America is going back to the moon. Eventually. This time to stay. Sort of. At least, that’s NASA’s plan — for now.
Through a program called Artemis, the agency will, at some point in the 2030s, allow a couple of its employees, including the first African American and first woman, to step on the rock where Buzz, Neil and 10 other Americans stood some 50 years ago. Then, after a few more such missions, the U.S. government will establish a part-time sometimes camp that may become somewhat permanently staffed by 2040 or so — unless there are more delays or budget cuts.
It doesn’t sound very inspiring, does it? It isn’t. Nor is it useful or really important as currently structured. NASA says its main goal is to learn how to send humans to Mars. Great. That is exciting and important. However, given that Elon Musk‘s SpaceX may get there (Mars) by 2040 to establish the first human community beyond Earth, the Artemis moon plan seems … irrelevant. It is.
However, China is focused primarily on the moon and is moving full-speed ahead on its lunar base. They plan to put their citizens on the moon before 2030 and stay there — permanently. China will then use its base to begin mining lunar resources as part of an industrial development program. From that first landing, their current plan is to expand and accelerate dramatically in the 2030s, leading to full-scale lunar factories by the 2040s producing materials to build massive solar power stations and other space facilities.
For those who might be skeptical of my words or of Chinese promises, or are still bought into the NASA Artemis hype, let’s compare:
Space station(s)
In 1984, NASA said we would have a space station — an outpost named Freedom, approved by President Reagan — by 1992 for $8 billion. The International Space Station (ISS) actually began its life in 1998. It was never completed, and primary construction stopped around 2011 after we and our partners spent roughly $150 billion. Originally sold as a spaceport and research facility to support our exploration and expansion into the solar system, those elements of it were dropped to save money. While it has been a great source of information and research, ISS will have nothing to do with returning humans to the moon. Rather, NASA has announced it will be thrown away, and wants to build a new space station called Gateway to fulfill a way station function (only for the moon).
China said it would build a space station by 2011. It did. Their early versions led to today’s Tiangong space station. About a fifth as large as ISS, it is up there right now with a crew that varies between three and six on board. We don’t know its cost. But I’ve been to Walmart and Harbor Freight. I bet it was cheaper than NASA’s.
Transportation
Back in the 1970s, NASA told Congress the space shuttle would fly 50 times a year and carry payloads to space for $100 a pound. At its peak, the shuttle flew only five times in one year and helped lock the cost of flying to orbit at over $10,000 a pound.
NASA (Congress) has declared that the nation needs the Space Launch System (or what I call the Senate Launch Scam) rocket to open the solar system. It cost taxpayers over $23 billion in its first 10 years, was years late, will cost over $4 billion per flight, and can only fly once every few years. It will be thrown away after each flight.
Along with the SLS is its Orion space capsule, which NASA says it needs to bring astronauts back to Earth. So far, Orion has cost about $20 billion. According to the Planetary Society, if we include the famous crawler and ground infrastructure needed to support SLS and Orion, the total is over $49.9 billion.
After reaching a flight rate of one per week with its Falcon 9 rocket and perfecting partial reusability, SpaceX has flown 10 human missions to orbit, including as a NASA astronaut taxi to ISS and private missions. Boeing, NASA’s long-time prime contractor, has yet to fly its Starliner astronaut capsule, despite being paid around $4.5 billion to develop it and twice as much per astronaut as it is paying SpaceX — even though SpaceX is not flying smaller astronauts.
Meanwhile, SpaceX is testing its huge new Starship vehicle. If it achieves its goal, Starship will cost 40 (yes, forty) times less than the SLS to deliver payloads to the moon, will be partially self-funded, and, when fully operational, will be able to refuel in space and fly to and from the moon multiple times a month. Even if SpaceX’s claims are off by a factor of 10, Starship will still be four times cheaper than SLS, fly hundreds of times more often over the decade, and it will also be able to go to Mars.
