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The Mars Prize

posted Feb 1, 2012 8:21 AM by Michael Stoltz   [ updated Feb 1, 2012 8:26 AM ]

By Dr. Robert Zubrin, National Review Online, 02.01.12*

In August 1994, I was invited to have dinner with House Minority Whip Newt Gingrich. At that time, I was a senior engineer working for Martin Marietta Astronautics in Denver, where I had been responsible for inventing a new plan called “Mars Direct.” By radically simplifying the mission architecture and making bold use of Martian resources
starting on the very first mission, this concept offered the potential to reduce the cost and schedule of a human Mars-exploration program. NASA analysis had confirmed these advantages, and word had leaked to Newsweek, which featured it as the cover story of its July 25, 1994, issue celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. “A manned mission to Mars?” the editors asked. “The technology is already in place. And at $50 billion — one tenth of previous estimates — it’s a bargain.” Gingrich had read the article and wanted to know more.

Thus it was that I found myself in a closed room in a Chinese restaurant a few blocks from the Capitol, providing a detailed briefing on Mars-mission design to the future Speaker of the House.

Gingrich listened to me closely and became enthusiastic about the possibilities. “I want to support this with legislation,” he said. “But I want to do it in a more free-enterprise kind of way than just gearing up the NASA budget to go to Mars.” I countered by saying that while Mars Direct might cost $30 to $50 billion if implemented by NASA, if done by a private outfit spending its own money, the out-of-pocket cost would probably be in the $5 billion range.  Thus if a prize several times this amount were put on offer for the first crew to reach the Red Planet, it might be possible to ignite a privately backed space race.  Newt liked the idea and assigned an aide to join me in developing the details.  We did so.  But a few weeks later, Newt took the House, and amidst the hectic revolution and competing priorities of the Contract with America, our draft bill never saw the light of day.  Last week, however, in a speech at Kenned Space Center, Newt finally put the idea squarely in the center of the political stage by calling for the establishment of a $10 billion prize for the first private organization to successfully land a crew on Mars and return it safely to Earth.

In the context of current realities, here is how the concept would work. Starting immediately, 10 percent of NASA’s budget would be put aside yearly to accumulate a prize fund. There would be at least two prizes: a $5 billion prize to develop and demonstrate a heavy-lift booster capable of lifting at least 100 tons to low Earth orbit, and a $10 billion prize for the first human mission to Mars. In addition, the winners of these prizes would be given contracts for the purchase by NASA of an additional five copies of their flight systems at a recurring cost of 20 percent of the respective prize per copy.

So to start with, NASA would save a good deal of money by having a heavy-lift booster developed for $5 billion, less than a third of the $18 billion it currently plans to spend over the next six years on its Space Launch System — which would deliver only 75 tons to orbit and which is unlikely to ever be completed in any case, as it is being developed in isolation from any payloads or missions that might use it. The nation would have heavy-lift capability — a matter of considerable military utility — and the competitor would be in the black, operating the single most important flight system needed to reach Mars. The team could then move forward to reach the Red Planet, recouping much more than its remaining development costs by raking in the $10 billion prize, after which it could expand its business base by selling to NASA repeat copies of its Mars-mission flight system, thereby allowing the agency to engage in a sustained and economical program of human exploration of the Red Planet. The total cost of the program, including both prizes and all the recurring missions, would be $30 billion. Spent over 20 years (ten until the first Mars mission, plus ten more years for the five follow-ons), this would amount to less than 10 percent of NASA’s budget.

This is a novel approach to human space exploration, which up till now has been entirely run by government. It has a number of remarkable advantages. In the first place, this approach renders cost overruns impossible. Not a penny will be spent unless the desired results are achieved, and not a penny more will be spent beyond the award sum agreed upon at the start. Success or failure with this approach depends solely upon the ingenuity of the American people and the workings of the free-enterprise system, not upon political wrangling. The tactic not only guarantees economical results, but it also promotes quick and smart results. When people have their own money at stake, it’s a lot easier to find and settle on practical, no-nonsense solutions to engineering problems than is ever the case in the complex and endless deliberations of a government bureaucracy.

There are other advantages to this approach as well. Economic growth would be spurred, prior to any government expenditure. Moreover, posting multibillion-dollar prizes for breakthrough accomplishments in space would call into being not only a private space race, but a new kind of aerospace industry, one based on minimum-cost production methods. The existing aerospace industry does not work that way. Rather, the major aerospace companies contract with the government to do a job on a “cost plus” basis, which means that whatever it costs them to do the job, they charge the government a certain percentage more, usually 8 to 12 percent. Therefore, the more it costs the major aerospace companies to do a job for the government, the more money they make. For this reason, their staffs are top-heavy with layer after layer of management bureaucrats, whose sole function is to add to company overhead. Of course, since the government needs proof that the expenses claimed by the aerospace companies are actually being incurred, vast numbers of accounting personnel are also employed, to keep track of how many labor hours are spent on each and every separate contract.

The prize system would change all that, because the company’s profit would be the value of the prize, minus their costs, period. They would have no incentive to run costs up.  Quite the contrary, they would have every reason to drive costs down.  Furthermore, their actual base costs would be lower, since their accounting and documentation burden would be much less onerous.  By creating new aerospace companies based on these principles, or forcing the existing ones to reform themselves, the Mars Prize would end up saving the government and the commercial-satellite industry billions of dollars, as they soon would be able to get all of their required space and launch system hardware much cheaper.

No doubt there would be many people who would be skeptical that a manned Mars mission could be flown for $5 billion — but that wouldn’t matter. If the Mars Prize bill were passed, the only thing that would matter was whether a few investors thought it could. Those interested in making the attempt wouldn’t need to convince a sustained majority in Congress that a humans-to-Mars program could be done cheaply; they would only have to convince a Paul Allen or an Elon Musk. The level of acceptable risk would also be much higher than is currently the case. Both of these are crucial: The private sector is often vastly more innovative than the government because a consensus is not necessary to start something new, and it is willing to dare the risks required.

But if nobody takes up the challenge, what then? In that case the whole exercise would have cost the taxpayers absolutely nothing.

Would offering the Mars Prize damage NASA? I don’t think so. Rather, it would result in an infusion of private capital into the best groups at the various NASA centers, as well as into both large and small aerospace companies and university and national-lab research groups, as the private consortia chasing the prize sought to subcontract expertise in particular areas of interest. This would have a very healthy influence on the technologists at NASA, as they would then be driven to develop systems that those seeking to fly a Mars mission actually want, instead of indulging themselves with research into technologies that are not relevant.

The American manned space program has not gone anywhere in nearly 40 years, and currently it intends to spend yet another decade mired in low Earth orbit, achieving nothing, at a cost to the taxpayer on the order of $100 billion. In contrast, for a small fraction of such a sum, the Mars Prize would unleash the courage and inventiveness of the American people, mobilize our technology, grow our economy, inspire our youth, and endow us with great new space capabilities, new knowledge, and a new world and a new frontier of unknown but vast potential. The American people want and deserve a space program truly worthy of a nation of pioneers. In setting forth the Mars Prize, Newt Gingrich has finally put one on offer.

*The Mars Society is a registered non-profit organization that does not endorse or support any particular candidate during the political campaign season. By posting this article, our only intention is to better inform our members and the general public about any newsworthy information that could possibly impact a humans-to-Mars mission in the future.

[Image: NASA, SpaceX]

Save the Mars Missions

posted Dec 19, 2011 11:17 AM by Michael Stoltz   [ updated Dec 19, 2011 11:19 AM ]

By Robert Zubrin, SpaceNews, 12.21.11

The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has withdrawn a U.S. commitment to joint Mars missions with the Europeans in 2016 and 2018. This poses a grave crisis for all of us hoping for a human future in space.

