Planetary Society's Confused Messaging

1. Keith, is it warranted to assume that the article you are linking to represents the Planetary Society’s views? It was a written by Van Kane, a “guest blogger”, and the content was originally posted on Van Kane’s personal blog. I don’t see a Planetary Society statement regarding guest bloggers, but in the absence of one, I would have assumed that the Planetary Society’s hosting of Van Kane’s material is little different from a newspaper hosting an op-ed piece. Apparently you disagree, but I think there is some ambiguity here, and perhaps if asked, the Planetary Society could clear up whether guest bloggers are speaking for the Society when their material is posted on the Society’s website. — Eric Goldstein

   1. It is posted on the Planetary Society’s website – and they are not known for posting positions by anyone who disagrees with them.

   2. You bring up a good point. In cases such as a guest blogger or writer, there’s usually a disclaimer stating that the views of the writer are their own and don’t reflect or necessarily reflect that of the publication/site where they are appearing. That’s not the case here. Without it, it could be said that the views reflect those of the Planetary Society.

      1. Exactly.

      2. A disclaimer is typical and advisable, but not necessary. I was going to write that the lack of one isn’t the same as an endorsement. But it occurred to me that the Planetary Society isn’t run by complete idiots. I’m fairly sure they know about disclaimers and their legal value. This has come up before, so the lack of a disclaimer probably not an oversight. I’d say they haven’t endorsed that blog, but it sure looks like they don’t mind people getting that impression.

2. I don’t see how SLS is contradictory to the Mars Orbital Mission. If anything, it makes it even easier – fewer modules to launch. And they can win NASA over to it as well, since you could theoretically do it with ISS-style hardware (unlike a landing mission, which requires the development of a multi-ton lander and the system to land it safely).

   In fact, I’ll bet that if NASA is still focused on Mars in the late 2020s when this becomes something they need to budget for, that’s how they’ll go. If they were serious about a landing mission, the best way to prep for it would be to do progressively larger sample return robotic missions, so you can test bigger lander/launcher set-ups on Mars over time.

   1. The SLS need lots of cash. So no payloads other then the equally expensive Orion taxi capsule. So no spending on landers, habitats, Mars surface systems & life support tech. So no trips to Mars. Also no robotic Mars lander missions, since SLS/Orion will suck up all the cash. AFAIK the SLS only have 3 missions funded thru 2025; EM-1, EM-2 & the Europa Mutliple flyby.

      1. There will be some cash after the ISS ends its primary mission, although it won’t be a lot. That’ll make the Mars Orbital Mission even more attractive – like I said, it could conceivably be done with modified ISS-style hardware. But a landing mission? Forget it, not with NASA’s current budgetary levels.

         1. If we cannot find productive missions for the ISS (or its replacement) for the forseeable future then it is unlikely there will be productive missions for humans at more distant locations in space.

            Regarding the article, the PS wants the Europa mission sooner rather than later. The administration budget delays it. To wait for SLS to be ready as an LV? To avoid needing SLS at all? Because money is needed to send humans to Mars? I’m confused.

            1. I don’t think they’re saying that at all – they support the Europa mission.

            2. I agree. I did not read the full article at first and misinterpreted the original quote “Europa isn’t Mars, and studying and eventually getting humans to Mars is NASA’s current overriding goal.” I thought that was a statement of support for a higher priority for Mars, when in reality it was a critique for the lack of funding for Europa. That’s why we should not be to quick to draw conclusions from isolated quotes. Moreover I don’t feel the article adequately addresses the choice of LV, which is a major cost driver.

            3. Regarding the PS wanting the Europa mission sooner rather than later and the administration delaying it. It all comes down to Money.

               To speed up the Europa mission means either adding about half a billion dollars to the annual NASA line budget or cutting that much form elsewhere in NASA for about a Presidential term.

               A budget increase is wishful thinking.

         2. A manned orbital mission to Mars will basically be a robotic Mars orbital mission at many times the cost.

            There is not much point in send people to Mars if you are not landing them on the surface.

