NASA and Mars: #EpicFail
Keith’s note: When I was growing up in the 1960s NASA said that they’d have humans on the Moon by the end of the 1960s. They did.
– NASA also said that they’d have humans on Mars by 1981. I would have been 26. Tick Tock.
– Now NASA says they might have humans on Mars by the mid-2030s when I will be in my mid-80s.
– NASA went from zero to humans on the Moon in less than 10 years.
– But humans on Mars takes an additional 60+ years?
– And we have not even sent humans back to the Moon?
– Charlie Bolden almost seems to be bragging these days when he proclaims “I have spent my life being ’20 years away from Mars’ now we’re closer than that”. He’s just admitting how pathetic NASA has become in this regard. And he’s so utterly clueless as to not even be embarrassed as he says these things.
– This has nothing to do with the White House or Congress. Rather, it has to do with NASA’s ever-diminishing ability to translate its undeniably stellar, collective genius into clear-cut programs with timelines that can be met, budgets that can be (more or less) adhered to, and deliverables that can be delivered. To compound things, NASA has no idea how to explain what it does to the people who pay the bills. Pretty pictures only go so far.
These days NASA does less – with more. Not a good sign.
As the kids say #EpicFail
Well, let’s see…A trip to Mars and back is ~40 longer than a trip to the Moon and back. The energy required may be ~1.5 larger. So 40 times more stuff x 1.5 times more energy = 60 times harder. 10 years to get to the Moon, therefore 600 years to get to Mars. Estimated year of arrival 2569. I reckon that’s a pretty good estimate based on the current rate of progress 😛
Yup
Remember when Mitt Romney responded to Newt Gingrich’s plan, and said he’d fire anyone who suggested 100 Billion to be spent on a moon colony? Remember SNL making a parody of Newt’s moon base? I would have voted for Newt if given the chance, but the country sees it as a joke. It is not incompetence by NASA that there is no concrete plan for an HSF Mars mission. It is deliberate vagueness to avoid placing a fixed price tag on a fixed Mars mission. To sell human spaceflight, there needs to be a business rationale these days, not science or inspiration.
I remember when Obama stopped the moon plans because we’ve been there, done that. So he picked a plan to go to Mars, something he knew would be unattainable for a long time and would not require significant money and political effort during his term in office. That lack of leadership directly affects NASA’s directing of the Mars plan.
Obama is just as enthusiastic about space as the average reasonably knowledgeable person, but he has other priorities, fires to put out, so just wants to keep it on life support so it does not die.
Human space exploration is very important, but not obviously very urgent. We (fanatics all) need to convince the world it is worth 2% of the federal budget.
And when Mr. Obama took office it is fair to say that he had a certain forest fire to deal with, followed by a country financially burned due to thoughtless financial ‘deregulation’.
In this environment it is hard to fault him for not championing space. It was hard enough to pass TARP. And that wasn’t even his plan.
How quickly we forget.
It’s not entirely NASA’s fault but all your points are well taken and agreed upon by me.
I don’t see any of the stellar genius you mention. The NASA people I’ve met are much like any other in a tired, gray aerospace industry where technical ability plays third trombone to management. Congress authorizes what its lobbyists want: Long contracts with lots of hooks for accountants, auditors, business development, contract monitors, supply clerks, and vice presidents. Genius keeps its head down if it knows what’s good for it.
SpaceX is doing a nice end-around but it remains to be seen if their M.O. of work until burnout can last in the longer term.
I’ll cop to my career being long and entirely unremarkable but as they say, a cat may still look at a king.
I agree that the fact we are still far from Mars is partly NASA’s fault. The growth in bureaucracy and people trying to make their pet projects mission critical have not helped.
That said this is not all or mainly NASA’s fault. The idea that this has “nothing to do with the White House and Congress” is absurd. NASA doesn’t print its own money. The White House and Congress determine how much NASA can spend and on what. The fact is that in the Apollo era NASA enjoyed massive budgetary support and limited interference from the WH and Congress. They don’t have that support today.
As a percentage of the federal budget NASA has steadily decreased since the Apollo Era. You might respond with the idea that if you take inflation into account NASA is getting as much money as it did in the Apollo Era. That’s fine, but it misses the point. It costs more to get business done than it did in the 60s. Also much more than half of the budget was devoted to human spaceflight, which is not the case today.
This idea that the only problem is NASA is ludicrous. You can’t have Buck Rogers without any bucks.
edited to add: much more than half of the budget was devoted to HSF.
It could be done quicker and for much less than the advertised amount if NASA and commercial industry got together and made it happen, with the support – rather than meddling – of certain Congressional representatives. It has been long known by those who think hard about space policy that the current approach – where work must be done by people in certain Congressional districts, therefore dictating certain very cost-ineffective projects – is going nowhere fast, and will require more money than will likely ever be available.
I agree that the district approach is inefficient and that Congress can interfere too much but that is not a “NASA problem.” That is a Congress problem.
it wasn’t a steady decease at all. It was more of a nose dive. In 2014 dollars NASA’s budget was at it’s highest in 1966 at 43B. By 1971 it was 19B and it is been in the 24B-15B range ever since.
When I said “steadily” I was referring to the fact that overall NASA’s budget as a percentage of the federal budget has dropped since the 60s.
you could have just taken the rope and not used a shovel 😉
Sorry jerr. I misread your message as a grammatical critique.
