Congress recognizes that it’s coming to an end:
Although the House language must still go to conference with the Senate, it seems unlikely anyone in that body will fight too hard to save the asteroid mission, Capitol Hill sources told Ars. Even if the administration vetoes the bill, it doesn’t really matter to Congress, because key members of Obama’s leadership team, including NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, will probably be gone next year. This year’s legislation effectively lays down a marker for negotiations with the new occupant of the White House in 2017.
The key legislators behind the new exploration approach for NASA, California Democrat Mike Honda and Oklahoma Republican Jim Bridenstine, at first blush seem an unlikely pair. Honda consistently ranks among the most liberal House members and Bridenstine among the most conservative. But with this new legislation, they have come together out of a desire for NASA to reconsider the Moon as a pragmatic interim destination before going to Mars.
“There is no better proving ground than the Moon for NASA to test the technologies and techniques needed to successfully meet the goal of sending humans to Mars by the mid 2030s,” Honda told Ars. “I am proud to lead the Congressional effort to ensure that NASA develops a plan to fully take advantage of potential partnerships with commercial industry, academia, and international space agencies to send affordable missions to explore and characterize the lunar surface.”
Loren Grush similarly writes that abandoning the moon was a mistake. I think she misses a key point here, though:
…perhaps the biggest strength of a Moon colony is how quickly NASA could pull it off. Studies have suggested that a crewed mission to the lunar surface could be done with existing rockets, such as the Falcon 9 or the Atlas and Delta rockets from United Launch Alliance, at a relatively low cost.
This is true of Mars, as well, at least if we consider Falcon Heavy. In fact, it’s the only affordable way to do it, given that Congress isn’t going to raise NASA’s budget to fund Mars hardware in the face of the continuation of the unneeded SLS.
Finally, Keith Cowing notes that the Planetary Society has an ulterior motive in continuing to support ARM:
The real reason why the Planetary Society supports ARM is that it delays sending humans to Mars. One look at their Humans Orbiting Mars report and you’ll see that they want to take longer to get to Mars and only play around on Phobos when they get there. Their own staff overtly state their reluctance to send humans to the surface.
Friedman’s statement that ARM cancellation would mean that “there will be no human space exploration earlier than 2030” demonstrates a certain level of cluelessness on his part. I guess he missed all of that SLS/Orion-based Deep Space Habitat goodness that was all over the news a month ago.
Lou Friedman wants us all to think that dire consequences will result if ARM is cancelled. I’d suggest the opposite: by focusing NASA’s limited resources on the things that actually get humans to Mars sooner – we will actually get humans to Mars – sooner.
I don’t care about Mars, but people who do should be loudly opposing SLS.
Interesting.
I’m glad that ARM appears to be either dying or dead. In almost all of its designs, it was a waste of money, time and effort.
Obama’s space legacy is commercial cargo and commercial crew. SpaceX exists as a thriving, innovating company because substantial NASA [non cost plus] contracts flowed to SpaceX.
As for moving the goal posts from Mars (in the 2030s, what a joke) to a Lunar goal, I am cautious. One could easily imagine a shot in the arm for SLS and Orion, which would then have an non-fantasy based mission (assuming a lander was added). Continuing to fund SLS and its ossified ways of doing business would be a regressive step for NASA and space development. On the other hand, Lunar COTS could be a boon for SpaceX and other innovative private companies, providing an anchor tenant for more elaborate and exciting developments. Frankly, the old ossified path would be much more likely to be the path followed by congress and the new administration.
SpaceX exists as a thriving, innovating company because substantial NASA [non cost plus] contracts flowed to SpaceX
SpaceX has a backlog of commercial launches. SpaceX exists because Elon could see past the BS everyone else considered the norm. While they benefit from a relationship with NASA, SpaceX thrives in spite of NASA… which if you notice is still trying to eat the commercial vendors lunch with SLS/Orion.
Elon does have commercial business. He’s also done a great job making excellent technical design decisions that impact the business. NASA’s contracts are still a large part of his funding base. Let’s not hold that against him.
Marilyn vos Savant once gave the definitive answer to why women are not paid less for the same job. If they were, no business could compete by hiring men.
