Roads to Mars go through the moon ...

... and not through asteroid operations

NASA plans in the field of manned space flight were again discussed at the level of the US House of Representatives. The fact that the US Parliament is not satisfied with a blurry timeframe, fuzzy goals, high costs and poorly described prospects for the NASA Mars plan has long been news. This has already been written here .

But on June 10, 2016, in the American and Russian media, sensational information was held under the slogan: “The United States gathered to return to the moon .” Such information is very unexpected for those who are not closely following the evolution of NASA's plans for a manned flight to Mars. It's funny that this “ new ” (rather well forgotten old) turn to the Moon, as part of the preparation for the manned mission to Mars, was made public under the same President Barack Obama, who with his position on this issue and his landmark speech on April 15, 2010 Florida, it seems to have completely hacked NASA's plans to return to the moon and at the same time the entire project “Constellation” (Constellation) . Then Obama stated :

Now, some believe that we must first try to return to the surface of the moon, as was previously planned. But now I have to say quite directly: We have already been there ...

Since then, periodically, in the news, there were echoes of hot discussions on the topics “What to colonize first: the Moon or Mars?” (Examples: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ) and “Go to Mars or through the Moon (or via lunar orbit)” (examples : 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ). Indeed, the path of a manned expedition to Mars can be carried out in different ways - these choices are best presented in the diagram below:


For those who closely followed the space news and these discussions, the news of the return to the Moon did not become out of the blue — rather, the expected inevitability: common sense worked in the face of the very heavy and dangerous manned mission to Mars. William H. Gerstenmaier , the chief of NASA manned research since 2005, also spoke about the fact that fuel and oxidant for Mars could be extracted on the moon for flight to Mars .
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There are a lot of invented flight options, but it is difficult to choose, since half of the technical solutions for such a mission have not yet been accumulated. There is an Orion ship , but so far it has flown without people and is not far away. There is the SLS super heavy rocket project and the main parts for it, but will it fly, as planned, in 2018? There is an idea about an automatic tug on ion engines (the so-called Solar Electric Propulsion concept) for delivering fuel and supplies to Mars in advance. But about landing / takeoff stages for Mars, so far little is explained, there are only disappointing calculations: to fly from Mars you need to fly to Mars to plant at least a 90-ton apparatus (or 2-4 smaller ones with a total weight of 120-130 tons for refueling or on-site fuel generation - p. 27 from NASA official report in April 2015). Where is all this to work in, before the dangerous long flight to Mars, which does not give any margin for error?

Maybe in missions to asteroids or with the transportation of an asteroid to the orbit of the moon?

Asteroid Project

Unfortunately, the initial idea to fly and land on an asteroid with a small crew was quickly abandoned by NASA.
Instead of this simple idea, NASA focused on a project called ARM ( Asteroid Redirect Mission ), which from the very beginning was associated with the Martian program .
Initially, the ARM project was assessed optimistically at only $ 2.5 billion , and now, closer to the point, NASA decided to request a total of $ 66.7 million for the initial stage of designing a robot tug and other equipment . But on June 10, the House of Representatives nullified the amount allocated by NASA for this purpose, and demanded a review of this entire project, effectively ordering the ARM project to be replaced with landing programs on the moon: habitable modules, geological exploration, landing and take-off assets "- p. 61 of the official document .

First, in this project, ARM proposed the following: get close, grab (by some inflatable structures or a bag) and redirect (drag) using an automatic tug (with ion engines) a small asteroid about 10 meters in diameter, weighing up to 500 tons, to a near-moon orbit.

Here is a commercial of the first option, in which the question of capturing an asteroid is poorly disclosed (or even not disclosed at all):


Then the project developers somewhat reduced their ambitions. They offer a much more modest goal: you need to choose a tug, grab it with the help of mechanical arms and pick up a cobblestone of a suitable size from an asteroid (2-3 meters in diameter). It is easier to grab him and you can drag him quickly. The final part of the project has not changed: astronauts will study the cobblestone in the arms of an automatic tug at the Moon, having arrived there on the Orion for only a couple of weeks. Promotional video of the second option (where frames from the first video are used):

Everything is smooth and fun in it, but the flight of the tug to the asteroid can then go back for many years (the document on the first version of the project on page 3 shows the flight time back and forth for the example of the mini-asteroid 2009 BD : 671 + 1092 days = about 5 years) and at critical moments of this part of this project a lot can not go as planned.
What will be the total cost of the whole ARM project, will it be $ 2.5 billion?

To compare the scale of costs: a private Russian company Lin Industrial offers a project to build a base on the moon at an estimated price of 12 billion dollars (this was also mentioned here ) - about the same cost the budget of the Russian Federation 2014 Olympics in Sochi plus the Adler - Krasnaya railway line built for it Glade with 4 stations. And about the same cost recently completed in Switzerland, the world's longest Gotthard base tunnel with a length of about 57 km.