NASA’s Mars exploration program has been brilliantly successful because, since 1994, it has been approached as a campaign, with probes launched every biennial opportunity, alternating between orbiters and landers. As a result, combined operations have been possible, with orbiters providing communication links and reconnaissance guidance for surface rovers, which in turn can conduct ground-truth investigations of orbital observations. Thus, the great treks of the rovers Spirit and Opportunity, launched in 2003, were supported from above by Mars Global Surveyor (MGS, launched in1996), Mars Odyssey (launched in 2001) and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO, launched in 2005).  But after serving 10 years on orbit, MGS is now lost, and if we wait until the 2020s to resume Mars exploration, the rest of the orbiters will be gone as well.  Moreover, so will be the experienced teams that created them.  Effectively, the whole program will be completely wrecked, and we will have to start again from scratch.

Furthermore, if the OMB cuts are allowed to prevail, we will not only destroy America’s Mars exploration program, but derail that of our European allies as well. The 2016 and 2018 missions have been planned as a NASA/European Space Agency joint project, with the Europeans contributing over $1 billion to the effort. But if America betrays its commitment, the European supporters of Mars explorations will be left high and dry, and both the missions, and the partnership, will be lost.

America’s human spaceflight program is completely adrift. Unless it is reorganized as a mission-driven directorate committed to efficiently achieving important objectives within a meaningful timeframe, it may well prove to be indefensible in the face of the oncoming fiscal tsunami. But the Mars program is defensible. It has real and rational objectives, reasonable costs and a terrific track record of success. It can and must be saved.

There is no justification for the proposed cuts. The U.S. government may be going broke, but it’s not because of NASA. Since 2008, federal spending has increased 40 percent, but NASA spending has increased only 5 percent. Trillions of dollars of out-of-control entitlement spending cannot be remedied by cuts in NASA, or even in the entire discretionary budget, defense included. Rather, the financial bleeding needs to be staunched where the hole is, and nowhere else.

In any case, cost is not the issue. With the Europeans putting up their share, a matching $1 billion contribution from NASA spread over the next six years would be sufficient to fund both the 2016 and 2018 missions at a level of $1 billion each. This would require less than 1 percent of NASA’s current budget. There is no excuse for not doing this.

The Mars program would not be terminated to make funds available for future missions to other planets. In fact, there would be no money in the OMB plan to fund any of them, either.

America’s planetary exploration program is one of the great chapters in the history of science, of civilization and of our country. Its abandonment would represent nothing else than an embrace of American decline. This is unacceptable.

Mars is key to humanity’s future in space. It is the closest planet that has all the resources needed to support life and technological civilization. Its complexity uniquely demands the skills of human explorers, who will pave the way for human settlers. It is, therefore, the proper goal for NASA’s human spaceflight program, and the proper priority for its robotic scouts. The human spaceflight program may be in disarray, but the scouts have been making progress, and are set to make more, if only we continue with them.

If we allow the OMB to shut down the Mars exploration effort, NASA will lose its most effective endeavor, one of the few that delivers the goods that justify the entire space program as a national enterprise; the nation will lose one of its crown jewels; the scientists will lose their chance to find life beyond Earth; and humanity will lose the one significant effort that is making real and visible progress toward opening the frontier on another world. We can’t let that happen.

Here is where we need to make a stand. There is no excuse for wrecking the Mars program. The nation can afford it, and walking away from it is walking away from success, from our allies, from science, from greatness, from the pioneer spirit, and from our future. Everyone needs to mobilize now to save the 2016 and 2018 Mars missions.

This is a fight we can and must win. It’s time to speak up.

[Image: NASA/ESA]

Is the Case for Mars Facing a Crisis?

posted Dec 6, 2011 10:42 PM by Michael Stoltz   [ updated Dec 6, 2011 10:45 PM ]

By Alan Boyle, MSNBC Cosmic Log, 12.06.11

Will NASA's $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory mission, launched last month, mark another step toward sending humans to Mars —or one of the last steps for a long time in NASA's Mars exploration program? Rocket scientist Robert Zubrin, founder and president of the Mars Society, is increasingly worried that it's more like the end than the beginning.

"We're faced with the end of the program after this mission," Zubrin told me this week.

The future of Mars exploration will be Topic A when Zubrin and I sit down together Wednesday in the Second Life virtual world for this month's installment of "Virtually Speaking Science." The hour-long talk show, which will be webcast via BlogTalkRadio and archived on iTunes, begins at 9 p.m. ET (6 p.m. PT / SLT) in the MICA Small Auditorium in Second Life. Teleport in and join the live audience, listen in real time over the Web, or catch up with the podcast after the show.

Zubrin has been an outspoken advocate for human Mars exploration for a long time: He distilled his thinking about the potential scenario for Mars missions into a book titled "The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must."  His other books on that theme include "Entering Space," "Mars on Earth," "First Landing" and "How to Live on Mars." He's also delved into energy policy, and recently converted his 2007 Chevy Cobalt to run on methanol (which saves money and gives a boost to energy independence). In his next book, "Merchants of Despair," he takes on the critics of nuclear power, environmental activists and the advocates of population control.

This is clearly a guy who can handle controversy and make his point forcefully. But 15 years after "The Case for Mars" was written, have his efforts brought us any closer to that first landing on the Red Planet? In the late 1980s, some talked about sending astronauts to Mars within 25 years. Today, the Obama administration is talking about sending astronauts to Mars ... maybe within 25 years. And Zubrin sounds doubtful about even that time frame.

In fact, Zubrin has deepening doubts about NASA's direction, particularly about the prospect of having no Mars missions on the books after the Maven orbiter launch in 2013. NASA hasn't yet fully committed itself to a joint ExoMars mission with the European Space Agency, and a U.S.-European-Russian meeting on the mission's future is scheduled for Wednesday.

Zubrin's concerns about the future of Mars exploration were the major theme of my pre-show interview with him this week. Here's an edited transcript of the Q&A:

Cosmic Log: How do you see the Mars Science Laboratory mission fitting into the wider Mars exploration goals that NASA has, and that you think NASA should have?

Robert Zubrin: The Mars Science Lab is a great mission. One could argue that they shouldn't have bet so much on this mission. They could have gotten several missions for the money, and spread the risk around. But this is the one we've got, and if it succeeds, it's going to be a terrific science mission. They can look for methane, and they'll be able to distinguish between biogenic and non-biogenic methane by its isotopic composition. It'll study the topography, the mineralogy, the works. And it's powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator, so it could last for years and years and keep going. The data will keep coming.

The problem is not this mission. The problem is, we're faced with the end of the program after this mission. OK, there's a little orbiter called Maven that's funded, but after that, they've canceled the program. The Obama administration has reneged on its agreement with the Europeans to do joint missions in 2016 and 2018 — which was supposed to be the preparation for Mars sample return.

What we're dealing with here is, No. 1, no missions in those years. No. 2, the collapse of an agreement with the Europeans. No. 3, probably a collapse of the European program, because these guys went and sold these missions to their political sponsors saying, 'Hey, we're going to do this together with NASA.' Now the politicians are going to turn around and tell the space officials, 'You lied to us.'

Q: There's talk about the Russians getting involved ...

A: Yeah, well, come on, you could do that. But every Russian mission to Mars has failed, without exception, including the one that failed last month. ...

This robotic Mars program has been a campaign, and it's been successful for that reason. This was a decision made in 1994, following the failure of Mars Observer. We were going to launch to Mars every two years, which is to say every launch opportunity, and we've been alternating rovers and orbiters. We were able to push right through the double failure in 1999 because we already had new things ready and up on deck. And beyond that, we were able to do combined operations: The orbiters could supply reconnaissance and communication links for the rovers, and the rovers could supply ground truth for the orbiters. It greatly enhances the power of orbiters and rovers.

