Why is it so hard to return to the moon?

if we could get to the moon in the 1960s no way why does it seem so hard to do it now in the 21st century like we've all seen or remember the 1960s we had giant computers that could now fit inside of a a little calculator let alone the Computing capacity of your smartphone we had technology that is laughably out ofd by today's standards and we just did it and yet now it seems almost impossible like we've been trying to recapitulate it for almost two decades now like we've been hearing for decades we're going back to the Moon NASA's back to we're headed back to the Moon more people on the moon it's taking forever our current plans are bloated horribly late over budget and it seems like it's getting worse what's going on well to set things up let me paint the picture of the difference between the 1960s and' 7s Apollo missions and our current strategy with the Artemis project so let's start with Apollo on July 16th 1969 we made history at 9:30 in the morning the Saturn 5 rocket the largest most powerful rocket ever built ignited capable of over 34.5 million Newtons of thrust at launch the Saturn 5 hoisted 48 tons of fuel equipment land ERS life support systems Communications gear a Command Module a descent module and NSN module and three human beings into space it was a three-stage rocket with the first two stages igniting burning and detaching before lofting the remaining spacecraft into a stable parking orbit around the Earth after a couple orbits the third stage ignited its own smaller Rockets boosting the spacecraft towards the Moon while in transit the spacecraft separated into two components a command and service module and a lunar module that lunar module spun around and reconnected it was a better configuration for the relatively easy Transit through empty space after the rigors of launch 3 days later the spacecraft passed within 110 km of the lunar surface two more burns put it in a stable orbit around the moon the lunar module detached and arrived on the surface where two astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldren spent 21 hours and 36 minutes on the moon they re-entered the lunar module and an Ascent stage detached rocketing them back up to the waiting Command Module they rued discarded the lunar lander which crashed back on the moon's surface and returned to Earth several days later splashing down 920 Mi Southwest of Honolulu in the Pacific Ocean that Fe would be successfully repeated five more times before the Apollo missions came to a close in the early 1970s that was over 50 years ago today NASA has plans to return to the Moon dubbed the Artemis project and the first crude Mission profile which is currently slated for no earlier than 2026 looks something like this first a launch will send the lunar lander craft into Earth orbit a private company either SpaceX or blue Origins will provide this craft to get the Lander to the Moon it will need to be refueled which will take somewhere in the ballpark of 10 to 20 additional launches each one of these launches will just carry extra fuel they will rendevu in orbit and they will uh refuel this lunar spacecraft alternatively there might be a tanker in orbit that is already pre-filled but the basic structure is the same the Lander itself will then burn and get itself over into lunar orbit and wait additional lunar Landers may be sent to deliver supplies to the lunar surface for later use then NASA's newest rocket the space launch system or SLS will send the Orion spacecraft into orbit the Orion spacecraft will then carry four astronauts into a lunar orbit taking 2 to 3 days to reach the moon the Orion spacecraft will dock with the lunar lander two astronauts will descend on the lunar lander and spend roughly a week at or near the lunar South Pole then the astronauts will get back in the lunar lander launch up and rendevu with Orion ditch the Lander and return to Earth splashing down in some handy large body of water like I said what's going on with Apollo we had a single launch of a single vehicle that contained all the stuff needed for a lunar Mission it was like heading out on a backpacking trip with all the supplies you need well on your backpack on your back in a single bag the Artemis Mission concept is more like sending a few of your buddies out ahead of time to set up your campsite and then you setting off with barely enough supplies and then on the last leg of your trip you get into your best friend's Range Rover to take you to the actual campsite it's okay you're in the Range Rover now and leaving the Range Rover there when you're done what's going on as we've come to learn on this show simple questions don't always have easy answers and we've also come to learn on this show that it might be easy or tempting to point our fingers at one specific cause but that we should resist that Temptation because often the universe is nuanced and complex which is good for us because it means we get to keep doing the show together without running out of things to talk about and all of this goes double for literally anything thing involving humans and especially politics because I can tell you this quantum mechanics is easier than people in general relativity is easier than politics people act like physicists are so smart but really we pick the easy problems to work on now maybe a hundred years from now a future historian will be able to summarize everything better about why Artemis is so much harder than Apollo so much more complex taking so much longer you know we're in the thick of everything now so it can be hard to pinpoint exactly what's going on but this is my best guess as usual I comes down to numerous factors