Doubts about the ARM project have been growing for a long time, in 2016 they wrote articles on the topic forget about the ARM project , about the necessary turn to the Moon , even without NASA , even with sad names. The NASA mission to the asteroid has not died yet - until (with explanations why the tugboat will not fly to an asteroid earlier than 2023), but it was finished off by stinging criticism from the most eminent asteroid specialist in the USA.

Richard Binzel wrote and published his first scientific article on asteroids in 15 years! In 2014, he straightforwardly called the ARM project with the words : “a one-time circus trick that distracts us from the goal ” - because instead of a long manned flight to a remote asteroid (which is training a long flight to Mars), the ARM project relies on a long flight of an automatic tug behind an asteroid, and manned flight is short and does not really train. In his ironic report with intentionally frivolous pictures, Richard accused the authors of the project of creating beautiful slides and animations (with a three-fingered tap, as in the well-known game machine, where you need to get toys from a glass cube), building sand castles, instead of working on working technical solutions and real movement even to such a strange goal:


Regarding the project's goal, Richard Binzel also hinted that generally small asteroids of the right size regularly fly in near-Earth space, between the Earth and the Moon, once a week, and one of them (even larger) in 2013 flew almost to the city of Chelyabinsk - Is it worth studying for such huge money that which falls on our heads?

After the speech of such a specialist , repeated in scientific and popular magazines, other critics also struck the project. And what do they offer in return? In exchange, Richard Binzel offered ARM to simply fly to a large asteroid on Orion (a long flight would be a training flight to Mars).

The operations of the automatic tug and manned “Orion” near and on the surface of a normal asteroid can really help in future landings on the Mars satellites (Phobos and Deimos). Especially if such landings are needed and clearly planned before or during the manned mission to Mars (which Richard Binzel himself strongly advises to add to the flight plan to Mars). But from the point of view of the development of landing on Mars itself, the activity around the asteroid (and even more so around the delivery of the cobblestone from it) is simply useless - this is a technological dead end. There is too much difference between the surface of Mars and the surface of the asteroid, a huge difference between landing and taking off from Mars and similar operations on the asteroid.

Back to the moon?

Here the Moon floats up again, as the only logical test site for Mars technology, a dangerous, severe landfill, but known from the Apollo missions and only 3-4 days from Earth. For the time being, NASA modestly offered only to park automatic tugboats with reserves and parts of the manned complex in a distant retrograde orbit of the Moon (DRO - Distant Retrograde Orbit or LDRO) before flying to Mars. This orbit around the moon has been mentioned in NASA's flight to Mars programs since 2014. Allegedly, it is very convenient for grouping and re-equipment (staging / refurbishment) of blocks in anticipation of a throw to Mars, as indicated in the two outline of the NASA 2015 Mars program: 1 and 2 .

About the base on the moon used to be at NASA and they were afraid to stutter, remembering Obama's order “ We were already there! ". In April 2015, in the official report of NASA, on the diagram with a retrograde orbit around the Moon, on the Moon itself wrote the mysterious letters “ROBOTIC LUNAR SURFACE” (Robotic Lunar Surface) - probably, only the initiates know what it is and drew something timidly named “Resource Prospector” (Moon Exploration):


Yes, because on the Moon one can get something to supply the mission to Mars: at least water and oxygen from the ground, i.e. air and fuel + oxidizer. And then throw it from the ground of the Moon into a retrograde orbit around the Moon to launch to Mars. But alas, for this you need to invest a lot long before the flight to Mars, since you can’t do without building a base on the Moon. The cardinal question again emerges: what is needed before - the base on the moon or the flight to Mars ?

Another argument for building a lunar base involuntarily arises - an argument that is ashamed to be heard openly: this is a possible reduction in the NASA budget in the middle of the program. Here again comes the new president / the new majority in parliament / the new crisis and the NASA budget is shrinking. What will happen then with the manned program?

1) If this is a costly manned flight to Mars without a lunar component, then most likely it will be hacked to death in whole or in the first stage: there will only be a flight around Mars and a pair of people can land on one of the satellites of Mars. And that's all: the tried and tested technical solutions (from the Orion ship to the super-heavy SLS carrier) will go to museums, as was the case after the Apollo program . Only records, a bunch of beautiful shots, some scientific data and a flag stuck next to Mars will remain.

