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Exploration

How NASA Quietly Releases Alternate Mars Mission Concepts (Update)

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
April 6, 2015
Filed under , , ,
How NASA Quietly Releases Alternate Mars Mission Concepts (Update)

Our Wednesday, April 8, Future In-Space Operations (FISO) telecon colloquium will host Cesar Ocampo (Odyssey Space Research/NASA JSC) and Damon Landau (NASA JPL), who will speak on “A Crewed Mars Exploration Architecture Using Fly-by and Return Trajectories.”
Keith’s note: I have sent an inquiry to Harley Thronson who was listed as a speaker in an official NASA capacity at the Planetary Society’s closed door Humans Orbiting Mars event last week – and also NASA PAO – asking “Is this upcoming NASA FISO presentation related to the Planetary Society’s Humans Orbiting Mars event last week – the one where you were listed as a speaker on the agenda? If so why is it being released by two NASA employees in this fashion and not by NASA HQ/NASA PAO?”. Stay tuned.
Keith’s update: The Planetary Society and Harley Thronson have replied and said that they don’t think there is a connection between this upcoming FISO presentation and what was discussed at last week’s Planetary Society event. So it would seem that there is more than one team inside of NASA JPL/JSC working on this idea of not landing humans on Mars but doing orbital operations instead. Add in the ongoing internal work at NASA that seeks to put humans on the Moon to develop and infrastructure to enable further exploration (such as Mars) and it is clear that NASA is not working within the narrow parameters that the White House told them to work within. That is not necessarily a bad thing. But all of this certainly seems to be uncoordinated – and NASA is rather shy about talking about it.
So this is how NASA is going to send humans to live and work on other worlds: behind closed doors, off the record, and without apparent coordination. Yea. That will work.

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

20 responses to “How NASA Quietly Releases Alternate Mars Mission Concepts (Update)”

  1. AstroInMI says:
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    It’s disappointing to see The Planetary Society become a lobbying arm for JPL. I don’t understand how JPL can conduct an internal study (I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt that it was Caltech money not taxpayer money) on alternate Mars missions — apparently without NASA HQ coordination given it was an internal study — and then use The Planetary Society to essentially conduct a DC lobbying effort on their behalf to roll out the plan.

    NASA has a plan. We’ve all seen the roadmap. I could see working within NASA to change it if you disagree with it, but why is JPL publicly promoting an alternative and getting away with it?

    • BeanCounterFromDownUnder says:
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      Which roadmap would that be then?
      Cheers

      • AstroInMI says:
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        OK, so maybe roadmap was a bit of an overstatement. 🙂 It’s just so frustrating that I will most likely be dead by the time we get to Mars when it wasn’t supposed to be that way. I still feel like everyone is still just talking.

      • 2004MN4 says:
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        This: http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/373…. And it is not even remotely affordable with realistic NASA budgets.

  2. 2004MN4 says:
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    This is the Mars LITE idea from JSC. I saw a paper on this approach at the AAS Space Flight Mechanics conf. in January. It’s a different idea than what the Planetary Society is talking about (judging from their blog post on it). Personally, I think Mars LITE might be the cheapest approach that anyone is talking about… but it requires hyperbolic rendezvous, which scares some people. …all of these ideas, even the Planetary Society one have been in conference papers over the past year. There’s been a lot of exciting new architecture work done lately both inside and outside of NASA.

    • AstroInMI says:
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      What I find discouraging is that this new architecture work is going to go on and on and on. We’ve been doing architecture work for how many years now? Ten, Twenty, Thirty? Conference archives like the IEEE Aerospace Conference or AIAA Space are filled with notional concepts. NASA needs to pick something and stick with it for more than five minutes.

      I’m biased towards NASA. I love NASA. I want NASA on Mars. But I can promise that if something like SpaceX gets to Mars first it’s going to be because they pick something — however imperfect — and make it work as opposed to talking and talking and talking and talking.

      Having each Center come up with some new architecture that also conveniently keeps them funded has to stop. Pick something and make it work!

      • 2004MN4 says:
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        We need to keep doing research because we don’t have anything that works inside the NASA budget or with high TRL stuff. You can’t just pick something and do it… it is beyond stupid to fault people for doing research work… especially when they come up with innovative stuff like this that could potentially make Mars affordable.

