NASA-Funded Report Says Mars 2033 Is Really Mars 2037/2039
Evaluation of a Human Mission to Mars by 2033 – Full report(PDF)
“In August 2017, NASA asked the IDA Science and Technology Policy Institute (STPI) to conduct this independent assessment, specifically requesting that STPI use NASA’s current and notional plans for human exploration as the basis for the spaceflight systems and timelines presented in this study. STPI produced a draft report in December of 2017. Because NASA’s exploration program was refocused in 2018, STPI was asked to update the earlier report in September 2018. Additional research was conducted between September 2018 and January 2019. This report is the result of those efforts.”
“Under NASA’s current and notional plans, four complex elements–SLS, Orion, Gateway, and the DST–need to be developed and completed to launch a human mission to orbit Mars. These technology developments would occur while NASA also designs and launches lunar landers and human astronauts to the Moon’s surface. Figure ES-1 depicts a notional schedule for an orbital crewed mission to Mars orbit. We find that even without budget constraints, a Mars 2033 orbital mission cannot be realistically scheduled under NASA’s current and notional plans. Our analysis suggests that a Mars orbital mission could be carried out no earlier than the 2037 orbital window without accepting large technology development, schedule delay, cost overrun, and budget shortfall risks. Further budget shortfalls or delays in the construction or testing of the DST would likely require the mission to depart for Mars in 2039 at the earliest.”
“Given that NASA’s investment in SLS, Orion, and the Gateway will continue with or without the orbital mission to Mars, the additional cost beyond these elements, of just the orbital mission to Mars, is $45 billion in FY 2017 dollars, which includes the costs of SLS launches, Orion capsules, the DST and its supplies, and ground support during DST missions.”
“We found that NASA’s current Human Research Program Integrated Research Plan to study human health risks associated with long-duration deep space spaceflight lacks sufficient detail in both evidence and strategy to justify the predicted timeline to develop risk mitigation strategies, or even estimate a realistic cost to retire the risks. Further, the document does not present a unified plan to prioritize NASA’s approach to filling in gaps in knowledge, especially on the combined effects of radiation, low-or-micro-gravity, and isolation on astronauts. Accordingly, NASA’s current approach to studying human health in deep space presents high risks to astronauts on a three-year mission to Mars.”
Contrary to Orion Pao they aren’t going to Mars anytime soon and not sure anyone was buying the 2033 timeline. Have we lived long duration in a low gravity environment? Nope. Do we have a capable robot maintenance system to keep a Mars transit functioning while the crew is on the surface for 500 days? Nope. Do we even have a long duration surface spacesuit? Nope. Have we tested isru beyond lab equipment to process Mars soil and atmo for water, oxygen and fuel?nope.
Are any of those in a current roadmap to thoroughly get tested to support a 2033 mission? Let’s see 7 day excursion to lunar surface in 2024 once a year? Once year two years? Lunar base in 2028 but that is start of construction not fully built ready for long duration habitation. So how did we jump to ready for Mars 5 years past start of lunar base? We have barely crawled in space let alone the walked on the moon before running to Mars.
Spot on! Is 1/6g enough to counteract the physiological problems that we know exist after at least 6 months in zero-g? If not, we need to place a centrifuge ON THE MOON, with astronauts exercising in it regularly at 3/8g over more than a year’s time! How about protection from cosmic radiation? (Solar radiation can be handled either by enough regolith or shielded by a water tank around the crew quarters on a Mars-bound ship. Cosmic radiation…that’s a different story, and will take a lot of research to solve!)
ISRU? Better learn how to do it on the Moon before tackling the Martian environment!
NASA is very unlikely to accomplish much of this without help from SpaceX, Blue Origin, Bigalow, et al.
My genes may allow me to make it to 100…in 2042. I might see the first human set foot on Mars by then! Hopefully, I’ll see a well-established Lunar base by then…by Americans!
Ad Luna! Ad Ares! Ad Astra!
At least on the Moon or Mars, cosmic rays are a solvable problem. As you mentioned, radiation can be handled by piling regolith on top of the shelter. That works for any sort of radiation. For cosmic rays, it might take quite a bit of regolith, but it’s not like there is any shortage of regolith on the surface of the Moon and Mars. The Earth’s atmosphere demonstrably stops cosmic rays. (No, at those energies and for heavy ions, the Earth’s magnetic field isn’t much help.) So, roughly, 14.7 pounds per square inch is enough. Gratuitously switching to metric, that’s 10,200 kg per square meter. At a guess, the density of regolith might be 2 g/cm^3 (about right for rocks with 50% or so void space or porosity.) So that would take burying the habitats under five meters of regolith. That would take some serious earth-moving equipment. But digging an eight meter deep trench, putting a habitat module at the bottom, and bulldozing the regolith back in on top, that’s a fairly straight forward civil engineering problem.
