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NASA’s Non- #JourneyToMars

18 Comments

Eric Berger reports on Wednesday’s House hearing.

If NASA is smart, they’ll be putting a plan together for a return to the moon, to present to the next administration, preferably with a lot of public/private partnership.

[Update a few minutes later]

Keith Cowing had a roundup related links yesterday. And here‘s Doug Messier’s summary and Jeff Foust’s story.

18 thoughts on “NASA’s Non- #JourneyToMars”

  2. I fail to see why people keep saying NASA’s #JourneyToMars is illusory. It’s actually quite real, just like any other hashtag.

    Of course, some might say that spending tens of billion and getting nothing but a twitter hashtag is unwise….

  4. I don’t think that a plan is necessary at all. What NASA needs is to figure out what needs to be done and ask for public proposals of interest. Then they can fund those of interest. There’s a lot of things which can be done. For the price of one of those rovers on Mars we probably could have used rovers all around the Moon by now. Someone or something needs to explore those unlit craters to check for water at least. At least the Chinese are doing the lunar probe thing but their current launchers suck. LM5 is supposed to go online this year but I dunno. Have been hearing that for years already. But at least the hardware exists which is more than I can say for other… uh… programs I won’t mention.

    1. For the price of one of those rovers on Mars we probably could have used rovers all around the Moon by now.

      Certainly several. But then there’s no possibility of life on the Moon, now or in the past. Mars is the sexier destination. Which is why it’s been able to keep getting congressional approval.

  6. Actually the Next Gen Space plan, which NASA paid for, would be a great starting off place.

    1. I was about to say that – it fits the bill for what Rand is talking about.

      And it seems to be actually doable on likely NASA funding levels over the next 20 years.

      1. It’s doable as long as they’re spending the money on that, and not SLS/Orion. Note that the NextGen LLC report made little mention of either, other than to show them in the budget.

        1. Because NASA is incapable of taking Charles’s paper plan and turning it into into something as expensive as SLS?

          Or because you want to *believe* it is incapable of doing so?

          It is not just bad luck that every major NASA program goes badly over budget.

      2. *Every* plan seems doable on paper.

        In 2004, Charles Miller assured everyone that the Bush Vision was doable on likely NASA funding levels over the next 20 years.

        Many space advocates believed him because they *wanted* it to be true: Government central planning will really work this time! (The rest of us were simply shouted down.)

        It seems nothing has changed in 12 years.

  8. OK, SLS and #JourneyToViewGraphs … just too easy to mock.

    How about we start a useful rumor right here, right now:

    #LoriGarver for NASA Administrator.

    Can you imagine the space program we might have?

    1. Lori Garver would be good. So would Jeff Greason. But no mater who is the administrator, they aren’t in charge. As long as the Science Committee members are the ones with NASA centers in their districts, we’d still have the same problems with NASA funding unnecessary giant monster rockets. That would be the case even if Elon Musk was made NASA administrator.

  9. If NASA is smart, they’ll be putting a plan together for a return to the moon, to present to the next administration, preferably with a lot of public/private partnership.

    They could simply Xerox the Bush Vision of Space Exploration, which didn’t turn out quite the way you expected. Or the Kennedy Vision, for that matter.

    (I’m glad you told me you aren’t trying to fix NASA. Otherwise, posts like this might lead mislead me into believe you were trying to fix NASA.)

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