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Landing 14 people on the moon remains one of NASA's greatest successes, if not the greatest.
The astronauts collected stones, took pictures, conducted experiments, planted flags, and then returned home. But these stays of a week during the Apollo program have not established a lasting human presence on the moon.
More than 45 years after the crew's last landing on the moon – Apollo 17 in December 1972 – there are plenty of reasons to send people back to the giant Giant of the Earth and stay there.
Researchers and contractors believe that a crewed base on the moon could become a fuel depot for missions in deep space, create unprecedented space telescopes, make life easier on Mars and solve long-standing scientific mysteries the creation of the moon. A lunar base could even become a flourishing economy, perhaps built around lunar space tourism. "A permanent human research station on the moon is the next logical step, three days away, because we can afford to deceive ourselves and not kill everyone," said recently Astronaut Chris Hadfield at Business Insider. "And we have a lot of things that we have to invent and then test to learn before we can go any further."
But many astronauts and other experts suggest that the greatest obstacles to crewed lunar missions over the past four decades have been mundane if not depressing.
It's really expensive to go to the moon – but not that expensive
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A difficult obstacle for any space flight program, especially for missions involving people, is the high cost.
A law signed in March 2017 by President Donald Trump grants NASA an annual budget of about $ 19.5 billion and could reach $ 19.9 billion in 2019.
L & # 3939; one or the other amount seems to be a windfall divided between all divisions of the agency and ambitious projects: the James Webb Space Telescope, the giant rocket project called Space Launch System, and the distant missions at Sun, Jupiter, Mars, the asteroid belt, the Kuiper belt, and the edge of the solar system. (In contrast, the US military has a budget of about $ 600 billion a year, including a project – the modernization and expansion of the US nuclear arsenal – could cost up to $ 1.7 trillion over 30 years.)
More NASA's budget is relatively modest compared to its past.
"NASA's share of the federal budget peaked at 4% in 1965. Over the last 40 years, it has remained below 1%, and in 15 years it has reached 0.4% of the federal budget. ". astronaut Walter Cunningham said during a 2015 congressional testimony.
Trump's budget calls for a return to the moon, then to an orbital visit to Mars. But given the huge costs and snowball delays badociated with NASA's SLS rocket program, there may not be enough funds to reach one or the other. Another destination, even if the International Space Station is quickly disbursed.
A report released in 2005 by NASA estimated that the return to the moon would cost about $ 104 billion (or $ 133 billion today, with inflation) over a period of one year. about 13 years old. The Apollo program has cost about $ 120 billion dollars in dollars today.
"Clothed exploration is the most expensive space adventure and, therefore, the most difficult to gain political support," Cunningham said in his testimony, according to Scientific American. "Unless the country, which is Congress here, decides to put in more money, it's just a discussion we're doing here." Referring to missions on Mars and returning to the moon, Cunningham added, "NASA's budget is too low to do everything we've talked about here."
The problem of presidents
Reuters / Carlos Barria
The immediate goal of the Trump administration is to bring the astronauts to "the moon's neighborhood" in 2023. That would be towards the end of what could be Trump's second term in office is re-elected.
And here is another major problem: the partisan political badping.
"Why would you believe what a president said about a prediction of something that would happen two administrations in the future?" Hadfield said. "It's just a conversation."
From the point of view of astronauts, it is the mission. The process of designing, engineering and testing a spaceship that could allow people to access another world lasts much longer than a president. two terms. But there is a predictable trend of incoming presidents and legislators who cancel the space leader's previous space exploration priorities.
"I would like the next president to support a budget that allows us to accomplish the mission that we are asked to accomplish, whatever this mission," wrote the astronaut Scott Kelly, who spent a year in space. 2016 Reddit Ask Me Anything session (before Trump took office).
But Presidents and Congress do not seem to care about staying the course.
In 2004, for example, the Bush administration tasked NASA to find a way to replace the space shuttle, which was to retire, and return to the moon. The agency has developed the Constellation program to land astronauts on the moon, using a rocket called Ares and a spaceship called Orion.
NASA spent $ 9 billion over five years designing, building and testing equipment for this manned space flight program. Yet after President Barack Obama took office – and the Government Accountability Office released a report on NASA's inability to estimate Constellation costs – Obama pushed him to abandon the program and approved the rocket Space Launch System (SLS).
Trump did not give up SLS. But he changed Obama's goal of launching astronauts to an asteroid at lunar missions and Mars.
Such frequent changes to NASA's costly priorities led to cancellation after cancellation, to a loss of about $ 20 billion and years of wasted time and momentum .
"I am disappointed that they are so slow and that they are trying to do something else," said Jim Lovell, an Apollo 8 astronaut at Business Insider in 2017. "I'm not excited about anything in the near future, see things as they come. "
Buzz Aldrin said in a 2015 congressional testimony that he believes the will to return to the moon must come from Capitol Hill.
