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Book Review: Moon-Mars Commission Report
The single most prolific spinoff attributable to NASA is not Teflon, Tang, or Velcro. No, it's high-level reports on how to fix NASA. The latest report, written under the authority of a 9-member commission named by President Bush, proposes how to implement NASA's latest orders: complete the Space Station and retire the Shuttle by the end of the decade, return humans to the Moon by 2020, and eventually send humans to Mars.
The Background
The President's proposal, while lacking details, has been greeted with enthusiasm by many aerospace workers, for whom the application of the term "beleaguered" is more than appropriate. What other major industry has lost half its workforce in the last 15 years? (Oh yeah, the airline, IT and telecom industries, who managed about the same attrition rate in only 2 years: evidence of efficiency, or something.) Space scientists have awaited the implementation report with some trepidation: their Hubble servicing mission has already been traded for the uncertain prospect of a robotic mission, and some NASA science missions have already been pushed back by the budget impact of the Moon-Mars mission.
Meanwhile, public opinion has not quite caught fire. Opinion polls taken in January show at best indifference and at worst hostility to the new plan. Greg Klerkx wrote "Perhaps the most disheartening aspect of the explosion of Columbia, other than the human tragedy, was that it changed very few opinions about NASA or NASA's human spaceflight activities. Both should continue, the polls unanimously concluded, but with no more or less vigor than at present." [p. 12, Klerkx 2004]
The Commission, led by longtime government official E.C. Aldridge, also includes four space scientists, a retired Air Force General, a former Congressman, a business and government executive, and the well-known CEO of a high tech firm. Notably, no astronauts or former NASA executives were on the panel.
Contents
Transmittal Letter
Executive Summary
Section I - Introduction: The Space Exploration Vision
Section II - Organizing the US Government for Success
Section III - Building a Robust Space Industry
Section IV - Exploration and Science Agenda
Section V - Inspiring Current and Future Generations
Section VI - Concluding Comments
Appendices
Historical Context
After any disaster or major program failure, commissions are empaneled and they tend to produce two sorts of reports. The first type of report is a failure analysis, including specific prescriptions for recovery. The second is a more broad examination of strategies and goals. This report falls into the second category. While the Aldridge Commission report includes some recommendations that duplicate some previous ones, the new report differs in some important ways from those.
In 1986, the Paine Commission examined how NASA should respond to the Challenger failure. The commission's report in places reads like a primer on space technologies, and proposes specific goals similar to those of the Bush plan: completion of the Space Station, return to the Moon, and a manned mission to Mars. The Paine Commission seems to have felt that the basic problem facing NASA was a lack of a long-term vision and political commitment.
In 1990, the Augustine Commission studied how NASA should respond to a variety of troubling problems on the Shuttle and other programs. This study endorsed space science strongly, while also supporting Space Station. The report focused strongly on workforce issues like morale, attrition and aging. It also noted weaknesses in NASA's executive leadership practices. The report made some specific reform proposals, some of which reappear in the Aldridge report.
The Report
The Aldridge Commission report differs from previous examinations in important ways. First, it has a very limited scope. The Commission did not perform an open-ended study of what NASA ought to do, or how much emphasis to place on astronomy vs planetary science vs human spaceflight. They only studied how to accomplish President Bush's new goals for the space program. Paradoxically, their limited brief resulted in a far more profound proposal to reorganize NASA than previous reports. The range and depth of reforms proposed by this report greatly exceeds those of previous reports.
