No One Knows/Cares How/When NASA Will Make The #JourneyToMars
NASA’s Human Spaceflight Program Can’t Afford Another Reset From the Next President, Wired
“But NASA has yet to fill in the blanks when it comes to the Proving Ground phase. Beyond initial plans for a controversial asteroid redirect mission, there’s a gap between immediate human spaceflight plansthe ISS and the commercial crew programand the United States’ long-term objective of sending humans to Mars. By making more concrete and detailed plans for the Proving Ground phase, the next administration can keep America’s human space exploration program on track and make progress toward Mars at the same time.”
Buzz Aldrin eyes 2040 for manned Mars mission
“Former astronaut Buzz Aldrin is eyeing 2040 for the first manned mission to Mars, noting that the red planet’s moon Phobos could play a vital role for astronauts. “I think that’s a good target date,” the 86-year-old space legend told FoxNews.com. “We should be able to reach there with international crews.” NASA’s goal is to send a manned mission to Mars by 2035, although Aldrin thinks that a slightly later date is more realistic.”
– Will NASA Ever Send Humans to Mars?
– Another Stealth #JourneyToMars Telecon at NASA, earlier post
– Houston, We Need A Mars Plan, earlier post
– Space Policy White Paper = Shopping List For The Journey to Nowhere, earlier post
– NASA’s Boulder Retrieval Mission is Doomed, earlier post
– More exploration news
Use the Moon as the Proving Ground. Land on it, live there, figure things out. I don’t know why there needs to be a rush to get to Mars other than to it would be nice to see it in my lifetime. But that’s not going to happen anyway without that middle part being filled in with something meaningful.
Proving Ground for what? Lunar ISRU will not be the same as Martian ISRU for fuel production, the lunar gravity environment is not similar to the Martian gravity environment except insofar that both are lower than Earth’s, and the hardware requirements for landing on the Moon are going to be seriously different than traveling to and landing on Mars.
There’s reasons to go to the Moon, mostly lots of potential scientific research to be done plus maybe some mining of the remnants of earlier impacts on its surface. But it’s not a stepping stone to anywhere unless you’re actually planning to drop a couple reusable launch vehicles, an automated propellant factory, and nuclear reactors deep in Shackleton Crater in the hopes that you can process fuel for cheaper than what it would cost just to launch more of it up from Earth.
If we really wanted to do a “proving ground” style mission, then building a reusable ship that can do lunar, Martian, and near-earth asteroid flyby and orbital missions would be better for that (not saying we should do that). There’s a lot of places in the solar system where you’re not going to have “boots on the ground” anyways.
OK, I can see your points, then what should we do? Honestly, I just don’t see Mars as achievable with such a far off horizon without something in-between.
Lower the cost of getting to LEO.
Lower the cost of supporting humans in space.
Lower the cost of going beyond LEO.
Lower the cost of supporting humans BEO.
Everything else — Moon, Mars, asteroids, SLS, whatever — is just treading water, burning money and decades, hoping these four things will somehow drop out of going to moon/Mars/asteroids or building SLS or whatever.
Agreed. LEO is “half way to anywhere”, so that’s the first step to becoming a truly spacefaring nation.
What Paul says above me in the comment thread.
Not to mention landing is completely different. NASA is still trying to develop inflatable reentry shields and large, supersonic, parachutes for a Mars landing. Those wouldn’t work very well on the moon.
Virtually no Gemini hardware could be used on a Moon mission, EVA’s were at zero gravity, rendezvous was at a totally different orbital velocity, reentry speed much less than returning from the Moon, and of course none of it dealt with landing or walking (or driving) on the Moon, or gathering samples. Probably we should have just skipped Gemini as it only seems to have gotten in the way.
Of course I’m being sarcastic, and no analogy is perfect. But part of the process is learning things that you didn’t know you needed to learn, example rendezvous (the actual flying part) turned out to be harder than they anticipated, as was doing EVA tasks in zero gravity. On the Moon that wasn’t as much of a problem but the EVA experience in Gemini had to have helped.