If we wait until 2020 to resume operations, all the orbiters that are there now will have failed by then. We'll have lost this entire infrastructure, and we'll have to start from scratch. This is just an incredible thing. The Mars robotic program has been one of the most successful programs in NASA's history. To cut it off now is just insanity. Perhaps there's malice in this, to not cut the waste, but actually cut the parts that are delivering the goods.

I think it will be reversed. I don't think Congress will stand for it. For these two missions, we've got an offer on the table from the Europeans for a billion dollars cash to help fund it. The idea of walking away from this is just nuts. But I think it represents a degree of incompetence that perhaps can't be explained by incompetence.

They're spending billions of dollars a year to refurbish the shuttle launch pads even though there are no more shuttles. They've got $18 billion for the Space Launch System program when we could get a heavy-lift rocket by putting out a $5 billion fixed-price request for proposals. I don't agree with people who say we don't need heavy-lift. We absolutely do need heavy-lift. But SLS is not being funded to produce a heavy-lift vehicle. It's just being funded to distribute money.

Q: I would have thought you'd be in favor of any effort to build a big rocket that could send humans to Mars.

A: SLS is essentially the same as any number of earlier heavy-lift designs. It's very similar to the Ares rocket that we proposed in "The Case for Mars." That's not the issue. The first issue is, they're developing a heavy-lift vehicle in isolation from any program to use it. Which means it'll never actually get developed. The Saturn V program succeeded not because it was a Saturn V program, but because it was part of the Apollo program to get to the moon. It was part of a coherent set of hardware that was being developed together in order to accomplish the mission.  It was mission-driven.

Since then, we've had any number of heavy-lift programs: Shuttle-C, ALS, NLS, Spacelifter, the Space Launch Initiative, the National Aero-Space Plane, the X-33 ... and none of them has produced a flying vehicle. That's because they were not mission-driven. Around the time it's proposed to get to Phase B, and the money starts getting serious, people say, "Why are we doing this? We don't need this. What's the mission?" So they fall apart.

The second problem is that it's not being pursued efficiently. Obama says that our objective is a near-Earth asteroid mission. Well, a mission to a near-Earth asteroid is not that hard. It requires a heavy-lift vehicle, an in-space habitation module and a re-entry capsule. If they were serious about this, they could put out the request for proposals for a heavy-lift rocket. They're already working on a capsule, and there's also SpaceX's Dragon. For the hab module, they could basically modify the design for a space station module, and there are also the Bigelow modules in parallel. You put those three things together, and you've got an asteroid mission. You could do that easily by 2016 ... if you were serious.

But instead they say we must have advanced propulsion, and they draw cartoons of gigantic interplanetary spaceships. It's vastly more expensive and calls for all kinds of engineering that we don't have. It's a way of postponing the asteroid mission until 2030 or so. It's a way to take an engineering project and turn it into a dream rather than a program.

What we have right now is a manned spaceflight program which is not going anywhere, and has no objective. For the next 10 years what are we going to get for the $10 billion a year we're spending? There'll be random technology programs, and they'll be flying people up and down to the International Space Station in order to get, what? Further evidence that human physiology deteriorates in zero gravity? As if we didn't already know that?

Q: So what's your prescription?

A: The prescription in all cases is to have a space program that's mission-driven. The reason why the robotic program has been so productive is because it's been mission-driven. They don't plan missions in order to use the maximum number of weird things. They do exactly the opposite: They design a mission to use the minimum number of novel and weird things. That's how the manned program has got to go. We need to continue with the robotic program. Frankly, it's the only thing that's moved us closer to Mars since I published "The Case for Mars" in 1996.

Now, I prefer that we simply bite the bullet, say the program should go to Mars, design the hardware to do that, build it and go. If you say you want to do something easier first, OK, the asteroid mission fits the bill. It would develop about half the hardware set you'd need to send humans to Mars. But that needs to be approached with the idea of actually accomplishing the mission.

Q: Some people would say that the launch system needs to be certified for human safety, "human-rated," and that's why it costs so much and takes so long to develop new hardware.

A: The booster should have the qualities needed to make it safe, and frankly, the vendor should not be paid for the booster launch if the launch fails. That's a pretty good guarantee that they're going to try to make it safe. But if you're going to spend $20 billion to develop a booster instead of $5 billion, and you're wasting $15 billion, don't tell me that you're trying to save lives when hundreds of thousands of lives could have been saved by taking the $15 billion and using it for highway repairs, or child vaccinations, or body armor for the troops, or fire-escape inspections, or swimming lessons. The money spent on the space program can't be spent on other things. So the space program really has an obligation to get its mission done. To say we're going to take $18 billion a year and not get the mission done — that's not socially responsible.

Q: Speaking of missions, the Mars Society has just started up a new field season at the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah. How do Mars mission simulations like yours and the recently completed 520-day Mars simulation in Moscow fit into the grand plan of getting humans to the actual Red Planet?

A: Our first crew of the year is now in there, led by a French engineer, Charlotte Poupon. We'll have 11 crews who will take us all the way through April. This is the 11th field season for the MDRS. Over 600 people have been crew members at MDRS to date, and they've come from more than 30 different countries.

It's been very instructive. We've gotten hundreds of lessons, not all of which agree with each other, because that's how experience works. Nevertheless, there are hundreds of people now who have gotten some experience in what it would be like to try to do exploration under Mars mission constraints.  Those people are going to go back to their various space agencies and universities and companies, and incorporate this experience into the technologies and plans that they design.

I think this is a much more useful exercise than Mars500. It's good that they did it. It's good that there are people out there thinking about Mars problems. But frankly, people have been locked up in rooms in Moscow many times in the past. The issue for a Mars mission is not the standing isolation. Anne Frank and her family in an attic in Amsterdam were far more isolated for two and a half years, under vastly more hostile conditions than any crew would face during a Mars mission. If you look at human history, any number of people, randomly chosen, whether they're refugees in hiding, prisoners, soldiers, merchant seamen, whalers, have withstood human-factor problems far more formidable than the crew would face during a trip to Mars.

The real issue is not how humans withstand isolation, it's how to plan the mission to get the maximum return from the exploration efforts. That's why our simulations are not based on isolation, but based on learning how to explore on Mars by doing it in the desert or in the Arctic. I'm hoping that NASA will copy us. I want our program to be made obsolete by people with greater resources picking up the ball and running with it. But until then, there's our program.

Q: And then there's your forthcoming book, "Merchants of Despair," which is totally different from what I expected. It's all about life on Earth, and you're probably going to stir a whole new kind of controversy.

A: Yeah, this is a book that's going to disturb a lot of people, because they're going to discover that a lot of ideas that are quite fashionable now have a horrendous heritage. They're not really new ideas. They've been paraded out before with the most disastrous consequences. Ultimately these ideas are all variants of Malthusianism, which basically says, "There isn't enough to go around, so some people are going to have to suffer, and therefore authorities are going to have to be empowered to enforce that." It's ultimately an argument for tyranny and justifying human oppression.

This was developed by Malthus originally to excuse the famines created by the British East India Company in India, and subsequently the famines in Ireland. It was the basis for the eugenics movement in Nazism, for the population-control movement, for the Limits to Growth movement — and for the global warming thing, which says, "Well, we're not actually running out of resources, but we've run out of the right to use resources." So the development of the Third World is to be precluded and the development of the advanced nations is to be limited. ....

The whole discussion of global warming is totally bizarre, because they're having all these arguments about whether it's getting colder or warmer, arguing about thermometer measurements, when it's very clear that increased CO2 content in the atmosphere accelerates plant growth. Furthermore, warming lengthens the growing season, and it increases rainfall. Global warming and CO2 increases are a cause for celebration.

