Lets Just Argue About Space Instead of Exploring It
Keith’s note: There has been a flurry of comments via Twitter and press releases over the past 24 hours about going to Mars – and what things we can do now to help us to get there. It all started with NASA Administrator Bolden telling an advisory group yesterday that “Inspiration Mars is not Inspirational”. He was referring the the latest incarnation of the ever-changing mission idea first proposed by Dennis Tito. This is part of a larger discussion regarding the SLS (Space Launch System), destinations in space, the value of commercial space – all of which was turbocharged by NASA’s stealthy direction to its staff to cut off all ties with Russia except those involving the International Space Station.
Bolden, the White House, and some Democrats want to do the ARM (Asteroid Retrieval Mission) as a first test of the Orion/SLS system. Republicans and members of Congress from states where SLS/Orion hardware is made want a more robust Mars flyby mission using additional SLS hardware. All of this is fueled behind the scenes by partisan politics and the puppetry by former NASA employees scorned by the cancellation of the Constellation program.
And no one in this food fight can point to a clear, cohesive space policy proposal – one with budgets, milestones, and overall goals. Indeed everyone’s notional policy is deeply flawed and wholly out of synch with the realities of using the same old approaches to conduct a program of human exploration mandated by the government. But when has that stopped anyone from having a good argument about what the current Administration’s policy is – or is not? Indeed that is what this is all about. No one wants to really explore space any more. They just want to argue about it.
The argument currently finds itself focused on asteroids Vs Mars. So lets start there.
ARM is not without its fiscal problems and fundamental flaws. If the whole idea of ARM is to give Orion/SLS system a test in deep space then they should actually send a crew *to* an asteroid IN DEEP SPACE. Grabbing an asteroid and then bringing it back to a location close to Earth via robot such that Orion can visit it totally undermines the purpose of a deep space test. Its like lowering a basketball hoop to make it easier for you to sink the ball. Your test now becomes a stunt. It would be vastly simpler and less expensive to send a robotic mission to characterize the target asteroid – if asteroid characterization was the main goal.
If a true test of Orion/SLS systems in a risky environment – for a first flight – was the goal, then NASA should do just that. But to suggest that a Mars Flyby is a good way to do this test is to run in the exact opposite direction – for a first mission. Operating much closer to Earth ARM has the virtue of providing a contingency return if any critical systems fail on their first flight. Mars Flyby commits to everything with no way to abort. The crew is along for a 500+ day ride no matter what.
So ARM is too wimpy and Mars Flyby is too risky. How do we test Orion/SLS? And oh yes, everyone is waving their arms as to whether either mission “helps us get to Mars”. Well, if you have already decided that Orion/SLS is the only (preferred) way you want to send humans to Mars then ANY flight has to provide some value. Of course some missions provide more bang for the buck than others. So people saying that it doesn’t help us get to Mars are simply playing politics with their preferred mission.
The issue as I see it is how you use this absurdly expensive system in a strategic, systematic way that reduces real risk without taking unreasonable risks and demonstrates systems and technologies specifically needed to land people on Mars. You need a firm goal, and a long term plan for what you do once you get to Mars and build backward from what it takes to meet those goals.
Here’s the problem: NASA has no firm plan, goals, destinations, and it doesn’t even have the slightest hint of any evidence that a budget significant enough to make Mars exploration possible is in the cards. “Some time in the 2030s” is not a policy to send humans to Mars. Its a punchline for policy wonks to use.
Indeed there is not enough money NOW in order to get started. Moreover, we have one singular government solution (Orion/SLS) irreparably mandated by a collision of meandering policies from successive White Houses with overt pork preservation tactics by Congress. No discussion of alternate approaches is possible. And when one private sector alternate approach appeared (the original Inspiration Mars) it was immediately abducted by big aerospace companies and morphed so as to now justify the Orion/SLS – the very thing it originally sought to eclipse.
Have I missed anything?
– Bolden: Inspiration Mars is Not Inspirational, earlier post
– Is Inspiration Mars a “NASA Mission”? It Depends Who You Ask, earlier post
Just a quibble about “Deep Space”… I think it is fair to say that ARRM is a mission to the “edge” of Deep Space. It is on the outer edge of Earth’s gravity well and beyond where Earth’s magnetic field can provide any radiation protection. And the crew can still abort to Earth in the case of an emergency… but, unlike the ISS, such aborts would take several days. Technologically speaking, ARRM also puts the US on the edge of being a truly space faring nation. The electric propulsion system that can move a 1,000,000 kg asteroid could also move supplies and forward bases to the Mars and the Moon. And ARRM provides an ideal testbed of in situ resource extraction from asteroids… better than a mission that sends a crew to visit an asteroid in its “natural” orbit. Why? because you can have repeat visits to the same asteroid instead of having to pick a different asteroid with each launch opportunity.