that are sometimes related and sometimes independent but but I think we can boil it down to three PS price politics and patreon that's patreon.com pm and you knew that was coming uh this is how you can support the show I greatly appreciate it I cannot thank you enough for all the support I've received over all these years you keep this show going I it is it is a blessing to be able to give this show to you and for you to support it that's patreon.com pmut now actually the 3ps is are price politics and priorities so let's look at the first P the price yes the Apollo missions were impressive and yes the Saturn 5 rocket was the most awesomest rocket ever built built and everything was also hideously expensive the entire Apollo program cost roughly 26 billion space bucks by by which I mean dollars but that was in the 1960s and70s once you account for inflation the entire Apollo program cost nearly $260 billion yes that's a Sean billion with a be if we include Project Gemini in the robotic lunar program which were necessary pre ERS to get Apollo off the ground literally that goes up to over $280 billion on the moon landings at its peak NASA was consuming something like 5% of the entire federal budget and the Apollo missions were more than half of NASA's budget that was simply unsustainable we don't have that kind of appetite now we don't have that kind of money for space programs now no one is going to approve spending 5% of the federal budget on space exploration human launches it's just not going to work I'll get into that in the in the politics but that's a raw fact the Apollo missions had more money than the Artemis project does simple numbers today total in the roughly 10 to 20 years depending on how you count uh of the Artemis project it has spent around $90 billion and NASA itself only commands less than 0.5% of the federal budget so if anyone ever ask why do we spend all this money on Space tell them it is a rounding error in the federal budget you could eliminate all of NASA and our overall federal budget Outlook growth GDP all that would be largely unaffected that's $90 billion over the entire lifetime we are trying to return to the moon for a fraction of what it cost 50 years ago that's just fact we can't get around that we're spending less money on the moon return than we were on the first trip out and so yeah things are going to be different this time things might take longer things might look different because we're spending a different amount of money now it's not always true that the more money you spend on a thing the faster it happens or the better it is I get that but also spending Less on a thing is probably going to get you worse results and I know some of you ask many people ask I even wondered this why don't we just reuse the Saturn 5 why are we building any billions why are we spending any billions of dollars to build an entirely new rocket the space launch system when we already had the Saturn 5 that was more than capable of delivering people to the Moon why do we need to do it again well the truth is because we're spending less money we have to be careful with our budgets and it's actually cheaper to build with new designs than it is to try to reuse Saturn 5 Tech because one Saturn 5 Tech was developed in the 50s and 60s with 1950s 60s and' 7s understanding of rocketry and machining and computer AED design and flight management and all that we don't want to do that again we have have better tools available we are able to make better composits better materials better understanding of fuel and flight characteristics it would be more expensive to take 1960s technology and try to fit it into a 21st century Mission than to just build a brand new rocket and yeah there are blueprints there are books there are schematics there are designs but most of the knowledge of building something especially like a rocket which is among the most complex machine ever invented by Humanity most of that knowledge is in people's brains it's in their heads the tiny little fixes oh yeah yeah you got to turn the valve this way or or you know the the the thing says we need to go to this tolerance but actually we need to go a little bit over here to make it fit like there's just so much builtin human knowledge that only exists in people's brains that that never makes it into a document or a piece of paper or a schematic there's so much knowhow when you have thousands of human beings working together on a project each one of those people individuals brings their own set of knowledge they they gain their own knowledge they gain experience and they apply it and it never gets written down and so we can't just look at the blueprints of a Saturn 5 and do it again again because most of the tiny tiny little details and anyone who has ever worked on a large project knows exactly what I'm talking about we would have to relearn all of that again we would have to teach ourselves how to build a Saturn 5 again the blueprints and the documents and the design simply aren't enough and when you look at it that kind of a daunting task you say well let's just build a new rocket anyway it's going to be cheaper the second reason is politics closely align Ed with the price the Apollo missions were a point of national pride and competition against the Soviets that's what fueled the national appetite it's really hard to get a country full of people especially a large country with hundreds of millions of people to spend 5% of all their money combined on a single thing they're very very few things in our in any nation that meet that kind of bar and for a brief period of time NASA did because man we want to stick it to the commies right we want to show them