I’m skeptical. Did this assume continuing to get Apollo levels of funding? Cause if so, I would call that unrealistic. But since we’re talking counterfactuals, reasonable people can obviously differ.
They had the rockets. They had Skylab. They had Apollo capsules and they did not see as many roadblocks (physiology etc.) as we now see. Had they continued funding at a steady level I think they’d made it to Mars by 1981. Remember: the old NASA went from zero to the Moon in a decade. The old NASA welcomed the challenges. Today’s NASA can’t – and won’t – and that is why everyone is cynical about what NASA might have done.
I think Only way we could possibly have made it to Mars by now would be for Kennedy to have never made his moon speech, which created giant NASA Only if somehow it had been possible to have commercial space back in the 60s or 70s could we have grown from Leo to geo to the moon to Mars and beyond.
“Commercial Space” with NACA like support from government is the only plausible path to Mars.
We live in a time where everything is measured with money, and belonging to the Church of Capitalism is pretty much expected. There was a time on this planet when the divine rights of kings as well as serfdom and membership in the Catholic Church had the same status- points recently made by Pickety (I think!).
There are lots of reasons to go to Mars that are measured in other ways, safety of the human gene pool being among the many.
I think you missed my point. I completely agree that there are non-profit driven motivations for space exploration that justify expenditure of public money on said efforts. My question was a challenge to those commenters that believe there is sufficient profit potential in human Mars missions to motivate the investment of private capital sufficient to fund such an effort (other than philanthropy) to please explain what that business case is. I have not seen it. (I seriously doubt that sufficient private capital to fund a human Mars program can be motivated on the basis of philanthropy.)
Two fold. Just like Falcon and like dragon, providing transport and platform for Academia, government, and Industry. And ultimately, SpaceX wants to charge colonists.
If colonization is your goal, then why for heaven’s sake would you want to go to Mars?! Interesting that there was some discussion on this board a few days ago about the old L5 Society. If you will recall the days when space colonization got serious discussion, you will remember that Mars is absolutely a dead end on the path to space colonization. If that is the only goal, then all humans-to-Mars efforts are a misdirection of resources that should be stopped now. If you are talking about humans-to-Mars as an academic or government effort, then by definition, you are talking about a public or philanthropic endeavor, not a commercial enterprise. If you are talking about humans-to-Mars for purposes of “Industry”, then I rephrase my question above – just what ‘Industry’ are you talking about?
Mars colonization is Musk’s goal (which I think is a good goal), however lunar colonization is my personal preference (but I don’t have a zillion dollars and a rocket company).
I think I didn’t state my point clearly.
You wrote: And what exactly is the business case for a commercial enterprise to go to Mars? to which I replied: “Two fold. Just like Falcon and like dragon, providing transport and platform for Academia, government, and Industry. And ultimately, SpaceX wants to charge colonists.”
SpaceX’s business case is providing the infrastructure for someone else, for example – academia, gov, industry. SpaceX doesn’t need to know or care why their customers want to go, they just provide the service. Public, philanthropic, for-profit, whatever. Disney Cruise Line does not care why you book the trip on their ship/private island/theme-park resort, just pay for it. ULA cares not a whit why you want to get 4 tons to GTO or where the cash comes from. Just sign the dotted line and place your deposit.
And the second part was that SpaceX is assuming that thousands and then millions will wish to emigrate and they will charge for the services of transport, infrastructure, etc. SpaceX may misjudge the market potential, but they plan not to cash in themselves on Mars exploitation, but to support others who wish to utilize Mars as their new home or a resource. 7% of the US population would colonize Mars. 7% of about 200million adults is 14 million. If 1 in 10 would actually do it that leaves 1.4 million. SpaceX is targeting $0.5million/person to colonize (about the net worth of a homeowner). That is $700billion for Americans only. Of course these are just the crudest of numbers.
The problem was and is political, not technical. I am convinced there is very wide support for human space exploration in general, and for Mars in particular. Like fascination with astronomy, this support extends across the political spectrum, from left to right. The old NASA had a clear mandate, and a national consensus that the objective was necessary.
There’s ‘very wide support’ for a lot of things that won’t happen- gun control, affordable health care, affordable college educations, etc.- that will never be funded. We are decades away from a representative Congress. Many decades. And if you 20 or 30 you might see this transition.