The top-level recommendations include:
1. Establish a Space Exploration Steering Council, reporting to the President
2. NASA should establish much more private industry participation in space operations, beginning with unmanned launch services
a. Reorganization of NASA HQ
b. Spin off NASA Centers as Federally Funded Research & Development Centers (similar to JPL and the DOE National Labs)
c. NASA should establish 3 new organizations:
+ a technical advisory board, modeled on the Defense Science Board
+ an Independent Cost Estimating organization, modeled on DoD Cost Analysis Improvement Group
+ a research organization, modeled on DARPA and formed from the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts
d. NASA should adopt DoD-style project management methods
3. NASA should identify and begin development of critical technologies
4. Renew and sustain development of a robust space industry
a. NASA should actively solicit ideas from all sources
b. Congress should fund prizes targeting specific missions and technologies, and work on space property rights
5. NASA should pursue international partnerships
6. NASA should consult regularly with scientists and the National Academy of Sciences
7. The space exploration program should be tied into educational programs and public relations
Section I "Introduction: The Space Exploration Vision" presents three basic justifications for the exploration program: The human urge to explore, economic growth, and national security. Three "imperatives for success" are also presented: sustainability, affordability, and credibility. Sustainability is described as being able to sustain both technical momentum and long-term political support for what will be an expensive program. Affordability is described as "go as you can pay," where each milestone is reached through "spiral, evolutionary developments." The report compares the funding to cancer research, where the pace is determined by a political judgment of "annually, how much can we afford?" The report describes credibility as an amalgam of best practices. While the Commission recognized that space exploration is full of risk, NASA must not appear careless or foolish. NASA must embrace both management practices as well as technical ideas regardless of their source.
Analysis
The Commission's Report is itself a model of the practices they exhort NASA to follow. Whether by intention or not, many of the ideas in the report have been the stated position of advocacy groups like the National Space Society and the Mars Society. Some of the reforms have been specifically proposed by previous Commissions.
The biggest problem I wondered about was funding. So far, about $12B has been proposed for this vision. Yet, many of the recommendations seem likely to cost a great deal of money. For example, on p. 23, the report states that much of NASA's infrastructure needs substantial modernization. Elsewhere, technology R&D is addressed by proposing a DARPA model or even the In-Q-Tel Venture Capital firm funded by the CIA. The Pentagon's "System-of-systems" approach is proposed as a model for project architecture. Special attention is given to the need for reliable heavy lift launch capability. In discussing how to pursue international participants, the Joint Strike Fighter program is listed as a model. Each of these areas requires either significant direct investment (infrastructure, heavy lift, R&D) or large bureaucracies to administer complex contracts (system-of-systems, JSF model). There is an unavoidable tension between the need for R&D, "go as you can pay," available funds, and "credibility."
The money issue is partially addressed by proposing tax incentives, privatization and private competition. But competition cannot reduce the amount of honest-to-goodness investment needed to remediate the technology deficit. It can only promote the most efficient approach. We need more R&D, yet private competition is seen as a way to "reduce government investment" (p. 20). The elephant in the room is that aerospace is a highly regulated market with relatively low profit margins. This means that direct reinvestment is fairly low. A glance at a list of the top R&D companies shows that top-tier aerospace companies do not reinvest a lot of their own money.
The second issue that troubled me is the applicability of the models they proposed. JPL, the National Labs, various DoD organizations and methods, the X Prize, and other examples are listed as models for various reforms of NASA. This raises some questions. First, are these models applicable? No evidence is presented to indicate that the Commission considered whether different organizations with different goals, constraints, missions, and sizes can use a given model successfully. The proposal to spin off most NASA centers as FFRDCs seems quite radical. Would any commercial firm spin off everything except a design team? Is this what the Aldridge Commission proposes of NASA? How many NASA employees would be left, and in which disciplines? Can the JPL model be applied well to other NASA centers? Would the centers work together better or worse? Would there be limits to how many centers a given contractor would be permitted to operate? I suspect it's much easier to designate JPL as a model than it is to enact in the real world. Do the security and procurement scandals at some DOE labs give us anything to worry about? What about the need for the National Labs to chase proposals in light of funding cuts? Does that make organizations more market oriented and relevant, or does it simply waste the time of researchers?
