Transcripts For CSPAN3 Discussion On Legacy Of Apollo Missio

CSPAN3 Discussion On Legacy Of Apollo Missions July 13, 2024

Test. Test. Test. Test. Test. Test. Test. Test. Captioning performed by vitac weve got commercial crew program, weve got space tourism, were going to the moon and using that as a steppingstone to go onto mars and some people want to retire there one day. There is so much excitement. So i would love for each of you to share what youre looking forward to most about the future of Space Exploration and are there things from apollo that still resonate today . The Critical Technology right now is what we call, you know we just got to figure out how to land the kind of masses were talking about landing on mars. Thats something weve got to figure out again, if i go back to what spacex is doing and has done, we had talked to them about flying a dragon to mars and landing because it would give us data about a landing on mars. Again, working with the private sector and experiment that is theyre doing that keeps nasa from having to do that allows them to go on and develop the exploration part of the program. The other thing is the human body. We know quite a bit more than weve ever known before thanks to a lot of the experiments thats going on on station today, but longterm survival on mars, i think well be okay, but its just its sort of like a commercial you see on television that says i think well be okay. Okay is probably not good enough when were talking about that, so we probably need to figure out exactly how were going to keep the crew safe in the radiation environment of mars. Im a big fan of going underground and using the soil as a safeguard, so humans live underground and thats enough for me. Spacex was built with the background of making the human species multiplanetary, which means earth and mars for now. And obviously the big problem going to mars is money. [ laughter ] there are some technical problems too. [ laughter ] money plays into that too. Space flight is superexpensive and so one obvious knob to turn is reusability. Currently, the design for ten times, were going to start for the fourth time. Dragon has been used three times. And so all these things help because you dont have to build something again. You have to, you know, inspect it, refurbish it, but you want to keep that really, really low. Like an airplane, you inspect it, its fine, and you schedule regular maintenance on boosters and, you know, others. We just recently recovered a coming from a second stage in a big net. And were going to refurbish that. Obviously we work in part. Star ship is going to allow us to use the second stage again and it becomes the cost of fuel and the cost of some maintenance and the operations basically, and thats where we need to do. Thats the technical side. On the other side we need help in terms of payloads, users, people that actually use that service and thats basically very everybody can pitch in here and help us because obviously if you have this capability, somebody needs to use it and thats superimportant too. I think thats primarily it. Reusability, and not to mention of course reliability and safety. When you reuse stuff you can make it safer, you can see leaks, get more data. We use video cameras all over the place. That helps you to. Reliability, safety, reusability. I think the biggest asset we have right now that will enable us to get to mars is about 240 kilometers that way, its the International Space station. Its the place were learning to live and work for long durations. How do we purr fi water . How do we get to recycling 85 to 90 of our water, how do we had oxygen, how do we make this work in a system that must function for the duration of time it takes to get to mars and back. And were perfecting those systems on the International Space station today. We have to look beyond 2028 and ask the question, where are the users . Who will build the replacement for the place to test and develop longterm assurance that these systems will work on the day that we eventually do leave lowearth orbit for the martian surface. The biggest barrier is the cost of getting people and things up there which our partners are working onto try reusability is a key, clearly to try and lower the launch costs. But also frequency of launch. If you go to the cases of the users, if youre a user, you want to be sure that you can get access frequently based on whatever the pace of your Business Model requires. Well see where we get to with the current plans. With respect to going further, to the radiation question, we have a lot of questions there. We need to understand the answers to those questions and manage that problem because radiation is not going to go away. That is sort of a i think what we have to do there. To chriss point, recycling is important, but i would say its beyond just creating a 100 closed life support system. Its everything else. Think about the logistics training that we might have to establish to support people on mars and its ridiculous to imagine how you manage that. So we have to figure out how to recycle everything that we take into space, how we can use the materials on the planetary bodies upon which we place human and is theres a lot of work that has to be done in that area. And that kind of work will come back and benefit earth because we have finite resources on our planet and we have to figure out how to recycle a little bit more here. Theres some dualuse technologies that we can work on that will benefit our planet. Well, i do firmly believe that humans will visit mars some day. But before we do that, not only learning to live off the planet on the iss, but we need to learn to live on another planetary body and were lucky enough to have the moon thats just a few days away as opposed to months, going to mars, and its a great test ground for learning how to live off this earth that were all looking out to do. And there are many questions to be answered, radiation being a significant one, and we ought to take advantage of that, the trips that we did make to the moon were all little camping trips, short duration kinds of things and to live