NASA Would Rather Talk About Going To Mars Than Go To Mars
NASA says it can put humans on Mars within 25 years, Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“The cost of solving those means that under current budgets, or slightly expanded budgets, it’s going to take about 25 years to solve those,” former NASA astronaut Tom Jones told reporters. “We need to get started now on certain key technologies.”
NPC Newsmaker: Becoming Martians: NASA’s 25-year Plan for Humans to Inhabit the Red Planet
“Humans are on the precipice of becoming an interplanetary species. We earthlings are on our way to becoming Martians. In fact, the future Martians are here on Earth now, training for Mars missions using new technological developments following a strict timeline that will get us there within 25 years.”
Jones: we’ll arrive on Mars when we’re technically ready, likely 20-25 years. Won’t be when a “consortium of billionaires” decides to send tourists.
— Jeff Foust (@jeff_foust) November 13, 2018
Keith’s note: Blah blah blah. In 2010 NASA started to talk about sending humans to Mars in the early 2030s i.e. approximately 25 years away. 8 years later and its still 25 years away. When I was a boy growing up in the 60s we were going to be on Mars in 1981 when I’d have been 26. Based on this latest 25 year prediction I will be 88. There is something fundamentally wrong with these predictions on the part of NASA. Some astronauts and space pros like participants Tom Jones, James Garvin, and Richard Davis would be perfectly happy if we never went anywhere. They’d rather talk about going somewhere than actually go somewhere. Meetings = action at NASA.
I am a space biologist. When I started working at the NASA Life Science Division at NASA HQ in 1986 we were already working on sending humans to Mars. We never stopped. This has nothing to do with science per se. Yes the risks are real. But they can be dealt with. This has everything to do with using the funding and assets at NASA’s disposal for a strategic research plan to methodically reduce risk and flight certify humans for trips to destinations such as Mars. NASA has never had such a strategy and has dabbled in meandering hobby shop science for decades. Now would be a good time to start thinking strategically. Otherwise NASA will never find a way to go to Mars.
Meanwhile SpaceX is building a Mars rocketship and can go to Mars without NASA funding or permission. How will they do it? They’ll take the best science at hand, maybe do a little of their own, do informed consent, have their crew sign waivers, and then go to Mars. If NASA won’t let their employees take the risk the private sector will. When I lived at Everest Base Camp for a month in 2009 I did so after signing a waiver. People do this risk/benefit calculation all the time. Virtually everyone at Everest signed a waiver. NASA has to WANT to go to Mars and then focus its scattered energies on that end point. In the end someone has to step up and sign off on the increased risk. It will never be zero. Otherwise NASA needs to stand back and let others do it. And they will. Will SpaceX make it? We’ll see. Are they trying? Yes. Is NASA trying? No. They just do telecons and Powerpoint.
We’re about to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11. Yea. Let’s have a big feel-good party to celebrate the fact that we dropped the ball on our Apollo achievements and no longer know how to do something that we once did with style and daring half a century ago.
SpaceX’s next big BFR spaceship part finished in Port of LA tent facility, Teslarati
“The first 9-meter (29.5-foot) diameter composite propellant tank dome for SpaceX’s full-scale BFR spaceship prototype has been spotted more or less complete at the company’s temporary Port of Los Angeles facility, unambiguous evidence that SpaceX is continuing to rapidly fabricate major components of its next-generation rocket.”
NASA Is Still Kicking The Can Down the Road to Mars, earlier Post
That and what is stopping SpaceX, Blue Origin of poaching NASA talent such as Life Scientists and Co? Contracts?
They already are, many of them. SpaceX’s “rocket landing guy,” Lars Blackmore, came from JPL along with a few others. John Insprucker, SpaceX’s Principle Integration Engineer, ran the USAF EELV program. Blue Origin started by hiring some of the DC-X people. Both are poaching people from all directions. SpaceX is over 7,000 strong now.
Yep, they are hollowing out NASA by attracting the risk takers and those wanting to boldly go again.
After nearly 40 years of working within NASAs human space program, I have serious doubts NASA will ever launch a manned spacecraft ever again, including Orion (most of which NASA has not been responsible for building or developing). NASA is not going to Mars in 25 years. This is due largely to their continuing practice of putting inexperienced people in the lead in functions they know absolutely nothing about, and are so arrogant they refuse to learn or take any advice. Lets put a few more astronauts or flight directors in charge. NASAs reputation is living on what was done in earlier eras. Orion and even ISS were not managed properly and the current bunch destroyed Shuttle.