Finally, the Commission's report failed to address the biggest political problem our human spaceflight program faces: a lack of relevancy to ordinary people. The transmittal letter to the President states that the Commission's web site received over 6,000 written inputs, and that public comments were 7:1 in favor of the new vision. This is of course not a scientific survey, rather it is a self-selected and rather small sample of people who are presumably interested in space exploration. Elsewhere in the report, supportive public testimony is cherry-picked without context or attribution. In one case, I recognized a quote that, taken out of context, sounds much more supportive of a government monopoly on human space travel than the speaker probably meant: "We all wanted to go" (p. 13) was characterized as an expression of the deep and broad effect that the Apollo program had on Americans. I believe this was Tony Tether, Director of DARPA. The full quote was: "What NASA seemed to forget was that then, we all wanted to go," Tether told commissioners. "We were forgotten about." But if NASA can find a way for American citizens to take the baby steps that would eventually allow them to reach the moon - or even just space - themselves, it would do wonders for the space agency's support, he added. "If you can do that, you will have a constituency that you don't have today," Tether said. The longer quote is here.
These anecdotes do not invalidate the report, but I do wonder if the Commission is overselling the enthusiasm that the public will have for this program. Section I, and the report's title, endorse the "inspiration, education, and innovation" arguments for space travel that have so far failed to garner support for a more expansive space vision. One brief mention was made of space tourism and of making NASA an engine of the economy (p. 20). There are hints at the relevance problem sprinkled throughout the report, but public support is more or less presumed, not demonstrated.
What's Good:
If your attitude about NASA reorg proposals is "wake me if it's a big deal," then this is your wakeup call. The Aldridge Commission Report proposes the most profound and far-reaching reorganization of NASA since its founding.
To a larger degree than I would have expected from this board, the proposals are strongly market- and business-oriented. I presume this is the implicit desire of President Bush (MBA, former CEO) and possibly NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe (an accountant).
The report is written in an engaging, enthusiastic style.
What's Bad:
Where's the Beef? "Go as you can pay" does not seem like an adequate response to an agency that has faced aging infrastructure and workers for more than 14 years (see Augustine report). Increased funding and profit margins might address many issues better than bureaucratic realignments or spinoffs. There is no discussion of how to value intangibles like scientific discovery and inspiration, yet tangible values are of prime concern to contractors. NASA's credibility is discussed only in terms of competency, not based on perceived relevancy to the public.
What's Missing:
There is no consideration of potential disadvantages of the various proposals. Supporters of space science may find the report dismissive of their priorities and concerns. There is no critical evaluation of the benefits of space program investments vs direct investments in education, science and technology.
This report is remarkably thin on supplementary materials: there are 13 pp of appendices. More is available on the Commission's web site.
Refs:
[Klerkx 2004]: "Lost In Space: The Fall of NASA and the Dream of a New Space Age," Greg Klerkx, 2004. ISBN 0375421505
[Paine 1986]: http://history.nasa.gov/painerep/cover.htm
[Augustine 1990]: http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/augustin e/racfup1.htm
[Aldridge 2004]: http://www.moontomars.org
The reviewer is an aerospace engineer with experience in human spaceflight engineering and operations, commercial satellite development and operations, and scientific satellite development and operations. No current relationship to NASA, and no significant interests in companies with an interest in this proposal.
You can download A Journey to Inspire, Innovate and Discover from moontomars.org. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page. Thanks to everyone who takes the time to contribute.
Just my $0.02.
Hmmm.
I though the whole point of running up massive deficits was precisely to kill off these sorts of discussions. Well, maybe as they pertain to universal health care and education...
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
explore options to create a university-based virtual space academy" for
:)
training the next generation technical work force.
This may be my favorite part. Itll will be difficult to replace the upcoming flood of retirements with so few students majoring in aerospace engineering (emphasis on space) these days. Giving NASA an academy from which to draw potential engineers, astronauts, and technicians would give it a pool of driven young minds.
Can the Starfleet Academy be far behind?
"Open the pod by doors, Hal" > "I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave" sudo "Open the pod bay doors, Hal" > alright
1) A national lottery. Opportunity and Spirit cost (individually) $400 million. A nationwide lottery would be able to raise this much money, and would excite people. They would know that their money is going to put something on another planet.