Actually if you read the Apollo history, George Mueller got in as AA managing human space flight just as Gemini was starting. When MCDac suggested cost increase and schedules delays, Mueller said he was ready to cancel Gemini. When Mr. Mac called and asked would he really do it, Mueller responded ‘damn right’.
Mueller said that while things like rendezvous, docking and long duration and EVA would all have to be tested, that could be done on Apollo, perhaps sooner, at less expense, and with more of an assist to the Apollo hardware testing, which would have to go through many of the same test missions. Gemini got back on budget and schedule quickly.
One of the lessons is that if you start developing a system too soon, its technology is likely to have been surpassed by the time you actually get around to using it. Selecting an Orion capsule as the first part of any beyond LEO mission to be developed, was likely a wasted effort.
Of course imperfect analogies are imperfect in both directions. In the case of Apollo they already had hardware selected and in development, and with the short timeline there was no option whether or not to use that hardware, so I can see someone making the case let’s fully concentrate on that hardware only.
And yet even in that environment there was still value seen in an intermediate program to try out if not the hardware, the capability, and to learn. That will always be the argument, what is the proportional value of the learning if there will be significant differences in the ultimate methods and hardware. Not an easy metric to precisely calculate since you are dealing with a lot of unknowns.
I think the crux of the argument being made is that although unprovable, there is a good chance that lunar missions will provide benefit to future Mars missions, and so doing them is better than doing nothing, and probably better than spending twenty years developing technology specifically for a future Mars mission, when you run a similar risk that the technology that you develop will no longer eventually apply. The point you make in your last paragraph. Whereas capability learned and problems encountered while building a lunar habitat, and doing long term habitation missions, could possibly be applied to new technology.
And it would be an opportunity to test out radiation mitigation hardware.
I don’t think that argument quite works. Gemini involved different hardware than what ultimately went to the Moon, but it was testing things that were going to be involved in the approach they took.
You don’t have that here. The only two things lunar and Martian ISRU have in common, for example, is that you might be trying to melt water out of a cold area to put it through hydrolysis.
But focusing on specific tasks is similar to focusing on hardware. There is a bigger picture. We currently have only 298 hours of experience living on another world. There are those who think we need to increase that experience at a local and relatively safe location before attempting a Mars habitation mission.
Understood, different gravity, different soil, different resources. But the logistical analogies are still there. It’s just hard to imagine that increasing our experience beyond 298 hours won’t help. Sure it will probably delay the first Mars attempt, but I think it will increase the likelihood that the first Mars attempt will be successful.
What does the moon teach you that other space operations don’t? After all, we have decades of human spaceflight operations experience.
After all, the critical difference in operations on Mars is the multi-minute time lag. The moon doesn’t have that. A lunar base will be in constant contact with ground control, just as orbital operations are.
Other than gravity (sort of), there’s no analogue between ops on the moon and ops on Mars than isn’t already covered by ISS or previous Shuttle ops.
Obama’s asteroid proposal (the original version, not the lunar rendezvous) was much closer to a Mars mission. Long duration flight, long lag in comms requiring a higher level of autonomy in prox-ops.
And we know how long that proposal lasted.
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People who advocate a lunar base as a pathfinder to Mars really just want to go to the moon. Practising for Mars is just an invented reason, since Mars currently has traction.
Likewise, those who want to go to Mars just want to go to Mars ASAP, the reasons they give are unconnected to that, and often contradict the very program they support.
Which is why it will never get past the “Mars Underground” faction at NASA. It’s the delay itself which is unacceptable.
“What does the moon teach you that other space operations don’t? After all, we have decades of human spaceflight operations experience.”
Decades of free fall experience inside the radiation belts. Only 298 hours of experience operating on a planet-like surface outside of the radiation belts. If the difference between those is trivial then yes we can certainly get all of the remaining experience that we need on ISS.
