Bolden: Inspiration Mars is Not Inspirational (Update)
Chairman Smith Responds to NASA Administrator Bolden about Mars Flyby Mission
“In comments before the National Academies, Administrator Bolden today misrepresented a Mars Flyby 2021 mission. The Administrator indicated that a Mars Flyby is not a worthy stepping stone to an eventual Mars landing because it doesn’t demonstrate technologies. That is factually incorrect. Experts have testified that a Mars Flyby mission would utilize the Space Launch System, architecture that will be central to a Mars landing. He further contended that the Obama administration’s proposed Asteroid Retrieval Mission (ARM) is a better stepping stone to Mars. However, the administration has not provided any details of how it fits into a larger exploration roadmap. The ARM mission lacks support from the stakeholder community and NASA’s own advisory bodies. It is a mission without a realistic budget, without a destination and without a certain launch date. I urge the Administrator to get his facts straight when comparing the value of potential NASA missions.”
Keith’s note: Looks like Mike Griffin Dennis Tito Boeing Doug Cooke Chris Shank Lamar Smith is upset that someone has an opinion that differs from the (previously all-private) bait and switch Mars Flyby mission Dennis Tito now wants everyone else to pay for. Oddly, Smith and his pro-Mars Flyby cabal have yet to explain where the money would come from for such a mission – now that taxpayers are funding it. Kudos to Charlie Bolden for being honest. But His plan is equally flawed.
Bolden: I don't consider Inspirational Mars inspirational since it doesn't demonstrate anything, doesn't help us to get people to Mars.
— Jeff Foust (@jeff_foust) April 3, 2014
Bolden: Tito's Inspiration Mars not inspirational. One time feat, doesn't help get ppl to surface of Mars. ARM will be proving ground 4 Mars
— Marcia Smith (@SpcPlcyOnline) April 3, 2014
Oh no! I agree with Bolden!
If Tito’s plan is uninspiring then Bolden’s is boring. Moon should be the goal for NASA HSF.
So, floating around a rock at EML-2 for a few days is more inspirational than sending two humans far deeper into space and for longer than any previous mission? And it won’t progress us towards Mars either? Hello, ECLSS development? Human health management? Who is briefing Administrator Bolden on this thing, a group of first year interns?
Only #SLSInspires
SLS certainly does inspire its manufacturers and the politicians from those manufacturers’ districts. I’m not sure what else is inspirational about a system that will bleed NASA funding and accomplish very little, if anything, in the process.
It depends on what it leads to. Getting people into orbit around Mars would be useful in of itself, especially if they can get into orbit and then remotely control rovers on the ground in real-time.
Inspiration Mars does not get into Mars orbit, it just swings around Mars to get on return trajectory towards Earth (and the swing by is very fast, above the night side)
I agree with Bolden in gender, number and degree. A flyby mission is just a flyby mission, nothing more. Must be boring watch one flyby mission. On television audience close to zero. And does not inspire anyone. NASA preferably should appeal to the public, and InspirationMars want something extremely monotonous. It’s like going to a birthday party and not eat cake when you do not step on Mars. Or, how to have sex with a condom. It’s safe, but it is not pleasant. Lack adventure. A mission to an asteroid is fast and is a lot more fun to watch. Not that I am in favor of a mission to an asteroid, but it is better, cheaper and more attractive than a flyby mission. The Bolden finally said something that only a man of courage says. No use having a hurry to get to Mars, since that actually gets there. Spending just there, it’s boring. Zero scientific gain. High risk and considerable cost, to fruit, anything. Congratulations Bolden!
I agree that the Inspiration Mars mission is ridiculous especially because they will transit Mars through the shadow. But the ARM (lots of) “money shot” will be an EVA astronaut floating slightly in front of a car-sized boulder to give the misleading impression of a much larger object. If the picture shows the astronaut peering out over the top, it will underscore how pointless/pathetic this destination truly is.
well, they can’t fly by Mars on the sunlit side. because PHYSICS. they’d have plenty of time to image the sunlit side of Mars on approach and before passing into the shadow and after leaving it. but taking pictures of Mars is not the point of Inspiration Mars.
well of course the point of Inspiration Mars is to take pictures of the crew taking pictures of Mars. “Hey Martha, look at the size of *that* hole!” (exclamation point added to inspire…)
This argument is the wrong one. It goes with the one that Griffin made, that we had to hurry up and go somewhere (anywhere).
Unless we come up with a goal that is achievable, sustainable, and that leads to a greater future, then we are wasting time and money.
The first lunar orbit mission, Apollo 8, was inspirational.
The first moon landing, Apollo 11, was inspirational.