The shuttle program acheived a lot, but broke many promises that New Space is now trying to keep. We just need to keep Congress out of their way a little while longer.
Shuttle illustrates the issue NASA has become. In 1982, Shuttle had flown 2 times, and they named a Flight Director to lead the Program. All development work stopped. The new Program Manager declared Shuttle “operational” after 2 more flights. In 1985 he established a contractor to “operate” Shuttle as though it were an airline. He separated the NASA developers from the operators. That should never have happened. Shuttle needed fixes and further development should have continued to improve on its functioning. More than anything, it should only have been operated within specifications and it wasn’t. The operations personnel could not follow their own rules; they made it up as they went along, they realized there was a problem once they killed a crew.
Now NASA is confused. they think their role with humans in space is “exploration”. They have not “explored” in 45 years. NASA ought to focus on what they used to do, which is systems development. Gateway is NOT systems development. Orion is not systems development. They are trying to establish a program for operating beyond LEO. That is NOT exploration. Take the operations people out of NASA leadership and put some people in who known something about systems development. ,
Those were heady days, weren’t they? It appeared in the mid 80’s that STS WAS an “operational airline” (my phrase). Who could blame NASA at that point in time? I was an interested observer then as now and while as a civilian I recognized the system should not be “static”, at the same time there was a huge sense that we were truly operating Generation 2 Spacecraft. No silly rockets anymore.
In a large way this is why the current capsule stack is so discouraging. Yes, I know, a capsule answers many engineering criteria.
It’s also why BFR is so damn exciting. It feels like the beginning of the STS program all over again. But this time with a bit more humility.
I’m going to throw out an idea people may find strange. NASA’s problem may be that they landed astronauts on the Moon before the deadline President Kennedy set.
Specifically, NASA was actually a merger of NACA and various people involved with ballistic missile development. NACA did not do anything operational. They developed technology and tested hardware, and handed it off to industry (or the military) to turn into operational systems. The rocket side, on the other hand, was used to building operational systems. The Air Force wanted working, operational ballistic missiles.
With NACA’s gradual, evolutional approach to developing efficient technology, we would never have landed people on the Moon in 1969. The missile approach of one or two tests before declaring a system operational was critical to meeting that schedule. The Saturn V was not built to be cost effective or efficient. It was built to do a specific job on a tight schedule.
Unfortunately, much of what NASA has done since has followed philosophy. I think that’s where the idea of operating a Space Shuttle, or a space station, came from. The Apollo program created a culture of doing things in space, and replaced the NACA approach. That would have been, for example, developing ways to land a first stage and then handing them off to any company who wanted to do so.
I mostly agree…except to say that I disagree that they haven’t explored. Do not ignore robotic probes of which there are plenty and which have done very well at exploration…even if some of them have been a robot sent to do a human’s job.
We’ve had a couple of astronauts in charge of the entire agency. Did that go well, would you say?
I’d have to say that the Administrators who came out of the astronaut group were among the worst ever.
There’s a lot to learn from Steve Jobs’ obsession with mixing the arts with technology, a lesson reportedly well-learnt by Mr. Musk.
I’ve spent my career going up against those schooled only in the so-called STEM disciplines. Fine and capable folks, all of them. Some, creative. But broad thinkers? No.
I’ll make a blatant plug for my alma mater (since I don’t send them money, I might as well do something.) The University of California, Berkeley has many excellent science and engineering department, but they also have heavy requirements for students to take courses _outside_ their major. Actually, outside their whole field (e.g. humanities and social sciences if your major is in a physical science.) I cheated and took some history of science courses (plus some linguistics and Roman history), but a physics major couldn’t get away with taking biology courses… And that includes classes at the junior/senior level. At least they used to. I hope that hasn’t changed, and I wish more universities did that to the same extent.
But I will also note that, once upon a time, a liberal arts education was defined by education in grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. There’s quite a bit of STEM education in there. Unfortunately, I can’t check off all the boxes, since I’m more or less tone deaf.
Why not? No risk of failure and it keeps the tax dollars flowing while you get to give aspirational talks and show view graphs of vehicles that will never fly. It’s the ideal combination from the perceptive of a government bureaucracy.
I will know NASA is serious about Mars when they start doing RFPs for a Base on Phobos, the Gateway to the Martian surface.
Bravo, Keith. Right on target.
“We need to get started now on certain key technologies.”
