How To Beat Congress's Ban Of Humans On Mars

An anonymous reader writes "Earlier this year, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would ban humans on Mars at NASA: "Provided, That none of the funds under this heading shall be used for any research, development, or demonstration activities related exclusively to the human exploration of Mars." The bill is held up in Congress and the anti-Mars language may be taken out. But in case the Mars ban becomes law, the Space Review has a handy guide on how NASA can beat the ban and continue its research and development without breaking the law."

Comments

Congress?

[rossdee]

Somebody please tell congress that they don't have jurisdiction on other planets.

Re:Congress?

[Pantero Blanco]

This is one of the many reasons I don't like sensationally-worded headlines.

Congress did not "ban humans on Mars". They stopped NASA's funding for a human mission to Mars and told it to concentrate on other things. Other nations, or private citizens of the US if I understand correctly, are free to shoot for it.

Re:Congress?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is one of the many reasons I don't like sensationally-worded headlines.

Congress did not "ban humans on Mars". They stopped NASA's funding for a human mission to Mars and told it to concentrate on other things. Other nations, or private citizens of the US if I understand correctly, are free to shoot for it. The US is allowed to shoot for it as well. They just can't pay for things that apply exclusively for Mars for the next year. This will barely affect anything. Only if NASA was researching human landing sites or actually building the Mars spacecraft could they say that their research was *only* for human exploration of Mars. And this would have to pass every year in the foreseeable future to ban NASA from human exploration of Mars (since it is a funding bill).

Re:Congress?

[innerweb]

This is the kind of stuff that you need to figure out who did it. Then, you need to find out why. Most likely, the reason will be somewhat insane, but at least you know what you are dealing with. Then, after you know who and why, you work to make sure that it does not happen again. Ignorance is a powerful disadvantage.

From the reference, it seems that this is an attempt to keep NASA form being administratively destroyed by a Bushism. Remember the guy Bush put in place that started slashing everything else to make one thing happen. The NASA budget is so tiny compared to so many other budgets, the solution to achieve things is not to slash and burn, but to fund it. OMG! Look at everything we have gotten out of the space race so far. Microwaves (communications and ovens), new materials, better computing, better aircraft, and more!

So, the who is not so important, but the why is very important. To prevent another slash and burn like the last Bush appointee.

Maybe this language is needed. Remember how many things this administration has made happen for short sighted goals that have disastrous mid to long term impacts (yeah, nothing new, but they are very good at it). Would it actually be good to go for Mars at the expense of so many other things?

InnerWeb

Re:Congress?

[Nossie]

"Congress did not "ban humans on Mars". They stopped NASA's funding for a human mission to Mars and told it to concentrate on other things. Other nations, or private citizens of the US if I understand correctly, are free to shoot for it."

Did you really mean that? I read it as:

Congress did not "ban humans on Mars". They stopped NASA's funding for a human mission to Mars and told it to concentrate on other things. Other nations, or private citizens of the US if I understand correctly, they are free to shoot at.

hmmmmmm :)

Re:Congress?

[amccaf1]

Well, China has a bigger army and Russia has more nukes. So...

China and Russia, huh? Well, Mars is the red planet...

Re:Congress?

[Dan Ost]

But humans are so more expensive. They need to eat and breath. They require more space. You need to handle their waste. You need to keep them healthy. You need to provide a way for them to come back (they're not disposable like robots).

Robots are cheap and you can do more science per dollar spent using robots in space than you can using humans in space.

Re:Congress?

[plague3106]

Honestly though, why should Congress get to decide that? NASA's main purpose is space exploration, I think that covers going to Mars.

Re:Congress?

[HUADPE]

Honestly though, why should Congress get to decide that? NASA's main purpose is space exploration, I think that covers going to Mars.

Because Congress created NASA and has final say over the purposes and funding of all federal agencies.

Re:Congress?

[FinestLittleSpace]

You are right in many many regards, however, the cost of sending humans to Mars is so unbelievably huge that it actually, despite the inanity of it, STILL costs less to make endless robot missions improving/revising a mission which didn't suit the appropriate criteria. It is true that humans with a suitably powered rover could zip around Mars and find so much more than one robot, but it would cost orders of magnitude more than just sending 10 different robots there one after the other. ...and even then, you'd probably have gathered the research even before the humans-to-mars R&D stage had finished.

I really really love the romanticism of humans on Mars. I really love the concept of terraforming, and I really wish it wasn't so damn dangerous to throw larger nuclear powered crafts up into space, as this could really open up possibilities, however it really is a low-return for the money you would throw at a human project.

As lovely as putting people into space is, it's expensive, risky and a hard case to argue. If we were a world all obsessed by expanding to other planets, we might even have had miniature civilisations on Mars by now, but as a whole, the obsession is looking after one self and not the far future...