2) A reality TV show about astronaut candidates. This long-running series, run by one of the major networks, would give a human face and personality to space flight. I'm not talking about people being voted off or anything stupid like that, but an unvarnished look at how astronauts are trained and selected. NASA could get the license from a network and make a few million bucks and improve its image.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
The public has turned into a funding arm for aerospace contractors at just the time when they should be figuring out how to make things work in the private sector.
Biotech, proteinomics, genomics, nanotech, clean energy, computing, photonics, networking, etc etc etc are all areas that can provide direct benefits to mankind now and pose more unanswered questions for basic science.
Look at the bottom of every page on spaceref.com's site: There are links to "Absinthe - Generic Viagra - Cialis - Hammocks - Cuban Cigars Humidors - Absinth - Sildenafil Citrate Salvia Divinorum - Salvia - Buy Salvia Divinorum - Free Samples - Xenical - Shopping"...
"We spend to much money developing weapon systems. We don't spend nearly enough developing the troops to actually use them."
Is that some kind of joke? Or are you not living in the US?
The US Air Force spend _2 million dollars_ per pilot training them - and that figure is at least 10 years old, so G-d knows what we spend these days. If that's not a significant investment, I don't know what is.
The US Army also has a pretty damned good training program for fighting wars. Regardless of whether going to Iraq was right or wrong, the US Army annihilated the Iraqi army with startling speed. Good training costs money, ergo, I would be somewhat surprised to hear we cheap out on battlefield training.
IOW, you're right, but the US military is obviously doing a pretty good job of training soldiers in weapon system usage. Maybe we ought to put some money into Civil Affairs training, but that wasn't your thesis as far as I can tell.
It's always amazed me that people aren't more aware of the educational institutions that are directly affiliated with the Department of Defense, too.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
The space shuttle isn't a 'safe' technology. In fact space travel itself is dangerous. Astronauts must know their line of work has it's risks and they accept this much as firefighters, police, and military personal accept the risks in their chosen professions. So why limit the shuttle to the ISS (ie: let hubble die) because it's risky? DUH! That hasn't changed since the first astronaut climbed atop a redstone. The shuttles will have to be replaced by something else, and that something won't be any safer. (It may be cheaper to use, carry more payload, be more available, etc., but it WON'T be any safer). We've lost fewer astronauts to space accidents then the miltary has lost test pilots (not to mention fighter pilot trainees) and we havn't canceled the airforce (yet). Maybe fewer people would want to become astronauts (outside the military) if the REAL risks were made clearer, but I doubt we would have a shortage of personal.
Keep the shuttles flying as long as needed. Develop a replacement (a good one, and keep poltics and pork out of the process).
I'm surprised that the miltary sees no value in a moon base. The scientific values are sure there. Building a long term base on the moon will serve to develop the technology to go to Mars. But until the red planet has been thoughly expolored by robots, there won't be any need for man to go there in person.
Actually, that's basically what "Space Property Rights" means.
Currently, there are no property rights in space (or more accurately, on other worlds). By treaty, bodies in outer space are "governed" rather like Antarctica -- no government can claim the Moon for itself and issue deeds to explorers. Likewise, no private citizen can land on the Moon and claim it for himself or herself.
In the case of Antarctica, maybe that's a good thing - it's a nice lab, but it's pretty small and can't sustain a tourism industry.
In the case of the Moon, Mars, and (collectively) the asteroids - they're big enough that it'll take so damn long to "pave over 'em" or otherwise "despoil" their "natural" state, that scientific research wouldn't be jeopardized by private ownership of 'em.
Without space property rights, there can be no return on investment for the private sector. Without the private sector's involvement, the only entities doing space exploration, tourism, industrialization or colonization, will be governments. Problem is, governments have "better" things to do than establish offworld colonies. Space exploration doesn't help a government stay in power, and unsurprisingly, governments tend not to give a fuck about it except insofar as to use space programmes to spread the pork around.
A radical proposal:
With space property rights -- whether in the radical form above, or by following the more traditional "Homesteading" model in which government opened up the West by taking ownership of the land for the express purpose of giving it away to anyone who could survive there long enough -- we're much more likely to make it off this mudball.
