President Obama Has Some Ideas About Mars
Barack Obama: America will take the giant leap to Mars, Barack Obama
“This week, we’ll convene some of America’s leading scientists, engineers, innovators and students in Pittsburgh to dream up ways to build on our progress and find the next frontiers. Just five years ago, US companies were shut out of the global commercial launch market. Today, thanks to groundwork laid by the men and women of NASA, they own more than a third of it. More than 1,000 companies across nearly all 50 states are working on private space initiatives. We have set a clear goal vital to the next chapter of America’s story in space: sending humans to Mars by the 2030s and returning them safely to Earth, with the ultimate ambition to one day remain there for an extended time. Getting to Mars will require continued cooperation between government and private innovators, and we’re already well on our way. Within the next two years, private companies will for the first time send astronauts to the International Space Station.”
Obama, Gov. Wolf to highlight Pittsburgh science and technology conference, Times Online
“President Barack Obama will be in Pittsburgh on Thursday for a daylong conference that will highlight scientific and technological advances locally and nationally. The Frontiers Conference will take place simultaneously at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University. The conference will feature some of the biggest names in business, research and governmental agencies. … The event is not open to the public but can live-streamed at www.frontiersconference.org“.
Keith’s note: Another meeting that neither regular citizens or news media can attend. The speakers have the benefit of getting to talk to each other while everyone else looks over their shoulders. More closed openness.
“Yes, I will wait until the last 4 months of my administration to mention a “clear goal” to go to Mars sometime in the 2030’s.
My administration will NOT FUND the half trillion dollar mission..so I’m just spouting rhetoric and kicking the money can down the road.”
I agree with the half trillion estimate. When George H. W. Bush initiated the SEI, and requested an estimate of the cost of the mission to Mars, the median estimate was about $400M for a campaign that included a lunar base and a half dozen manned Mars sortie missions. He decided that this was more than it was worth and shelved the idea. SpaceX might be able to shave quite a bit off hte cost, but I am unaware of how SLS/Orion would be able to do it.
> the median estimate was about $400M
$400B ($4e11), no?
(FWIW, I think that was fairly realistic, give or take a factor of 2.)
Depends entirely on how much kitchen sink gets thrown in. Mars base by way of full lunar and orbital infrastructure is a lot more expensive (but also more capable) than a 4-person Mars Direct with no follow-on.
I suppose at some point we will need a way to differentiate between $ Sx and $ ULA.
Just talk. He doesn’t have any more budgets to submit.
The primary difference with this announcement from previous discussions about Mars exploration is tying together a number of initiatives toward a specific objective, and more emphasis on international cooperation and partnerships with the commercial sector.
It’s hard to criticize the overall intent, but it seems that it’s a bit late in the term to shine a light on humans to Mars exploration. The key to any long-term program is sustainability through subsequent administrations, adequate and consistent funding, and significant political and public support. While it’s nice to see the President speak up, success will require specific milestones, objectives, timelines, and budgets. Need to go back and look at the last budget the President submitted; is there sufficient funding to support the initiatives mentioned in the White House statement?
I suspect the President’s announcement will be received favorably by space advocates, but they will be disappointed that it came so late, not to mention cynical if no money comes with it. Assuming HRC wins, has she committed to supporting and funding this plan? If not, then this announcement just kicks the can down the road for the next administration to deal with.
It will be interesting to see how the participants at the upcoming Pittsburgh gathering react, but hard to imagine they won’t all be on board. Disappointing that the event is closed to the public.
I’m wondering if the Administration felt compelled to act because of the recent announcement from Musk and his ambitious plan to send 100 people to Mars? Perhaps they felt it necessary to show that it has been NASA that has been laying the foundation for human exploration of the Red Planet. Hoping to plant a legacy?
I’ve been engaged at various levels in plans for humans to Mars exploration since the Ride report in 1987 and the first Office of Exploration that was established as a result. Since then there has been plenty of talk and hype about humans to Mars. Based on that experience I’ve learned it’s easy to lay out enticing visions about space. Achieving those visions is another story altogether.