there is a total different problem and we need to solve that. Well, bob really brought up some points that we outlined in this years study i shared for president bush senior and Vice President quail, about how to go back to the moon and onto mars. He hit it right there. But one thing, you are going to need a big booster. Theres no doubt about it. People have things to sell. They always want to sell you the small boosters and put them together, the math just doesnt work. Weve been through it many times. Radiation, absolutely, we have to have a way to protect for radiation. Thats one of the big risks. And assuming that your Systems Engineering is good and your systems have enough reliability to get you out there, perhaps a Nuclear Thermal Rocket for mars, you dont need it for the moon. As far as upper stage propulsion. And oh, again, the two things you have to recycle is water and oxygen. And, you know, for example, on apollo 10, i lifted off about 6. 4 Million Pounds of mass. I had 300,000 pounds to leo how did you do that . How did you do that . All i had was 4. 8 there earth orbit and then on tli, it was 1. 6 . The human being uses about 2. 2 pounds. It depends on your weight. 2. 2 pounds of oxygen per day. So that means youre going to have to have 50 to 75 pounds of mass for every day you breathe, unless you recycle. Youre going to have 6 1 2 pounds of water a day and thats going to take that much more. So youve got to recycle that. And so theres a lot to be done. One other thing, this kind of sticks in my craw, we hear the word commercial, well, i was on the backup on the first gemini flight pilot, i was the backup commander of the first apollo flight so i was there from the start to finish and everything nasa bought and purchased was from commercial entities. It was all commercial. Except we had insight and requirements, but the contract is a good team. But the word commercial means nasa steps out of the way. I kind of disagree because nasa did everything on gemini, apollo and even the shuttle was all done by commercial people. None by nasa, zero. So i wanted to bring that up. [ laughter ] [ applause ] prior to this, i did a bunch of research and something that wasnt that i didnt include in your bio was at some point, the Guidance System that you did hand calculations in space because the Guidance System failed, correct . Now you understand how he can do that. Hes a human calculator, i love it. We have a short period of time, but were going to do one more question before we go to the audience. This space industry is highly competitive as we know. It has a history of being competitive. But its also highly collaborative. The scope of what were trying to achieve requires us to really collaborate. Now, in the commercial era, still highly competitive and highly collaborative. How does that balance i guess give me some insight on that delicate balance and why we need both and i would love to start with sandy because i know you did a lot of work with International Agencies during your time at nasa. It is a delicate balance and i think its its a good dynamic because theres a push pull amongst the different entities. The competition is good because it makes everybody keep innovating and the collaboration is good because we learn from each other because it still is quite risky, dynamic, its a harsh environment to operate in. Keeping that balance where the learning happens across the community but theres enough competition and poking at each other to spur people to do better is really awesome. And i think it all works at the end of the day because in my experience working with people around the world in the Space Program, what i have found is that everybody is really, really passionate about the mission of flying in space, whether its that machines or people or both. And because everybody buys into that and feels that and is passionate about that, we can conquer all kinds of issues that might otherwise create fractionization and just complete dysfunctionalty. We still have some, but in general the whole Community Pulls together because they believe in that passionate thing. And its one thing i talk about with respect in the International Space station program, is it shows you, going back to collaboration and cooperation, it shows you that program, what we can do as human beings if we really want to accomplish something difficult. Its the most complex highly Technological Program ever conceived and executed by people and it involved numerous Different Countries with different agendas, languages, the english system and the metric system and thats a mess too. But political situations. But this project, this multidecade project worked because everybody who was engaged in it at the end of the day really believed in it and had their passion towards it. Theres no reason why we cant solve any problem thats facing us as a global population if we take the same attitude. Thats why the competition and collaboration work so powerfully in the Space Program because of this passion and this total commitment to achieving the end goal. We dont have a ton of time, but who wants to take this one . Charlie . I say ditto. Ditto . [ laughter ] spacex . Boeing . I dont know. I feel like when you actually theres also a level of cooperation when youre on the launch pad that everybody works for the mission. It doesnt really matter which company they work for in many cases. And the same thing applies to when things go around. Everybody feels terrible when things go wrong. And i found at the end of the day people that work in space are passionate about space. They want their company to succeed, of course, but theres an overarching level that people want things to go well and to be space and reliable. So that in many cases is more important. I found that pretty refreshing in many cases. Ill talk dollars quickly. If you look at what it costs to develop the shutting, it was between 30 and 40 billion, in 2,010, give or take. And the subtle federal was about 3 billion per year and that got you about four to five flights per year depending upon the year. If you just look at the way the commercial crew program is evolving