NASA Prepping Plans For Flexible Path To Mars

FleaPlus writes "A group at NASA has been formulating a 'Flexible Path' to Mars architecture, which many expect will be part of the soon-to-be-announced reboot of NASA's future plans. NASA's prior architecture spends much of its budget on creating two in-house rockets, the Ares I and V, and would yield no beyond-LEO human activity until a lunar landing sometime in the 2030s. In contrast, the Flexible Path would produce results sooner, using NASA's limited budget to develop and gain experience with the technologies (human and robotic) needed to progressively explore and establish waypoints at Lagrange points, near-Earth asteroids, the Martian moon Phobos, Mars, and other possible locations (e.g. the Moon, Venus flyby). Suggested interim goals include constructing giant telescopes in deep space, learning how to protect Earth from asteroids, establishing in-space propellant depots, and harvesting resources/fuel from asteroids and Phobos to supply Moon/Mars-bound vehicles."

Comments

Re:Going Nowhere

[Hal_Porter]

Eventually the Chinese are going to wise up and stop lending us money, and that'll be that for a whale of a lot of things, with things like NASA getting the axe first.

I do wish people would stop saying that.

Total US debt in 2009 $12,867.5 Billion. Total debt owned by China 789.6 Billion. China owns only about 6% of US debt and the odds are they will reduce that gradually to reduce their risks if the dollar depreciates or there is inflation in the US. The Iraq war is forecasted to cost $2 trillion by the CBO - Afghanistan is a bargain at a mere $500 Billion. The US spends almost that much a year on defense. $8.3 trillion evaporated in the financial crisis, way more than any of these numbers.

So even if the Chinese T bills were destroyed instantaneously it would still be a shock 10x less severe than the financial crisis, or less than half an Iraq war.

Of course the Chinese gradually diversifying away from US debt is likely to have much less effect than that.

Re:nasa is not gonna get much done

[camperdave]

Design is not the problem. Politics is. Mike Griffin had a pet project which has been nicknamed "the stick", or ARES-I. A single solid rocket capable of launching a 20 tonne payload into orbit. ATK, the folks that build the SRBs for the shuttle were given the contract to develop and build the solid rocket. ATK is based in Alabama, and Alabama's senator, Richard Shelby, holds NASA's purse strings. So, no money for NASA unless ATK gets a big fat juicy contract.

Another problem is NASA's "Not Invented Here" syndrome. ARES-I is a 20 tonne launcher. Billions have been spent developing it. However the US already has a perfectly fine rocket that can launch 20 tonnes into orbit; the Delta-IV Heavy. Oh, but that was designed by the Air Force. Can't have that at NASA.