Whatever arguments you have with the ARRM cost estimate, you have to admit that it is very cheap by the standards of other potential first steps into Deep Space. It also makes progress in the direction of other destinations. Cislunar outpost: ARRM puts a 50 kW power supply with a docking ring in a stable Lunar Orbit that could be the core of a new cislunar space station (that maybe processes asteroid material along with samples from Mars and Europa). Lunar Surface: ARRM derived space tugs could bring up fuel for reusable or partially reusable Lunar landers that ferry crew from a cislunar outpost to various locations on the Lunar surface… making the cislunar outpost effectively a mobile moonbase. Mars: you get both SEP tugs to send cargo to Mars and a staging point on the edge of Earth’s gravity well to efficiently fling spaceships at Mars… all that and radiation shielding and water mined from asteroids. Commercial Space: a ring of asteroids around the Moon would provide a resource rich, easy to access destination in space that could seed the commercialization of human spaceflight.
Maybe we should stop getting into fights about the destination and instead ask NASA to provide us the capability to reach all of the destinations we dream of visiting. Instead of flags and footprints, lets build an interstate highway system in the sky.
Ideally a goal, and not a technology demonstration, is designed with some semblance of sustainability. One would think that humans would have figured this one out by now.
I think you’ve captured the essence of the problem quite well. Frankly, I think the whole situation reads like a Joseph Heller follow-up to “Catch 22”.
The real question is how do we move from the current tangle mess to a system and state that actually works? I have no clue what the solution is, only that we are in desperate need of one.
“Here’s the problem: NASA has no firm plan, goals, destinations,”
This.
That is really the whole problem in a nutshell. The is no *national* space policy. Where do we want to go with the US space program? I am talking in a strategic sense. What do we want to do short term, long term, and what do we expect to get out of it. Exploration, pure science, prepping for colonization, some combination, or what?
“We go to the Moon with a human and return them safely before the decade is out”. That was a goal. Not going to argue the merits, but it was a firm, robust, and concrete national goal. All the hardware followed from the goal, not the other way around. Where is that now? I think VSE was a start but of course that is now history.
Some people will say, Elon Musk is leading the way, just turn over everything to him. Please. Do not misunderstand, I do not hate SpaceX, and I want to see them succeed. But they have their own goals and plans. Do these coincide with the national goals? Some, sure, but just saying SpaceX will do it all smacks of “what is good for SpaceX is good for the US”. Multiple companies need to be part of the solution, but we haven’t even defined the problem yet.
All I see us doing is arguing about which bus (SLS/commercial/…) to take, with the destinations merely secondary considerations, or worse, tailoring the destinations to our favorite bus. Talk about putting the cart before the horse! It sure as heck is not a policy that is going to go anywhere in the long term.
If we don’t start working toward some concrete national policy, we will forever be stuck in this handwaving mode we are in now.
“it was a firm, robust, and concrete national goal. All the hardware followed from the goal, not the other way around.”
But that was the problem wasn’t it, that there was only one goal, and it was a political goal at that. The goal to “put a man on the Moon before the Soviets do” (rephrased for public consumption as “put a man on the Moon by the end of the decade”) was extremely narrow in scope. It included no long term strategy because none was needed, since once this single narrow goal was achieved the game was won, the race was over.
That being the case the hardware was built specifically for that one single goal, and since the goal even put a limit on the time frame there was no concern about long-term financial sustainability. Or a need to worry about whether the hardware would be useful for any future space goals that might come later. Sure there were people thinking up ideas for what to do with the hardware after the first Moon landing, and some great things were certainly accomplished with the hardware for a short period of time after the first Moon landing, but it wasn’t sustainable, and it wasn’t flexible.
The current situation is much different, there are a lot of different goals and destinations and reasons for going into space. There may never be a single consensus, but instead we may just have to accept that we will be moving from one project to the next, without necessarily knowing for sure what the next project will be, or the one after that one. Ideal? No. Reality? Probably so. But in the long run the accumulation of accomplishments, in whatever possibly chaotic order they may occur in, should still eventually lead to a sustained presence beyond Earth orbit. Keep fighting for a long term strategy as that is certainly needed but while that seemingly endless debate goes on I think it is worthwhile to also keep some forward motion going. And also remember that even if a consensus is reached for a long-term strategy, it will almost certainly change yet again before it is fully implemented.