And it was 4.5% of the entire federal budget in 1966, as compared with about 0.5% these days. Jack it back up to 4.5%, and we’ll have footprints on Mars before you know it. Of course that would be about $175 billion a year.
Uhhh, human spaceflight does get more than half of the budget.
Around 8 Billion compared to Science 5B and Aero and Space Tech at 0.5 each. And a proportionally large chunk of the cross-agency goes to human spaceflight as well.
The idea that a good portion of the problem isn’t with NASA is also ludicrous.
Maybe I should have said, “much more than half.” Overall it is very close to the halfway mark today.
I didn’t say NASA was blameless. I was disagree with the prevailing attitude that if NASA just had the “perfect plan” they would easily be able to get to Mars. That isn’t true.
Yes and just saying NASA does less with more is unfair to paint the entire agency with one brush – I’d argue, the unmanned science side (basically a separate agency) has done a ton with relatively less $/mission (at least since Golden’s better faster cheaper – updated to be good enough, faster and less expensive). The manned side on the other hand has been rudderless – which I think is due to the large required project size not having adequate resources, planning timeline vs political stability and lack of frequent development which is necessary to create a culture of lean mean experience designers and contractors. The unmanned side with frequent stably funded bite-sized projects is more conducive for this culture and experience base which in turn allows for much higher efficiencies – basically the one shot wonders vs continuous development/production analogy.
Well, of course, there are those (a vast majority of “the people who pay the bills”?) who don’t think the whole idea of spending trillions on this is so great anyway. And that includes lots of educated, scientifically-literate, space-buffs.
All dangers correctly considered, the real cost of ameliorating those dangers for any significant human mission will be so great that what’s the point? No benefit to just briefly wandering around like tourists when increasingly capable robots (rapidly increasingly capable) can get all the data without danger. Too many are just locked into this Star-Wars fantasy where everything is cool and easy in space. Diametrically wrong!
I don’t think it’ll take 600 years. But probably 100 until major tech breakthroughs improve propulsion and therefore load-carrying and safety and total cost. Or maybe the cost/safety trade-off will never become attractive. Too bad, not the end of the world.
Knowing exactly what these places are like is where the real thrill is, not paying through the nose to watch some jock stagger around for a few days.
SpaceX has the very specific intention to be on Mars before the end of the next decade – and not just for a boots and flag, but on-going and forever.
Many have doubted Musk and bet against him, but that is a bad bet so far.
NASA is not going to do it. They will contribute mightily on basic research and maybe ultimately direct cash, but I cannot see the government, no matter which party, ever making it happen with NASA.
SpaceX have had many successes. They have also had regular timeline slips. I would wager on them reaching Mars, but not by the end of the next decade.
SpaceX has a fairly standard 26 month delay. Fine, no problem. Musk is talking 2025 or 27, Shotwell 2029 or 31. If they are off by a couple of years – no prob. They have a goal, and they are building towards that goal. If it takes a few more years then they plan, AT LEAST THEY”RE GOING.
Absolutely. Space is not quite urgent, but it is very, very important, and we need to do it as soon as may be.
Maybe. There’s a lot of talk about going to Mars but no real discussion of how to pay for an on-going colony.
As things stand now, SpaceX could use profits from the launch business to support the Mars colony. But over time the monopoly enjoyed by SpaceX’ current low prices will come to an end as those pesky Europeans, et al, bring low-cost launchers to the table. And if Elon ever goes public the picture changes dramatically again.
From where we sit in the 20-teens, things look sweet. But the 2020s+? Not so much.
Bottom line: when other cheap launchers come to market, how will SpaceX support a Mars colony? and why?
Do read John S Lewis’s old but excellent book “Mining the Sky”. Life needs just three things to prosper: materials, energy (free energy G, in the chemical, thermodynamic sense), and room. Space has all of these things in enormous abundance. Lewis is a planetary chemist, and an expert on the practical details.
For sure. SPACE. The surface of Mars, not so much.
This is where the Chinese can help….
We are not paying through the nose for NASA — 0.5% of the federal budget. Even doubling that would help enormously; 2% would be a revolution, with out hurting anyone much at all.
Let’s try to get a (economically) self-sustaining colony on Mars by the end of the century. We are technically closer to being able to send humans to Mars than we were to being able to land on the moon in 1961, but there are indeed many details to work out to beat down the cost to make it economically viable. We don’t want an Apollo-style dead end.
I’m going to use a phrase I don’t really like. Numerous studies and reports have said there are serious problems with NASA’s “corporate culture.” It is not clear to me that doubling (or quadrupling) NASA’s budget would result in a doubling (or quadrupling) of the results. I think more funding is necessary for something as ambitious as sending people to Mars. But a large amount of NASA-internal changes are also needed for the additional funding to be used effectively.
No doubt there is room for criticism of NASA. But the technical core people are excellent, dedicated folks with the lifelong vision of taking homo sapiens off earth into the solar system, as soon as possible. Of course there are bureaucrats and deadwood, and people who just got tired and discouraged (like the rest of us, sometimes).
What NASA really needs, in my opinion, is a commitment from the nation — politicians and all — to a clear goal. I’d suggest getting us independent sustainable colonies somewhere off earth by the end of this century. (I’m not sure that is possible, but I think it would be a good goal even if we don’t quite make the deadline.)
