Attempt No. 3. Trump enters a new lunar race
America is returning to the moon! This is the main content of the memorandum signed on December 11, 2017 by the American President. Document published on the White House website and it talks about the preparation of a new series of American manned flights to the Moon.
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It is symbolic that the memorandum was signed and published exactly 45 years after the final lunar mission, Apollo 17. Astronauts Harrison Schmitt, who was part of the Apollo 17 crew and one of the last people to walk on the Moon, were invited to the document signing ceremony; Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin from the crew of the legendary Apollo 11, the second person to set foot on the surface of the Moon, as well as Peggy Whitson, a record-breaking astronaut who flew 665 days in space - more than any woman or any American.
The presence of important guests, inscribed on the tablets of the Astronaut Hall of Fame, was supposed to emphasize the seriousness of what was happening. And Trump, judging by his speeches, was more serious than ever: his administration intended to send astronauts to the Moon not for another bag of rocks, but to build a long-term lunar station and seize a bridgehead for subsequent flights to Mars “and, possibly, to other worlds.”
While astonished humanity takes a breath and comes to its senses, let’s think a little about how feasible the tasks set by Trump for NASA are.
The US lunar program, adopted in the early 1960s, which resulted in the Apollo project, did not come cheap for America. At today's exchange rate, the costs are equivalent to $250 billion, although the original project budget was about three times more modest.
No one has ever hidden that the American landing on the Moon was a purely political event, the purpose of which was to wipe the nose of the Soviets, who were ahead of the United States with the first artificial Earth satellite, the first man in space and the first man in outer space.
The desperation of the American leadership from the obvious loss of the USSR even at the stage of the pre-space rocket race was so great that the Pentagon decided to caress and shower with gold the former “father of Hitler’s wunderwaffles” of the FAU, SS Sturmbannführer Wernher von Braun, who was granted American citizenship for such a cause in 1955.
During the Apollo program, the crew of the first spacecraft (astronauts Grissom, White and Chaffee) died due to a fire. Nevertheless, the Americans managed to practice Apollo flights, first in low-Earth orbit, and then in a non-stop flight around the Moon. The icing on the cake was the Apollo 11 to 17 flights that landed men on the Moon, except for the crash flight of Apollo 13, which was a triumph of the successful return of a space expedition under extreme conditions.
NASA's plans were to send three more Apollos to the Moon, but management came to the conclusion that a few more flags stuck in the lunar dust and new bags of lunar rocks would not make a difference: after all, they flew to the Moon not so much for new knowledge, but for sporting interest.
Some of the lunar program paid off and became part of everyday life. These are, for example, popular Velcro fasteners and thin metallized plastic, used as a thermostat in outerwear, tourism, and in some places by emergency doctors.
In the USSR, the lunar program was curtailed after the successful flight of the Moon by Apollo 8. It became clear that we would no longer be able to catch up with the Americans, especially with the exploding N-1 missiles. True, the USSR was to some extent able to win back by throwing two “lunar rovers” onto the surface of the Earth’s natural satellite and, for the first time in the world, returning several machines with lunar soil from another celestial body to Earth.
From the lunar race, the USSR inherited the Soyuz spacecraft, which were also developed to fly around the Moon.
Since then, no one else has tried to storm the Moon again or generally engage in interplanetary manned astronautics.
However, in 2004, when after the disaster of the space shuttle Columbia the fallacy and dead end of the Space Shuttle program became extremely clear to Americans, then US President George W. Bush announced the ambitious “Return to the Moon” program. American society, which was in shock after the unthinkable terrorist attack of September 11, 2001 and the Columbia disaster, received the news with enthusiasm.
But, in general, it was clear that the United States, which got involved in two wars at once - in Afghanistan and Iraq, and which had also reduced its share in the global gross product from 50% to 20%, would not be able to support the new lunar program. And so it happened. America did not abandon Bush Jr.'s plans, but they were pushed into the back box “for someday,” which is tantamount to a funeral.
The cheerful Nobel laureate Barack Obama, who replaced Bush Jr. as president, in turn said that the “bastard” was swimming shallowly with his Moon, and shocked society with the announcement of the “Constellation” program, which can be called mega-ultra-hyper- ambitious, since Obama proposed that NASA fly and land astronauts on some nearby asteroid, and then begin the siege of Mars from this asteroid.
Both programs were based on materiel mastered during the space shuttle launch program. Without going too deeply into the technical details, both programs, for all their ambition, looked like pure Manilovism. Firstly, the new Ares-V rocket being developed with solid propellant boosters turned out to be heavier than the heavy lunar rocket Saturn-5B. Secondly, “Ares”, like “Saturns”, became “a thing in itself” - that is, they were “sharpened” only to perform a specific mission - a flight to the Moon, to the nearest asteroids. For more prosaic things, like delivering another space telescope into orbit, the rocket was prohibitively expensive, and even the very rich United States could not and cannot afford this.
It turned out that for the second time NASA received a highly specialized and monstrously expensive monster to deliver cobblestones from some not very distant celestial body. And even then, if this monster proves its survivability. Repeating what has been done is not always successful.
In addition, even in its lightweight form, Ares became the fifth wheel in the cart. Despite the demand for delivering commercial cargo up to 20 tons into low-Earth orbit, Ares entered into unnecessary competition with the American Atlas, Delta and Falcon rockets already available for these purposes. In the end, NASA abandoned the Ares-type launch vehicle.
But, in addition to the launch vehicle, we also need manned spacecraft, as well as landing modules.
In principle, new ships are under development and even testing, since, after the cancellation of the shuttles, NASA simply needs to carry its astronauts on something, at least to the ISS. America has four of these: “Orion”, “Dragon V2”, “Starliner” and the space plane “Dream Chaser”. Of these, only the first two ships are intended for flybys of the Moon, and only “Orion” - hypothetically - for flights to Mars and asteroids.
There is a non-zero chance that at least some of these US ships will be finished to condition, but so far only Orion has made it to flight tests, and even then, its test launches have been postponed due to identified technical shortcomings and NASA’s financial difficulties. The most interesting thing is that in future interplanetary flights of the Orions, a significant role is assigned to Russia and its promising Federation spacecraft, with which the Orions have a single design for docking nodes and a number of other systems.
It is unlikely that Trump's third attempt to send a manned mission to the Moon will be implemented within the time allotted to him in the White House. Producing memoranda is not moving bags. The United States still has serious problems with budget money and public debt, and in principle no private shop is capable of independently carrying out the project of an interplanetary spacecraft.
It seems that Trump, who ate a pack of dogs in show business, is using every opportunity to strengthen his own image. “Give me the Moon again!” - a large inflated candy with a bright wrapper for the American man in the street. Like, know our people - America still has gunpowder in its flasks!
It only remains to add that the memorandum is just a document of intent, and not a verified program with funds allocated for its implementation, and Trump has yet to convince Congress of the need to prove something to someone again by sticking the Stars and Stripes in the lunar dust for a lot of money. The United States, with its internal problems, has where to spend billions. Flying through all positions like asteroid Obama.
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