In my first blog, I wrote why Harold Rosen formed the Southern California Selene Group. In short, he and I registered our team to compete for the Google Lunar X PRIZE to demonstrate that a low-cost space mission to the moon could be accomplished and could lead to lowering the cost of some future robotic missions to planetary moons. Plus, we intended to have fun! Harold and I both are strong supporters of space science and robotic space exploration. (For one, I’m an astronomy and cosmology enthusiast.) We love the kind of work that JPL is doing, for example. But we most definitely are not in favor of human space missions. That is not our goal, nor do we support such a goal.
The Team Summit turned out to be a real wakeup call. In the Guidelines workshop that I attended just last Tuesday, the cumulative effect of hearing all day from Peter Diamandis, Bob Weiss and Gregg Maryniak that the “real purpose” of the Google Lunar X PRIZE was to promote the so-called commercialization of space (which I took to mean highly impractical stuff like mining the moon and beaming power to the earth, as shown in one of GLXP kickoff videos), humanity’s future in space, etc. etc., took its toll. I couldn’t help but think “what am I doing here?” When I spoke to Harold about it on the phone later, he agreed – no way did he want to be involved in promoting a goal he does not believe in.
As I stated in my short speech at the media event on Wednesday (you can see it on the webcast), we already face serious issues regarding rising projected launch costs, which complicate the already-difficult task of obtaining a sponsor… so we have some serious thinking to do.
Deborah Castleman
Associate Team Leader
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Put some Serious Thought into this
If humanity's future in space is realized, space science missions will be doable using pocket change in comparison to what's necessary today.
I hope you choose to stay in, and achieve your goals while GLXP achieves theirs.
doubts
If your goal is to show that low-cost robotic missions to moons can be done, then just do it in such a way that what you demonstrate can be used by later missions. You are the team, and it is you that define your goals. Each team is driven by its own goals that it promotes and strives to achieve, whether it's making robotic science easier, winning money, starting a business, education, supporting human spaceflight, promoting open source, having fun, or anything else. I suspect your goals are very much in line with the X PRIZE and Google folks, even if they're also looking several (achievable?) steps beyond that.
You also have to look at the kind of space commercialization and human spaceflight that they're actually working on. The human spaceflight X PRIZEs haven't been for (currently?) impractical things that require big lunar settlements. They're for things like routine, low cost suborbital spaceflight. If this becomes a viable, long-term commercial industry, it will be extremely useful for science. It would allow upper atmospheric measurements, astronomical data collection, Earth remote sensing, accurate monitoring of operating Earth sensing satellite performance via concurrent measurements above the atmosphere, testing of space science instruments under development, student access to real space data, possibly smallsat launch, and more.
Commercial lunar robotics may also have science benefits. For example, if agencies like NASA can integrate instruments on a commercial lunar robot, or just buy data from the robot, while the robot also does commercial work (for whatever - movies, Google Moon data, who knows what), both parties can benefit greatly.
As for sponsorship and launch costs, that's a difficult one. Launch costs can go up and down. Your effort itself helps demonstrate a market that might encourage lower-cost launch providers. Maybe there are ways of lowering the sponsorship threshold by teaming with schools, other GLXP teams, etc. Some sponsors may be ok with the risk of not finding other sponsors. The more progress you make with what you can do without the big money, and the more promotion you do (or get new team members to do), the more likely you will be to succeed. Look at the "Kansas City Space Pirates" - just on the Conan show, and getting sponsors - for a project that has some near-term practical benefits, even if the stated goal is quite ambitious.
The money issue is serious
The money issue is serious and will affect many other teams. But as for the reason, just do it for your own reasons and never mind what others think.
Phil
Phil Stooke
Author of "The International Atlas of Lunar Exploration"
Departments of Geography and Physics/Astronomy
University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada
No to Manned Space Travel?
Am I to understand that you (Southern California Selene Group) don't believe in manned space travel? If this is true I'm just curious as to why not?
It's more nuanced than that
The SCSG doesn't think anything with one mind. Each member has their own opinions on this and other topics, and the debate can be colorful and lively, I assure you.
Personally, and most especially not speaking for the team, I believe that we will continue to be a spacefaring species in the long term.
I wish also, however, that we come to better understand our home planet -- our oceans, our atmosphere, our geology, our animal kingdom, our selves. I support the investment of public funds into pure science for this reason.
When couched in terms of the allocation of scarce resources, however, I sympathize entirely with those on our team who advocate for less emphasis on human-piloted spaceflight and instead more emphasis on robotic exploration of our solar system. For me, it's inescapably a question of using the "correct tool for the job", as well as one of maximizing return on investment. Every dollar spent on keeping crew members hydrated and breathing isn't being spent on something else, like materials science and improving software development practices.
Those are my two cents, anyway. I thought I would contrast them with Dan's, above.
- Brian
this is not the official
this is not the official position, but at least personally, I'm opposed to manned space travel.
it takes only 50 rads of radiation to kill a person (in comparison, space-qualified electronics can take hundreds of kilo-rads to mega-rads). if the astronauts just happen to be in space during a solar flare, they would've been dead. currently, we have no way to predict solar flares in advance, the human life at risk is too great.
-Dan, former SCSG member.