When you are 50. Maybe.
Our country is in for one hell of a political ride as the disparity between the makeup of Congress and the wishes of the people come more apparent.
The old NASA had NERVA. The post Apollo NASA & everyone else has pretty much been forbidden from even thinking about anything like NERVA. No humans to Mars program will ever be anything more than a money pit of cartoons doomed to certain failure unless and until it centers around reviving development of a nuclear rocket engine. Until that happens, humans to Mars anything is a waste of effort and resources that could be put to much more productive use in other areas of space flight. They almost got that right at the beginning of VSE when Steidle was in charge, but Griffin shut down the long range technology development programs with Cx and Mars died for another generation at least. Given the now six year track record of total failure of the present administration to make any progress on nuclear powered anything (let alone rockets) despite their all big talk, I see no reason for hope in the current climate.
Nuclear power has failed because nuclear power is a failure. The merchant plants (private nukes selling electricity on the market) are folding up. No private cash will build any (world-wide). Only plants being paid by government entities forcing tax- or rate-payer money into their hands are doing any building, and those are collapsing.
I’m not so sure if the “old NASA” could have gotten to Mars that soon. One of the ways NASA has changed was inherent: Whenever something went badly wrong (as in risking an astronaut), the “old NASA” added a procedure/policy/flight rule to make sure it could never happen again. Regardless of the how that procedure/policy/rule would restrict future activities. Given enough time and experience, that approach will end up producing impractical costs and paralysis. If, for example, lightning had hit Apollo 17, in just the way it had hit Apollo 12, the “old NASA” would probably have aborted the mission. You might say that’s just evidence that the “old NASA” was going away, but I’d say one of the causes of the change was inherent to the “old NASA” way of evolving its practices to avoid risk at all costs.
I agree with that statement; but the funding was flowing appropriately at that time. To go to Mars you have to have multiple developmental projects going at the same time. To paraphrase Kennedy at Rice University; ‘we’re not going to waste any money, but we’re going to go do this’. This is an order of magnitude bigger, and it means we’re going to have to chew gum and walk…and that is going to take consistent and appropriate funding.
Agree. We can do it, when we are ready to be as serious as Kennedy was in 1961ff. Until then we should just build the base of infrastructure and technology that we can use when the time comes. ISS and the Dawn SEP spacecraft seem to me to be foundational examples.
“There are a number of precursor activities necessary before such a mission can be attempted. These activities can proceed without developments specific to a Manned Mars Mission-but for optimum benefit should be carried out with the Mars mission in mind.”
This is essentially the same justification for ARM: creating tools and techniques needed to get to Mars, yet valuable as stand-alone projects.
It didn’t work before and I am concerned that any government-led program is destined to always die the Death of a Thousand Cuts.
They must use the same screenwriters as the Fabled Doomed Quest for Nuclear Fusion. Twenty years is close enough to be a goal, yet far enough away to ignore reality.
Read Stephen Baxter’s Voyage for a ‘what if?’ His scenario is that NERVA fails w/ loss of crew, leading to years of delay and ultimately a one-off Ares mission flying Skylab+Apollo+multiple Saturn V+strap on solids on a gravity assist by Venus. 3 people get to Mars in the late 80s. All the hardware pieces existed or were under study as the Agnew report was drafted, although the Saturn V line was being shut down so ending it evolution.
Really? And the crew was going to not be dead from radiation exposure before they arrived after that flight how? And then they were going to ride what magic carpet down to the surface and back? While it may be a perfectly feasible plan for cartoon world, it would have been a sick joke in the real world.
The reality is NERVA failed due to politics and we are stuck until somebody unfails it. Period.
Interesting to see if *any* nuclear will appear in Musk’s plan/cartoon, he apparently needs only fuel depots. Clustering/refueling Saturn upper stages, and the Mars Excursion Vehicle, were under study at time of the Agnew report, the dry Skylab would have been water shielded (plenty of volume for 3) and the Venus flyby was Apollo Applications study that included that shielding.
In the Baxter book the NERVA fails in flight as a plot device unrelated to the fission core itself, but its “fallout” is also political and Ares survives only by dumping that power source and dusting off the chemical plans. The premise is that NASA kills *everything else* (shuttle of course, ISS, Apollo >15, all robot probes not focused on Mars) to barely fund the one-shot to Mars. The mission is of course a senseless short foray w/o lasting political/scientific value.
