House lawmakers met Wednesday to tackle a daunting task: how to keep Congress committed to investing hundreds of billions of dollars into a decades-long plan to send humans to Mars.
A manned mission to Mars has long been the stuff of science fiction, but it’s one of NASA’s biggest projects as part of its larger goal of laying the groundwork for permanent human settlements in the solar system. William Gerstenmaier, an associate administrator at NASA, told a Senate committee in April that the agency is currently focused on intermediate space missions but hopes to build up to long-duration space travel.
But if humans are ever going to reach Mars, a panel told the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, it’s going to require steadfast public enthusiasm, the support of multiple presidential administrations, international cooperation, private sector involvement and, perhaps most challenging, a bipartisan agreement in Congress to keep funding the venture for at least another 30 years.
Congressman Posey: We Need Neil DeGrasse Tyson To Get People Excited About Going To Mars The Huffington Post
Unity on Mars mission easier said than done
It will take unprecedented unity, funding and international teamwork to land astronauts on Mars within the next 30 years, the co-chairmen of an independent government panel advocating such a mission told a congressional committee Wednesday.
Then the two co-chairmen got a glimpse of why those goals won’t come easy.
GOP lawmakers at Wednesday’s hearing bashed the Obama administration for abandoning a return-to-the-moon mission in favor of using an asteroid as a steppingstone to Mars. Democrats said Republicans have no right to complain about lack of money for the space program when they’ve pushed for budget cuts. And lawmakers from both parties raised doubts about whether potential foreign partners, notably China, can be trusted.
Former Republican governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana, co-chairman of the National Research Council panel that issued the 285-page report earlier this month, acknowledged the enormity of the task.
“Getting humans to the surface of Mars will be a daunting challenge,” Daniels, now president of Purdue University, told members of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee. “Succeeding in this endeavor will require, we believe, a very different way of doing business than the nation has been practicing in recent decades.”
America’s Long-Term Space Goal: Let’s Put Humans on Mars NBC News
A new report from the National Research Council declares that the expenses and risks associated with human spaceflight can be justified only by the goal of putting humans on other worlds, with the “horizon goal” of getting to Mars.
That goal is consistent with NASA’s long-term vision for space exploration — but the report, titled “Pathways to Exploration: Rationales and Approaches to a U.S. Program of Human Exploration,” goes farther by noting that NASA’s current budget is too meager to reach the goal, and that it’s “in the best interests of the United States” to let China participate in future space partnerships.
NASA’s budget has been trimmed back in recent years, and there’s currently a ban on U.S.-Chinese space cooperation.
NASA’s Strategic Plan 2014 Released Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE
NASA has released its 2014 Strategic Plan, with the space agency’s Office of Strategy Formulation identified as the responsible office.
“Our long-term goal is to send humans to Mars. Over the next two decades, we will develop and demonstrate the technologies and capabilities needed to send humans to explore the red planet and safely return them to Earth,” explains NASA chief, Charles Bolden, in the opening pages of the document.
Obama proposes ending Mars Odyssey, Mars Opportunity in NASA budget Examiner.com
According to a March 13, 2014 story on Fox News, two venerable but successful Mars probes face the budget ax by the Obama administration in the FY 2015 funding request for NASA.
“NASA’s baseline budget for the year beginning Oct. 1 pulls the plug on the 10-year-old Mars rover Opportunity, newly released details of the agency’s fiscal 2015 spending plan show.
“The plan, which requires Congressional approval, also anticipates ending the orbiting Mars Odyssey mission on Sept. 30, 2016.”
Full Committee Hearing – Mars Flyby 2021: The First Deep Space Mission for the Orion and Space Launch System? Space
The Science, Space, and Technology Committee will hold a hearing titled Mars Flyby
2021: The First Deep Space Mission for the Orion and SLS at 10:00 a.m. on Thursday,
February 27th. This hearing will explore the need for a roadmap of missions to guide
investments in NASA’s human spaceflight programs, how a manned mission to flyby the planets
Mars and Venus launching in 2021 might fit into a series of missions and how the Space Launch
System (SLS) and Orion Multipurpose Crew Vehicle could contribute to that mission.
World’s first space tourist gives details on manned mission to Mars in 2017 – 2018 The Verge
Dennis Tito, the American entrepreneur who paid $20 million in 2001 for a trip to the International Space Station, spoke before a House subcommittee on space today to outline his plans for reaching Mars. According to Tito, the “Inspiration Mars” endeavor will be a fly-by mission that’ll take two astronauts 808 million miles from Earth to Mars and back again in 501 days. And he’ll need more than $1 billion to do it. The plan works within a narrow timeline that takes advantage of a rare alignment in Earth and Mars’ orbits. According to Tito’s written testimony, the launch will need to take place between Christmas 2017 and January 5th, 2018 to ensure a speedy trip. So to pull that off, Inspiration Mars will need complete cooperation from NASA — the two-man crew aboard the Inspiration Mars’ commercial craft will need the space agency’s huge Space Launch System (SLS) rocket to propel them there. The SLS rocket is still under development.
Why India’s Mars Mission Is So Much Cheaper Than NASA’s
Former NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin pioneered a “faster, better, cheaper” approach to America’s space program, but he would have been hard-pressed to deliver a Mars mission for the bargain-basement price of India’s first probe to the red planet, which blasted off Tuesday.
“India’s Mars mission, with a budget of $73 million, is far cheaper than comparable missions including NASA’s $671 million Maven satellite that is expected to set off for Mars later in November,” reports The Wall Street Journal, which is among several publications noting the disparity between the cost of U.S. space missions and India’s burgeoning program.
Even the project director of India’s Mars orbiter mission has been quick to tout his country’s frugality in space:
Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO)
“This is less than one-tenth of what the U.S. has spent on their Mars mission Maven,” S. Arunan told reporters at a pre-launch news conference last week, according to Al-Jazeera, which added that “the cost-effectiveness of the mission is indeed turning out to be the highlight of the project, almost eclipsing the other aspects.”
Spaceflight experts work on alternate vision for Mars trips NBC News
While NASA works on a multibillion-dollar, decades-long space exploration plan that relies on monster rockets, an informal cadre of engineers is laying out a different vision that would take advantage of cheaper, smaller spacecraft that can fuel up at “truck stops” along the way.
Right now, the alternate vision, known as the “Stairway to Mars,” is little more than an engineering exercise. But the plan’s proponents on the Space Development Steering Committee say their scenario for Mars missions in the 2030s may have a better chance of becoming a reality than NASA’s scenario.
Millions Of Miles From Shutdown, Mars Rovers Keep Working
The budget negotiations in Washington are not front-page news on Mars. There, millions of miles away, NASA’s rovers continue to operate, taking photographs and collecting data as they prepare for the coming Martian winter. The two rovers are taking in data and getting into strategic locations before winter arrives on Mars in a few months.
The scarcity of sunlight shouldn’t pose a challenge for Curiosity, whose systems are powered by heat generated by the radioactive decay of plutonium. NASA hopes that the older Opportunity, which powers itself with solar panels, will be aided by its position on a north-facing slope.