Re:Congress?

[SpecTheIntro]

For a moment, we were worried that we didn't have your parliament's permission

Only sissies call it "parliament." Its proper reference is "freedom council of freedom and liberty justice."

America. FUCK YEAH.

Re:Congress?

[Kohath]

Ahh, so politicians know better than scientists on how to conduct research.

When you go to a restaurant do you order what you want to eat?

Or do you just give them your account number and they bring you whatever the chef wants to cook that day? Then the chef takes the amount of money he feels he needs from your account.

Because chefs know better than customers how to prepare a meal.

Re:Congress?

[Chris Burke]

The US is allowed to shoot for it as well. They just can't pay for things that apply exclusively for Mars for the next year. This will barely affect anything. Only if NASA was researching human landing sites or actually building the Mars spacecraft could they say that their research was *only* for human exploration of Mars.

And is my memory failing me, or did I read on Slashdot some time ago that the new director of NASA had already put a hold on all projects that were *only* for human exploration of Mars until such time as additional funding was allocated for that purpose? Since Bush's "Mars, Bitches!" plan didn't actually include any funding and NASA didn't want to get distracted from their other projects for an un-funded attempt at a legacy.

If that's true, then this is just Congress agreeing with the NASA director, saying "Yes, you should focus on other things, because we're not giving you extra money just for a manned mission to Mars for now at least".

Re:Congress?

[osu-neko]

It's worse than that. It's not merely a matter of "who's going to collect my garbage and make me my cheeseburger?" Having unhealthy people around you is hazardous to your health. Seeing the best doctor every day while many people around you can't afford to see a doctor at all creates a situation like having every expert in fire-safety in the world suggest improvements to your house while you live in a neighborhood of fire-traps. I don't care how well you've taken care of your home, when the fire rages across the city, your house will burn with all the rest. The fact that the fire was less likely to *start* there will be of little consolation.

Individual fire protection isn't better than a public fire department because some things, like fire (or disease) can rapidly get out of control when control isn't comprehensive, and then even those who *did* pay for private fire control end up suffering. There are things in life that can't be effectively gone about piecemeal by individuals -- they require coordinated public solutions, or else they're not effectively dealt with at all.

Re:Congress?

[jinxidoru]

And honestly, I am all for stopping the funding of a human mission to Mars. It sounds cool and all, but it isn't worth it right now. Manned missions are so much more expensive than robotic missions. Are they any better? Except for the coolness factor, there isn't much benefit having a human over a robot, especially how robots are improving. We can leave a robot up there indefinitely, we can't do the same (for a while at least) with humans. There are so many reasons why we should be focusing on robotic over human exploration.

Everyone is up in arms about how there's a lot of programs (like the Hubble and the spacestation) that we are abandoning. The reason we are abandoning them is because of a lack of funding. Why is there a lack of funding? One big reason is because we are spending money on human space-travel projects because of this goal to reach Mars. No, instead, let's keep funding the projects that are actually providing us with all sorts of valuable research.

Could the headline have been more misleading?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no 'ban' on Mars. It just means that no funds from the current funding bill can be used for funding potential human exploration on Mars. Future bills (every single year) would have to include this 'ban' every time they were passed.

Re:Could the headline have been more misleading?

[Evil Adrian]

I can think of plenty of things that are more motivating and visionary to spend taxpayer money on. Things like AIDS research and cancer research, just to name two off the top of my head.

I believe that the people lacking vision are those that want to spend billions of dollars rocketing a team of 8 people to a giant red rock in the sky when we haven't figured out how to fix problems at home first.

Re:Could the headline have been more misleading?

[PlatyPaul]

What with the additional costs of sending humans anywhere, doesn't it make sense that an already-strapped NASA would pursue human-free missions to stretch its limited budget? I mean, I'm all for pumping up the public view of space exploration, but that problem lies more in making the public aware than in the nature of the missions themselves. Seeing a robot plant an American flag on Mars could be equally awe-inspiring, if widely televised.

The members of Congress were duly elected by the general populace of the United States; why NASA should attempt to ignore Congressional opinion is beyond me. If you happen to live in the U.S. and are upset about the situation (one way or the other), I urge you to contact your representative legislator(s) directly.

Re:Could the headline have been more misleading?

[Pantero Blanco]

A culture of machismo where the first thing Spanish explorers did when they reached the New World was rape women and steal?

Like the Aztecs did to the other tribes, but without the human sacrifice?

A nation that tries to deal with its social problems completely before tackling expansion and technological progress will be destroyed by the nations that don't.

Re:Could the headline have been more misleading?

[DerekLyons]

True, but this reveals a great lack of motivation and vision among U.S. lawmakers.