Gravity’s another problem, since I hate the idea of a centrifuge on a planetary surface. I mean one big enough to live in and spinning quickly enough to generate useful, partial gravity _and_ slowly enough to avoid medical issues from things like coriolis force.
Developing the technology for in situ resources exploitation is going to take work. There’s nothing inherently difficult about it. But it will be different from terrestrial mining and ore processing. That’s likely to be a trial and error learning process. But I don’t see any reason we can’t start making mistakes with robotic missions right now. Although I don’t think the Moon isn’t a great place to practice for Mars. Most of the in situ resources on Mars can be extracted from the atmosphere, and pumping air into a chemical processing plant isn’t anything like digging a strip mine.
This is BS – get on with it!
I don’t think anyone cares about the old 2033 timeline now that NASA has officially pivoted back to the Moon for the 2020s. Assuming that doesn’t just get diverted again, a NASA Mars mission probably won’t be happening until the 2040s unless outside commercial hardware makes it much cheaper (IE unless Starship/Super Heavy turns out to be everything that was promised).
Actually, Lunar activity is part of the whole scheme.
Not enough money, not enough time. To hit the 2033 deadline after presumably getting to the Moon by 2024, they’d have start serious work on the Mars mission right in the middle of the on-going lunar missions. That’s not going to happen without either a major budget increase or SpaceX offering a much cheaper way to do it.
Yes, SpaceX seems to be the only hope. Hopefully they will quickly fix the issue with the Raptor they found with the Starhopper and return to flying it soon.
I agree Space X is the only hope, humans have not been outside low earth orbit since 1973. I do not think they are having an issue with the raptor engine, it is just normal development.
Yep, just they are just getting the bugs out, which is what test programs are for. A tweet from a Brownsville reporter indicated SpaceX told the county there wouldn’t be any road closures for a couple months, presumably while they debug the Raptor.
Life support. Radiation countermeasures. Low gravity countermeasures. It takes more than just a cool rocket to get to Mars
And, as this study notes, NASA is not making those issues a priority. At least not enough of a priority to have solutions in time for a 2033 Mars mission. As for SpaceX, how do we know they aren’t working on things like life support? Or how much they’re spending on it? Sure, it could be zero. But all we really know is they aren’t talking about it. It’s not like we have any real visibility into what they do. (Well, unless it’s built on an open field in Texas or produces a large cloud of smoke in Florida…)
On reading this report, one notices that it is severely constrained. So much so that its utility, too, is constrained.
1. Start with the inception date of August, 2017, and delivery date Feb 2019. An awful lot happened during those 17 months, not the least of which is the continuing re-definition of what I call the ‘space minute.’ Folks, time isn’t determined by study groups anymore. It’s set by the speed of commerce, and the two just ain’t the same.
2. The study uses Orion/ SLS only. Enough said.
3. The ‘spaceship’ carrying people to Mars is the Deep Space Transport (DST), designed to move between Lunar orbit and Mars orbit. Not bad, in itself, but depends on the Lunar gateway and landers at both ends; and as far as I know the DST is simply a statement of need and not a reference to any sort of design. Cost of DST is $29.2B.
4. The lunar lander would be partially expendable; a kind of progress, I suppose.
Jeff Foust’s (understated comment): “The report has received a relative muted reaction on Capitol Hill, in part because it has been overtaken by events, namely plans to accelerate the first human landing to 2024 that will affect other elements over the overall exploration plan.”*
Well, at least we are talking about how, and not why; that’s a huge improvement. OTOH, there’s no mention of commercial activity (by design).
Turning the last page my first thought: “It’s not terrible.”
*https://spacenews.com/indep…
Just more evidence that the SLS/Orion/Gateway is not going to gets America to Mars. The only mention of SpaceX is providing cargo to the Gateway and DST.
This report puts a dagger through the heart of the supposed pivot to Mars policy instituted by Obama in 2010.
