Rand Simberg questions the wisdom of making humans-to-Mars a goal for NASA. In a nutshell, he gives his reasons as libertarian-based opposition to big-government programs, an unwillingness to repeat Apollo and its lingering aftereffects, and the lack of depth of public support for such things.
And of course, he is right.
I too would like to see the free-market development of space access and space exploration, and I’m just as excited as anyone else about the X-Prize competition — and the non-participant startups, such as SpaceX. I too would like to see NASA make it possible for National Geographic to send the first manned mission to Mars. Unfortunately, I just don’t see manned missions to Mars, and the initiation of settlement there, as happening within my lifetime without some sort of government-directed push to get there sooner rather than later. And I certainly don’t want to see a new round of flags-and-footprints-and-forget-it missions.
But…
There are certain strategic benefits to getting NASA to take on manned missions to Mars, particularly if those missions are required to be carried out within the agency’s current funding levels.
First off (and most obvious), NASA would be forced to prioritize its spending, and to extricate itself from projects which do not support the primary goal in some way. This would place higher importance on R&D which would yield results beneficial to that end, dramatically reducing the amount of money wasted on dead-end pet projects and should-have-known-better white elephants. (On the other hand, as Stephen Baxter argued in his alternate-history Voyage, it may have its own deleterious effects, such as decreased quantity and variety of unmanned missions to other bodies not involved in the agency’s core mission).
Second, the hardware developed for sending humans to Mars could be adapted by private concerns for use in LEO and on the Moon. If the fedgov pays to develop that hardware for its own purposes, and then licenses the designs to private industry for reuse (a la Humvee and Hummer), it could help jumpstart private space development. In reaching for Mars, NASA could end up dragging private efforts along behind it into LEO and onto the Moon.
Third, if NASA is assigned a comparatively narrow focus (or a few of them), and has to justify much of what it does based on that focus, it will make it that much more difficult for the agency to “compete with” startups by undertaking its own in-house efforts or subsidizing others to do their bidding (as Andrew Beal complained). What NASA can no longer provide becomes a niche for startups to exploit. This is really just a variation on the “ban NASA from LEO” argument — if NASA is preoccupied with matters beyond LEO, it will be less tempted to meddle in LEO.
I’m not at all recommending a budget-busting program which would require a deep and sustained committment of public opinion to carry out. NASA’s budgets have been flat in recent years, but it still ends up with a lot of money — $15.469 billion in its FY2004 budget proposal . Freeing up a chunk of that money to pay for human missions to Mars (by, say, completing ISS construction or phasing out the Orbiter fleet in favor of — don’t laugh — OSP) would not be as controversial as asking for another fifteen billion dollars on top of the existing budget. NASA could even make the plausible case that it is getting more value for the same expenditures. Would this hypothetical small chunk of NASA’s budget — say, $2B per year — actually do any good? Quite possibly. Consider the cost estimates for developing a heavy-lift launch vehicle from Shuttle hardware and facilities. Back in 1991, Shuttle-C was projected to have a development cost of around $1.8B over five years, which translates to $2.38B in 2002 dollars, and still leaves plenty of money in each of those five years to develop other essential pieces of hardware. This approach might take longer to reach the goal than a lavishly-funded project, and that possibility carries with it an increased risk that the program will be cancelled before it reaches fruition, but it would be easier to obtain public support for this level of funding — because NASA already has it.
Well, that’s my quick stab at a response. The comments are on — tell me if I’m wrong or right.
One question I really would like Rand to answer is this: How is a government sponsered expedition to Mars “socialistic” but a government sponsered program to develop technology and infrastructure to permit others to launch expeditions to Mars “not socialistic?”
Seems to me that there’s socialist elements in both. However, in the former government is controlling space development, while in the second case, government is enabling space development.
Er, sorry that was me above with the control versus enable comment. Sorry about posting anonymously.
I’m not sure that a NASA expedition to Mars controls anything. It certainly doesn’t rule out concurrent or subsequent private efforts. In fact, by field testing the technology for interplanetary travel, I would think it is an enabler.