         3. We shouldn’t forget the time aspect either. It’s many years before the ISS ends. So de-orbiting the ISS and placing a new, slightly smaller ISS-ish thing in orbit (call it the Mars Transit-hab, ship, etc.), and using cargo/crew transport dollars for other stuff (like landers, etc.) implies time. To judge by the time it took to turn ISS dollars into today’s ISS, that’s an endless amount of time, during which stakeholders, the world, and so much will change that essentially we are here in 1972 all over again – envisioning those old task force Mars plans for 1985.

            All of which came to naught as decisions to do what was politically expedient at the time would actually make such plans impossible.

            We have to learn. We have to do better.

   2. Contradiction occurs when you have a top-line yearly budget constraint. When you have 4 dollars a year, and one items costs 3 dollars a year, and another costs 2 dollars a year, you have a contradiction.

      It gets worse – since as soon as you say lets just increase the yearly allotment to 5 dollars a year, the 3 dollar item stands up and screams it now needs 4! And so it never adds up. Also known as unsustainable.

   3. I don’t see how SLS is contradictory to the Mars Orbital Mission. If anything, it makes it even easier – fewer modules to launch.

      SLS and Orion will consume at least $35b/yr between now and 2027 and deliver a maximum of four SLS flights. A maximum of two flights can be manned.

      [Prior to 2027, there are a total of 16 recycled shuttle engines available, enough for 4 SLS flights between 2018 and some point after 2027. NASA has ordered six additional engines, contracted to start delivery in 2027, which is why I’m using that date.]

      $35 billion for two manned flights and two unmanned flights.

      We know the first unmanned flight (in 2018 or so) will be used to fly a bunch of nanosats to the moon. So that leaves one unmanned mission and up to two manned flights. The second unmanned flight is being earmarked for the Europa mission. So that leaves just two flights between now post-2027 for anything else.

      Not seeing any #JourneyToMars capability here. #Orbital or otherwise.

      BTW that works out at around $5.8 billion for each unmanned flight, and $11.6 billion for each crewed flight. That obviously doesn’t include any previous funding. Just starting now. Nor does it include European costs.

      If the manned flights don’t include any kind of EVA, you can launch a total of 8 astronauts into lunar orbit, for up to six weeks total, between 2022 and 2027. If you want to include any kind of EVA, you are limited to two crew per flight, due to the inability of Orion to carry EVA suits except in crew spaces.

      Nearly $12 billion to fly between two and four astronauts to a maximum distance of lunar orbit, for a maximum duration of three weeks. Nearly $23 billion for four to eight astronauts for a total of six weeks flight duration, somewhere near the moon. Plus another $5.8 billion to launch some nanosats, plus $5.8 billion to launch a single probe to Europa, not including the price of the probe.

      There will be some cash after the ISS ends its primary mission,

      That’s the thing, in order to do anything with SLS/Orion, you need to kill something else. Even on more than $3 billion per year, it’s not capable of actually performing useful missions. After you kill off another large program somewhere in the late 2020’s, and repurpose its funding for hardware to launch on SLS, you’re still only starting from scratch at that point.

      So why not just bite the bullet and kill SLS/Orion now and free up more than $30 billion over the next decade for the things you want to do? Then when ISS times out, you can free up even more funding and do even more things in the 2030s.

      1. Whatever you replace SLS with will probably have to employ the same set of people in the same politically connected locations, so there’s some serious limits there on what you can spend it on. And it won’t be cheap to cancel SLS – Constellation cost $2.5 billion to cancel IIRC. As much as I’d love for them just to dump it and buy Falcon Heavy launches at (hopefully) a much cheaper launch price, it’s probably not possible politically.

         1. It doesn’t change the fact that you cannot use SLS/Orion for actual missions.

            People need to stop pretending that SLS has some “capability” that can be “used” for whatever fantasy mission they’ve invented.

            You said: “I don’t see how SLS is contradictory to the Mars Orbital Mission. If anything, it makes it even easier – fewer modules to launch” and you are wrong. Conceptually wrong. SLS is not capable of launching modules for a Mars mission, because SLS prevents the development of any Mars mission hardware.

            If your goal is a manned Mars mission, then step one is to cancel SLS/Orion.