Q: I'm sure the first question people are going to ask is, "What's a rocket scientist doing writing a book on these kinds of issues?"

A: Well, somebody's got to.

It's also this: Look, one might ask why John Holdren, Obama's science adviser, is basically trying to wreck the American space program. I think it's because the space program is the banner for proving that there are no limits to growth.

Here's what the space program is all about: It's to win the argument in favor of humanity. It's to prove that it's not the case that there's only so much to go around. It's not the case that human beings are just vermin who are consuming what's there, so they have to be limited, because if they're let loose they'll destroy everything. Rather, it's the case that resources — which is to say the possibilities of doing things — come about through human creativity. Resources are a product of human invention. Far from limiting human activity, you want to maximize freedom so as to maximize human creativity.

Here's a quote from John Holdren and Paul Ehrlich in "Global Ecology," the book they wrote together: "When a population of organisms grows in a finite environment, sooner or later it will encounter a resource limit. This phenomenon, described by ecologists as reaching the 'carrying capacity' of the environment, applies to bacteria on a culture dish, to fruit flies in a jar of agar, and to buffalo on a prairie. It must also apply to man on this finite planet."

If you want to be able to condemn humans to being nothing but the equivalent of bacteria in a culture dish, you must make the assertion that we are limited to a finite planet. If we are not limited to a finite planet, then it becomes clear that we are not bacteria in a culture dish. We are creators of our own future. That's what's ultimately at stake here.

[Images: SpaceX, MDRS, NASA]

An Uncertain Future for Solar System Exploration

posted Nov 14, 2011 5:23 AM by Michael Stoltz   [ updated Nov 14, 2011 5:53 AM ]

By Jeff Foust, The Space Review, 11.14.11

In less than two weeks, an Atlas V rocket is slated to lift off from Cape Canaveral, propelling NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) spacecraft towards the Red Planet. MSL—aka Curiosity—is one of the most ambitious, and expensive, Mars missions ever flown: a rover roughly the size of a Mini Cooper automobile and equipped with a suite of instruments to study Mars and learn about when it was warmer, wetter, and perhaps more hospitable to life.  Its landing in August 2012 will be the capstone to what NASA calls the "Year of the Solar System", a Martin-year-long period that includes milestones ranging from the arrival of MESSENGER at Mercury and Dawn at Vesta to the launches of Juno to Jupiter and GRAIL to the Moon.

While this is something of a golden age for planetary exploration, with a dozen active NASA planetary missions today, there is growing unease in the planetary science community about the future. There were concerns earlier this year with the release of the decadal survey of planetary science missions, which warned of a mismatch between the highest-priority missions—a Mars rover to collect samples for later return to Earth, and a Europa orbiter—and projected budgets. That anxiety has grown in the last few months for other reasons, including the growing cost of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and actions by the administration that suggest to some a weaker commitment to NASA’s planetary science programs. Some fear MSL may mark not yet the end of the “Year of the Solar System” but also the end of an era of planetary exploration.

ExoMars estrangement

The future of Mars exploration, beyond MSL, had been intended to be one of enhanced collaboration between NASA and ESA. The two agencies had agreed in 2009 to effectively merge NASA’s long-term Mars exploration program with ESA’s ExoMars effort. In 2016 NASA would launch a European Mars orbiter carrying some US instruments, to be followed two years later by the NASA launch of what was originally planned to be separate NASA and ESA Mars rovers, later merged into a single, jointly-developed rover that would cache samples for return to Earth on later missions. That would fulfill the mission of the Mars Astrobiology Explorer-Cacher (MAX-C) that the decadal survey identified earlier this year as the highest priority large, or flagship, planetary science mission in the next decade.

There is evidence, though, that NASA may be backing out of that commitment. In September it informed ESA it would not be able to launch the 2016 European Mars orbiter as planned, forcing ESA officials to scramble to find an alternative approach, one that may have Russia become a partner by launching the orbiter on a Proton rocket, The Space Review, October 24, 2011). That decision reportedly came at the behest of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which also seeks to put the brakes on a joint 2018 mission.

“The Europeans are as mad as hell,” said Scott Hubbard, former director of NASA’s Ames Research Center, at a November 3 Capitol Hill forum on the future of planetary exploration jointly organized by The Mars Society and The Planetary Society. “When I talk to my European colleagues, they’re really, really upset. They feel like they’ve been swindled.”

That frustration comes after NASA and ESA had worked to lower the cost of the 2018 mission. Hubbard said the NASA cost of the mission has been reduced to $1.4 billion, more in line with a midrange New Frontiers mission. “It’s no longer a flagship-class mission,” he said, thanks to $1.2 billion provided by ESA for its role on the mission.

Hubbard believes that OMB may be misinterpreting the “decision rules” included in the planetary science decadal report on how to accommodate reduced budgets. Citing an email from someone who had met with OMB officials about the budget, MAX-C was deemed a “non-starter” by the office under current budgets even with its reduced cost, as it considers flagship missions the lowest priority of all classes of missions.

Hubbard noted that “programmatic balance”—a mix of small, medium-sized, and large missions—was a key aspect of the planetary decadal. That report, moreover, did not place flagship missions as the lowest priority. Instead, it recommended that if costs exceeded projected budgets, flagship missions should be descoped or delayed, followed by changes to the New Frontiers and Discovery programs for smaller missions.

That’s exactly what NASA has done, reducing the cost of MAX-C from its original estimate of $3.5 billion to the new estimate of $1.4 billion. “I would argue that NASA has been extremely responsive to the decadal survey and to budgetary pressure,” Hubbard said.

NASA has said little publicly about the future of its Mars exploration program and cooperation with ESA. At a news briefing last week about the upcoming MSL launch, Doug McCuistion, director of NASA’s Mars program, talked briefly about the issue. “The US and ESA realize we may have some budget concerns in the future, so ESA has approached Russia about potentially providing a launch vehicle and being involved,” he said. He declined to go into more detail because both the fiscal year 2012 budget has yet to be approved by Congress—although that may happen this week—while the 2013 budget proposal won’t be released until early next year. The subject may also come up at a hearing Tuesday on NASA’s planetary science plans by the House Science Committee.

The challenge of funding “America’s new destiny”

The uncertain future about the 2016 and 2018 Mars missions has raised broader concerns about NASA’s overall planetary exploration program. That unease got much broader public attention in an op-ed by Mars Society president Robert Zubrin in the Washington Times on October 26. In it, he claimed the administration’s 2013 budget proposal “intends to terminate NASA’s planetary exploration program” by cancelling any missions beyond the small MAVEN Mars orbiter slated for launch in 2013. In addition, Zubrin claimed some operating missions, like the Kepler space telescope, would be turned off mid-mission.

“The administration’s decision to derail planetary exploration and space astronomy is shocking and portends the destruction of the entire American space program,” Zubrin wrote. He described NASA as a “mixed bag” of programs, some of which are highly effective and others that are “wasteful, pork-driven spending.” Planetary science and astronomy fell into the former category, in Zubrin’s view. “Kill those, and what is left will be indefensible.”

Some dismissed Zubrin’s op-ed as hyperbole. While there are concerns about the Mars program, ending it would not be the end of planetary exploration. In addition to MAVEN, there is the LADEE lunar mission, also slated for launch in 2013, and the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission, announced earlier this year for launch in 2016. Next year NASA will pick from among three finalists for the next low-cost Discovery-class planetary mission, also planned for a 2016 launch. Concerns about the shutdown of Kepler and other missions may also be overstated: while those missions will be subject to a NASA “senior review” in the coming months, it doesn’t mean that all—or any—of those missions will necessarily be terminated.

Zubrin defended his commentary at the Capitol Hill event earlier this month. “Right now the queue is empty, a situation we have not had since Sputnik,” he claimed. There will be the appearance of a planetary program for a number of years thanks to ongoing missions, he said, but “right now we’re not planting any seeds. No seeds, no harvest; no missions, no program.”