Let’s forget socialistic versus non. My point is that in one case, it’s of the government, for the government, by the government. I’m trying to get something that has broader purposes. I want to see NASA return to the role that it had as NACA, before things got entirely peverted by the Cold War and Apollo, in which the development of the space industry became a (democratic) state enterprise to beat their (totalitarian) state enterprise. Sadly, it was never established as capitalism versus communism, because that would have made it harder to get the left, both in the US and Europe, on board.
My other problem with having NASA actually mount such an expedition is that it continues to promote the myth (as have Shuttle and station, for years) that only governments, and large governments at that, are capable of such things, and discourage private investment.
Rand, first I’m glad to see you’ve decided to stop using the word “socialist” as an arbitrary buzz word. But your post here betrays a certain lack of understanding of history. Apollo was not just sold as “beating the Russians”, but rather as the first act in the exploration and settlement of the solar system. The Kennedy administration, in selling Apollo, invoked the pioneers who explored and settled the American West.
The original sin of NASA was not in undertaking Apollo, but rather in ending it too soon and in not following up. That sin was compounded in the space shuttle, a vehicle whose sole function was to take people and material to Low Earth Orbit and back. That is truly a function best suited to the commercial sector.
Secondly, while I have some problems with Mars as a sole destination (at least until propulsion technologies bring that planet into better reach), one of those problems is not that somehow just because a government will do it that it closes the door forever and always on private efforts. Indeed, such an effort, in the function of testing the technologies necessary for interplanetary travel, would seem to me to bring closer the day that National Geographic or the Mars Society could mount their own expeditions or even found their own settlements. Indeed, there is no reason why such organizations can’t become partners in such an effort.
The original sin of NASA was not in undertaking Apollo, but rather in ending it too soon and in not following up.
NASA had no choice in any of those. And if you think that Kennedy would have proposed it, or the American public bought into it, absent Sputnik and the fear of Soviet technological superiority, you’re being naive. Only people who already believed that we should settle space bought the argument that it was the purpose of Apollo, and that’s never been a significant fraction of the population.
Sorry, that first graf was a quote from Mark…
Rand, my suggestion is that you acquire and read the book Selling Outerspace: Kennedy, The Media, and the Funding for Project Apollo, 1961-63 by James Lee Kauffman. Kauffman I think demonstrates that, whatever JFK’s motives for proposing Apollo, the thing that sold it to the Congress, the media, and the American people was the idea that Apollo was going to begin the opening of the high frontier of space, not that we were going to beat the commies to the Moon. Now one could argue that the race was an aspect of that, but of course even that had parallels in history with the competition of European powers over the New World.
Mark, if the public really bought into that, then there would have been a great outcry over program cancellation. There wasn’t, because it had achieved its true objective–beating the Russkies to the Moon.
Mark R, Whittington says:
>> “I’m not sure that a NASA expedition to Mars controls anything. It certainly doesn’t rule out concurrent or subsequent private efforts. In fact, by field testing the technology for interplanetary travel, I would think it is an enabler.”
Except that there’s no incentive for a private group to do that instead of NASA. Plus, my suspicion is that the NASA versions of the technology wouldn’t be that useful to private industry. Namely, NASA can afford to make an expensive nuclear engine with rigorously high safety standards. Can private industry afford those standards or in the case of unmanned flight even need them? I doubt it.
What happened if instead of NASA making some expensive program for its people to go to Mars, that it instead put together serious prizes for landing people and accomplishing various goals? The numbers I keep hearing are $40 billion or so. How about instead, putting a portion of that change to create awards for private ventures. Ie, $1 billion to the first group that sets foot on Mars, $2 billion to the first group that lives for more than six months on Mars, pay guaranteed amounts for rock returned from Mars (say $1 million per kg). Have similar events for the Moon.
I think that could start serious investing in LEO space and beyond because it gives definite goals to private industry. Ie, NASA enables space development and space technology because it reduces some of the risks of space, here the risk that space development stalls because of lack of business.
As I mention before, this smells too much like retaining control of the technology and space development in general. Frankly, a lot of private parties can test this technology. What requires NASA to be the party doing the testing instead of giving that business to private industry? If a private company is preparing an independent Mars mission that competes with NASA’s, are they going to encourage that second mission, or throw obstacles in the way so that NASA management can’t be embarrassed by an upstart? History suggests the latter will occur in my humble opinion.