The Seventh Landing: Going Back to the Moon, This Time to Stay

  • Michael Carroll
Springer: 2009. 115 pp. £19.99, $29.95 9780387938806 | ISBN: 978-0-3879-3880-6

In The Seventh Landing, Michael Carroll adeptly lays out NASA's strategy for returning to the Moon, establishing a permanent outpost there, and, if all goes well, pushing on to Mars. It is a complex and ambitious undertaking, requiring a new fleet of launch vehicles, an updated crew module, a more versatile lunar lander, sophisticated all-terrain vehicles, souped-up spacesuits, lunar habitats and enough acronyms to make your head explode. Fortunately, using straightforward reportage, coupled with his own stunning space art, Carroll brings compelling order to what could have been a chaotic romp.

Carroll's vision of a shuttle craft coming in to land at a Mars settlement. Credit: ©MICHAEL CARROLL

NASA's goal is to get moon boots on lunar soil by the year 2020. But to do so, milestones must be passed on schedule. The maiden flight of the booster rocket, Ares I, which will loft the crew module, Orion, into orbit, is scheduled for early 2013. Orion, which will accommodate a crew of up to six, may fly its first manned mission to the International Space Station by 2015. The more powerful Ares V booster will carry the lunar lander, named Altair, into Earth orbit. After docking with the crew module, the booster's upper stage will haul both Orion and Altair to the Moon. Ares V's maiden flight is scheduled for 2018. Deadlines, hardware and mission details are in flux but, Carroll recognizes, “the overarching goals, strategies and inspiration for the seventh landing will not change”.

Those sentiments, however, may not go unsullied. Even now, under a directive by US President Barack Obama, a committee of ten aerospace executives, astronauts, engineers, scientists and a retired general are taking a down-to-earth look at the United States' space exploration strategies (Nature 459, 1038–1039; 2009). Particularly sobering are the budget constraints on completing both the Orion module and the Ares V booster. Reservations from scientists about the value of a return to the Moon have also reached the committee's ears. Their report, which chairman Norman Augustine asserts will be unblinking in its findings, will be released in August.

After looking back at early robotic lunar missions such as the Luna and Ranger series and then the Apollo programme, Carroll shifts the focus from our lunar history to our potential lunar future and the justification for that future. Whereas the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programmes were politically motivated, the reasons to return are more practical. Jim Garvin, chief scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, gives the most succinct reason: “Going to the Moon enables us to build a platform for technology that is transformational to our society, and that's not just Teflon.”

As Carroll's interviews with experts show, those of us who remain on Earth will probably reap the benefits from innovations that emerge from the new Moon programme. These include advances in communications, materials science, computer technology, robotics, medical procedures and even building materials.

There are also purely scientific reasons for returning to the Moon. It is, as Carroll writes, “the Rosetta stone of the terrestrial planets”, and there is still much to be learned about its geology and origins. If ice is locked up in the permanently shadowed regolith at the north or south poles, as many scientists think, it probably got there via countless impacting comets. Such material would be pristine, deposited when the Solar System was in its infancy. A study of these volatiles would prove invaluable to understanding the origins of the Solar System.

Inherent in the strategy is the long-range vision of sending humans to work and live on Mars. If we can learn to abide in a lunar environment, we should be able to deal with the harsh conditions on the Red Planet. As Carroll describes, however, many in the aerospace industry ask: why waste time and money on the Moon when those resources could be better used for a mission to Mars? This debate will not be settled for some time.

What is not up for debate is the difficulty of establishing a long-term base on Mars. Just getting humans there will be a challenge. Travel times will be up to eight months, and by the time a crew lands the launch window to return home will practically be gone. Even if a crew stays for only a few weeks, they would have to wait another year and a half for the planets to reach a favourable alignment for the journey back.

Planetary scientist Chris McKay of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, thinks our approach should resemble the efforts made to live and work in Antarctica. “We've been [in Antarctica] for 50 years and built a station that's designed to last at least another 30. That's the kind of mentality I would like infused into the Moon programme ... and Mars base.”

Carroll writes passionately that missions to the Moon and Mars are like instinctual siren calls to humans. “It is something larger than ourselves, something for the generations to come.” To deny these instincts, he argues, is to deny our history and to deny our humanity.

Having won the race to the Moon with Apollo 11 in 1969, US public interest in pushing on to Mars quickly waned. The Seventh Landing demonstrates that it has never died, however. Carroll's enthusiasm is infectious and will inspire readers who look back on the the Apollo landings as a time when mankind really did make giant leaps towards a promising future. Maybe we will finish what we started 40 years ago and set a course for Mars, either directly, or by way of the Moon. After all, that was the idea in the first place.