        • AstroInMI says:
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          You’re misdirecting my complaint. I am not faulting people for doing research work. I am faulting the NASA leadership for not forcing the issue. I am an engineer myself and, like many of my colleagues, there are times I would research something to death instead of going with what was good enough.

          To use your words, I think it’s beyond stupid to keep researching and researching and never do anything. That’s what we have been doing since the 1970s. Heck, even Ocampo and Landau say that in the beginning of their paper (assuming this is it https://www.aca.unsw.edu.au… ):

          “Unfortunately, despite a litany of trade studies there has not been any consensus reached regarding the strategy that should be used to transport humans to the Mars system, how long they should stay there, what propulsion should be used, etc.”

          Really, after a litany (and I’m sure millions of dollars) of studies we could never come up with a consensus? Why are we even trying to get a consensus? That’s my point with the SpaceX reference. Elon Musk isn’t going to look for a consensus. He and SpaceX will just do it.

          I always hate to reference Apollo and the glory days, but they managed to come up with a darn good design for the Moon in lot less time than we’ve spent not even reaching a consensus on how to approach Mars.

          At the minimum, NASA leadership needs to pick a lead Center (or HQ) to coordinate these studies and then rule with more of an iron fist.

      • Paul451 says:
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        But I can promise that if something like SpaceX gets to Mars first it’s going to be because they pick something — however imperfect — and make it work

        No. SpaceX constantly change their plans. Revise and redesign based on new information. Musk has a long term goal, but he is not locking down the path. That’s one of the things that apparently freaks people at NASA (and DoD) out, you’re supposed to pick a plan and lock it in.

        IMO, the “plan” that Musk created, the one he is sticking to, is that each step has to be useful in its own right. (And for a private company, “useful” means there must be a market.)

        So Merlin wasn’t just an engine research project, it was Falcon 1 and flying actual payloads. They used that to learn their craft, the art of rocketry that’s not in the books. The next step was meant to be Falcon 5, but NASA’s COTS/CCDev offered a justification for jumping straight to F9. Iterate through multiple versions of that, but every version is useful (and apparently profitable). Now move on to FH and start the next engine dev program. (Meanwhile dropping reusability for the upper-stage, and changing the next engine goal from F1-scale KeroLOx to Methane. Similarly they seem to have dropped the idea of replacing the 9 Merlin 1 engines in F9/FH cores with a single Merlin 2 as a stepping stone to Falcon X.)

        I understand you want NASA centres to stop the talk/talk/talk and do something, but locking in a plan is the worst thing. If SpaceX did that, they’d be locked into making the F9 upperstage reusable before moving on to FH. They’d be locked into a KeroLOx Merlin 2 engine. They’d be stuck on the Falcon X, X-Heavy, XX path. Etc.

        They key is the iterative development process, making sure that each step is useful in its own right, and the willingness to change directions when necessary.

    • JaxToSpace says:
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      Sounds like the Thomas plan that JSC/JPL were recently exploring. Stay tuned

  3. 2004MN4 says:
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    I just saw your update. I wouldn’t call all of this stuff uncoordinated so much as people doing research… smart people with new ideas building off of each other’s ideas to try to find a low cost way to get to Mars.

    • kcowing says:
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      And they do not talk to each other and then NASA denies that the work is important even though these people are being paid to do it.

      • 2004MN4 says:
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        I’m pretty sure they talk to each other since I see some of the same authors on the different papers and I see these people at the same conferences. This stuff is research work being presented at open conferences… it is getting play at things like the Planetary Society Conference and FISO because it is innovative and super exciting not because it is NASA policy. As far as I know neither one of these is NASA policy or probably even from the main NASA study teams… but I would be shocked if those study teams weren’t aware of this research… I’ve seen people from those teams at the conferences (not many though, but that’s because of travel restrictions not because of stove-piping) I’m not saying NASA doesn’t stove-pipe…. NASA has very well-piped stoves just like most giant government bureaucracies. I just have personally seen people from the NASA teams engaging people with these new ideas and trying to use ideas they like from these papers…. so I know it can’t be completely stove-piped. Mars is a freakishly hard problem and we won’t get anywhere unless people are open to new ideas and innovation. And I wouldn’t always assume people are getting paid by NASA to do this stuff… a lot of people do research and write papers after hours. Yeah they need funding to go to a conference… but sometime they get funding for one paper and do a second paper on their own that they can’t get funding for. Sure, it depends on the individual, but some of these people are really dedicated and working hard to find ways to do Mars cheaper. …maybe you’re right, but I just can’t assume the worst without knowing more.

