On the moon about the moon

Participants in the announcement of the Moon Run at the International Astronautical Congress hold a giant inflatable moon to celebrate the start of a competition whose details are yet to be defined. (credit: The Moon Race)

by Jeff Foust
Monday, October 22, 2018

The star of the recent International Astronautical Congress (IAC), held early this month in Bremen, Germany, was the Moon. More precisely, it is about two meters in diameter.

This inflatable model of the Moon spent most of its time in the conference exhibition hall, serving as a backdrop to countless photos of conference attendees. However, he moved from time to time and presented himself at various events during the conference.

Then there were the lunar rovers of various companies and organizations, some of which were only models exposed, others were moving in the exhibition hall – much to the delight of some but of the consternation of others, who were unexpectedly in the obligation to negotiate crowds of people but also robots.

"I think you can not walk in the exhibition hall and not fall on a lunar vehicle, which is nice to see, but also an edifying story," said Eric Stallmer, President of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, at the beginning of a panel. discussion on lunar exploration at the conference. "Pay attention to them. They are everywhere."

Inflatable moons and lunar rovers aside, it was hard to escape the emphasis on the Moon at the conference, in keynote addresses and roundtables throughout the five-day conference . "This week has been an incredible week at the IAC," said Giuseppe Reibaldi, president of the Moon Village Association, during one of the final sessions of the conference. "We saw almost daily announcements about Moon's activities and initiatives."

Within the ICC, it was clear that agencies and space companies were almost unanimous on the desire to return to the moon with humans in the short term – in about ten years – and to conduct other human activities there. and robotic before continuing Exploration of Mars or other activities beyond the territorial space.

A key factor was that NASA was finally, and fully, on board with a human return to the moon. After years of "Journey to Mars" and other efforts that have largely bypassed the Moon, the agency now has an explicit direction, in the form of the Space Policy Directive 1 signed by President Trump last December , aiming to send humans back to the moon while maintaining a long-term, so vague, vision of human missions to Mars.

"The president asked me to return to the moon, but to do it differently from what we had done in the 1960s and 1970s," said NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine at the traditional panel of ITC "heads of agencies" at the beginning of the meeting. conference. This difference, he said, will involve more cooperation with other national space agencies that are also interested in lunar exploration. "We can not do what we do without the support of our international partners."

This seems to suit most potential international partners, who have expressed interest in cooperating with the United States as part of their lunar exploration projects. A number of traditional and non-traditional partners, from ESA to the newly formed Australian Space Agency, to JAXA, said they were looking for a way to find a role on the bridge.

Another factor is that at this year's IAC, defenders of Mars exploration were harder to find. Over the past two years, Elon Musk has delivered a speech about his approach to sending humans to Mars, using what is now officially known as the Big Falcon Rocket. This year, however, he stayed at home after taking stock of the changes made to BFR at a press conference held last month at SpaceX headquarters. (This probably relieved the conference organizers and many other participants, given the disruption of these speeches at the conference held two years ago in Mexico and last year. in Australia.)

At the same information conference in Mexico two years ago, Lockheed Martin presented his own vision of human missions to Mars through his "Mars Base Camp" concept, which the company updated at last year's meeting. The company was back with another presentation in Bremen, but this time it was mainly interested in the Moon.

During their presentation, they discussed a new concept of reusable lunar lander that they had developed. The huge lander – 62 tons when fully fueled with liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen – could land four astronauts on the surface for two-week stays, using many technologies developed by the company for the Orion spacecraft .

This LG has been adapted from the designs previously developed by the company for Mars exploration, without requiring elements such as an airship needed to land on Mars. "Everything we are working on today is necessary to secure the future of this next phase of placing humans on the surface of the moon," said Tim Cichan, space exploration architect at Lockheed Martin, when of the presentation. "This time, the exploration campaign will be a long-term and sustainable exploration of the moon."