“People who advocate a lunar base as a pathfinder to Mars really just want to go to the moon. Practising for Mars is just an invented reason, since Mars currently has traction.”
In other words they are liars. Thanks for the warning, I should have known they were up to no good. Why don’t they just come clean about their true nefarious intentions?
“Likewise, those who want to go to Mars just want to go to Mars ASAP, the reasons they give are unconnected to that, and often contradict the very program they support.”
No way, they have a hidden agenda also? And here I naively believed that all of these people just want to see humans expand their presence off the planet, and just have differing opinions about what they honestly believe is the best approach.
But seriously, I’m sure you are right there are some people like that, I just have trouble believing it’s the majority. Maybe the most vocals ones who attract attention to themselves could be viewed with that type of skepticism, but I like to think that most people are simply stating their true beliefs. Maybe that is what you meant.
“After all, the critical difference in operations on Mars is the multi-minute time lag. The moon doesn’t have that. A lunar base will be in constant contact with ground control, just as orbital operations are.”
I know that the budgets will be tight, but for just a few hundred dollars they can install time delay software. Okay a few thousand since it will be cost plus.
And you advocate a $100b moon base in order to install a $100 delay circuit?
Still not seeing the point of the $100b moon base.
Seriously? How about the point of a much more expensive Mars base?
You wanna go to Mars? Fine. The cost of getting there is trivial compared to the cost of living there.
I guess, since we don’t see those numbers.
I really don’t. No.
Dunno, Paul. I really DO want to go to Mars. The idea of standing on another planet is overwhelming.
I’ve described here before my own teenage explorations of Colorado’s “outback”, usually on horseback and frequently alone. Every new ridge, I imagined, offered a sight never seen by white boys like me!
Likely not true, but the thrills of childhood are what they are. And the imagination of adulthood easily leaps millions of miles to Martian vistas that will truly be seen by the first human eyes. Is there a thrill greater?
At the same time, what of the ice caves of Europa? The methane lakes of Titan? All seem as unreachable when rationally assessed.
Any rational assessment of Mars will conclude that all of those Journey-crazies will be sorely disappointed when the cost of repeated Martian bound flights to support a “colony” will doom the project. Our tech, put into the perspective of the 15th century, wouldn’t get us 100 miles into the Atlantic from Europe. Oh, sure, intrepid souls might have paddled a canoe across the Atlantic to the New World, but kinda hard to support a colony with canoes.
So, now it’s 2090 or 2100. Folks are looking around, wondering why we haven’t been back to Mars. It’s been 50 years, after all.
Which is why “going to Mars” is the worst possible path towards “having humans on Mars”, let alone “colonising Mars”.
You are not ever going to have a sustained presence on Mars if you have to spend billions of dollars per flight, one flight every two and a bit years. (Plus $20-50b before the first flight.) It will always devolve back to essentially flags’n’footprints missions, with the public (and Congress) losing interest a week after the first landing, and the program continuing for 3-4 more landings out of pork-momentum before it can be cancelled.
Is that what your fantasy is? Apollo 11 with a red-filter?
If you want to go to Mars, I mean really go, you need to lower the cost of access to LEO, then lower the cost of operating humans in space, then lower the cost of going beyond LEO, then lower the cost of operating humans in BEO (which means with minimal support.)
Only then can people do many things in space, stupid things that I don’t agree with, throughout the solar system. Only then can you have an affordable facility on Mars, let alone any possible hope of a colony.
The entire Pacific was colonised by canoes.
The technology was affordable enough that a single small tribe could fund several “expeditions”. And a single group could decide, “screw this, I’m starting my own island (with blackjack and hookers)”, and go colonise a new island.
The problem isn’t our technology, it’s the fundamental way we “do space”.