2) And if this is also an expensive and longer manned flight to Mars with a pre-landing / take-off and building a base on the moon, extracting fuel and other resources there, then most likely the most expensive and not yet completed flight will be hacked: but at least NASA (and all mankind) will have a working base on the Moon (which can also be conserved for 10 years - this is not the ISS in orbit, it is not necessary to supply it, it will not fall), spent new technologies for landing / taking off and processing The moon is in place. And it will be incredibly stupid to lose these achievements as thoughtlessly, as it was in the 70s, after the Apollo lunar program , as it was with the unsupported Soviet lunar rocket H1 and with the really untested Buran pilots together with the Energia " .

And what about us?

How does all this threaten Roscosmos, which is also constantly rushing about doubts about the further goals of the manned program. The range of these throwings is wide: to the moon or to mars? With serious discussion, Mars can be discarded as purely ideological statements (for example, these: 1 2 ) sometimes reaching an entirely unserious level: Russian monkeys as pioneers of the flight to Mars (which causes protests in people who take this stupid PR seriously ).

If Roscosmos gathered on the moon, then on what: on the old "Unions" or on the mythical "Clippers" or on something new, unknown and expensive , such as the ship "Federation" ? On which rockets and how many of their launches are needed ( in some plans it takes up to 4 launches of “Angara A5” for one flight to the moon )? Just circling around the moon or just landing with pre-exploration? Purely for science or for the sake of building a base ? Build just a small base in the most valuable place of the Moon or somewhere else for the extraction of Helium-3 for future thermonuclear energy (which no one has yet been able to create)?

Does this extend the program on the ISS or not? Can the Russian modules ( specially modified ) be taken from the ISS and dragged them into a new separate Russian station ? Or build your orbital station from scratch? Or not entirely their own, but jointly with China and India ? Or build a new ISS after 2024 with the United States ?

New American plans (if they finally become clear) lead to a narrowing of choices for Roskosmos: after all, if Americans are going to build a base on the moon, then most likely they will occupy the most valuable place in terms of resources (illumination and water deposits in the soil) - mountain / crater shaft Malapert at the south pole of the moon. This is not a race for prestige and a record as in the 60s. Who will build the first base on the moon is not so important, it is important that forever there the best place will take! Questions about the registration of ownership of this developed territory and the resources extracted there will arise (and arise already!) . This question has already been raised in the Russian Federation at the level of Roskosmos and the Russian Academy of Sciences .

Repetition of the story with the "Union" and the new ISS for the moon?

The one who first builds an existing base will have vast experience in the development of cosmic bodies. If Americans on the Moon learn how to build, mine, process resources and develop without risk and failure, then sharing this skill with someone else will have no particular reason for them.

But if you don’t get involved in the new lunar race to build the first extraterrestrial base on the ground, Roscosmos has its own unexpected, but in some way already worked out option to become your own by working as a cab driver / builder for NASA or an international project. While NASA is suffering, choosing the path to Mars, sticking together existing and promising technologies each time in a new way when changing plans, trying to save money, but destroying the already accumulated, hoping to immediately get the optimal complex for the delivery of manned and cargo ships to the Moon and Mars (and can still on an asteroid) with the removal of people back, Roskosmos can take the same old reliable "Union". Thinking, taking into account the experience of the USSR ( “Soyuz 7K-L1 series” ) to finish the “Soyuz” to the lunar version with the modified “Frigate” upper stage, suggest NASA as a reliable transport / lifeboat using the “Angara A5” rocket to launch from Earth which currently has no use) with the overclocking unit KVTK - an option proposed by the company Lin Industrial . Something similar has already been done in the old Soviet unmanned program "Probe" (using the Proton rocket) and even offered abroad under the name Lunar Express back in 2004:

Only a place in such a new lunar "Soyuz" will cost for NASA no longer $ 70 million, but much more. It is better to be on the moon, at least in the role of a cab driver, than not to be at all and not to participate in anything. Roskosmos already has experience of such underworking on the ISS, and for NASA the old partner will have more confidence.

Rumors and individual statements (with refutations) about mutual contacts between NASA and Roscosmos on the Moon and the station in the Moon’s orbit have been going on since the beginning of 2015 ( refer to the words of Charles Bolden ).
Finally, at the end of June, reports appeared in our press about the agreements of the new international working group MKS (IECST) about the lunar orbital station . Allegedly, the question of the further development of orbital stations outside the Earth's orbit has been going on since 2011 as part of the expert working group for the ISS program (IEWG - ISS Experts Working Group). It is clear that Russia (since the times of the USSR) has great experience in orbital stations, while other countries have a desire to use it, reducing their time and expenses.
In addition, in Russia there is at least a little developed project of a tug on a nuclear engine since 2010 , which is also a huge plus for saving fuel.

In general, we can say that NASA and Roskosmos have the same problem: an abundance of fuzzy plans with general indecision in the choice of a target.