This is not a NASA Website. You might learn something. It's YOUR space agency. Get involved. Take it back. Make it work - for YOU.
Budget

Where's the Money? Republicans Want a moon AND Mars Base

By Marc Boucher
NASA Watch
June 18, 2013
Filed under , ,

Mars base added to moon plan Politico
“Republicans in Congress are pushing for major cuts across the federal budget, but so far, they’re not willing to sacrifice a plan to build a moon colony.”
In fact, Republicans on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee are eyeing an even more ambitious goal: building a base on Mars, too.
“… The [NASA] Administrator shall establish a program to develop a sustained human presence on the Moon and the surface of Mars,” states a recent discussion draft obtained by POLITICO.”

Marc’s note: Wow, what can I say, go for it! Oh hold on, there’s no budget for this “go-as-we-can-afford-to-pay” plan. The rhetoric out of Congress is at an all time high and who can take anything they say seriously anymore. I suppose the only way to make them accountable, is to vote them out.

SpaceRef co-founder, entrepreneur, writer, podcaster, nature lover and deep thinker.

36 responses to “Where's the Money? Republicans Want a moon AND Mars Base”

  1. Anonymous says:
    0
    0

    Would rather see my tax dollars at work in Space than say the Middle East once more.

    • Anonymous says:
      0
      0

      Clearly, most here “would rather see” their “tax dollars at work in Space”. But remember they were knowingly appropriated and voted for “the Middle East” by American politicians. In fact, more was spent by two U.S. administrations in occupying Afghanistan and Iraq, between 2001 and the present, than NASA’s cumulative budget over the last 55 years. That speaks volumes!

  2. Mark Friedenbach says:
    0
    0

    Marc, congress floats the idea of establishing a permanent human presence on the Moon and Mars, and you call for their removal from office? Who’s side are you on, exactly?

    • Marc Boucher says:
      0
      0

      I did say go for it. But the problem is that it’s just words, they won’t back it up for money which makes it worse.

      • Mark Friedenbach says:
        0
        0

        And I’m being flippant when I ask who’s side your on. But wouldn’t it be better to point out what it would mean to implement such a directives, e.g. what parts of NASA might have to be gutted or refocused, or which aspects of the plan might have to be pushed to the private sector. That’s more productive journalism, IMHO.

        • Steve Whitfield says:
          0
          0

          I think it’s a question of magnitude. We’re not talking about simply gutting or handing off some aspects of NASA’s work; it’s more like using your rent money to go on a vaction and therefore losing your place to live. It’s just too expensive to even consider right now.

          • Mark Friedenbach says:
            0
            0

            Jeff Greason’s planet hopping strategy could take us to the surface of the Moon then Mars, within the budget that we are currently spending on SLS, Orion, commercial crew, and ISS operations. Only if we assume the Apollo/Constellation model do things get crazily out of hand.

  3. TheBrett says:
    0
    0

    Still waiting for them to allocate more money for propellant depot experiments . . .

    • muomega0 says:
      0
      0

      no research required…all the technology is in place…just needs to raise the Technology Readiness Level with development dollars. There is of course concepts to improve the depot that require ‘experiments’ at a much smaller dollar level.

      A LEO depot with zero boiloff LH2 simply has to be built and placed into service to cut the NASA costs by up to 2.5B/year thereby enabling more missions and technology development.

      Depots reduce the launch vehicle size required dramatically and hence that is their ‘problem’: no HLV required.

      • Steve Whitfield says:
        0
        0

        Last I heard, “zero boiloff LH2” twchnology did not yet exist.

        • muomega0 says:
          0
          0

          Well, lets break it down.

          Think in terms of refrigerators: the “surroundings” are maintained to the desired temperature–the things inside are not directly cooled.

          Flight ready 90K cryocoolers exist that would maintain a shield around the LOX tank, so the LOX is held to ZBO. For a 100,000 kg LEO depot, that would take about ~10 kW of power. The depot requires a conical shaped MLI shield, ~ 4 layers, to achieve this ~10 kW power, otherwise, depending on the flight orientation, the kWe would be substantially higher.

          For LH2, it would take about ~2 kWe more power to maintain the LH2 shield at 20K to achieve ZBO. Note that the 20K shield is placed inside the 90K shield as its more efficient to capture most of the heat at a higher temperature first. A higher capacity cryocooler at 20K needs to be developed and demonstrated, but no research is required. R&D is still possible to improve performance.

          For GCR mitigation with active shielding, NASA would likely require a similar sized cryocooler, so the development has a rather important 2nd benefit to allow the crew to explore for substantially longer times with less mass and hence cost BLEO.