Neither lasted more than a long week. Would it have been as inspirational if the mission had lasted 90 days?
Apollo 10 did everything that Apollo 8 did plus a test of the LM. Not too many people watched.People complained when they preempted Batman and Lost in Space. Been there, done that….new piece of hardware, don’t really care…
Apollos 12-17, all very exciting (for space geeks). Not much to see most of the time they were on the surface. Not too many people watched. Inspirational? Only 40 years later.
Even the first manned Mars landing will only be inspirational for the landing and the first couple hours the crew is on the surface.
There will be a few hours that the inspiration Mars mission is running. The first few hours as the crew leaves Earth, and the few hours as they cruise by Mars.
People who are looking for an inspirational mission are looking for the wrong thing. They won’t find it.
I agree. The goal is not inspiration. it is practical and sustainable human spaceflight. Despite what NASA tends to say, there is no physical reason spaceflight has to be particularly expensive. The fuel that gets you into orbit is cheaper than gasoline. The problem is the way we do it. Musk has the right idea, we have to begin with reusability.
There are many flaws in the iMars concept.
– earth ascent/decent capsule included- park it at L2
– Insufficient GCR rad shielding (needs another 20mT)
– 2021 is solar min when GCR (not SPE) is MAXIMUM!
– the capsule cannot return from an asteroid and Mars due to inadequate heat shield
– SLS consumes all the budget to develop the necessary technologies to travel to Mars.
– Wrong architecture–alternatives are cheaper. Shuttle lost in the cost trade to Titan but was built anyway and its derivative SLS looses in the cost trade vs many alternatives http://www.nss.org/resource…
If ARM featured the DSH with the technologies really required for a trip to Mars, then adding this mission to gradually extend the BEO duration may make sense. Further, if the DSH was then returned to L2 to serve as the L2 Gateway for further use, it even makes more sense. The L2 Gateway acts as a staging point to incrementally demonstrate longer duration BEO capability, service and maintain large telescopes, lunar safe haven, and a staging point for Mars/Venus cycler to substantially reduce energy required for crewed and uncrewed missions.
flaws in the flaws you think are flaws.
“parking” the Earth return vehicle means you have to slow down and stop and park your ERV, THEN blast off again to Mars, fly by Mars, then slow down and stop again to retrieve the ERV before you can return to Earth.
so any savings you got by “parking” the ERV is vastly, vastly offset by the massive amount of fuel you must now take along with you to move, slow, stop, then go to Mars, slow, stop, then move back to Earth. direct return is much more efficient.
there’s a lot of uncertainty about exactly how much of a danger GCRs are to humans and how best to shield against them. one of the things Inspriration Mars would have done is finally quantified that uncertainty, which, IMO, is the best reason for attempting to do Inspiration Mars’ flyby.
which capsule? why do you think the heat shield would be inadequate?
fair point about the SLS budget.
which alternative architectures for Inspiration Mars are you talking about?
If that’s the best reason, far cheaper to send an array of dosimeters and some tissue samples. Oops, not inspirational, never mind.
I agree with Keith, that Bolden said the right thing. Do the right thing? No. Bolden is stuck with orders from two masters – Capitol Hill and the White House. Build SLS and Orion and send astronauts to an asteroid by 2025. By 2021, SLS & Orion will be DOA if it makes it that far. Bolden’s Asteroid Initiative is trying to kill three birds with one stone: 1) satisfy Obama’s mandate, 2) give SLS/Orion a first mission, 3) do something about those pesky asteroids. In the last case, we need an asteroid initiative but not one driven by ARM and a human rendezvous mission. In the second case (Vulture4, et al.), commercial HLVs and human rated LVs will provide the impetus to go BEO. And with the first case, we should eventually fly humans to an asteroid and even retrieve one but not with SLS & Orion. Inspiration Mars was inspirational as a private venture but not as an excuse to give Smith’s and Shelby’s rocket something to do. As I commented to Jeff Foust’s article, the ARM and manned mission is a case of putting the cart before the horse and having to obey two masters, puts a rock and a hard place in the cart. Try steering that on the right path.
Well, H. L. Meinken said, you’d never go broke underestimating the American public…A.K.A. O.J. Simpson. Just take a gander at the average Jay-Walking Clip on YouTube. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do the right thing for America’s future anyway. Most people are more curious about Bieber’s life than they are about insitu propellant production on the Moon or Mars. But we’ll be doing good, if we can inspire the right 10%. The ones that in the next generation keep the ship of state moving forward to the future. It all takes an appropriate amount of consistent funding. Again somewhere north of 22 billion so that we can accomplish more than one task at a time; and in a reasonable time frame…2030’s! You gotta be kidding me.