That being the case I think it is worthwhile even as long term strategies are being debated to also continue to discuss hardware, and to especially set as a priority that any hardware being built for whatever the current next project is must be flexible and sustainable. The concept of STS (Space Transportation System) wasn’t a bad idea, it’s just that the first attempt at it was too much rooted in Apollo to be sustainable. And many believe that SLS/Orion is going down that same unsustainable, inflexible path.
The reason that people are excited about what Elon Musk is doing is that he is absolutely concentrating on the hardware and is trying his best to provide tools that can do whatever we eventually wind up doing, at a price that we can actually afford. I too would be concerned if he continues to be the only one doing this, but the hope is that as he eventually proves his concepts, which so far he continues to do, that it will change the way that we think about space hardware.
and some great things were certainly accomplished with the hardware for a short period of time after the first Moon landing, but it wasn’t sustainable, and it wasn’t flexible.
While this is certainly one viewpoint, it does not represent the reality of the situation. If you take a look at the federal budget in the years after the peak Apollo spending, you will not see an overall federal budget decrease. What you see is a shifting of resources to other priorities, priorities demanded of the time. It is those shifted priorities that in the end we can see today as unsustainable as they are not investments, they are simply spending for spendings sake.
There was an integrated plan. Congress knew about it. I have the congressional testimony of Von Braun and James Webb for FY-1966 and we were firmly on the way to a space program that would have transformed mankind forever. Now I will be the first to acknowledge that it could have and probably should have been done with far more emphasis on involving and enabling a stronger transition to private enterprise. Indeed this state directed space program philosophy is as much at fault as anything for its demise. However, with the NERVA, the Saturn V, the post J missions, there was a huge infrastructure in place for further exploration.
As early as Apollo 20 the NERVA nuclear stage would have more than doubled the throw weight of the Saturn V to the Moon, from 48 tons to 98 tons. The uprated Saturn V F1A engine would have pushed this over 100 tons.
I point you to an article that I just did that shows that it could have unfolded in a different way, one based far more on private enterprise than how it unfolded, based upon a 1961 article by the Chairman of the Board of GE.
http://denniswingo.wordpres…
Dennis thanks for the link. Excellent article by Ralph Cordiner. Actually stunning is a better word. As you point out in your article he basically nailed it on so many points. While reading his article I suspected that it was written sometime in 1960, and I found out that it was, making Cordiner even more prescient. Through a bit of online research I discovered that actually it was a transcript from a lecture that he gave at UCLA on May 4th, 1960. This was part of a series of lectures sponsored by the University of California between March and June 1960, and later compiled into a book titled “Peacetime Uses of Outer Space”, published in 1961 by McGraw-Hill and edited by Simon Ramo. An online copy of the book which includes lectures by James Doolittle and Edward Teller is available at the University of Florida Internet Archive.
Even though Cordiner saw the dangers of cost-plus contracts and single-vendor hardware, he seemed to accept that in the early exploration stages of a particular area of space it may be necessary in some cases to rely on a single vendor. However even when that is necessary, in another one of his quotes similar to one that you cited, he cautioned that “contracts must be negotiated that offer exciting incentives for exceeding agreed standards of performance, economy, and speed – and sizable reductions in fees in case of failure.” And he said that nearly 54 years ago!
My comments about Apollo hardware were not meant to deride their capability and potential. However my impression is that a well-paced long-term exploration program which could facilitate the type of government/commercial partnership as Ralph Cordiner envisioned in May 1960, was effectively hijacked one year later with the announcement of an accelerated Moon landing program. Now I am awkwardly on both sides of that argument as I fully understand and support Kennedy’s decision, the stakes were high enough to be worth the cost. But the cost in hindsight turned out to be more than just the dollars, it was the creation of the “nationalized airline” as Cordiner referred to it, which we are just now fifty years later trying to wiggle our way out of.
The what-if’s of course are unprovable (at least I can’t prove them) but I suspect that without the rigid goal of a Moon landing within eight years, that the Apollo and other hardware may have been developed in a more sustainable manner, at a lower cost, and set things up sooner for turnover of LEO manned spaceflight to the commercial sector, instead of it taking fifty years (and counting) for this to happen, thus delaying even further moving out farther into space.
Steve— Absolutely, It is interesting to consider his words in the context of the last 54 years of the national space program. As you, I agree that the Kennedy plan was a must. HOWEVER.