  4. Jeff Smith says:
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    Keith, I actually would prefer many “space programs” trying to achieve the same thing (and many different things too). SpaceX has its own space program, and they can do as they please. The Virgin and XCOR guys have their own space programs. Every NASA center is its own “space program” in a sense, and sometimes they come up with better ways of doing things than the “coordinated” efforts.
    While von Braun was REALLY good, he had some ideas that were really BAD. Direct Ascent? Rejecting H2? Sometimes it takes a competing space program (read: John Houbolt at Langley, NOT the center of the Apollo Program world) to redirect the entire effort.

    • kcowing says:
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      Don’t get me wrong more ideas are better than no ideas. Its just that NASA does these things internally – they deliberately stove pipe things such that one center or group avoids interacting with another – and then NASA makes public statements that disavow the work – work they are paying their employees to do.

      • Mark_Flagler says:
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        Stove-piping prevents cross-fertilization that might be helpful reaching one’s goal. I don’t mind independent teams pursuing goals from different directions, in fact, the competition among them might be helpful. But only if they know they are competing. And only if, at some point, management can merge mini-programs to create synergy.

    • Paul451 says:
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      While von Braun was REALLY good, he had some ideas that were really BAD. Direct Ascent?

      Direct Ascent wasn’t Von Braun’s idea. It arose at NASA when Von Braun was still designing Jupiters for the USAF. Once at NASA, Von Braun pushed hard for EOR, based around a 3-engine Saturn.

      • Jeff Smith says:
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        Watch “Woman in the Moon”. The Germans had wanted to do direct ascent since before WWII. Any movie that with an action scene to achieve a certain deltaV can only be a German film. (And then they go on to show the orbital dynamics of arriving at the moon!)

        EOR became the fall back position to land directly on the moon. If von Braun had REALLY gotten his way, he would have preferred a single rocket to DO IT ALL. (But even he realized Nova was too small, so he had to iterate to something that would work… hence EOR to get enough mass to land the whole thing on the lunar surface). Direct ascent had always been the German way to do it, Oberth planned it that way, so did von Braun.

        • Paul451 says:
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          The Germans had wanted to do direct ascent since before WWII.

          Dude, in the ’40s everyone believed in direct-ascent. Also SSTO. No-one knew how hard rockets were going to be.

          If von Braun had REALLY gotten his way, he would have preferred a single rocket to DO IT ALL. (But even he realized Nova was too small,

          Again, Nova was not Von Braun’s design. It arose within NASA before Von Braun joined. He deliberately designed Saturn as a smaller version, using the F1 engine being developed for Nova. His preference was C3 (the three engine variant), multiple-launches, and EOR. The committee instead chose C5 (the five-engine variant), single launch, and LOR.

          If Von Braun had gotten his way, NASA would have built a space station in LEO first, to act as a construction site for the Lunar mission.

  5. Neil.Verea says:
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    NASA has been “researching” going to Mars, through 1000’s of studies since the late 80s and will continue to do so. They know what it takes, what they are missing is leadership commitment to fund and continuity. A Human Mission to Mars requires 2 key elements, Development time and Budget, both of which are driven by the Country’s political winds. These winds have a short attention span (this is not Apollo environment). Having competing ideas is fine with the leadership since it doesn’t cost more then NASA is receiving and keeps everyone distracted. Commitment on the other hand requires leadership to endorse and fund a program, there is no serious expectation of a Mars Program at NASA for at least another decade. The best HEO can do is work around the edges and try to place the Agency in a posture where it can commit to a Humans to Mars Program by the early 30s. That appears to be the only viable political approach, but it is also the least efficient because it has multiple approaches being championed, which in turn consume a lot of the budget. If they were to organize around a “pre-Program” to better integrate and focus resources then they may be able to commit earlier.