Yes, like multiyear autonomous ECLSS. Probably could be developed over a couple of decades starting with shorter development/ demonstration missions in earth orbit and working up to a two-year, four person trip to EML2.
If that fails, then Mars trips will need to haul a lot of consumables and spare parts along with the crewed vehicle(s).
There’s a whole bunch of aspects of a crewed Mars mission that could be tested now, at relatively low cost.
Yep, including the life support system. I actually thought that would be a good use for the old dirigible hanger at Ames since locking up crews inside would create a psychological effect as well, especially if you covered the floor in red sand and painted the inside walls to match ?
Yes this is representative of the problem w/ SpaceX etc. They are working on the booster, great, but there are SO MANY OTHER parts that MUST BE DONE to put and maintain people on Mars or even Phobos. Will early success with BFR/BFS push NASA to redirect its manifest talents to these? I’ve heard an argument that BFS’ huge payload allows much more COTS hardware, but I don’t see the systems.
What’s the record for the maximum time a submarine has remained underwater? I think typical deployments for ballistic missile submarines are measured in months. That sounds like off the shelf (although, perhaps, not commercial) life support, mostly closed and maintainable without an unreasonable amount of spare parts.
Perhaps, but my understanding is that they make use of seawater for replenishing fresh water and maybe other purposes since they have tons of energy available. So it’s not a completely closed system.
I’m pretty sure that I read an indirect quote from Musk that he considers himself the “get you to Mars guy” but not the guy who is going to build Mars colonies. He expects that once he builds the railroad, other people and companies will ride the railroad and take on those challenges.
Then again there’s something that Musk is working on now that may have direct application to building colonies on Mars, his tunneling operations. Assuming that the majority of living and working space for a Mars colony will be underground, that’s a whole lot of digging that will be needed. His battery powered boring machines will be fully operational and perfected by then and with hopefully just some minor modifications able to start tunneling on Mars. Actually these would probably be much smaller versions of the current boring machines to reduce the size and weight for transport to Mars, which is fine because the scale of these projects will be much smaller than digging projects on Earth.
Of course using solar power to recharge the batteries on the boring machines. Solar is more of a challenge on Mars due to less solar energy, but again by lucky coincidence (?) Musk is also involved in solar power so he can design solar systems specifically for Mars, not only for the boring machines but for all of the other power that will be needed for the colony.
And BFR can bring back plenty of sample soil so that they can test making bricks with it.
Actually all of this would likely be done first at a research base on Mars which is more likely to exist before an actual colony.
I believe you’re right about SpaceX’s plans, that is providing transportation to Mars but not necessarily building the colony (or base) themselves. But the trip to Mars will take months. So SpaceX will need to provide BFS with a life support system and probably one with closed air and water loops. As I understand it, they contracted the Dragon 2 life support system to Paragon Space Development. I haven’t hear what they plan for BFS.
I’m not too concerned with other spacecraft systems. Other things required for a deep space mission (e.g. power, navigation and communications) don’t need to be fundamentally different from what robotic missions use. Once on Mars, you might be right about Boring and Solar City having something to contribute. But, one way or another, laying out solar panels or digging hole should require a whole lot of technology development.
The great thing about the BFS is that it’s cheap enough and reusable so you will be able to test it in Earth Orbit and Cislunar Space before committing to Mars. For example just place one in the EM L2 position for a year or so to test out the life support system. Maybe while there deploy a couple of co-orbiting space telescopes as well as systems for imaging the far side of the Moon to pay for it. Maybe even a far side rover or two. If anything goes wrong Earth is just a few days away.
The system you’re looking for is on ISS, it has been continuously occupied by humans for 20 years, and it needs about 20 tons of resupply and spare parts every year to support 6 astronauts.
BFS is designed to land more than 100 tons on Mars surface, so one BFS can bring enough supply and equipment to support a team of 12 for 2.5 years. And SpaceX plans to send 6 BFS for the first human mission to Mars.
Until there’s money all ANYONE can do is talk (plan). In the US we prefer to give the rich a tax cut. http://www.robert-w-jones.com
And the rich like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are using the very tax cuts you hate to actually get us to Mars. By contrast, if they government did take the money from them in higher taxes it wouldn’t be going to NASA. NASA only gets a tiny dibble of government spending and there is zero evidence it has any relation to tax revenues.
Spacex is years late. We’ll see if they are cheap as Soyuz. We’ll see how safe they are. They will use resources NASA built.