It turns out that all the Obama policy claims of “developing technology for Mars” were all just a bunch of hot air, while the real money was still being funneled into LEO ops and ISS Forever. So even the hazy goals of “Mars by the early 2030’s” were never taken seriously, and Obama cancelling the Moon plans were just one more case of politicians kicking the can down the road while keeping the pork flowing.
Actually, I would disagree. The original proposal by the Obama administration was to scrap Constellation and institute a technology development program, while supporting ISS using commercial service providers. In my opinion, that is exactly what NASA should have been doing for the past ten years instead of building a new booster and capsule. Those were forced on NASA (and the administration) for political reasons by Congress.
Of course Congress revolted. The Obama 2010 plan offered Congress nothing to compensate for the cancellation of Project Constellation.
And even with that Congressional meddling, what is the excuse for the the Obama administrations mismanagement of NASA? Look at all the boondoggles of various projects both manned and unmanned during the Obama administration. All the delays, all the cost overruns. Who the heck was minding the store?
Well, with the Obama Admin, the policy was simple: “if you are happy with your current rocket program, you can keep it”!
A space policy that is not implemented because it ignored political realities is just as much a failure.
And properly should be.
It is easy to dismiss the political arena because it is challenging. This could explain, for instance, the tendency of many to demean participants, to question their motives, or both. “She’s just a politician,” for instance, covers the object with cooties!
Why is that? Scoring a victory in the political column is difficult. But isn’t this proper? Isn’t this the very arena where various ideas and preferences are heard?
Why do we demean politicians? Well, engineers and scientists do because we tend to think of real work involving technical details, facts and numbers. And for serious work to having answers that reflect some sort of absolute, verifiable, underlying truth. Politics is about as far from that as you can get.
But more generally, I think what we’d really like is for politicians to work by convincing people and building a consensus. But that’s a really tough job. It is possible to get results in politics by lying to and misleading people, telling one person one thing behind closed doors and another person something quite different, and other forms of deception and manipulation. Some politicians do that. It would be surprising if they didn’t, because there’s a natural tendency to get results while expending the least necessary. But the easy way to get things done in politics happens to be behavior that would be frowned on in private life. (Oh, and there is also a certain amount of elitism and sense of privilege many politicians display.)
But I suspect a lot of that is less pervasive than we imagine. Stories about honest, hardworking politicians don’t sell newspapers. That gives us a biased view of the profession.
“Politics is about as far from that as you can get.”
But as pointed out ignoring political realities will lead to failure. I’m thinking for decades there were dreams and plans for a space station. Von Braun Colliers magazine was impressive but never went beyond artwork. Lots of work spent on MOL but nothing was launched. Skylab was a one time use from Apollo Applications Program. Space Station Freedom was being worked on, survived by one vote in its last year. Teaming up with the Russians added considerable cost and delays but if it wasn’t for the Russians, ISS would have never been launched. Technically doesn’t make sense but that’s the way it is. Yikes, fast forward to these days of SLS and commercial space… what a balancing act.
There you go forgetting about Congress again…
Situation normal, always 20 years from today. Also, by then (2035) there will be more people over 65 than under 18. I wonder who will be paying for this or anything by then?
It’s worth mentioning the basic approach and underlying assumption of this study. That is, a human Mars mission will be developed as business as usual, and follow current NASA policies and practices. The schedule, cost and risk assessments are all based on NASA following the rules they normally do, and taking as long and costing as much as that normally does. Given those assumptions, I think the conclusion isn’t a surprise. Actually, given those assumptions, I’m not sure 2039 is a realistic date.
If anything, the cost assessment is optimistic. They follow the NASA practice of estimating cost overruns on past projects. That is to use the cost at the Preliminary Design Review and Key Decision Point C as the initially planned cost. There is some logic to that, since that’s when the design and plan mature enough for realistic cost estimate. And it’s when NASA technically commits to the mission, as opposed to funding the formulation and design of a possible mission.
But past projects have seen a huge growth in estimated costs before this stage. That’s not just uncertainty due to a very rough design or mission concept. That ought to go either way. It’s also because of very optimistic assumptions at the early stages, design creep and probably a number of other things. Unfortunately, NASA’s plans for human Mars missions aren’t even close the PDR. Nor any of the things that have to be done first. That means you can’t say actual cost growth has averaged 47% (+-53%) between PDR and execution, and multiply the current cost estimates for a Mars mission by 1.47. It’s going to be worse than that.
“Due to long development programs and ongoing testing, SLS and Orion present low technology risks to a Mars orbital mission.”