There is a little known fight that slowed the effort down for several months. It was between Gilruth, who came down firmly on the side of Lunar Orbit Rendezvous and Von Braun, who wanted Earth Orbit Rendezvous. There is a record of a meeting at MSFC where Von Braun was afraid that the LOR architecture would not leave any infrastructure in place in Earth orbit to support long term activities beyond the first few missions. He was worried (and history shows this worry was justified) that the LOR architecture would result in a “Kilroy was Here” complex, that as soon as the goal was accomplished, the will to continue would fade away.
This fight went on so long that Von Braun finally conceded as the time wasted meant that EOR would probably not result in getting to the Moon by 1970.
Stunning is the correct word and good on you for digging further. I want to read the other essays as well.
In my mind Cordiner’s article is a jumping off point to drive home the point that we are at a fork in the road. One fork is to repair the error of the state flagged space program and place our faith in private enterprise vs the already failing state program of the SLS/Orion.
That is a fight worth fighting…..
What if the SaturnV had been a reusable rocket?? Isn’t Musk trying to build a SaturnV with legs to get to Mars?? Didn’t we have the tech to make boosters land vertically in the sixties?? Image that instead of building the Space Shuttle that NASA had redesigned the Saturn V to be reusable just like Musks Falcon XX or MCT??? I believe that to build a sustainable Highway into space that we DO need a heavy lifter like SLS but reusable. Won’t Musk be able to drop the price to Leo more with a larger rocket than falcon heavy???
Saturn V had 5 engines. It seems to me the center engine could have been used for booster landing same as falcons center engine.
Why do we keep making the same mistakes over and over????
Instead of porking SLS shouldn’t the companies building SLS be designing SLS to be reusable to compete with falcon XX??
There was a plan for a TSTO Saturn V that was the original proposal for the space shuttle. Would have had higher development costs and much lower operational costs and would have preserved the Saturn production line. Tricky Dick did not like it and thus the TAOS Shuttle was funded. Just another reason that relying on the government for wise decisions in space is a crap shoot.
The goal of Apollo was “to send a man to the moon and return him safely to the earth.” Period. The part NASA didn’t understand was the period. Before the Moon Race the primary mission of NACA was to help the Elon Musks of the day achieve their commercial goals. NACA did not build a giant biplane to fly around the world. They met with industry, and asked industry what it needed. And with the help of the NACA the American civil aeronautics industry led the world.
“But that was the problem wasn’t it”
The Apollo program landed humans on the Moon, showing we could travel in space beyond the Earth. It gave truth to the promise that we could become a space faring society, a promise that up until that point, was only in the domain of SF authors. Yes, the politicians may have had political goals in mind, but I contend that the Apollo program transcended the political goals with its success, inspiring millions of people *around the world* and continues to inspire people to this very day for reasons that have nothing to do with politics. Without trying to sound too cheesy, The Apollo program truly was a monumental achievement in the history of mankind. We should have such “problems” with our present day space programs.
Having said all that, I am not advocating returning to the Apollo model of doing things. Even Von Braun recognized back in the 60’s that we needed a better way to approach space exploration. But it doesn’t really matter, because without some framework to hang our efforts on, we get…well, exactly what we have gotten for the last 40 years, a shotgun approach to projects that have not gotten us past LEO. There is nothing wrong with having private companies do what they are good at (I am all for commercial crew), but we also need a national program which allows for those high risk, low (initial) return projects which lead to great things later on. But again, without the framework of strategic goals, we are just flailing around.
Agree with everything you said about the importance of Apollo. As I mentioned to Dennis I think Kennedy made the right decision. Besides dealing with the Soviet issue the Moon landing had a far reaching cultural impact, changing forever everyone’s view of space travel and what can be accomplished.
However there was a price to pay and not just financially for having such an overwhelmingly large government driven project attached to a very fixed goal, especially one that had such a very short deadline (Shepard to Armstrong in eight years was insanely aggressive). In hindsight the Moon landing program and the almost wartime-like priority that it held sway with helped create or at least greatly expand the bureaucratic government controlled system that has almost completely dominated HSF ever since. Only recently this seems to be finally softening a bit with the increasing influence of commercial space, or at least there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Also I agree on the vital need for long-term strategy, but my point is that it may be a long time in coming, if ever, since there are so many different viewpoints and goals (and yes agendas). And what if there is finally a long-term strategy painstakingly hammered out, but then a few years later it changes again (like we see over and over). So my point is that we should keep pushing for and developing a long-term strategy, but while it is evolving I don’t think we should sit on our hands while waiting for it. Continue developing hardware and doing projects. Even if all we get as our next project is asteroid retrieval that is better than doing nothing. Just be sure to keep the hardware low cost and flexible so that it can be adapted for future still to be decide on missions as the long-term strategy continues to evolve.