Zubrin also used his op-ed and his talk to defend JWST. “Webb is the core of NASA’s future,” he said. “It’s its most important single science mission.” The space telescope, he added, could be “essential” to the future of human spaceflight by providing a destination in deep space—the Earth-Sun L2 point, 1.5 million kilometers away—for potential future servicing missions.

“It’s really in grave danger, because it’s not being funded at a level that will allow it to completed in a timely fashion,” he said, noting that stretching out a program only increases its overall cost and increases the risk of its cancellation. He dismissed concerns about overruns that have pushed the telescope’s cost, including the first five years of science operations, to $8.8 billion, saying that any major program has experienced cost growth. “Hubble overran, Apollo overran, the Normandy landing overran, the Parthenon overran.”

While few doubt JWST’s capabilities, including in planetary astronomy, funding the telescope could hurt other planetary missions. In September project officials said that they needed $156 million above the original 2012 budget request for JWST, part of an additional $1.2 billion needed over the next several years to keep the program on track for a 2018 launch. Half of that money would come from the agency’s Cross-Agency Support budget, while the other half would come from the astronomy, planetary science, and heliophysics budgets. NASA hasn’t yet revealed specific cuts to science programs, and full details of the “replan” of the space telescope’s budget may have to wait until the release of the fiscal year 2013 budget proposal next February.

But if all of these programs—JWST, Mars exploration, and other planetary missions—are important, where will the funding come from to support them in an era of fiscal constraint, if not austerity? At the Mars Society/Planetary Society event this month, panelists sounded skeptical that NASA’s overall, or topline, budget could be increased. “It’s very difficult to do in this environment,” said Hubbard. He suggested looking at schedules for some large missions and “maybe you ought to stretch a few things out and redistribute some of the resources.”

“I don’t think we can increase our budget in this environment,” said Heidi Hammel, executive vice president of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA). It might be different story, though, she said, if the public understood how little NASA spends. “There’s a misperception that a third of the federal budget is NASA,” she said; the actual fraction is about half a percent.

“It is, perhaps, unrealistic to talk about increasing NASA’s budget,” Zubrin said. He argued, though, that it would still be possible to conduct a “real space program” even if budgets are cut back to 2008 levels, when NASA received $17.4 billion. He said he would prioritize “mission-driven activity” like astronomy and space science. He would revamp human spaceflight, in particular the Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lift rocket. “I happen to be among those who believe that heavy-lift is absolutely necessary, but I think it can be pursued far more efficiently,” he said. His solution would be to offer a fixed-price, $5-billion contract to develop a heavy-lift rocket, saving more than $10 billion over NASA’s current projections for developing the SLS through 2017.

While concerned but the budgetary dilemmas facing NASA’s planetary science programs, some at the Capitol Hill event remained optimistic about the future. Hammel said she wants her children to grow up in a strong, secure country, but also one that is a leader in technology development and space exploration. “We need to be able to find the balance in our budget to have the roads, to have the bridges, to have the education, to have the health care, but we also have to have the vision, and that’s what planetary science and astrophysics at NASA can provide to us.”

“This is an amazing time in the exploration of space,” said Jim Bell, president of The Planetary Society. “We’re on the verge of completing the initial reconnaissance of the worlds around us.” That reconnaissance, performed in large part by NASA planetary missions, is only the first step in exploration that will, he believes, ultimately involve humans. “We can’t go yet, but we desperately want to go, and we need to go, as a species,” he said. “This is part of America’s new destiny, to be the leader in this new age of exploration. I want to see it continue more than anything else.”

[Image: NASA]

Scientists: Scrapping Space Programs Short-Sighted

posted Nov 4, 2011 3:49 PM by Michael Stoltz   [ updated Nov 4, 2011 3:50 PM ]

By Paul Strand, CBN News, 11.04.11

The debate is heating up between space scientists and political analysts over whether funding should be cut for space exploration.

The news comes in the wake of a Washington Times report that the Obama administration plans to slash NASA's budget.

A group of scientists gathered on Capitol Hill, Thursday, to discuss the long-term effects of the loss of NASA's most prominent space programs.
        
Jim Bell, a professor and president of The Planetary Society, noted the space program has taken mankind close to Mars, Venus, Jupiter and Saturn.

"The risk is that we'll lose all this momentum that we have in understanding the worlds around us," Bell, who attended Thursday's forum, told CBN News.  
 
After discovering more than a thousand other solar systems, the Kepler telescope will be turned off before it might find Earth-like planets that could support life.
     
The Webb telescope, five times more powerful than Hubble, will likely never launch.

"Hubble discovered a new law of physics: the acceleration of the expansion of the universe. That implies there's something out there we don't know about," Dr. Robert Zubrin, president of The Mars Society and author of the book The Case for Mars, told CBN News. 

"We might be able to get to the bottom of it with the Webb.  We need to stay on this quest," he said. 

Drain on Taxpayers?

Gene Healy, vice president of the libertarian Cato Institute, disagrees.  He says taxpayers shouldn't have to pay one more penny for such quests.

"We've got a national debt that's larger than the entire U.S. economy, and this is a vanity project we can't afford," he stated.

"We're entering an era of austerity and we've got to make cuts," Healy added. "This happens to be a program that a significant majority of taxpayers are willing to cut." 

But Zubrin called the likely cuts an offense against science and civilization.

"These are the most effective programs in NASA," he told CBN News. "They're the ones that really deliver the goods."

"These are epic achievements in humanity's search for truth," he added.   

Stopping the flow of robot-scouts dooms America's plan to send man to Mars.

"All the work that the robotic programs do is laying the groundwork for eventually sending people out into the solar system," Bell said.

Zubrin agreed, saying "If the scouts don't go, the army won't follow." 

Long-Term Implications

Could such a budget decision someday doom the human species?

"The earth is constantly at risk for impacts or major shifts in climate or nuclear war or whatever.  Our species is at risk," Bell said.  "And so we would in fact hedge our bets by getting some of our species off the planet." 

These pro-space exploration scientists say that while space programs may seem like a luxury, they've yielded tangible technological rewards, like the development of GPS satellites and others.

"Astronomy has led to the major breakthroughs in physics: the laws of gravitation through nuclear fusion," Zubrin said.

"By sending rovers to Mars, by flying around the rings of Saturn, we inspire kids to think about science, math and technology and engineering," Bell explained. " And we educate people.  We're rewriting the textbooks right now."

Healy, however, doesn't believe it's worth enough to drain taxpayer dollars.

"If you feel the music of the spheres and you're captivated by the romance of space flight, then pony up," he said. "Don't ask the embattled taxpayer to pay for what polls show they think is another bridge to nowhere."

"I think a formerly space-faring nation is a formerly great nation," Zubrin shot back.

To watch the video report that accompanied this article, please click here.

Zubrin: Obama Readies to Blast NASA

posted Oct 27, 2011 1:51 PM by Michael Stoltz   [ updated Oct 27, 2011 4:35 PM ]

By Robert Zubrin, Washington Times, 10.26.11

Word has leaked out that in its new budget, the Obama administration intends to terminate NASA’s planetary exploration program. The Mars Science Lab Curiosity, being readied on the pad, will be launched, as will the nearly completed small MAVEN orbiter scheduled for 2013, but that will be it. No further missions to anywhere are planned.

After 2013, America’s amazing career of planetary exploration, which ran from the Mariner probes in the 1960s through the great Pioneer, Viking, Voyager, Pathfinder, Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Odyssey, Spirit, Opportunity, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Galileo and Cassini missions, will simply end.