            If your goal is a lunar mission, then step one is to cancel SLS/Orion.

            If you believe that SLS/Orion is politically uncancellable, then you cannot perform those missions, so stop pretending that SLS has added any capacity. It’s a lie.

            1. I’m not a fan of SLS’s high costs, but TheBrett is right. And those missions CAN be performed if congress is willing to fund them.

            2. And those missions CAN be performed if congress is willing to fund them.

               Not really. There’s a maximum of four SLS flights available between now and 2027. The first (Block 0) flight will be spent carrying nanosats that other people are funding. It’s too late to develop a more serious payload for that flight. One of the remaining flights must be used to demo Orion. That leaves two flights.

               Some Congress-critters want to use an SLS launch for an (unfunded) Europa probe. That leaves one flight.

               Orion flights are not capable of carrying payload BEO. So you can choose between a second Orion flight around the moon with nothing to do, or one unmanned cargo payload.

               There’s no HSF mission that you can perform, even if you had additional funding. The physical capacity isn’t there.

               OTOH, many missions can be performed – if Congress was willing to cancel SLS/Orion.

               Aside:

               How is wishing Congress would throw yet more funding at SLS, so it has something to do, being politically realistic? But wishing they’d just kill SLS/Orion being unrealistic?

               I hear it this kind of thing all the time: “Congress will never cancel SLS/Orion, it’s too well protected, so my attitude is that we may as well accept it and try to get something useful out of it,” then list what we “can do” with SLS/Orion’s “capability”.

               But if you are going to “accept political reality”, then you need to accept that SLS cannot fly the missions being proposed and there’s no extra funding for those missions coming from Congress – not unless you sabotage someone else’s program – and very little capacity to actually perform those missions even if the funding existed.

            3. All well said. But you forgot to mention that it looks like Congress IS going to fund a deep space habitat, which I consider to be an exciting and very useful project. If we’re lucky, NASA may even use a COTS type program to develop it. https://uploads.disquscdn.c…

            4. $55m that NASA is ordered to take from other programs? (But not from the extra funding given to SLS/Orion.) Yeah, thrilling.

               The fact remains that there’s only one SLS flight left to launch it on, and that uses the entire manifest until after 2027.

            5. I am hoping that the hab will attract commercial customers and international partners who would use the Falcon Heavy to make the trip. Come on…admit it…that WOULD be thrilling.

            6. Fudd a deep space habitat? OK, so I spent a few days next door in the Bahamas, but this is a piece of news I missed?

            7. Hi Michael. Fudd?

               “a report attached to the recent omnibus spending bill has allocated funds for NASA to figure it out. The bill orders NASA to spend at least $55 million to develop a habitation module for deep space exploration, and to have a prototype ready by 2018.”

            8. Congress is most definitely funding the Europa mission.

            9. Starting estimates are $2 billion for an orbiter alone. More, a lot more, for a lander. Culberson apparently wants something like MSL, which cost $2.5 billion and built on previous missions.

               Funding for the Europa mission? $175m.

            10. That’s $175 million _per_year_. Do the math. That adds up to $2 billion for EMFM after 11 or 12 years. Europa started getting that sort of funding last year. 2015+11=2026. That’s about right for the scheduled launch date and lenght of the mission.

                Correction: Anticipated launch date, not scheduled. They haven’t fixed a launch date yet.

   4. More robots on Mars at this point would almost be sending a robot to do a man’s job.
      Humans going clear to Mars just to hang out in orbit would be sending humans to do a robot’s job.

      1. I’m only lukewarm on it myself, especially after watching this interesting talk on how we could drastically improve our robotic exploration on Mars. And robots are just getting better with time.

         h[remove this]ttps://youtu.be/EeSGuGw4aJU…

         Of course, the same applies to other places. Why bother building a Moon Base, when it’s so close to Earth and so vastly cheaper just to set up better relay satellites and use robots on the ground?

         Sorry about the above thing with the link. DISQUS, in its infinite wisdom, decided that anyone who posts a youtube link in a comment must be of a desire to see it be embedded automatically as a video.