I have seen no published information myself from SpaceX that they yet have a credible plan for developing technologies capable of keeping humans alive for the trip to Mars or for landing human scale vehicles on Mars, which makes a 20 time frame sound rather implausible. Are you privy to some sort of inside information about their plans that justifies your optimistic claim? Or is there something they have published that I missed?
See this is kind of what I’m saying. The SLS flying with any regularity within the next 20 years; to some here, that’s a fiction. But the Mars Colonial Transporter with a crew of 100 traveling to mars in the next 20 years? As certain as the fact the sun will rise in the morning.
SpaceX is an amazing company that’s accomplished impressed feats and will do much, much more. But there is an immense double standard when it comes to skepticism.
The fanboys would do well to heed the subtext of Musk’s message on the topic space elevators: “don’t talk to him about it until a carbon nantotube structure larger than a foot bridge has been fabricated”. There is a world of difference between a MCT plan and and an actual functioning MCT. We can start getting excited about the MCT when the “Falcon 1” equivalent of the MCT flies to Mars one day.
Its Pace You can look at a race, and see it at glance. While SLS lumbers along gobbling up all our human spaceflight money Spacex is building an affordable heavy lifter now. Engine testing now. Reusable flight software tested on F9R. Engineers designing best affordable highway/to Mars now. Bolden can see this, anybody can.
I haven’t either and I have sure been looking for it. As I have said I would like to know more about Mr. Musk’s thinking. He’s said more about his California ‘vacuum train’ than he’s said about Mars (I think).
It’s just more of this site being really being SpaceXFans and not so much NASAWatch. Not saying that SpaceX can’t or shouldn’t do it (or that I wouldn’t be exceedingly happy about it). But really, it’s ironic a site that demands such a high bar for NASA takes pretty much everything SpaceX says or does at face value.
A passerby could be forgiven for not realizing that in fact, the Falcon Heavy hasn’t flown a dozen times already and that there isn’t a functional orbital fuel depot or something.
With spacex’s typical 26 month slippage (they modify plans as conditions change. They aren’t front-locked like government plans) that places the prestaged hardware on Mars in the 2024 or 2026 conjunctions, and crew at the 2028 conjunction.
Arguably, sailing from Europe to America is quantitatively different from sailing along a coast or across the Mediterranean. By fairly reasonable standards, the ships used to cross the Atlantic between in the sixteenth century were completely unsuitable technology for such trips. I’d say Apollo-derived technology could get astronauts to Mar. It might also involve a 50% failure rate, with similarly high fatality rates. But it could probably get astronauts there.
Site selection would actually be fairly easy with 1970s technology. It would just take upgrading and modifying the Viking spacecraft a bit. Remove the astrobiology-focused lander with two, smaller, Surveyor-like landers per orbiter. Upgrade the orbiter instruments to include a stronger atmospheric science component (on par with Pioneer Venus, launched in 1978.) Assume enough money is available to fly four missions instead of two (likely if there had been funding for a manned mission and this was a precursor.) Plan the manned mission to spend a few weeks on orbit before landing, to do final site selection and wait for favorable weather (e.g. a lack of dust storms.) You might say all that would still make the landing too risky. But I specifically said a Mars landing would be possible _but_high_risk_ with 1970s technology.
As far as the analogy with sixteenth century exploration goes, all analogies are flawed at some level. My point was that inadequate technology can be successfully used, if you are willing to accept higher risk. I think that’s correct. I’ll also note that astronauts landing on Mars will not have to deal with hostile natives or tropical diseases.
It’s only negative progress if you actually believe that the 1969 time estimate was realistic.
I do. Had the momentum been kept NASA would have pushed for Mars and made it decades ago.
I’m skeptical. Did this assume continuing to get Apollo levels of funding? Cause if so, I would call that unrealistic. But since we’re talking counterfactuals, reasonable people can obviously differ.
~Jon
They had the rockets. They had Skylab. They had Apollo capsules and they did not see as many roadblocks (physiology etc.) as we now see. Had they continued funding at a steady level I think they’d made it to Mars by 1981. Remember: the old NASA went from zero to the Moon in a decade. The old NASA welcomed the challenges. Today’s NASA can’t – and won’t – and that is why everyone is cynical about what NASA might have done.