Furthermore, the plan from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) also leaves the space astronomy program adrift and headed for destruction.  The now-orbiting Kepler Telescope will be turned off in mid-mission, stopping it before it can complete its goal of finding other Earths.  Even worse, the magnificent Webb Telescope, the agency's flagship, which promises fundamental breakthroughs in our understanding of the laws of the universe, is not sufficiently funded to allow successful completion.  This guarantees further costly delays, with the ensuing budgetary overruns leading inevitably to eventual cancellation.


The administration’s decision to derail planetary exploration and space astronomy is shocking and portends the destruction of the entire American space program. As an agency, NASA is a mixed bag. It includes a large bureaucracy and wasteful, pork-driven spending. But it also includes departments that are technically superb and really deliver the goods. First and foremost among NASA’s most productive divisions are the planetary exploration and space astronomy programs. Kill those, and what is left will be indefensible.

NASA’s planetary and space astronomy programs are not merely good scientific work. They are epic achievements representative of humanity’s highest ideals in its search for truth. As a result of a string of successful probes sent to the Red Planet over the past 15 years, we now know for certain that Mars was once a warm and wet planet and continued to have an active hydrosphere for a period on the order of a billion years - a span five times as long as the time it took for life to appear on Earth after there was liquid water here. Thus, if the theory is correct that life is a natural phenomenon emerging from chemistry wherever there is liquid water, various minerals and a sufficient period of time, life must have appeared on Mars. If we can find it, we will have good reason to believe we are not alone in the universe.

The Kepler observatory has discovered more than1,000 other solar systems, and if it’s allowed to continue operating, it could well find other worlds like ours. The Hubble Space Telescope discovered that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, indicating the existence of a basic force of nature that previously was unknown. The Webb Telescope will be five times as powerful as Hubble. If it can be completed and flown, there is no telling what discoveries it could make. From the laws of gravity through nuclear fusion, many of our most important discoveries in physics were made through astronomy. We have no idea what the processes were that allowed for the creation of matter, energy and the universe. Webb might help us find out. The potential gains to humanity from such expanded knowledge are beyond calculation.

The ostensible reason for the administration’s decision to kill planetary exploration and space astronomy is budgetary discipline. Yet while federal spending has grown 40 percent since 2008, NASA’s funding has remained virtually the same. It is not NASA that is bankrupting America, but OMB. If the administration needs to cut budgets, it should start with those of the regulatory agencies that are strangling the nation’s businesses rather than NASA, which helps the economy through scientific discoveries, technological innovation and the inspiration of youth to pursue careers in engineering. Furthermore, if there were a need to cut NASA, it would make more sense to trim almost anywhere else in the agency. Instead, the administration’s goal seems to be to destroy the entire space program by hitting it in its most vital parts.

The desertion of America’s great exploration enterprise is an offense against science and civilization. It represents a radical departure from the pioneer spirit, and its ratification as policy would preclude any possibility of a human future in space. It is an inexcusable decision, and it needs to be reversed.

Robert Zubrin is the president of Pioneer Astronautics and the Mars Society and author of “The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must” (Free Press, 2011, second edition).

[Image: Alexander Hunter / Washington Times]

Space Agencies Set Two Courses

posted Aug 31, 2011 2:02 PM by Michael Stoltz   [ updated Sep 1, 2011 6:33 PM ]

By Alan Boyle, MSNBC, 08.31.11

To the moon? Or to an asteroid? Both destinations have been in NASA's sights — the moon during the George W. Bush administration, and a near-Earth asteroid during the Obama administration. Now a "Global Exploration Roadmap" being drawn up by NASA and its counterparts around the world lays out a 25-year scenario for each of the two paths leading beyond Earth orbit.

Both of the paths are aimed at the same eventual destination: Mars. And some observers are suggesting the best course is to aim directly at the Red Planet, rather than starting with closer destinations.

The moon vs. asteroid debate was brought back into the spotlight during the deliberations of a panel known as the International Space Exploration Coordination Group, or ISECG. The group, which includes representatives from Britain, Canada, the European Space Agency, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States, was established as a coordination forum for space exploration back when NASA was aiming for a return to the moon by 2020.

Over the past year, the group has retooled the long-term global strategy for space exploration. "It begins with the International Space Station and expands human presence throughout the solar system, leading ultimately to human missions to explore the surface of Mars," NASA said today in a news release. "The roadmap flows from this strategy and identifies two potential pathways: 'Asteroid Next' and 'Moon Next.'"

NASA said "each pathway represents a mission scenario over a 25-year period describing a logical sequence of robotic and human missions." That scenario would be consistent with the plan that President Barack Obama laid out two years ago, with a goal of sending astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid by 2025 and pushing out to Mars and its moons by the mid-2030s. The new twist is that the moon is back on the table as the initial destination beyond Earth orbit.

Senior space officials gave their go-ahead to the two-pathway plan today during a meeting in Kyoto, Japan, NASA said.

"NASA is confident that the release of this product, and subsequent refinements as circumstances within each space agency evolve, will facilitate the ability of space agencies to form the partnerships that will ensure robust and sustainable human exploration," said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for human exploration and operations.

Gerstenmaier is the outgoing chair of the ISECG. The incoming chairman, Yoshiyuki Hasagawa of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, said the group's members were "very happy with the progress of the Global Exploration Roadmap."

NASA spokesman Michael Braukas told me that the roadmap was not yet available for public release, but space officials agreed that an initial version of the document would be issued sometime in the next few weeks. Based on viewgraph presentations prepared in advance of this week's meeting in Kyoto, both paths would eventually get to the moon as well as asteroids. It's more a question of which destination is targeted first.

One suggested strategy would start by sending a deep-space habitat to an Earth-moon gravitational balance point known as L-1. Later missions would go to the moon, as preparation for eventual Mars trips. Another scenario calls for reaching the lunar surface first. The lessons learned there would be applied to asteroid missions, and then to Mars-bound missions. A variant would focus on testing the deep-space habitat, then taking trips to the moon, then going to an asteroid, and finally flying to Mars. It's not yet clear how all these possibilities are wrapped up into the ISECG's "Asteroid Next" and "Moon Next" scenarios.

Are these 25-year plans necessary, or is it possible to send humans to Mars on a shorter, more direct timetable? SpaceX's millionaire founder, Elon Musk, says a 10-year plan could suffice for a mission to Mars. Rocket scientist Robert Zubrin, president of the Mars Society, made a similar case for an early Red Planet rendezvous last week in a Washington Times commentary:

"We’re ready. Despite its greater distance, we are much better prepared today to send humans to Mars than we were to send men to the moon in 1961, when President Kennedy started the Apollo program - and we were there eight years later. Contrary to those seeking indefinite delay of any commitment, future-fantasy spaceships are not needed to send humans to Mars. The primary real requirement is a heavy-lift booster with a capability similar to that of the Saturn V launch vehicle employed in the 1960s. This is something we fully understand how to create.

"The issue is not money. The issue is leadership. NASA’s average Apollo-era (1961-73) budget, adjusted for inflation, was about $19 billion a year in today’s dollars, just 5 percent more than the agency’s current budget. Yet the NASA of the '60s accomplished 100 times more because it had a mission with a deadline and was forced to develop an efficient plan to achieve that mission. If NASA were given that kind of direction, we could have humans on Mars within a decade. If not, as the rudderless agency continues to drift into the coming fiscal tsunami, we may soon end up with no human spaceflight program."

Gearing up for missions to Mars would likely require a significant boost in space spending, as well as more serious efforts to solve the problems of interplanetary spaceflight, including radiation exposure and zero-G health hazards. The ISECG's deliberations are a sign that deep-space exploration is too expensive for any one country to take on by itself. But the latest reports about the roadmap suggest that the path beyond Earth orbit is not yet set in stone — which means there's still ample opportunity for you to weigh in on the debate.

