Astronaut Jeff Ashby at DIllon Lecture

I went to the Dillon Lecture this morning that featured Astronaut Jeff Ashby.

Ashby has traveled more than 11 million miles through space. He was a fighter pilot in the Navy before joining NASA in 1995 and flew his first mission for them four years later.

He talked about where we're at today and what we can expect in the future.

One of the things I found interesting, but also somewhat troubling, was that he talked about how we've had human occupation in space for about seven years now on the international space station. He said he predicts there will "never be another time when humans are not in space." That's exciting, but also troubling. An era has passed, and we didn't even know it was happening. Space is now inhabited.

He discussed NASA's plan to go back to the moon, have habitats there, and learn from that experience, so we would be better suited to go to Mars for an extended period. He said the human return to the moon will be in about 2018. This concept is sometimes summed up as Moon, Mars and Beyond.

He said at the luncheon later that we already have the technology to live on the moon for extended periods of time. But, we have to have a system for supplying.

He showed drawings for the shuttle replacement and said they now know that the Apollo system was the most efficient so future missions will employ the idea of a capsule that is "inherently serviceable for the crew." He said we are willing to lose equipment, but not so willing to lose human life.

He discussed the idea that although a planet may not be habitable, it might provide us with things we need for continued exploration - water, oxygen and fuel - or some of the elements of those.

He talked about the idea of tourist travel into space, and used some kids from the audience to demonstrate distances and different kinds of travel.

He mentioned a number of different craft going to various planets and what we've learned. He showed photos from Jupiter and Saturn and said sometimes it's the moons that are so interesting.

The Jupiter moon, IO, has no atmosphere but has active volcanoes, with lava flows. And, what's in that lava is of great interest.

Pluto has an atmosphere in the summer, but in the winter, the atmosphere freezes and falls to the ground. Winter lasts 150 years. The Horizons Craft is on the way to Pluto now. It will take 10-15 years to get there. It launched last year and passed our moon in nine hours. When it gets to Pluto, it will only have three minutes to fly by. Pluto's gravity isn't strong enough to pull it in. But we will get information for 30 days prior and after. Pluto is of real interest to Kansans, because it was discovered by Clyde Tombaugh, a native son, in 1930.

At the luncheon he was asked quite a bit about space debris, living on the moon, and the difficulties inherent in possible exploitation. He said, "These are important issues for us to work through as a world, not just as a country."

He talked about NASA and how he viewed the investment in it much bigger than the things we sometimes think about - from velcro to miniturization to cell phones - that have grown from the technology NASA created. He said the value is in inspiring kids to learn science and math and for the US to be involved in creating what will be new societies on the moon and maybe elsewhere. NASA's job, he said, is to "push the far frontier."