I think
Only way we could possibly have made it to Mars by now would be for Kennedy to have never made his moon speech, which created giant NASA
Only if somehow it had been possible to have commercial space back in the 60s or 70s could we have grown from Leo to geo to the moon to Mars and beyond.
“Commercial Space” with NACA like support from government is the only plausible path to Mars.
Is now, was then, or at any moment in time.
And what exactly is the business case for a commercial enterprise to go to Mars?
Good question- and bad one at the same time!
We live in a time where everything is measured with money, and belonging to the Church of Capitalism is pretty much expected. There was a time on this planet when the divine rights of kings as well as serfdom and membership in the Catholic Church had the same status- points recently made by Pickety (I think!).
There are lots of reasons to go to Mars that are measured in other ways, safety of the human gene pool being among the many.
I think you missed my point. I completely agree that there are non-profit driven motivations for space exploration that justify expenditure of public money on said efforts. My question was a challenge to those commenters that believe there is sufficient profit potential in human Mars missions to motivate the investment of private capital sufficient to fund such an effort (other than philanthropy) to please explain what that business case is. I have not seen it. (I seriously doubt that sufficient private capital to fund a human Mars program can be motivated on the basis of philanthropy.)
Two fold. Just like Falcon and like dragon, providing transport and platform for Academia, government, and Industry.
And ultimately, SpaceX wants to charge colonists.
If colonization is your goal, then why for heaven’s sake would you want to go to Mars?! Interesting that there was some discussion on this board a few days ago about the old L5 Society. If you will recall the days when space colonization got serious discussion, you will remember that Mars is absolutely a dead end on the path to space colonization. If that is the only goal, then all humans-to-Mars efforts are a misdirection of resources that should be stopped now. If you are talking about humans-to-Mars as an academic or government effort, then by definition, you are talking about a public or philanthropic endeavor, not a commercial enterprise. If you are talking about humans-to-Mars for purposes of “Industry”, then I rephrase my question above – just what ‘Industry’ are you talking about?
Mars colonization is Musk’s goal (which I think is a good goal), however lunar colonization is my personal preference (but I don’t have a zillion dollars and a rocket company).
I think I didn’t state my point clearly.
You wrote: And what exactly is the business case for a commercial enterprise to go to Mars? to which I replied: “Two fold. Just like Falcon and like dragon, providing transport and platform for Academia, government, and Industry.
And ultimately, SpaceX wants to charge colonists.”
SpaceX’s business case is providing the infrastructure for someone else, for example – academia, gov, industry. SpaceX doesn’t need to know or care why their customers want to go, they just provide the service. Public, philanthropic, for-profit, whatever. Disney Cruise Line does not care why you book the trip on their ship/private island/theme-park resort, just pay for it.
ULA cares not a whit why you want to get 4 tons to GTO or where the cash comes from. Just sign the dotted line and place your deposit.
And the second part was that SpaceX is assuming that thousands and then millions will wish to emigrate and they will charge for the services of transport, infrastructure, etc.
SpaceX may misjudge the market potential, but they plan not to cash in themselves on Mars exploitation, but to support others who wish to utilize Mars as their new home or a resource.
7% of the US population would colonize Mars. 7% of about 200million adults is 14 million. If 1 in 10 would actually do it that leaves 1.4 million. SpaceX is targeting $0.5million/person to colonize (about the net worth of a homeowner).
That is $700billion for Americans only. Of course these are just the crudest of numbers.
A philosophical article on colonization by David Grinspoon, chair of astrobiology at the Library of Congress “Is Mars Ours?”
http://www.slate.com/articl…
Keep in mind that NASA’s pioneering research and tech transfer made SpaceX and Bigelow possible.
I do, point being that an affordable reusable is needed for any sustainable push to anywhere.
The problem was and is political, not technical. I am convinced there is very wide support for human space exploration in general, and for Mars in particular. Like fascination with astronomy, this support extends across the political spectrum, from left to right. The old NASA had a clear mandate, and a national consensus that the objective was necessary.
There’s ‘very wide support’ for a lot of things that won’t happen- gun control, affordable health care, affordable college educations, etc.- that will never be funded. We are decades away from a representative Congress. Many decades. And if you 20 or 30 you might see this transition.
When you are 50. Maybe.