[Image: NASA] 

NASA on the Block

posted Aug 24, 2011 9:12 PM by Michael Stoltz   [ updated Aug 27, 2011 8:41 PM ]

By Robert Zubrin, The Washington Times, 08.24.11

America's human spaceflight program is adrift. The space shuttle has made its final flight, and the Obama administration has no coherent plan what to do next.  Instead, it has proposed that the United States waste the next decade spending $100 billion to support a goalless human spaceflight effort that goes nowhere and accomplishes nothing.  In the face of a mounting imperative to find ways to cut the federal deficit, this has set up the nation's space program for the ax.

In order for NASA's human-exploration effort to be defensible, it needs a concrete goal and one that is truly worth pursuing. That goal should be sending humans to Mars.

As a result of a string of successful probes sent to the Red Planet over the past 15 years, we know for certain that Mars was once a warm and wet planet and continued to have an active hydrosphere for a period on the order of a billion years - a span five times as long as the time it took for life to appear on Earth after there was liquid water here. Findings released by NASA last week indicate that underground water seeps are reaching the surface of the Red Planet periodically. Thus, if the theory is correct that life is a natural phenomenon emerging from chemistry wherever there is liquid water, various minerals and a sufficient period of time, life must have appeared on Mars and may still be there.

If we go to Mars and find fossils of past life on its surface, we will have good reason to believe we are not alone in the universe. If we send human explorers, who can erect drilling rigs that can reach underground water where Martian life may well persist, we will be able to examine it. By doing so, we will be able to determine whether life on Earth is the pattern for all life everywhere or, alternatively, whether we are simply one esoteric example of a far vaster and more interesting tapestry. These things truly are worth finding out.

Furthermore, Mars is a bracing positive challenge that our society needs. Nations, like people, thrive on challenge and decay without it. A humans-to-Mars program would be an invitation to adventure to every young person in the country, sending out the powerful clarion call: "Learn your science, and you can take part in pioneering a new world." In return for such a challenge, we would get millions of young scientists, engineers, inventors and medical researchers, making technological innovations that create new industries, find new cures, strengthen national defense and increase national income to an extent that utterly dwarfs the expenditures of the Mars program.

But the most important reason to go to Mars is the doorway it opens to the future. Uniquely among the extraterrestrial bodies of the inner solar system, Mars is endowed with all the resources needed to support not only life, but the development of a technological civilization. For our generation and those that will follow, Mars is the New World. We should not shun its challenge.

We're ready. Despite its greater distance, we are much better prepared today to send humans to Mars than we were to send men to the Moon in 1961, when President Kennedy started the Apollo program - and we were there eight years later.  Contrary to those seeking indefinite delay of any commitment, future-fantasy spaceships are not needed to send humans to Mars.  The primary real requirement is a heavy-lift booster with a capability similar to that of the Saturn V launch vehicle employed in the 1960s.  This is something we fully understand how to create.

The issue is not money. The issue is leadership. NASA's average Apollo-era (1961-73) budget, adjusted for inflation, was about $19 billion a year in today's dollars, just 5 percent more than the agency's current budget. Yet the NASA of the '60s accomplished 100 times more because it had a mission with a deadline and was forced to develop an efficient plan to achieve that mission. If NASA were given that kind of direction, we could have humans on Mars within a decade. If not, as the rudderless agency continues to drift into the coming fiscal tsunami, we may soon end up with no human spaceflight program.

Some may say, why not just let it sink? Aren't there more vital things to salvage from the budget shipwreck? Such thoughts, however, would be wrong. The government fiscal catastrophe was not caused by NASA but by an administration with no interest in it. Acceptance of the destruction of the space program simply amounts to acceptance of American decline. For all its flaws, NASA is one of the ornaments of our age. The United States comprises 4 percent of the world's population yet has been responsible for 100 percent of the people who have walked on the moon, 100 percent of the rovers that have wheeled on Mars and 100 percent of the probes that have visited Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus or Neptune. Our time will be remembered because this is when humankind first set sail for other worlds. Our nation should be remembered as the people who opened the way.

Robert Zubrin is president of Pioneer Astronautics and of the Mars Society (www.marssociety.org). An updated edition of his book "The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must," has just been published by the Free Press.

Report on the 2011 Mars Society Annual Convention

posted Aug 16, 2011 10:36 AM by Michael Stoltz   [ updated Aug 16, 2011 10:46 AM ]

By Richard Obousy, Centauri Dreams (centauri-dreams.org), 08.16.11

After a stint as project leader for the Project Icarus starship design study, Richard Obousy now serves as Module Lead Primary Propulsion for the effort. Dr. Obousy’s doctoral work at Baylor University focused on the possibility that dark energy could be an artifact of Casimir energy in extra dimensions. For Icarus, he has pivoted to the study of fusion propulsion systems for this ongoing reworking of the original Project Daedalus concept.  He's also fascinated with the possibilities of getting off our planet more easily and establishing a human presence on Mars, all ideas he was able to explore at the Mars Society's latest meeting, from which this report.

As a native of Texas, living only a couple of hours drive from Dallas, I was thrilled to discover that that was where the Mars Society planned to hold its 14th International Mars Society Convention. This was a perfect opportunity for me to meet space enthusiasts, to present to this community some of the ideas coming out of Project Icarus, and to learn from a successful non-profit foundation how to engage with its members, while delivering something valuable to the field of Mars research.


For those not familiar with the Mars Society, it is a non-profit charity founded in 1998 by Mars exploration luminary Bob Zubrin. The society is devoted to the cause of exploring and, ultimately settling, the red planet. The society has over 4,000 members and is active in over 50 countries worldwide. A large number of volunteers engage in public outreach programs in an effort to foster support for Mars research and exploration, and a notable feature of the society is its commitment to ongoing technical projects – the most exciting of which are arguably the research stations that the society has set up in hostile environments. The purpose of these research stations is to simulate the conditions and environment that early Mars explorers might face. Currently there are research stations in both an arctic environment and a desert environment, representing evidence for what can be accomplished by a devoted collection of volunteers.

The conference itself spanned four days, as numerous presentations relating to Mars exploration were delivered by a selection of scientists, engineers, and private hobbyists. An entire afternoon session was devoted to the topic of nuclear rockets and several of the original engineers involved in the NERVA (Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Exploration) program presented. NERVA was a fascinating facet of the US space research program, leading to nuclear rocket engines actually being certified as flight worthy in the late 60s, after extensive testing. The untimely cancellation of NERVA was largely a result of the Nixon administration’s lack of interest in the manned exploration of Mars, which it saw as both costly and strategically irrelevant, with the space race already ‘won’ after the successful Apollo moon landings.

One talk that still resonates with me was given by Dr. John Hunter, an ex-theoretical physicist turned space engineer. Hunter is the director of Quicklaunch, a company planning to use a light gas gun to launch payloads into space. The basic idea behind the gas gun is to use a large piston which imparts force to a gaseous working fluid through a smaller diameter barrel which contains the projectile to be accelerated. The gun that Hunter is working on gives the projectile, a single stage rocket engine plus payload, an initial speed of 6 km/s which launches it to approximately 100 km altitude.


At this point, the rocket engine fires and gives the projectile the final kick it needs to circularize its orbit. Using this technique, Hunter believes that he will be able to attain launch costs of $500/lb. Contrast this with the Space Shuttle costs of around $10,000/lb and the economics quickly makes sense. Even Elon Musk’s heavy Falcon launcher will be around the $1000/lb mark, so Hunter’s gas gun looks like an attractive option! One obvious limitation is that the high gee forces (~100 g’s) experienced during the initial launch exclude the possibility of human passengers, and so the gas gun will likely focus on launching propellant payloads. The resulting fuel ‘depots’ could enable future manned lunar and Mars exploration, if Quicklaunch were used in tandem with traditional launch systems. I encourage anyone interested in this fascinating technology to take a look at the Quicklaunch website which contains more details on their plans and accomplishments to date.

