The NASA Advisory Council is pretty remarkable to listen to today, particularly Bill Ballhaus. They’re essentially telling NASA it doesn’t have the technology or a plan. Which has always been the case. As I tweeted, the NAC needs to speak truth to Congress about SLS.
7 thoughts on “There Is No #JourneyToMars”
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“…the NAC needs to speak truth to Congress about SLS.”
In which case, the NAC would be defunded, I’m afraid. When the NAC is quoted later, the reply would be, “There is no reason to listen to an outmoded and defunct committee.”
Committee Chairs will only listen to change when it guides them to safety under a threat. That threat will only come when the numbers of congressional serfs at JSC, KSC, and MSFC are overwhelmed by the employees of of a new Space industry. We are not there yet, and may not be for 10+ years, ….sigh.
The only there, there, is NASA’s (mandated) attempt to obfuscate about a Mars mission that remains totally undoable while the SLS pork flows. Which will be indefinitely.
Oh, and BTW, how’s that public rush to support a human Mars flight coming, post “The Martian” movie? Yeah, that ‘worked’. [Crickets].
There is, actually, a #JourneytoMars, from NASA.
It’s a very real twitter hashtag. And that’s all it is. It’s also as close to a real Mars mission as NASA/SLS is capable of.
However, look at the bright side; NASA has apparently succeeded in making #JourneytoMars very low risk: the risk is now limited to carpel tunnel syndrome.
It serves as a good PR distraction from NASA’s aimless path forward. Notice that no one is talking about what the first step in the journey was supposed to be, the asteroid mission.
Wodun, sorry, but that’s just not true; they are still talking about an asteroid mission.
NASA hasn’t given up on the asteroid mission, they’ve just incrementally down-scaled it a bit. First, they strategically shifted from sending a crew to an asteroid to retrieving a very tiny asteroid (a boulder), moving it to lunar orbit to send a crew to explore it there. (this was a safety issue; there’s less chance of the crew getting lost while out exploring when the celestial body they are exploring sis smaller than a SUV).
However, it now appears they’ve strategically down-scaled the asteroid mission again, in order to leverage an existing NASA asset; NASA’s Langley facility, in Langley, Virginia. That facility is well within a manned excursion range, utilizing existing assets, of an asteroid fragment. (The Cape York meteorite, on display at the Smithsonian). .
#MissionToAnAsteroid
you beat me to my comment.
Have NASA’s contractors finished the first CDR on the notional hashtag #JourneyToViewgraphs?
That’s the 800 pound gorilla in the room they won’t address. They lament the lack of Mars related tech development but are willfully oblivious that SLS and Orion have consumed the productive budget for years and years ahead and that is with some intent from those who wanted to obstruct such investment and force such a quandary now.
Their Mars technology development plan could be done largely the same with a commercial launch orientation, with more encompassing disparate activities undertaken, sooner, and for a fraction of the cost of the ongoing SLS and Orion program, just like as it was proposed as part of the technology development portion of Obama’s FY2010 exploration plan.
Instead it is coupled in with SLS/Orion flights to cislunar space in the 2020s to give it make work. They want to take what would have been accomplished already under this president’s term, and stretch it out for the next decade coupled with SLS. This is the great advance SLS has brought us from those jerks who dumped on the tech plan because it wasn’t the moon and it wasnt an immediate HLV and SDHLV vehicle.
There was some talk about a Mars duration test hab mission for SLS/Orion in the late 2020s. You could develop a Mars duration test hab and run a year long test in LEO instead of cislunar space and accomplish largely the same demonstration they want. While not exactly the same it would be largely the same. You could also propose doing it exactly the same, but I’d be curious about lesser scoped near equivalent work.