Wonderful article. In a similar vein I would suggest looking at Dr Jerry Pournelle's Chaos Manor site http://www.jerrypournelle.com/ and his various reviews of NASA policy. also, this article (which is linked on Jerry's site) http://tinyurl.com/2ljja truely says it all on the problems with NASA.
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
Whats the deal with everyone saying we don't have the tech to go to Mars? They tech has existed since the early 70's. You do not need advanced hab modules or rockets, simple computers (LINUX or HAL, take your pick) work fine, and you don't need some crazy spinning gravity inducing spaceship to get you there. The origional plan was for an Apollo-type pod and LIM to be used with an additional cargo container for water and food. The simple profile had 1.5 years out, a 2-6month stay, and a 1.5 year return. Its not rocket science people. OK so it is. But the fact remains it is not hard to go to Mars. The point of giong to Mars should be the development of all the new tech to make the journey and stay more confortable and profitable. Which is the real reason we should be going, profit. When people came to the US, they had to make money for their investors back in UK or Spain to pay off their journey. Mars should be the same. Send the poeople there sponsored by compaines like Lockheed and Boeing and have them do research to make their companies money. I volenteer to be one of these people, but my wife is going to be pissed.
I stole this sig.
NASA has simply outlived its usefulness as an agency. There are a few projects that by international agreement still need to be continued for a number of years (such as the completion of the ISS), but I would not cry too much if Congress simply pulled the plug altogether.
/. readers would be familiar with. The NASA that exists today is not the same sort of agency that existed back during the Apollo program.
Some aspects of this proposal are valid, such as spinning off the research agencies. I could see the creation of a "Department of Science" or some other federal bureaucracy that would oversee national research laboratories, including much of the NSF programs (Like the Antarctic research bases), leftover items from NASA such as JPL or Ames, and include other scientific projects that are generally "Big Science" that take so much capital to put together that it really makes sense to fund them with federal dollars due to legitimate return on their value. A restructuring of the NSF would also have value on its own as well. A restructuring like this would even allow other areas of research to be created that currently aren't being done.
When I think of NASA, I think of a bunch of cool looking guys (and a few cool women) dressed up in spacesuits going to places that nobody has ever gone before. For over 30 years NASA has done nothing even resembling this idea, so it is no wonder that a bunch of greying astronauts (no matter how fit they are) with stuck-up elitist attitudes have absolutely no connection with ordinary Americans like myself. I happen to know personnally (I've been in his home and done things with his kids... now raising kids of their own) one of the Apollo astronauts, and boy did he have a bunch of fun stories including his own recollections of Yuri Gregarian, not to mention Neil Armstrong and others I'm sure
I am a solid supporter of further space exploration. I feel we, as a species, need to get off this rock and move on throughout this universe. NASA, rather than helping out in moving this idea forward like they did in the 1960's, they are now a major obsticle keeping people from going into space. The longer NASA continues to exist as an agency, the longer and harder it will be for my kids and grandkids to get into space themselves. If this is a P.R. perception that NASA needs to change for both myself and within NASA as well, so be it. I wish it would simply go away because we no longer need the agency.
I do think that a civilian-based space exploration agency of some sort should exist, and perhaps something should be done to preserve the Astronaut corp, but there is so much more to NASA than astronauts that this minor part of the agency could be kept running for almost nothing compared to what it is currently taking to run the agency. When the main Astronaut corp office is in LEO rather than in Houston, Texas, I might give those guys a little more respect. Unfortunately I think the USAF will have a military base in space well before NASA gets its act together.
... Those bozos can't even replace the existing Shuttle. Not for lack of money, either. ...
Ok, you have a NASA administration that is completely incompetent (by your own admission, throwing good money after bad), and then you complain that the commision wants to change out the organizational structure. As if leaving these people in the positions to make business decisions is viable?