If we did that, human life would be essentially immortal for thousands or millions of years, and I am in favor of that. (Of course I hope we can save as much of the rest of the biosphere as possible.)
But it is a huge project. It needs not only astronauts and aerospace engineers, but systems planners who can lay out a program a decade or two ahead, and then try to see that the critical elements — rockets, technology, information inputs — are there when we need them. and lay out viable alternatives when some things don’t pan out. There are, after all, lots of wonderful surprises and possibilities that pop up unexpectedly.
Anyhow, it needs to be clear about its overall aims, but flexible about details when there are still uncertainties. And of course it needs long-term, consistent support from the politicians and the people.
In my opinion (OWBSID) and experience, the support will be there if the vision is clearly explained and honestly laid out.
* “Often wrong but seldom in doubt”
What would a self-sustaining Mars colony look like? What would they sell exactly, and to whom, to pay for what they would need buy?
Great question. Probably the sci-fi writers have explored this better than I have.
Obviously it would need to produce, as much as possible, all its essential needs locally. But for a while it will need some imports. To finance those, it will have to generate value somehow that it can export.
What could that be? One thing is as a better place for a base to exploit the asteroids for extraterrestrial resources than Earth, being closer to the main belt, and needing only about 20% as much energy to escape from the surface into space.
Also, it has those two fantastic moons — 10 trillion metric tons for Phobos, 1 T tons for Deimos, that could be natural space ports and super space stations. Because of their deliciously low gravity, <0.001g, you can practically land and take off from them with ion or plasma thrust ships, no chemical rocket fuel needed at all. And yet their gravity is enough to keep most stuff from floating off, a problem for smaller bodies. Anybody could throw a baseball completely off them (given a flexible enough space suit) but stuff will mostly stay put.
They have plenty of mass to shield people against the HE galactic cosmic rays that are a problem for practically every 0g location except LEO. Also, with so little gravity, the entire 3D volume of them should be accessible to mining, making them equivalent to a much larger surface area on earth.
So I guess I see Mars as maybe a hub for further solar system exploration and transportation. Raw materials coming in from all over. Huge space ships built there, and in-space habitats to be relocated elsewhere.
One thing I think about lately that will be very different, is because the success of homo sapiens is (in my opinion) based on two key pillars: our intelligence obviously, but also our sociability. Other than bees, ants, and termites, we are possibly the most social animals in existence. There is almost no place on earth where a single human could survive long without some support.
This will probably be even more extreme in space. Cooperation will be more necessary than on earth, for individuals certainly, and probably also for communities. It will be interesting to see how that plays out socially. We need enough freedom to be able to breathe, but I think we will be even more dependent on others than we are here.
regarding the surface of Mars: how is that a better place to stage asteroid exploitation than, say, asteroids?
Wouldn’t we be better developing the centripetal devices needed for gravity and long-term space habitation than struggling with gravity wells?
I suppose it is likely to be inconvenient to turn asteroidal resources into finished products out in the Belt, at least until deep space settlements are routine. Solar energy is less abundant there, also.
No idea how this will play out in the longer run, but by that time Mars should be sufficiently developed not to be dependent on support from earth. I hope.
What does the earth export??
Nothing yet, it is self-contained (except for support of ISS, if you want to count that as exports). But a Mars colony will need imports for probably quite a while before it can be self-sufficient. So it will need to return value to earth to pay for itself. Balance of payments, etc.
Of course the obvious reason I asked my Question is I wonder what it would take if that was your planned goal from the get go. How much would it cost to make mars self sustaining for x amount of settlers.
We have already decided that we can’t expect resources from it, gravity well cost etc. so seems to me you have to pre plan to get Martians on their own as rapidly as possible. EARTH EXPORTS NOTHING. Martians shouldn’t have to either. Right?
I recall ISS was going to have a transhab where they practiced living on there own for the duration of a flag and boots mission. Well of course some congressman or senator made it illegal to do anything related to Mars so transhab was sold and ISS does less learning to live off earth on our own.
Anyway if Musk is to have any hope of making Mars work the goal/plan needs to be self sustaining. Not colony of earth.
Does my question make a little more sense now Mr. Squared 🙂
And I’m not talking absolutes of course
It’s like balance of payments issues on earth. Mars will need support from earth, so how does it pay for it, to keep earth willing to keep supporting? I think science and gee-whiz cosmic awe etc count as value from Mars to earth for a while, but eventually earth folks will probably want something more tangible, with a $ sign on it.
One possibility I see is satellite power, which is certainly big enough business to pay for the infrastructure needed if we can use extraterrestrial resources for the Si & metals to build the satellites, and thus save the launch costs. Humans on Mars & Phobos could help give us a step up for that. Since we can probably move massive materials around fairly cheaply from LEO to Phobos, round-trip with plasma or ion propulsion, and Phobos could be a cheap source of ice for LH2/LOX, these assets might help to get us started.
I think the long term value of indepeendent colonies off earth (Mars, Moon, asteroids, O’Neill habitats, etc) are valuable as insurance, for long term human viability against threats like WWIII, comet/asteroid impact, climate change (moving earth towards Venus…), disastrous epidemics, political catastrophe (al la 1984, etc) — so that should count as value returned as well.
Eventually we can beat the gravity cost of using the moon by building an elevator cable over Earth-Moon/L1, but I think we are likely to have people on Mars & its moons before we get to that.