That would be funny if it was not so tragic. Oh well, Space X, while still a long shot, remains the best shot we have.
Unfortunately, that statement is completely true, at least by the standards used by NASA and in this study. No one actually believes SLS will launch next June. But based on past performance, it probably won’t slip by more than nine months or so. (So far, the work has taken an extra two thirds of the planned time. So call it ) That’s not a serious risk to a 2033 human landing on Mars.
All that time and money has (ostensibly) gone into analysis and testing to make sure SLS and Orion will work. I think it’s even officially described as a demonstration (showing that everything works) rather than a test (seeing if everything works.) I personally question now much pre-flight analysis and testing can reduce risk, but this is the conventional wisdom. That means the technical risk from SLS and Orion is low. A human Mars landing probably isn’t going to be set back three years by an SLS launch failure or Orion EM-1 burning up on reentry, because they’ve spend years and billions making sure that won’t happen. (Note again, that’s the conventional wisdom, not my own view on risk management.)
Compare that to something like Deep Space Transport, which this study really blasted. Based on projects of a similar scope (say SLS or Orion) we can almost count on the development work taking at least 50% longer than planned. That’s a high schedule risk to humans on Mars in 2033.
The conceptual design for DST is based on idea which may not work. To pick one of the dozen or so issues the study mentioned, the plan calls for astronauts to spend three years in microgravity. We don’t know that’s acceptable, and that’s one of the things NASA want ISS and Gateway to find out about. But the current concept for DST assumes that it’ll be fine. Maybe with lots of exercise, maybe with the right medicines to prevent calcium loss, or something. But the results of studies on ISS and Gateway could very well come back saying, no, that just won’t do. If so, all the work done on DST up to that point would have to be scrapped and they’d have to come up with something completely different. (Tethers and spin for centrifugal “gravity”?) That’s a high technical risk. Normally, NASA wouldn’t let a project past preliminary design review until issues like that have been resolved. But if they do that, they hold up DST development, and the schedule is blown.
So, in fact, SLS and Orion actually are low risk to NASA’s plans for putting astronauts on Mars. NASA is assuming they will work as advertised, and, except for a likely schedule slip they can accommodate, SLS and Orion probably will. In contrast, everything downstream of them isn’t going to happen as planned or anything like on schedule.
I suppose you could say all those downstream plans are built around the idea using SLS and Orion. That’s true. But that’s comparing the current plan to alternative architectures. The study in question wasn’t chartered to do that. Just to evaluate the realism of the current plan.
I guess I’d say that really shows NASA’s approach to risk is fundamentally flawed. SLS/Orion involve existential risk to crewed spaceflight because there is a truly significant possibility they won’t work at all. I don’t mean in a “We launched it and put it into orbit” manner (although I have doubts about that as well) but in a “We spent $80 billion dollars and the thing we built doesn’t help us achieve any goals at all. If that’s all we can do, kill it.”
Imagine a world with no SpaceX–the inability of SLS/Orion to execute could easily lead to the extinguishing of crewed spaceflight in the next 5 to 10 years. That’s real risk, the asteroid risk. For technical issues, build robust, build efficiently, iterate your solution to increase capability. That’s SpaceX and it is the opposite of SLS/Orion. In Nassim Taleb’s phrasing, build systems that are “antifragile.” SLS/Orion is a perfect example of a “fragile” system and those systems carry tremendous unmeasured long tail risks.
There is a reason why reports like this always include their charter. The first paragraph in the report (after the executive summary) reads
“Section 435 of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Transition Authorization Act of 2017 mandated NASA to contract with an independent entity to assess the technologies and the scheduling, costs, and budget profiles that would be associated with a human spaceflight mission to Mars to be launched in 2033.2 NASA requested the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) Science and Technology Policy Institute (STPI) to conduct this assessment, and use NASA’s current and notional plans for human spaceflight as the basis of the evaluation.”
The relevant section of the authorization act is in Appendix A.
There are tons of reports like this, and others by organizations the National Academies, which insist on being very careful about what they were commissioned to do. That lets them answer questions like yours.
Did they consider alternatives to SLS and Orion? No. Why not? NASA specifically told them to evaluate the NASA plan, and that plan is about using SLS and Orion. Do they think SLS and Orion will be flying (in the technical, getting things into orbit, sense) in time for NASA to use them as planned? Yes. Do they think the way NASA plans to use SLS and Orion will get astronauts to Mars by 2033? Not a chance. That’s not a flaw in this independent study; it may very well be a flaw in what NASA asked them to do.