I have moved the contents to another thread, now that there is one discussing the issue:
http://nasawatch.com/archiv…
Interesting to say the least. To whom were the messages addressed?
All the wikileaks this cycle have been stolen from email account of John Podesta
Its eight years too late. It really doesn’t matter what his views are about Space or Mars anymore. He had his chance and miss his window of opportunity.
McConnell would have filibustered anything he proposed.
A four decades old stepping stone mission was proposed to an asteroid to give the ‘rocket and capsule’ something to do. Unfortunately, because they were designed for lunar only, they could not do the job, besides the fact that the cost of the mission would be about 40B recapturing SLS costs until it flew.
He also did not offer up a more challenging task at the time because he recognized, like Augustine, that using decades old expendable technology would require 3B/yr extra and some other technology would be required. Cancelled CxP.
Fortunately, commercial crew is at least underway to fly on a US Rocket, not to mention the lower launch costs of New Space. Hey Wait…What? An opportunity to affordably explore with lower $/kg and shifting SLS/Orion dollars to missions!!!
Will the scorched earth, stall and delay Congress keep NASA stuck in LEO & SLS/Orion parked going nowhere?
The most realistic path to Mars would in fact be a collaboration between NASA and its traditional (Boeing, etc) and nontraditional (SpaceX) partners. Perhaps my hopes cloud my judgement, but I think Obama is trying to ease everyone into this thinking. Then again, it could be just meaningless fluff talk, couldn’t it?
Obama seems suddenly interested in his presidency’s legacy. Without commenting on Obamacare, his foreign policy, energy industry and trade, or domestic racial strife and violence, maybe he really thinks he left a visionary space program headed to Mars ?
In fact the space program is a shadow of itself 8 years ago. As he said he would do, and true to his word prior to taking the Presidency, he has consistently tried to reduce NASAs budget. His legacy in space is not a positive.
Visionary leadership? NASA is now an agency without any vision and with no leadership, too.
Perhaps you were not aware that all those issues are posted online
https://www.whitehouse.gov/
Last website I would believe. Obama tells you only what he wants you to hear.
Oh look, another lame duck session vision announcement with no funding. Yay. How many successive admins have we seen this? I can hardly contain my optimism.
And what would happen if THIS President asked a republican congress for visionary space funding?
From what I’ve seen over the years, use of NASA as a political football to leverage votes by announcing grand unfunded visions is one of the few things both sides of the aisle seem to agree on.
The best outcome would be if the government would get out of the way and let more innovative solutions emerge.
I don’t want Uncle Sam to run away with the checkbook. I would prefer congress fund NASA to be an anchor tenant in LEO, Cis-Lunar and Lunar surface. Buy commercial seats and use commercial cargo services.
Really tired of the “if government would just get out of the way” red herring. If the private sector wants to mover forward with research and development of space, I don’t see where the government is in the way. If anything, the Obama administration has been very supportive of commercial efforts.
Alan Ladwig – you have converted me. And while we are at it we can put the government in charge of airlines, have US Air really be the only airline, and run by the government. And how about the power grid? Why doesn’t the government take that over and run it?
My point is that the process of the government getting out of the way is in process and hopefully will continue.
“I don’t see where the government is in the way.”
Not completely accurate Alan.
One of the first significant commercial human space efforts was Spacehab. Spacehab was a turn key operation. Spacehab evaluated the payloads and selected a complement that could be flown successfully on a Shuttle flight. They performed the integration, managed the safety process, wrote the procedures, trained the crew and peformed the flight control during the missions. Typical timeline was 9 months to a year to fly a payload. Spacehab was incentivized to fly as many payloads as they could carry and perform successfully, both each mission and as frequently as possible.
NASA-Shuttle, through their cost-plus contractor, USA, performed the same services. Actually the Shuttle payloads on average were simpler because both Shuttle and Spacehab carried locker sized payloads but except for CFES, only Spacehab carried rack-sized. Shuttle averaged a couple years to manifest and fly a payload.
