An Open Letter to NASA
Dear NASA:
As you may know, I come from both a West Virginia coal mining background and thirty years of combined military, federal, and NASA service. Nearly twenty of those years was with NASA where I trained astronauts for Spacelab and other missions, ending my career as the payload training manager for the International Space Station which was just beginning to be built. Since then, I've been a writer but that has not stopped me from doing what I can for both my old home state and its people as well as NASA, an agency near and dear to my heart. These days, in my spare time, I am the Vice-Chairman of the Space & Rocket Center Board which includes Space Camp, Space Academy, and all the great programs here in Huntsville. I am also fortunate to be able to speak to the many groups of teachers that attend Space Camp each year and hear from them their hopes, dreams, and fears for the children under their care and tutelage.
Although I am a supporter of NASA and the space business as a whole, there is a certain psychological reserve to someone raised in the coalfields to anything that seems ephemeral. We like real things. We like to see people and machines at work. We believe there is no water holier than the sweat on a person's brow. We want to go where there is work to be done, work to support our families, work where homes might be built and a decent wage might be made, work that feeds into the human spirit and soul, even dangerous work, that makes us better than we might otherwise be.
As such, I am very much a "moon guy" and I write this to make that clear. Ever since I suggested in 1960 to then-Senator John F. Kennedy that we go to the moon and "just mine the blame thing," I have been a believer that the eighth continent (which, since it was carved from the Earth, it is) is where we as humans should go, there not to build only science laboratories but to build towns and cities and use the resources given to us so near that we can almost touch it (and a few times have actually done so).
It is my belief that we do our young people and their teachers a disservice to keep presenting Mars as our real destination while the moon is but a means to get there. The moon to me is not a means. With our present technology, it is the end but one where an exciting future filled with productive people might evolve.
Of course, the arguments for and against Luna vs. Mars are well known. I was debating Bob Zubrin on this a decade and more years ago but, never mind, everything I've seen, learned, and felt since continues to sway me toward a new society of workers developing wealth on the moon with Mars left for now to machines and our developing AI capabilities or any billionaires who want to go there for which I wish them good luck and great fortune (although I suggest a couple of weeks of camping in the badlands of Montana and the Dakotas in the winter with only what they can pack in to see how they like it). However, to compare the very real potential of an industrial moon with a sod-busting Mars holding but a few farmers gasping for breath is wrong in my view. The idea of Mars as a new Earth is at best a dream and at worst a cruel hoax to our children and if we head for Mars while shortchanging the moon, it will be like the Pilgrims skipping New England and heading off to Antarctica instead.
The eighth continent is where I believe NASA clearly needs to set its sights for human habitation and suspend for now any fixation on a human-settled Mars which is no more real than the canal-striped version of Percival Lowell but sadly within the same dreamy context.
As a federally-funded agency with the most responsibility for our future, I believe NASA should make the case to our citizens that it is on our moon where we can open up a new domain of wealth for them and their families, thus justifying any expenditures in that pursuit. If this is not clear, we can always say we're going to go there and just mine the blame thing. The folks will get that.
Thanks for letting me spout off and thanks for all you do and have done and please keep aiming high.
Homer Hickam
www.homerhickam.com
Member: UAG, National Space Council
As you may know, I come from both a West Virginia coal mining background and thirty years of combined military, federal, and NASA service. Nearly twenty of those years was with NASA where I trained astronauts for Spacelab and other missions, ending my career as the payload training manager for the International Space Station which was just beginning to be built. Since then, I've been a writer but that has not stopped me from doing what I can for both my old home state and its people as well as NASA, an agency near and dear to my heart. These days, in my spare time, I am the Vice-Chairman of the Space & Rocket Center Board which includes Space Camp, Space Academy, and all the great programs here in Huntsville. I am also fortunate to be able to speak to the many groups of teachers that attend Space Camp each year and hear from them their hopes, dreams, and fears for the children under their care and tutelage.
Although I am a supporter of NASA and the space business as a whole, there is a certain psychological reserve to someone raised in the coalfields to anything that seems ephemeral. We like real things. We like to see people and machines at work. We believe there is no water holier than the sweat on a person's brow. We want to go where there is work to be done, work to support our families, work where homes might be built and a decent wage might be made, work that feeds into the human spirit and soul, even dangerous work, that makes us better than we might otherwise be.
As such, I am very much a "moon guy" and I write this to make that clear. Ever since I suggested in 1960 to then-Senator John F. Kennedy that we go to the moon and "just mine the blame thing," I have been a believer that the eighth continent (which, since it was carved from the Earth, it is) is where we as humans should go, there not to build only science laboratories but to build towns and cities and use the resources given to us so near that we can almost touch it (and a few times have actually done so).
It is my belief that we do our young people and their teachers a disservice to keep presenting Mars as our real destination while the moon is but a means to get there. The moon to me is not a means. With our present technology, it is the end but one where an exciting future filled with productive people might evolve.
Of course, the arguments for and against Luna vs. Mars are well known. I was debating Bob Zubrin on this a decade and more years ago but, never mind, everything I've seen, learned, and felt since continues to sway me toward a new society of workers developing wealth on the moon with Mars left for now to machines and our developing AI capabilities or any billionaires who want to go there for which I wish them good luck and great fortune (although I suggest a couple of weeks of camping in the badlands of Montana and the Dakotas in the winter with only what they can pack in to see how they like it). However, to compare the very real potential of an industrial moon with a sod-busting Mars holding but a few farmers gasping for breath is wrong in my view. The idea of Mars as a new Earth is at best a dream and at worst a cruel hoax to our children and if we head for Mars while shortchanging the moon, it will be like the Pilgrims skipping New England and heading off to Antarctica instead.
The eighth continent is where I believe NASA clearly needs to set its sights for human habitation and suspend for now any fixation on a human-settled Mars which is no more real than the canal-striped version of Percival Lowell but sadly within the same dreamy context.
As a federally-funded agency with the most responsibility for our future, I believe NASA should make the case to our citizens that it is on our moon where we can open up a new domain of wealth for them and their families, thus justifying any expenditures in that pursuit. If this is not clear, we can always say we're going to go there and just mine the blame thing. The folks will get that.
Thanks for letting me spout off and thanks for all you do and have done and please keep aiming high.
Homer Hickam
www.homerhickam.com
Member: UAG, National Space Council
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Richard
(new)
Aug 17, 2018 10:04AM
I agree with you on this matter. The idea of sending people off to Mars when there's so much we can do with the moon nearby is, to me, a complete and utter waste of time.
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Thanks. I believe there is scope for both Moon and Mars to be settled, for different purposes and with different outcomes. Certainly the lunar regolith on the far side must hold many fragments of meteorites, and we could mine those with a robot and supermagnet.
