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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.
It's an unfortunate byproduct of our electoral system that most government departments have trouble seeing beyond the 4 year election cycle, because a whole new group of people could be in power by then and completely reverse the direction they've been taking for this time.
This problem is amplified in the United States, it seems. Countries like Canada, Australia, most of the EU don't have this problem; the political parties are often quite similar in terms of their policies, differing usually only in name and a few minor things.
It's hard to think of a solution that might help the US situation, apart from an agreement between the two major parties that, for major undertakings like the mission to Mars, if the other assumes power then it will continue.
Of course, every politician and their dog will want conditions on that; riders, perks, kick-backs, etc. It's hard to see how it could actually work in practice.
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
I blame most of the destination argument on the creation of the Mars underground in the 1980's. Prior to that NASA was focused on using the Shuttle for industrialization in LEO with projects like demonstrating the repair and return of satellites, building structural items in orbit, tethers, etc., all logical starting points for building a Cislunar industrial capability that would have given us the Solar System. NASA didn't even have plans to send robots to Mars. By advocating that we needed to skip the Moon and go rushing off to Mars they started this entire useless destination debate that has paralyzed space policy ever since.
Although their arguments made no rational or economic sense, falling back on outdated ideas like "manifest destiny" and painting Mars like a second Earth, they struck some cord among a very vocal hard core group that has shouted down any rational space strategy ever since. We see it now with Senators force feeding the SLS with money it doesn't need while starving commercial crew because the SLS would, in theory, be able to take astronauts to Mars. As a result the ISS is only one Soyuz failure away from being abandoned.
We need to give Mars a rest and once again spend the limited budget on building capabilities in space, space tugs, orbital refueling, lunar LOX, that would serve for going to all the interesting destinations beyond Earth, not keep wasting money on plans to go to a single one that is already well mapped and explored.
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mfwright@batnet.com
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.
In the early 1960's the USA had the fear of Soviet missiles to motivate it. We don't currently have anything equivalent. Maybe if the Chinese send a person to the moon we'll finally get worried enough to devote the resources.
The closest thing to the "Sputnik scare" of late is 9/11 (twice), which basically drove us to invade random countries, snoop on ourselves, and hold endless email hearings. We landed on our own moons this time.
Table-ized A.I.
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.
That's certainly true. Mars isn't in the top three priorities for NASA under the current administration. Mr. Bolden (the head of NASA), said these are the three things Obama asked him to do with NASA:
When I became the Nasa administrator, he [Obama] charged me with three things.
One, he wanted me to help reinspire children to want to get into science and math;
he wanted me to expand our international relationships;
and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good
The point was equally valid in 2010 when President Obama abruptly and without warning canceled the Constellation space exploration program.
"Without warning"? You mean that the Augustine commission was secret? Nobody saw it coming that a lousy program that had delivered too little by that time for too much money got scrapped?
Ezekiel 23:20
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
Going to the Moon had NOTHING to do with capturing the imagination of America. This was an arms race with the Soviet Union pure and simple. That's why there was money for this project.
Mocking me won't change reality.
Our planetary history is one of repeated mass extinctions. We have zero chance of surviving one.
But we may gain a chance... if we aren't confined to one planet.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *