Shooting for the Moon, Once Again

Behind 18 inches of concrete in stainless steel cabinets flushed with pure nitrogen rests a material rarer than gold, more valuable than diamonds.

Not even NASA curator Gary Lofgren knows both combinations to the Johnson Space Center’s vault that contains 600 pounds of lunar rocks and soil.

Of late, Lofgren has noticed something unusual -- there’s been a run on moon dirt. Gram by precious gram, he’s been doling out samples to researchers around the world eager to study the desolate orb again.

Thirty-four years after the last Apollo astronaut walked on the lunar surface, a new space race is underway.

It will be a long race, with humans unlikely to set foot on the moon again in the next 10 to 15 years. But countries are gearing up to take their first steps.

India’s 20,000 space workers are readying a lunar orbital mission set for 2007. Japan plans to send a robotic rover to the lifeless rock by 2013, and the European Space Agency has a probe, SMART-1, orbiting the moon.

Although many countries are talking about sending people to the moon, only two, the United States and China, have set dates for manned lunar landings. NASA says its next manned mission will be as early as 2018; China says it wants to land “taikonauts” -- as Chinese astronauts are called -- as early as 2017.

“There is a lunar armada” on the way back to the moon, said James B. Garvin, head of NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter project, scheduled to lift off in 2008.

It’s an unlikely renaissance of lunar exploration after decades of sending robots to distant planets while human explorers busied themselves building a space station in low-Earth orbit.

Each country is going for its own reasons -- some commercial, some strategic, some for national pride. But if the plans come to fruition, the moon could become a busy extraterrestrial outpost for scientists, engineers and possibly ordinary citizens in the coming decades. It would also serve as a vital way station for man’s long-dreamed-of trip to Mars.

Leading the way is the only country that has set foot there before, the United States.

Two years from now, NASA will begin launching probes to search for landing sites and potential water sources at the moon’s south pole. Work is underway on new generation lunar projects, including a souped-up rover and a $38-million project to extract breathable oxygen from moon dust.

All this has gotten NASA’s workforce, which has been demoralized by the frustrations and tragedies of the ill-fated space shuttle program, fired up in ways it hasn’t been since the 1960s.

But there are plenty of doubters.

Why bother with the moon? The U.S. has been there. Six times. On each occasion, explorers have found the same barren world -- a place of “magnificent desolation,” in the words of Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin.

Visionaries such as Gregg Maryniak, director of the James S. McDonnell Planetarium in St. Louis, have little patience with those who say, “been there, done that” about the moon.

“That’s like saying you’ve seen New York when you changed planes at JFK.”

Lost Landscape

Bouncing along a patch of Texas flatland at the Johnson Space Center, NASA engineer Joe Kosmo steered his pickup truck onto a field covered with tangled tufts of grass.

Kosmo hopped out and began tramping into the weeds.

“It was right here,” he said, gesturing at a small sign that reads: “Wildflower Preserve.”

At the height of the moon race in the 1960s, the Army Corps of Engineers dug a six-acre faux lunar landscape here, complete with craters. Apollo Astronauts in spacesuits test-drove the lunar rover and clambered over large rocks to prove they could handle the harsh environs of the moon.

“A lot of people spent a lot of time here,” Kosmo said.

The country was younger and bursting with energy when President Kennedy inaugurated the race to the moon in May 1961.

“No single space project ... will be more exciting or more impressive to mankind ... and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish,” Kennedy said. A month earlier, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin had become the first person in space when he orbited Earth in his Vostok 1 spacecraft. It was the latest in a string of firsts notched by the Soviet space program, beginning with the 1957 launch of Sputnik, whose distinctive “beep, beep, beep” broadcast sent American politicians into a frenzy of chest-beating and teeth-gnashing.

Slowly, America began to catch up. It was a heady time, fired by patriotic zeal and steeled by tragedies. At least four Soviet and three American astronauts died in the moon race.

