Posted on 03/10/2005 12:18:15 PM PST by ambrose
Posted on Mon, Feb. 21, 2005
• On the Web | NASA: The Vision for Space Exploration
NASA rushes plan to send humans to moon, Mars, despite doubts
By ROBERT S. BOYD
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - NASA is racing to carry out President Bush's costly vision of sending humans back to the moon and then on to Mars - despite the federal budget squeeze and doubts in Congress and the scientific community about the plan's wisdom.
Even some of the project's allies are balking at its price tag and headlong pace.
NASA is "trying to do too much at once," said Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, R-N.Y., chairman of the House Science Committee, a strong supporter of the space agency. He protested that NASA is "barreling ahead" even though Congress "has never endorsed - in fact, never even discussed - the vision."
"I think NASA is headed for a potential train wreck," warned Rep. Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., the committee's senior Democrat, who worried that the Moon-Mars plan is gobbling up funds for other scientific ventures.
Even some space agency officials are expressing concern. The cost and complexities of the Moon-Mars project make this "a time for sobering up," Michael Meyer, NASA's lead scientist for Mars exploration, told a committee of the National Academy of Sciences earlier this month.
It's been a little over a year since Bush announced "The President's Vision for U.S. Space Exploration," but the space agency has already awarded 118 preliminary contracts for the project. It's requesting fresh ideas from industry and universities in order to launch a large new spaceship, called the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV), three years from now.
The $15 billion CEV is supposed to take over from today's aging fleet of space shuttles and carry astronauts "to the moon, Mars and beyond," as NASA officials like to say.
By this summer, two aerospace teams will be chosen to construct competing prototypes of the CEV. A final version will by chosen by the end of 2006, and the first unmanned flight is scheduled for 2008.
"To meet the president's timeline, we need to start technology development now," said Craig Steidle, a retired admiral who heads the agency's Exploration Systems Directorate. "There is urgency in the president's agenda."
The administration has asked Congress for $3.2 billion for the second year of the Moon-Mars project. That's a 23 percent increase from its first-year kitty of $2.6 billion. Bush wants total NASA spending to grow just 2 percent to $16.5 billion for the 2006 fiscal year, so other NASA programs are getting cut.
The project enjoys a White House promise of increasing funds, totaling $20.3 billion over the next five years (through fiscal year 2010). Outlays surge thereafter, and NASA estimates that it will spend $100 billion on the project through 2020.
"This is an absolute priority on the part of the president," White House Budget Director Joshua Bolten told congressional budgeteers last year. The project also enjoys the powerful support of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, whose Houston district houses NASA's Johnson Space Flight Center.
Meanwhile, scientists worry about the impact of the huge enterprise on other endeavors, such as astronomy, physics and climate change.
The exploration project has already doomed plans to prolong the life of the successful Hubble Space Telescope. A mission to detect Earth-like planets around other stars has been postponed for two years, until 2012.
Some space science missions have been delayed indefinitely, such as one to explore Jupiter's moon, Europa, which might support life beneath its icy surface, and another to study the mysterious "dark energy," a sort of anti-gravity, which is forcing the universe to expand.
The National Academy of Sciences has called dark energy the most important question in physics and astronomy today. The Europa mission was the top priority of the astronomical community's 10-year plan adopted in 2001.
A panel of academy experts, headed by Yale University astronomer Megan Urry, sent a letter to NASA, dated Feb. 14, stating that "the long-term impact (of the Moon-Mars project) on astronomy and astrophysics is not entirely clear, but short-term changes are already having an effect, and there are community concerns that serious problems lie ahead."
In an analysis of Bush's science budget, the American Association for the Advancement of Science said the president's vision will "require steep cuts in aeronautics and earth science funding and the cancellation of a proposed Hubble servicing mission to pay for NASA's ambitious space exploration plans."
"The goal of sending humans to Mars needs more definition," Meyer, NASA's Mars scientist, told the National Academy committee. "What are humans going to do on Mars? We have to protect Mars. Do we want to send astronauts with all their dead skin cells and bacteria? We don't want to contaminate the planet and replace possible extant life."