That is my biggest concern, that the current rush to Mars mentality even if intended as colonization, will only lead to a FAF (flags and footprints) outcome. The technology needs to be developed, and costs brought down. If we can’t even build a habitat on the Moon at a reasonable cost then don’t even think about Mars until you can. Regarding your previous comment “Still not seeing the point of the $100b moon base” I agree as far as if it costs that much then we aren’t ready even for that yet.
I totally agree to demonstrate can do lunar missions. Paraphrasing Matula and we all heard this many times, maybe need to get this to others outside the space forums. They’re falling back on outdated ideas like “manifest destiny” and painting Mars like a second Earth, struck some cord among a very vocal hard core group that has shouted down any rational space strategy ever since. This is why we always say we will land a man on Mars 20 years from now, and we’ve been saying that for the past 50 years. I see no land rush to the Gobi Desert even though that place is thousand times easier to settle. We romanticized of settling Mars because it is so far away. Meanwhile we should ask if we can land a man on the Moon, why can’t we land a man on the Moon? Also ISS is only one Soyuz failure away from being abandoned.
Some of my favorite points.
There’s really no overwhelming reason to go to Mars- from our present point of view.
And that’s the key- our present point of view. We are busy building a better horse, as Mr. Edison would probably observe, when we really need a real honest space ship (that’s some sort of mixed metaphor record I imagine). You know: something that lives in space? something you refuel and is re-used countless times? With bathrooms? 🙂 And is not a throwaway.
There is a huge future for us in space but it is not at the bottom of gravity wells until we solve some very serious LEO and LMO problems.
Addressing the converted with the obvious, I know. And as I’ve learned more about NASA and about NASA leadership I’ve also learned that they know this, too.
They are very, very different planets.
I support building a lunar village for the sake of exploring and developing a small part of the Moon, specifically Shackleton rim.
The most useful parts of lunar development for Mars work would be developing pseudo-realtime telerobotics and further operational experience in space living, like ISS has fostered.
The link delay between Earth and the Moon is about what you’d expect between Mars and Phobos (accounting for lower bandwidth availability, ping times, etc) or a Mars orbiter. Use the Moon to help figure out how to get one human to accurately command multiple rover-dozer-drill-etc vehicles.
New, extraplanetary operations experience on the Moon would provide a set of skills and teams that would be able to manage a future Mars effort. However, the converse is true, as well.
Things that aren’t the same: Mars has an atmosphere, current suits and Apollo suits won’t properly work since they rely on vacuum for certain functions. Mars has an Earth-like day-night cycle so thermal cycles are very different. The chemistry is much different than the Moon, though we need to figure out bricks and cement for both. Mars has weather and perchlorates in the soil, the Moon has the worst dust found outside an asbestos mine.
This discussion- why settle the moon?- has historically included far-side astronomical research. The far-side is in an Earth-shadow, it’s said, and with proper location telescopes or other research devices could be solar shaded as well.
On the other hand, I’ve also seen arguments that scientific return from space-borne instruments is about as good as expected from permanent moon-based research. I’m not qualified to assess the discussion.
The Moon is no better a proving ground for Mars than the Sahara is for the South Pole. Ultimately you would design very different infrastructure and tools for access and sustainable habitation. Eliminate all “middle-men” to the final goal.
OK, I hear you all, and like I say, I can see your point, but don’t we have to have _something_ in between now and 20 – 25 years from now? I just can’t see a hash tag being enough to maintain funding for that long.
And another generation bites the dust.
Constellation was mutually ended when the 25mT Ares I could not loft 32mT–Orion 9mT + Service Mod 13mt+ 10mT LAS. The launch abort system grew 6mT due the time delay of SRB ‘shutdown’.
NASA’s ‘foundation’ consists of 8B/yr on SLS/Orion/ISS and zero dollars for R&D to reduce costs and enable the missions, and ZERO missions.
NASA is saddled with SLS and Orion. A push to the moon has nothing to do with developing a less than 100B approach to the vicinity of Mars.
