New Space Directives from U.S. President Lack Specifics and Funding Commitments

December 12, 2017 – Yesterday President Trump signed an executive order to make the United States the premier space-faring nation “reclaiming America’s proud destiny in space.” Trump was acting on recommendations made to him by a White House advisory panel, the National Space Council. Using the June 28, 2010, National Space Policy document created under former President Barack Obama, Trump changed one paragraph making a return to the Moon the new short-term focus for NASA and echoing President George W. Bush’s original directive. Obama had made cislunar and asteroid capture the next goal of NASA’s program. Trump has, like in all Obama-related directives, reversed his predecessor’s policy.

So what is the reason for NASA to return to the Moon?

NASA has invested its future in a heavy-lift rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS). This is the successor to the Saturn 5 rocket of the Apollo Program. Its first test flight is scheduled for 2018 with an Orion space capsule atop in a crewless test of both the new rocket and the crew capsule’s capabilities. The destination would be the vicinity of the Moon. The next mission with a human crew, scheduled as early as 2021 would duplicate the first mission.

But NASA is not alone in targeting the Moon. China, Russia, Europe, India, SpaceX, and Blue Origin, the latter two, commercial U.S. space companies, have all got designs on the Moon. Commercial U.S. space companies like Bigelow Aerospace are planning lunar habitats and space hotels. SpaceX, Elon Musk’s reusable rocket company will launch the Falcon Heavy, its competitor to SLS, early in 2018. Its current plans include sending two paying customers on a trip to orbit the Moon and return possibly by the end of next year. So NASA’s lunar interest is far from unique.

Where President Obama saw a return to the Moon as a been there, done that mission, it seems the majority of those in the space business see lots of good reasons to make the Moon a place for humans to further explore and even settle. Russia’s Roscosmos and Europe’s ESA have announced a collaboration to establish a lunar colony before the end of the decade of the 2020s. NASA has been invited to participate.

The cost of establishing a lunar colony could easily exceed $100 billion over the lifetime of the project, even with the space launches getting cheaper because of reusability. The return on investment in building a human presence on the lunar surface could come from exploiting the Moon’s resources. The Moon has water in the form of ice which can help sustain a lunar colony with minimal need for resupply from Earth. The Moon has significant quantities of Helium 3 lying on or near its surface, a material of great interest and high worth to those developing commercial nuclear fusion reactors. This could earn a lunar colony venture hundreds of billions of dollars. And who knows what else can be extracted from the lunar regolith. The old United Nations peaceful uses of space doctrine, and the preservation of moons and planets we humans reach is all out the window in this new rush to exploit space. But with Mars seen as the ultimate destination for NASA’s humans-in-space program, the most obvious reason to return to the Moon is to create and test the technologies that ultimately will make a mission to Mars a success. The Moon is close by. A technology we put on its surface that doesn’t work can be replaced or improved upon at a site less than 5 days away.  You can’t do that when Mars using current transportation technology capability is as much as six months distant.

When President Obama revised Bush’s directive in 2010 he substituted for the Moon with an asteroid redirect mission in cislunar space in the mid-2020s to be followed by a mission to Mars sometime in the 2030s. I always felt that this was a bit short-sighted and it appears that the spacefaring community was similarly inclined. Now Trump has agreed with the larger community and reversed Obama’s mission objectives.

But his motives may be far different than those who will benefit from the change. For Trump, a real estate mogul before becoming President, one could suspect he has designs on ownership of the high ground of space, as well as a commitment to “America First” in all things. For the space community the Moon has always been seen as a necessary stepping stone to Mars.

What appears to be lacking in Trump’s new directive is funding, and commitment to milestone dates. The wording changes in the old 2010 document are small. Trump has changed Obama’s words from “crewed missions beyond the moon” and “humans to orbit Mars” as the primary objectives to:

• “enable human expansion across the Solar System,”
• “the return of humans to the Moon,” and
• “human missions to Mars and other destinations.”

It will be interesting to see how a U.S. government with a projected ballooning multi-trillion dollar debt, will find the money to have NASA achieve such lofty goals. Follow the money and you may find out what will be NASA’s actual future in human spaceflight under constrained budgetary circumstances.

Meanwhile, expect many private U.S. companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin, Planetary Resources, Virgin Galactic, and others to fill the gaps left by NASA’s budgetary shortfalls. And likewise, expect other national and international programs to compete at achieving the same objectives.

One wonders when humanity will finally make space a global space project with cooperation replacing competition, similar to the effort that created the International Space Station, and akin to what science fiction writers often describe when telling stories about our species’ future beyond Earth.