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Exploration

PBS Video: Does The Current NASA Mars Plan Make Sense?

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
December 5, 2014
Filed under ,

“Miles O’Brien: It doesn’t feel like its a well thought out campaign at this point. Its like a horse designed by a committee at times.
Chris McKay: The plan for going to Mars is not well thought through. I think that part of the reason why it is not well thought through is because the pieces are so expensive that they do not fit in the box. If we can knock the prices down on all of the pieces then we can fit them into the box reasonable and we may have a plan that works more clearly. Right now they won’t fit because the pieces are so expensive that you can’t put more than one in. So … some people want this, other people want that. They’ve gotta fight because they can’t both fit in the budget.If you can drive the cost down then everything fits in and everything can happen.”

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

7 responses to “PBS Video: Does The Current NASA Mars Plan Make Sense?”

  1. Paul Newton says:
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    Does the current NASA Mars plan make sense?

    There’s a plan? Is there a plan? What is it?

    The current Orion launch begs the question. We now have a vehicle which NASA says is the first step to Mars. What exactly does the step look like? Are astronauts going to ride all the way to Mars and back in an Orion? Really, in a room the size of a walk in closet they’ll be living for a couple years? Oh, by the way, Orion’s heat shield was designed for lunar returns so when does the redesign start to accommodate Mars returns? If Mars-class missions were really the plan, all along, why wasn’t the vehicle designed to that kind of a mission.

    My biggest problem is than an Orion style command service module implies, as Chris McKay distinguishes, the ability to pick up some rocks and go home. Orion is certainly not a vehicle for going and staying.

    Its a hell of a time for NASA to start thinking about the plan, after they’ve spent billions of dollars and most of a decade designing something for which there may never be a need.

    • Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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      “Are astronauts going to ride all the way to Mars and back in an Orion?”

      No, obviously not, since Orion by itself can only carry enough supplies for 4 people for 21 days. they will need something like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wik

      “Orion’s heat shield was designed for lunar returns so when does the redesign start to accommodate Mars returns?”

      this is actually untrue, it seems to be an internet myth. to be fair, it was true up until 2009 or so, but every indication i have found is that the Orion (the current “MPCV” version, design circa 2011) heat shield can handle Earth reentry speeds at least up to 12 km/sec and possibly more. there are a lot of return trajectories from Mars that produce Earth reentry speeds less than 12 km/sec. if you can find an actual number cited by NASA for the maximum reentry speed for the Orion, i’d love to see it.

      • dogstar29 says:
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        I don’t think the entry speed is that critical since the thickness of the heat shield can be increased.

        I would love to go to Mars. But I feel there is little discussion of what specific benefits will accrue to the US from a manned Mars landing using SLS/Orion. What will our goal be after the crew returns? Is the plan to continue sending human flights to Mars with the SLS/Orion system? How long will the program continue beyond that first flight? What annual budget will be required?

        • Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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          the problem with the heat shield is that certainly you can increase the thickness and thus allow for more ablation at higher speeds, but Orion is already overweight. adding weight is probably a non-starter, so the question then is what is the current heat shield capable of? many say that it’s not capable of handling a return from Mars speeds, and as i said, so as far as i can tell, that’s a myth.

    • muomega0 says:
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      No, the current Congressional plan for NASA requiring SLS
      + Orion (3.1B/yr for decades) does not make sense. Parts of NASA have created a much better flexible path forward–discarded by Congress. http://nasawatch.com/archiv… The art is knowing when to move on.

      When the HLV is adapted for beyond the moon, it results in the almost bizarre, incredible, expendable architecture, and no infrastructure or technology to reduce future mass or costs. http://www.thespacereview.c

      The 2005 Policy and ESAS (“must be less than 3 launches”) guaranteed that economic access would not occur for at least two decades: 1) no commonality nor competition between EELV/NASA rockets, 2) no humans on EELV, 3) guaranteed fixed costs for two EELVs 4) limited funding to alternative LV, 5) the wrong architecture. History will show that 2005 resulted in the worse space policy ever. http://www.nasa.gov/sites/d

      Two lunar sorties per year is 240 mT divided by 10 launches is a *single* 24 mT LV. Simply with “non-sole source”, one doubles this capacity. Its time to consolidate SLS/Atlas/Delta into a single LV as NASA advances to LV independent BLEO architecture with a L2 Gateway voyager. Perhaps some Moonshot Thinking is in order. http://www.youtube.com/watc

    • DTARS says:
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      Of course they Have a Mars Plan
      The Plan is to bull shit the publicinto believing that some how the money spent on SLS and Orion will some how get us to Mars. Isnt this just a war between old cost plus space and newer practical space which threatens all these Jobs. If you really want to go to mars, let the next Mars robot mission be red dragons, cheaper better, testing making fuel and launching from Mars. Development moon missions for falcon heavy. find ways to help Musk when he reveals his MCT plans.
      Fact is the old space model and parts of Nasa will have to change soon.
      You can’t bull shit the public forever

  2. numbers_guy101 says:
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    What plan?