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Exploration

Yet Another NASA Mars "Plan" Without A Plan – or a Budget

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
October 8, 2015
Filed under ,
Yet Another NASA Mars "Plan" Without A Plan – or a Budget

NASA Releases Plan Outlining Next Steps in the Journey to Mars
“NASA is leading our nation and the world on a journey to Mars, and Thursday the agency released a detailed outline of that plan in its report, “NASA’s Journey to Mars: Pioneering Next Steps in Space Exploration.” “NASA is closer to sending American astronauts to Mars than at any point in our history,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. “Today, we are publishing additional details about our journey to Mars plan and how we are aligning all of our work in support of this goal. In the coming weeks, I look forward to continuing to discuss the details of our plan with members of Congress, as well as our commercial and our international and partners, many of whom will be attending the International Astronautical Congress next week.”
Keith’s note: This is just pathetic. There is no “plan” in this “plan”. Its a description of a bunch of things what NASA says it needs to do but there is no budget, firm timeline, architecture, or overarching mission goals. This is just another PDF file with pretty pictures and a unorganized shopping list of ideas. This is not how you prepare for a “Journey to Mars” or a journey anywhere else for that matter. And how does this “plan” integrate with NASA’s recently issued Strategic Plan? Wouldn’t you think that they’d be intimately integrated?
NASA’s Strategic Plan Isn’t Strategic – or a Plan, earlier post
“This thing reads like an annual report – there is no “plan” in this strategic plan. The authors are utterly confused as to what a “goal”, “objective”, and “strategy” are and confusingly use the terms interchangeably. It is almost as if they say “it is important that we do what we are doing because we are already doing it”.

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

47 responses to “Yet Another NASA Mars "Plan" Without A Plan – or a Budget”

  1. DTARS says:
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    Rumor has it SpaceX will be releasing a real Mars Plan Shortly.

    Wouldn’t that put NASA in a position to support it?

    NACA

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/

    Elon Musk has called for the doubling of NASA budget.
    http://www.examiner.com/art

    Maybe, NASA can find a way to dump SLS Orion and follow the man with the plan.

    With a few more years of SpaceX success, Musk maybe be able to get more money for NASA to help him.

    • AstroInMI says:
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      SpaceX’s plan will be no more of a plan if it doesn’t have a budget either. Honestly, I don’t see how SpaceX will have the billions to reach Mars on their own and I don’t see NASA picking up the tab (yet). Where will that come from?

      • DTARS says:
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        When you go to a bank to borrow money first, you have to have a creditable plan.

        Has nasa ever had a creditable plan?

        They sure don’t have one now?

        Their moon mission Apollo on steroids was a dumb plan.

        Having a plan that doesn’t first reduce the cost of launch to LEO is crazy.
        Wouldn’t NASA have more support from the people if they had made spaceflight affordable when they built shuttle.
        That was the promise.
        Isn’t that when NASA lost credibility?

      • DTARS says:
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        The advantage SpaceX has is they don’t have to change their plan each 4 or 8 years. Doesn’t that make it more creditable?

        • AstroInMI says:
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          But they have no plan. Where is the schedule and budget? To use your example below, if I go to the bank to borrow money, I’m pretty sure you have to give the bank a figure not just say I want all your money. (There’s another term for that! 😉

          I do agree that SpaceX not having to be led by the whims of politicians is an advantage.

          • DTARS says:
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            They have no plan (released) yet

          • Mark Friedenbach says:
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            Private industry tends not to wear their plans on their sleeves. What’s Apple’s plan for the 2020’s? Google’s? I assure you they do have plans, even if they are mum or abstract about them in public.

          • Michael Spencer says:
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            You are right, to a point. The difference of course is that it’s OUR NASA, and to that extent the public helps to shape direction.

          • fcrary says:
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            I’m not sure that’s how I would put it. Maybe “to that extent the public _should_help_ to shape direction” and the fact that they do not is a problem. Or, perhaps, you are exactly right, the public does shape the direction of space policy, and that’s the problem. I’m not sure which possibility is more cynical and depressing.

          • Mark Friedenbach says:
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            I was replying to a comment about SpaceX “not having a plan.”