But given the vast material and energy resources of the solar system, and human technical ingenuity re creating attractive habitats — I am counting on the engineers to make space habitation self-supporting in the long run, following John S Lewis’s arguments in “Mining the Sky”.
Obviously lots of details left to be filled in. (Massive hand waving is inevitable and appropriate here, I believe.) As animal life adapted to life on land after starting in the sea, I assume we will adapt to the space environment, technically (and likely biologically) in the longer term, until it seems perfectly natural and comfortable to us.
Long-term project…. 🙂
It may not be able to return value to earth therefore it must be self sufficient soonest!
Your question makes no sense whatsoever. The Earth doesn’t need to export anything because all its resources and users of those resources are here. Now take a minute and realize how your question sounds, especially when you consider that money will have to come from somewhere to support a Mars colony.
Yes money to support Mars must be minimized by making Martians as self sustainable as quickly as possible unlike we like we currently do on ISS.
Mars self sustainability was to be a big part of what we do on ISS, but it’s not?????
Is it still against the law for NASA to work on Mars issues???
Exactly how is a colony on Mars going to be economically sustainable?
I don’t know therefore It may not work. Moon first perhaps?
It’s not NASA’s fault their budget got drastically cut in the late 60’s. The money spigot isn’t going to get turned back on anytime soon.
Would a man/woman on mars really be all that exciting? I’d rather we go back to the moon, on one of the poles with an outpost that’s solar powered with new equipment, resupplies, and crew turnovers every few months.
What really drives me nuts is that we haven’t been out of LEO in over 40 years, hopefully at least that will change by 2030. And hopefully it’ll be done commercially.
I think that, basically, this illustrates just how much harder going to Mars is compared to going to the Moon, especially in an environment where there is not a ‘space race’ psychology to absorb complaints from various special interest groups about costs.
That’s pretty much it.
Nobody has answered the ‘why’ question very well.
Putting aside how or to where NASAs exploration charter takes shape, placing a major goal, drawing so much attention, so far away, makes for being quickly relegated to irrelevance by most people inside and outside the agency.
I’m reminded how many big thinkers, from foriegn policy to the environment to economics, all blame the eight year political cycle, or the lack of attention span of the public, and so on for an inability to carry out large scale, or long term plans. This reflects more the inability of many entrenched, inflexible organizations to adapt and to want to understand the realities of budgets, politics, public sentiment and technology advances, than any shortcomings in the world around us.
Why is it that the director of 2001 Seemed to have a better plan than nasa to settle the solar system?
Pan Am commercial affordable space flight first.
A gravity wheel for a useful Leo station
Reusable ferries to moon
Couldn’t NASA have given Government a decent plan that could have created a real foundation to go to Mars.
Just Jumping to Mars makes no sense now.
Sounds like just more bullshit
Where is the fuel depot plan to cram down the next administrations throat?
The man who was behind most of what we see in 2001 – Arthur C Clarke, was a founder member of the British Interplanetary Society. He and his colleagues had spent a long time thinking over how best to do space travel and a lot of it is reflected in his books and their film adaptations.
Those are all great things to “plan” to do. Indeed, many such plans have been made over the decades. The larger issue is (and always has been) FUNDING those plans.
Gotta disagree with you here, Yale. The money is certainly there and has been every year, wasted on ISS and SLS and STS and god knows what else.
The money is certainly there and has been every year, wasted on ISS and SLS and STS and god knows what else.
That it in a nut shell!!!
Had/have the resources but……….
… which reinforces the point that the money that is available has not been applied to the aforementioned plans.
Also, if your desire is to go to Mars, then you’d probably think that a circular rotating space station or trips to the Moon would also be a waste of money, etc.
I’m to the point where I almost don’t care what they decide to do, I’ll be happy if they pick something and stick with it, rather than cancel everything and pick something else every 8 years.
“Sound like more buillshit” can be applied to a number of statements.
At any rate, NASA’s job is, in part, to offer up decent plans that are achievable and affordable. Movies shouldn’t be confused with reality.
Now you tell me.
We gotta disagree about the moon, DTARS. I think we need to do some intensive robotic exploration of the poles to see if the ice there is really mine-able in practice (meaning space people and old-fashioned mining engineers figuring together) and then see if we can come up with a economically viable, end-to-end scheme to get that ice to LLO where we need it, cheaper than lugging it up from LEO.
Lunar science is not enough, and I don’t see anything else that is going to justify going back to the moon right away. Maybe when we are ready to build a lunar elevator cable to lift solar cells up for power-sats, but we’re not quite there yet.
Just out of curiosity, does anybody really want to LIVE on the moon? In the absence of important, useful work to do there, I mean. Nice place to visit, but…. (Don’t get me wrong, I love love luv the moon actually, but… 🙂 )
We don’t disagree about the moon. We go to the poles if it can be mined. People may not want to live on the moon but I’m sure there are a lot of people that would love to visit. We need to get on with figuring the fuel thing out.
Musk said that his Mar Colonial Trans should be able to fly to the moon as well. I’m hoping that’s right.
Since the abort test Musk has reminded us that Dragon V2 is designed to be a lander for most solid surfaces in the solar System.
“As the kids say #EpicFail” ?
@nasawatch says #fail and #epicfail plenty. From troublesome webcast feeds to conference media registration fees, #epicfail #epicfail!
http://thebestpageintheuniv…
NASA has many Epic Fails.