Space X is already
doing what nobody else had done or planned to do at a much cheaper cost than anyone else.
SpaceX is late on commercial crew, but so is Boeing. That’s largely due to NASA requirements which were not anticipated when they bid for the contracts and set the original schedule.
Both companies have already contracted to provide seats which are as “cheap” as a Soyuz (if you want to call that cheap…) Those are firm, fixed price contracts. Unless they default, that’s what NASA will be paying.
Both companies are being held to much higher safety standards than NASA has every held itself to. Requirements which SpaceX and Boeing must satisfy were not followed (or were waived) for every launch vehicle NASA has every flown astronauts on.
And, yes, SpaceX and Boeing are using resources developed by NASA. And Douglas used technology developed by NACA to build the DC-3. Developing technology for industry to use is part of NASA’s job, just as it was NACA’s.
I am not convinced that commercial crew will end up being as cheap as Soyuz. Neither am I convinced it will be as safe. We will see.
Falcon 9 is already much lower in cost than Proton, despite the Russians having the advantage of paying their engineers and techs peanuts – which is why they’ve basically driven Roscosmos out of the competitive global launch market.
Time will tell regarding the safety of Dragon and Starliner. But the recent spate of problems stemming from deteriorating QC with Soyuz does not give much reassurance that the previous five decades of Soyuz history can be relied upon as a guide to future performance.
And do we really want to continue being dependent upon Vladimir Putin for access to orbit?
Why would Elon Musk be foolish enough to undercut the Russians, and Boeing, by more than a few percentage points? He is in business to make money on his government contracts and if there are no competitors able to under cut him he would be foolish to forgo the profits from NASA. It’s how business works. I read somewhere that he raised his rates for cargo to the ISS to just under those ATK/Orbital is charging NASA, a good business decision.
With space vehicle development, EVERYTHING is years late.
Even Apollo was years late.
But at least Crew Dragon will have its first test launch in 7-8 weeks, after being in development for 7 years. Orion will not get off a launch pad before 2021, despite having been in development since 2005.
How many people born after December 14, 1972 have we lost already? They lived their entire lives hearing grand stories, but seeing no actual efforts to reclaim that glory. Space Shuttle and ISS were grand feats of engineering, but they were a step *back* from Apollo, and we are prisoners here as long as the politicians who care more about pork than glory are in charge.
If I sound bitter, it’s because I’m in that post-1972 contingent, and I would dearly like to see humanity expand it’s reach, rather than shrink it, before I die.
Calling those achievements a step back might be fair. Calling their achievements a step back really isn’t.
Well you do have something over those born after 2003 because they have never lived in a world with supersonic airline travel. Like Apollo capsules those can now only be seen in museums. Different reasons why, but still it’s disappointing that we can’t fly much faster than we did sixty years ago when the DH Comet 4 and B707 began service in October 1958 (the original 1952 Comet was significantly slower).
In the case of the Concord and supersonic air travel, we don’t do it anymore because the existing technology doesn’t make is a sensible or sustainable thing to do. Oh. Wait. That applies to sending people to the Moon as well.
But when it comes to supersonic, commercial aviation, NASA is making progress and the state of the art is improving. I can see something practical and sustainable on the horizon. When it comes to human spaceflight beyond low Earth orbit, I can’t say the same thing. If it’s on the horizon, it’s not NASA’s doing.
FYI, the link to the article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution sends me to an ESA webpage.
Oops. Fixed that. Thanks
Are we upset today, Keith? 🙂
The problem with the Tweet that you’ve quoted is the narrow visuals of the word “Tourists”. In this context they will be scientists…some of them former, or perhaps even then current, NASA employees. Further, I think this was the plan all along. The first people to set foot on Mars will get there on a shoestring compared to NASA cost+ contracting estimates. It’ll also be way, way sooner than Mr. Faust thinks it is. He is using the SLS approach. SLS will not even still be a thing in 25 years.
Just breath…in through the nose and out through the ears. Try it. It works!
Actually, if SpaceX gets there first, the first people on Mars are likely to be engineers and technicians, not scientists.
Good field scientists are also good engineers and technicians. (And good some of the best people doing research in the field are engineers and technicians.) Those of us who are good with theory and computers probably aren’t the sort of scientists you’d want to send to Mars.
Good point, but it still follows my general drift. They WON’T be old people with big hats, flowered shirts, Nikons, and pockets full of American Express Travelers cheques. Well, maybe one or two of them will be…but the rest will be what you said and not there on their own dime.