         1. “And robots are just getting better with time.”
            Which implies, of course, that at some point in the immediate future, depending on the task, they will be better than we are.

            1. That too. Although they’ll always be limited by the fact that scientists will usually want to be watching-in frequently to see if they find something interesting. I doubt we’re near the point where we could just send a robot with programmed tasks and just tell it to do a complex 2-year mission without supervision from back home.

3. (sigh)

   The fact that the words “climate change” even show up in an article about Europa mission funding vs other Planetary Science, on the website of an organization called “Planetary Society”, defies logic.

   We need to get away from the false perception that voting against NASA funding being used on Earth climate science is a vote against climate science. It is, rather, a vote in favor of the deNASAfication of Earth climate science and the empowerment of NOAA to fund, plan, and operate (and contract cheaper launchers for) their own missions. It doesn’t mean that there would be less quality in the spacecraft observing the Earth or that fewer scientists will work on Earth climate science or that there’d be fewer or smaller troughs for either to feed from.

   It just means that the business of studying Earth climate science from Earth orbit will be handed off to the Department of Earth climate science during a time when NASA intends to focus away from Earth orbit. DUH!

   It would decouple NASA from the shifting politics of Climate change and decouple climate change from the Congressional pork politics of NASA. Win-win.

   Push those coins over to Planetary Science.

   1. It’s always intrigued me that NASA does Earth science and that NOAA provides space weather services. How did that happen? Apologies if the answer is obvious, but it appears to be a strange setup to an outsider (from Australia, that is).

      So, are those proposing to re-allocate Earth science funding to planetary science, also proposing to throw a few coins NOAA’s way?

      1. It’s a good question that is even hard for us Americans to understand. Suffice it to say, NASA has always built the spacecraft. And by NASA, I really mean NASA Goddard has always built the spacecraft. NOAA doesn’t have the in-house capability to build and operate spacecraft like this, so it always defaults to NASA Goddard who has always done it. They do all the joint weather and Earth observation satellites too (weather for NASA, NOAA and the US military).

         If it were to be turned over to NOAA, they would probably contract it out to a commercial entity and just serve as a procurement office. Too much interia and no impetus to change the status quo yet. And the congress that would change it is the same group that has asked why do we need to fund weather satellites when we can just turn on The Weather Channel on TV!

         1. These days, I think most weather satellites are contracted out rather than built at Goddard. NOAA has some involvement in operating them. And JPL has done a few Earth observing missions.

            1. You’re, the hands-on construction and detail design are done by other contractor. But with Goddard, they control the overall architecture and approve the designs. If NOAA did it, they would do it as data-as-a-service. They would spec what final info they need to do their job and they would agree on a price with the contractor.

      2. The split goes back to NASA’s traditional role as a technology developer and for conducting fundamental research. NOAA traditionally used existing technology to observe, forecast and make the results available as a public service.

         But, no. I’ve seen zero evidence of funding being shifted rather than cut.

   2. Has any Republican ever said they would shift every dollar of satellites, scientists, databases, ground stations, services, people, contracts (and who knows what) now in NASA Earth Sciences over to NOAA? Of course. allowing NASA to keep any capability necessary for planetary science. Even if redundant. Including any necessary transition dollars over many years to address any problems and difficulties in such an undertaking?

      The idea that the climate science work NASA does belongs in some other agency, in every instance I have ever seen it promoted in political circles, or in discussing funding priorities, internal or external to NASA, is an idea I’ve never seen floated sincerely – always being a ruse to attack climate science period (for assorted reasons).

      While a sincere, ideal notion of such a shift may have it’s adherents, thinking federal agencies should have better focus’s areas for example, I’d beware – such talk to date would only enlist those with a sincere belief this is doable or justified for other purposes. It’s called being used as a pawn.

      1. NOAA is part of Department of Commerce. Yes there is overlap with NASA. NOAA also does things that overlap with USGS which is part of the Department of the Interior. NASA and USGS overlap in many ways too. NASA and NSF both fund astronomy. NASA and NIST both fund technology. NASA and NIH both fund human physiology research.