But it has an awful lot of “Epic Wins” as well!
Look I know NASA and the space program are not as good as they can be. There are issues within NASA and without that do need to be addressed.
That said lets not treat NASA as a punching bag and claim that all of the problems lie within NASA.
There are good things going on. Orion completed its first test flight successfully. The Dragon V2 pad abort was a success. Dawn is orbiting around Ceres. New Horizons is about to flyby Pluto. Commercial cargo is thriving. Deep Space Habitation module designs that may actually fly are being worked on. ISS is still up there.
Maybe its just because I grew up in the shuttle era rather than Apollo but I am excited that humans will soon be leaving LEO for the first since 1972. I am excited that we are building a massive lift vehicle (maybe 2 if SpaceX gets BFR to work). I am excited that to see Orion, Dragon V2, and CST-100 take shape. I am excited to see NASA partner with commercial companies. There is plenty to be excited about!
I think the ball was in Buzz Aldrin’s court last time this was discussed in-depth in Congress.
We as a nation were going to rally behind Buzz based on a plan defined by Purdue University. The plan is defined in an undergraduate senior design project that came out about a little more than a week ago.
http://buzzaldrin.com/aldri…
http://wbaa.org/post/purdue…
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
When I was 9, I looked up at the moon and smiled because there were two guys walking around up there. I assumed — ASSUMED — that by the time I turned 50, trips to Mars would be happening regularly and that I might even get to go. I really thought I might get to go.
When I was 10, Werner von Braun (in the famous Colliers series) estimated it would take us 100 years to get an expedition to the moon. This is not for me, or you; it is for the human species, and for Earth Life. Remember how long it took for life to crawl out of the ocean to make a living on that ghastly hot, dry land, where nobody could possibly live. (Hell, you can’t even swim there….) We can do it a lot quicker, if we just don’t meet disaster before we get over the hump. But there is no telling how long the window of opportunity may remain open, so we need to keep on it now.
How so? With the Saturn V cancelled, the budget cut, and “no (political) appetite for another large, expensive Apollo-like commitment”, how can you say it’s fundamental. Those all seem external to NASA and out of their control.
STS and ISS have consumed huge $$ with little to show; similarly a certain space telescope. One could say that the dollars have been there been squandered.
The difference is that a certain space telescope has yet to fly, and the real possibility exists that it will return results that justify its existence, if not its expense.
Surely you mean JWST, not HST? The latter seems to me to be the most important scientific instrument of all time.
JWST is a long slog (as was HST) that is likely to be very rewarding, IF there are no serious problems at L2, and if the instruments are not obsolete in 5 years.
We really need to be able to get out there and service it if necessary, a good job for SLS/Orion (? a month or so each way I think) except NASA seems to say it can’t be serviced. I’m pretty worried about all that.
No bucks, no Buck Rogers.
The reasons for going to the moon always was and always will be completely political. The USA went to the moon to prove our technical and military prowess to the USSR and the rest of the world.
The reason for not going back to the moon or going to Mars is also political and until it becomes a political/military necessity I don’t see us going.
The only reasons we are not going back to the moon or Mars is because the powers that be don’t want to–Period!
Until the those in charge make the decision to go to Moon/Mars, NASA will continue to be a rudderless ship and a USA jobs program with 11 field centers. (13 if you want to count JPL & Plumbrook)
The reason we don’t go to the moon is because there is no compelling reason to go to the moon. This is not complex.
Space cadets like me have lots of reasons that sound a lot like why we climb Mt. Everest. Other than that there’s just no reason.
Just copy what NAS report says about Mars mission:
“The committee concluded that although no single rationale, either practical or aspirational, seems to justify the value of pursuing human spaceflight, the aspirational rationales, when supplemented by practical benefits associated with the pragmatic rationales, argue for the continuation of a U.S. human spaceflight program, provided that the program adopts a stable and sustainable pathways approach.”
They are too polite to say it is worthless.
Your reading of that quote is strange. It simply says that there is no single reason that can justify a Mars goal, but is justifiable when all the reasons are combined and an affordable stable plan is executed
Please stop commenting my post. You prove nothing as always, just opinions.
A second opinion says you misinterpreted/misread the NAS statement.
If you don’t want your opinions challenged, don’t post them.
I am perfectly fine with challenges from people of reason, not trolls, including yourself.
And you are too opinionated to see otherwise. 🙂 But that is OK, I’m certainly opinionated too — for over 60 years, I guess. We need good critics to keep us fanatics from being completely nutty, but to be a really effective critic you need to engage in a more substantive way.
The fact is, Einstein, human life, even earth life, is critically endangered, as Stephen Hawking has pointed out and a number of books have described. Human spaceflight will probably not solve our problems here on the ground (though it may help quite a bit with some, like energy), But it is a fundamental characteristic of animal (& even plant) life that it seeks to explore and expand its range. You may think that is silly romanticism, but there are very good evolutionary reasons for that. Humans are not immune to that instinct, and again, for good reasons. Those reasons are still relevant, though we may ignorantly think we have conquered all their is.
So don’t think you can come here without push-back to your comments.
Just a wild guess based on the figures, but if this reflection is prompted by what I suspect, then happy 60th, Keith?
October ….
