U.S. House Wants 'Sustained Human Presence On the Moon and the Surface of Mars'

MarkWhittington writes "Politico reports in a June 18, 2013 story that House Republicans have added a Mars base to its demands for a lunar base in the draft 2013 NASA Authorization bill. Both the Bush-era Constellation program and President Obama space plan envisioned eventual human expeditions to Mars. But if Politico is correct, the new bill will be the first time an official piece of legislation will call for permanent habitation of the Red Planet. The actual legislative language states, 'The [NASA] Administrator shall establish a program to develop a sustained human presence on the Moon and the surface of Mars.'"

Comments

Cool, let's send Congress first.

[Uniquitous]

The moon, Mars, deep space... just get them off this planet and out of our hair ASAP.

Re:Cool, let's send Congress first.

[i kan reed]

Just don't send any of that expensive oxygen with them. We can save that for a second trip.

Re:Cool, let's send Congress first.

[ConceptJunkie]

Well, the first few vehicles might have some glitches. We should probably use Congressmen and Senators until they stop exploding.

Re:Cool, let's send Congress first.

[Kjella]

Too late, they're already full of hot air.

Re:Cool, let's send Congress first.

[chill]

Then the whole CO2/global warming issue should be solved.

Re:Cool, let's send Congress first.

[paiute]

Gawd, NO! Leave them here & let's the rest of us go!

Don't worry, you can have Venus for the geeks, Jupiter for the nerds and Pluto all for yourself.

Kudos to you, brave AC, for passing on all of the obvious Uranus jokes.

Unfunded mandate?

[jandrese]

I don't suppose the house is planning to actually pay for the enormous expense of putting a permanent human colony on a different planet? They just want NASA to stop everything else that they're doing and start making manned Mars rockets? Is it any wonder NASA struggles with long term projects, with Congress meddling every year with crazy ideas and budget uncertainty?

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[the eric conspiracy]

I'm surprised the House admits to the existence of Mars and the Moon as separate bodies in space rather than being lights in a crystal sphere around the Earth.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[tpjunkie]

Not only that, but the funding level for NASA is actually lowered by 5% to boot. I suppose no one should be surprised that the people who seem to have difficulty with science also have difficulties with math. Unless they think going to Mars is going to be a cheap proposition.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

rather than being lights in a crystal sphere around the Earth.

Around!? You do realize that in order to even conceive this notion, they'd first have to make a bold leap of thought regarding the sphericity of our humble middle realm of existence? There aren't many things I would put past them but I think you're too much of an optimist.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[ArcadeMan]

That's a sure way of making the human race extinct.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[ColdWetDog]

Actually, NASA has done a shitload of stuff since Apollo. They have been doing long term, small scale research on a whole raft of subjects including plain ol planes. They've organized some pretty impressive technology for the Mars / Jupiter / Saturn unmanned probes. They've kept the ISS up and running.

All of this isn't as sexy as the Shuttle or Apollo programs and NASA would be glad to ramp up it's efforts had it been given some decent long term funding and had Congress resisted the urge to micromanage everything. There have been setbacks of course. The James Webb Telescope/a) (successor to the Hubble) is over budget and over time. Sometimes rocket science is hard.

Given the constraints they have had to work under, I'm surprised they get anything done.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[bware]

Look at a list of the last 500 experiments conducted there, and try to find one that someone will care about in 100 years.

Hubble
Kepler
Cassini-Huygens
COBE
WMAP
Spitzer
MSL
GRACE
GRAIL
Chandra
Galileo
SWIFT

We've been mapping the cosmos. We've studied the cosmic microwave background in great detail and discovered that that crazy inflation idea is basically correct (COBE, WMAP). We've determined the Hubble Constant within 9% - we didn't know it within a factor of 2 when I was in grad school (WMAP). We've mapped the large scale structure of the universe, voids and bubbles. Not to mention the numerous theories that have died in the face of experimental evidence from NASA probes, or crazy ideas that have been confirmed.

We've discovered that almost every star we've looked at has multiple planets (Kepler). When I started in this biz, we literally had no idea what \eta_{planet} might be, and now we're closing in on \eta_{earth}.

We've landed probes on Titan (Huygens) and Mars (Rovers, MSL). We're driving robots around on Mars. We've mapped the gravity fields of two planets (GRACE, GRAIL). We've studied the outer planets in great detail (Cassini, Galileo). We've discovered that we don't know what 96% of the universe is made of (HST/Chandra).

Not to mention mapping out gamma ray bursters (SWIFT), x-ray and infrared cosmology (Chandra, Spitzer), and detailed study of the planet we live on (GRACE, numerous others).