for the cost of operating the Space Shuttle program for two years, a little bit over that, youre getting two different providers that are contracted to do a full development, two test flights and six Service Flights back and forth to the International Space station. Just looking at it, at the dollar value, it will turn out to be a very good value for the american taxpayer when we execute. So where does that reinvestment dollar get paid and i think the intent is to reinvest that in explorati Exploration Technology to get us to the moon and to mars. Lets invest in lowearth orbit, commercial availability to get cargo and humans back and forth from there and allow nasa to go beyond lowearth orbit with that taxpayer investment. Were going to transition out to the audience for questions and while we do have mics set up, we have someone thats going to walk around. If you have a question, just raise your hand and someone will meet you with a microphone. Materials engineering, space, a new Military Branch was created last year so we are going to have Additional Branch for the armed services. With your realworld experience in space, your perspectives are very valuable to make sure the new branch would operate to its maximum and deliver the best value. So i would like to see the panel to share some of your views and maybe specific suggestions. So the space force will be operated accordingly. Your views of space force . Yes. Okay. Or suggestions, as well. Would you like to take that, tom . Yeah, ill take that. Okay. The way that force has been evolved over the year, starting with armies and somebody invented a boat and navy and that went on for years. But in the air, i think the first shot ever fired was a tiein, a twoplace fier, across the English Channel in 1910 and some fight in the balkans. I dont know if they hit anybody. Air became a domain of force projection. And so all youre doing in this case, youre going higher and youre going faster. And to think that its not going to be, is to be a little naive. We know already what the chinese are doing with hyper sonic glide vehicles and thats out in space. Anyone else want to take that . No . [ laughter ] we have internal views on space force up here. My name is dan baker. Im a practitioner of space weather and many of you on the panel have mentioned space radiation as a concern. I guess my question is, how important is it to you in your mind for the future to have forecasts of what the space environment is going to be and to have adequate warning to help, lets say, prepare for the more transit space radiation affects. I think its important for astronauts but nearly as important as it is for us on the planet. Space weather today, im speaking to the choir here, it is how we have we anticipate problems to communications, you know, weve been very fortune in that we have not had a major space weather occurrence thats knocked out Satellite Communications and the like, but that is a possibility. So i think long before we need to worry about whats the risk to a crew member flying in space, weve got to continually have an ongoing, improving, technologically developing space weather capability just to protect us here on the planet. I think some of the ideas that have been floated on protecting astronauts from space radiation, and i understand there are some advancements being made in polymers, but ive seen building something around a Space Shuttle. This is something were going to have to solve. I dont know how good were going to get to say, hey, youre good for three years, for your threeyear trip to mars, youre going to be just fine. Were going to have to beat the problem back. He asked about space weather forecasts. From my perspective, i watch the space weather every time when we launch, as much as i look at the other weather. Its the same it has different affect in that sense that you care about, you know, life on board and the electronics rather than wind in the upper atmosphere. Its just a factor that goes into the whole picture and whole environment. Well take the next question. Right here. From a commercial perspective, what is the end goal . Where do you see this program in 25 years or 50 years . Whats your vision . And this could be anyone in the panel. Its a good question, actually. We work on contracts and the discussion of commercial, i found one of the biggest discriminators, whether you tell somebody, build that to me and this is the amount of money you get and then youre on your own. Mostly, its not quite like that. We get some support, obviously, and we work as a team, always, but at the end of the day the money is finite that you get from something and thats a model that i can see helping the cost and control because were very cost conscious. Its not billable hours like you have in other professions. So, because thats what its a billable hour and it just goes up. And the insevencentive is not t to keep it low costs. And it becomes more of a service and i think it was you, it could be like a service that you book it like you book a ticket, basically, you have a certain amount of money to bring stuff from the ground to the moon, and whatever it is basically, and some amount of money that goes to mars. But fundamentally, costs must come down dramatically in the next 25 years in order to make this work, to make the whole economics of it close, otherwise it might be too expensive. If i may, in a perfect world, 25 or 50 years from now, probably closer to 50 than 25, but the cost of launch will have come down. People like you guys who are very creative and have a krr good expertise in certain areas have an opportunity to have these perception shifts that i mentioned earlier and the creative juices flow and you think of things that you can do in lowearth orbit. Things you can take advantage of, what were missing now is that piece. We have a lot of capabilities that are going to be coming on line but we havent figured out yet how to develop the markets or use cases for the broader private enterprise, if you will, but the broader private enterprise. Getting the access for people to hav

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