whose boss who's more technologically Superior which way of doing things is better we want to get to the moon first it became a nationwide priority and we put our money where our mouth was we spent a lot of money on it nowadays returning to the Moon is not a point of national pride or competition and that's not necessarily a bad thing like I said spending 5% of the federal budget on Apollo missions well well great was unsustainable we were never going to do that for the Long Haul and we can see what happens once we got to the Moon public interest in the Apollo missions collapsed in a matter of years because it was unsustainable once we showed that we could do it they're like okay yeah whatever another moon landing who cares it's not necessarily a bad thing that this is not a point of focused national attention and pride and competition because those are fickle and temporary and when the spotlight moves off of you you have run the risk of losing everything so it's smarter to have different reasons to go to the Moon to be slower and cautious about it to get different angles of public support involved in this so it's not a single focused let's go moment but a longer more sustained let's do this thing kind of trajectory cuz we don't want that collapse to happen again so we want to be smart and we want it to be sustainable relatedly to that to keeping things sustainable we have to keep a lot of people very very happy and we have to do things old school there's a lot of talk about new space and the private space companies and they're doing amazing things I would love to devote an entire episode of what the future of private space fight looks like from my perspective so feel free to ask but NASA is a government organization it is part of the government bureaucracy and if you want to play the political game which means surviving as a political agency as a bureaucracy as a government outfit you have to play by certain rules and you have to keep lots of different people happy this is part of because there isn't this focused national attention of let's beat the Soviets instead you have to be smarter about it you have to be more diplomatic about you have to get people on board in different ways and the number one way to get people on board with a big government project is to ensure that they get a cut make sure someone's writing a check with their name on it and that's why NASA has tentacles in almost every state that's why there's launch facilities in Florida uh Rock ET manufacturing plants in Georgia why there's in Alabama why there's command facilities in Houston why oh there are some extra launchpads out in California why one little essential doohickey on the rocket can only be made in Oregon there's a reason for that yes it's inefficient yes it's slow yes it can lead to corruption but also it's the only way to do it some community in Oregon if they don't care if if we're not beating the Soviets if if there's not this Focus national attention Spotlight on it the only reason they're really going to Care is if they have a stake in it if they have a role to play if they have a part of the grander story NASA has to play those politics these weren't necessarily considerations they they were part of the consideration don't get me wrong back in the 60s and '70s but also the government was just writing blank check to NASA to get the job done now we have to do things differently that is going to change how we approach returning to the Moon we have to do it old school and yes private space companies can do things differently and great and they need to and that's worth celebrating and pouring resources in uh NASA can't because NASA has to play the political game as an example of this the space launch system is less powerful than the Saturn 5 it's true it simply can't get as much stuff into orbit or to the Moon as the Saturn 5 did why in the heck are we designing a new moon mission based on a less capable rocket well because of politics because we're kind of stuck with it you I just talked a little bit ago about how wasteful it would be to try to rebuild just just o brush off the drawings of the Saturn 5 and let's build it again um we're kind of sort of doing that with the shuttle engine so the space shuttle wound down that program wound down and we didn't really know we as in NASA and Engineering folks didn't know what to do with all that infrastructure the shuttle program involved manufacturers suppliers key components from so many different states communities representative districts like the like the whole deal it was this massive tentacle spreading across the country and then when you're not building shuttles anymore and you're not doing that anymore what do you do with all of that space industry infrastructure you know all the all the plants all the engineers all the technicians you know all the all the whole fraction of our economy that was devoted to building and maintaining the space shuttles what do you do with them and so NASA cooked up these new lunar and Mars missions the Artemis project as a way to reuse the old shuttle engines one because there were a bunch of shuttle engines just sitting in warehouses unused and then two you know if we've recently been building shuttle engines it's not like 50 years ago the Saturn 5 we it was just a few years ago that we built our last shuttle engine maybe we can just keep doing that and so NASA designed the rocket the actual entire assembly of of this Mission around the engines around the shuttle engine so at the bottom of the space launch system you're looking at old shuttle engines and when there are new versions of the space launch system they're going to be new versions of the old shuttle