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]

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]

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.

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?

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]

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.

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]