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

nasa is not gonna get much done

[ionix5891]

if it gets "rebooted" very 4/8 years by new president/administration

Re:nasa is not gonna get much done

[Nyeerrmm]

In this case, no. The Bush plan was underfunded and overplanned. Ares has proven to be a colossal money sink, using a contracting method that has been incapable of creating an actual working vehicle since the space shuttle, and kept alive by political considerations rather than practical reasons.

The flexible path provides new and early 'Firsts' that can be accomplished much more cheaply and fits better within expected budgets. It moves to take NASA out of the LEO ferry game, and keep it doing what it does best -- Exploration. The mission steps outlined by the Augustine commission were designed specifically to deal with the always changing political goalposts. The flexibility means that if funding changes our the target changes its not a cessation of an entire program, just some relatively minor revisions.

Re:You're kidding.

[MichaelSmith]

Asteroids are a good target for missions because they are easy to get to in energy terms. There were plans to do it with Apollo. Doing something is better than doing nothing, and an asteroid mission is pretty much all NASA could do now outside low earth orbit. It is actually easier than going to the moon.

Orbiting Fuel Depots

[BodhiCat]

Orbiting Fuel Depots, 'bout time. Use of the LaGrange points, asteroids, yes! Scifi has known this for years, 'bout time that NASA caught up and went for long term development of space instead of quick one-shot missions.

Re:You're kidding.

[smpoole7]

Won't this be an unnecessary drain on taxpayers?

.

It never ceases to amaze me how often this objection is raised. The original drive to the moon in the 1960's is one of the very few examples of a government program that WORKED, and that paid for itself many times over. This point has been raised many times over as well: a quick Google search, in fact, led to this comment from September of 2007 right here on /.:

...from a poster named "Tausin," with plenty of links to prove the point.

Besides, even if it did cost, why not invest in the future in the most tangible way? Rather that sitting on this planet whining about resources running out, why not go "out there" and FIND MORE? Rather than worrying about overpopulation, why not go find some more real estate??? Man, even if we never make it to Mars, putting viable colony/way stations at the Lagrange points would be cooler than liquid helium. :)

It's time for us to stop whining and tightening our belts and worrying about the future. It's time to start MAKING IT.

As for a change of administrations killing this new initiative, it won't happen if the people get behind it. That's a simple sales job. And to quote Jerry Pournelle, one great way to start is just to ask everyone to go outside tonight and look up at the stars for a while.

Just look at them. :)

We could start now

[coder111]

Thousands of tonnes could (theoretically) be launched by something like Project Orion. The estimated cost of the fallout would be ~20 people getting cancer across the world. I think more than that get killed in car crashes, wars and famines and other pointless ways each weekend, . So I think this is the price humankind is able to afford to do more space exploration.

Computer hardware was even more unreliable in the 70s-80s, and people managed to get by. You can always have some redundancy and hot-swappable modules, both with computer and with other hardware.

Assembly under the sea is just as dangerous, and we still manage to do it.

For the price of Iraq and Afghanistan wars, we would probably be in Mars already. It's just a matter of priorities and long term goals. We don't have any anymore. It's all about next quarter profit, getting rich and doing 2 chicks at the same time. There aren't any big plans or visions anymore.

--Coder

Re:Why do people care so much about Mars?

[T Murphy]

Human-caused disaster is not the only scenario that would drastically reduce the Earth's carrying capacity. Calderas such as Yellowstone, ice ages* and asteroids are the first things that come to mind, and over a few thousand years the chances of one of those happening starts to be significant (given averages on these events, we're due for all three). Given progress from one man walking on Mars to thousands living there would likely take hundreds of years, we better start early.

Not that we should start spending billions of dollars on ice-age prevention or something, but it is always good to keep in mind that there's a reason the vast majority of species no longer exist, and odds are humans will join that group eventually.

*I realize an ice age would not kill off humans as long as there is still a habitable zone. The threat to humanity would come with the fight over the remaining land and food.

A key assumption of the Flexible Path option

[khallow]

The Augustine committee assumed with the Flexible Path option, that the NASA budget would not expand significantly. As a result, this plan is designed to do useful and daring things without requiring that everything gets developed at once. Staggered development of technologies is a notable property of this option. However, it does require that NASA will get somewhere around $3 billion more per year to support manned space flight development including a Saturn V-class heavy lift launch vehicle, fly supporting unmanned space missions, and pay for the missions described in the report.

It is intended to be a stepping stone to some more advanced exploration scheme, but neither Mars nor Lunar exploration is required as part of the program.

Some proposals mentioned in the Slashdot article simply cannot be afforded on even that enlarged budget (for example, the space telescope construction mission). At this point, many of these proposals are merely a theoretical study of what sorts of missions are possible with the infrastructure and tools proposed by the option plan rather than serious plans.

Finally, it's worth noting that there's a good chance even the relatively low funding needs of the Flexible Path option will not be supplied by Congress. At that point, I don't know what will happen. As far as I know, the Augustine committee simply could not generate a useful manned space plan with the budget manned space flight currently gets. My view is that the dependence on a heavy lift vehicle is the reason why. Eschewing heavy lift should be possible, but that does generate a new set of problems and technologies which NASA has yet to explore (propellant depots and orbital assembly of spacecraft in particular).