September young man
Doubt we’ll ever see a Mars landing. To much stuff to do in Leo Geo and the moon first. NEVER going to get there dumping Money into the NSLS
Nelson Shelby Launch System.
New name should credit the visionaries of our time.
Both of you are younger than Disneyland, which opened in July 1955.
I remember as a kid I loved the Flight to the Moon attraction, where you sat in a circle around two view screens, one below and one above. When you reached orbit the seats moved upwards a couple of inches to simulate going weightless.
In 1975 after the Moon landings they updated the attraction and renamed it Mission to Mars.
In 1992 they closed Mission to Mars.
The building now houses Redd Rockett’s Pizza Port
I guess I could make a wry comment comparing this with HSF but it seems self-explanatory
“Hmmm… maybe Bolden — and Obama — are being cannier than you credit
them with being.. There’s something to be said for lying low in times
of adversity…”
You missed Keith’s point. NASA has been “lying low” for decades and Mars is just as far away now as it was in 1969 when we landed on the moon. Perhaps farther. Certainly congress and Presidents of both parties deserve some of the blame for constantly kicking the can down the road, but it is frustrating that Bolden completely misses how awful he sounds. “Epic Fail” is an accurate description and not an exageration.
Exactly.
Mars is NOT as far away as it was in 1969; it is definitely, (precisely!) 46 years closer. And we have made tremendous and necessary progress. In 1969, we thought Mars was as hostile as the moon. We knew almost nothing about any other plant — a little about Mars, Venus was hot!, not much beyond that. Now we know a lot about them all: eight planets, six huge moons beyond ours, two huge asteroids. And our technology is much better.
Go to https://www.innocentive.com…, register (no commitment) and look up the references (100 MB, about 1000 pages) of work done since 2008 on getting us to Mars.) Then say nothing useful has been done.
Of course we know much more and have made great progress in technology and unmanned exploration. The problem is mankind has not left low earth orbit since 1972. The problems with Orion are well documented. I believe we will eventually progress, but it might not be with the United States. Elon Musk and the Chinese seem to be the only interested parties in expanding manned exploration.
I agree we have made serious mistakes, and I would have done much differently. Not the space shuttle, for starters. Used the Apollo system for ten or twenty years, and built on it before throwing it away. And built up a robust rotating space station for learning everything possible about living and working in the space environment decades ago. But democracy is after all, “the worst of all political systems (except for all the others)”, and we gotta live with it.
I wish they had listened to you.
I thought Elon was from the United States? Or has he started his own country here on earth already?
Musk was born in South Africa.
LOL, yes he is from the United States, one of many reasons I hope he succeeds. It just seems that Keith’s original point is that the government and NASA are drifting with Mars always 20 years in the future seems to be very accurate.
#IfTheyBuildItThenWeWillGo
Our unofficial motto at Space Station Freedom was “if you build it they will come”. Well … I am not sure if that has happened after 25 years.
Yes that is a reference from the movie called “A Field of Dreams”. That story is where magical baseball players emerge out of a mystical field of corn to play ball.
This new unofficial motto is from an adjacent story called “A Landfill of Dreams”. This is where mortal humans make a life long journey (like salmon going up a river) to deliver their ideas for Mars via presentations, graphical animations and 3-D models using software that changes every two months.
If then ….
We have been treading water on manned space exploration since the last human left low earth orbit – I believe in 1973.
1972. But we have made huge progress in the interim; we are all just (understandably) impatient.
Thanks for the correction.
I agree we have made huge progress in unmanned exploration. We just have not made great progress – or in my opinion any progress at all – in manned exploration. The ISS is what John Glenn feared – spam in a can. When I was in 10th grade we landed on the moon and proceeded to play golf and drive vehicles on it. I am now 62 and there is no firm date or even good plans for leaving low earth orbit. Mars is the same 20 years away that it has always been.
The goal does not have to be Mars, but I would like to go further than where we were in 1972 in my lifetime. This seems like a con game that is being played by both parties and NASA. The problem in not getting higher than LEO since 1972 is not my impatience.
A science fiction author, born somewhere around 1940, if memory serves, once noted than he had always expected to live long enough to see men walk on the moon, but that it never occurred to him that he might live.to see the last man to walk on the moon.
Keith misses the point – was NASA a better, more visionary agency in the 1960’s? Perhaps von Braun was, maybe a few others but overall, it was just a fledgling technical bureaucracy – most of whose employees were not more visionary than when run by Admn. Glennan under Eisenhower (who never saw the point of human spaceflight). With the solid support of two President’s in a row, (and with the moon goal sanctified by his martyrdom) and years of solid Congressional support in the middle of a Cold War where space de facto became a battleground, NASA did the moon landings. This combines to be a once in several lifetimes confluence of events – be glad you got to experience them! Now let’s just hope ISS research finds a cure for this aging disorder so we can stick around for the next one – and I want to see a better return or Halley’s Comet too! (Oh, oh – now he’s gonna go after CASIS!)
SInce you mentioned CASIS – they are part of the problem, not the solution, for tapping the amazing potential of the ISS.
Ok You took the bait! Actually, their biggest problem is NASA picked a proposal from a team started from scratch. They should have picked a Battelle, or a Cal Berkley (Livermore Labs). With a short ISS lifetime, I don’t know why they wanted to have such a newbie effort.