We're living in a golden age of cosmology and earth science. You think no one is going to care about these discoveries in a hundred years? Two of those, dark matter/energy and the discovery of extra-stellar planets are paradigm-shifting.

We have the capability to do much more. Give NASA the price of a couple of B2 bombers or an aircraft carrier (or an ISS) spread out over the next decade, and we'll determine the spectra of the atmosphere of other planets light years away (and perhaps find evidence of life), and study the universe in the gravitational wave spectrum. And a dozen other great ideas that simply aren't going to be funded in my lifetime.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[quenda]

The house thought they had the funds already, but it turns out they were looking at the NSA budget, not NASA.

Rep. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-California) says

[Spy Handler]

"Get your ass to Mars!"

Re:If ever there was a role for drones...

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

http://marsairplane.larc.nasa.gov/platform.html

Re:no

[jellomizer]

Like...
Encouraging children to get into STEM Degrees. The moon landing back in the 1960's but a large boom into these careers. Although a small portion of them will be working on the space missions. The interest in these things as a kid will make them far more interested in the topics. Getting kids interested in Science Technology Engineering and Math, will help them get off their butts go to college and get in less serious trouble.

Our Environment. Sure launching a rocket into space take huge amounts of carbon. But to figure out how to get people to survive and thrive on the Moon and Mars (extremely harsh conditions, and little energy sources) will create technology that we can use here on earth. Hey that solar panel on the moon can keep a small city running with a half a month of darkness, means on earth we could at least get it to run half a small city. Plus it will need to be small and light to get there. Extracting Drinking water out of the brimy pools on mars, would help us get drinking water out of our oceans and deserts.

Agriculture, these people will need to be self sufficient, in a bubble, imagine what we could do with these ideas on earth.

Health Care. The people in colonies on the Moon and Mars can get sick, we will need to find new procedures to fix these problems. They can be transferred back to earth as a cheaper solution to many problems.

Those are just a few.

we've seen this before on bullshit mountain

[nimbius]

1. insist the US Postal Service implement pension funding 75 years into the future with no known revenue source to do so, as we cannot directly defund it. pretend companies like UPS and FedEx actually want to deliver bulk mail in place of the postal service but are in fact incumbered by its existence.
2. insist NASA pursue permanent manned installations on the moon and mars despite the fact its orders of magnitude more expensive than current unmanned operations. pretend companies like SpaceX are somehow encumbered by the existence of NASA.

Do it... but do it right

[steveha]

I want to see mankind spread out into the solar system, and ideally I'd like to see the USA at the head of it all. So I'm not unsympathetic toward the idea.

But I really want to see the space program get done correctly. So far, every trip to the moon has been via a single-use rocket, completely used up for the one trip. It made sense when we were trying to win a race, but it also meant we hadn't built out the infrastructure.

The right way to do things: build a truly reusable space vehicle, often called a "space pickup truck". Proposed heavy lift vehicles are more like a "space moving van", and they will have their uses, but what we need more than anything else is a spacecraft that can fly and fly and fly some more with minimal maintenance.

We want a craft that can fly to orbit, return, and then go again tomorrow. It might need some maintenance overnight but it should be as little as possible. The space shuttle needed man-centuries of work between flights... we can do far better than that.

Single-stage would be ideal, but two-stage might be easier to get going... just make sure both stages are reusable and don't need too much maintenance. Cargo capacity need not be huge... it would be cheaper to fly things up in multiple small loads on a truly reusable craft, than to build, launch, and use up a single heavy-lift vehicle.

Once we have the "space pickup truck" we need to build a transportation hub in Earth orbit. It would have emergency Earth return vehicles docked, would have lots of supplies (fuel, water, oxygen, food, etc.) and would have staff on board all the time.

Once you have all the above? The moon becomes trivial. Build a "moon shuttle" that could be basically a couple of fuel tanks and engines bolted to a frame, with some sort of shielded crew compartment and a lunar lander docked to it. It need not be pretty and it need not be tough because it will never land anywhere.

Ideally, also we should build a "space cannon" system that can shoot things into space. This would be the cheapest way to send up inert things like oxygen and fuel, or even dried food and tough electronics. And humans living in space will need serious radiation shielding... the cannon could possibly send up lots of shielding mass.

Imagine how expensive it would be to deliver cargo from America to Australia if we had to do it by building a single-use cargo missile. With modern aircraft the dominating factor is fuel costs. If we could get space travel costs down to chiefly the cost of fuel that would be a massive reduction in costs.

