Congressional Testimony Says NASA Has No Plan For the Journey To Mars (blastingnews.com)

MarkWhittington writes: Testimony at a hearing before the House Science Committee's Subcommittee on Space suggested that NASA's Journey to Mars lacks a plan to achieve the first human landing on the Red Planet, almost six years after President Obama announced the goal on April 15, 2010. Moreover, two of the three witnesses argued that a more realistic near term goal for the space agency would be a return to the moon. The moon is not only a scientifically interesting and potentially commercially profitable place to go but access to lunar water, which can be refined into rocket fuel, would make the Journey to Mars easier and cheaper.

Comments

Lost is a tricky word

[Overzeetop]

The technical ability to go to the moon, or even low earth orbit, is at our finger tips. The practical ability to do so today does not exist in the NASA storehouses.

The mathematics required to go to the moon and return was at least half the battle. Anyone who has had to slog through Battin knows that pain. But we are, to a certain extent, beyond that now. Our ability to simulate orbital mechanics and transfers far exceeds anything imaginable back in the last 50s and early 60s. NASA didn't not land rockets back on earth like SpaceX because they didn't think it would be more convenient, they didn't do it because the entire computational infrastructure that existed couldn't handle the mechanics.

Just about everything that was done has been advanced since the Apollo era. Will we need to re-invent some things? Sure, but in many cases the materials, technologies, and capabilities we have today would make all but the lessons learned books* obsolete for new construction.

We haven't really "lost" anything but the will. And by will, I mean solid, long-term funding commitments.

*yes - they do exist. They have been written for many missions and you can browse through them at several NASA libraries.