      2. Of course they aren’t shifting the money, they want to be seen slashing it away.

         NASA doesn’t build satellites…Boeing builds satellites, and today they build them for NASA and NOAA. Tomarrow they’ll build them for your rich Granny. We live in a time where highschool students build their own satellites and launch them piggy-backed on other people’s launches for a short string. NOAA knows what they need to put on a satelite and can add sensors and data gathering to new weather satellites to do climate studies with. The only reason for NASA to do climate studies is so that Congress folk can be seen giving them the money to do it or taking it away. If NOAA did it it without direct and visible NASA support they would just fold in to their books and not have to put Congressional names on it and drop a digit to two off the price to boot.

         1. Politicians opposed to climate research take the position that NASA climate science simply duplicates existing work done by NOAA, so no additional funds are needed.

            But this is not the case. Scientific observations made from space fall under the NASA charter. NOAA is not funded for space based research on climate change, though NOAA of course collaborates with NASA and does excellent ground-based research.

            Opposition to climate research stems not from its assignment to NASA but from the fossil fuel industry itself (and particularly Koch Industries) and their opposition to _any_ restrictions on the release of CO2. It would not matter who was doing it. They don’t want it done.

            1. What is a weather satellite if it isn’t space based research? Again, the days of NASA as the go-to folks on LEO are behind us and NASA is putting Earth orbit behind them…except climate science.

               It has nothing to do with funding, and if it did then NOAA could do more with less without the overhead and Congressional strings that NASA carries into their projects. It’s not like they wouldn’t help out with anyway.

               NASA gets a budget bump from climate change and climate change gets a legitimacy bump from NASA. Let NASA do Planetary Science with that money and let Climate Change sink or swim on its own legitimacy.

            2. Weather satellites are operational systems, not research per se, and for the most part design and launch of weather satellites has been managed by NASA, since it has more experience in spacecraft design and launch, with NOAA taking over for operational use in weather forecasting.

               These resources could in theory be shifted from NASA to NOAA, but it is hard to see any obvious benefit since spacecraft design and launch is a rather specialized field. However at present NOAA is _not_ funded for space based research on climate change and climate science opponents in Congress have no intent of providing such funds, because they want the science stopped.

               Those who think climate change is a political question misconstrue the very nature of science. The goal of science is not to decide the truth, it is to discover the truth. The Earth is what it is, not what we might want or believe it to be based on our trivial political ideologies. We need to know the facts, whatever they may be. Those who oppose the science are simply afraid of what it might reveal.

            3. “The goal of science is not to decide the truth, it is to discover the truth. The Earth is what it is, not what we might want or believe it to be based on our trivial political ideologies. We need to know the facts, whatever they may be. “

               I agree with every word of this, but it can be used by both sides.

               I don’t deny climate change. I deny that NASA can reach out into deep space, which is their current, stated focus, while keeping one toe in the oceans of Earth. I don’t think they should try. I don’t think that in today’s space tech environment NOAA needs them to. I don’t even think it’s helpful anymore.
               “Spacecraft design” involves little more than placing a new and different suite of sensors on a boiler plate satellite bus that has already been used and tested a gazillion or so times. NASA doesn’t even need to do this for themselves anymore, unless it is something extraordinary like JWST, so why should NOAA need them to. It’s ridiculous and unnecessarily expensive. Communication companies have not involved NASA in their spacecraft designs for three decades. Neither has Lockheed-Martin. Neither has Boeing. There was a time, back when I was looking for a date for the Jr. Prom, when NASA’s involvement was needed for that, but sometime around when my kids went to the Prom it stopped being necessary. Now, a decade after that, it’s just silly.

            4. Remote sensing satellites cost millions, in some cases billions. If for research purposes they require new types of sensors providing previously inbaccessible data. They must operate for years without maintenance. Yet the money available is always limited. Particularly in the case of climate research, each satellite is unique, since new spectra and levels of detail, or new active-sensing instruments are needed. There is no commercial market for climate research. Industry will not do it on its own.

               Someone has to do the basic science to determine what sort of sensor is needed. Someone has to do the testing and R&D to perfect and validate new sensor technology in the space environment. It’s not a trivial task.