          • AstroInMI says:
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            Well, OK. That’s a good point.

      • Zed_WEASEL says:
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        Well SpaceX is not the only thing that Musk have to play with. There is also Tesla Motors, Tesla Energy & Solar CIty. These companies will contribute technology & some cash for a Mars venture. Plus Musk’s Paypal Mafia pals.

        Even SpaceX is more than a launch provider in the future. If the SpaceX’s LEO internet backbone satellite constellation (aka CommX) became real, they will have more then enough money to fund their Mars venture. Besides they need a planetary communications network for Mars anyway.

        We should get some sort of update from SpaceX about their future plans soon. According to the Nasaspaceflight forum chatter.

        Hopefully NASA & the US government will have no say in a possible SpaceX Mars plan.

        • AstroInMI says:
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          “They will have more than enough money to fund their Mars venture.” How much do you think they will need?

    • LPHartswick says:
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      First let see them launch people to orbit and return them safely once or twice before we talk about letting them run a Mars exploration program. Anyway, none of those weenies in Washington is willing to appropriate the kind of consistent budget that it would take. Until they do the only one taking us to Mars will be Ridley Scott.

      • DTARS says:
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        I have finally solved the mystery.
        It is a beard not a beak!
        It is a mouth not eye pupils
        It is a mustache not eyes
        It is eyes and eyebrows not just eyebrows.

        All this time I have looked at your picture and wondered why someone would have a picture of a cartoon character that was some relative of of Heckle and Jeckle.

        Finally see the wise old man

    • TheBrett says:
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      Calling for a NASA-specific budget increase isn’t going to happen. What Musk ought to do is lean hard on one of the main Presidential candidates to include a “promoting American science and technology” plan that includes a major boost in funding to all the major science agencies (including NASA).

      I could totally see someone getting that into Clinton’s policy platform and the later Democratic platform with the right influence.

      • DTARS says:
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        May need to consider Bernie Sanders platform, the middle class/poor are getting hungry. Many republicans have had bad trade deals send their jobs over seas and they can’t afford to educate their kids anymore either. Hillary doesn’t seem to promise change.

        Maybe the Koch Brothers will build a giant Space wheel in LEO
        or SpaceX can talk them and the .5 percent Super Rich to go freeze their asses off on Mars.

        82 billion dollar Brothers buys our country?

        https://www.google.com/sear

        https://youtu.be/B5tAT6ciJ4s

        • TheBrett says:
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          Clinton seems more likely to me, although Sanders would be a possibility in the whole “promote all the sciences” form. The Republican side will probably talk up space travel but not fund any extra money for it.

      • Vladislaw says:
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        Push space transportation through the dept of transportation . .there budget is 300bil

  2. MattW2 says:
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    It seems aimless and disorganized because you’re looking at it all wrong. Mars isn’t a place. It’s a feeling. And it’s a color. Now you know, and “Journey to Mars” makes much more sense.

    Q: “What do you think of this 3-D render of the new space suit we’ll never build?”
    A: “That’s very Mars.”

    Q: “Should we paint the SLS first stage or leave it orange?”
    A: “Ooh. Orange is much more Mars!”

  3. numbers_guy101 says:
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    Oh geez…I didn’t think it would be this bad when it came out…figured the thing would be shorter and avoid calling itself a plan. This became more a “things happening and random thoughts”.

  4. AstroInMI says:
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    I’m not sure I’d go so far as to call it pathetic, but I agree it’s not a plan. A plan requires a schedule with an associated budget. At best, this is a notional concept.

    • DTARS says:
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      Does it???
      About September 20th 2011
      SpaceX presented their plan for affordable spaceflight. Did they have a schedule and a budget??

      Didn’t they just have a goal, an idea of what they were trying to do?
      I remember how exciting it was to see someone being bold and innovative.

      Four years ago 🙂
      https://youtu.be/sSF81yjVbJE

      Maybe before Christmas we will get to see the plan of the raptor MCT

      The next step.

      • AstroInMI says:
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        Really? And that’s different that the NASA PR videos or the #JourneyToMars plan how? You are right, it has been four years and there’s not a single thing in that video that is operational (except for the Falcon 9 that’s currently in dry dock because it blew up).