"The American leadership inspires the world by constantly doing what no other country is capable of doing, we demonstrated it 45 years ago, but I do not believe that we We've done it ever since, "wrote Aldrin in a prepared statement. . "I believe it starts with a commitment from Congress and the Bi-Partisan Administration to sustained leadership."
The real driving force behind this government's commitment to return to the moon is the will of the American people, who vote for politicians and help define their political priorities. But the public interest in lunar exploration has always been lukewarm.
Even at the height of the Apollo program – after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the lunar surface – only 53% of Americans thought the program was worth the cost. Most of the time, the approval of Apollo by the United States was well below 50%.
Today, 55 percent of Americans believe that NASA should make a return to the moon a priority, but only a quarter of these believers think this should be a top priority, according to a Pew Research Center poll published in June. But 44% of those surveyed believe that sending astronauts to the moon should not be done at all.
Support for crewed Mars exploration is stronger, with 63% believing it should be a NASA priority, and 91% of people think it's important to scan the sky to find killer asteroids.
Challenges Beyond Politics
The political tussle over NASA's mission and budget is not the only reason why people have not returned to the moon. The moon is also a deadly trap for humans 4.5 billion years old and should not be ridiculed or underestimated.
Its surface is littered with craters and rocks that threaten landings safely. Before the first landing on the moon in 1969, the US government was spending billions of dollars to develop, launch and deliver satellites to the moon to map its surface and help mission planners search for potential sites. Apollo landing.
But what is most disturbing is what the lightening meteorite impacts created: the regolith, also called moon dust.
Madhu Thangavelu, an aeronautical engineer from the University of Southern California, wrote in 2014 that the moon is covered with a thin layer of talc-like lunar dust, several inches deep , which is electrostatic. charged by the interaction with the solar wind and is very abrasive and sticky, fouling space suits, vehicles and systems very quickly. "
Peggy Whitson, an astronaut who has lived in space for a total of 665 days, recently told Business Insider that the Apollo missions" had a lot of dust problems. "
" If we pbad long periods and build permanent habitats, we have to find a way to deal with that, "said Whitson.
There is also a problem with sunlight For 14.75 days at a time, the lunar surface is a landscape of Hell that is exposed directly to the harsh rays of the sun – the moon does not have a protective atmosphere.The next 14.75 days are in total darkness, making the surface of the moon one of the coldest places in the universe.
A small nuclear reactor developed by NASA, called Kilopower, could provide electricity to astronauts during lunar nights of several weeks – and would be useful on other worlds, including is Mars.
"There is no place of life more hostile to the environment and harder than the moon," writes Thangavelu. "And yet, as it is so close to the Earth, there is no better place to learn to live, far from the planet Earth."
NASA has designed space suits and rovers resistant to dust and sun, but it is unclear if this equipment is ready to be launched because it was part of the Constellation program now canceled.
A generation of billionaire space nuts could do it
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A series of lunar rockets is on the horizon.
"There are this generation of billionaires who are crazy about space, which is great," Astronaut Jeffrey Hoffman told reporters at a round table earlier this year. year. "The innovation that has been made over the last 10 years in the field of spaceflight would never have occurred if there was only NASA, Boeing and Lockheed, because it was not the only space in the world. there was no motivation to cut costs or change the way we do it. "
Hoffman refers to the work of Elon Musk and his rocket company, SpaceX, as well as that of Jeff Bezos, who runs a secret aeronautical company called Blue Origin.
"There is no doubt that if we are to go further, especially if we go farther than the moon, we need new means of transport," Hoffman added. "Right now, we are still in the era of spaceflight."
The desire of many astronauts to return to the moon is enshrined in Bezos' long-term vision. Bezos launched a plan around Washington to begin building the base of the first moon using Blue Origin's new Glenn rocket system. In April, he said, "we will move all heavy industry off the Earth, and the Earth will be zoned residential and light industry."
Musk also spoke at length about the how the development of SpaceX's Big Space Falcon could pave the way for affordable and regular lunar visits.SpaceX could even visit the moon before NASA or Blue Origin.The company's new Falcon Heavy rocket is capable of launch a small space capsule of Dragon Crew beyond the moon and return to Earth, and Musk said that two individuals had already paid a large deposit to go on a trip.
"My dream would be that one day, the moon is part of the economic sphere of the Earth – just like the geostationary orbit and the low Earth orbit, "said Hoffman." The space on the geostationary orbit is part of our everyday economy one day I think that the a moon will be, and it's something to work on. "
The astronauts do not doubt that we will return to the moon and Mars. It's just a question of when.
"I guess eventually things will happen when they go back to the moon and end up going to Mars, probably not in my lifetime," Lovell said. "I hope that they will succeed."
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