It took seven years and $150 billion in today’s dollars to get there. At 1:17 p.m. PDT on July 20, 1969, astronaut Neil Armstrong announced: “Houston, Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed.”

Several hours later, the spectral image of a man appeared on television slowly descending the ladder from the Apollo 11 lunar module.

The U.S. sent five more missions. But by the end of the Apollo program in 1972, the passion for the moon had faded. American television curtailed its coverage, more enamored of Watergate and other earthly concerns. Twelve people walked on the lunar surface.

Space workers dispersed to other programs, budgets shrank and the moon once again was just a silver orb in the night sky, inspiration to poets and songwriters rather than engineers.

The lunar landscape in Texas was bulldozed and forgotten.

Until now.

NASA is rebuilding it. Kosmo is in charge.

Ambitious Nations

A few hundred miles above the moon, the European Space Agency’s SMART-1 maintains a lonely vigil -- the only craft now in lunar orbit.

From 1959 to 1976, the United States and the Soviet Union sent 60 missions to the moon. Then came a long hiatus.

Missions resumed in 1990, first with the Japanese Hiten probe to test space technologies. It was followed by NASA’s Clementine in 1994 and Lunar Prospector in 1998, which mapped the rocky surface.

SMART-1, the European Space Agency’s first lunar mission, arrived in 2004 to test a new solar-powered ion drive and collect scientific data.

It will soon have plenty of company.

The Japanese are readying Lunar-A and SELENE for launch on missions to survey the moon’s geology and topography. Then comes India’s $100-million Chandrayaan-1 mission in September 2007. The 1,150-pound craft shaped like a 5-foot cube will orbit the moon’s polar regions for two years and make a chemical map of the surface.

China is preparing to launch its Chang’e 1 probe at about the same time to study the lunar environment from orbit. By 2012, China would start work on a spacecraft capable of bringing material back from the moon. A landing by taikonauts would occur after 2017.

China, India and Japan have ambitious strategic goals to develop advanced technologies for military and commercial uses.

The countries are pouring money and people into the task. India’s space budget, for example, is $600 million a year, employing 20,000 people -- about as many as NASA.

Suffusing the enterprises is a sense that reaching the moon -- ultimately with human explorers -- will become a dividing line of this century, separating great powers from lesser ones.

“If you can send humans into space, you can play with the big boys,” said NASA lunar expert Wendell Mendell.

The military and commercial potential of the moon has sparked tensions reminiscent of the Cold War -- with space-faring nations eyeing one another’s advancing rocket technologies.

“There’s a lot of politics among countries in East Asia that we saw in the West before,” said Jerry Sanders, a NASA lunar program manager.

But there is also a sense of brotherhood among the moon researchers who sense their long-held dreams could soon become reality.

“Welcome to Toronto, the capital of the moon this week,” said the European Space Agency’s chief scientist, Bernard H. Foing of Noordwijkt, the Netherlands. About 200 scientists and visionaries from across the globe participated last summer in the largest gathering of moon experts in the world.

The spirit of community was rooted in a simple fact: No country, including the United States, can afford to go it alone -- financially or technologically. During Apollo, Congress allocated 5% of the nation’s annual budget to the moon race. Today, NASA and all its programs is 0.7% of the budget.

The 30-person Chinese delegation caused the biggest stir in Toronto, because so little was known about its military-run space program.

Trying to break the ice, Louis Friedman, executive director of the Planetary Society in Pasadena, slapped a Toronto Blue Jays cap on the head of Hao Xifan, head of the Chinese group.

Friedman feared he’d offended the dour Chinese scientist, but the response was pure detente.

Hao turned the cap backward and wore it street-style throughout dinner with a smile.

Hard Work Ahead

For legions of dreamers hoping for humanity’s return to the moon, the vision of bustling space communities, giant orbiting power plants and commuter flights to space seem so tantalizingly close.

The gulf between possibility and reality, however, remains vast. One of those striving to close that gap is Larry Clark, who’s building a robotic laboratory in the foothills of the Rockies outside Denver to make oxygen out of moon soil.

