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Exploration

Moon, Mars, and Beyond 2.0

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
December 12, 2017
Moon, Mars, and Beyond 2.0

Trump Policy Promises Moon, Mars, and Beyond – Will This Time Be Different?, Space Policy Online
“Bold goals to continue trips to the Moon and go on to Mars envisioned in the immediate post-Apollo period never gained traction, nor did pronouncements by President George H.W. Bush in 1989 or President George W. Bush in 2004. President George W. Bush’s plan to return astronauts to the lunar surface by 2020, called Constellation, was cancelled by Obama after a 2009 independent review concluded that NASA would need $3 billion more per year to implement it. Obama decided to focus instead on the “Journey to Mars” with the goal of putting humans in orbit around Mars in the 2030s, bypassing the lunar surface and saving the billions of dollars required to build a lunar landing system and associated lunar surface systems for habitation and exploration.”
President Bush Announces New Vision for Space Exploration Program, earlier post (2004)
“Our second goal is to develop and test a new spacecraft, the Crew Exploration Vehicle, by 2008, and to conduct the first manned mission no later than 2014. The Crew Exploration Vehicle will be capable of ferrying astronauts and scientists to the Space Station after the shuttle is retired. But the main purpose of this spacecraft will be to carry astronauts beyond our orbit to other worlds. This will be the first spacecraft of its kind since the Apollo Command Module. Our third goal is to return to the moon by 2020, as the launching point for missions beyond. Beginning no later than 2008, we will send a series of robotic missions to the lunar surface to research and prepare for future human exploration. Using the Crew Exploration Vehicle, we will undertake extended human missions to the moon as early as 2015, with the goal of living and working there for increasingly extended periods. Eugene Cernan, who is with us today — the last man to set foot on the lunar surface — said this as he left: “We leave as we came, and God willing as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind.” America will make those words come true. (Applause.)”
Keith’s note: Gene Cernan stood with George Bush in 2004. Jack Schmitt Stood With Donald Trump in 2017. Not much has changed – except that Apollo 17 has now been the last mission where humans walked on another world for 45 years.

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

24 responses to “Moon, Mars, and Beyond 2.0”

  1. TheBrett says:
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    Another re-orientation, although this one is probably as reversible as the Obama one was if there’s no money for the Deep Space Gateway until after we cut off funding for ISS.

    It’d be a pity. The Deep Space Gateway idea isn’t a bad one, as long as it’s paired with reusable lunar landers to ferry people to and from the lunar surface (first on short-term missions, later to a moon base). That’s not the case right now (so there’s no point for it), but maybe in the future.

  2. Donald Barker says:
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    And the wheel goes round. When the Bush 2 plan was “cancelled by Obama after a 2009 independent review concluded that NASA would need $3 billion more per year to implement it.” – It is too bad our nation had wasted nearly $3 trillion in an ongoing 9 years of war; and nothing has changed. It amazes me as to what humans really think is important and what things will make their collective future better. As Potus 45 says, “So Sad.” It IS going to be more sad when in 10 years from now nothing new, sustainable or permanently on a visionary tract will have happened. Pessimism is maxing.

    • Richard Malcolm says:
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      $3 billion more, after all that has been blown on SLS and Orion, might well be throwing good money after bad if NASA just spends on on traditional procurement methods.

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        SLS would be a bad idea even if procurement were cleaned up. It’s yesterday’s rocket concept.

  3. ThomasLMatula says:
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    The key is if the Trump Administration is willing to put the necessary political capital into it and if you have an NASA Administrator that will work with Congress to make it happen. Those are the elements that have been missing for decades.

    The statement is worded in a way that is flexible enough to allow for many interesting innovations, which hopefully wasn’t accidental.

  4. Michael Kaplan says:
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    Human lunar landing is not cheap, so the big question is where will the resources come from to pay for it. Is OMB on board with the needed budget increases to enable it?

  5. mfwright says:
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    I think for starters is to dump Mars as part of the HSF plan because with that planet people will begin a lunar exit strategy before even getting to the Moon.

  6. Michael Genest says:
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    I find it astonishing – in a very annoying sort of way – that we continually accept the canard that we can’t make bold progress in space exploration because, as the referenced article states near the end, “the perpetual hurdle is money”. Really? We Americans live in a nation with a GDP over $18 trillion and a federal budget of around $4 trillion. Heck, our fellow citizens LOSE over $100 billion a year just gambling. And we can’t afford a measly extra $3B a year to help push the human race out into the Universe? Give me a break. And that’s not even counting the resources that international partners can bring to the endeavor. No, we don’t lack money; what we lack is leadership with the necessary vision, moxie, and backbone to decide to spend the money to get it done. Let’s just hope that this time really is different.

    • ThomasLMatula says:
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      I suspect it will be very different. Space is something President Trump seems to have an interest in.

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        ‘Seem’ being the operative word.

      • muomega0 says:
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        It ‘seems’ this interest maybe linked to the discovery of lunar surface ‘potholes’: “space is terrific, we don’t exactly have a lot of money, we’ve got to fix our potholes” 😉

        Using shuttled derived+ISS splashdown, +3B/yr reqr’d ( 2005 CxP sand chart), but they will now add IPs and commercial raising costs. The plan will be implemented when the 1.4T tax cut returns a surplus 300B 😉

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      Yep.

