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Future Space Exploration The Human Touch
By Leonard David
Senior Space Writer
posted: 12:33 pm ET
23 April 2001
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Step-by-step staying power
To move beyond Earth orbit, Rothenberg said there is a need to incrementally build, in essence, NASA’s get-up-and-go.
"We need to invest in technology that allows us to sustain humans in space without resupply from Earth for longer and longer periods of time," Rothenberg said.
What NASA strategy for human exploration and development of space calls for are 100-day, 1,000-day and then 2,000-day or beyond stay times in space. Doing so means solving the issue of radiation and bone loss, as well as myriad technology issues, primarily in the areas of power, life support and space propulsion.
Rothenberg said that one early mission may be to a human-made destination in space -- the inflatable TransHab, positioned more than 932,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth. Equipment at this locale, such as large telescopes, could be constructed, repaired and serviced by on-the-spot astronauts living within TransHab, he said.
Moreover, it is from this location, perhaps as early as 2018, that other incremental steps – a human return to the Moon, trekking to an asteroid or dispatching a human expedition to Mars – can be taken, Rothenberg said.
Hospitality sweet spot
Apollo 11 Moonwalker, Buzz Aldrin, contends that an "action plan" for America’s space future is urgently needed.
"History will remember the inhabitants of the last century as the people who went from Kitty Hawk to the Moon in 66 years – only to languish for the next 30 in low Earth orbit," Aldrin testified to a congressional space subcommittee in early April.
Aldrin wants to see citizens on the space shuttle by lottery, and to develop cost-effective, reusable boosters to take tourists into space. This would foster the birth of an expanded "hospitality" industry in orbit.
"A new generation of space vehicles can carry private citizens to orbiting hotels, settlers to the Moon and Mars and waves of explorers to the far reaches of the solar system," Aldrin said.
The Aldrin action plan also envisions long-haul transportation systems -- deep-space cruisers that not only routinely cycle tourists between Earth and the Moon, but also continuously transfer explorers and settlers between Mars and Earth. A fully reusable lunar and interplanetary system is the ultimate way of transporting people and cargo across the vast void of space, he said.
Now is the time to commit the country "to a gradual, but progressive plan of permanent settlement of space, not just occasional visits that leave little more than flags and footprints," Aldrin said.
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