what will we actually do on the moon? brent sherwood [email protected] new brunswick june,...

What Will We Actually Do On the Moon?

Brent [email protected]

New Brunswick

June, 2007

mailto:[email protected]

Sherwood, Jun07 Rutgers Symposium on Lunar Settlements 2007 2

Purpose

Demonstrate a method of communicating about the

Vision for Space Exploration that could begin

motivating the public to support it


Global Lunar Strategy

• NASA catalyzed global lunar-exploration planning

– March 2006 workshop with 200 participants in seven teams

– Open RFI

– Gap-filling reviews by 10 NASA centers, 14 international space agencies, two commerce roundtables, young-professional and advocacy interest groups, MEPAG, LEAG


Global Lunar Strategy – Dec 2006

• ~800 ideas about “what” to do on the Moon

– Yielded 188 discrete objectives

– 6 themes about “why”


Theme Mapping

Orange Team – 3/06

Enable increasingly sophisticated lunar activities

Conduct science to gain new knowledge

Improve the human condition

Provide economic growth

Enable deeper exploration of the solar system

Ultimately establish human settlements off Earth

Global Strategy – 12/06

Scientific knowledge

Global partnerships

Public engagement

Economic expansion

Exploration preparation

Human civilization


Two Techniques

• Future history as a story

• Specific vignettes that provide glimpses


Pocket Guide to Lunar ActivityFirst we will reinstate the capability to land people there, sustain them for a few days, and return them.

This time, we will not be fundamentally restricted to Nearside, near-equatorial sites. Small crews will explore their surroundings, collect samples, set up simple surface systems (for power, communications, and scientific and engineering experiments), and learn how their equipment really operates. We will use simple rovers to explore regions surrounding the landing site. We will use remote sensing and surface exploration to seek unique places where useful materials or scientific phenomena are concentrated.

After determining where it makes sense to “put down roots,” we will bring larger habitation and workshop elements, and construct radiation shields around them using assembled structure elements and lunar regolith. We will commission power plants that can operate through the two-week night time. We will explore the strange regions where permanent shadow and near-permanent sunlight are close together, where there may be ice resources, and locations on the Farside where Earth is never directly visible. We will grade and pave the surface locally to make it safer, cleaner, and more predictable for people, mobile equipment and automated machines to operate. Crew members will begin to specialize: experiments, exploration, construction, housekeeping, jury-rigging, and repair.

Among the engineering experiments will be some that test practical ways of operating, constructing, excavating, beneficiating, and ultimately producing useful products from lunar material: oxygen for propellant and life support; masonry, glass, and iron for making things; nitrogen and other light elements for air and nutrients. We will learn how to cultivate, protect, and harvest plants and animals. We will try a wide variety of solutions to these challenges, selecting and scaling up the ones that work well.

We will establish test sites where we can practice techniques being designed to explore near-Earth asteroids and Mars. We will build research facilities that Earthbound scientists use by proxy to perform unique astronomical observations, or uniquely dangerous experiments. If it turns out to be economically sensible, we will establish large-scale production of lunar-derived propellants and construction materials to enable cis-lunar development, and large-scale generation of energy for Earth. We will build destinations on the Moon for business and leisure visitors. Eventually the scale and viability of these activities will cross the threshold that defines settlement, and humanity will become a two-planet species.


Scenario Vignettes

• The “details double-paradox”

• Painting the picture…even without pictures!

• The value of novelty

• Get professional help to excite non-nerds


Eleven Vignettes

Enable increasingly sophisticated lunar

activities

Pave for dust control

Establish a colony of continuously active robots

Kitchen science

Designer biology

Tend the machinery


Search for pieces of ancient Earth

Build simple observatories that open new wavelength regimes


Establish a virtual real-time network to enable public engagement

Provide economic growthInstitute a public-private lunar development corporation

Enable solar system exploration

Rehearse planetary protection protocols for Mars

Establish human settlements off Earth

Expand life and intelligence beyond Earth


Eleven Vignettes

Enable increasingly sophisticated lunar

activities



Kitchen science

Designer biology

Tend the machinery



Build simple observatories that open new wavelength regimes


Establish a virtual real-time network to enable public engagement

Provide economic growthInstitute a public-private lunar development corporation


Rehearse planetary protection protocols for Mars



Enable increasingly sophisticated lunar activities



• Lunar regolith + hard vacuum = !

• Design around mitigation of bad effects– Pave roadways and work areas

• Grade, then stabilize– Compaction vs. using the natural resource

• Paving alternatives– Compacted gravel– Paving blocks– Direct sintering

Imagine an investigation that prototypes various methods to determine what works best to control dust



• Kurzweil singularity – what will we expect of robots by 2025?– Benefit-to-cost ratio– Human extension and enhancement

• How much of an outpost could be built robotically?– Shape a predictable environment– Establish, verify routine operations– Build radiation shelters

• Remote, dynamic construction site– Productivity– Public interest– No downtime during, between human visits

Imagine “looking in on” a robotic colony as it changes every day


Kitchen science

• How “normal” processes work on the Moon, and affect routine activities– Convection, mixing, drainage, evaporation…

• The practical things– How to cook, how to clean, how to live

• Must be done in situ

• Investigations akin to play– Inherently interesting: defining a new way for humans to live

Make it personal: what do you do every day…and how will we learn to do these things on the Moon?