 

Zubrin himself gave a fascinating talk titled “VASIMR: Hoax or Silver Bullet,” arguing hotly that Chang-Diaz’s VASIMR is unlikely to produce any better efficiency than current ion engines, and that the promises being made regarding the utility of the engine are exaggerated. Zubrin believes that research into VASIMR is nothing more than a distraction, since NASA is adopting the mindset that the VASIMR is a necessary technological precursor for a manned mission to Mars. Zubrin argues that a manned Mars landing can be accomplished using off-the-shelf technology available today, for a small fraction of the $450 billion price tag that NASA initially suggested in the “90-day Study” in 1989.

Another of Zubrin’s talks, titled the “Transorbital Railroad,” urges NASA to devote a budget of $1.2 billion per year to pay for launches, possibly using SpaceX technology, to deliver payloads into orbit. The payload mass would be sold to paying customers at $50/kg, and if there were unused payload space, this could be filled with tanks containing water, kerosene and liquid oxygen. These tanks would then be left in orbit and made available to anyone who could reach them. Using the Falcon Heavy launch vehicle, Zubrin estimates that 765 metric tonnes could be launched annually. The main thrust behind this heavily government subsidized plan would be to create a space-based economic sector welcoming to entrepreneurs. His belief is that the tax revenues that would be generated from this endeavor would pay for the Transorbital Railroad many times over. The name Transorbital Railroad is adopted from the history of the settlement of the American West, where the building of the Transcontinental Railroad opened up a plethora of economic opportunities for Americans of the era.

There were many more talks at the conference, equally worthy of discussion, but the ones reviewed here probably had the biggest impact on me for one reason or another. I was happy to meet with Bob Zubrin at the speakers party one night, and share with him some of the exciting work being conducted by Project Icarus, which was met with enthusiasm by Bob – a former nuclear engineer. Being involved in the area of interstellar research, I was reaching, somewhat, into a community whose goals vary from my own field. However, I felt that there was a common theme and a collective unity that binds the Mars Society with those of non-profits like the Tau Zero Foundation and Icarus Interstellar – namely a core of dedicated volunteers pushing a vision forward, while being supported by a network of collaborators spread across the globe. The success of the Mars Society is a testament to what can be accomplished by such volunteers and I was genuinely happy to be a part of that last weekend.

[Image: Tau Zero Foundation]

How to Get to Mars in 5 Totally Conceivable Steps

posted Aug 9, 2011 9:22 AM by Michael Stoltz   [ updated Aug 9, 2011 8:50 PM ]

By Amanda Schupak, Life's Little Mysteries (lifeslittlemysteries.com), 08.08.11

Robert Zubrin, President of the Mars Society, a nonprofit dedicated to the exploration of the ruddy fourth planet, says that there's nothing holding us back from landing a man on Mars except ourselves.  That is, NASA and the current presidential administration have shifted their focus (and resources) to other destinations, mainly asteroids. 

Still, "We're closer today," Zubrin tells Life's Little Mysteries, "to sending people to Mars than we were to sending people to the moon in 1969." And we rocked that. So why not hit up Mars already?

Zubrin concocted a scheme two decades ago that relies on technology we already have: powerful rocket boosters, surface rovers, nuclear reactors. Here is his Mars Direct Plan, in five steps.

Step 1. Get a really big rocket

According to Zubrin's Mars Direct Plan, a rocket on the order of the Saturn V, which, with its total 8.7 million pounds of thrust first put man on the moon, is all we'd need to send a 40-ton payload on a trajectory to Mars, and ultimately put men on the Red Planet. The Saturn V hasn't flown since the 1970s, but SpaceX's brand-spanking-new Falcon Heavy could be a prime candidate for just such a task.

SpaceX founder Elon Musk has suggested as much and Zubrin concurs, calling the Falcon Heavy "the closest thing on the horizon that gets you in the range." However, he says, it's not quite as powerful as the booster he envisioned in his original plan, and would require a variant three-launch, three-rocket approach. (For simplicity's sake, we'll ignore that for now. Just keep in mind that you need a really big rocket.) 

2. Leave on time

The timing of a launch has to be such that Earth and Mars are at an optimal distance to one another on their respective elliptical solar orbits. (Spring of 2014 would do nicely.) This happens every 26 months or so. Mars being hundreds of times further from Earth than the moon, the trip would take about 8 months (or six with about 15 percent more thrust out of low Earth orbit). Right now, according to a cool calculator operated by the physics department at Emory University, Mars is about 195 million miles from here.

The first approach would send automated and remotely-controlled equipment only to the surface, where they would prepare a base camp for later manned missions. The payload would include rovers, an empty Earth return vehicle (ERV), 6 metric tons of liquid hydrogen, a 100-kilowatt nuclear reactor mounted to a remotely operated truck-like vehicle and an automated chemical processing unit.

3.  Set up shop

Zubrin's plan calls for the ship to air-brake as it approaches its landing site, using the friction between its aeroshield and the planet's atmosphere to slow down, then deploy a parachute for final descent. Once on the Martian surface, the automated rovers will begin exploring the surrounding area. Meanwhile operators on Earth drive the truck a few hundred yards away from the landing site and turn on the nuclear reactor, which will power the base camp.

The amount of fuel needed to power the ERV back to Earth after a manned mission, plus what it would take to run operations on the surface, is too heavy to carry up to Mars. Zubrin's solution: Make it there. The ferried hydrogen will react with the Martian atmosphere, which is 95 percent carbon dioxide, to produce methane and water. The methane will liquefy and be stored, and the water will be electrolyzed, producing oxygen (which is stored for future use in rockets) and hydrogen, which will get recycled through the methanator.

After about 10 months these processes will yield 24 tons of methane and 48 tons of oxygen, plus another 36 tons of oxygen created by dissociating atmospheric CO2. All told, that means 108 tons of methane/oxygen propellant, 96 tons of which will be used to fuel the ERV on its eventual journey back to Earth. The rest will support long-range ground vehicles. More oxygen can be produced and stockpiled for the incoming human inhabitants, so they can breathe when they get there.

4. Send a crew

About two years from initial launch, leaving plenty of planetary prep time and when Earth and Mars are once again in auspicious alignment, the first manned module is sent up, most likely from Cape Canaveral, with a crew of four and provisions for three years. Their destination point is a few hundred yards from where the previous landing site where the Mars-made fuel — and the ERV that will take them home — awaits them.

One of the biggest concerns on a trip of this distance is that in a microgravity environment calcium is flushed out of the bones at a rate of about 1 percent per month. To prevent astronauts from suffering irreparable bone loss on the way out there (an issue that has plagued Space Shuttle missions and which Zubrin thinks is utterly avoidable hooey), the module will be tethered to the spent booster so that it rotates around it, creating safe-for-bones artificial gravity.

5. Land, rove, repeat

At the same time, another rocket is launched for Mars. It will carry another unmanned ERV and fuel factory to prepare for the second manned mission. This will land several hundred miles from the other in the convoy and follow the same process as the first mission to prepare for the next wave of astronauts. Sending an ERV one launch window ahead of the manned mission's arrival enables constant readiness for an indefinite number of crew landings.

Back in 1996 Zubrin wrote: "The question of colonizing Mars is not fundamentally one of transportation. If we were to use the same heavy lift boosters used in the Mars Direct plan to launch people to Mars on one-way trips, firing them off at the same rate we currently launch the space shuttle, the United States today could populate Mars at a rate comparable to that at which the British colonized North America in the 1600s — and at lower expense relative to our resources."

But first the United States has got to be willing to summon the cavalry.

http://www.lifeslittlemysteries.com/how-to-get-to-mars-1922/

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