We could use similar logic to getting to mars. Assume we offer x-prizes to get to mars. How many companies would then first go to the moon or an asteroid to achieve that mars objective?
If Elon goes to the moon it will because someone paid him… not as practice for mars. He’s practicing for mars in the earth upper atmosphere because that actually is an analogy for the thin mars atmosphere.
The next executive to the whitehouse will finish the transition… Commercial destination. Then the three legs of the stool will be in place. Domestic commercial cargo, domesitic commercial passenger services and a domestic commercial destination.
The whitehouse will have kill SLS or threaten to and then congress will give up a commercial destination for the last gasp of a monster pork rocket.
I can see a need for Lunar bases for a couple of reasons. We have pretty good information now about human physiological effects of long-term stays in freefall/microgravity, but the longest anyone has spent in Lunar gravity is a few days, so having a habitat that could be lived in for months to a year would yield a lot of information. For example, is 1/6 G good enough to prevent bone loss? If low-G only slows bone loss or causes partial loss, that would be important information for a long-term Mars settlement. I could see another reason for trying to build out a Lunar settlement, and that’s to see how to handle construction in low-G. Granted, the fact Mars has an atmosphere would change quite a few variables, but wouldn’t it be good to be able to learn how to use low-G construction equipment someplace closer to home, especially if it’s easier and less costly to get to the training area? NB: I’m not advocating abandoning Mars in favor of the Moon, but surely there’s some place in a future Space Infrastructure for something that big right in our back yard?
Cheaper to build the variable gravity lab in LEO than a Moon base.
Elon needs to do this before sending people to Mars.
The only way to determine how humans can function long-term in Mars’ .38 gravity is…by putting humans in .38 gravity. And the cheapest way to do that is to simulate .38 gravity in low earth orbit. Long-term stays in a lunar base will tell you how humans are impacted by living in .16 gravity. That’s not without utility, but not the same as Mars.
Elon seems to prefer to test out how Mars gravity works directly. Well: it’s his dime.
All that said, a lunar base has some good rationales for it, a few of which would even have applicability to operating on Mars.
“I don’t care about Mars, ………….”
Neither do I. And I have yet to see anyone give a compelling reason why we need to land humans on Mars. For “compelling” read “economic”.
If the Moon is merely practice for getting to Mars, then there’s no compelling reason to go back to the moon.
Ken Anthony writes:
“If Elon goes to the moon it will because someone paid him…”
THAT is an example of a compelling reason: It’s valuable enough to someone, for some reason, to trade their money for the trip.
CptNerd writes:
“….so having a habitat that could be lived in for months to a year would yield a lot of information. For example, is 1/6 G good enough to prevent bone loss? If low-G only slows bone loss or causes partial loss, that would be important information for a long-term Mars settlement. I could see another reason for trying to build out a Lunar settlement, and that’s to see how to handle construction in low-G.”
This is all R&D. R&D is good if you have a definable economic goal firmly in mind but you need to figure out some stuff in order to get there. If you don’t have a compelling goal then you don’t need the R&D.
Someone* will have to land on Mars to fix the robots. Otherwise we will just be throwing away robots.
Also, we don’t need a compelling reason to go to Mars. The reason could be uncompelling. It all depends on what motivates individuals and groups to to there. These types of motivations will not be universally compelling.
Right now, there isn’t a way to get there for any reason. As the barrier of access lowers, people will be in a better position to act on their motivations.
The problem here is the unknown. Knowing how people, plants, animals, construction processes, ect act under varying levels of gravity is important even if we don’t know how that knowledge will be used at this moment.
What we do know, is that increasing the knowledge and technology bases are part of a cycle of discovery, advancement, and wealth creation over long periods of time.
*Sure, there are potential work a rounds like robots repairing each other.
Like I said, I am not advocating Moon over Mars, for God’s sake I want to see us go to Alpha Centauri but we’re not going to get there next week. Yes, the immediate goal is R&D, and sometimes R&D will show you something that you weren’t looking for that is better than what you wanted. Is that a reason not to do R&D?
You always need R&D, since often your research shows things you weren’t expecting, that end up being more valuable than what you thought you wanted.