It is worth mentioning that at least five U.S. firms, including Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Rocket Lab, are focused on reusable spaceships that also promise to lower the cost of access to space dramatically. And Blue is also working on a lunar transportation system — partially funded by NASA.
So who do you believe? What do you believe? And what is the best and most important purpose of returning to the moon?
The Chinese have it right when it comes to the “Why?” After all, it’s pretty clear they got their ideas from us. I don’t mean “us,” as in just NASA. I mean U.S. citizens, including science writers, former NASA folks, or visionaries like my mentor Dr. Gerry O’Neill, who, in his 1976 classic “The High Frontier” laid out a plan for going to the moon and asteroids to build space-based energy systems that could end humanity’s dependence on carbon. To be fair to the brilliant people who have come and gone at the agency since then, there are also lots of studies and plans and concepts rotting on NASA shelves that lay out ways to do incredible things on the moon — ignored by Congresses and White Houses, but not by China.
It’s a story we are all too familiar with. American genius and creativity produce a brilliant idea or plan. We ignore it. Then China does it, and in the end, sells its product back to us. In this case, the product will be low-cost clean energy from space, “rare-earth” metals, and fusion-enabling Helium-3 mined on the moon. Oh, and they will also control the Earth-moon system the way they are trying to control the seas of the western Pacific. This is the reality of things as they stand.
Here’s the science fiction part. Imagine if the White House and Congress could agree that it was time again for America to step up as we did during the first space race. What if we decided to return to the moon before China arrives in 2030? In fact, what if the president declared that Americans will be back on the moon by 2029, the 60th anniversary of Apollo 11? And this time we were going to stay!
Better yet, our return would be focused on developing new clean energy systems and resources to help save Earth from our current climate crisis! (Sure, Republicans would first have to admit there is a crisis, but their kids would get it.) Imagine a nation united behind a single cause. Imagine the excitement that would build as the date got closer. Imagine the moment. Not an also-ran after China’s triumph, but two Americans, free people, confirming the first race wasn’t just a fluke, and showing we do have the Right Stuff.
We still have time. We also know what to do to get it right. But it would mean some serious changes in who, why, and what we are doing regarding the little gray island off our orbital shore.
It’s not too late for Congress and the White House to call for a “drop tools” moment (an engineering term for a pause) and re-evaluation of why we are going back to the moon and who is going back and for how long.
Here’s a suggested plan. Let’s call it the Artemis New Moon program. It is simple, based on practical need, strategic utility, and what Buzz and Neil’s generation called “common sense.” If implemented immediately and with vigor, it would also mean the free world can beat the Chinese — both in the short and long term, up there and down here.
1. The president sets a goal for U.S. astronauts to land on the moon by 2029, the 60th anniversary of Apollo 11. As to their gender or race, that’s a political decision. Maybe one Republican and one Democrat. Ok, perhaps that’s too much. But we can also still call the first NASA-led missions Artemis. All good. We already have the patches. Save some money.
2. The Mars prep stuff will wait and shift. The first missions aim to explore, survey, and establish the first permanent human lunar facility (as in full-time all the time) and begin experiments on harvesting and processing lunar materials. In other words, the establishment of the first human community on another world. Let’s call it Artemis Base (evolving to Artemis Town or A-Town). The astronauts and their robots will also build the first lunar landing pad. This is a priority, as lunar dust (what I call “razor blade talcum powder”) is nasty stuff, and we don’t want landing ships to be blowing it all over the place.
3. The means of transportation are a bit more complex, as the old-school SLS/Orion horse is already out of the barn. (Ok, it’s back in the barn, but at some point, it may stick its head out of the barn again, and we’ve paid so much for it that we may as well use it.)