This assessment makes an assumption that NASA has a plan and a strategy. There is none.
In 1960, before Kennedy announced a Moon landing, there was a strategy. It had been developed over the previous ten years. In addition to launching automated spacecraft that would become ever more capable, first they would launch 1-man spacecraft that could orbit Earth. Then they would develop a multi-man spacecraft to be used to support space stations and circum-lunar missions. That would be done in the 1960s. In the 1970s they would build a space vehicle to land men on the moon. Its not what ultimately was done but that was the strategy that had gotten a lot of discussion over several years.
Today NASA has become a totally political organization. They have no plan or strategy of their own. Augustine says something, that is the plan for the moment. Bush announces a plan-sounds good. Aldrin whispers in Obama’s ear and Obama announces a new and different plan, why not?
Moon, Mars, asteroids, Gateways, Ares, SLS, Orion; not only US political forces but NASA also tries to make their vendors happy. And they want to keep all their partner nations involved, so if that means an under-powered Orion, sounds good for the moment until of course years and billions of dollars later they figure out it cannot perform most missions being considered.
What is NASA currently good at doing?
a) making rockets
b) planning deep space manned missions
c) inspiring the public
d) making space cool
e) stimulating the imagination
f) none of the above
g) all of the above
How about spaceX? Same options.
There are just too many big errors in this report to even start pointing out. It’s borderline “not even wrong”.
Notice that the acquisition approach so important to any cost estimate is always vague as well as unspecified by element. Notice the usual blobs of SLS and Orion become Mars blobs in sandcharts, a sure fire sign someone didn’t want to show thier work, obscuring rather than revealing. Notice the lack of a connection to flight rate for the ongoing blobs of SLS and Orion, again a sure sign of taking poor assumptions off bounds in the study, SLS and Orion are always cheap, TOMORROW.
Just bad. Not even helping the debate. Just creating confusion. Aggg.
I think you may be confusing this report with NASA’s plan for a 2033 Mars mission. The report does describe NASA’s plan, and it has plenty of flaws, including the ones you note. But the study itself was commissioned by NASA to evaluate that plan’s realism in terms of cost, schedule and risk. They weren’t asked to come up with an alternative plan. I can’t disagree with their evaluation: The then-current NASA plan isn’t viable for so many reasons, it’s hard to know where to start.
Understood, and I stand by my points. The report, as an assessment even, is not even wrong. If someone gives you a plan, much of which is not a plan first of all, and you find the so-called plan does not add up, there are many, many places where you could have added valuable advice.
Your crazy uncle says he has a plan for a mansion in the woods, with a zoo, and zombie defenses. You conclude after much analysis the zombie defenses won’t be ready in time, even if he wins the lottery (part of his plan). Who’s crazier, your uncle or your advice?
I see your point, but I can think of a couple reasons it wouldn’t work that way.
First, to use your crazy uncle example, I might want to influence him and I might also be sure he’d simply ignore me if I told him zombies aren’t real. Wanting to get rich playing the lottery? That’s not going to work but it’s harmless enough not to argue about. A mansion in the woods with a zoo? Also not going to happen, but it would be nice if it did, so no arguments there. The anti-zombie mine field? Bad idea. I’d really want to talk him out of that. But I might say, “But uncle, everyone knows you can’t stop zombies with a mine field. It just blows off their legs and then keep crawling forward. Why not a nice, tall wall instead?”
Second, again with the crazy uncle example, the advice I’d give to an uncle is different from the advice I’d give to a customer paying me to do a specific task. As a relative, I’d feel much freer to offer unsolicited advice. But if I were an architect, and a customer asked me to draw up blueprints for a wall capable of stoping zombies, what would I do? Tell him he’s crazy or ask what sort of zombies he was thinking of, so I could assess how tall and strong that wall should be? (O.k. there is a professional ethics issue there, but my point is that the relationship defines how much unsolicited versus solicited advice people offer.)
My favorite example along those lines is the “gnome on a rope” example a NASA manager once used at a pre-proposal meeting for instruments on Europa Clipper. He was explaining how the proposals would be reviewed, and the fact that they would be reviewed by three panels, each asked to focus on one of three topics. That’s the scientific value of the measurements, technical feasibility of the instrument and its ability to make those measurements, and the realism of the cost, schedule and management plan. They were _not_ to comment on things outside their purview. The scientists on the first panel weren’t supposed to comment on budget, since that’s not what they really know about. Similarly, the accountants the third panel weren’t supposed to comment on the science.