When I was a kid, it was “Mars in 2019”. Which annoys me in hindsight, because that pretty clearly wasn’t the goal – NASA should have just said their primary mission was the ISS, and maybe they’ll focus on a Mars mission once the ISS mission runs its course (but no promises on the exact date when that happens).
For that matter, what happened to the pivot to the Moon? Has the Lunar Gateway proven so hard to defend that they’re switching back to talking about Mars? Have the pro-Mars people in NASA launched their counter-offensive?
Wait, didn’t I hear the 25 years figure in a speech by a President named Bush? Can’t quite remember which one….
For reference, here is how NASA promised America Mars 50 years ago. Now it is another 25 years… Is it any wonder no one takes NASA’s talk about Mars seriously anymore?
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Thanks for posting that video, which I’d seen several times over the past decades.
I wonder if my fellow lefties would come out in anti-Nuke droves (ie Cassini), or if we’ve matured? Perhaps salting the news with stories about USN successes would help.
(Notice in this film how much gear is abandoned).
I’ve tried using the Navy experience with nuclear power, but it doesn’t have much traction. The usual response I get is that we don’t really know how reliable Navy reactors are, since any accidents would be classified. There are ways to refute that (e.g. anything involving numerous fatalities wouldn’t stay secret for long) but that’s rhetorically weak. There are also technical and training reasons why a Navy reactor would be safer than a civilian power plant.
The environmentalists did a good job of instilling a high level of fear about nuclear energy in the public. Sadly in doing so they basically condemned the world to the current crisis of global warming when the solution was in humanity’s grasp 50 years ago. But then it’s not surprising since many environmentalists seem to hate the modern world and much of the technology in it.
Keith is so right on this! He nails it and speaks for many of us. Meaningful manned spaceflight has been stolen from my generation. I am 65 years old. We landed on the moon shortly after I completed 10th grade. Since 1973 human beings have not gone beyond low earth orbit. Meaningful goals were always 10 to 25 years in the future and no president of either party seriously pursued those goals. Astronaut lunar “heroes” never objected to this stagnant state of affairs and celebrated their status as one of a very few to go to the moon while being silent that nobody followed for decades. Keith, please keep up the great work in supplying a much needed perspective.
To be fair, expecting that sort of leadership from the astronaut corps is simply not going to happen. Those people are, if the popular press is even close to accurate, so afraid of losing a slot by dint of a misplaced statement, that they simply keep quiet.
And who can blame them? Years- decades- of training for a couple of rides is quite motivating.
On the other hand there are a few Big Names who I have faulted for post-NASA silence (and I am not looking at Buzz). I’m talking about the First Man himself, possibly the only one on the planet who could have moved us forward. Teaching at Embry wasn’t helpful.
I’ve got mixed feelings about that. I really respect the way Armstrong never wanted (and refused) to be a superstar. But perhaps he could have done a little more in the way of low key but firm advice. For astronauts in general, I think you’re right about the cultural tendency not to make waves. And I don’t think it’s just the public statements you imply. I get the impression it goes down to the level of speaking up at a internal meeting versus private one-on-one conversation after the meeting. But that’s all a response to how NASA selects astronauts for flight missions. If they are looking for vocal leadership from astronauts, they shouldn’t rig the system against people who can provide that.
Not all the astronauts have been quiet. Folks like Buzz Aldrin, Harrison Schmitt, the late Pete Conrad, John Young, Gene Cernan have been very vocal about both a lunar return and going on to Mars.
The attached picture is taken in my office at PSI HQ in Tucson. The top is a paint-by-number I did in 1965, commemorating the first American space walk by Ed White. Below is a poster I made in 1989, commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Moon landing. That poster would make little sense to people today, because most were not born or too young to have had dreams of today at the time we landed on the Moon. If someone had asked me in 1969, where we would be in the year 2000, I would have said we would be heading out to the stars after colonizing the Moon and Mars! After all, we went from nothing to the surface of the Moon in less than a decade – what could we do in the next 31 years! Back in the 1960s this kind of expansion was considered inevitable. It was expressed in shows like Star Trek. In the midst of the cold war and the hot Vietnam war, we still had this relentlessly positive vision of the future. The vision of the public, encouraged by NASA and the government, was that this was the beginning of the “Space Age”. The problem was that there really was no vision by NASA or the government beyond planting a flag on the Moon and repeat. It was doomed to end, or at best hobble along. Our government has never committed to a future beyond stunt as policy. In the 1960s, we were excited because the “Space Age” meant that we would all be able to live and work in space, expanding our opportunities, wealth and knowledge, being a part of a great human journey beyond the Earth. The people saw themselves in that future, not some proxy astronaut. Today, we know so much more about near-Earth space, Mars, and other solar system bodies, that we can ask the question “do we – as a people – have a future in space, and how do we make that happen?” I think the answer is yes, and that there would be nothing more exciting than to confront the tough engineering, biology, and other science problems we need to figure it out. It’s not about dates. It’s about direction.
