NASA Wants Your Ideas – Or Do They? (Update)
Update: NASA Seeks Comments on Moon to Mars Objectives by June 3, NASA
“NASA has extended the comment period on its Moon to Mars Objectives to 5 p.m. EDT on Friday, June 3. Comments were previously set to close on Tuesday, May 31. While the agency is working on a tight deadline to finalize the objectives this fall, numerous respondents requested additional time to provide higher quality feedback. The agency still intends to invite select participants to its workshops this summer to include the first event in June as originally planned.”
Keith’s 23 May update: A few more days may help. But still, you’d think that the agency was not interested in rushed ideas – but rather – ideas that the submitters actually had the time to think through and present in the most useful fashion for NASA. Oh well. Its only rocket science, right?
NASA Seeks Input on Moon to Mars Objectives, Comments Due May 31, NASA
“As NASA moves forward with plans to send astronauts to the Moon under Artemis missions to prepare for human exploration of Mars, the agency is calling on U.S. industry, academia, international communities, and other stakeholders to provide input on its deep space exploration objectives. NASA released a draft set of high-level objectives Tuesday, May 17, identifying 50 points falling under four overarching categories of exploration, including transportation and habitation; Moon and Mars infrastructure; operations; and science. Comments are due to the agency by close of business on Tuesday, May 31.”
Keith’s 17 May note: These to-do 50 items that NASA lists are interesting questions – covering big topics which would require time and thought in terms of the input that people could provide. So what does NASA do? they drop this on the outside world with no advanced notice with only 2 weeks to respond – with a prominent national holiday on the day before comments are due. If NASA was really serious about getting quality input they’d give people more time to think, analyse, and respond.
As such, the real question is whether NASA actually needs help and will consider accepting help from outside the usual suspects within its bubble – or – if they are just going through the motions of asking for input – so as to be seen as being interested – when in fact they are probably not interested in outside input i.e. faux transparency.
What difference does it make when Congress micromanages NASA anyway, and the goals of huge NASA projects are more about pork and supporting as many congressional districts as possible?
Sounds like you WANT to extinguish the stardust! NASA may appear hapless, but thats nothing compared to constant, feckless crowing about pork.
30 day Mars mission for crew of two begs the question why even go? Why spend all those billions to build Mars crew transit, Mars lander, Mars ascent systems just to go for such a short stay? How much science is performed given crew will be deconditioned so won’t exactly be running out the door post landing so is 30 days more like 25 days? How many more robotic missions that could be built to do more exploration than what this crew can cover in their 25 day stay?
This plan is so timid and unengaging that I don’t see the point.
Reading between the lines, I think NASA believes the mission tradeoffs for landing large surface payloads are unfavorable. Easier to do a high energy opposition class mission than a long surface stay conjunction class mission.
Such a Mars mission design certainly has too much of an Apollo era flags-and-footprints whiff about it.
But if the Mars tech for the first manned mission is that limited, then why even try landing crew on Mars? If the first crew is going to spend that much time in space, why not do a conjunction class Mars orbital mission instead? Explore the surface of the Moons. Teleoperate Mars surface rovers from Mars Orbit. Recover Mars surface samples robotically launched from Mars.
A Mars orbital mission has more direct overlap with lunar mission technology. A lunar lander would very adaptable as a Mars orbital-transport/moon-hopper; a hopper that could transfer crew back and forth from an interplanetary transit vehicle parked in high Mars orbit, to prepositioned habitats on the moons of Mars.
$L$ delenda est
I found the interesting part of the Pam Melroy-Jim Free-Spuds Vogel video to be the part where they said only two would land and they’d land in the rover. Their artwork was still showing an Altair style Constellation lander but now carrying a crew half the size.
They are also planning on debilitated astronauts landing; debilitated after exposure to days, weeks or months of zero-G. No plan at all to research partial-G. I guess they must be planning on going to Mars In a Gateway or an Orion? Ridiculoous.
Assuming Musk’s StarShip flies then all of this goes by the wayside and perhaps out of the ‘crew’ of 50 or 75 people (maybe a 100) NASA will buy 2 tickets for their folks.
They need some top level over riding goals and objectives, beyond the routine “we’ll do this kind or that kind of science”. One of those kinds of goals should be to build and maintain a first rate engineering/technology, technical management workforce. Thats something NASA gave up 35 years ago and has not replaced yet.