          Spinning the tanks would separate liquid and gas to enable transfer and handling and has already been demonstrated. Recall that ullage motors accomplished this separation during Apollo. Many other methods could be considered.

          Notice the word ‘experiment’. It is used repeatedly in attempts to state that depots are not ready for prime time because of their major ‘problem’: No HLV required. 😉

          Yes, the depot or gas station is space is the magical way to reduce the costs to LEO: it allows smaller launch vehicles to fly more often.

          Still not happy with LH2 ZBO? Simply start with a passive system, but at least the mass is placed on the depot, and not on the transfer stage absolutely killing payload mass fraction or disposing of expensive long life equipment before each transfer. One just has to use it in less than a few months or lose it–not really flexible and increases chance of LOM or adds costs.

          • Steve Whitfield says:
            0
            0

            muomega0,

            Your proposal and numbers appear to have come from, or are consistent with, Transporting Hydrogen to the Moon or Mars and Storing It There by Donald Rapp. I have no argument with your logic or your numbers, but I would like to quote the concluding sentence of the Overview from the above document:

            however the ZBO system is immature, and it introduces considerable complexity and risk not involved in a passive storage system.

            Based on that sentence, and the accepted fact that passive systems are nowhere near good enough, I’m going to have to stick with my statement that ZBO tech does not yet exist. The sooner a ZBO system is proven the happier we’ll all be.

            Not to sound negative, but let’s not forget that temperature is not the only issue. The fact that hydrogen atoms are smaller than those of any other material means that pressure-based-only leakage, as oppose to thermal, is going to be a problem for longer-term missions, not just for storage but also within all of the LV and/or spacecraft components that either use or transfer LH2. Even techniques such as all-welded joints instead of connectors do not eliminate this problem. So, more research and a great deal of long-term testing are still to be done to address and solve that problem.

            This is one of the R&D areas that has long annoyed me because (almost) everybody agrees that it must be solved, and everybody agrees that the amount of work and funding dedicated to this issue have both all along been far below what is obviously necessary, and yet for decades the problem has been almost ignored. It’s because we have situations like this while many people are saying, Just Do It, let’s go to Mars, that I too often through up my hands and shake my head.

            I’d like to see LH2 storage and usage losses be a solved issue, but we are clearly not there yet, or even close enough. Let’s not forget that, throughout the entire space age, any LV or spacecraft that used cryo propellants was a throw-away machine, designed to be used typically for a few minutes (LVs) or a few days at most (low-pressure fuel cells). Whatever we learn from LH2 storage research can also perhaps be used to make the storage of other mission gases (such as N2 and O2) more efficient and reliable.

            I absolutely believe we can solve this with hybrid systems, but the design details and the repeatable manufacturing processes for them are both a long way yet from TRL 9. That’s my view, anyhow.

            Steve

          • muomega0 says:
            0
            0

            Leak rates are a very minor impact to costs.

            Capturing heat at a higher temperature to reduce mass and power before the lower temperature is nothing new. Many authors adapt the concept to many applications, and its demonstrated in space–how does one achieve a 4K experiment otherwise?

            Trying to stick zero boiloff on a transfer stage is the wrong approach–place the long life expensive equipment on the depot.

            The technology is ready to go for the baseline concep–just needs dollars to raise its TRL. Further R&D of devices would improve the baseline concept, but please do not intertwine the two. folks confuse research versus development all the time. BTW: everything in the baseline concept has been demonstrated in space, and is scalable to the capacity required.

            Ullage loss during ignition are quite a bit different than a slow roll of a depot. Perhaps this is where you are confused.

            i am starting to get the impression you support large IMLEO costs with these poorer ISP hybrids. Not really serious about saving tax dollars.

          • Steve Whitfield says:
            0
            0

            My concern is independent of IMLEO or any other infrastructure concepts, and I am not thinking about ullage or anything else. I’m simply saying that the current literature — at least that which I have been able to see — still claims that LH2 storage in space is not a solved or nearly solved problem. The loss rates are simply too high unless you’re looking to use the LH2 within a matter of hours after it has been put into space and overfill your storage volume to allow for the leakage during those hours. LOX leakage is not nearly as bad, but it is still too high.

            I think we need to point out that there are two different concepts involved.

            First is sending propellants into space just ahead of when they’re to be used, so as to improve your propellant mass fraction. This means a few hours at most until your main launch comes along and takes on those propellants. I don’t consider this scheme to be a “depot,” since no additional infrastructure is needed — just leave it in the tanks it was launched in until it’s unloaded — and the fuel carrying hardware is used only once.

