The Value of the Moon

by Paul D. Spudis

  The Role of Public Opinion in Spaceflight

  A familiar refrain about the civil space program is that we must somehow get and keep the American people “excited” about space. NASA has spent a great deal of energy pursuing this elusive goal. Its outreach efforts are designed to convince the taxpayers that spending money on space is a good investment. The most common approach is an appeal made to impress upon the American people how the many benefits from spin-off technologies, goods, and capabilities inspired or created by space research and development have affected their lives in positive ways.

  The Aldridge Commission received a presentation from NASA Public Affairs that contained 50 years of polling data on the question, “Do you support the American space program?” The poll numbers on this question have bounced around through the years, ranging from close to 60 percent to as low as around 40 percent. Surprisingly, no matter what the agency was doing, how it was faring, what disasters it endured or the triumphs it had achieved, the typical breakdown was roughly 50–50, plus or minus 10 percentage points. This result, nearly constant over the course of the 50-year history of the space program, is as rock-solid as almost any polling number in existence over a similar time span.14

  Yet, NASA wrings its hands over this result: “How can we excite the people? If we could just come up with the correct public relations plan, the public and Congress will shower us with money and support!” I believe that these numbers have a different significance. If your poll results are always around 50–50, then, in a fundamental sense, people are indifferent about what you are doing. Apparently, the public really doesn’t fixate on what NASA does. True enough, many do have a fascination with spaceflight; attendance at the National Air and Space Museum is consistently the highest of all the museums on the National Mall in Washington. But as with any museum visit, their curiosity is easily satiated, and few dwell on national strategic and economic goals and objectives in space on a daily basis.

  While NASA sees its 50–50 polling approval as a problem, I see it as an opportunity. In broad and vague terms, people support our space program. It is a source of national pride, and Americans don’t want to see NASA on the chopping block. They like the idea of going to new places and making new discoveries; they just don’t center their thinking on the sausage making of space policy. What they want from their government is a space program that does interesting things and not too many dumb ones, with programs that inspire the country and make us smarter, hopeful, and proud.

  Given this relatively benign public mood and a funding level almost literally “in the noise” compared with other federal programs—at less than 0.3 percent of the federal budget, much smaller than most believe it to be—NASA’s strategic direction should focus on the incremental buildup of our capability to go farther, stay longer, and develop and increase human “reach” beyond low Earth orbit, first, into cislunar and then into interplanetary space. Our Moon is situated where it can play an important role in this buildup, since it is the first place beyond low Earth orbit with the resources needed to develop and expand our spacefaring capability. Initially, this means oxygen and hydrogen—vital, consumable resources necessary to support a human presence, and as rocket propellant for refueling spacecraft. Provisioning in space begins here.

  Perhaps the public doesn’t care about the Moon or even the space program in general. But even if this is true, it is irrelevant. Few concern themselves with the requirements and properties of infrastructure development such as railroads or highways, yet no one denies their value, nor does it stop their productive use of them. As a modern, technical society, we depend upon space and the assets and resources found there, for a wide variety of purposes. In order to take advantage of these opportunities, we need freedom of movement on the ocean of space—the ability to go where we need, whenever we want to. The development of lunar resources holds great promise by giving us the flexibility to pursue a set of long-term goals in space—goals that will ultimately allow us to go anywhere, for any amount of time, to do almost any job we can imagine, as well as doing those things that we can not yet imagine.

  Moonrush: Issues in Private Sector Lunar Activities

  A number of American companies, at differing levels of involvement and with greatly differing degrees of technical credibility, claim to be attempting lunar spaceflight. A stimulus to this activity is the Google Lunar X-Prize (GLEX), a $20 million contest to safely land a payload on the Moon and conduct a number of specified milestone activities.15 Although this seems like a stunt, the rationale behind GLEX is serious. Prizes are employed by other technical fields of endeavor to stimulate development and innovation. Winning a prize has multiple benefits: It awards money, confers prestige by succeeding over competitors, creates acclaim, and generates business opportunities. Competing is also a good way to compress timescales of technical innovation and development: to win the prize, achieve “x” by “y” time.

  Although space entrepreneurs and experts often tout the value of prizes in stimulating new technical accomplishment, their efficacy in the field of space to date has been less than impressive. The Annsari X-Prize for the first commercial suborbital flight was won in 2004, but as of 2015, no other commercial suborbital flight has taken place.16 Space businessman Robert Bigelow established America’s Space Prize, a $50 million award for the first commercial provider of the transport and return of five human passengers to LEO. The prize was announced on December 17, 2003, the hundredth anniversary of the first Wright Brothers flight, and it expired in January 2010 without a single attempt to claim it. The GLEX was announced in 2007 and had a deadline of 2012, a deadline that has been extended twice, first to 2014 and then to the end of March 2015. A third extension to the end of 2017 was recently announced. I do not inventory these dismal statistics to disparage prize offers. I merely point out that they have a poor record of creating new capabilities.