The company considers the landing gear as a means of transporting astronauts to and from the gateway orbiting the moon, using a separate propellant deposit to refuel between exits to the lunar surface. This deposit could eventually utilize lunar water ice, although it may initially generate propellants from the water supplied to the Earth through a lunar orbit.

The bridge itself, however, continues to take shape. Although the design of the complex has evolved to become more complex, no decision has been made as to which countries will contribute, even if some space agencies, such as ESA, commission the industry to conduct studies. on how to develop specific modules.

"We are following a process," Bridenstine told a news conference after the panel of heads of agencies. "We formulate what architecture will look like, then we examine each of the space agencies and their capabilities, and we will incorporate these capabilities into the architecture." He did not specify the duration of this formulation. process takes.

This uncertainty also extends to other lunar initiatives. At the press conference, one of the press conferences was devoted to an announcement entitled "The Moon Race", with few details provided to the media in advance. The event itself brought together a host of lunar exploration enthusiasts, overwhelming the limited number of journalists present. This inflatable moon also made its appearance, mounted on stage (with the southern hemisphere up, noted a lunar scientist). Also present were Bob Smith, CEO of Blue Origin, and Nicolas Chamussy, Executive Vice President of Space Systems at Airbus.

And what has been announced? Well, it was rather vague. As its name indicates, The Moon Race is meant to be a competition related to lunar exploration, but this is not the successor of the Google Lunar X PRIZE that ended earlier this year. year without a winner, or even in the same spirit.

Instead, the young professionals who developed the contest, with the support of Airbus, want to stimulate technologies for future lunar exploration that could be built and ultimately piloted and tested on the moon. But the rules specific to the competition have not yet been defined, and The Moon Race will not accept applications from potential competitors until next year. And the organizers would not say anything about scholarships or other issues related to the funding of the contest.

This did not, however, put an end to the festive atmosphere that brought together the organizers and guests posing with this inflatable moon, raised above their heads in the happily high ceiling room. At one point, the moon bounced over some people, like an oversized beach ball bouncing in the bleachers of a baseball stadium on a summer afternoon.

In the midst of all this, Blue Origin's Smith was asked what role his company – which has its own lunar ambitions – would play in The Moon Race. He replied that the company had not yet made a decision on this matter. "We just want to be part of everything that can take us back to the moon," he said. (Later during the IAC, Blue Origin announced that it has signed a letter of intent with the German aerospace company OHB to study "a future Blue Moon mission on the lunar surface", but with little clarity on the potential partnership.)

A return to the moon would also seem to give a new impetus to the concept of "Lunar Village" promoted for years by Jan Wörner, ESA Director General. As Wörner recalled to the IAC, Moon Village describes a broad concept of partnership between agencies and societies in the field of lunar exploration, and not a literal village of people living on the moon.

"Moon Village is not the colonization of the moon," he said at a press conference during the IAC. "I'm not trying to build houses, a church, a cinema. I do not want to take people away from Earth to live on the moon or on Mars, because the Earth is always the best place to live in the universe. "

However, during the panel at the end of the ICC that debated the "first results of the drawing board" on the creation of the concept of Moon Village, some people focused on this type of architectural planning Wörner was opposed. Yoshifumi Inatani, of the Japanese space agency JAXA, spoke about the development of Moon Village architecture, the goal being to create a facility in the second half of the century hosting a "reasonable" number of people.

"In order to support the architecture, we need a definition of Moon Village," he said. "But that definition is not fixed yet." Given the differences between Wörner's high-level concept and the more literal interpretation of Inatani, it is clear that the definition is not yet fixed.

It is clear that there is a lot of enthusiasm for exploring the moon, be it robots or people, governments or businesses. What is less clear, however, is how this enthusiasm will translate into specific plans and programs, projects and benefits. Of course, we have time to do this in the months and years to come, but celebrating too soon and too early may deflate this interest in the moon when things do not develop as quickly as some hope.

Jeff Foust ([email protected]) is the editor and editor of The Space Review, and a senior writer of SpaceNews. It also operates the Spacetoday.net website. The views and opinions expressed in this article are binding only on their author.

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