Update on NASA's #JourneyToNowhere
Space experts warn Congress that NASA’s “Journey to Mars” is illusory, Ars Technica
“Another panelist, Tom Young, the former director of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and former president and chief operating officer of the Martin Marietta Corporation, agreed that NASA does not currently have a clear pathway to Mars. “What we do not have is a plan, strategy, or architecture with sufficient detail that takes us from today to humans on the surface of Mars,” he said. Young said he favored continuing with a mission to Mars but that following such a course required hard choices and narrowing NASA’s focus. The agency cannot both have a flourishing program in low Earth orbit with the International Space Station while also trying to mount a Mars exploration program, he argued. Agency officials have said they are not ready to talk in detail about Mars plans because they are evolving.”
Congress asks: Can NASA really get astronauts to Mars?, Christian Science Monitor
“We pretend that we are on a ‘#JourneytoMars,’ but in fact, possess neither the technology nor the economic resources necessary to undertake a human Mars mission now or within the foreseeable future,” testified Paul Spudis, senior scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute, a Texas-based space research institution.”
The Moon or Mars? NASA Must Pick 1 Goal for Astronauts, Experts Tell Congress, Space.com
“[Tom] Young spoke about the desire to have fewer “tombstones” for cancelled projects and more “memorials” to successful ones. He reiterated the thesis of his opening remarks, that what NASA needs more than anything is a concrete plan for how it should proceed. “I am personally passionate about humans going to Mars, but I’m equally passionate about a good, disciplined plan that is not frivolous,” he said. “A plan that does what is required, but also doesn’t just do what’s possible.”
Many politicians are unhappy with what they see as NASA’s disregard for concrete details and deadlines, Inverse
“The committee seemed most irritated about how the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) NASA’s plan to send a robotic spacecraft to a near-Earth asteroid, pick up a giant boulder, and bring it to lunar orbit for a crew to study fits into the overall Mars objective. .. [ARM] is a misguided mission without a mission, without a launch date, and without ties to exploration goals,” said Representative Lamar Smith from Texas. “It’s just a time-wasting distraction.”
– ASAP: NASA Has No Plan or Firm Funding For Its #JourneyToMars
– Kicking The Can Down the Road to Mars, earlier post
– NASA Begins Its Journey To Nowhere, earlier post
– Yet Another NASA Mars “Plan” Without A Plan – or a Budget, earlier post
– NASA’s Strategic Plan Isn’t Strategic – or a Plan, earlier post
– Charlie Bolden’s Meandering Strategic Plans, earlier post
Its been an illusion for over 40 years and they are just now figuring it out?
NASA lost any practical and affordable chance to send humans to Mars when the NERVA program was shut down in 1973,
And when we stopped launching nuclear reactors after SNAP-6
Your point being that interplanetary travel using traditional rockets isn’t feasible?
Not crewed missions. Radiation exposure risks alone will keep NASA fom sending anyone.
Here I think the Moon first option would allow experience to be gained with actual exposures and physiologic effects on a more incremental basis. The expected exposure during a mission to Mars is about one Sievert, a significant risk but not out of the range of the other risks crewmen on this mission will face.
That said, nuclear electric propulsion could permit a faster travel time, which would reduce exposure.
Recall the Space Health Grand Challenge:
“Eliminate or mitigate the effects of the space environments on human physical and behavioral health…” It does not say “ignore the issue and go to the moon for 28 day missions.”
All the technology budgets were *raided*. NASA is left with a decades old LV + a terrible architecture– all to shift shift budget to the ‘base’. The trip time is reduced by prepositioned supplies via L2-to-Mars reuseable tugs, (3 month trips with Mars DRM approach is impossible) abandoned for 3 day lunar trips.
A variable gravity facility provides vast amounts of data and increases the flight rate at significantly less cost than 6 day lunar sorties.
ISRU of asteroids has significantly more ROI potential than lunar. To Mars is at least 4 times the mass than to lunar, so IPs can play an important role; flight rate should reduce their ‘commercial’ costs too.
That’s why one starts with the L2 Gateway voyager to demonstrate that hardware and crew can survive the long trips; determine how to land heavy objects on Mars that actually has an atmosphere; and depots and tugs to find solutions to the Grand Challenges because innovation and creativity drive the economy. Once this technology is adequately funded long term, then fit it destinations within the budget or plus up. Then start planning for the Jovian trips. Google: Moonshot Thinking.
Oops, back to reality. If one changes campaign finance and gerrymandered districts you may be surprised how many good ideas from all will be adopted, not the ones you were told to believe.
Obedient, closed minded workers–George Carlin’s American Dream, where a special interest group can pay 158 folks of Congress and sign a pledge to not tax carbon; tell you what to believe, who is liked, who to vote for, and miss out on a decade of KSC test flights of reuseable LV technology with a dead end LV.