The goal of Exploration beyond lunar must demand expansion of the economy. Even if one accepts the former, it still cannot be accomplished without a reset, actually cancellation, of NASA programs due to $$.
Yes! The CxP program was such a disaster that it would have died of its own weight if Augustine/Obama hadn’t cancelled it first. SLS/Orion will likely do the same, since anyone who speaks ill of it publicly is considered a treasonous by NASA/big aerospace industry.
Worse: when it finally dies common knowledge of a wasteful and ill-considered decade-long program –with nothing useful other than jobs to show for the money-could cripple NASA. Let us hope that when the dinosaur dies the stink is contained.
I hope so. Large segmented SRBs and disposable(!) SSMEs and water only landings for the capsule is as backwards and ill conceived as it gets. There is zero opportunity here for reuse, repeating the high cost of Saturn V with an even lower flight rate. Saturn V was cancelled due to its high cost. Repeating that mistake is insanity.
NASA’s plans to go to Mars or to an asteroid can best summoned up by one word–delusional.
Only if they actually believe the plans themselves. Otherwise there is another word for them. But Keith would have to censor it to keep this site PG-13.
I believe the word is FUBAR…
NASA can go to Mars with its current budget within 10 years. It would take cancelling of ISS and commercial crew. All the problems including radiation, microgravity, EDL, and long-term life support are solvable. NASA planning to go to Mars in 20 years will not work because there would be too many administrations along the way that could/would cancel their predecessor’s program (e.g. Obama cancelling Constellation). So, the ONLY way for NASA to get to Mars is within 8-10 years. 2040 might as well be 2140, it is meaningless for NASA goals.
NASA however could go to Mars 10s of billions of dollars cheaper with commercial crew and the DOD + IP fleet rather than using SLS/Orion if you want to tell the complete story, unlike Congress and special interests.
http://www.spaceref.com/new…
This isn’t a secret. And while the NASA brass hardly advocates alternatives like COTS/ SpaceX, they do on occasion make it clear that they understand the implications, better than those of us on the outside.
I’ve never seen a direct quote or even a hint that Sens. Shelby and Nelson (and others) also understand reality but these are very smart guys. It is possible, one supposes, that the SLS is actually, truly seen as a better way forward. On the other hand, self-delusion is synonymous with the halls of congress.
I completely concur. In addition to the perpetual 4/8 year revamp of national egos and goals, no one seems to want to address or even understand the largest looming problem of the next 35 years – that being another 2 billion plus humans on Earth. There were ~3 billion fewer people on Earth during the Apollo program. Everything we do now revolves around the size of the human population on this planet – pollution, resource loss, ecosystem loss, climate change, conflict, costs of aging populations, etc. It is highly unlikely we will solve any of these issues positively and as such will drain resources from anything unrelated (e.g., humans on Mars). Sad but probabilistically true.
Except that’s not a thing which actually happens.
The Shuttle survived from Nixon’s initiation to Bush Jr’s cancellation and last flight under Obama. Freedom/Alpha/ISS survived from Reagan’s initiation through Obama, and will continue another 2-3 Presidential terms. NGST/JWST lasted from it’s initiation under Clinton, through Bush Jr and Obama, to launch sometime in the next President’s term. Spitzer lasted from initiation under Reagan to launch under Bush Jr. HST lasted from Carter’s initiation to the final service mission under Obama.
You cannot analyze this only on the basis of the office of the President. You need to consider House/Senate majority control and leverage, the amount of public attention, pride and propaganda around and near potential funding decision points, NASA administration status and how far along the project has already proceeded. Unfortunately the odds are against cancelling are very high over the long duration and across more than one administration. Two examples of recent canceled programs being the X-38 and the Constellation program. The next will be ARM.
Yep we can increase budget for one thing by taking it away from another. How about that giant Cross Agency Support slice? Seems there is alot more opportunity there without even having to eliminate a whole line item.