Our country is in for one hell of a political ride as the disparity between the makeup of Congress and the wishes of the people come more apparent.
I’m already 72, alas. 🙂
The old NASA had NERVA. The post Apollo NASA & everyone else has pretty much been forbidden from even thinking about anything like NERVA.
No humans to Mars program will ever be anything more than a money pit of cartoons doomed to certain failure unless and until it centers around reviving development of a nuclear rocket engine. Until that happens, humans to Mars anything is a waste of effort and resources that could be put to much more productive use in other areas of space flight.
They almost got that right at the beginning of VSE when Steidle was in charge, but Griffin shut down the long range technology development programs with Cx and Mars died for another generation at least. Given the now six year track record of total failure of the present administration to make any progress on nuclear powered anything (let alone rockets) despite their all big talk, I see no reason for hope in the current climate.
Nuclear power has failed because nuclear power is a failure. The merchant plants (private nukes selling electricity on the market) are folding up. No private cash will build any (world-wide). Only plants being paid by government entities forcing tax- or rate-payer money into their hands are doing any building, and those are collapsing.
I’m not so sure if the “old NASA” could have gotten to Mars that soon. One of the ways NASA has changed was inherent: Whenever something went badly wrong (as in risking an astronaut), the “old NASA” added a procedure/policy/flight rule to make sure it could never happen again. Regardless of the how that procedure/policy/rule would restrict future activities. Given enough time and experience, that approach will end up producing impractical costs and paralysis. If, for example, lightning had hit Apollo 17, in just the way it had hit Apollo 12, the “old NASA” would probably have aborted the mission. You might say that’s just evidence that the “old NASA” was going away, but I’d say one of the causes of the change was inherent to the “old NASA” way of evolving its practices to avoid risk at all costs.
I agree with that statement; but the funding was flowing appropriately at that time. To go to Mars you have to have multiple developmental projects going at the same time. To paraphrase Kennedy at Rice University; ‘we’re not going to waste any money, but we’re going to go do this’. This is an order of magnitude bigger, and it means we’re going to have to chew gum and walk…and that is going to take consistent and appropriate funding.
Agree. We can do it, when we are ready to be as serious as Kennedy was in 1961ff. Until then we should just build the base of infrastructure and technology that we can use when the time comes. ISS and the Dawn SEP spacecraft seem to me to be foundational examples.
Interesting in the 1969 doc:
“There are a number of precursor activities necessary before such a mission can be attempted. These activities can proceed without developments specific to a Manned Mars Mission-but for optimum benefit should be carried out with the Mars mission in mind.”
This is essentially the same justification for ARM:
creating tools and techniques needed to get to Mars, yet valuable as stand-alone projects.
It didn’t work before and I am concerned that any government-led program is destined to always die the Death of a Thousand Cuts.
They must use the same screenwriters as the Fabled Doomed Quest for Nuclear Fusion.
Twenty years is close enough to be a goal, yet far enough away to ignore reality.
We will just have to use fusion powered spaceships to go to Mars. Two problems solved. 😉
Step 1 – Have a federal agency create a plan/goal to goto Mars.
Step 2 – Congress funds everything but those things that will advance you towards your goal.
Step 3 – Rinse and repeat.
Even if the money was in the bank, it will take them 50 years to decide on a landing site.
Read Stephen Baxter’s Voyage for a ‘what if?’ His scenario is that NERVA fails w/ loss of crew, leading to years of delay and ultimately a one-off Ares mission flying Skylab+Apollo+multiple Saturn V+strap on solids on a gravity assist by Venus. 3 people get to Mars in the late 80s. All the hardware pieces existed or were under study as the Agnew report was drafted, although the Saturn V line was being shut down so ending it evolution.
Really? And the crew was going to not be dead from radiation exposure before they arrived after that flight how? And then they were going to ride what magic carpet down to the surface and back?
While it may be a perfectly feasible plan for cartoon world, it would have been a sick joke in the real world.
The reality is NERVA failed due to politics and we are stuck until somebody unfails it. Period.
Interesting to see if *any* nuclear will appear in Musk’s plan/cartoon, he apparently needs only fuel depots. Clustering/refueling Saturn upper stages, and the Mars Excursion Vehicle, were under study at time of the Agnew report, the dry Skylab would have been water shielded (plenty of volume for 3) and the Venus flyby was Apollo Applications study that included that shielding.