You did not bait me. But I agree with your second post. NASA could have picked a group that actually knew what they were doing – including assembling a team of qualified individuals. But they decided to make a political decision and give it to Florida instead.
However CASIS has been running things for almost four years now so I’m not sure how much longer we can excuse them for being new at this.
Alas, yes.
Even though human Mars mission makes little scientific sense, it doesn’t mean humans can’t do it. In fact, the reason we landed on the moon and inspired a lot in the 60’s is that it was a sporting event, and a very expensive one. So we should be honest and call human space flight what it is: a sport. Just consider this fact: it takes roughly $100M to enter America’s Cup (with a good chance of loosing), a few billion dollar price tag to be the first to land humans on Mars might just be cheap for many billionaires. Therefore, instead of asking people to pay up taxes so that NASA can do the job, it might be better for NASA or some reputable international sporting organizations to start a competition. Many of you should be please to see a human coming back from Mars in your life time.
I’m not sure you can really call an international dick-wagging contest with undertones of nuclear annihilation a “sport.”
LOL, before women are allowed in international sports competitions every sport involves dicks. Further the reason competitive sports are created as a less violent alternative to war, nuclear annihilation or else.
Both the Soviet Union and the United States considered achievements in space a means of demonstrating military superiority, using hardware that in other configurations could have been used to destroy cities. Not quite the same thing as playing hockey against each other.
Not sure exactly what your point is, that winning the space race had no impact? We watched as the competing system later collapsed and dissolved. To what extent winning the space race contributed to this eventuality is hard to say. But I think we can say that beating the USSR in hockey probably had nothing to do with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
“going to the moon had, IMO, unintended consequence that may have in the long run actually stunted Human Space Exploration”
I agree. I fully understand the decision to commit to a Moon landing and Kennedy’s reason for doing so. However if we look only at long term strategy it was too much too soon. That is one of my big concerns about the rush to send humans to Mars without first developing more efficient and cost effective methods.
Good points, and I wonder too, but NASA actually has done quite a lot since 1969, and I wonder if even that might have never come to pass without Apollo to catch our attention. Anyway, I hope we are all agreed that a steady effort to achieve a sustainable human presence off the earth is far preferable to any one-off, boots and flags deal. That is the thing that “been there, done that” really means.
No plan is unsurprising, figuring out why is not ‘rocket science’. All politicos have sticker shock for even a one-shot boots and flag using the NASA baseline, polling shows not enough people care even for that. (good for them, what a waste that would be). Interim destinations imply that at some point we’ll go all the way, which none want for the reasons above. Zubrin’s plan is considered a death sentence. Those in the know or with a naive sense that govt should care about the long term want ‘settlement’, but no govt is going to pay for that. How far can Mr. Musk go when his organization must cover all costs? Hopefully, we’ll get to see.
While I wondered the same thing about Musk and the costs, your assertion that “Zubrin’s plan is considered a death sentence” caught my eye. What do you mean?
He has aligned with Mars One,
http://www.mars-one.com/abo…
The younger generation won’t understand the fury of the older generation. I don’t think this helps.
Most of us old enough to witness the moon landings lived during a time of plenty. America had recently won the world war. We had defended the world. In our minds We were good guys. There was nothing e couldn’t do.Young people of the sixties were taught about the promise of the future. That future was billed to happen by the end of the century. For many space fans the movie 2001 fore told that possible future. I would guess that many readers here of my age were very influenced by that movie. It was more than a movie. It was our future. And a very technically possible future.
I guess that explains our fury. To learn that tons of money is being wasted on an giant expendable rocket drives me crazy. The next future is about to be dumped in the ocean.
Keep the faith, DTARS! I’d seen 2001 16 times (when I lost count). This is a BIG DEAL. It is hard, but it is very very much worth doing. Remember that lungfish, slobbering out of the brine. looking for another pool within reach. He made it, we will too — unless we stop working, or meet disaster along the way.
I wouldn’t be so sure. I’ve seen some very unhappy (but perhaps not furious) statements along these lines, from graduate students whose _parents_ may not have been alive when the last man walked on the moon.
We can imitate the fury, but will not genuinely feel it. I can (and have) write furious essays about the state of NASA, but it wouldn’t be personal. Because so what if people most likely borned one or two decades before our parents are mad, we grew up in a time where we never knew a NASA with HSF/beyond LEO capabilities. We care about the PATRIOT Act more, because we grew up in a time of social media. Our hero is Edward Snowden and Mark Zuckerberg, not Neil Armstrong and Alan Shepard.
Either those graduate students have young parents or the graduate students are young graduates. My parents are borned just before Apollo 17 yet could not care less.
I am sorry to say these guys are living in the past. For our generation, after witnessing great discoveries from Hubble, WMAP and other great NASA robotic missions, the cosmic horizon is far broader for us and the scientific questions presented to us are far more profound than these guys could imagine in the 60s and 70s. Unmanned rovers and probes have given us unprecedented views of other solar system planets and are collecting data of other “solar systems” that will ultimately solve the mystery of the formation of the solar system and better understanding of our existence. There are very few scientific questions that can’t be addressed with robotic probes but can be answered by sending human astronauts. Advances in robotic technology/artificial intelligence not only make human astronauts unnecessary, it will soon render human drivers and airplane pilots things of the past. As to the suggestion that we might someday need to migrate to other planets to survive human damage to the earth, all I can say is people who say this are delusional. No matter how hard humans can pollute the earth, it will still be the best planet for humans (as we are genetically defined) to live. I can’t rule out that someday humans may take evolution into their own hands and genetically engineering super off-springs that can survive tens of thousands of years of space travel to other worlds, but I will be happy to wait another 2000 years before the question been addressed.