engines because they were playing politics because they had to because that is how you survive in the political game by keeping a lot of people happy and the number one way to keep people happy is to keep giving them money to do things so we are reusing some old shuttle technology the the engines it's actually costing us way more money than if we had just designed engines from the ground up it is affecting the entire Mission profile because we have weaker engines we have a weaker rocket than we did with Saturn 5 and that limits what we can do we simply can't get the whole p package up in a single launch like we did with Saturn 5 we can't do an entire lunar Mission based on the space launch system because it doesn't have enough oomph we can't get enough stuff over to the Moon to make it happen so we need a more complex Mission with more components we need other partners yes it's inefficient yes we're spending more money this is proof right here if you want to know like why can't we just go back to S 5 imagine this times 10 but it's keeping NASA alive they're playing the game yes it's inefficient but that's better than zero efficiency and simply getting wiped away from the federal budget which threatens to happen every few years or so and this is another line of thinking one can argue that it's a great thing that we kept all that shuttle infrastructure in place all the engineers all the technicians all the knowhow in place we kept those people employed for years even though the space launch system is is kind of beast and an albatross and weird Frankenstein's monster of of old and new technology we kept those people employed we kept those companies around and that was exactly the technical base that we needed to have our Modern Renaissance and private space flight companies but that's a different episode we've done price we've done politics and the last reason why emus looks a lot more different than Apollo is priorities in this this takes several different shades one is in Risk tolerance I'm going to be brutally honest with you the Apollo missions were dangerous they were straight up dangerous don't believe me look at Apollo 1 a pure oxygen environment during a test caught fire three astronauts died Apollo 6 engine number two partially failed nearly killed the crew nearly blew up the whole thing Apollo 13 a little stur thing in a tank broke and near nearly killed the crew that's three of the Apollos one was Lethal and two near disasters like a breath away from complete catastrophe we were testing these rockets and complex machines as they were flying the public in political desire for risk the tolerance for risk is way way lower than it was in the 1960s NASA simply especially after the two space shuttle disasters NASA can't have dead astronauts they are hanging on to public Goodwill by a thread and if they screw up we're done and also as a public in the 60s and 7s we were smoking we were drinking and we were lighting rockets on fire and going to the moon and if a few people died in the process well it's worth it there was a different attitude towards risk an attitude that the public simply doesn't have anymore and so of course things are going to move slower they're going to be more complex there are going to be a million tests on the ground to ensure that every flight is much much safer than any flight of the Apollo missions because we just can't stomach the thought of corpses on the lunar surface another angle of the priorities are the different mission parameters Apollo missions could be counted in hours yeah all that might all that work all that money to spend a day is poking around a few hours actually outside of the vehicle and actually walking on the surface the new Artemis missions are designed to last for days maybe over a week on the lunar surface that means you need more stuff you need more water more air more food more fuel more extendable arm grabby things more pouches wrenches tricars doodads gizmos if you want to spend a week on a moon you got to pack more stuff and Hauling that stuff to the Moon ain't easy the more stuff you have the bigger the rocket you need which means you need more fuel which means you have a bigger rocket which means you need more fuel this is called the tyranny of the rocket equation the only way we can think of to get a decent sized Mission like a week-long mission to the Moon is to have the these multiple components where the Lander is not inside of the initial rocket that leaves the Earth surface that leaves before the only way to get that large of a Lander over to the Moon you can't do it in one launch you need to refuel it we have a different location you know the Apollo missions you know they're just just having to land somewhere on the moon somewhere easy uh we're more interested now in the lunar South Pole because there might be pockets of water ice there and there might be a lot of water underneath the surface Landing there is kind of difficult you need a very special kind of orbit which is tricky to get into which means the entire mission is more complex more involved trickier has a lot more moving Parts another priority is we have a different purpose don't get me wrong the Apollo missions returned an enormous amount of scientific knowledge about the moon but remember that the science part was shoehorned in there there were so much advocacy uh it's a fascinating aspect of American History the primary goal was getting humans on the moon and beating the Soviets that was goal number one and then oh by the way maybe if we teach them to pick up rocks we might learn something tiny tiny tiny fraction of the attention and focus and priority was doing science the Artemis missions are