            The second concept is the gas station model, where fuel and oxidizer are stored in a facility in space for longer periods, and may not be used for weeks or months after being put there. This is the true “depot” model because the contents are not for a one-time single operation, and it may not even be known what mission(s) will make use of the depot at the time that it’s loaded up. Emergency situations and “space tug” operations would make use of this setup.

            I wonder if we’re not seeing eye to eye here because you’re talking about the first (just ahead) concept while I’m talking about the second (gas station) concept.

            As a personal opinion, I dislike the just ahead method because it will litter inner solar system space with more and more junk over time, when we should be working to reverse that situation. Like almost everything space nowadays, we should be thinking in terms of reusability and materials recycling in every aspect. I keep imagining our first manned Mars mission avoiding NEOs with ease and then getting crunched by man-made space debris before reaching TMI.

        • Paul451 says:
          0
          0

          Then skip it for now and develop monoprop hydrazine depots. Or better yet, COTS it. It’s an easier problem that is nonetheless technologically and economically useful.

          (Then biprop hydrazine/N2O4. Then LOx cryo. Then, when the bugs are worked out, LH cryo. Stepping stones.)

          • muomega0 says:
            0
            0

            You would dramatically increase life cycle costs not using LH2/LOX.

            Select LH2/LOX as the baseline transfer stage.

            If one switches to methane, the payload mass fraction is reduced to 60 to 80% of LH2, and to 40 to 60% for hydrazine for a range of deltaVs (destinations), driven mainly by ISP.

            IOW, if one needs 100,000 kg of prop for the LH2 transfer stage, then one needs ~125,000 kg of methane/lox and 150,000kg for hydrazine

            At $5,000/kg, then one needs 125M more to launch a methane based system to LEO or 150M for hypergols.

            IOW, there is tremendous payoff with the no show stopper LH2/LOX zero boiloff depot in LEO.

          • Paul451 says:
            0
            0

            You would dramatically increase life cycle costs not using LH2/LOX.

            That’s the myth that leads to the Shuttle, NASP, ISS, SLS, JWST. “Building the end goal first is cheaper than going through intermediate stages to develop the skills.” I strongly disagree with it and blame it for so many problems at NASA over the last few decades. There’s a huge gap between “No showstoppers” and “Knowing how to do this affordably”. If you are doing something brand new, you need to learn your craft.

            Satellites and other control systems use hydrazine. Refuelling them increases their lifespan. That’s an immediately useful market, for the simplest combination of experimental depot technologies. So starting with hydrazine simplifies the problem, and provides an economic justification for continuing the research (“Hey, it worked the first time.”) And the developers will know so much more when adding the next step (bi-prop), and then the next (easy cryo), and the ultimate system (LH/LOx).

            (I doubt the comsat manufacturers would support it, they don’t want customers who can just refuel instead of buying new, but the DoD is a big enough customer to be able to mandate refuellability.)

          • muomega0 says:
            0
            0

            GEO and BLEO are too very different missions.

            In relative terms, the payload mass fraction of a methane or hypergol fuel relative to LH2 ranges from 0.6 to 0.8 and 0.4 to 0.6 depending on the deltaV required.

            What this means is that if one required 100,000 kg of propellant for a LH2 system, then one would need ~125,000 kg for a methane system or ~150,000 kg for hypegols, driven mainly by ISP alone.

            At $10,000kg to IMLEO, one is talking about launch cost increases of250M to 0.5B for ONE mission to the moon. For Mars chemical flyby, multipy by 4, so just launch costs increased from 1B to 2B.

            For a GEO satellite of 10,000 kg, the delta cost is much less because of the smaller deltaV and the smaller payload.

            But one can clearly see if you were a LV provider how having lower ISP upper stages is a good business model 😉

          • Paul451 says:
            0
            0

            You’re still missing the point. You can’t get your mind to move from the end goal (bi-prop cryo) to asking the most efficient way to get there.

            I’m not saying that Hydrazine mono-prop is the choice for BEO missions. I’m saying that the cost of incrementally developing a technology one novel feature at a time is (counter-intuitively) cheaper and faster than trying to get to the end goal directly in one step. (And, in this case, many of the potential steps are useful in their own right, so it lends itself to semi-commercial development, such as COTS.)

            I’m saying that “no obvious show-stoppers” does not mean that we are ready to develop a system directly.

