MS Calls for Mobilization

All Out Fight Begins for Future of US Space Program
Mars Society Calls for Mobilization
September 4, 2003

The week since the release of the damning Gehman report on the Columbia Shuttle disaster has seen an all out fight emerge on the future of the US space program.

NASA’s policy of maintaining a human presence in space without a discernable goal has come under withering criticism. On the one side are those who, pointing to the present program, say the risks and costs of human spaceflight are unjustifiable, and therefore such activity should be curtailed or eliminated. On the other are those who insist that the space program be given a goal that is worthy of the costs and risk human spaceflight necessarily entails. Between the two, the middle course of continuing to tread water is becoming increasingly untenable. NASA must start swimming, or it will drown. Stagnation is not an option.

Those who want there to be a real American space program need to come out swinging. Some are. On Friday, August 29, USA Today founder Al Neuharth editorialized calling for a 10 year commitment to send humans to Mars. Numerous other newspapers and radio stations have opened their media to Mars Society members to make the same case, with coverage over the past two weeks including CNN, the BBC, The Toronto Globe and Mail, US News and World Report, the Boston Herald, the Houston Chronicle, the Boulder Camera, the Denver Post, Liberation, and many local radio stations.

Many in the political class are also beginning to pick up the call as well. At hearings Sept 2, Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) said he wants to know “NASA’s vision for the future.” Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-TX) said “I believe the agency needs a new culture of bold innovation and creativity.” Rep Bart Gordon, (D-TN) said; “There has to be a goal.”

The most exciting news, however, is leaking out of the White House. According to Washington Post writers Mike Allen and Eric Pianin, writing August 29, the Bush Administration is now considering a radical redirection of the American space program, with the option of a commitment to human interplanetary exploration squarely on the table.

“Administration officials disclosed in an interview that the White House will begin work next week on a blueprint for interplanetary human flight over the next 20 or 30 years, with plans calling for Bush to issue an ambitious new national vision for space travel by early next year. The officials said they will wrestle with the military’s role in space, as well as with whether to emphasize manned or robotic missions, whether to build a base in space, what vehicle should
replace the shuttle and what planets should be visited. “The question is: What do we say to the president about why we should continue humans in space and in what vehicles and to what ends?” a senior administration official said.”

In other words, it could go either way. We need to make sure it goes our way.

This debate will play out over the next six months, and the result could determine the future of the American space program in our generation. Now is the time when anyone who cherishes hopes for a spacefaring future for humanity must step forward and speak up.

At its 6th International Conference held in Eugene, Oregon last month, the Mars Society initiated a mobilization of its own chapters to meet with congressmen in their home office, with a goal of 300 meetings over the next six months. In view of the critical nature of the current situation, this mobilization needs to be both accelerated and expanded. We call upon all other space advocacy organizations and unaffiliated individuals to join us in this effort.

We need to send every member of the political class a message consisting of the following points.

1. America needs to continue to be nation of pioneers, and space is the frontier.
2. The problem with NASA is not that it has taken risks, but that has taken risks without a goal worthy of those risks.
3. NASA’s current policy of trying to make headway in space through miscellaneous technology development programs to spread money around its various internal constituencies is a failure. We are spending 90% of the average 1961-73 NASA budget ($17 billion/year) in real inflation-adjusted dollars, and achieving less than 1% the results. In consequence, we are no closer today to sending humans to Mars then we were 20 years ago. To make progress, NASA needs to be given a goal and a schedule. The goal should be humans to Mars. The schedule should be 10 years.
4. The Shuttle Orbiter is a high-risk vehicle whose use is only rational for a limited class of missions, such as Hubble repair. But the Shuttle launch stack can be readily converted to a heavy lift vehicle capable of lifting 120 tonnes to LEO or throwing 45 tonnes directly to the Moon or Mars by replacing the Orbiter with a payload fairing and rocket stage. That is what should be done, and a coherent set of payload elements developed to enable such direct-launch human exploration expeditions.
5. Back to the Moon in five years as an initial milestone. On to Mars in 10. We can do it. We overcame much greater challenges to reach the Moon a generation and a half ago. Accepting the line of those who say we can’t is equivalent to accepting the idea that we have become something less than what we used to be, and that is something we truly cannot afford.

So mobilize now. Write George Bush. Insist on meeting with your congressman and senators. The choice, as Wells said, is the universe — or nothing.