The goal is to be able to make 9 pounds of liquid oxygen a day. “That’s enough to keep four people alive,” said Clark, a Lockheed Martin Corp. engineer.

The chemistry is relatively straightforward, relying on the extensive supplies of ilmenite on the moon. Because ilmenite is rich in titanium oxide, the trick is to strip the oxygen from the titanium.

Four methods are being tested, Clark said. The challenge is that all of them require heat, a lot of it. Clark estimates that by stripping the top few inches of soil from an area the size of a basketball court, moon explorers could make enough oxygen to supply a small enclosed lunar base for about half a year.

Solving the problem would be easier if scientists could find water on the moon. NASA’s Clementine mission found promising clues in the form of hydrogen deposits in craters at the south pole.

Some scientists think ice could be hiding in these craters, which never see the light of the sun.

The possibility of finding water on the moon is why Ben Bussey of Johns Hopkins University calls the poles of the moon “the most valuable pieces of real estate in the solar system.”

The cornerstone of the moon effort is a new spaceship, the Crew Exploration Vehicle, which would carry twice as many astronauts to the surface as the Apollo landers did. Instead of staying on the surface for a day or two at most, the four astronauts would be able to linger for a week.

NASA’s projected lunar budget of $104 billion is enough to send a crew to the moon and back -- a feat the space agency figures will take place as early as 2018.

Some researchers even have a name for the first lunar city: Jamestown, in honor of the first English settlement in the New World.

The enormous commitment to reach the moon has prompted some critics to ask whether the 13-year mission could become another NASA boondoggle.

Friedman, of the Planetary Society, said: “What’s the purpose? It could be we would get as bogged down on the moon as we are on the space station.”

NASA’s recent history has been dominated by huge projects such as the space shuttle and the International Space Station. Though they never left Earth’s orbit, they have cost about $135 billion in current dollars and 14 lives.

The real goal, Friedman said, is Mars.

“It is the only planet we know of that has a chance to support human life,” he said. “On Mars, it’s possible to determine if humans can make it off this planet.”

For NASA, it’s not an either-or situation. The space agency’s lunar plan envisions the moon as a steppingstone to Mars -- and possibly other planets.

The moon’s low gravity, one-sixth of Earth’s, means launches would require far less fuel for liftoff. And if enough ice is found, a moon base could produce its own rocket propellant.

“The moon will become a near and dear friend to space explorers,” said Mark Borkowski, head of NASA’s Robotic Lunar Exploration Program.

Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin -- one of the 12 humans to have walked on the moon -- agrees.

But he knows it won’t be easy.

“When I think of what’s left of Tranquillity Base,” Aldrin said of the lunar landing site, “I think of what the old guys said: ‘When they go back to the moon, they’ll find out just how hard it is.’ ”

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A lunar odyssey

NASA’s plan to return to the moon involves using two spacecraft-one to transport four astronauts and the other to transport a lunar lander. The system would employ reusable spacecraft and allow lighter launch payloads.

Exploration timeline

Jan. 2, 1959: First flyby of the moon by the Soviet Luna 1 probe.

March 3, 1959: First U.S. flyby of the moon by Pioneer 4.

Sept. 12, 1959: The Soviet Luna 2 becomes the first spacecraft to impact the moon.

1966: The Soviet Luna 9 makes the first soft landing on the moon.

1968: First manned orbital mission to the moon (Apollo 8).

1969: First manned landing on the moon (Apollo 11).

1972: Last manned mission to the moon (Apollo 17).

1976: The unmanned Luna 24 becomes the last Soviet mission to the moon.

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Lunar facts

Average distance form Earth: 238,855 miles

Equatorial radius: 1,080 miles

Surface gravity: one-sixth of Earth’s

Length of year: 27.3 Earth days

Minimum temperature: minus 387 degrees Fahrenheit

Maximum temperature: 253 degrees

Sources: NASA, Associated Press