I agree with your general thesis: a 20-year horizon is too long to manage towards. So let’s assume you get to cancel ISS and commercial crew. How much of the savings do you use to solve the technical barriers to humans to Mars, and how do you test those in space without ISS? And how do you develop a lander for Mars in 10 years, or do you start with Phobos?
We do it in a way that we know works… we’ve actually done it before during Apollo. 1. Come up with architecture. 2. Determine the elements and techniques to fulfill the architecture. 3. Develop those elements – some already underway, like SLS or FH. 4. Test in earth or cislunar space with SLS or FH launches (probably want artificial gravity in the mix). 5. Fly progressively complex missions. 6. Accept risks and make mission success the primary objective (i.e. crew safety cannot be primary objective or else it will not get done in 10 yrs). 7. Remember it’s only rocket science.
Oh dear. Comparisons with Apollo as if it’s the gold standard miss the point that it was a stunningly wasteful program driven by an unrealistic timetable; engineers were decision-hobbled at nearly every step of the way.
On the other hand maybe too much time has the same effect.
It was the program that got me into engineering and space exploration some 40+ years after the fact and I don’t think I am the only one or the last one. And if you are going to attack govt programs as wasteful – NASA is the least of your worries. Apollo was paid back many times over in the amount of people that got turned on to the STEM fields… many of the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs of today we’re inspired by Apollo… so our country and our world absolutely changed for the better because of a vibrant and inspirational space program. Sad thing is that even in the space community, these facts get lost – as evidenced by your sentiment. Apollo was not perfect but remember, perfection is the enemy of good… and Apollo did and continues to do a lot of good.
You do not believe America has the talent in the aerospace industry to provide commercial transportation services for the Nation’s researchers? You do not believe the government should just be paying per seat prices to send our Nation’s lunar geologists to Luna?
Sore point, I see, so let me try to clarify something.
The benefits of Apollo are without question. But there are Apollo legacy issues that we sometimes don’t see, issues that were a product of impossible schedules.
Throwaway boosters is one of those products, a legacy that hobbles us even now. The insanity of splashing those stunning machines has been lost on us through decades of familiarity.
It’s not just “throwaway” boosters, either; the issue of fuel depots was actively debated until fairly late in the process. The arguments were many that would seem familiar today, too; why man-rate Saturn, for instance, when a much smaller human rated booster made a lot more sense then (as it does today).
It’s easy to criticize looking back, but it’s also foolish to ignore the lessons of Apollo, many of which have very little to do with engineering, aside from squeezing engineers into making decisions that should have taken more time but were ameliorated by seemingly unlimited funds. In truth the engineers and designers performed a miracle in an impossible political arena.
Sound familiar?
I understand and agree – we should absolutely learn from our mistakes in Apollo – but the greatest lessons from Apollo are the things we did right, not the things we got wrong. NASA shined during Apollo because of one and only one reason – it had a clear goal and it put all of its resouces towards that goal and accomplished that goal. Was it done in the most efficient way possible?.. of course not – it is, after all, a govt program… I’ll take another Apollo / flags and footprints any day over the globular mess we have now.
waste anything but time is not a philosophy for commercial services companies.
“All the problems including radiation, microgravity, EDL, and long-term life support are solvable.”
In ten years
Maybe, if China does something this week that causes the President to make a speech next week similar to Kennedy’s;
“This year¹s space budget is three times what it was in January 1961, and it is greater than the space budget of the previous eight years combined…. for we have given this program a high national priority–even though I realize that this is in some measure an act of faith and vision, for we do not now know what benefits await us…..and I think that we must pay what needs to be paid. I don’t think we ought to waste any money, but I think we ought to do the job. And this will be done in the decade”
If we hear that speech next week then you’ll have your Mars landing in ten years.
China has nothing whatever to gain from a new space race. As my Chinese friend says, “If we lost, we would look incompetent. If we won, we would irritate our biggest customer. If you want to race to the Moon, go ahead. We will not race with you. You will be racing by yourself.”