I think we are overall in agreement. I would quibble with the notion that the post Apollo space program that we got was inevitable given how Apollo was approached. But we got what we got thanks to the neglect or hostility of the various administrations over the years.
I also agree with you that we can’t sit around and do nothing while the government fiddles. I applaud all the great private enterprise efforts to get into space in one fashion or another. I just see the end result of all their efforts is, once again, going around in circles in LEO. Yes, there are plenty of talking heads saying we should do this or that
and go here or there, but we have had that for the last 40 years and it
has not gotten us very far.
My main point was that a national goal with a good strategic plan helps shape and focus what we are doing and guides the particular efforts that are underway and will get underway.
It also guides the development of the hardware needed to meet the stated goal. While its nice to say a bunch of people are developing hardware now for all the different types of missions, space flight hardware really can’t be designed as all purpose yet. The different environments and conditions of the different missions preclude a practical, go anywhere, but yet still be affordable, spacecraft. So, further development will be necessary for any particular mission that finally manages to make it to flight status.
I understand that such a plan/goal cannot simply be a repeat of the Apollo approach. But an appropriate plan *will* lead to the sustainable space program you mention. If its robust and concrete and really pushes the limits, it doesn’t even have to have “inspiring”, “maintaining leadership”, or any of those other hand waving phrases you see in the current space policy documents. All that stuff will just follow naturally.
–
“ARM is not without its fiscal problems and fundamental flaws”
Yeah, NASA “Small Bodies Assessment Group” or SBAG, i.e. a group of scientists that actually study asteroids for you know, living, basically shredded it to pieces almost as soon as it came out, and keeps reiterating that it’s fatally flawed in every findings statement.
See here:
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/sba…
‘Murica
How about we just start with having the ability to put humans into space and go from there.
Yes, the ability to put humans into space at a cost that will make it viable for potential customers. NASA cannot be a customer for its own technology. That is the original self-licking ice cream cone.
Did you miss anything. How about MOON.
You missed the part where I said I was referring to the topic at hand i.e. Mars. I left a lot of things out because, well, they were peripheral to the specific thing I was discussing. There is no official policy to go back to the Moon with humans – as much as I wish there was.
The assumption is made that Orion is the vehicle to carry people to Mars. This is a bad and technically unsound decision.
Orion makes the assumption that all missions will be done like Apollo, and furthermore that we will throw the entire vehicle away after every mission. Given the unaffordability of working with a spacecraft like Orion, this is not a workable strategy. It makes zero sense to hang anyone’s plans on such a program.
Much wiser would be to take a subset of the ISS elements and configure them for a long duration transplanetary spacecraft. If there is a need for Orion at all, then it is for nothing more than a launch and return capsule. However given the constraints on affordability, Dragon or CST-100 would make much more sense for that job and besides they are much further along.
Even more sense would be for departing and returning crews to go from and return to the ISS and use the nominal ISS crew launch and return process.
The idea that the ISS be used as a testbed for the new spacecraft’s systems, and then to use the ISS elements as a basis for the new deep space spacecraft makes much more sense in terms of use of existing infrastructure, knowledge and people.
Currently there is no logic, no strategy, no plan for how to move forward and arguing with politicians is counterproductive. Lets decide on a technically feasible plan and tell them what needs to be done.
well if you have to have an expensive SLS system test the planned the Lunar retrograde flight sounds reasonable as would an L2 mission.
so what about mars?
fly inspiration mars without a crew and plan to keep the Cygnus derived hab active in a Aldrin cycler orbit and add to it over time, use “gateway” ideas here as in also use Delta Atlas Falcon and others for smaller contributions to this hoffmann transfer orbit gateway.
SLS DUUS could serve as a future fuel depot as could contributions from our existing launchers.
keep third stages used for TMI attached to our space station for shielding and future storage( empty tanks)
use inflatables as well,
send Orion and commercial crew afterwards,
use this prepositioning idea for mars orbit as well with humans to follow afterwords
keep ISS to 2024 and use commercial crew and Orion to build this L2 and cycler orbit gateways
Personally, I only support Mars-2021 if it is mission EM-3. Mission EM-2 should not be an operational mission of any kind, only a deep space proving flight to cis-Lunar space. Any more ambitious a mission plan is risking astronauts on an unproven spacecraft (remember, as currently proposed, EM-2 will be the first flight of a complete and crew-ready Orion with ECLSS).
Purely FWIW, I would be a even happier if there was a crewed EFT-2 mission to LEO before the EM-2 mission to test the Orion in the best-understood space environment of all.