Inspiration, across history and defined in its broadest sense, stems from deeds and goals, and rarely if ever from the technologies used to accomplish them. How many people remember anything about the ships that Magellan used to circumnavigate the world or even the giant rocket that took humans to the Moon. It is the deed that is remembered and which inspires and motivates us now and in the future. As we are all being humans, it seems that many don’t really understand human psychology.
Inspiration aside, the problem with both the Mars flyby and the asteroid capture is that they do not contribute to a sustainable presence off the Earth. Should either one succeed, the probability of a follow on, just for the sake of doing it, is low. And should they fail, then decades of road blocks will be constructed and placing people on the surface of Mars will remain 40 plus years in the future. Simply put, we need a single, inspirational, sustainable and growing space exploration initiative.
At least do something inspirational if you’re going to go to Mars or an asteroid or the moon. I’m not sure but I don’t think anyone has seen our universe in complete shadow and total darkness. During Apollo they could see 10 degrees when they looked out the window on the darkside of the moon, and during the three EVA’s (Apollo’s 15-17) they weren’t in total shadow, visor issues, and they were very busy with only 15 mins anyway.
I’m not sure what kind of view astronauts performing EVA’s have when they’re in shadow but they get a lot of light from the earth and the ISS itself.
My plan would to orbit any one of these planets or moons and send an astronaut outside the spacecraft in complete shadow and total darkness long enough to have their eyes get adjusted to the blackness of space. It could be brilliant, wondrous, awesome, or maybe terrifying. They’d be the first to see the universe as it truly is and I think very inspirational.
I think General Bolden might be suffering from ‘Not Invented Here’ syndrome!
If NASA is going to Mars (eventually) then if it can’t afford the tens of billions needed for Martian Surface Habitats, Rovers, Power Systems and most of all: an Entry/Descent/Landing/Takeoff vehicle – then go to Phobos AND Deimos!! You would get 2x asteroidal bodies for the price of one and genuine, pre-selected choice Martian regolith and rock samples if they use Sample Return Probes that just have to climb into Martian orbit where the crew can rendezvous with them. I’d suggest 1x from each Polar cap, and 4x from a couple locations from each hemisphere. Use ISS-based modules for Habitats and a mix of Solar-electric and storable propellant propulsion modules to get them there. And maybe the Dragon and it’s thick heatshield for Earth Return duties. No expensive ISRU or nuclear propulsion needed – virtually off-the-shelf or upgraded, current propulsion technology. The biggest technological pacing item will be ECLSS and crew radiation protection. But THAT stuff can be developed and tested first in L.E.O. and cislunar space.
Also; a man-tended Lunar Outpost(s) achieved by a NASA, International & Commercial Space partnership would be a sensible, valuable and probably achievable goal on the tight budgets we see these days…
Being inspirational is a good thing, but while your trying to do that, also doing the thing your sponsors and stakeholders want is advisable. Things near and dear to the support you need have to be done, accepting and managing that a tension there may exist with longer term thinking. Solve that tension, success. Fail to resolve it, and consequences follow.
Rocky, Donald and Matthew all make good points. What Bolden is most right about is the need to maintain the space station, and his
support for commercial crew. Even though it is not currently being used as effectively as it could to develop equipment for BLEO operations, it can be.
We should start, at the station, to develop a fully reusable space
transportation system, with logistics bases, that will allow us to reach all of ur space goals and put an end to the endless tug of war over goals. Make the station into a real logistics base. Lets start with a small space tug and a small propellant depot to support it. Then large modules can be placed into the space station’s orbit and retrieved without the need for a entire expendable tug package as part of that
payload.
The station could then be expanded with standard or Bigelow
habitat modules, and it will also need room for more vehicles to dock.
Adding a docking truss for non-pressurized vehicles is one answer. Testing the ability of the existing station robots (Canadarm 2 and Dextre) to assemble such a truss from parts would then allow us to duplicate a smaller logistics base at L1 or L1.
Having an L1/L2 logistics base would suddenly make access
to the Lunar Surface and Mars much easier. the L1/L2 points have no space debris risk, and departure from them takes only a small amount of fuel . A small asteroid could then be used to provide radiation shielding for the habitats at the L1/L2 base, as well as providing a practice area for turning asteroidal materials into space building materials.
For both Lunar and Mars expeditions, high mass operations would be a must, due to the need for a lot of equipment to support the base and provide for redundancy. As the reusable rocket revolution progresses, I anticipate that by 2020, we will be able to launch payloads of 300 metric tons for under $200 / lb. This will allow expeditions with masses of thousands of tons.
John