  Most discussions about lunar resources focus almost exclusively on the technical issues associated with extraction, transportation, and use. Little has been offered on the legal issues involved in lunar or extraterrestrial mining—staking a claim, in other words, just as a miner does on Earth. This vacuum exists for a very straightforward reason: No one knows the legal status of commercial space mining and planetary surface activity.

  Several international treaties, the most pertinent of which is the 1967 U.N. Outer Space Treaty, set the current legal regime for space activities.17 Signed by 129 countries, including all of the major spacefaring nations, the treaty bans nuclear weapons in space and prohibits any nation from establishing territorial claims on extraterrestrial bodies. This formulation left open the question of private development and ownership, although the treaty states, “Outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, shall be free for exploration and use by all States without discrimination of any kind, on a basis of equality and in accordance with international law, and there shall be free access to all areas of celestial bodies.” Note well the language: “free for exploration and use by all States.” That wording would appear to guarantee the rights of a nation to mine the Moon, extract a product, and then—what?

  Certainly one would suppose that this language ensures that a government facility could manufacture rocket propellant to use in its own vehicles. But does it permit a private company based in that nation to make the same product and then offer it for sale on the open market? Certainly the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) can issue restrictions on American companies in regard to impinging upon the activities of another American company—say, for example, Moon Express landing a vehicle near an installation of Bigelow Aerospace inflatable habitats on the Moon. But who else is obliged to observe those restrictions? International companies that launch from their own soil do not require FAA commercial licenses. Unless some reciprocal agreement is reached between all of these nations, their private companies do not have to respect the access and “control zone” rights of other nations’ companies.

  The situation beco
mes even murkier when considering the possible interactions of a private American company on the Moon and the national representatives of a foreign power. Suppose another country such as China decided for whatever reason to land a government-funded, military-controlled spacecraft on a patch of lunar territory that the FAA had previously set aside for the exclusive use of Bigelow Aerospace. Legally, the FAA license has nothing to do with China, which is not bound to observe any restrictions. When international relations are peaceful and productive, conflicts are unlikely to arise. But political situations change, sometimes at the drop of a hat, and certainly on timescales shorter than industrial development cycles.

  Prime locations on the Moon, as on any other extraterrestrial object, are not limitless, and access to and use of the most desirable and valuable sites for resource prospecting and harvesting may become contentious. In terms of water production for rocket fuel and life support consumables, ideal sites are in zones of enhanced duration sunlight (“quasi-permanently lit areas”) near the Moon’s poles, proximate to permanently shadowed regions and thus deposits of water ice. At such locales, electrical power can be continuously generated in order to extract the nearby water ice. There may be only a few dozen zones where initial ice harvesting facilities may be operated with reasonable efficiency, on which more prospecting data will give us a better picture. If this turns out to be the case, then who gets the rights to produce the product? What constitutes staking a claim? First come, first serve? Or does might make right?

  This issue leads us to consider the presence and role of the federal government in space. I contend that a strong federal presence in space is necessary to ensure that our rights are established and that our values are protected and promoted. In the hypothetical context mentioned of Bigelow and China mentioned before, a single American company facing a determined nation-state is not likely to prevail in a manner favorable to the interests of free market capitalism. Legal recourse on Earth would be limited—more likely nonexistent. It is also unlikely that the United States would go to war over the infringement of some corporate plot of land on the Moon, at least during the early stages of commercial space. However, when the federal government establishes a presence, it serves notice to the world that we have national interests there. Their presence makes any infringement on the property and access rights of American corporations less likely to occur in the first place—and more easily resolved if such a situation arose, creating a much more favorable climate for private investment in space activities.

  There is no reason to assume that all nations will voluntarily cooperate in space, if for no other reason than nations do not behave this way on Earth. Sometimes national rights of way and access to resources must be guaranteed by a physical presence, backed up with threat of force. This is the way of life at sea here on Earth and the reason we have a blue-water navy—not only to defend our country but also to project power and protect our national interests abroad. Historically, the navy has conducted exploration and goodwill tours in peacetime and power projection in times of tension and war. A space navy could do likewise as humanity moves outward into the solar system.

  Ultimately, we will need to face up to our national and collective responsibilities to protect American commerce and interests wherever they reside. Given the cost risk of opening up space to commerce, companies need assurance that government can, and will, help protect their investment. In the very near future, our theater of operations will include cislunar space. The idea that the private sector alone can develop near Earth space is not realistic, nor even advisable. It remains a dangerous, unpredictable world, and clear-thinking leaders need to plan for future confrontations, if only, so that they can be avoided. Any display of weakness will be exploited—and not to our benefit.