Re:Do it... but do it right

[Areyoukiddingme]

Fortunately, that's precisely what Elon Musk is building. The Falcon 9 will be partially reusable sometime next year, and fully reusable probably by 2016. (It's two stage.) A Falcon 9 launch is already an order of magnitude cheaper than a launch from the (illegal monopoly) United Launch Alliance. Once the Falcon 9 is even partially reusable, that price will fall another order of magnitude, making possible all sorts of on-orbit assembly of larger structures.

Nobody is likely to build a linear accelerator launch system this century. Building one at all is hard enough. Building one that doesn't result in smashing your payload into atmosphere at the end is even tougher.

Re:All for it...

[ArhcAngel]

You're currently modded flaimbait but my first thought was let's do it now. Load up all politicians, attorneys, and used car salesmen and launch em!

Pork, Pork, Pork

[Squidlips]

By US House, they mean TEXAS. This is just PORK for Houston and its rocket-to-nowhere--The Space Launch System (SLS). SLS has no mission, but it means money to Houston and therefor they dreamed up this ridiculous objective, And Houston will do anything to get the money, including poaching from the highly-successful unmanned mission from JPL such as Opportunity and Curiosity.

Gonna feed the anonymous troll

[Xaedalus]

Anonymous, you will NEVER solve the problems you are indirectly referring to. Poverty, war, crime, environmental pollution: those are inevitable byproducts of existence itself. Not to mention that you fail to take into account the greatest random factor of them all: human stupidity. Stopping our march to space and spending money to solve problems here at home is the most futile fallacial notion ever; because you will waste more money trying to correct for human stupidity and the inevitable results of existential chaos than you ever would in building capability to get into deep space. Those problems will never be solved--but putting permanent encampments of humans on the Moon and beyond CAN.

Waste of money, period.

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

Sending someone to Mars is a complete waste of money in the short term. As is finding water or even signs of life on that planet.

And before you jump down my throat about bullshit such as Space R&D leads to beneficial offshoot technology, realize that we do not need to spend $100 Billion dollars to send someone to Mars with the offshoot of having a better memory foam for our mattresses, new flavor of Tang, or a more grippy version of Velcro.

We have real problems on Earth. We have an energy crisis. We are running out of fossil fuel and demand more electrical energy year over year. One could argue that sending someone to Mars could lead to a solution to Earth's energy crisis. However NASA could easily spend billions on R&D for energy for a space mission and find out the best solution is to tack a nuclear reactor to the end of the spaceship because you can just eject the spent core's into the void of space. A solution like this will not benefit Earth at all.

Instead, having a mandate to solve our energy crisis on Earth first, by finding real alternatives to using fossil fuel for energy and making technology use energy more efficiently, would lead to trivial solutions to generate and conserve energy on a mission to Mars. That is, NASA could operate on a cheaper budget and spend less time finding solutions for a Mars mission when we have real solutions to Earth problems.

Space R&D is limited in scope and we can only hope for there to be offshoot technology that could benefit Earth. NASA is not going to design solutions with a dual purpose, to work on Mars and provide solutions to Earth. Why create a limitation on R&D when it won't move the Mars mandate further, faster.

The problem, or course, is that a US presidency only lasts at most 8 years and its hard to hand over an easier Mars solution to the next president.

It's simply irresponsible to waste billions on Space R&D when we have significant economic, energy and climate issues on Earth. Three days after people see someone landing on Mars on YouTube nobody will give a shit and we will be stuck with the same problems on Earth, now just with even more repressive tax debt.

Fix Earth first, then lets see the planets and the stars. Why not have mandate to sustain life on this Planet?!

Humans cannot survive on Mars

[emil]

Since the planet does not have a strong magnetic field, the surface is lethal.

The Earth is largely protected from the solar wind, a stream of energetic charged particles emanating from the Sun, by its magnetic field, which deflects most of the charged particles. These particles would strip away the ozone layer, which protects the Earth from harmful ultraviolet rays. Calculations of the loss of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere of Mars, resulting from scavenging of ions by the solar wind, are consistent with a near-total loss of its atmosphere since the magnetic field of Mars dissipated.

As has been discussed elsewhere, at the time of arrival on Mars a person would already have received a lifetime's radiation dose.

Re:Humans cannot survive on Mars

[drinkypoo]

Since the planet does not have a strong magnetic field, the surface is lethal.

Sure, if you're naked. But that's true anyway since it doesn't have an atmosphere worth mentioning, unless you're mentioning dust storms.

As has been discussed elsewhere, at the time of arrival on Mars a person would already have received a lifetime's radiation dose.