science first they're not only going to spend way longer on the lunar surface they're going to be much better trained the astronauts are going to be much better trained they will be carrying out a lot more experiments which means they need to carry more scientific Gear with them with the Apollo missions we were playing fast and loose with money in human lives to achieve a singular goal of beating the Soviets now we are being cautious with money in lives to achieve a myriad of goals mostly scientific and scientific goals have a lot more stuff and work in planning and design and instruments a associated with them than just putting boots on the ground and turning around and leaving the Artemis project has an entirely different set of priorities than the Apollo missions did and this different set of priorities dictate a different Mission profile which makes the mission more complex because we are trying to do more stuff on the moon and we have a different purpose included in that priority we're not just going to land and look around take some selfies and come back we're planting the beginning of a lunar base we're sewing the seeds of long-term habitation with the Artemis project once again this requires so much more stuff not just to spend a week there which is longer than any of the Apollo misses like a single emis Mission could potentially spend more time on the moon than all of the Apollo missions combined but we also expect our astronauts to start building stuff habitats walls and roofs and water filtration devices and and Porta poies and and all this stuff vending machines because we want to lay the first step to long-term habitation that requires more stuff that requires a more complex Mission and then when you weave it together with the fact that we're spending less money on Aramis than we did on Apollo that we live in a different political climate where there isn't a singular National focused will where instead we have to be much more careful we have to make sure there are a lot of people on board with this in different ways we had to reuse some of our shuttle technology just to keep those people on board so that NASA wasn't outright defunded that limited what we could do with our rocket the space launch system which is weaker than the Saturn 5 and so you need to involve a lot more components Artemis is a lot more complex than Apollo and that's not a bad thing yes there are going to be delays setbacks inefficiencies bloated budgets because we're doing things differently now and that's not necessarily a bad thing there's a side goal here a lot of the Artemis project hinges on the development of a fuel Depot in orbit like a big old tank that you can send Rockets up to fill with extra Fuel and then those Rockets return to Earth um that is more complex than necessary than we need for now for the initial Artemis missions that's for sure but it's essential for the future exploration of the solar system and if NASA and NASA's buddies nail this now they will be one to two generations ahead of everyone else in terms of capabilities because if NASA has access to a orbiting Fuel Depot where they can send anything up into orbit refuel and then rock it that's how you don't just get to the moon that's how you get to Mars the asteroid belt that's how you send missions quickly into the outer solar system if that's all we get out of the Artemis project for this phase of the emis project is the working out the details of an orbiting Fuel Depot and how to refuel in Zerg and freezing cold which could be an entire episode of how do we actually do that that's a game Cher right there and that's a hidden game changer that I don't think a lot of people talk about yes it's frustrating to see delays and cost overruns and slightly less than impressive Rockets I get it but that's not the reality we live in how we got here is a product of hundreds if not thousands or millions of individual decisions and considerations playing out over decades trying to make the most of a not so Stellar situation where we don't have National focus and priority on beating the Soviets so we're trying to be smart about it in many different directions we're trying to be smart engineering wise MoneyWise financially and smart politically why is so that we never have to retreat from the Moon again thank you to Sr L on email for the question that led to today's episode and thank you to all my patreon supporters especially the ones uh who who contributed to earn a free copy of rescuing science we've got so many of you oh I can't thank you oh man this is amazing we've got Justin G Chris L Lothian 53 Barbara K Alberto M Duncan M Cory D stargazer Robert B Tom G Nyla bike Santa Sam R John S Joshua Scott M Rob H Lewis M John W Alexis Gilbert M Rob W Valerie H Demus J Jules R Mike G Jim L Scott J David S Angelo L William W Scott R Dean C Miguel bbjj 108 barel wires Heather Mike S Michelle r p Steve S Nathan and W Bird that's patreon.com / PM Suter again I cannot thank you enough it is a distinct honor to be able to share all of these wonderful stories about the universe with you and to be supported in that please keep sending me questions drop a review on iTunes or Spotify that really helps the show's visibility in the meantime send me more questions that is by far the most important thing that's Ash askas Spaceman askas Spaceman gmail.com or just the website aspace band.com and I will see you next time for more complete knowledge of time and space

Channel: Dr. Paul M. Sutter

Views: 694,142

Keywords: space, cosmos, universe, astronomy, physics, science, moon, rocketry, NASA, lunar landings, moon landings

Id: P_Brfn9Lquw

Length: 33min 8sec (1988 seconds)

Published: Thu May 16 2024