Bush's Space Panel Seeks Public Input

brandido writes "Space.com is reporting that Bush's space panel is seeking public input on the effort to return to the Moon and then reach Mars. From the article: "President Bush's new space advisory commission for getting humans to the Moon and Mars has launched a web site seeking public input with the promise of reading all comments." The article provides a link to the website for Bush's Space Panel, but it does not provide a direct link to the site for sending comments. I personally think we should use a Martian Space Elevator to further our exploration of Mars."

Comments

Sounds like a bad idea...

[Gothic_Walrus]

Best way to make sure that Bush's plan never becomes reality?

Talk to the public that's already shown animosity to the plan! Great idea, guys!

Hey why not go to mars

[pvt_medic]

I mean, we can barely keep the ISS running, and our current space program is hurting significantly. So when my back is against a wall like that, i think i too would come out with crazy plans like this.
Not to mention the costs that it would have, NASA budget doubled for like 5 years when the appolo missions were going on.

Dont get me wrong I am not anti-NASA, I am just anti-mars right now. We could use that money for more important things.

Re:Hey why not go to mars

[mwood]

I submit that reaching beyond what we already grasp is also a fundamental necessity. It's one of the things that made humans, and if we stop doing it we will stop being human.

What reason is there for living, if history stops here?

Re:Hey why not go to mars

[Lord Ender]

Nothing in the entire course of human history is as important as space colinization. The humanity-destroying meteor or plage could be coming right now. If we don't establish bases on other celestial bodies now, while we have the chance, humanity itself is doomed.

Seeking public input is laudable...

[blorg]

But what if the public tell them that science would be better served by robotic exploration, and that he should prioritise the economy and public services here on earth? Would that make a difference?

Re:Seeking public input is laudable...

[dbIII]

But what if the public tell them that science would be better served by robotic exploration, and that he should prioritise the economy and public services here on earth?

He doesn't have to do that, market forces will do it for him - the economy in India will do very well thank you :) The Indian space program will probably do better as well, since this is a token effort with not much of a budget increase to NASA. To someone from outside the USA (never been to India either) it looks like a minimum effort to get a guy with a flag on Mars, with a future administration getting shamed into footing almost the entire bill.

There's always something better to spend money on - cracking down on war profiteering would make money in the long run but the initial legal costs would be immense, as would an attempt to tax Hollywood, or a bunch of rich destructive recently formed cults. Unfortunately those are the folks that put up money for Presidential campaigns, and anyone that proposes a wider seperation between the state and business intrests is seen as some sort of commie.

My idea

[eclectro]

Kill the mars program and fix the Hubble.

We will go more places this way.

European endeavors

[zoney_ie]

I wouldn't discount the "major competitor" side of things! The ESA is likely to mount some sort of manned mission series. Europe may be behind in terms of volume of missions mounted to date (they've by and large been quite successful though), but it's sure doing things a lot more cheaply than the U.S. What's more, we have a launch base nearer the Equator, in French Guiana. (As we are reminded each time we look at our banknotes). Hopefully the new Soyuz launcher facility will be up and running there soon - launching stuff from Kazachstan is surely far from ideal! The ESA of course has the benefit of Russian co-operation and the legacy of their space program.

It all looks like being quite some fun! (Not to mention pushing back the frontiers of knowledge, etc, etc)

Last one to land people on Mars is a rotten egg!

Inspiring taglines

[photonic]

Kennedy:

We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

Bush :

We choose to explore space because doing so improves our lives and lifts our national spirit.

Couldn't he come up with something better?

Low orbit assembly of ship modules,

[bthomson0]

Fist keep it simple and use existing technology.

I think the best approach is to assemble 2 ships in low earth orbit, or one large modular ship. These ships would be assembled by robotically docking "russian" style space station modules.

Pre build all the required modules before lanch.
Some of the modules required for each ship.
- habitation modules, either one can be used for planet habitation.
- power modules, "probably nuclear is required for enough power" either one can be used for planet
- sealed cargo modules, which can hold supplies and tools for crew, can be used for planet if mission requires
- cargo racks, and robot arms to assist module assembly,
- crew excape modules, aka chinese or russian style capsules,
- propulsion modules
- fuel modules
- numerious landers to attach modules for planet landing

This is just a draft

Just Posted this to their website (K. Rice Plan)

[justanyone]

Here are some humble suggestions:

1. NASA should be required to make any purchase of over $50M in a competitive bidding process. This can be open auction if need be, or sealed bid, but bids must be published afterwards.

