposed the moon missions for national prestige and politics and to best the Soviet Union’s impressive space achievements. The worthy science came along for the ride. Trump’s goal is to show the Chinese that the U.S. is still serious about space and he aims to make sure the Chinese don’t seize the lunar high ground. Never mind that China doesn’t plan a manned moon mission until 2036 and has flown but six manned space missions compared to 171 by the U.S.
Does this make any sense? It depends on the risk. Propelled as it was by Kennedy’s end-of-decade deadline, we’ve forgotten how significant and risky Apollo 8 really was. In the fall of 1968, NASA still had problems with the Saturn V booster, the program’s complex service module had only flown once and the deep space communication network was similarly unproven. The decision to switch from an earth-orbit mission to a circumlunar mission was made in a matter of weeks. And Apollo 8 made the trip without the lunar module that proved to be a lifeboat when the flawed oxygen system blew up on Apollo 13. Flying a manned Orion mission to the moon would be even bolder. Apollo had flown one manned mission before 8 launched for the moon and numerous subsystems flights had also been flown.
Spaceflight hasn’t gotten any less risky since Apollo 8, although it could be argued that we’ve gotten better at assessing and mitigating that risk. It’s not a very convincing argument, though. The much-vaunted and high-achieving private sector launch industry, lead by SpaceX, has still suffered failures and, despite its Silicon Valley prowess, its overall record is no better than what went before it. In other words, the risk is what it always was, as is the probability of losing or not losing a crew.
As you’ve probably read, Orion is the follow-on manned system to Apollo and the Space Shuttle. It’s a clean-sheet system capable of carrying four crew on deep space missions. It flew once on a trial mission in 2014. Its booster, the Space Launch System, is in development and slated to be ready for a 2018 unmanned mission involving lunar orbit time. NASA reviewed this in a hastily convened press event last week and raised the issue of manning the Orion mission.It wasn’t clear if the agency was responding directly to guidance from the White House, but Trump has said in the past that NASA should be bolder, favoring big exploration projects over earth sciences and aeronautics work.
If a manned circumlunar mission is to happen in 2018, as planned, NASA has less than 18 months to man-rate Orion with no additional flights planned before then. During Apollo, NASA moved that fast, if not faster. The Saturn V first flew in November 1967, unmanned. A little over a year later, it launched Apollo 8 for a trip around the moon. But there’s little parallel between Apollo and Orion/SLS. NASA was doing major parallel development in Apollo systems such as the S-II and S-IVB and had more or less a blank check for funding it all, not to mention Kennedy’s looming end-of-decade deadline. Actually landing on the surface of the moon was a driving ambition that just flying around it might not be.
I’m all for getting U.S. manned space vehicles back in space soonest, but before cheerleading this plan, I’d want to make sure NASA isn’t being forced into cutting corners on manned safety just to show the Chinese a thing or two. A failed mission could be a giant backfire compared to a successful one that would be a two-day news story in a river of White House tweets.Further, how about an overarching goal for doing this beyond the feel-good shot around the moon? The fact is, unmanned exploration capabilities have advanced exponentially since Apollo 8 orbited the moon a half century ago. We ought to have a good reason for sending astronauts to do what machines can do better and cheaper, not to mention more safely. Lunar colony, anyone? Mars mission?