And amazingly enough, changing NASA's finance model to a DARPA model, shouldn't cost as much money as NASA is now, so it shouldn't be a surprise that future funding is not as aggresive as it is today. In my opinion, we have given them plenty of money, which they squandered on building (1) a floating international research station without science modules and (2) a flying tractor trailer to move shipments when we needed taxis. They've hardly earned my respect to continue to have responsibility.
NASA works primarily because it is government. Yes, it always has the chance to be swayed from one political side to the other (slightly). NASA, though is also one of the few (only?) institutions of the government that has actually returned more money to the economy than it has taken. The thought of slice and dice on NASA is chilling. NASA provides (or provided) a strong platform for bringing initial research from the point of being non-viable in a business sense to a viable and even necessary understanding for businesses.
Take a look at most business today, especially corporations. How far down the road are the looking for a return on investment before they are willing to spend their capital on anything? Not even 4 years in most cases. There are a few exceptions, but normally limited to the pharmaceutical companies. Even most investment funds are geared to a year by year investment strategy, and they have one of the longest look ahead time frames for any product on the market.
I see the same private interests peeking up here as I see in almost all other privatization, schools, parks, roads, etc. The failure of this view is to recognize that by their very nature, all businesses must make a profit, and that means to the exclusion of all things perceived profitless (or not profitable enough). Our space program would have never happened if that had been the view (profit), and more than likely many things from tennis shoes to microwave ovens would either not exist yet or never exist. (Yeah, I know theoretically, all things in time will exist, but realistically, from a profit motive standpoint, most things will not exist, as the profit motive is not strong enough and even a societies available consumption is finite in nature. Basic supply and demand says no (or not enough) demand, no need for a supply.)
One of the problems with advanced cutting edge/bleeding edge research (like the moon missions) is that you have to throw tons of money away to get the advances. But as has been shown time and again (moon shots, Internet, Christopher Columbus, Marco Polo, ), the benefits can be unmistakably life altering. This is something that most businesses are not good at, and in the hands of businesses would slow to a trickle.
IMO, NASA should be returned to its prior years of glory. I say glory because as a nation we glorified it. We stood as a people behind its mission. The bully pulpet of the president was strongly behind it. It was advertised and promoted. If anything should be outsourced, perhaps that would be the best start. We do so well promoting our drug using abusive sports heroes, but we fail to promote that which is essentially most valuable to us as a society, even as a race.
InnerWeb
Freud might say that Intelligent Design is religion's ID.
I'm not sure about trying to grow plants on mars on an initial mission (would the space, mass, and energy requirements for such a large, even inflatable, pressurized greenhouse really justify it? Perhaps - it's hard to say). On the other hand, you probably could justify a big plastic bag of photosynthetic bacteria and minerals in a "just add water and CO2" situation - perhaps they could even produce sugars for you. :)
:)
I'd imagine it'd be a whole lot easier than trying to grow plants... although if they could get true farming going, that would be just great.
You know when it's okay to shout fire in a crowded theatre? When it's on fire.
Everyone bashing nasa in replies to this review should take a moment to grep the kernel source and notice that a lot of code has been submitted and maintained by nasa employees. The beowulf code also originated from nasa employees, among other significant contributions to the linux community.
It seems to me that the Aldridge Commission report is just taking the next logical step in carving up NASA, considering how much NASA had ignored the strategic survival plans from the two prior commissions.
After all, if in 1986 they tell you that you had a car accident due to your drinking, then in 1990 they tell you your driving is still terrible, then we can only conclude that when you have another inept DUI accident in 2002 that it's time to restrict your driving to "work only".
NASA has proven itself to be a poor repository of space vision. And we can see with increasing clarity that it is also a poor place to put your technological hopes for SSTO, solar power stations, lunar and asteroid mining, and overall Human habitation in space.
I can't blame NASA for all of this, however; we must also point at the money-fickle Congress. NASA has earned good marks with the thing they were allowed to pursue in good faith and budgeting, that being the interplanetary probes. We may as well relegate them to that so they can (to borrow that hated modern phrase) "concentrate on their core competency". I'd leap for actual joy if NASA was reduced to a "National Space Exploration Administration", which would design equipment, build probes, contract to have them launched, and then manage and track them with the DSN.