  9

  A Visit to the Future Moon

  I believe the central, near-term goal for the American civil space program needs to be a permanent return to the Moon. Once we do this, we create a new and versatile spacefaring infrastructure, one capable of extending human reach beyond low Earth orbit (LEO) into the solar system. If we eventually head in such a direction, what might we expect to see in the future? What benefits will accrue from this direction and how might they develop over time? Here I envision a future for humanity on the Moon and a series of steps and events that are most likely to occur, along with their appropriate implications. On the Moon, we will begin to use and settle space for a variety of beneficial purposes.

  Early Activities

  In one sense, our lunar return has already begun through the series of robotic spacecraft that have mapped, measured, and surveyed the Moon over the past decade. Most of these missions were orbiters, loaded with a variety of sensors and instruments designed to measure physical properties in almost every part of the electromagnetic spectrum. These data, converted into maps showing shape, size, composition, and physical state, have given us a clearer picture of the makeup and evolution of our nearest neighbor. The Moon is probably the best-mapped object in the solar system, while parts of Earth’s ocean floor are more poorly known than the lunar far side. These survey maps allow us to evaluate the Moon as a planetary object. The regional inventory of its resources determined from orbit show that the Moon possesses what we need to create a new spacefaring capability. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) continues to give us the knowledge that fuels research and produces new discoveries.

  Impactors and landers have also added critical detailed information for small, selected areas on the Moon. One of the most important pieces of information came from the LCROSS impactor. In this mission, the upper stage of the LRO launch vehicle was crashed into one of the cold, dark regions of the lunar south pole. The collision was observed by a small satellite that had followed the impacting upper stage and by the LRO spacecraft, already in lunar orbit. The ejected material from this impact conclusively demonstrated that water ice is present within this cold trap. The amount is estimated at about 7 weight percent at this location. The ejecta plume also threw up other volatile species, including ammonia (NH4), methane (CH3), carbon monoxide (CO), and some simple organic molecules.1 These data suggest that the volatiles of the Moon’s polar regions are likely of cometary derivation. With this information, we can state with a strong degree of confidence that the materials needed for permanent human habitation on the Moon are present in the Moon’s polar regions.

  We have located and quantified the areas near the Moon’s poles that receive the most sunlight over the course of a year (figure 3.1). These lit regions are close to deposits of water ice and other volatiles. Maps produced by LRO and its orbital companions will be crucial in locating likely sites for resource processing on the Moon. In addition to the direct sampling of lunar ice by LCROSS, several different remote measurements support the presence of significant amounts of polar water. The M3 spectral mapper on India’s Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft found evidence for hydroxyl molecules (OH) at high latitudes (figure 9.1), which migrate poleward to possibly serve as a source for polar water.2 A small impactor from Chandrayaan-1 (the Moon Impact Probe) found a tenuous water vapor cloud over the south pole (probably water molecules en route to their ultimate site of deposition in a polar cold trap). Mini-RF radar images show high diffuse backscatter in some polar craters (see figure 5.1). Ultraviolet spectra and laser reflections indicate the existence of water frost on the surface of the floors of some polar craters. Neutron measurements over the poles indicate extensive amounts of hydrogen. These data support our understanding about the presence of significant amounts of ice at both poles, as much as 10 billion tons at each pole.

  Figure 9.1. Schematic showing the five modes of occurrence of lunar water. Water is found within melts formed deep inside the Moon and sampled by volcanic glasses and minerals. Exospheric water occurs as rare molecules that bounce around the Moon in the space just above the surface. Adsorbed water is found as a monolayer of molecules on dust grains; these molecules increase in abundance with increasing latitude (decreasing mean surfa
ce temperature). Surface water frost of more substantial quantity is seen within the dark, cold areas near the poles. Larger amounts of water ice may occur near the pole at shallow depths (a few meters or less) in substantial amounts (millions of tons). (Credit 9.1)

  Despite the abundant new data, in order to achieve a permanent lunar presence, we must understand and map the variations in polar water content on meter-scales, laterally and vertically. The physical properties of the ice must be determined to plan for excavation and water extraction. We must find areas of the highest water concentration that are closest to the areas of “quasi-permanent” sunlight, so as to make future water processing most efficient. These properties and others can be obtained from additional robotic surface exploration. The ideal way to get the highest quality data is to land a nuclear-powered surface rover, similar to the current Mars Science Laboratory, and conduct an extended traverse across the polar region to find and map out the best areas.3 Identically equipped rovers should be sent to each pole; although we suspect that both north and south poles possess significant volatile deposits, the scouting of both areas by two rovers would help us be certain that we locate the outpost near the highest grade deposits.

  Short of this fairly sophisticated level of exploration, a series of smaller missions could gather preliminary information on polar volatiles. One example of an inexpensive mission is to fly a pallet of about a dozen small impactors (hard landers) that would be individually deployed and landed to gather surface compositional and physical data from multiple points. Although less desirable than the detailed, continuous information that a properly equipped rover would provide, this approach may be a good strategy to collect widespread, detailed data in a short period of time for a small amount of money.