        I like SpaceX just as much as the next person, but I am getting really, really tired of people talking about SpaceX like it’s some super company that will somehow go to Mars on a shoestring and all their stuff just works because Elon Musk is Tony Stark in disguise. He can go on all the talk shows he wants, diss Apple, and run his employees to the ground, but SpaceX is a long, long, long way from a human trip Mars. How about SpaceX just get someone in space first. That will be a big enough accomplishment on its own.

  5. Littrow says:
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    Not a plan. More like an advertisement of a concept. They tried to include some of the right words, but what they have of the system, Orion , doesn’t fit with reusability,maintainability, extensibility…ity or cost effectivness.

  6. Littrow says:
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    I wonder why they felt it necessary to publish this now and just how quickly did they throw this together? This is the kind of thing that really makes NASA look bad, really incompetent.

    • TheBrett says:
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      They’ve been beating the #JourneyToMars message hard in the wake of The Martian. Maybe they felt obligated to release something.

  7. DTARS says:
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    My names George, not Charlie 🙂

  8. EtOH says:
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    And now, we are designing our next vehicle around the same system, but now expendable. And with a lower flight rate.

  9. TheBrett says:
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    It’s a pile-up of basically everything everyone wants to do inside NASA, all lumped together under “getting us to Mars”. I suppose at least they go to the trouble of trying to explain why it’s all necessary, though.

    It’s all meaningless anyways unless SLS gets more money for flights. When all you’ve got funding for are two flights around the Moon (one empty, one hopefully crewed), what can you do?

    You know, that’s making me more sympathetic to the Moon-First folks, although I don’t think NASA or anyone else is going to plunk down a ton of money on lunar infrastructure for spacecraft or fuel production (barring a Moon Base becoming the New Big International Mission after ISS). But at least it’s something that might be done with commercial hardware at a more reasonable price and launch schedule.

  10. TheBrett says:
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    You know what’s even more unfortunate timing? The uncrewed lunar trajectory of the EM-1 mission is scheduled for 2018 – the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 8 mission. I’d love to see some of the comparisons in the press on that one. *Sigh*

  11. AndrewW says:
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    “Think of it as Your Government In Action.”

    Why are so many blind to the long track record that Government top down central control doesn’t work that well, especially after there have been so many examples of it failing in so many areas?
    🙁

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      Probably because there are so many areas in which governmental activity is successful.

      • AndrewW says:
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        Such as?

      • AndrewW says:
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        When you say “successful” do you mean they “completed the task”, much as I would say “I successfully walk down and collected the newspaper this morning” or do you mean “the government out performed another organization in fair competition and beat it”? If the latter, could you give examples in which the competition wasn’t another government?

      • fcrary says:
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        You need to be more careful, or more specific, about that. Governments are good at certain things, at least in theory. wars, foreign policy, infrastructure, basic research (the sort with no immediately obvious profits), etc. In practice, they aren’t all that good at those things, but probably less bad than the private sector. (For example, starting wars is, historically, something private citizens mess up even worse than governments.)

        But governments are very bad at other things. Say, things involving efficiency, cost-to-benifit ratios, or simply getting things done when there isn’t an immediate crisis.

        When it comes to spaceflight, you shouldn’t expect NASA to start an asteroid mining operation. That’s not the sort of thing governments are good at. You should expect NASA to provide good advice on how to get to your asteroid mine. (Is a Kaufman or Hall-effect thruster a better choice for electric propulsion? Do you want 1 or 1.5 kV on the grids?)

        • Michael Spencer says:
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          Just as I pressed ‘enter’ I figured someone, probably Andrew, would jump me. And rightly so.

          I don’t know about the entire breadth of the USG. I know a little about space. And I know quite a bit more about how university extension works, but offering it as an example is dicey because it’s not widely known. However, in my business access to university research- particularly vigorous in my field here in Florida- is essential. And the work is excellent.

          It’s the state government, in this case, that provides liaison between research and the public, and they are very good at it. More: ask anybody in agriculture how they get great research results and advice. All governmental efforts.