However, this is just me. I recognise that moving EM-2 at least a year to the left and adding another Orion flight (including possibly funding development of Atlas-VH as a crew launch vehicle) really isn’t realistic. I’m just annoyed at the incredibly glacial schedule of the SLS. I suppose, it all falls down because of a lack of a decent strategy as Keith says.
This: “Here’s the problem: NASA has no firm plan, goals, destinations, and it doesn’t even have the slightest hint of any evidence that a budget
significant enough to make Mars exploration possible is in the cards.”
The problem here is that SLS/Orion is taking up the lion’s share of a budget that’s not going to grow. This SHOULD remind everyone of the space shuttle program in the 1980’s. STS was a “space transportation system” to LEO with no solid destination. Mir and ISS were solid destinations, but did not materialize until billions upon billions were spent on Space Station Freedom to the point that a grand political compromise had to be reached in order to move forward.
But, I don’t think the outcome will be exactly the same this time around. By the time the politicians realize that SLS/Orion is too costly to actually have a sane destination, commercial crew and lower cost commercial launch vehicles ought to be in place. The time for SLS/Orion is running out, unless something fundamental changes which somehow justifies its extremely high fixed costs and extremely low flight rate.
“The time for SLS/Orion is running out”
Astonishingly there are few if any people within the NASA organization who realize this.
I’d wager there are quite few NASA folk who know as much. There is nothing that NASA folk can do, however, to change the Congressional love for SLS.
NASA could even leverage this into a return to someplace they keep saying they will not go… the Moon.
But
I’m not worried, we will never go back to the Moon or to Mars because
someone might get hurt, and we all know that can not be allow to
happen.
So no Boldly going anywhere.
Definition: Boldy
not hesitating or fearful in the face of actual or possible danger or rebuff.
I often disagree with Keith but I violently agree with this.
America is in a transistion period. We are moving our NASA monopoly human spaceflight systems to standard domestic commercial service providers. All transportation in the United States is handled through commercial services. Congress is also having to go through this paradigm shift also and it will be painful in the short term as NASA workers involved in launch operations and some design and development workers are moved into the commercial sector.
I have said this quite a few times but it bears repeating:
Space is a place, not a program.
How often is their a clarion call for the federal government to build submarines to explore the ocean? A call for the federal government to build land rovers and explore the earth? There is all kinds of exploration going on but on the whole it is for locating usable resources and it is mainly carried out by commercial companies.
This is something space advocates have to make the transistion to also. The federal government will now be doing most of the true exploration by robotic probes. When NASA does move researchers off world it will be the commecial sector doing it. As it should be.
NASA should be moving to being a consumer of turn key systems. Like the Navy buying ships.
Would sending a monkey on a Mars flyby trip be counted as a reasonable plan? Or maybe one of the congressmen?
I use to be more pessimistic about the 2030s deadline, but since NASA funding isn’t about to seriously go up anytime soon, the 2020s are probably the earliest we’ll get some funding space opening up for a Mars mission after ISS drops into the ocean. Until that happens, all we can do is get the hardware in place to do that.
I do not think we will sacrifice the ISS. It is our only foothold in space. Without it we will not be trapped in LEO. We will be trapped on the ground. If ISS is cancelled the money currently spent on it will likely be simply deleted from the NASA budget.
With the current hardware (SLS/Orion) human flight to Mars is not feasible because of cost. Even the Moon could not be reached except by sacrificing any long term objectives to a single, brief Apollo-like mission.
By developing low cost human flight to LEO first, we can build the infrastructure there for flight beyond LEO. This is not a new idea; it is what Artur C. Clark, Werner von Braun, Robert Goddard and Chesley Bonestell imagined before humans ever reached the edge of space.
Without sacrificing the ISS or getting a massive budget increase that doesn’t appear to be on the books for the foreseeable future, you just don’t have the budgetary space in NASA for a Mars mission while ISS is still active. You’ll get your SLS, but then you’ll only have the budget to do supply runs into LEO while the ISS continues to draw down the $3 billion/year they plan to have allocated for it until the 2020s.
When people ask about Mars missions, that’s what I say. We had a choice in the 1990s, between pushing for a Mars mission or pushing for a major space station, and the space station people won the argument in NASA and Congress, as well as the money.
And rightly so. The ISS can be sustained indefinitely, and serve as a terminal for reusable launch vehicles. The SLS is not a viable technology for flight to Mars, we wouldbe better off reprogramming the money toward research and development.