No, it reveals the great frustration of US lawmakers with NASA for screwing up and mismanaging project after expensive project, year after wearying year. Between the overhyped and overpriced Shuttle program (and two very visible accidents on top of other problems), Hubble, the ongoing disaster that is ISS, and whole string of less visible projects... Congress simply doesn't trust NASA.
 
Historically, post-Apollo, NASA has tried to spin every project it can into being a precursor for manned Mars missions... Which Congress has historically been uninterested in funding. (This 'ban' isn't the first such, nor even the second...) Worse yet, NASA has also (historically) tried every trick in the book in the book to get around the 'bans', further engendering mistrust of them in Congress.
 
NASA has been hobbled practically since it's birth by the Shuttle - Station - Mars!! vision laid out by Werner Von Braun and enthusiastically endorsed by early NASA administrators. Yes Virginia - the Shuttle program has been around that long, the earliest studies are contemporary with the Mercury project. Many in NASA (at the time) felt that Max Faget and the STG represented a shortcut to beating the Russians and a way of getting early engineering experience before getting to the real task at hand - developing a shuttle and all the rest of Von Braun's vision.
 
 

Instead of getting the public fired up about space exploration, as two administrations in the 1960s succeeded in doing, year by year NASA takes another punch in the gut by funding cuts.

Except - in real life it didn't happen that way. The Apollo (Lunar) program was an accident of a) the Cold War, and b) the Kennedy assassination. Before he died, Jack Kennedy was already seeking to distance himself from, and minimize the program. When he was killed, Apollo was funded as his memorial. Even so, budget cutbacks started as soon as they could be managed - Apollo landing missions and post Apollo programs were being cancelled or cut back as early as 1966! By the time we actually reached the moon, the program was already running on vapors.
 
So far as public interest goes - just look at the TV numbers of the various landing missions. The great public interest, much ballyhooed by space fanboys, simply never existed.

Re:Why?

[Cy Sperling]

They, more than likely, see it as a colossal waste of taxpayers money. Unlike, say..., sending millions of dollars in cash into a warzone with no accountability whatsoever.

Not quite...

[igotmybfg]

From the article:

"The House of Representatives version of HR 3093, the bill that determines NASA's funding for 2008, effectively bans the study of an entire planet: Provided, That none of the funds under this heading shall be used for any research, development, or demonstration activities related exclusively to the human exploration of Mars.

As you can clearly see, the language in that bill does NOT "ban the study of an entire planet" - it just says that any research done must have other applications besides the human exploration of Mars. For example, a weather study wouldn't be "banned", because that would also be related to the Mars Rovers. So basically, as long as NASA can show that any R&D activity is related to something else besides humans on Mars, the ban won't apply to it.

Every dollar spent on Mars...

[Nova Express]

...is a dollar that can't be used to provide pork for John Murtha's district.

Or defense contracts for companies owned by Nancy Pelosi's husband..

Or billions in subsidies to Fortune 500 agribusiness companies.

There can be no funding for frivolities like the human exploration of space when so many of the needs of the Permanent Bipartisan State of Porkistan remain unmet...

Re:Why?

[Solandri]

NASA has two factions - manned and unmanned missions - who both compete internally for the same money. Big-name manned NASA projects like Apollo, the shuttle, ISS, and this manned Mars mission have a history of expanding until they consume almost the entirety of NASA's budget. Many, maybe even most, would say most of the useful science comes from NASA's unmanned missions. On a bang-for-the-buck basis, I think almost everyone agrees the unmanned missions yield much greater returns. But of course there's an allure, a romance with sending a man out there.

Congress is trying to protect the other projects from being cannibalized to fund the manned Mars mission. And they want Bush to pony up the dollars for it if he's going to give NASA a mandate to put a man on Mars (as opposed to just giving the mandate with no funds, forcing NASA to divert funds from other useful missions).

Re:I can see it both ways...

[Stringer Bell]

Should NASA be free to spend its own budget without Congressional oversight? Probably.

Absolutely not. NASA's budget comes out of my pocket, so I want some say in how it's spent. My congress critters represent me, and without their oversight I've got no say in the matter. Ditto the military, public schools, etc.

And yes, I realize that in practice I haven't got much say anyway, but the current arrangement is set forth by the Constitution.

Re:Has Washington Lost its mind?

[LWATCDR]

"No wonder we as a country are getting plowed under by the rest of the world on the innovation front. "
While I do think that this bill is dumb how do you figure that the us is getting plowed under on the innovation front?
The US still leads the world in Space exploration. There are some very interesting robotic missions going on right now.
The US is still a world leader in ICs And is the world leader in CPUs. Intel's core line, AMDs Barcelona, IBM's Power5, Suns' Sparc T2 are all very cutting edge.
The US still leads in Aircraft. The 787 and the F22 are prime examples of innovation. And then you Burt Rutan.
There is a lot of very innovative work in biology going on in the US.
Then you have Software. Apple, Microsoft, Intel, Google, and IBM, are all doing a lot of interesting research and development work.