          • AndrewW says:
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            “Just as I pressed ‘enter’ I figured someone, probably Andrew, would jump me. And rightly so.”

            “More: ask anybody in agriculture how they get great research results and advice. All governmental efforts.”

            Wow, what an example to fire at me.

            I’ve spent the last 30 years dairy farming here (New Zealand).

            Negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership have recently been concluded, for NZ the biggest problem has been negotiating access for agriculture in the protected markets of Japan, Canada, and the US, to us farmers in those three countries are slurping at the public trough, subsidized by, and protected from the international market place by their governments.

            Government research can be interesting and useful to farmers, but do I think it’s efficient? Nope. It doesn’t compare to the efficiency of commercial service providers who have to stay focused on producing the goods and services that they can find markets for, Government research isn’t as focused on produces results that are economically useful.

            But having said that, it’s certainly true that there is an argument for “pure research” that isn’t targeting knowledge that has the goal of economic benefits – science for sciences sake. Something that governments can do better than the markets, because there’s no market for that research. Obviously NASA is an example of an agency that performs such research.

          • duheagle says:
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            Nice try. The government does sponsor a lot of Ag research, but hardly all. One of my college roommates 45 years ago was an Ag Engineering grad student working under a grant his thesis prof had wangled from a major farming corporation. These sorts of deals were fairly common then and much more so now.

            In the larger picture, the Ag extension service is really a moldy holdover from the 19th century. At that point the nation’s farmers were over half the population and many were the American equivalent of the illiterate peasants who dominated subsistence agriculture in other parts of the world. At that point, getting together some genuine experts to do Ag research and spread the results around to the legions of bib-overalled rustics following mule-drawn plows around made good sense.

            But it’s now the 21st century. Only a percent or so of the workforce is engaged in agriculture and the small family farm is – largely thanks to the inheritance tax – pretty much gone. What are left are large family farms and out-and-out corporate agribusinesses. Why, exactly, in this day and age, do these people need the government to do their R&D for them? And don’t get me started on commodity price supports, the ethanol subsidy and all the other farming-related special-interest market distortions the government provides to the Ag sector. It’s crony capitalism all the way down.

  12. Bernardo de la Paz says:
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    Why does it matter? Even if it was a good plan, it will become irrelevant in a year when the current DC crowd gets replaced, especially since there doesn’t seem to be any indication that any of the likely replacements will follow any NASA policy leftovers from the current team.

  13. Neal Aldin says:
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    What they have described is a flags and footprints mission in quest for the holy grail, life.
    First, flags and footprints will get us nowhere.
    Second, we better not conclude there is no life on Mars anytime soon, because if we do,there is no reason for a mission.
    Third, the amount of money being spent and the slow and unreliable schedule to date on Orion show that we will never get there from here. By the time we are ready to send Orion anywhere, the technology will be obsolete and we can start over.

    The real danger is we are now on a schedule that says, even if we keep ISS flying until 2028, we have nothing to replace it with in human space flight and the HSF program will be over.

    You know, in Houston they wrecked much of the human space flight capability trying to build this engorged operations organization. They also made an ISS program office which is much too large. They did it on the back of engineering and the sciences, which was what was needed for new development work, and also would have given them a handle on how to lay out a plan-which it is clearly shown here they do not have. With no more than 2 or 3 Americans flying in space a year for the foreseeable future, why do they continue to maintain this unbalanced organization? What do all of the NASA people do all day? Are they practicing for fictional Mars missions? Why haven’t they reformulated the development organizations?

  14. Daniel Woodard says:
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    It is not clear to me how the plan provides affordability consistent with a relatively stable NASA budget. Cost reduction is not included as a strategy. All launches are assumed to be based on SLS. In my view reduction in launch cost, improvements in LEO infrastructure, and development of AI for exploration robotics might take precedence. I feel when humans do go BEO that a sustainable lunar base would be the first logical step.

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      My thinking as well. Plans with a dozen or more SLS launches seem far fetched at best.

      A decade or so from now all of this effort to build the world’s priciest rocket will be regarded as a boondoggle. You heard it here first 🙂