Moon Base – Failed Prediction - Part 1

The Apollo program that was started by President Kennedy in 1962 with his famous speech at Rice University (http://www.hbci.com/~tgort/jfk_rice.htm). captured the hearts and minds of much of America. It provided an exciting prospect and allowed the US to show the Russians how good our technology was. Despite a shaky start with the Atlas and Redstone rocket projects [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redstone_(rocket), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_rocket], and Russia getting Gagarin into space first on April 12, 1961, the US soon caught up and past the Russian achievements.

The Apollo program injected over 20 billion of dollars (1960’s dollars – equivalent to about 50 billion dollars today) into the US economy partly through the many contractors involved in manufacturing parts and sub-systems for the Saturn rocket and other parts; partly through money spent in the US colleges solving difficult problems like the flame instability in the rocket engine bells (See: http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/saturnv.htm).

By 1975 we were planning on putting some kind of structure on the moon. Boeing even built part of it in Seattle. Predictions had us putting some kind of colony on the Moon by around 1975 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Applications_Program).

But after Apollo 17 it all stopped. The funding was cut and the program cancelled. The last of the giant Saturn V boosters ended up as tourist attractions and we still have not gone back. Only twelve men have walked on the surface of the moon and the last of them left the final human footprints there December 1972.

In October 2003 (http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/shenzhou5_china_archive.html) the Chinese launched their first manned vehicle and on Jan 14, 2004 President George W. Bush announced that the US would be going back to the Moon and on to Mars (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/01/20040114-1.html). He boldly stated that we would conduct the first of the new manned missions to the Moon by 2014 - which is only 5 1/2 years away. It took seven years just to build the LEM last time.

Apollo was a publicity stunt in many ways. Kennedy wanted to show the Russians that Americas had the technology, financial resources and skills to do something impossible. And we did it with remarkably little loss of life. Compared to aircraft development, the entire space program is about as safe as growing roses. It’s certainly safer than driving to work every day. But Apollo was a very expensive program and despite the fact that it provided the US with many new inventions and discoveries such as Tang (which my teenage son rediscovered recently) and all sorts of material science, its public interest waned and many thought the money could be spent better elsewhere.

So why did so many people predict we’d be on the Moon? I believe they were too close to the project, too caught up in the enthusiasm to show how superior the US was to the Russians and too ignorant of how easy it is for the US government to make sweeping changes in spending on a whim. It’s far too easy for a single person to alter the course of technological spending. If you can’t show the results of a project on TV and say “look what we did” then the politicians that are backing that project don’t get re-elected. The entire technology investment process is perhaps a chaotic system. Small changes made by one or two individuals massively affect the outcome and the outcome can be massively different depending on lots of small factors that are in play when the initial decision is made. This means that nobody could have predicted when we’d put a base on the Moon. Sure, the Apollo project managers could generate a plan based on available resources, known risks and project goals but that plan is about the engineering, not about the fickle nature of the funding controlled by the US political system. It’s scary to think that so may potential technological advances could happen or not happen depending on which politician needs to make himself look favorable to a lobby group for a couple of months.

So will we go back to the Moon at all? I think we probably will, but I’m doubtful that the US government will foot the bill. We’re about to stop flying the Space Shuttle (Officially called the Space Transport System – hence the STSxx mission numbers) and we have no replacement. We’re using Russian boosters and systems to supply the International Space Erector set with food and other supplies. This is technology we were laughing at during the cold war. If we go back, my guess it will be with companies like SpaceX or perhaps Richard Branson will fund a new spaceline - Virgin Heavenly Bodies.