President Bush announced a plan last week for America and humankind’s return to the moon.
Bush’s plan represents an opportunity to truly begin exploration and exploitation of space. Key to both of these goals is the creation of a permanent manned base on the moon.
The plan has several key features, including completion of the International Space Station by 2010, a crew exploration vehicle to replace the space shuttle, the establishment of a base upon the moon and a manned mission to Mars.
The plan also calls for increasing the NASA budget over the next five years from $85 billion to $86 billion and using $12 billion of that money in the aforementioned programs.
Bush’s plan emphasizes the benefits of a moon base for exploration of space. The moon’s lower escape velocity means lower launch costs for exploratory vehicles. Both manned and robotic explorers could gain experience in an extraterrestrial environment.
A moon base will be a boon to space exploration.
Launch vehicles carrying interplanetary probes or manned ships could be either built on the moon from local materials-given a sufficient infrastructure-or built on Earth and ferried to the moon. Either way, they could be fueled from materials present and minable on the moon.
Hydrogen and oxygen processed from ice could fuel the space shuttle. Oxygen and aluminum or magnesium processed from the lunar soil could also fuel rockets. An even more advanced launch method could use electromagnets to accelerate a launch vehicle powered only with electricity.
The ease of launching crafts from the moon would allow for missions capable of rescuing damaged Earth-launched mission and repairing essential science and communications satellites.
Also, the moon itself makes an excellent scientific satellite or space station. With its low gravity and lack of atmosphere, much larger and more powerful scientific instruments can be constructed on the moon than on Earth.
As Bush points out, mission planners, scientists, engineers and astronauts will receive invaluable experience for expanding into the solar system by learning to live and operate on the moon.
Beyond the immediate benefits to science and exploration lay the long-term benefits of lunar exploitation. The moon’s easy access to low and micro-gravity environments opens new doorways in the production of pharmaceuticals and advanced structural materials.
The moon also offers new solutions to old problems.
It has the potential to revolutionize the power industry with clean, renewable, nearly unlimited electricity. Solar panels placed on the moon or in an orbit serviceable from the moon could gather the sun’s rays and beam them back to Earth as microwaves.
The moon is also a source for non-renewable resources. Even if a resource is not found on the moon, it may be present on a near-Earth asteroid and accessible from a moon base.
Learning to live on the moon also gives humanity a method of relieving population pressures. Industry, agriculture and people can be moved off Earth to increase living space.
Moving industry and power generation off the planet has the added benefit of greatly reducing pollution.
The president’s plan is an excellent starting point for humanity’s expansion into space.
The plan lays a necessary foundation for a golden age in space science, exploration and industry that promises incredible benefits for science and civilization-something easily worth several billion dollars.
Nathan Alday is a senior aerospace engineering major. He can be reached at [email protected].