I think your statement contradicts itself. “All the problems…. are solvable”. Using the ISS, they might be solvable, but if you have neither access to space nor a place in space to perform the R&D,then you won’t solve anything. …Canceling of ISS…5 years ago a lot of stupid people bought into the idea that canceling Shuttle was going to give us the $$ billions to permit the development of a new system. So now, 5 years later, you have no Shuttle, no access to space. The commercial systems are still years away from flying, and even when they do, they will not have the capabilities of a Shuttle-not even close. Any NASA system, and Orion/SLS is far from the capability of a Shuttle, is another decade, and perhaps a lot longer from operation. The approach of canceling what we have in the expectation of getting anything better is foolish.
We don’t need ISS to go to Mars. We do need some type of heavy lift rocket. We also need a plan/program with a goal of going to Mars within a 10 year time frame. It’s not about cancelling what we have – It’s about building what we need to achieve a goal.
ISS is useful as a destination to test systems needed for the zero gravity trip to Mars and back. But, that could also be done by launching “stand alone” missions, so that usefulness is somewhat questionable.
It’s long been argued that HLV is “needed”. But, there is no actual design for a manned Mars lander yet. So, the size of SLS is quite arbitrary (mandated by Congress, in fact).
To get to Mars we need to question all previous assertions and assumptions… There is nothing that says a trip to Mars has to be in zero gravity… You actually don’t want to be in zero gravity / microgravity because you will be weakened by the trip and more prone to injury when you get there. So developing an artificial gravity concept would be very beneficial (but not absolutely necessary). Point is, we know microgravity has negative effects on the body, bones, muscles, etc… ISS job well done – now we need to move on. HLV is needed to do this is the simplest way possible (lift and throw)… the way we’ve done every other interplanetary mission. We will need transit vehicles, landers, habitats, ascent vehicles, possibly orbiting vehicles – all of these need some sort of HLV.
But how big is “big enough”? If Falcon Heavy reaches its goal of lofting 117,000 lb to LEO for only $90 million per flight, is that “big enough”? Those billions we plan on spending on SLS would buy *a lot* of Falcon Heavy launches.
Bigger is better… If SpaceX can deliver the Falcon XX (140 – 150 mT) for their estimated development cost of $2.5B, then we could compare apples to apples, and SpaceX would have the obvious advantage.
Yes, Falcon XX would be better.
Of course bigger is better. But better is the enemy of “good enough”. We don’t know what is good enough, because we don’t have any actual plans or designs for an actual manned Mars lander. In the short term, it would cost far less to launch Orion on Delta IV Heavy and/or Falcon Heavy. The shotgun wedding of Orion to SLS is surely slowing things down.
A launch vehicle that large will have difficulty attracting any commercial customers, increasing the cost that the government must pay per launch.
Pointless to kill commercial crew now. They will be soon selling flights to Bigelow Commercial stations.
The Wired article advocates a “Stay the Course” method for NASA to accomplish their Journey to Mars goals. Show me an actual architecture for LANDING on Mars that requires the use of SLS/Orion, and then we can talk about staying the course.
Show me an actual architecture that lets Orion go anywhere in interplanetary space with humans on board first perhaps ? Because it’s not designed to do that
Show me an architecture for STAYING on Mars. One that’s actually affordable.
What would have made sense was to develop an ISS derived cis-lunar vehicle. Replicate, upgrade, evolve ISS systems. Interesting that we went to ESA and asked them to do this for Orion with an offshoot of the ATV, but we were not smart enough to do the same thing ourselves.
The cislunar vehicle could operate from ISS, which would serve as a base from which it could be maintained and refurbished. Planetary surface operations don’t need to start for decades, which they won’t anyway, and yet in the meantime we could have been perfecting the vehicle to take people beyond LEO.
Instead we threw all our eggs in the Orion capsule basket, which will take no one anywhere.