Simple logistics-crew supplies-took 2 to 3 months to manifest and fly on Shuttle; on Spacehab the same could be carried in 2-3 days, and frequently was on Mir missions.
The Spacehab double module and Spacelab carried essentially the same payloads. Spacelab was a more sophisticated module to fly because of the archaic 1970s technology which was never upgraded during the life of the program. Spacelabs used large rack sized computers and CCTV systems that no payload developer ever wanted to interface with by the mid-1980s. Spacehab used laptops and camcorders.and got better data. Spacehab missions ran tens of millions$$ and could fly every few months. Spacelabs averaged something over a billion $$ a mission and could fly only every year or longer.
For some reason ISS costs and schedules are in line with Shuttle and Spacelab. I think the reasons are pretty straightforward. NASA organizations are there to stay in business and have as many people as possible. The more money the NASA manager manages, the more power they have. The first job of any NASA contractor is to make money by sucking off the government teet and the more people and the more time, the more money they make.
What’s kind of funny is that the Washington Post put an article suggesting that maybe we should go to Venus instead. Which is pretty cool (and I love that speculative presentation that Geoff Landis did on it), but not exactly a good idea for a crewed mission even if the 50-60 KM elevation on Venus is possibly tolerable in terms of pressure and temperature.
People have advocated sending astronauts to Mars orbit, without landing, to demonstrate long-duration spaceflight and to teleoperate rovers on the surface without the ~10 minute two-way-light-time delays. If that’s justified (and personally I’m not convinced) then Venus would be equally viable. It’s slightly easier to get to than Mars, solar power is 450% more available (in watts per square meter), and telecommunications issues are as significant. Possibly more so.
I thought the time delay was 24 minutes when Mars is at it’s closest point?
It’s 8 minutes (one-way) per AU. I get 6 to 44 minutes (two-way) from Earth to Mars. Venus is 5 to 29 minutes.
We need a good study of the impact of delay of a second or two vs delay of 6 to 44 minutes with maximal autonomy on rover operations. This could easily be simulated on Earth of course.
It has been. (Google “teleoperation with time delay”.)
Results vary, but the gestalt result seems to be:
Anything below 0.2s is imperceptible. You could drive your car with a 0.2s delay.
Most people can adapt to a 0.5s delay for even a moderately quick rover (say 5mph), but when you have a system with more axes-of-control (such as a robotic arm, or a docking system) things get froopy. Even with a rover, above a certain speed, you’d want an on-board computer with out-of-condition abort capability.
Between 0.5s and 1s, you have to slow down the rover, but most operators would be able to adapt with practice and specific techniques like “move and wait”; controlling something more demanding like docking is virtually impossible.
Anything above 1s and you might as well revert to conventional pre-programmed sequences rather than direct control. (Supervisory point-and-click human guidance, with actual driving controlled by the on-board computer.)
You can even try a little game called “Signal Delay” which lets you vary the delay from 1-10 seconds. It’s funny to watch online players quickly adopt the “move and wait” method.
[Edit: Current research isn’t on the delay itself, it’s on things like predictive displays to assist human-teleop.]
[Edit2: This is also an issue with computer control. If there’s any lag between control-signal, start-of-motion, sensing-the-motion, and new control-signal, you can get weird feedback loops that produce oscillating or chaotic errors.]
No news here, usual humans on Mars 20 years from now (and defer burden of those smucks in the future to come up with real money). Moon is off limits because otherwise have to come with money now to build a transfer stage, lander, EVA units, etc. There will be a time when ISS will be in need of serious upgrade or be splashed down. Will Boeing, SpaceX, and BO continue HSF for US? Hard to say as none of us really know what their strategic business plans are.
Gerstenmier and Bolden have pretty much said this will be the last NASA owned and operated station in LEO. I hope it is splashed in 2024. By that time the Nation should have commercial cargo, commercial passenger services and a commercial destination in place and NASA can buy seats and lease floor space.