Step 1: Go to mars
Step 2: Find bacteria
Step 3: Study bacteria fully
Step 4: F the luddite envirofreaks, terraform mars. Bacteria has no use other than proving life forms elsewhere.
RE: "Wonder how much overbudget this one will come to? "
The overrun will probably be about the same as the Big Dig.
Reduce the solar influx, likely by large, thin-film mirrors, and start seeding algae and bacteria from orbit to reduce the atmosphere. It's an OLD plan for Venusian Terraforming, the REAL trick is the sufficient quantity of mirrors required to drop the effective Venusian solar influx to Earth or lower levels. . . Heat radiating out will fix most of the rest of it. Mind you, ANY Terraforming effort is a multi-hundred-year project at best, thousands of years being possible in the "fine-tuning". . . but the key to Venus is solar influx...
thanks for the corection!
Why not just paint the planet white?
You know it's budget time when you hear this stuff from NASA. I think they've already done their "Life On Mars!" press release for 2005, haven't they?
> go ahead and pass the hat wherever you might hope to find some hardcore sci-fi fans ready to put their money where their hobbies are
Ah. So you're opposed to the Army having technology advanced past... what? World War I levels?
"...We haven't been on the moon since December 11th, 1972...."
Make that December 14th, 1972 when Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt lifted off from Taurus-Littrow. Anyway, Cernan has said that his record for being the last one to set foot on the moon is one that he'd gladly relinquish. He has stated many times that he wonders when that will be.
Where do I go to sign on, I want to go! When I get to Mars I set up the first Freeper Chapter off planet. No dems allowed!
NASA is a relic.
I thought that Mars' atmosphere was mostly CO2.
So... The greenhouse gas is aplenty.
What is needed is more atmosphere. Boiling water out of the soil might help... But possibly some of the natural compounds could be converted to other compounds with lower boiling temperatures.
Dissociating the Carbon form The Oxygen would be expensive but would free oxygen.... and unfortunately lower the CO2, which is needed as a thermal blanket.
What about covering large areas with black tarps?
Blah blah blah.
We've been down this road before. As I recall, you might be one of those Chicken Little paranoid doomsday types who thinks we need to push for space colonization so that we can leave this condemned little rock before it's too late.
Oh, the humanity!
LOL.
About the only big thing NASA has done with the new schedule is award some CEV contracts and a pile of small component contracts. It is not at all clear--looking from outside--that the schedule has been fully detailed at this time.
"What are humans going to do on Mars? We have to protect Mars. Do we want to send astronauts with all their dead skin cells and bacteria? We don't want to contaminate the planet and replace possible extant life."
Oh jeez, its not the prime directive for crying out loud.
Mars had its chance, didnt happen. Sure I want to know if something is living there now but the odds of it becoming sentient at this point are nill.
What are we going to do there? LIVE! explore, colonize, terraform the whole planet! grow mars food, have pets, play ball. Who cares. Its the nature of humankind to expand. Mars though distant to us today will not always be that way.
Is it only paranoid doomsday types who support the government funding the Army?
Why not increase the CAFE standards for Venesians to reduce their global warming.
No, it's only paranoid doomsday types who justify government funding of manned space exploration by citing the need to someday escape this planet in order to avoid the total extinction of the human race. Then, they deem it a matter of "national defense."
I can only guess why you weren't able to figure that out for yourself. Too much time in the comic books? In front of the hookah?
> it's only paranoid doomsday types who justify government funding of manned space exploration by citing the need to someday escape this planet in order to avoid the total extinction of the human race.
So human extinction does not bother you, huh? How does domination by Islamists or Communists grab you? How about losing out on the most lucrative markets since the invention of markets?
> Too much time in the comic books? In front of the hookah?
No. Too much time in reality.
It isn't paranoid or doomsday... It is quite likely (or even certain) that the Earth will one day suffer either a natural or man-made cataclysmic event. It would be nice to know that we won't have all our eggs in one basket.
Yes, I know.. we'll all be dead and gone by the time anything like that happens or before planetary colonies are established... but you know, what... that's part of what makes us humans, and not animals... we actually give a *%*^ about the legacy we leave for future generations, and not just our present material comfort. Or at least that is how it is supposed to be.
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