               Scientific observation of Earth from Space was assigned to NASA in its charter. Observation and understanding of Earth and its climate is more critical at this point in time than NASA’s other missions.

               If the funding and resources were transferred to NOAA that is fine with me, although space-based Earth science has much more in common with the development of planetary science spacecraft. But the opponents of climate science have no intention of doing that. I see no one willing to provide NOAA with these resources. They want the science stopped because the information it is providing is disadvantageous to the fossile fuel industry.

            5. All true.

               Still, I think it would be an enlightening experiment to toss a pocket full of million dollar research grants over a cliff and see how many respected scientists jump off after them.

4. I used to be a member of the Planetary Society, for a number of years. Also, I supported their fund-raising mail-outs, providing $50 three different times at least. But when they decided to launch their “solar sail” on an old Soviet rocket, and it failed, I read all about it and decided that my funds were just going to a private hobby site that wanted to play with other people’s money, not do the serious stuff about planning and lobbying for the next step in human spaceflight. They used an aweful lot of member’s money on those solar sail experiments, to little or no effect as far as I can see. Since then, this society has become progressively worse, basically almost opposing human spaceflight in favour of robotic missions, and the final straw was when they recruited Bill Nye to be their mouth-piece. In my opinion, with Bill Nye at the helm, it has lost all relevance. Contributors should be aware of their history and their present irrelevance and antagonistic approach to human spaceflight.

5. JWST is a flagship mission, flying in 2018. Mars 2020 Rover is a flagship mission flying in 2022. Europa would be a flagship mission flying in 2022. Let’s look at the history of flagship missions: Voyager: 1977, Galileo: 1989, Hubble 1990, Cassini 1997, MSL 2007, Historically, that is 5 missions so far over 40 years, averaging 8 years per mission (10 if you don’t count Hubble). Now it seems we’re supposed to fly a Flagship every 2 years?

   1. First, JWST is an astrophysics flagship mission, not planetary. You left out astrophysics and heliophysics from your list of past flagships. So what about HST and the other “Great Observatory” missions, Dynamics Explorer (1 and 2), Magnetospheric Multiscale, etc.?

      Second, where did a planetary flagship every two years come from? I think Green said a Discovery every two and a New Frontier every five. That would cost about half a billion per year.

      1. HST = Hubble. Dynamics Explorer was NOT a flagship mission. It was much smaller. Same for Magnetospheric Multiscale. Flagships are pegged at 2-3 Billion dollar budgets. My point is that Flagship missions are historically about once a decade. Not every other year which is what happens with a 2018, 2020 & 2022 launch cadence. Europa should wait a while, allowing smaller Discovery & Frontier missions to be funded (which exactly matches the Administrations budgetary request).

         1. The people who do heliophysics certainly consider MMS and DE to be flagships, and astronomers feel that way about HST. A cost-based definition would imply there has never been a heliophysics flagship.

            The definition I’ve seen from people involved is usually that it’s a directed mission, not PI-led (as in considered too important to put management outside a NASA center) and costs at least twice as much as anything else that division/discipline flys. Often, as you point out, at the expense of smaller missions. If memory serves, MMS did reduce the frequency of heliophysics Explorer missions.

            But I agree about balance. Too many planetary flagships would cut Discovery and NF flight rates, and I think that would be a bad idea.

            1. With respect to cost I wonder about the costs of these missions- flagship and discovery- were a COTS or similar model used. Could SpaceX develop a Europa lander for < $170B a year for a decade?

               The reach of big money into the pockets of NASA knows very little limitation.

               Let the mirth ensue.

6. This seems a bit harsh on PS, from listening to their podcast, everything they do seems to be in good faith

7. Kane does make a good point about the notional out-year budget. I knew the funding profile was a mess, but I hadn’t connected it to multi-year contracts. The President’s budget not only gives the funding for FY17, but also what NASA should (must) assume for several years beyond that. So, even if Congress ups the FY17 budget for Europa, NASA must spend it on the assumption that the FY18 budget for Europa will be much smaller. I knew the uncertainty made planning and efficient use of the money difficult, but the blog says this also virtually bans multi-year contracts. I suppose long lead time purchase would also be affected.

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