I also worry about the future of technology in the US but when you make statements that are just flat out untrue people will dismiss your concerns.

Should NASA earn a weasel reputation?

[ColoradoAuthor]

Regardless of whether one thinks that the "Mars ban" is a good idea, would it be good for NASA to get a reputation of using loopholes and subverting the intent of Congress? Even if NASA complied, space enthusiasts could inadvertently build such a reputation in the public mind.

Then what? Would Congress get more strict the next year, resulting in dozens of started-but-never completed projects? Would the public say, "Those NASA dudes can't be trusted! See how they handled the Mars ban? Let's use that money to subsidize professional football instead!"

Why stop at Mars?

[Anonymous Meoward]

What's so wonderful about manned exploration of space anyway?

Transporting humans and all of their environmental requirements is ridiculously expensive. The risk for the travelers is ultimate. Alternatively, unmanned missions can go not only where no one has gone before, but also where no one will ever be able to go (e.g. the Venutian surface), and for a fraction of the cost.

The only upside from a manned mission is that we feel all warm and fuzzy when our heroes return from the voyage. Big deal.

Sounds odd to say, but I'm with Congress on this one. I just wish they'd taken it farther.

That's how I read it.

[p4nther2004]

The headline ignores that they upped NASA's budget over what the President asked. (Congress hates NASA...honest). I grimace with each launch of the Shuttle now. I keep expecting another failure. They're running on a shoestring as it is now.

Easy!

[jav1231]

How To Beat Congress's Ban Of Humans On Mars and NASA's Funding Thereof: 1. Get private donations to build your own spaceship! 2. Goto Mars! 3. Congress gets mad! 4. Fund NASA's manned mission to Mars to arrest you! 5. Congress 0WNED!

Re:Inevitable

[teslar]

We will NEVER colonize the planets.

Sure. And there is a market for maybe 5 computers in the world, 640K is enough for anybody, we don't need telephones because we have good messenger boys, flight of heavier-than-air vehicles is impossible, rail travel at high speed is impossible because humans would be unable to breathe and asphyxiate etc etc. Oh, and just for you:

To place a man in a multi-stage rocket and project him into the controlling gravitational field of the moon where the passengers can make scientific observations, perhaps land alive, and then return to earth - all that constitutes a wild dream worthy of Jules Verne. I am bold enough to say that such a man-made voyage will never occur regardless of all future advances.
--Lee DeForest

Have you learned nothing from past absolute statements?

Sending humans to Mars is stupid and pointless

[Animats]

Sending humans to Mars is stupid and pointless. It's an idea trotted out by politicians every decade or so to distract voters, not something to really do. Congress is right to pull the plug.

Space travel on chemical fuels is just barely possible, and it's not getting any better. Chemical rockets work about as well as they did forty years ago. Chemical fuels haven't improved, and they're not going to. We've had liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen for forty years, and that's as good as it gets.

Hence the fundamental problem. All spacecraft have to be so weight-reduced that they're fragile and unreliable. If spacecraft could be built with the weight budget of a jetliner, with about 50% of the mass at takeoff being fuel, they'd work fine.

Without fission, fusion, or antimatter power, or new physics, this isn't going to improve. We're stuck without a better power source.

There hasn't been a new power source for half a century now. First time since the Industrial Revolution that's happened. Most of the major problems in the world today, from global warming to the Middle East, come from that fact.

That's the problem. Mars is a sideshow.

Mars is stupid

[bussdriver]

Man on Mars timelines are so long that robots will be much better at that time. We can out perform human exploration NOW! Its only a waste of money to do it before it gets cheap. We can send dozens of robots for the cost of 1 human. Its not cost effective and will not be for sometime (if ever.) When we are ready to build bases to live on then we can send humans (not exactly exploration at that point.) We NEED advances in robotics on earth more than methods for space travel. Everybody keeps neglecting how cold and O2 free mars is and the traveling problems; which are best saved for solving later.

Its a DISTRACTION, didn't anybody notice how Bush has been trying to slow or stop climate science? He has NASA refocused on mars and neglecting other areas that he doesn't want or care about moving forward. Remember, he stopped a climate science probe that other countries would have paid to launch (it was already built) just because he didn't want any climate science probe backing this vast conspiracy of climate scientists scamming people about global warming. (we know he tried to censor government climate scientists, even after the public woke up.)

I've said it before; won't waste time doing it again even if I'd get mod up like I did before.

"Exclusively"

[DynaSoar]

That's a key word in the proposal. It'd be damn silly to put money into R&D that couldn't translate to another domain. The intent is to be able to use (frinstance) the Constellation lifters for both lunar and Mars flights. There was never any plan to ban people from Mars.