With the implications of the discovery of lunar ice at both of the poles of the moon still being assessed in the space community, one constant remains left over from the Apollo days: the critics of human spaceflight still abound.
The added complication today is that NASA and the U.S. federal civil space program has its short term future hitched to a $100 million space station that has yet to be built – or fully paid for. In short, even with the tantalizing prospects that water ice on the moon could be economically exploited to support human colonies, America isn't going back to the moon anytime soon. But, just perhaps, not so her allies.
No sooner were Dr. Alan Binder's remarks about putting bases on the moon
for less cost and operating them for less winging its way around the world,
long standing foes of human spaceflight were just warming up to throw cold
water – no pun intended – on the prospect. Chief among these was Planetary
Society head Dr. Bruce Murray, who poo-poohed the thought of using the
lunar ice to live on the moon. "Water at one percent by volume is not a
resource," Murray told New York Times space reporter Warren Leary. "It's
just not at high levels to be extracted economically," he added. And he
sternly warned moon supporters to basically shut their mouths. "Raising
false hopes makes people more cynical about space," Murray criticized.
Of course, so does criticism of major scientific finds before they are fully
understood, too. In any event, nary a word of support for the Prospector
findings was heard from one person claiming to be its "father", none other
than Dan Goldin, the czar of "faster, better, cheaper" space probes. Goldin
was absent from the Ames press announcement on Thursday, and his voice
hasn't been heard since playing up the bold discovery.
In truth, while
Binder was opening his press conference to make the discovery public,
Goldin was lunching at the White House with the Clintonites and new space
shuttle commander Eileen Collins. Collins got the red carpet treatment last
week, as First Lady Hillary Clinton announced her selection as the first
female shuttle commander, then took the president, the astronaut, and NASA
chief Goldin to schools in the Washington, DC area to hail Collins as the
new role model for young girls everywhere. Never mind that the Clinton
administration has done nothing for NASA except downsize the space agency
to nearly out-of-business status. Goldin was quiet about the scene.
Meanwhile, others are puzzled about the lack of public interest in the
discovery thus far. National Space Society Executive Director Pat Dasch
wondered aloud Friday about the news media's "muted" reaction. And others
have pointed out that NASA has been swiftly criticized in the past year for
allegedly planning seriously the prospect of manned trips to Mars.
But one U.S. space partner may not be so shy. Japan may well accelerate its
development of a pilot plant to mine in-situ lunar resources. A prototype
unit to extract hydrogen from the lunar regolith was shown in Washington in
1992 at the World Space Congress. Along with its programs for lunar
penetrators, look to Japan to find a way within its own embattled space
programs to capitalize on the ice and find a way to make it profitable for
a lunar base, if such is possible at all. And, if the truth be told, no one
yet knows if that can – or more pointedly -cannot be done.
Of course, Goldin may just be too busy to talk up the moon- the once and
future moon, that is. On Thursday evening, when the whole space world was a
buzz with thoughts of the moon's future, Goldin was more preoccupied with
its past. He attended an exclusive, invitation-only screening of one of the
12 episodes of the new HBO/Tom Hanks mini-series on the Apollo program.
There were a lot of movie stars present there, we're told. But strangely,
nobody from the Lunar Prospector team. Or even from Clementine, for that
matter.