Regarding transportation, my suggestion here is not radically different than the current short-term plan in many ways, just faster. The challenge and question is whether we utilize the legacy Orions and SLS tech or toss them out right away as write-offs. For example, NASA can still use its existing contracted SLS rockets and Orion return capsules as part of a mixed fleet. Just no more BS about keeping them alive or extending their contracts. While they might hide their waste under the rubric of “exploration,” they simply do not fit any serious economic development model for the moon or anywhere else. The old aerospace complex is welcome to compete in a future Earth-moon economy, but they’ll need to go back to the drawing board and beat Starship, Blue Origin’s New Glenn and the other NewSpace transport systems coming down the line.
So, in the near term, we can begin by using the SLS/Orions to win the sprint, with the Starships and other privately operated systems taking over for the marathon. This is a nice way for NASA and its contractors to go ahead and get their glory. Or, the SLS may be better suited to emplace large structures on the lunar surface. Meanwhile, Starships and Blue Origin moon pods carry the humans, with Orions used short-term to get them back to Earth. We will have to develop some sort of docking system and the ability to refuel in space. SpaceX is already working on the refueling part, and we did the docking and crew transfer part during the Apollo program. I believe we can do it again, and without an entirely new space station in the mix at first. We can let the experts sort this out. Note: I say experts, NOT lobbyists.
The key here is to get there fast AND to create a system that enables us to stay. Not visit, not camp out, but to stay and build. There needs to be a clear-headed trades discussion here by parties with no axes to grind nor contracts to be paid.
Whatever the mix, or if we decide to go straight to the next generation of reusable rockets, the plan must be completed by the end of this year. The New Moon plan must also incorporate a transition to a pay-for-delivery services multi-contractor model, enabling several players to get involved. Given what I’ve said about SLS and Orion, I want to be clear: I have nothing against the traditional aerospace contractors per se. They performed magnificently during the Apollo program. New Moon is their chance to reinvent themselves, too. However — and here’s the only sci-fi component in this article — Congress and the White House have to agree to it, and fast.
4. If (and only if) it is found necessary to have a space station serving as a lunar gateway, NASA will contract for its services using a variation on standard leases as currently done for other government use all over America. The same will be true of ground facilities on the moon. Currently, the U.S. has five private companies that have raised over $200 million each to build their space stations. The interest and assumed capabilities are there. However, the first part of the race cannot wait for this decision to be made. We go!
Speaking of space stations, the model some of us worked on that NASA adopted to enable private companies to carry astronauts to the ISS might be applied. For example, a company can invest in designing a habitat, working with the agency on perfecting the tech, building the hab, and leasing it to NASA employees for a set price and time. If it houses more folks, the company can rent bunks to them, and at the end of the lease, the hab belongs to the company. This is how it’s done every day here on Earth. The government has acted as an anchor tenant in hundreds of buildings nationwide. It works.
5. Also, Congress will offer the same sort of tax breaks and investment incentives it does all the time in areas of economic possibility and need to companies investing in the development of lunar resources and space-based energy systems. Again, NASA and the Department of Energy can work with companies to offset research and development costs, a normal tool the government uses to encourage technology on Earth — so why not in space?
6. NASA can then focus on exploration. After Phase One, the private sector takes over the building and expansion of what transitions from a base to an industrial park and community. Meanwhile, the agency’s people can work on researching and developing those elements and projects that might apply more specifically to Mars. They would likely find a willing partner in Musk, who is always eager to offset his own costs for projects.
7. A-Town’s biggest focus will be harvesting lunar resources, from water ice to regolith, to launch into space as bricks and mortar needed to build space solar power facilities. China is doing this. They are not doing it as a stunt. They are doing it because China, like the U.S. and the rest of the world, is facing an unprecedented climate crisis and knows it must transition away from a carbon economy — big-time and fast.
The climate crisis aspect of this program is critical. Not only can whoever is on the moon utilize its resources to build space solar power plants, but it also offers other important tools to help us save the Earth. We know there are relatively large amounts of Helium-3 on the lunar surface, which is important in developing clean fusion energy. We believe there are massive amounts of what are called “rare-Earth metals” there as well. These are critical to the development of an electric economy. Lunar materials can also be used for more extreme emergency measures, such as building shades between Earth and the sun if things get out of control. The point is, those who control the moon gain a lot of options when it comes to the future.