Considering that we haven’t been up above 600 miles in the last 40 years; I think a good initial test of the Orion/SLS would be a good old flight into lunar orbit. If I hear one more person say “the moon, been there done that” I think I’ll puke. Considering that we’re currently kissing up to the KGB thug to get rides to orbit, I think we’ll find it plenty challenging. The moon will be an excellent testbed for many of the technologies we will need to explore intersolar space. Maybe the politicians have been humiliated enough to start spending an appropriate amount of money on space exploration. Somewhere north of 23 billion should get things rolling and may be enough to lift all boats. On the other hand I don’t think these guys can be embarrassed. I mean were only talking about the future of the country, let’s all do it on the cheap.
Here is the answer to any questions you have about NASA’s plans to go to Mars, an asteroid, or anyplace 400 miles above the earth.
Forget projected. Here is the history right from the horse’s mouth, and I believe they wrote a song describing this plot – – – Killing me Slowly! At least they have been consistent for the past 50 years.
Keith’s list is correct and pretty complete, although it does leave out the lunar base as one of the competing goals. Not only are there competing goals, but for some goals there are totally incompatible ways of reaching them. The sad fact is that we have to deal with reality as it is, not as we wish it to be. On the good side, reality is indicating that SpaceX is steadily solving the access to LEO problem, with or without government assistance.
So, how would we go about solving the problem? First, find a method of getting at least some of those supporting the competing goals to agree on a cooperative method that will include their goal. (Some who are fixated on their goal will never agree to cooperate). The cis-lunar and reusable space transport and logistics initiative concepts would take care of much of this. Second: what is the common element in all of these goals, noting that the moon, Mars, asteroids, and even power satellites are not or can not be located in LEO. The common element is that we must be able to operate economically and sustainably beyond LEO. Well, the cis-lunar arena is where you want to go first, but you still have to start from LEO.
Thus one valid starting point is to use the space station as a testing location for the cis-lunar equipment and vehicles, in the process gradually transforming it into a real space station or logistics base, as well as a space laboratory. Start with a small space tug and a small (non-cryogenic fuel depot to support it. That means that if the SLS (local politics) cabal should succeed in killing the space station, it would set back efforts to develop such cis-lunar equipment by at least a decade. Note that there is no one “right” way to do this, though there are lots of wrong ways.
The initial common element after the space station is still, in my mind, an L1 or L2 logistics base, made possible from the testing of propellant depots and space tugs at the existing station. Storage of several thousand tons of propellant would be required for major expeditions. High mass cargo operations to such bases will require docking for non-pressurized cargo vehicles, and means of unloading and transferring the cargo and transferring fuel.
Once operational vehicles and cargo are able to operate from such a base, access to the Moon, Mars, and even asteroids, would be greatly enhanced. Departure requirements from L1/L2 are very low and both locations are free from space debris, so they are much safer than LEO if you need to accumulate fuel, vehicles and equipment.
Finally, the various goals should be integrated into a plan. Use lunar fuel if possible for Mars expeditions. Use a captured asteroid to provide shielding for crews at an L1 station. Design and use vehicles that can support multiple operations and expedition types. None of this will happen without cooperation and compromise. If it does not happen, the US will still be stuck in LEO, while SpaceX goes to Mars on its own.
Good plan. Small suggestion. Cryogenic fuel depots (methane/Lox) are closer than you think.
Won’t Musk do methane/lox depots regardless of what public space does?? Has Spacex ever said if they plan to do any depots on their own?? “Closer than you think”? Who is working on methane depots at this time?
http://forum.nasaspacefligh…
Keith, great synopsis! As a culture that is overtly reactionary and responsive to fear and driven by those with the cash and often blinding egos, I unfortunately don’t see a way out of this hole until something negative happens, affecting the majority, which will motivate the need for a common goal.
I couldn’t agree with you more.
I am talking about today, not in 1806. Would we TODAY send out a government funded expedition to
explore and map the American west? Space is, relatively, explored already, much like the American west. We have highly detailed maps of Luna and Mars, et cetera.
The prospectors followed after looking for resources that they could get basically for free. THAT is the stage we are at now, if we finally nail down property rights.
I have trouble getting people to talk about who their customers are. NASA program managers sell to members of congress who sell to wealthy contractors who sell to NASA program managers. It’s a closed circle with no opportunity to discuss the good of the country. SRBs have been manufactured for over 30 years and there is only one customer. Prior to the moon race every nasa/naca technology was developed for commercial aviation or occasionally other commercial industries or the military. It does not benefit our nation for NASA’s only customer to be itself.
To be a bit contrarian here, a thought I’ve had some time now is that perhaps the continued arguing about space exploration is a good thing.
We’ve seen consensus and it has not been shrouded in only positive aspects. The Shuttle program ran for three decades, quite a consensus, through the loss of two crews. Quite a consensus. Shuttle’s getting old? They can be upgraded. Consensus. Shuttles too expensive? We can save a little money here or there. Consensus-keep marching.
