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SpaceX's Mars Vision Puts Pressure on NASA's Manned Exploration Programs (marketwatch.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Entrepreneur Elon Musk's announcement late last month accelerating plans for manned flights to Mars ratchets up political and public relations pressure on NASA's efforts to reach the same goal. With Musk publicly laying out a much faster schedule than NASA -- while contending his vision is less expensive and could be financed primarily with private funds -- a debate unlike any before is shaping up over the direction of U.S. space policy. Industry officials and space experts consider the proposal by Musk's Space Exploration to land people on the red planet around the middle of the next decade extremely optimistic. Some supporters concede the deadline appears ambitious even for reaching the moon, while Musk himself acknowledged some of his projected dates are merely "aspirational." But the National Aeronautics and Space Administration doesn't envision getting astronauts to Mars until at least a decade later, a timeline NASA is finding increasingly hard to defend in the face of criticism that it is too slow.
... as well as the same level of oversight... and they can race Musk. fact is, Congress has been starving NASA since the first shuttle blew up. and it's getting worse by the year.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
How does Musk propose getting around the 0-g effects on the human body?
Is a lonely number.
Two can be as bad as one It's the loneliest number since the number one.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
If he can't make his goals of Telsa 3 production, why should we believe he can put people on Mars...
"increasingly hard to defend"
Seems to me the defence is quite easy.
"We're going to do it properly and safely and with some kind of guarantee."
for anti-aging research? Where is the "we choose to fight aging not because it is easy, but because it is hard" spirit?
Let him. He won't do it because he's all hot air. Great talker, horrible on the follow through. He'll soon understand why space exploration is costly, both in terms of dollars and lives.
Tesla cars don't exist? Solar roofs? If that's all vapor then it is truly spectacular vapor.
He's from South Africa, not Russia.
Musk's problem isn't getting people to Mars... it's that he's not sinking any R&D funding into keeping them alive once they get there, while mouthing off about establishing a significant permanent colony.
We still don't know if a mammal can remain healthy in 0.38g, nor where we'd get all the resources required, how to do much with the ones we're pretty sure are there under local conditions, or how to maintain a closed biosphere indefinitely.
I'd love to see a Mars colony, but first I think we need to do something stupidly simple... like send a rover-sized box to Mars with a few lab mice in it to see what happens. And maybe make a few serious major efforts at artificial closed biospheres here on Earth.
Until we know how to live on Mars, Musk's technology is better for sending more rovers than humans.
Using old rocket tech will not result in new technology filtering down through industry like it did before. After 60 years we already have just about all the secondary tech we are going to get out of rocket based spaceflight initiatives. Now is the time for physics research on non-relativistic propulsion and next gen nuclear reactors for self sustaining permanent outposts. I will not advocate banging our heads against the rocket wall for the sake of being able to say that we clawed our way to Mars and achieved nothing else in the process. We are not yet capable of manned exploration for the sake of exploration itself, and that's what needs to change. Stop pretending rockets are acceptable to a space faring race, they are inefficient, massive, unsafe, unreliable, and primitive. DEAL WITH IT.
From TFA: But the National Aeronautics and Space Administration doesnâ(TM)t envision getting astronauts to Mars until at least a decade later, a timeline NASA is finding increasingly hard to defend in the face of criticism that it is too slow.
That criticism largely comes from the legions of ill-educated members of the Cult of Elon. Not that being ill-educated is all that notable in the space fandom community, it's practically a defining characteristic. Another defining characteristic is their credulity and inability to distinguish the gap between plans and power points and actual flying hardware.
Much of the rest of the criticism comes from lazy journalists - bashing NASA or worshipping Musk is great for clicks. A two-fer is manna from heaven.
And there's the folks who don't grasp that NASA isn't an independent organization - it's part of the Executive branch of the US Government. It's only going to go to Mars if it becomes Government policy and Congress and the Administration are behind the concept and fund it.
And on top of all that is Musk's (in)famous overpromising and under or late delivering. He's an optimist, but not always realistic.