Designer biology

• 1960s quiz: Which will occur first?– Transgenic and knockout mice

– DNA fingerprinting as admissible evidence

– Cloned pets

– Moon base

• What biological “miracles” will be common by 2030?

• Plants and animals optimized for lunar conditions– Hard radiation, low atmospheric pressure, different partial

pressures, long dark periods, strong ultraviolet, economical geometry, alien soil, nutrient concentration…

Imagine a laboratory on the Moon devoted to developing a novel lunar ecology that meets our needs


Tend the machinery

• You think YOU spend weekends working on your house…

• Economics will drive routine lunar ops to be machine-mediated

• “Highest and best uses” of humans– Exploration

– Jury-rigging new solutions

– Maintenance and repair

• Shirtsleeve workshop will emerge as critical need– Long night-time, diurnal rhythm

Imagine the public appeal when “tending” grows to include husbandry of living things



• Oldest Earth rocks miss the first 1/5 of Earth history– Tectonic recycling, weathering obliterate the record

• Lunar environment preserves solar system history

• If SNCs could come from Mars to Earth…– Lunar regolith must contain Earth rocks

• How would we recognize them?

Imagine a scientific campaign using robots, humans, searches, modeling, sample recovery, and in situ and terrestrial lab analysis to gain insight into the missing history of Earth


Observatories to open new wavelength regimes

• Every new wavelength window has yielded new discoveries about how the universe works– Space flight opened several windows above Earth’s atmosphere

• Two unexplored windows remain: they require both a space location and very large detectors

• Low-frequency ( > 10m) radio– Large array of simple dipole antennas

• High-energy cosmic rays– Detector/regolith lasagna

Imagine robotic preparation and deployment of new kinds of observatories…and imagine new discoveries being made


Virtual real-time network for public engagement

• Voters of 2030 will not be born for another 5 years– How much will they share our values?

• Today’s media world: interests are a click away

• Public will expect to be embedded in humanity’s lunar adventures via high-fidelity telepresence– Anytime-broadband infrastructure– Privacy challenges

• Not “Education and Public Outreach”– Digital-wallpaper live feeds of lunar wilderness or worksites– Moonwalks in immersive VR – in junior high– Lunar inhabitant blogs and chat

Imagine how the issue of “relevance” will vanish as lunar living becomes just another part of our daily life

Provide economic growth


Public-private lunar development corporation

• Public-private partnership is required to jumpstart viable commercial enterprise– Sparse and frangible business opportunities

– High barriers to entry

• Port authority model1. Insures core service continuity, predictable business conditions

2. Promotes competitive growth via long-term, competitively-awarded service contracts

3. Reinvests its own profits to improve the port infrastructure

Accelerate commercial implementation of routine services – Habitation, energy, communications, propellant production,

consumables resupply, food production, waste management, construction, maintenance, housekeeping, recycling, security


Planetary protection protocols for Mars

• Mars is very different from the Moon– Yet, we can design lunar operations to validate Mars techniques

• Key feature of human Mars exploration is investigation of “special areas” where life might be– Paradox: require human field work, but most susceptible to

contamination

• Can sub-optimize lunar ops to emulate Mars conditions– Far-side outpost + 6-mth orbital loiter + 1-yr base ops with Mars-

type systems + 6-mth orbital loiter = simulation

– Help is days away, rather than months

Imagine rehearsing protocols for exploring “special areas”– Sterile robots, habitat gloveboxes, dust control, ops procedures



• Über-objective – focuses the others– Long-term purpose– Operations tailored for permanence, local supply, economic

growth, self-sufficiency, survival, procreation, and new beginnings

• Settlement resonates with people– A dwarf planet only three days away…with resources– Opens alternative industrial space futures– Strategic destination for passenger travel– Noah’s Ark reassurance

• Key architecture and investment decisions– Reusable hydrogen/oxygen transportation systems– Sites selected to scale up resource production– Regenerable life support, genetic modification– Habitat construction– Genuine economic development

Imagine using settlement to focus what we do on the Moon now


What Happens Next?

• More vignettes– Try this at home

• Engage visionary illustrators– Doesn’t matter if reality is different 25 years hence

• Get professional help

• Test-market

Be bold

what will we actually do on the moon? brent sherwood [email protected] new brunswick june,...

Documents

lunar settlements

lunar material

lunar activity

lunar regolith

jun07rutgers symposium

global lunar strategy

human settlements

sophisticated lunar