Humans have tolerated complete weightlessness for periods comparable to a lunar mission. Radiation at a lunar installation would be comparable to what would be encoutered on Mars. I agree with you regarding the rather old LV technology.
We could test it, you know. With mice, or lab rats. We used to test on this new frontier with chimps and dogs ..
Fortunately science is moving away from cruel abominable animal testing.
Well, I guess that’s another thing we disagree about. We would agree that cruelty to animals is bad. But when it comes to medical research, I don’t see good alternatives (I do far too much theoretical modeling to trust anyone’s life to it.) I’m sorry, but given the choice between a.monkey’s life and a.humans’, the monkey wouldn’t win. I guess I’m speciesits.
*another thing we disagree about*
A long list but one thing to agree on is this: the benefits of discussing disagreements respectfully.
And on the issue of animal rights: you’ve set up a false dichotomy, one that’s fairly common. It’s not a human life vs a monkey’s life (and if it were we’d be on the same side). There are lots of problems with animal testing, and while I agree to some extent about modeling, the problems are far wider.
Think for instance it is necessary to restrain bunnies while dishwashing liquid is put in their eyes? That’s the kind of thing we are talking about, much of it driven by archaic FDA regulations.
Fortunately animal testing is rapidly decreasing for a couple of reasons: monkeys and other animals are expensive to maintain, especially with all of the cameras about documenting abuse; and there’s solid evidence that applying animal results (especially by shortening tests with multiplies of 50% death dosages); and there’s a question about the applicability of animal results to the human condition, even as a ‘first pass’.
Far off topic, and with apologies, just something that rings my bell.
How is the ARM mission a distraction? They’re putting it in orbit around the Moon, so that the crewed SLS test mission can fool around with it while doing a test flight they’d be doing anyways (assuming they get the funding for said mission, but that’s another issue).
In any case, the plan is to develop and successfully utilize SLS, then apply it to whatever mission we decide upon beyond Low Earth Orbit (be it to the Moon or Mars).
It’s also on the path towards in situ resource usage. Perhaps that’s the issue.
NASA’s goal was always to fly to an asteroid on the way to Mars to test the transportation hardware. Then land on the Martian moons, avoiding expensive gravity wells before the economic infrastructure is put in place. Since asteroids have tremendous resource potential significantly more visits need to be considered, rather than trying to find a needle in a haystack on the gravity well moon.
BTW, NASA needs the propellant near Mars and beyond, not a lunar orbit 😉 that is the issue with *retrieval*.
Looks like everything is compromised forward when you start with decades old expendable hardware that cannot reach an asteroid, rather than trying to solve challenges or using hardware that can create new markets.
Sounds like a robotic mission to Phobos and Deimos is in order to determine if they have the water needed for fuel. If not then perhaps a second asteroid with water could be placed in Mars orbit. But this of course assumes NASA is actually going to Mars someday 🙂
I read an article and it stated Congress wants a more defined timeline on getting us to Mars by 2040. 2040? Is this to try and guarantee that SpaceX gets their first? It just made no sense.
To bad Russia’s sample return mission to Phobos ended up in the drink in the South Pacific. That mineral data might have been handy if Phobos is a captured asteroid.
Good news! We could just throw chunks of ice into the Water In-Situ Hydrogen extractor, or WISH, as it’s called. The device is part of a program to extract and use minerals found in space.
The Martian moons are most likely asteroids so we could kill two birds with one stone. A mission to Phobos and Diemos (the PhD concept) was proposed at the first Case For Mars conference in 1986.
NASA is like a car manufacturer. It can build things to go places, but the thing it makes needs a driver to decide where to go.
With the exception of Apollo, NASA has been more productive when it funded the development of new technology based on the needs of commercial industry.
There is little to nothing of value on/in the asteroids that would pay for these kinds of multi-billion dollar missions in multi-billion dollar throwaway spacecraft. If you don’t get the cost down and the access made routine, then its far less cost effective than Shuttle or ISS missions, both of which struggled for reasons to exist because of their expense.
The ARM was a mission invented to make use of a capability and hardware which otherwise has no use for multiple decades.
High power solar electric propulsion is a key technology for any manned exploration missions beyond cis-lunar space. ARM would be the first application of that capability.
What matters with asteroid mining (and all off-Earth mining) is that it gains us access to mineral resources that are limited here on Earth, or under the control of other, perhaps hostile political systems.
China has a corner of the rare-earth element resources necessary for battery development? No big — provided we (USA) have access to REEs from space rocks. In fact, REEs in space-rock quantities change the whole resource picture entirely, along with political forces based on limited access to them.