Its pretty ludicrous to think NASA could be talking about a manned Mars mission in the foreseeable future, not if its done through NASA leadership and NASA methods. Bolden spouts a lot of hype with no substance to back it. First, the Orion capsule they are spending tens on billions $$ on is not designed for a Mars mission return and would need a significant tens of billions $$ redesign. An Orion is only useful, however, if your intent is to throw away the remainder of your Mars spacecraft. The Mars spacecraft will need to be similar in mass and complexity to ISS, so figure a $ 160 billion spacecraft, which apparently you will throw away after nmo more than a couple year’s use. Not gonna happen. Then look at the systems that are required, none of which are in development: radiation protection, particularly against insidious cosmic rays; until we solve that problem, which we’ve not yet even started on, the astronauts come back with brains that look like swiss cheese. You’ll also need advanced propulsion to reduce flight time to less than 6 months; critical life support systems that are assured to function for a year or longer-systems now being testing on ISS have not yet proven this durable. Most of these systems are not in development and there is not even funding to begin to consider establishing a development program. In the meantime the best we can do is the gras dual extension of existing ISS capabilities.
People on Mars-at best perhaps by the end of the century if we get focused on it today, and so far no money is supporting such an effort with taxpayer dollars.
If he can develop the advanced propulsion systems and a spaceship far larger and more complex than Dragon, Mr. Musk might be able to conduct a mission at a cost that is only in the tens of billions$$ and perhaps he could be ready within his lifetime, in another forty years.
“radiation protection, particularly against insidious cosmic rays; until we solve that problem, which we’ve not yet even started on, the astronauts come back with brains that look like swiss cheese”
Now that’s a statement I have to complain about, mostly because I know enough about the subject and know it’s a cynical funding ploy. The problem is getting the radiation dose down to the OSHA career limits for astronauts. That’s set at a dose likely to produce a small increase in the risk of developing cancer later in life, not “brains that look like swiss cheese”
The experts who make a big deal about this problem, and the need to study it, just happen to be the same people who immediately follow up their statements by pointing out that this means they should get lots of big government contracts and grants. I have serious doubts about their impartiality on the subject.
There is reason for concern:
http://news.sciencemag.org/…
Alas, dismissing such claims based on the supposition that researchers have some ulterior agenda is a common political tactic, one that lacks facts.
Thanks for pointing out that study, and I think it is quite valuable. But I have to disagree with you for several reasons.
First, I was objecting to an absolute statement. That radiation would (not could) be an extreme problem. The article you pointed out says that a new study “suggests” that there “could” be a significant problem. I am in complete agreement with the latest statement,but strongly disagree with the former.
Second, I’ve been on enough NASA proposal review panels to know that almost everyone asking for funding exaggerates the impact work has, to some degree. There is nothing wrong with saying these statements need to be taken with a grain of salt.
Third, space plasma physics is what I do for a living. So I think I can make an informed, factual judgments on the subject. The study you pointed out is, in my opinion, exactly the right approach. A better understanding of the radiation issue is critical, since the risks are uncertain and a mission would have to be designed to the worst case estimate. Reducing the uncertainty reduces the design requirements. Given that, understanding the medical effects of high energy heavy ions (the study you pointed to) is highly valuable. This is the main uncertainty involved. Better measurements of the flux of these ions is not such a big deal, since that has been measured, at length and fair accuracy. I was thinking of people who use the radiation issue to justify additional studies of this, when I said I had concerns about impartiality. In my oppinion, the fact just do not support that.
The mouse studies I am familiar with utilized a much shorter exposure but much higher exposure rate than one would experience from GCR exposure in actual spaceflight. It’s not clear if this might have been a factor, but the effects of a realistic exposure rate remain to be evaluated. Nevertheless I am in favor of improving propulsion (possibly through high power electric propulsion) to reduce travel time. Exposure rate on the surface of Mars is similar to that on the ISS, so is fairly well documented.
There is reason for concern, but not for despair. HE cosmic rays are pretty much unstoppable without impossibly massive shields in the near term, but effective shielding on Mars and Phobos for the long term is practical. And the doses in transit are not a show stopper, considering the other inevitable risks in the early missions.
We will want to move massive cargo with slower robotic, solar or nuclear electric vessels, and likely move crews with smaller, faster ships.
Neither OSHA nor NRC regulates cosmic rays since they are not a problem on earth. They are a nuisance at the ISS altitude and become more of a long term health concern at a Hubble altitude. They are definitely a concern when it comes to flight between earth and moon or earth and other planets. The problem may be solvable, probably with an electromagnetic radiation shield instead of a mass shield, however so far we have not even started to test any options.
NASA has standards for radiation exposure that are different from OSHA’s but can under some circumstances be more stringent. They are based on keeping any increased risk of cancer below a specified criterion.
Every day, brother, every day.
Yet the physics and even economic (read J. S. Lewis’s “Mining the Sky”, he’s a genuine expert) arguments for going are quite strong.
We just need to work out the details of the most cost-effective ways to get us there. Keep on slogging….