One example of this dual-use exploration and development approach is that, while the civil and industrial program is building steam, the agency can launch its own Mars analog missions over the horizon on the moon’s far side, supported by personnel living and working in a “mission control” center at A-Town. These support personnel’s living needs can all be provided by contractors, priming the economic pump for civilian growth.
Not one item I have mentioned in this plan is new. I published a book in 2005 called “Return to the Moon,” featuring 20 of the best lunar thinkers at the time. They, and I, and dozens of others much smarter than I, over many years since the end of Apollo, have worked out almost every detail of these ideas. As I said at the beginning, so has NASA. I have massive books on my shelves and piles of reports and studies by brilliant people at the agency showing how, if the decision were made, America could return to the moon quickly, efficiently, and in a way that assures the free nations of the world will lead humanity into the solar system.
So now, the challenge is to the White House and Congress. Feel free to send them the link to this piece and ask them: “Can you, just once in the short history of the 21st century, agree to take one giant leap that will position this nation to lead us for the next thousand years?”
The race is on. We are in a Sputnik moment — a sudden and important recognition that we are about to lose the heavens if we do not act with clarity and unity. Humanity is going back to the moon. The question is, Will America get there first, and will we stay when we do? Oh, and there’s also that climate crisis thing — where we save humanity while doing so.
More than 40 trillion gallons of rain drenched the Southeast United States in the last week from Hurricane Helene and a run-of-the-mill rainstorm that sloshed in ahead of it — an unheard of amount of water that has stunned experts.
That’s enough to fill the Dallas Cowboys’ stadium 51,000 times, or Lake Tahoe just once. If it was concentrated just on the state of North Carolina that much water would be 3.5 feet deep (more than 1 meter). It’s enough to fill more than 60 million Olympic-size swimming pools.
“That’s an astronomical amount of precipitation,” said Ed Clark, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Water Center in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. “I have not seen something in my 25 years of working at the weather service that is this geographically large of an extent and the sheer volume of water that fell from the sky.”
The flood damage from the rain is apocalyptic, meteorologists said. More than 100 people are dead, according to officials.
Private meteorologist Ryan Maue, a former NOAA chief scientist, calculated the amount of rain, using precipitation measurements made in 2.5-mile-by-2.5 mile grids as measured by satellites and ground observations. He came up with 40 trillion gallons through Sunday for the eastern United States, with 20 trillion gallons of that hitting just Georgia, Tennessee, the Carolinas and Florida from Hurricane Helene.
Clark did the calculations independently and said the 40 trillion gallon figure (151 trillion liters) is about right and, if anything, conservative. Maue said maybe 1 to 2 trillion more gallons of rain had fallen, much if it in Virginia, since his calculations.
Clark, who spends much of his work on issues of shrinking western water supplies, said to put the amount of rain in perspective, it’s more than twice the combined amount of water stored by two key Colorado River basin reservoirs: Lake Powell and Lake Mead.
Several meteorologists said this was a combination of two, maybe three storm systems. Before Helene struck, rain had fallen heavily for days because a low pressure system had “cut off” from the jet stream — which moves weather systems along west to east — and stalled over the Southeast. That funneled plenty of warm water from the Gulf of Mexico. And a storm that fell just short of named status parked along North Carolina’s Atlantic coast, dumping as much as 20 inches of rain, said North Carolina state climatologist Kathie Dello.
Then add Helene, one of the largest storms in the last couple decades and one that held plenty of rain because it was young and moved fast before it hit the Appalachians, said University of Albany hurricane expert Kristen Corbosiero.
“It was not just a perfect storm, but it was a combination of multiple storms that that led to the enormous amount of rain,” Maue said. “That collected at high elevation, we’re talking 3,000 to 6000 feet. And when you drop trillions of gallons on a mountain, that has to go down.”
