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: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.

"flexable path"

[addsalt]

sounds like a marketing term for "one way"

An alternative they never consider...

[master_p]

An alternative they never consider is the creation of a 'mothership', i.e. a big enough spaceship that can act as a space station and as as a small planetoid, complete with its own gravity (out of rotation) and nuclear propulsion (project Orion). Assembled in space and never landing itself on planets, it can be a stepping stone for mankind to the solar system, and make the trip Mars-Earth a commodity.

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.

Yes. Next stupid question?

[Kupfernigk]

The title of the post suggests this is a troll. An asteroid strike is a very credible threat, as the geological evidence for past ones is all around us. The last one that could have been really serious was Tunguska, which had it hit head on rather than at an angle, and in an inhabited region rather than Siberia, would have been so destructive that it would have been worth the cost of deflecting it. That was in 1908. The next possible impact is, I believe, in 2037/8.

Only last week hard evidence was reported that asteroids themselves collide. This implies that yet another mechanism to cause asteroids to leave their relatively stable orbits and head Sunwards exists (apart from gravitational deflection by planets.)

The cost of a program to detect all credible collision threats and do something about it is, I imagine, around $1 billion per annum. The cost of a single asteroid collision in the developed world could easily run into thousands of times that. Look on it as relatively cheap life insurance, on a par with solving the Year 2000 problem and cheaper than protecting the US eastern seaboard against inundation, and it makes a lot of sense.

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. :)

Reading Between the Lines

[Ralph Spoilsport]

tells me this: "We're not going to Mars".

This is a bureaucratic method of killing the overall project of a Mars mission. What happens is each sub project runs into "unexpected delays and expenses" that make it impossible to complete the sub project, or delay it so that it splits up the co-ordination with the other projects for a Mars Mission. Apologists will take up the side of NASA, and they should, but in reality there are facts mitigating against NASA even existing, such as the simple fact that the USA is bankrupt and can't pay its bills, and (according to the Hirsch Report from the DoE) the USA needs to spend 20 years and hundreds of billions of dollars converting itself to a non-fossil fuel culture if it hopes to maintain a technical civilisation at all.

In short: good luck with this new plan - cool if it works out - but it has "Cover My Ass" and "Plausible Deniability for Mission Failure" written all over it.

RS