      That’s an argument easily extended; the USA is so incredibly rich that thee should be highways and trains to every definition, and that nobody lacks health care.

      But no. And the reason has little to do with our wealth, except in peripheral way. It has to do with the Church of Free Enterprise. It has to do with our shared affliction that anything worth doing must be profitable. That somehow ‘the business case must close’. Argh.

      Why the hell do we create all of this wealth, anyway? How about so we can have nice things? Or so we can bomb more civilians a planet away?

      It makes me crazy to watch college students go deeply into debt, or choose majors like BA over Classics, wasting a life and trivializing our great civilization. Kids that need to put up web sites to get a kidney transplant. Governors (like Florida’s) wanting to ‘privatize’ public highways.

      A few billion for the moon? Seriously?

      /Sorry. Forgot to take my medication today.

  7. ThomasLMatula says:
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    In the current environment anyone he picked would have alienated the Democrats, so he may as well pick someone with the energy and drive to do the job.

  8. Bill Housley says:
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    The commercial partnerships part of all this will assure that we don’t circle back around like this again and stretch that 45 years out to 55. Empowering industry to continue forward, at lower costs, after political will has faded is the only way to build a future in space.

    • Daniel Woodard says:
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      Commercial partnerships may be able to reduce costs considerably, but there is little indication of commercial customers. Federal/NASA funding will stil be required, and diverting saupport from existing programs will still be problematic.

      • Bill Housley says:
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        Of course there are commercial customers. Every nation on Earth wants a piece of moon pie! A commercial company providing reasonably priced human launch and hab services would rake it in just from that. This would also encourage world peace because troublemakers would be subject to tech transfer restrictions and thus need not apply. Also researchers from around the world with government funding, and entrepreneurs looking for various resources. This is all on top of any straight-up tourism interest.

        • Michael Spencer says:
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          What exactly would ‘every nation on earth’ actually DO with their piece of moon pie? How would Bangladesh pay to maintain their lunar presence? How will the USA pay for it?

          The problem here, as Dr. Woodard points out, is simple: aside from rides to ISS, and aside from telecommunications, who exactly is going to buy rides, and to where? And ISS is a risky destination, long term.

          This is a discussion had many times on this site, and with no satisfactory answers. Some say ‘build it and they will come’. I doubt it.

          Ten years ago the space world was all agog over suborbitals. Where are these services? Mired in technical and safety-related issues, with very slow-going because investors don’t see the pay off.

          That’s a singular thing that Elon figured out- you need a sufficient number of pioneers that will drive demand for human settlement. He’s done his homework. Settling Mars, and settling Your, are very similar.

          This is why his Mars manifest includes so many humans. SX is creating the underlying demand from which will spring in situ manufacturing.

          Or something.

          • Bill Housley says:
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            How many airliners are in flight over the U.S. at any one time? A thousand? How are all those flights funded? Why are they paid? Who pays for them?

            What is the population of this planet? 5 billion? And you are telling me that you would not be able to find 100,000 who would fund (directly or indirectly) a quarter million dollar trip to the moon? And that is just straight up private-money tourism and ignores resource exploration and scientific exploration.

            Quick show of hands, just here on this thread, if you or those you work for could plunk down the price of a house to send you on a five-day moon trip, what is your bucket list of things to do while you’re there?

            I’ll start…lava tube spelunking.

          • fcrary says:
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            I’m afraid that market is smaller than you might think. There are more like seven billion people on Earth, rather than five, but almost none of them can afford a $250,000 vacation. A quick web search tells me there are only about 500,000 people in the US who earn over $1 million per year, and that most of the people who make that much are in the US.

            So, if you call a quarter of your annual income an affordable vacation, then the market for a $250,000 trip to the Moon is only about a million people worldwide. Do you really think one in ten of them would be interested? It’s possible, but that’s very different from the 100,000 out of five billion you mentioned.

            Even so, unless you have repeat customers, that’s only $25 billion in total income. I suppose that might cover about five hundred Falcon Heavy launches. Which isn’t nearly enough to send 100,000 people to the Moon. I just don’t see how tourism could be a viable and sustainable market for lunar travel.

          • Bill Housley says:
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            I’ve only personally paid for about 25% of the flights I’ve taken in my adult life. Less than half of those were strictly personal/tourism. Also, you are correct in that those I’ve funded have cost between 1% and 2% of my annual income…not 25%, and have averaged about 1 for every 2 years.
            So, based on those numbers, and using me as an example, what would 5 days on Luna need to cost to draw enough interest to support a base with the population that fcrary described?

      • Bill Housley says:
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        There is little wonder in my mind that there are no customers in the absence of capability…especially a capability that had been promised and not delivered for four decades. Any interest is on hold until capability is demonstrated. But developing economies all over the world are currently demonstrating an interest in pushing their space envelope as far as the affordable capability available to them allows…including the moon. Give those groups a demonstrated capability, at a price that they can reach, and they will buy.

  9. Tim Blaxland says:
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    Presumably the $3B/year is still required. If yes, where will that come from? If not, why not?

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      Why is it still required, Tim? Hasn’t the techno-landscape shifted so dramatically that a reassessment is in order?

  10. Michael Spencer says:
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    VERY cool logo that hits all the high points save one: no sense of scale. But for policy wonks it’s dead center.