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NASA's Bolden Claims NASA Is 'Doomed' Unless It Stays the Course To Mars (spacenews.com)
MarkWhittington writes: According to a story in Space News, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden made a speech at the Center for American Progress in which he declared that if the next president deviated from the Journey to Mars program, the space agency would be "doomed." The point he was making, that programs of that nature, have to have consistent support over several presidencies and congresses, was a valid one. The point was equally valid in 2010 when President Obama abruptly and without warning canceled the Constellation space exploration program. Bolden, however, had a ready answer for that, which may not be convincing on close examination.
Back in the time of the Apollo program, NASA was very popular. Today the Moon is been there, done that. Mars rovers? We currently have G3 roving around. G4 isn't going to generate tons of excitement. But going to Mars? To put, since it's NASA, good ol' American Boots on the soil of another planet? To be the first to have Real American Heroes planting the Stars and Stripes on the Red Planet broadcast "live" to a worldwide TV and streaming audience? That's going to generate a hype we haven't seen since, indeed, Apollo. Without sending Americans to Mars, NASA will only be of significance to the science community, with the associated budgets appropriate for that role.
What NASA can learn from the Mars One project is their idea to use tv coverage for funding. Set up a consortium of broadcast partners from around the world and negotiate. No need to give everything away for free.
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
Time for NASA to start a line of "Mars or Bust!" merchandises; anytime a federally funded agency work to pay its own way is a Good Thing (tm) I am sure the both houses of current congress agrees...
I personally think that's why the original moon shot succeeded -- it captured the imagination of the American people. It was something we wanted to see happen. Without that, you don't have much.
I suspect that part of "NASA is doomed" is that without clear, consistent goals, NASA just seems like a money pit. Funding Constellation would arguably have put NASA more in the "moon shot" category. Defunding it after the money already spent, pushed NASA more to the "money pit" side.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Bolden has a point that NASA needs a high-profile, long-term goal.
Whether Mars is the best option for that goal (probably not) is a completely different issue.
Unlike NASA's mission to the moon, there are non-government entities that are now funding missions to Mars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://www.space.com/28215-elo...
NASA could focus on actual Science, like sending unmanned missions into space and collecting data, as opposed to manned missions. This seems like a much more cost-benefit way to spend taxpayer money. Let the private companies fund the projects with questionable value.
Expensive science NASA wasted it's slim credibility on the CAGW scam. We need a different funding and reward model for ***successful*** science talent. More prizes, fewer sinecures. Let industry tackle Mars, asteroids and / or the Moon for profits, we already have the basic technologies. A smaller NASA should focus on science beyond Jupiter or inside Venus orbits, and the stars.
Seriously. Here's why:
All military and space programs in the US are budgeted with completely phony accounting that is never applied to the rest of the government. When One of these programs is created, it is priced according to the following sort of equation:
ProgramCost = R&D costs + Setup costs + personnel training costs + operating costs + costs of facilities used during operation
and then:
UnitCost = ProgramCost / number of units.
This LOOKS rational, but it's not. Here's why:
1. The R&D of any program actually informs many other later programs. Apollo, for example, was "billed" for all the R&D to put a man on the moon, but most of the long-term benefits of that R&D cost actually went into the general economy over the past 50 years. The moon flights needed that R&D, but got less benefit from it ultimately than the rest of the economy did. This is proper bookkeeping, but not honest accounting.
2. Setup costs are often higher in big high-tech systems than for any other field because they are cutting-edge and not pre-existing from other projects. Custom jigs and molds and manufacturing tools are often required (for something like the B-2 bomber that included massive new autoclaves for the composites and tools made of special materials to not damage the stealth coatings, etc). There is no way to bill other parts of the economy later for the benefits provided by these tools when they are first created so the whole cost goes to the program. Again, proper amd honest bookkeeping, but not really honest accounting.
3. Operating costs are always false in government accounting. Federal government employees are nearly impossible to fire and Federal government facilities are almost never sold-off but all must be accounted for (in a book-keeping sense). Therefore, employees (and all their costs) and facilities (with all maintenance costs) get billed to whatever related programs the accountants can use whether they are actually involved.
This all becomes worse when congress or an administration panics over total program cost and then cuts back on the number of units...usually slightly cutting total cost while ballooning the per-unit price since the full setup and R&D costs must be covered by the number of units.
The shuttle program suffered terribly from this accounting. It was forced to bear the costs of all the KSC facilities and people, and nearly all the facilites and personnel costs of places like JSC and Stennis (since it was THE high-profile program of NASA) so shuttles appeared hugely expensive to fly. Depending on the year, NASA priced the program at 3 to 5 Billion annually. The actual cost per flight will never be known but was estimated inside the agency at approx $500 million, but there was an annual $3 or 4 Billion "overhead cost" even if no flights were made. A year with 2 flights might cost $4 billion and a year with 6 flights 5.5 billion. This is terrible accounting. It lead people to think that it the shuttle was cancelled, huge piles of cash would be freed-up to go into Constellation or commercial crew or whatever else people dreamed-up. That was false however, because the overhead costs never go away, they just shift to whatever new program comes-along (currently SLS) suddenly making the new program "too expensive". SLS is now going to be "too expensive" and "$1 Billion per flight!!" and other nonsense (as long as people talk about only flying it once or twice per year so all the overhead gets assigned to one or two flights per year). The actual flight per yer of SLS (less overhead) will be cheaper than Shuttle was (less overhead). All the hardware is cheaper to build, the "standing army" of contractors is far smaller, and no orbiter refurb between flights will be needed. The ISS currently bears the costs of all the ground facilities and people who support it and missions that supply its crews and experiments for its entire projected life (that's why it's labelled as costing $100+).
Remember: no matter WHAT program NASA