2. No Cost-Plus contracts should be awarded unless a congressional waiver is granted.

3. PRIZES: NASA should award at least $100M per year of all-or-nothing prizes for technology demonstration projects. Requirements should include disclosure of all technology used, so the experience curve (a.k.a. learning curve) of other companies benefits from this tech. Patents are always possible.

Prize 1: first private launch into space (100 km) using air-breathing engines for > 50% of time of flight.
Prize 2: First two-stage to orbit flight using wholly reusable components (>90% by mass re-used) for 2 subsequent flights. Similar to X-Prize, only going to orbit.

4. NASA should auction delivery of consumables (Air, Water, fuel) to within 200 meters the ISS (not necessary to dock). PAYMENT SHOULD BE C.O.D. FOR CONSUMABLES AT THE ISS. No payment should be made if nothing is delivered. Contractors should arrange for their own insurance, everything.

5. Likewise, NASA should offer payment of 0.1 cents per pixel (or something close to that) for delivery of all photographs of any planetary body taken from orbit around that body. Maximum award per body should be set by committee.

6. The space shuttle, conceived in 1968 and an albatross around the neck of NASA, should be RETIRED immediately and bids taken on its separate primary functions (delivery to ISS and higher orbits of personnel).

7. NASA administrators should be given real power to reform their agency, without irrelelevent Line-Item appropriations from congress. Facilities should be able to be closed. Existing power structures (political ones) should be phased out or replaced with different ones somehow. NASA KILLS TOO MANY PROJECTS DONE BY THE PRIVATE SECTOR, DON'T LET THAT HAPPEN!

Just some humble suggestions I like to call the K. Rice Plan.

Cordially yours,
-- Kevin Rice

-- Kevin J. Rice

Nuclear propulsion

[invid]

My first choice would be for a space elevator, but if we want to get to Mars without it we should go nuclear

Space elevator is premature...

[Goonie]

I've posted this a dozen times now...the space elevator is not possible with current technology. It's not a matter of engineering. While people are continuing to dicker with the stuff, nobody has managed to make a nanotube composite that is vaguely strong enough, let alone figured out how to churn out thousands of tonnes at a time. It's definitely worth throwing $MODERATELY_LARGE_SUM at it, for myriad applications. If it turns out to be possible, then we can throw $BIGNUM at space elevators across the whole damn solar system and become the multi-planet species we are destined to become.

But until it's proved possible, we shouldn't base our entire space program around a pipe dream.

Re:Remember

[gonar]

I really want to be excited about this, I _really_ do. but I have no faith that this is anything other than election year politics to be abandoned or marginalized as soon as the election is over regardless of who wins.

be that as it may, we need to do this. we need a moon base first if only as a technology proving ground that is easy and quick to get to (compared to mars). we should have started this 30 years ago as a follow up to apollo, but instead we spent 30 years building the space shuttle and one third of the ISS. we are no further ahead now than we were in the 70's with skylab.

rather than doing this the conventional government way, where we send billions to lockheed on the basis of a rediculous underbid that everyone knows is BS and then sending them more and more when they have cost overrun after cost overrun compounded by weight issues, how about you take a lesson from the X-Prize, they have more than 20 teams competing and spending their own money on the chance of a $10 million prize (which won't cover their costs) and the prestige of being the winner. the side benefit is that they develop new technology which they may be able to sell later.

so here's the big idea:

offer a $1Billion (or $500 Million) prize to the first private company to land a crew of 4 on the moon, live there a week while performing a designated scientific task requiring EVA or perhaps building the first module of a permanent station and return safely to earth.

offer no government assistance other than access to all of NASA's technical info, access to the parts bin so they can use what's best of existing tech, and a basic technical viability review, then get out of their way and watch it happen.

my money's on Burt Rutan.

Open Spaceware, Anyone ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Open Software Initiative,
Open Hardware Initiative, ....

Open Rocketarwe ? Open Astroware ?
Open Terraformingware ? OpenEcoformingWare (Ach! Himmel! :) )?
Open Hyperdriveware ?