Another example, perhaps the last time a good dose of arguing stopped, would have been the very early days of the Constellation program. The collapse of consensus there, as with the Shuttle, just came about much faster, as there has been a rising tide inside the agency that wants to further space exploration, and they now sniff out rather quickly the directions that only pretend to have an interest in furthering space exploration.
Space exploration is a goal. Many advocates of larger budgets, this or that rocket, this or that destination, could not care less about space exploration. They are here to build a big rocket. They are here to keep up a space station. Any plan that tries to say what and how must meet up, that transportation is a means to an end, for scientific instruments, for people or probes exploring, for doing so regularly, within expected budgets, in relevant time frames, quickly reveals who is interested in space exploration, and who is not.
So perhaps the arguing is a good thing. We’ve tried the alternative, and as good as the kumbaya-moments of fantastic launches, and great plans may have seemed, more arguing was what these needed then. And it may be what we need a while longer now.
If the arguing gets us talking about how to explore space, then we are ahead of the game, as we’ll have reached some consensus at least on the real topic! And the real topic is space exploration, not space transportation, not a sub-systems design, and definitely not some inertia about how we just keep doing what we did before.
Consider this, in 1849 your mule would cost you 150 dollars. using an inflation calculator that means that mule would cost over 4000 dollars, in today’s dollars, hardly a cheap proposition.
http://www.kidport.com/RefL…
“John H. Miller, writing to the “St. Joseph Valley Register,” October 6, 1849, gives the following prices at Weberville, 60 miles from Sacramento:
Wagons ………. $40 to $80.00
Oxen, per yoke ………. 50 to 150.00
Mules, each ………. 90 to 150.00
Board, per meal, $1.50, or per week ………. 21.00
Beef, per pound ………. 40 cents to .75
Salt Pork, per pound ………. 40 cents to .75
Flour, per pound ………. 25 cents to .30
Sugar, per pound ………. 30 cents to .50
Molasses, per gallon ………. $2 to 4.00
Mining Cradles ………. $20 to 60.00
Mining Pans ………. $4 to 8.00″
The mining pans were going for 110 – 220 in today’s dollars.
http://www.westegg.com/infl…
So actually, in 1849, in relative terms, it was very expensive to just prospect. I was thinking more on the lines of industrial because you will not see mules and placer mining on Luna, it will be industrial scale, and the industrial mining talking place in 1855 was ( using the inflation calculator) not cheap. Flour was over 13 dollars a pound.
“EARLY CALIFORNIA PRICES CURRENT.–Delano’s “Life on the Plains and at the Diggings,” gives the following as the prices paid at Lassen’s Ranch, on September 17, 1849:
Flour, per 100 pounds ………. $50.00
Fresh beef, per 100 pounds ………. 35.00
Pork, ………. 75.00
Sugar, ………. 50.00
Cheese, per pound ………. 1.50
H. A. Harrison, in a letter to the “Baltimore Clipper,” dated San Francisco, February 3, 1849, gives the following price-list:
Beef, per quarter ………. $20.00
Fresh Pork, per pound ………. .25
Butter, per pound ………. 1.00
Cheese, per pound ………. 1.00
Ham, per pound ………. 1.00
Flour, per barrel ………. 18.00
Pork, per barrel ………. $35 to 40.00
Coffee, per pound ………. .16
Rice, per pound ………. .10
Teas, per pound ………. .60 cents to 1.00
Board, per week ………. 12.00
Labor, per day ………. $6 to 10.00
Wood, per cord ………. 20.00
Brick, per thousand ………. $50 to 80.00
Lumber, per thousand ………. 150.00
William D. Wilson, writing to the “St. Joseph Valley Register,” on February 21, 1849, gives the following schedule of prices at Sutter’s Fort:
Flour, per barrel ………. $30 to $40.00
Salt Pork, per barrel ………. 110 to 150.00
Salt Beef, ………. 45 to 75.00
Molasses,………. 30 to 40.00
Salt Salmon ………. 40 to 50.00
Beans, per pound ………. .20
Potatoes, ………. .14
Coffee, ………. 20 cents to .33
Sugar, ………. 20 cents to .30
Rice, ………. 20 cents to .30
Boots, per pair ………. $20 to 25.00
Shoes,………. 3 to 12.00
Blankets ………. 40 to 100.00
Transportation by river from San Francisco to Sacramento, he says, was $6 per one hundred pounds. From Sacramento to the mines by team at the rate of $10 for every twenty-five miles.”