And to civilization as a whole because we all know, civilization = electricity and vice-versa. Make electricity even more abundant, make storage of it easier and cheaper, and the world becomes something different and better than it is now.
That’s why space mining is important.
There’s the problem of smelting to concentrate the ore, and then transporting it through Earth’s atmosphere, all adding incremental cost.
Notions of “riches from heaven” in the form of platinum or whatever miss the mark. Using these materials in situ would support all sorts of space activities including those permanent colonies at the L points (for instance). Earth would still produce high value, low mass components like chips and Ics, but the heavy metal would be a space-product.
This isn’t about “riches” and space commerce. It’s about obtaining a large quantity of a rare but strategic mineral, likely to be essential to advancing civilization, and who has access to lots of it and who doesn’t.
If rare-earth elements are rare on Earth, and if China controls the world supply, then China has its hands on part of mankind’s technological future — and yours.
If the US can mine REEs in space-rock quantities and puts them to an electicity-storage device near you — well, let’s say you can put away your Mandarin homework.
If NASA announces an official plan, building Nautilus or something, landers, spending 2 billions on this, 3 billions on that, it would face strong criticism anyway, an even fiercer one from other sides. So it appears that they choose to pick the heat and go baby steps, mounting the case for Mars, until it’s viable and unavoidable. In 5 to 10 years, the political environment can be different, the techonology can be more mature to start developing the hardware, and they can afford for a Mars humam program as they are paying for cheaper LEO commercial transportation and space station or there’s a renewed appeal for international cooperation, or even Spacex comes with a comprehensive plan that Nasa can support on budget. Anyway previous plans faced technological and budget constraints, the shuttle, space station, VSE, VentureStar, and others faced the same problem, Apollo was the exception, because of the political climate of the age, what we can’t expect to happen again. A plan to go to Mars is an easier target now than doesn’t having one. I would bother if NASA wasn’t investing and supporting projects like advanced propulsion, landers et al as they are doing on current budget.
the techonology can be more mature to start developing the hardware
Here is the thing. Technology does not mature all by itself when left in a corner. Deep space technologies especially also do not have anyone else developing them – if you were not planning to license IP from China sometime in the future, that is.
Radioisotope Stirling generators, artificial gravity wheels, in situ resource utilization stacks etc will not be magically better off 5 or 15 years from now if you dont put funds and people behind it.
Even component technologies like electronics for deep space do not get much better on their own because there really aren’t that many customers for radiation hardened deep space environment tolerant supercomputers and robots elsewhere.
I agree with the need for radiation hardened electronics, particularly for robotic rovers. Google can come up with logic for artificial intelligence, but without space-rated computing components AI will be earthbound.
My point isn’t about rad hardened electronics specifically, but just generally people expecting ‘technologies to develop’. They dont, on their own.
That was the original concept behind NACA.Not planting flags, but rather working as a partner to industry to develop useful new technologies.
Radiation hardened electronics is actually an example of how things can go the wrong way. Most (almost all?) current R&D on microchips is aimed at the commercial market. That pushes most parts to smaller and smaller components, etching, etc. That makes chips more sensitive to radiation. As a result, the good (for space applications) parts often become obsolete and go out of production. Without active development of specifically radiation-hard parts, the available technology would actually go downhill.
I agree. But radiation hardened electronics could also improve the active capability of communications satellites. With NASA as a development partner the technology could be advanced.
Sure. I was simply saying that, without active work, this is a field which can actually deteriorate.
For the past 50 years NASA has worked with all its eggs in one basket. Meaning that it can only fund and support one primary goal at a time (See federal budget history). We cancelled the last 3 Saturn 5 moon missions as soon as the Space Shuttle was chosen – the gap being filled with Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz. The only reason the Space Shuttle survied as long as it did into the ISS era is that it was needed to assemble and transport crews to it. Once congress found that there was another route to getting crews up there and no more construction was needed, they killed it without a good, and in-work go forward plan. If we could think more than 10 years ahead and had a quarter the yearly budget that the military has, NASA could do spectacular things assuming it could control its entrenched bureaucracy. Unfortunately I don’t have high hopes for humans on Mars in my lifetime.
The political reality is that NASA won’t get a significant increase in funding anytime soon. Killing ISS would free up some development money, but would also eliminate a functioning zero gravity laboratory to test equipment needed for going beyond LEO.
If I had my choice of programs to kill to free up money, it would be SLS/Orion.
I agree. Reducing the cost of human spaceflight is a better strategy.
Until we can find customers for human flight to LEO there is no prospect of sustainable human flight beyond LEO. I believe that both science (in particular human-tended Earth observation from the ISS) and tourism to the ISS (which was popular until the supply was cut off by the end of Shuttle) are viable options. Cancelling ISS will only serve to persuade the public that human spaceflight is not needed.