I believe that was the function of the Nautilus – X that was floated about the time of “The Vision for Space Exploration.
When you read this from the ‘VSE’ :
“In the days of the Apollo program, human exploration systems employed expendable, single-use vehicles requiring large ground crews and careful monitoring. For future, sustainable exploration programs, NASA requires cost-effective vehicles that may be reused, have systems that could be applied to more than one destination, and are highly reliable and need only small ground crews. NASA plans to invest in a number of new approaches to exploration, such as robotic networks, modular systems, pre-positioned propellants, advanced power and propulsion, and in-space assembly, that could enable these kinds of vehicles. These technologies will be demonstrated on the ground, at the Space Station and other locations in Earth orbit,”
Now, how could anyone read that and come away thinking
“ORION Capsule”
The VSE was calling for reusable, space based vehicle(s) that would be modular and built in LEO, a far cry from a disposable, water landing, four person, capsule. According to the GAO the full run out for just the Orion capsule is 25 billion dollars, that would have paid for at least 3 Nautilus – X vehicles.
“systems employed expendable, single-use vehicles requiring large ground crews and careful monitoring. For future, sustainable exploration programs, NASA requires cost-effective vehicles that may be reused, have systems that could be applied to more than one destination…”
What?!? Wow, how much we forgot what was original desires (and was this concept also proposed in 1950s by Von Braun and others?). I remember when VSE was introduced, it also called for stop flying Shuttle, splash the ISS in 2015, reduce costs in systems, etc. which I interpreted as a program that will not make many friends because there will be a lot of people laid off. I also read in one of these NW comments when O’Keffe was presenting his plan to senate and congress, VSE was a non-starter because of all the Shuttle legacy contracts would come to an end.
Yes .. The VSE said no new rockets that would have made a couple NASA centers ghost towns and when O’Keefe told capital hill that 14000 jobs would be lost .. he got his walking papers and in comes Griffin with the 60 day study and the ESAS and now only a handful of jobs would be lost.
It is striking that a study of only 60 days has committed us to a program that could last 60 years. The political explanation is similar to the rationale given by t boone Pickens for ethanol in auto fuel.
An actual SPACEship? Why would we build it? I mean how would we burn it up? Or splash it, anyway?
Keep beating the drum, Vlad.
The Wired writer is showing some very poor journalism here, making a statement about staying the course while showing no understanding of motivations and realities ahead as well as those same factors that got us here. The current administration knows that if it were to increase the NASA budget to make a mission to Mars something serious, it would face problems on two fronts from the very same Congressional reps that currently say NASA and the administration lack a plan.
One group of Republicans especially would continue as deficit hawks, with a dose of anti-climate science to boot. These are not going to increase NASA’s budget when chopping here and transferring there will do. Another group of Republican’s (and some Dems) would be all too glad to accept increased funding, if they alone tell the administration who it needs to feed; specifically, traditional aerospace partners who know how to spread the wealth. Both are versions of the same – “my way or the highway” from Congressional reps, neither flavor giving the current administration reason to believe it will get NASA on a footing to Mars anyway.
The administration knows this, and rather than a protracted fight
in public over the inevitable, or alternately rewarding Shelby and company for bad behavior, only to squander the extra funding anyway, it’s moves have been geared towards a stalemate. The current administration would have gone more commercial, more non-government markets, less traditional, less “cost-plus”. Similarly, a new administration, and a new administrator who is up for a fight too, if the nomination can be made of someone other than a compromise candidate, will have many reasons to “reset” NASA. It is that or seek compromise, avoiding the fight again as unwinnable, with NASA human space flight in a stalemate another umpteen years.
That was a great response. Some want to kick over the rice bowls others would accept a bigger bowl. But absolutely no driving force to actually see anything done or hardware produced. As long as the cost plus, fixed fee, sole sourced, FAR development contracts continue into the horizon they will be happy.
NASA has the money it needs now to develop a credible interplanetary capability.