          • Steve Whitfield says:
            0
            0

            Paul,

            I agree with you on both counts. Doing it on a COTS basis will likely give it to us sooner, on a more predictable schedule, at a lower cost, and will have potential as a step forward in the well-recognized goal of having commercial space endeavors pay for themselves, or at least earn some revenues if not profits (every little step helps).

            Also, going with hydrazine depots instead of LH2/LOX or other cryo tends to favor the medium- and heavy-lift LVs and pull us back from the big mistake (as I see it) of super-heavy-lift LVs. I’m not just talking about SLS, but all super-heavy-lift LV ideas. I figure: 1) let’s get the more practical, not so big LVs perfected; and 2) let’s get back to embracing the obvious and long-accepted logic of minimizing the price-per-kg to orbit instead of trying to use up wrong parts from one program on another wrong program.

            I firmly believe that the idea that we NEED a super-heavy-LV (say anything in excess of 80 mT to orbit) is as fallacy and has been all along. Wernher von Braun argued against them and it was only after their introduction into program proposals that the estimated costs for proposed missions went ridiculously out of control (although it is admittedly not the only factor).

            The other overlooked aspect of super-heavy-lift LVs is that, in the long run, space voyages within the solar system are going to become two-way, which means that, ideally, whatever you set up at one end of a mission path you’re going to want to duplicate at the other end(s). Consider the infrastructure and body count (and all of their support and living facilities) required to process and launch a super-heavy-lift LV from Earth. Now image trying to duplicate it all on Mars, or Ganymede, or Titan. The task would be somewhere between ludicrous and impossible unless you already had a large, thriving colony on site, which current theories say you need the super-heavy to build in the first place. So, it’s the age-old closed circle with no entry point.

            I think you’re definitely on the right track, Paul.

            Steve

  4. Sherye Johnson says:
    0
    0

    They can call for a trip to Jupiter and the public and NASA employees and contractors will eat it up. But they will never allocate money for it. That is not their point. I agree with Mark. They are just going against the Administration. Nothing else.

    • Bernardo de la Paz says:
      0
      0

      Constellation had its flaws and needed a serious course correction, but It is the current administration that has been thrashing about in every direction possible looking for a space policy, any policy, as long as it is anything but what the previous administration was trying to do. At least congress is trying to hold to a consistent long range plan even if the money is available to only execute that plan one step at a time.

      The moon is next. (Well, at this point, getting back to LEO is actually next.) The asteroids and Mars will come later. Trying to force it out of order only sets the stage for failure.

      • dogstar29 says:
        0
        0

        I agree. First practical and affordable flight to LEO, building a market. Then practical and affordable flight to the moon. Constellation/SLS/Orion is unbelievably expensive. With four people per capsule and one launch every two years, that’s a grand total of two seats into space per year, yet it is soaking up everything we spent on Shuttle. Absent an impossible increase in the NASA budget, it will trap us in a future in which there will never be more than a half-dozen Americans in space.

  5. LPHartswick says:
    0
    0

    If they want to dream big I invite them to do so. I suggest they put their money where their mouth is. I have a few modest suggestions: restart research on NERVA; expand the size and scope of the Deep Space Network; increase the funding for the SLS’s unhurried development; ditto Orion; increase life sciences funding for cosmic radiation and microgravity mitigation; and might I humbly suggest that we send more than one robotic probe to Mars every six years if we really want to understand the character of the planet that we proposed putting human beings on! An appropriate funding level for expanding the United States capacity in inter-solar space should probably be on the order of 1% of the federal budget. That should do nicely. Now, we can wish in one hand, and “you know what” in the other, and see which gets full first. I’m not holding my breath waiting on politicians in either party to do the smart thing for the future of the country.

    • Bernardo de la Paz says:
      0
      0

      “…restart research on NERVA…”

      Too right!

      If we are serious about doing anything beyond the moon other than sending a few remote controlled cameras and rock drills on one way trips, a nuclear rocket engine (or something better) is absolutely essential. In particular, any plan to send humans beyond the moon with anything less than NERVA like capability is so stupid as to be unworthy of serious discussion. While getting back to LEO and then back to the moon will occupy the bulk of our resources for the immediate future, you couldn’t be more correct that this is THE essential next step to exploration beyond the moon.

      Since NERVA successfully developed a flight-like nuclear rocket engine and since all the technologies with equal or better potential are much less mature, I agree – restarting NERVA is the right thing to do.

      While the current administration rightfully deserves full blame for the current chaos in policy and the previous administration for the failure of Constellation, blame for the failure to have a clear path to NERVA like capability when needed goes all the way back to the Nixon team.