The fact that these storms hit the mountains made everything worse, and not just because of runoff. The interaction between the mountains and the storm systems wrings more moisture out of the air, Clark, Maue and Corbosiero said.
North Carolina weather officials said their top measurement total was 31.33 inches in the tiny town of Busick. Mount Mitchell also got more than 2 feet of rainfall.
Before 2017’s Hurricane Harvey, “I said to our colleagues, you know, I never thought in my career that we would measure rainfall in feet,” Clark said. “And after Harvey, Florence, the more isolated events in eastern Kentucky, portions of South Dakota. We’re seeing events year in and year out where we are measuring rainfall in feet.”
Storms are getting wetter as the climate change s, said Corbosiero and Dello. A basic law of physics says the air holds nearly 4% more moisture for every degree Fahrenheit warmer (7% for every degree Celsius) and the world has warmed more than 2 degrees (1.2 degrees Celsius) since pre-industrial times.
Corbosiero said meteorologists are vigorously debating how much of Helene is due to worsening climate change and how much is random.
For Dello, the “fingerprints of climate change” were clear.
“We’ve seen tropical storm impacts in western North Carolina. But these storms are wetter and these storms are warmer. And there would have been a time when a tropical storm would have been heading toward North Carolina and would have caused some rain and some damage, but not apocalyptic destruction. ”
Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
It’s a dinosaur that roamed Alberta’s badlands more than 70 million years ago, sporting a big, bumpy, bony head the size of a baby elephant.
On Wednesday, paleontologists near Grande Prairie pulled its 272-kilogram skull from the ground.
They call it “Big Sam.”
The adult Pachyrhinosaurus is the second plant-eating dinosaur to be unearthed from a dense bonebed belonging to a herd that died together on the edge of a valley that now sits 450 kilometres northwest of Edmonton.
It didn’t die alone.
“We have hundreds of juvenile bones in the bonebed, so we know that there are many babies and some adults among all of the big adults,” Emily Bamforth, a paleontologist with the nearby Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum, said in an interview on the way to the dig site.
She described the horned Pachyrhinosaurus as “the smaller, older cousin of the triceratops.”
“This species of dinosaur is endemic to the Grand Prairie area, so it’s found here and nowhere else in the world. They are … kind of about the size of an Indian elephant and a rhino,” she added.
The head alone, she said, is about the size of a baby elephant.
The discovery was a long time coming.
The bonebed was first discovered by a high school teacher out for a walk about 50 years ago. It took the teacher a decade to get anyone from southern Alberta to come to take a look.
“At the time, sort of in the ’70s and ’80s, paleontology in northern Alberta was virtually unknown,” said Bamforth.
When paleontogists eventually got to the site, Bamforth said, they learned “it’s actually one of the densest dinosaur bonebeds in North America.”
“It contains about 100 to 300 bones per square metre,” she said.
Paleontologists have been at the site sporadically ever since, combing through bones belonging to turtles, dinosaurs and lizards. Sixteen years ago, they discovered a large skull of an approximately 30-year-old Pachyrhinosaurus, which is now at the museum.
About a year ago, they found the second adult: Big Sam.
Bamforth said both dinosaurs are believed to have been the elders in the herd.
“Their distinguishing feature is that, instead of having a horn on their nose like a triceratops, they had this big, bony bump called a boss. And they have big, bony bumps over their eyes as well,” she said.
“It makes them look a little strange. It’s the one dinosaur that if you find it, it’s the only possible thing it can be.”
The genders of the two adults are unknown.
Bamforth said the extraction was difficult because Big Sam was intertwined in a cluster of about 300 other bones.
The skull was found upside down, “as if the animal was lying on its back,” but was well preserved, she said.
She said the excavation process involved putting plaster on the skull and wooden planks around if for stability. From there, it was lifted out — very carefully — with a crane, and was to be shipped on a trolley to the museum for study.
“I have extracted skulls in the past. This is probably the biggest one I’ve ever done though,” said Bamforth.
“It’s pretty exciting.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 25, 2024.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