Yeah, yeah. Doing a collaborative MINIX based kernel via, basically, 1200 or 2400kbps email and bbs just isn't going to work in the early 90's, either. Let alone a GUI to compete with "market standards". Everyone knows only big governmbennts and b.i.g. M.I.Complex corporations can ever do *that*. (sigh)

This is a madly optimistic dreamer idealists initiative. All critics, naysayers and otherwise "quenchers", please proceed to the nearest working VASIMR, remove you lumpy upper appendages from where it is presently tightly wedged, and place it where that *very* shiny light is. Thank you.

Planned tether for Mars rover

[FleaPlus]

It's not quite a space elevator, but it looks like the next Mars rover planned is going to be lowered down to the surface by a tether attached to a "Skycrane" craft hovering 5 meters in the air. This is to prevent the potential problem of a rover getting stuck in a landing platform. After lowering the rover the Skycrane will fly off to another area.

This is what I sent them...

[sbaker]

The Moon seems like a very dead and uninteresting place unless it can be confirmed that there are ice deposits in some of the deeper craters. There seems little point in going back there - other than to explore the geology - and we know how to do that with robots like the ones that are doing such great work on Mars right now.

The Mars mission would probably be better served by assembling the craft at a Legrange point - but to do so, we need a better lift capability.

However, I concede the President's desire to get the public excited about space again - and setting up an assembly facility at L5 isn't going to do that...it sounds like just another space station like the hideously expensive waste of vacuum that we are probably about to abandon.

I'd have preferred to see the President putting his weight behind the construction of a space elevator to earth orbit. That is a worthy goal, it's certainly at least as do-able as a manned Mars mission and would have immense benefits for mankind beyond the Mars mission. The likely need for novel materials to build it would also have great spin-off potential for American business - and hence go a long way toward justifying the expense.

Setting up a facility at a Legrange point would also fit nicely with the plans for the Hubble replacement - so there would be synergy in that effort.

Re:Read your 1040 instructions

[FroMan]

Wow, facts. Here on slashdot even too.

I am with you 100% up to here.

Personally, I don't think the government should be funding space exploration (or health care, for that matter), so I'm not arguing in defense of NASA, just in defense of actually considering the numbers.

Space exploration I see as a initially as defense and military spending. It would be foolish for the government to not spend on space exploration, or atleast space base technology. In the event another nation were to overtake us in space based tech they would be able to potentially gain a huge advantage over us by removing satalites. A moon base would simpley be useful as a military facility as a defensive location and preventative measure for other countries not to get any "smart ideas" just because they are in space.

Re:Public Doesn't Know

[RobertFisher]

This comment is bang-on. The author's comments are insightful. So insightful, in fact, that, amazingly enough, NASA has already gathered such a review committee. They do so once a decade, in a huge effort that takes input from the entire astronomy/astrophysics/space sciences/planetary sciences community. It is often referred to as the "Decadal Review" or the "Decadal Survey," and features some of the most respected scientists in the community. (For instance, the 2000 survey was sponsored by Princeton's binary pulsar discoverer and Nobel Laureate Joe Taylor and the University of California at Berkeley Physics Department Chairman, Chris McKee.) Rather than having dozens of warring factions fighting for a limited pool of funding, it has long been realized that it is far better for everyone to get together and decide on the basis of scientific progress which goals should be given the highest priority. Then, when NASA goes to congress to ask for the billions it will take to fund these missions, the entire scientific community stands behind NASA as one.

The result? There were many goals described, some of which may now be in peril as a result of Bush's backhanded hit on science within NASA. Putting a man on the moon or on Mars is not on the list, however. You can read the brief summary here. The entire text of the report is availbale here. Although the entire text is well over 200 pages, there is a lot of material in it that sets it apart from most beauracratic reports, including some 40+ pages of a layman's discussion of the science driving the requests.

Bob

Re:I'm not a american...

[gerardrj]

You clearly have an outsider view, and seem hellbent on seeing the world in purely monochromatic good versus evil terms. Real life is about a billion times more complex than that.

Apparently you have a major dicconect with the leadership of the country. Bush has stated many times in no uncertain terms that there are only two groups of people:
1: The evil-doers (the people we don't like)
2: the people who are against evil-doers

That's it. He's left no room for those who think that terrorism is bad, but that US actions in retaliation are also bad. According to George W. Bush and his administration, the world is in fact monochomatically good vs evil.

The problem is

[Anonymous Coward]

Without specific design goals, "a shuttle replacement" is going to have the same problems as the last ten years of failed attempts to replace the shuttle and the shuttle itself-- meandering design requirements, meandering design, programs that stall out in beauraucracy.