Then he illustrated this by describing how he’d want the panels to review a proposal to measure the atmosphere of Jupiter by lowering a garden gnome into the atmosphere on a very long rope. The gnome would be given a thermometer, a barometer and a cell phone. Every 100 meters on the way down, he would call in and report the temperature and pressure. So he was, just with your example of a zombie-fearing uncle, talking about how to respond to a totally crazy idea.
As he described it, the science panel should not say the idea was crazy. They should say temperature and pressure at 100-m resolution, from 0.01 to 100 bars, would be great. But, actually, without composition data, it wouldn’t be nearly as great and might duplicate measurements which could be made by telescopes.
The people looking into cost, management and schedule shouldn’t say it was a crazy idea. If the proposal properly budgeted for the cost of the gnome, instruments, cell phone and rope, then it’s fine. If they have enough time scheduled to buy all that, assemble it, and do the necessary reviews, then that’s also fine. They might comment on the fact that 10,000 km of rope is an awful lot and the mass might be more than the planned spacecraft could accommodate.
‘
It’s the people who were tasked with evaluating the technical feasibility of the proposal who would get to say it’s crazy. They should probably start by mentioning that garden gnomes are statues and inanimate objects, so someone on the proposal team has clearly slipped a cog. Other comments might involve the length of the rope and the tensile strength of rope, range of cell phones, etc.
But the idea is that, when NASA wants input on X, they provide a statement of task which says, “Tell us about X, and do not waste our or your time telling us about Y and Z.” Partially, that’s to make sure they ask the experts on X about X, and the experts on Y about Y. Partially, it’s to make sure they don’t get in trouble over the experts on X giving them bad advice about Y (which the experts on X may or may not know anything about.) And, to be cynical, partially it’s about not wanting to hear contradictory advice when they’ve already made up their minds or have to make suboptimal decisions due to things like congressional mandates.
LOL. True actually. Maybe why the number of assessments I get asked to do keeps dropping. And how often i get asked for advice. I keep trying to get my crazy uncle to spend his energy toward paying his rent. Funny, and sad.
Zombies aren’t real?
No, zombies aren’t real. Well, there are the zombie cats in the tunnels under Denver International Airport. But they aren’t technically zombies. People only call them that because they look like zombie cats. They are really pets brought to Earth be the reptiloid aliens from planet ten, who also live in the tunnels below the airport. (And if we can keep this up, a Denver suburb might get as much money from UFO/conspiracy theorist tourism as Roswell, New Mexico does…)
The amusing, ironic or dismaying thing about all this is that still, no one, addresses the fundamental question of WHY we are, should or will go there, and EXACTLY what we will be doing there; and in doing so prove that the answers given are worth the costs? If you use the word “explore” than you use an open-ended word/concept that has no chance of achieving anything sustainable (itself a multifaceted technical, political, logistical, etc. word/concept – today used as a catch phrase and incorrectly). Are we going to send ONLY geoscientists and engineers to do this so called “exploring” thing, because who else would you need to send to a barren rocky world? It is all nice and fun to discuss the bending of metal and all the designing of cool new toys, but that is the catch-22 between the desire and hope of doing something and the pragmatic reasoning needed to engender action in our modern world. True answers need to be addressed and adopted and followed, else we remain indefinitely at arms reach.
And that is exactly the difference between the conquest of Mount Everest and landing on the Moon.
The conquest of Mount Everest, like the conquest of both poles, was within the means of private organizations and needed no more justification than a group of individuals deciding they wanted to do it – “because it’s there”. It was their money to spend how they wish.
Apollo by contrast required the funding of the taxpayers and so all types of “rational” justifications were needed, “national prestige, science, spin-offs, etc.” And that will be the case as long as government money is needed for space exploration. Which is why ultimately government funded space exploration has drifted for 50 years, both in terms of human space flight and the development of the knowledge needed for space settlement. Yes, there have been many robotic missions, but all have been justified based science, and the reality thatin the modern world leadership in science is critical for national security.
It will only be when the cost of space flight drops to the level by which it is affordable by private organizations will space will be settled by humanity. Unlike those using taxpayer dollars they won’t need to develop rational justifications. All they will need is the desire to do so.