While I have no doubt that Musk and SpaceX will eventually get to Mars... There's simply too many technologies and too many mission techniques to master for a mission to be likely in the timeframe he proposes. Yes, they're already building the BFR - but while the booster is the most visible and sexy piece of the system, it's only one piece. (And one that hasn't flown yet.) Notably absent from Musk's discussions, beyond vague hand waving of intent, is any mention of progress on the flight hardware. It'll no doubt be built on a modified Dragon, but that's just the hull, again one part of the overall system.
[Dons flame-retardant suit in preparation for the arrival of legions of cultists.]
NASA for decades has been primarily a program to send pork back to all 50 states, by using cost-plus contracts and making sure that as many congress-critters as possible can point to jobs they brought to their district. One report put ARES/SLS spending at $19B to date, and Orion at $13B to date. So we've spent nearly half the adjusted cost of the Apollo program with no hardware in flight yet. And the same report puts NASA overhead at 72% of Orion cost. NASA isn't really trying to return us to space as much as they're trying to run a jobs and pork program. Now I love NASA, have since I was a kid. But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to recognize an out of control government program thats been taken over by MBAs and politicians.
...competition is good.
On the other, the current form of racing to do this or that before anyone else is going to end up costing someone their life.
I would suggest we don't really have anything to prove these days and that their needs to be far more cooperation between all the various entities building and launching space vehicles.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The biggest political hurdle they didn't mention is the question of sovereignty. If Space-X, a non governmental organization, sets up shop on Mars independent of the United States government, you have a situation similar to the Dutch East India Company. A corporation will hold territory which nominally is the property of their host government, but in fact the company holds sole sovereignty over. Colonies have historically separated from their mother countries. If Mars declares itself sovereign, what exactly would the United States (or any other country) actually be able to do about it?
WTF is "Non-relativistic propulsion"?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Elon Musk and NASA have different goals, hence the different timelines: NASA wants to send astronauts to Mars and bring them back alive.
We need a launch loop or an orbital ring to make space travel cheap. Once we have that the total flight cost to Mars is less than flying across the Atlantic, even using old rocket tech.
I would assume the poster means some type of propulsion that avoids time dilation or such. Like the "Alcubierre warp drive ", some type of stabilized wormhole, or such. You know, stuff that NASA isn't really researching due to the fact that these are still mostly science fiction. Now, I DO think that NASA should be putting FAR more research into tech like VASIMR, and NASA should give White's "warp-field interferometer" experiments some actual orbital time somehow.
As for "next-gen reactors", we're STILL cleaning up the last site used to make the fuel. For the past several years we've been salvaging fuel from decommissioned nukes; and only recently have started working on building new production facilities to make new plutonium-238. It's highly toxic and not easy to work with. This isn't something that Elon could do, no country on the planet would let a private individual set up a processing lab for this.
I propose a test for any new unconventional propulsion. Bring it to ISS, and raise the orbit. Even a little bit, we can measure that orbit very precisely. Call me back after that works, please. Not interested until it does.
Bruce Perens.
and return him safely to earth then we can talk. Yes, it's been done before but can we do it again? Can we sustain a human(s) in a sealed spacecraft outside the earth's magnetic field? Can we build a spacecraft that can land on another celestial body? And take off again? crashing is easy, getting it to fly again is hard. I admit I haven't thoroughly studied these plans (much of it none of us have access) but so far it doesn't add up. I see lots of flashy graphics, I have yet to see a habitat module that can sustain a crew for months (years) during transition and no lander. Artwork of Red Dragon landing on Mars doesn't convince me. Much of this is funded by tax payer money, some of it is mine. Please make it easy for me to see how this all works. They did it for Apollo, as a child I can see how all the pieces (launch vehicle, TLI, LOR, etc) work together. disadvantage of Apollo is it was specifically made to beat the Reds to the Moon but limited use for anything else.
mfwright@batnet.com
Why rush it??? are Russkies flying to Mars in next year or two? Or somebody needs money?
I am talking about LFTR and other associated reactors which compliment it. LFTR solves the main problems with nuclear power, meltdowns (passive safety), cooling failures and inefficiencies, proliferation risks, fuel costs and proprietary supply, waste type and volume, and burning old "waste" fuel which is mostly useful fuel and not waste at all. Here's the original presentation on LFTR by NASA engineer Kirk Sorensen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
But I'm pretty sure staying there will not be economical perhaps for centuries. Even "The case for Mars" says so. Humans are not very good at planning for centuries.