In addition, consider that purchase power can drop thru 2028, if the past decades have been any indication. This is not just generic inflation at work, but a syndrome specific to the kind of contracting NASA would lean to for space exploration – cost-plus contracting. The cost-plus world has been reducing competition, while the commercial world has been increasing competition and offering an effective way of staying ahead of such inflationary effects. So freed up ISS dollars are actually very ineffective “cost-plus” dollars by 2029ish.
Add to that the way in which ISS as an operational program can “learn” their way into dealing with shortcomings in purchase power over years to come. This will mislead new program developments into thinking they have the same effective “cost-plus-ish” purchase power.
Consider if we just cancel Orion though – for now.
A years worth of Orion budgets can be put to upgrades or modules making the commercial crew spacecrafts cis-lunar capable. Orion was never going to Mars after all, finally admitting this recently, that it’s for a cis-Lunar to and fro only.
The rest of the Billions in dollars saved would still be sent to JSC and KSC, dollar for dollar, avoiding trauma, for real progress on a commercial habitation module (JSC) and to complement Commercial Crew integrating with exploration (KSC). The only downside is NASA swallowing it’s pride and admitting Orion dollars were a bad investment, a training exercise to keep the old JSC Orbiter Project office happy. The actual offices and groups and contractors would not be traumatized, and skills issues would actually be enhanced.
The hardware does not currently exist, nor does much of the tech (at the sizes necessary) for a round-trip or One-Way Mars mission. All Mars missions are one-way for at least a year with no support anyway. “Flags and Footprints” missions are impossible on Mars. You build to stay because you have to stay for a year anyway.
“Narrow focus” means not testing that hardware on less risky missions for the durations necessary to assure safe Mars mission. The ISS, cis-lunar (or something else), and maybe the moon are all part of that safety precaution.
What is the best way to prove that it is ‘wrong’ for NASA Human Space Flight to continue to flounder year after year, administration after administration w/o a goal/purpose/achievable mission/leadership/budgets?
You prove it’s wrong by setting up NASA to flounder year after year, administration after administration w/o a goal/purpose/achievable mission/leadership/budgets!.
And complain that it is the way it is!
Great game being played! And all involved are winning that game!
(The players: NASA HSF program, Congress, OMB, White House)
The “game”, as you term it, is being played in an entirely different arena. Current discussion about Mars as a target, and about HSF in general, are appropriate in a democracy. There are too many with disparate views. Over time it will sort out.
To find the real action, google “starve the beast”.
Only if innovation and creativity to spur the economy are part of the effort. Challenges are important because they give a sense of accountability and guide you to what you actually need to achieve.
It was believed that cutting taxes would lead to lower spending but all the evidence indicates they are *NOT* an effective mechanism for limiting expenditure growth. STB belongs in the museum of discredited ideas with zero empirical evidence it has worked as preached since adopted in the 1980s.
Change campaign finance and gerrymandered districts and you may be surprised how many good ideas from all will be adopted, not the ones you were told to believe.
I won’t be surprised at all. What would surprise me is sensible definition of congressional districts.
The game being played has the participants complaining about the way things are now, unconsciously though the players want to keep things exactly as they are , so they can all be ‘right’ that the present situation NASA HSF finds itself in is ‘wrong’
This leads to cynicism and resignation in an organization , and has the future look very much like the past .
Don’t expect any changes in the status quo until the players can see the game they are really playing here
Lovely game w deadly consequences, no?!
This is the essential problem with “national greatness” programs. There’s no scientific reason to send human beings to Mars; robots can do science far less expensively and with much less risk (both to human life and to the national budget). The only rational reason for America (or anybody else) to go to Mars is to colonize; but that would be in violation of the Outer Space Treaty to which the US is a signatory. So all that’s left is the “research outpost” program where we send some government employees to Mars at mind-boggling cost some two or three decades hence, and in the meantime provide a lucrative federally-funded (i.e., taxpayer-funded) jobs program for NASA’s public-sector employees and various industrial contractors. It’s objectively a silly notion, and neither politicians nor American taxpayers have much appetite for it. If we truly want to become a spacefaring nation, we need to learn how to live and work in space, and you do that by incremental steps out from your home base. Technology will develop as our skill develops. If we can find a way to explore and exploit cislunar space, we may find a way to grow our economy sufficient to support a robust program of exploration. But “national greatness” arguments are empty unless there is a great national purpose behind them. And there just is no *reason* to go to Mars.
If we used robots to build a human habitat on Mars, perhaps taxpayers would be excited to send people there.
Good idea. Could they have a Starbucks ready?