Saying "let's replace the shuttle" has gotten us nowhere. Saying "let's go to mars, we'll need to replace the shuttle to do this" gives the people designing the shuttle both real design requirements and real reasons to get done.

Personally what I'd do is say screw replacing the shuttle, what we need is INTRA-orbital crafts that can do things like move from LEO to L5 or somesuch. We can just use the old shuttle space planes or rockets to heft stuff into space and put our fly-to-mars craft permanently in space.

WTF does healthcare have to do with with this?

[s13g3]

Largely, most of the early replies were completely off-topic and irrelevant. The cost of healthcare has absolutely NOTHING to do with the price of tea on Mars. Rather than concern myself with a meaningless and over-debated off-topic thread, I just wanted to address the issue at hand. I'll get into the whole "The US is a bunch evil, sucky, arrogant bastards who are in bed with the Jews to own all the worlds money while they kick the Palestinians around" arguement elsewhere, should I find I've got nothing better to do than waste time, that is (FYI, I'm a dual citizen of the US and Germany, and am German-Jewish by birth... Most of you don't know what you are talking about and just need to STFU unless you are talking about the space-program... Take your ideological [or idiotillogical] beliefs and rants somewhere devoted to those topics). That said, I know it is highly unlikely anybody will ever read this post, it being so far down in the thread, but I'm gonna post it anyway... The following is copied from the comment I sent to the MMB (Moon, Mars & Beyond) website:

"This is an idea whose time is long overdue. This great nation should have had a permanent outpost on the moon shortly after SkyLab was completed, a dream whose time never came due to lack of public interest (mostly lack of education on their part) and the unwillinginess of previous administrations to set the goals and make the budgets necessary to completion of mankinds ultimate goal: the shedding of our earthbound chrysalis so we may stretch our wings, and fly beyond our home,so we might see what lies beyond our own isolated world. Humankind is doomed insignificance at the least and extinction at the worst if we are never able to slip the surly bonds of this world, much in the way of the 30 year-old son who never manages to separate himself from mother and leave home. This is an idea whose time has come. Werner Von Braun did all the math necessary ages ago, and materials science was up to par in the 80's... Now it is up to our policymakers alone to make the decision to make the investments necessary to push our species forward to it's next evolutionary step. DO THIS, and countless generations in the future will remember you. Not for your policies and beliefs... Those memories are short and will last perhaps 50 years, maybe a century at most, to be remembered simply as a name of a guy who did a thing... No, make this decision, make this happen, and humankind will always remember the people who freed them from their shackles and set them loose upon the universe, much in the way the American people still remember and honor Columbus and the Monarchs (Ferdinand and Isabella) who financed his great mission of exploration. Moon, Mars and Beyond... What a wonderful sentiment... I can but hope I will live to see "Beyond" in my lifetime."

Not only did the race to the moon do great things for our national pride, way back in the day, but it fueled out economy and industry as a result... It also encouraged invention and research, and the public actually backed the dream of getting off of this beautiful (but god-forsaken) rock of ours... This might be exactly what this nation needs. With a drive to complete such a project, more infrastructure of all kinds would need to be established (always good for the economy), research encouraged (also good) and investment in our future. As well, we do have a competitor equal to Cold War Russia, and it's name is China. Somebody has to figure out what to do with China's excess population (shipping them to Australia is prolly not the answer) and if we don't figure it out, China will... An idea I am loathe to consider. Their population figures are frightening enough, much less the thought that they may one day be more technologically and economically advanced than us. *shivers* Anyway... It's about time, and I hope this and the following administrations have the guts to make this happen. Now if you'll excuse me, I have work to do before I start my Enterprise/Babylon5/Stargate marathon tonight ;)

S13G3

Space exploration and other goals

[under_score]

Here's what I wrote:

I think that reaching these various milestones in space exploration is commendable. However, I have two concerns:

1. We have many urgent problems facing us here on earth - perhaps it would be wise to invest the money that it would take to reach the moon and mars and instead spend it on the U.S. debts to the United Nations, or to improve public education.

2. Any major efforts to reach space should be done in collaboration with other governments under the banner of either the United Nations or some other international organization _and_ should deliberately exclude commercial interests until a much later stage of exploration.

Thanks for the opportunity to contribute.