Comments on: The Space Debate: When Will NASA Astronauts Explore the Moon, Mars, and Beyond?

By: Brian Too

Brian Too — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 23:37:39 +0000

I wonder about manned missions generally. Once we got to the Moon and the space race was over, there was little there to keep going back for. The Moon is a dead place where not much happens. It may be scientifically interesting, but it won’t hold the interest of the average citizen, that’s for sure.

Mars is going to have the same issue I think. Yeah, sure, it has ice and an atmosphere, and there’s more going on than the Moon has. However for most people it’s just a giant desert, it’s extremely cold and you can’t breathe the air. Perhaps some Martian bacteria live there but again, that’s mainly interesting to scientists and other small-ish groups of people. You’ll have a tough time cost justifying a second trip to a sceptical public.

Right now the exploration missions work from a PR perspective because they are robotic missions, don’t cost a fortune (compared to manned spaceflight), and really they tend to visit a lot of places and just hit the highlights.

The exception would be the long duration missions, but the public only hears about those periodically anyways.

By: Carl

Carl — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 02:47:28 +0000

@JMW,

I respectfully disagree. The public will accept a clearly articulated plan with tangible goals and the potential for opening up new resources for businesses to exploit. It’s all about the return on investment and how the message is presented. For example, how much would Americans spend if they found there was an abundant resource on the moon that could replace petroleum as a source of fuel? What about on an asteroid?

By: JMW

JMW — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 00:01:12 +0000

The problem is that the public will not accept huge expenditures (and any amount will be “huge”) in the current environment. There’s no simple motivation to be going to the Moon or Mars, as there was during the Cold War, and that’s what is missing from the current environment.

By: AndyW

AndyW — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 20:25:14 +0000

NASA must excite the public by setting out a clear, exciting and valuable 20 year timeline of exploration goals along those in the Augustine report. Keep hitting new goals every five years. This approach gives researchers new data, shakes out systems, pushes technology forward and keeps the public engaged. Do exciting and valuable work while building up capability towards the Mars landing goal. Early on, combine a crew with tele-robotics (orbit the moon, run a remote polar sample return rover). The best political and practical bet for a near-term budget increase is to push for the accelerated development of Heavy Lift (ARES V lite specs). Keep the Orion Crew Vehicle going. Further optimize CEV for Deep Space (exploration) use only. There are a million applications for a heavy lifter that can be sold as practical reasons for adding some near term funds. The heavy lifter lets you hoist aloft new propulsion and other tech for testing. The technology development the budget talks about really applies to the future Deep Space Cruise Vehicle. Yes, some R&D may help a bit with a launch vehicle, but most of the real R&D payoff is going to come from landers, probes, habs and deep space propulsion systems. We dont need to wait on the lifter for that research. This plan also keeps a good portion of at risk jobs and in house capability going. In case commercial fails to live up to its human-rated promise, the US will still have options. An outline of how to clearly present this to congress and the public is on the spaceprogress.com website.

By: Rod

Rod — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 19:05:25 +0000

The question that has to asked is, how to you want to develop human space flight.
Like Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and Space Shuttle programs.
Or, like the internet.
Both were started roughly the same time. Look at where both are now.

From an engineers point of view, I think the usadmin new budget is a breath of fresh air.
The Constellation program is a 21st century launch system built on 20th century technology.
Top down development is dead.