As has been discussed elsewhere, that assumes using an existing space vehicle design, with jack for shielding. But since you'll need to take water with you in order to bootstrap the mission, you can use it for shielding.

The fastest way to Mars...

[Nivag064]

The fastest way to get a human on Mars is to launch from Earth.

The fastest way to get a sustainable human presence on Mars is to build a base on the Moon, and use its raw materials for shielding, fuel, etc., and only getting the hi-tech & wet-ware from Earth. Why lift a lot of mass off the Earth when it is is a lot cheaper to do so from the Moon, in the medium to longer term?

It is only cheaper from Earth for a one-off mission, or at most a small number of Mars missions.

For sustainable transport between the Earth and the Moon, you want at least 5 structures, 4 of which would be easy to reuse - in order to minimise cost:
(1) Earth-LEO shuttle - the most difficult to reuse
(2) LEO station - for transfer of men & material
(3) LEO-LMO shuttle
(4) LMO station - for transfer of men & material
(5) Moon-LMO shuttle

LEO: Low Earth Orbit
LMO: Low Moon Orbit

Similar reasoning applies to Moon-Mars transport, as there is no point in landing a craft capable of going between the Moon & Mars on the surface of Mars, or the Moon for that matter - though the Mars landing is the most technically challenging.

"come on Charlie Brown, kick the football..."

[Thud457]

and I want a pony.
a unicorn pony.
a well-hung unicorn pony.

Until these nimrods in congress actually come up with the funding for this, and given their history of cancellations, up front, this is just useless wheel-spinning that might fund a few shoestring studies that go nowhere. We'd get to Mars sooner if we put the project on Kickstarter than waiting for congress to fund it.

Here is the real problem

[WindBourne]

All of these ppl are going for pork. Look at this:
Republican Members

Steven Palazzo, MS, Chairman
Ralph M. Hall (R-Texas)
Dana Rohrabacher (R-California)
Frank D. Lucas (R-Oklahoma)
Michael McCaul (R-Texas)
Mo Brooks (R-Alabama)
Larry Bucshon (R-Indiana)
Steve Stockman (R-Texas)
Bill Posey (R-Florida)
David Schweikert (R-Arizona)
Jim Bridenstine (R-Oklahoma)
Chris Stewart (R-Utah)

Democrat Members

Donna F. Edwards, MD, Ranking Member
Suzanne Bonamici (D-Oregon)
Dan Maffei (D-New York)
Joe Kennedy III (D-Massachusetts)
Derek Kilmer (D-Washington)
Ami Bera (D-California)
Marc Veasey (D-Texas)
Julia Brownley (D-California)
Frederica Wilson (D-Florida)

The ONLY one on this group who is NOT trash is Rohrabacher. The rest are seekers of pork.

If a one of them REALLY wanted to go to the mars and/or the moon, they would be allocating money for setting up a base in Antarctica using BA's BA-330 and/or ILC Dover's equipment as well as pushing private space. But, do they? Nope.

In addition, they would kill the SLS and instead push a COTS-SHLV for 2 SHLVs. Do they? Nope.

Re:Permanent Mars habitation sounds great

[WindBourne]

What is is like at Antartica? COLD. Runs from -89C to -5C. Lots of high speed winds with cold temps with snow/ice that eats at material. Days that are 24 hours long. Seasons. Sun is missing in the winter. Shortage of water (though it can be picked up locally). Shortage of resources. If they really want to do well, they should bury down into the snow.

And what is it like on Mars? COLD. The mean on Mars runs from -87C to -5C. Lots of high speed winds, with cold temps with dust in it, that eats at material. Days that are ~24 hours long. seasons are similar, though 2x as long. Sun is missing in the winter. Shortage of water (though it can be picked up in various amounts). Plenty of local resources. If they want to do well, they should bury down into the frozen ground.


If this can survive at the Antarctica, then it can not survive mars. Something that works on the moon, MAY or MAY NOT work on mars. The ONLY thing that the moon has for testing purpose is life support, and that is available on the ISS.

OTOH, The moon is the worst place for testing. Little to no wind. No atmosphere. Lots of micrometeorites (mars has some, not many). Temperature extremes (mars does not get hot). Radiation galore (far far more than mars gets). In fact, mars surface gets less radiation than does the ISS (which is partially protected by our magnetosphere). The Radiation hitting the moon surface is 4-8x what the Martian surface will get. So, if BA units check out in Antartica for 2 years or longer, AND can check out for several years as a space station, then it is fully tested for Mars.

About the only advantage for the moon is testing a lander. Nothing else. All else should be tested here on earth or at the ISS.