These are the pictures Mark wanted to post <img alt=”http://images.spaceref.com/…” src=”http://images.spaceref.com/…“>
“Blah, blah, blah”. So true.
Someone in NASA leadership will stand up at one of these conferences one day and say it like it is – “I’m going to show you what we’re funding right now, and for the foreseeable future. It doesn’t add up to getting us a crew stepping foot on the Moon or Mars, not on its own. And even these parts go out years. Decades. Maybe one day we can get beyond this, but we don’t like to actually look that far ahead either, like how that might happen, ending this or that, and moving money from here to there. It pisses off the people who are here now. Like talking about Grandma’s inheritance, in front of Grandma. I have to say as well -lots of people in space, doing lots of things, frankly that’s not in our swim lane either. So bear with me as I present a bunch of charts I’m told is our “plan” for the Moon and Mars, and I’ll try and keep a straight face. [Phone starts to vibrate…looks at phone] Oh, gee! I just learned my retirement party is tomorrow…”
“…..for a strategic research plan to methodically reduce risk and flight certify humans for trips to destinations such as Mars. NASA has never had such a strategy and has dabbled in meandering hobby shop science for decades.”
KC- this comment is woefully incorrect. NASA’s biomedical research program, in it’s various guises, has for years been dedicated to conducting only targeted research aimed at lowering the risks for various mission scenarios, including Mars. You often mention that you are a ‘space biologist’, but you left the Agency decades ago, and your comments often indicate a lack of familiarity and understanding of more recent developments and activities in the Agency’s research in this area. (And yes, until relatively recently I was intimately involved in this research. )
I was thinking the only spacecraft that carries humans in space is Soyuz. Orion, Dragon, others are years away and even with a weak Russian infrastructure the Soyuz has endured. I wonder if it’s due to the concept design of Soyuz (entry module, workshop module, service module) where other concepts like Apollo were not sustainable.
It has been said Korolev got Soyuz idea from the proposed GE concept for the Apollo program. Dennis Wingo has written in his blog about Ralph Cordiner, Chairman of the Board of General Electric Company, “As we step up our activities on the space frontier, many companies, universities, and individual citizens will become increasingly dependent on the political whims and necessities of the Federal government.”
Dennis has pointed out once federal govt pulled the funding for Apollo, that entire system stopped.
See https://denniswingo.wordpre… of what Cordiner and others discussed in year before Apollo program decision.
Was the GE concept had something influence by Ralph Cordiner? Just wondering.
NASA is a tragedy of tremendous proportions. They seem to have taken all the right decisions to get us to the moon “before this decade is out”, and we were so successful! And then they seem to have taken all the wrong decisions, for probably the right reasons. Next step? A re-usable spacecraft to get us to orbit (half the way to anywhere) that would save us money. Result? Shuttle, which cost more per launch than any other vehicle they could have possibly conceived. Next step? Well, Von Braun proposed a space station that would be able to dock moon and mars bound craft, re-fuel them, and send them on their way. Result? Well, not so much as the dream, especially given the orbital inclination of ISS at 56 degrees. Next step? Well, how about a lunar space station? This would be so great, would be able to dock lunar landers and re-fuel them and send them on their way! This is one space cadet that isn’t buying it.
In modern NASA jargon, that would be a very poor flow down of requirements. Low cost was the reason for developing a reusable vehicle, but once development started, that higher level requirement got lost and it became a program to develop a reusable vehicle _without_ requirements on cost. Similarly, the higher level requirement for a station might have been supporting missions to the Moon and Mars, but once it became a program to build a space station, with the purpose of the station getting lost along the way.
You know, I don’t think a single individual in NASA management today contributed one iota to the architecture of the program NASA is currently operating. About all the current crop did was to eliminate things. They cut the Hab Module, the Centrifuge Module, a second Cupola, they shut down the Shuttle. It is too bad they have no idea what they are doing in terms of planning out a future program.