In the Baxter book the NERVA fails in flight as a plot device unrelated to the fission core itself, but its “fallout” is also political and Ares survives only by dumping that power source and dusting off the chemical plans. The premise is that NASA kills *everything else* (shuttle of course, ISS, Apollo >15, all robot probes not focused on Mars) to barely fund the one-shot to Mars. The mission is of course a senseless short foray w/o lasting political/scientific value.
Mr. Bolden is correct. We will have a mission to Mars in less than 20 years. Spacex will be taking NASA along for the ride.
I have seen no published information myself from SpaceX that they yet have a credible plan for developing technologies capable of keeping humans alive for the trip to Mars or for landing human scale vehicles on Mars, which makes a 20 time frame sound rather implausible.
Are you privy to some sort of inside information about their plans that justifies your optimistic claim? Or is there something they have published that I missed?
Musk said at the MIT interview that MCT plans will be ready this year.
See this is kind of what I’m saying. The SLS flying with any regularity within the next 20 years; to some here, that’s a fiction. But the Mars Colonial Transporter with a crew of 100 traveling to mars in the next 20 years? As certain as the fact the sun will rise in the morning.
SpaceX is an amazing company that’s accomplished impressed feats and will do much, much more. But there is an immense double standard when it comes to skepticism.
The fanboys would do well to heed the subtext of Musk’s message on the topic space elevators: “don’t talk to him about it until a carbon nantotube structure larger than a foot bridge has been fabricated”. There is a world of difference between a MCT plan and and an actual functioning MCT. We can start getting excited about the MCT when the “Falcon 1” equivalent of the MCT flies to Mars one day.
Its Pace
You can look at a race, and see it at glance. While SLS lumbers along gobbling up all our human spaceflight money Spacex is building an affordable heavy lifter now. Engine testing now. Reusable flight software tested on F9R. Engineers designing best affordable highway/to Mars now. Bolden can see this, anybody can.
Check in 5 years from now 🙂
I haven’t either and I have sure been looking for it. As I have said I would like to know more about Mr. Musk’s thinking. He’s said more about his California ‘vacuum train’ than he’s said about Mars (I think).
It’s just more of this site being really being SpaceXFans and not so much NASAWatch. Not saying that SpaceX can’t or shouldn’t do it (or that I wouldn’t be exceedingly happy about it). But really, it’s ironic a site that demands such a high bar for NASA takes pretty much everything SpaceX says or does at face value.
A passerby could be forgiven for not realizing that in fact, the Falcon Heavy hasn’t flown a dozen times already and that there isn’t a functional orbital fuel depot or something.
His time frame for boots on Mars is not 20 years. It is 10-12 years.
With spacex’s typical 26 month slippage (they modify plans as conditions change. They aren’t front-locked like government plans) that places the prestaged hardware on Mars in the 2024 or 2026 conjunctions, and crew at the 2028 conjunction.
Arguably, sailing from Europe to America is quantitatively different from sailing along a coast or across the Mediterranean. By fairly reasonable standards, the ships used to cross the Atlantic between in the sixteenth century were completely unsuitable technology for such trips. I’d say Apollo-derived technology could get astronauts to Mar. It might also involve a 50% failure rate, with similarly high fatality rates. But it could probably get astronauts there.
Site selection would actually be fairly easy with 1970s technology. It would just take upgrading and modifying the Viking spacecraft a bit. Remove the astrobiology-focused lander with two, smaller, Surveyor-like landers per orbiter. Upgrade the orbiter instruments to include a stronger atmospheric science component (on par with Pioneer Venus, launched in 1978.) Assume enough money is available to fly four missions instead of two (likely if there had been funding for a manned mission and this was a precursor.) Plan the manned mission to spend a few weeks on orbit before landing, to do final site selection and wait for favorable weather (e.g. a lack of dust storms.) You might say all that would still make the landing too risky. But I specifically said a Mars landing would be possible _but_high_risk_ with 1970s technology.
As far as the analogy with sixteenth century exploration goes, all analogies are flawed at some level. My point was that inadequate technology can be successfully used, if you are willing to accept higher risk. I think that’s correct. I’ll also note that astronauts landing on Mars will not have to deal with hostile natives or tropical diseases.