  6. Andrew_M_Swallow says:
    0
    0

    This could be used as an excuse to fund Desert RATS. The base may have to consist of modules weighting no more than 5 tonnes.

    When they have had some success the Morpheus team may talk about their plans for a larger daughter lander.

  7. Paul Spudis says:
    0
    0

    The POLITICO story is just another example of their typical sloppy journalism. There’s nothing in the new authorization that speaks about a “Mars base” — or a Moon base, for that matter. It simply re-asserts the same long-range goals (Moon surface and then Mars) that have guided the American space program since the 2004 Vision for Space Exploration. Here is a one-page summary of the content:

    http://www.spacepolicyonlin

    The idea that it is irresponsible to adopt a long-range space goal and not simultaneously provide a new avalanche of money at the same time is facile. NASA gets between $16-17 billion dollars per year. The question before us is how that money should be spent. Some of us contend that working toward a clearly articulated strategic horizon — one that can be bitten off in small bites, provides abundant intermediate milestones, and leaves us a legacy of long-term space faring capability — is a better strategy than dissipating the money on silly PR stunt missions that make a big splash (and wrong) headlines and leave nothing behind but recriminations.

    Logsdon’s quote about this costing “$200-500 billion” is the usual trope that journalists will trot out whenever the idea of lunar return is brought up. There is no traceable pedigree for that number and frankly, I do not believe it. How much a lunar outpost costs depends on how you approach the problem of building one. There have been several architectures published in the last five years that show how we can return to the Moon in small, affordable steps.

    Where’s the money? Most of it is being thrown down the drain on thousands of stupid government projects. This is a chance to perhaps spend some of it on something worthwhile.

    • Steve Whitfield says:
      0
      0

      The situation would be a lot easier to discuss, and more meaningful, if just one architecture and one set of facilities for a base could be agreed on. Right now, it’s a completely open question — buried huts or surface infaltables? Self-sustaining or monthly supply missions from Earth? A single base complex or a main base with outlying stations (manned or unmanned)? How many people? How many rovers of what capability? etc…

      It’s a tough job to argue for or against an unknown.

    • barc0de says:
      0
      0

      Actually, most of the money goes to very few government projects: Social Security, Medicare/aid, and Defense, each of which consumes roughly 20% of the budget (and over 30x NASA’s entire budget apiece). Cuts to those are political non-starters, of course, and hence our predicament. [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wik… ]

      • dogstar29 says:
        0
        0

        People’s lives really do depend on Medicare and Medicaid, and both have much lower overhead than private insurance. DOD has some projects that are a complete waste of money but try to get agreement on which should be cancelled; every project has support from the local congressmen. As for all government investments, the public has to be convinced that spaceflight is worth paying additional tax dollars. In an era when every taxpayer demands tax cuts, this is not easy.

    • dogstar29 says:
      0
      0

      Unfortunately those stupid projects all have their supporters, and if they are cancelled there are numerous Americans who want further tax cuts. We must persuade the public that human space exploration is worth paying the additional tax dollars it will cost.

      • Tharsis330 says:
        0
        0

        Sorry but why is human space exploration worth paying “additional” tax dolars for?

  8. mfwright says:
    0
    0

    I remember in 2004 of John Pike’s comment about VSE which he wrote it is an elegant way to shutdown HSF program and replace it with artwork. It seems so far this is what has happened.

    • Bernardo de la Paz says:
      0
      0

      That is a non-sensical thing to say about the VSE itself and shows a fundamental lack of vision in that regard. But I do agree that it is a completely accurate assessment of Constellation and especially the ESAS architecture as an inherently doomed attempt to implement the VSE.

  9. Steve Pemberton says:
    0
    0

    Even in the unlikely event that hundreds of billions of dollars were moved from who knows where to fund a base on the Moon or Mars, what’s to stop it from being underutilized like happened with ISS? Everyone just knew that we needed a permanent space station, but they waited until it was built to really start thinking about what to do with it. By that time we were already planning to drop the whole thing in the pond in 2016. It’s been extended now at least a few more years, but whether ISS will ever reach even a fraction of its full potential is a complete unknown at this point. The same thing can easily happen with a Moon base or Mars base if all that is decided is that we need one, with the usual justifications of “And when we have it we can do this, and we can do that” like they did with ISS, with no actual solid plans (or funding) for utilization.

  10. Anthony Chaney says:
    0
    0

    Lot of funds pulled from NASA because it’s costly and takes months to prep when sending space shuttles. Why do that when are military has classified craft that already goes into space and other planets in an unacknowledged way.