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
Here's an idealized timeline:
2005 - designing the CEV
2010 - testing CEV, moon probes, ISS finished
2015 - CEV routinely services ISS, 1st CEV to the moon and back.
2020 - Moon base has been established, mining and manufacturing experiments, Mars probes
2025 - O2, water and metal mined on moon.
2030 - Mars ship launches - modified Zubrin plan using Lunar O2, small nuclear reactors for power. O2 tanks being made on the moon.
2035 - After three successful missions, President calls for a permanent Mars base.
2045 - Mars Base launches - several robotic and finally a crewed mission of "colonists" - six carefully picked scientists who will stay for 5 years.
Here's a more interesting timeline:
2005 - designing the CEV, XPrise awarded to Scaled Composites.
2010 - 3rd disaster grounds shuttle, CEV not ready yet, ISS not finished, Scaled Composites tourist service is wildly popular - space enthusiasts use lotteries to get a chance to go.
2015 - CEV finally flying to ISS, way over budget, warnings that various compromises make it less safe than hoped. Moon resource probes operating. ISS declared complete, but lots of failing components. Scaled Composites testing 2nd generation tour ships for ultra-high speed terrestrial transport and 2nd stage micro-launch.
2020 - CEV missions to moon, permanent base delayed by funding and safety issues. TeleRobotic probes doing lunar mining & manufacturing experiments. Private micro-robot launched by Scaled Composites survives impact on moon, sends back video showing Adidas logo.
2025 Lunar base finally established, lunar robots depositing ultra-large array telescope on far side. ISS closed, will transfer to lunar orbit as emergency base. Mars resource probe launched (fails - too many corners cut). "Open Source" lunar micro-robots attempting duplication of NASA robotic mining/manufacturing methods on the cheap.
2030 Lunar mining and manufacturing done by teleoperated robots, exploration done by humans. Mars resource explorer finds ice. Mars ship designed - controversy over nuclear reactor. Scaled Composites launches its first true orbital excursion. Open source microbots building "Open Base 1" - teleoperated mining and mini-manufacturing facility - aim to make bigger robots and O2 tanks and half of a lunar launch vehicle.
2035 Mars ship components being launched - mix of human/telerobot assembly - no nuclear reactor. O2 and O2 tanks manufactured on Moon - O2 launch craft availability delays Mars launch. Open Lunatic Society announces competitive lunar O2 supply and crude launcher availability. (NASA ignores them after citing "safety concerns"). OLS reacts by announcing their own Mars mission. Scaled Composites launches first lunar orbit excursion, contracting with OLS for return O2.
2040 - Mars mission returns - a success, lots of good science. OLS launches Open Mars Probe, renames itself Open Space Lunatics, starts telerobotic assembly of Mars ship in lunar orbit. SC transports 1st guests to tiny Lunar Hilton - mostly constructed from OSL tanks by OSL telerobots, finished by a human SC crew. OSL holds a lottery to send a member with first tourists. OSL reveals he'll be staying on moon, working with telerobots on an OSL manned base adjacent to Hilton.
2045 Second NASA Mars mission. OSL moon base has crew of 6 humans, 500 telerobots. OSL -SC Mars mission launches with crew of 3 and a small therm-ionic nuclear reactor using lunar radioactives, plan to stay 3 years, partially by scavenging equipment left by NASA - no way home, depend on follow-up OLS mission! OSL launches robotic re-supply mission 2 years later.
2050 NASA announces official Mars colonization plan, launches 3rd Mars expedition with crew of 5. OSL-SC send crew of 7 to Mars later that year. One of original crew and four of new crew will stay on Mars permanently. OSL martian manufacturing turning out storage tanks, fuel and O2 for return ship. Martian farm supplies food for five. Lunar OSL base has 20 permanent staff, turning out heavy components to minimize earth launch costs. Earth launch costs by SC are down to $200/kg, but they mainly carry passengers and small cargoes. Space elevator finally under construction.