Mars Society Statement on Bush Space Initiative

Thought this would be worth passing on as it addresses
many points talked to on here and would provide for
interesting discussion.

Mars Society Statement on Bush Space Initiative
January 24, 2004
Reprint or pass on as desired
For further information about the Mars Society, visit
our website at
www.marssociety.org, or contact info@...

On January 23, 2004, the following statement
concerning the new Bush
space policy was ratified by the Steering Committee of
the Mars
Society. The vote was 19 in favor, 3 abstentions, none
opposed, and 5
not voting.

Bush Speech Opens Door
The Future is Up to Us

Statement of the Steering Committee of the Mars
Society
January 23, 2004

On January 14, President George Bush gave a speech at
NASA
headquarters outlining a new strategic orientation for
the American
space agency. While some of the initial ideas for
implementing the
new space policy can and should be substantially
improved upon, the
policy overall clearly represents a significant and
long-overdue step
in the right direction for the American space program.
The Steering
Committee of the Mars Society therefore welcomes the
new policy as
presented in Presidential Directive entitled "A
Renewed Spirit of
Discovery," and strongly urges Congress to provide the
funds
requested for the initial steps requested for the
program over the
next fiscal year.

Our analysis of the important strengths and required
areas for
improvement of the new policy is presented below.

Analysis
As stated, the new Bush space policy offers both
opportunities and
pitfalls to those interested in furthering human
exploration and
expansion into space in general, and Mars in
particular. While not
representing the start of an actual Moon/Mars program,
since nearly
all serious spending for hardware systems other than
the crew capsule
is deferred to administrations coming into office in
2009 or beyond,
it does in fact clear the ground for the initiation of
such a program
should the 2009 administration be so inclined. It also
provides a
certain amount of free energy that, if handled
properly in the 2004-
2008 period, could be used to help insure the
emergence of a powerful
human exploration initiative within the time frame of
the 2009
administration.

In his speech, Bush redefined the purpose of the
American space
program as the "establishment of a human presence
throughout the
solar system." This statement may seem to some like a
mere
rhetorical flourish, but it actually has important
concrete
programmatic significance, as it legitimizes NASA
spending supporting
technology development for human exploration of the
Moon and Mars.
Such spending was forbidden under the previous order
of things, and
for the past ten years technologists seeking funding
for important
human Moon/Mars exploration technologies had to
justify them by
arguing their value for other established programs,
such as the JPL-
led robotic exploration program or the ISS. This has
made it
impossible to obtain adequate funding for many
technologies, such as
planetary in-situ resource utilization (ISRU), and has
led to
disasters such as the promising JSC-led Transhab
inflatable
habitation program, which was derailed when the
discovery that
planetary exploration technology work was being done
under ISS cover
led to cancellation by congressional staff. It is for
this reason
that the Mars Society has had since its Founding
Convention in 1998
campaigned for the establishment of a NASA line item
for the support
of human exploration technology development, so that
such activity
could take place openly. Bush's initiative fully
accomplishes this
objective, with healthy initial program funding. For
this reason, if
no other, Bush's move must be seen as an extremely
positive
development.

The new policy will also create a program organization
at NASA
headquarters, called Code T, which will significantly
raise the level
of NASA efforts to develop efficient plans for human
planetary
exploration. This is also a welcome development.

In addition, the Bush policy also provides a basis for
including
human exploration research requirements within the
design of robotic
planetary missions. In the late nineties,
representatives of the
human exploration missions office at JSC attempted to
utilize flight
opportunities aboard the JPL-led robotic Mars
exploration landers,
but as the JSC researchers had neither a mandate nor
money, they had
neither force nor funds to back up their requests, and
were dealt
with accordingly. Under the new space policy, both a
mandate and
funds should be available to support human exploration
related
research and technology flight experiments aboard
robotic lunar and
planetary spacecraft. This could allow such payloads
to either fly as
paying customers aboard the JPL/Code S sponsored
science spacecraft,
or alternatively, support the funding of human
exploration program-
controlled robotic landers whose primary mission would
be to provide
engineering data for the human exploration program,
with other
science payloads carried on a space-available basis.

The Bush policy also identifies where the funds
required to support a
true human exploration initiative willcome from, to
wit the
redirection of the existing Space Shuttle and ISS
budgets. Currently,
the Shuttle budget runs about $4 billion per year,
while the ISS
budget is between one and two billion. This total of
$5-$6 billion
per year is more than sufficient to get humans to both
the Moon and
Mars within ten years of actual program start. Thus
the initiative
can be done within the existing NASA budget of about
$16 billion per
year in 2004 dollars, a level found supportable by
presidents and
congressional majorities of both political parties for
the past four
presidential terms. Thus the financial basis for the
program is
clear, and is not a budget buster or in any way
fantastical.

In his speech, the President invited all nations to
join with the
United States in pursuing the proposed program. We
welcome this
statement, as we fully agree that the exploration and
settlement of
the solar system is a great goal that can help bring
humanity
together, one that is worthy of, and requires, the
mobilization of
the best talents of all the peoples of the Earth.

For various political and diplomatic reasons, the Bush
policy delays
the phase out of the Shuttle and ISS until 2010,
thereby delaying
substantial human exploration program start until
about that time.
Thus the choice on whether or not to really start a
Moon or Mars
human exploration program, and what its pace or
objectives should be,
is effectively being placed in the hands of the 2009
administration.

The merit of this decision is debatable. A key point
however, is that
the 2009 administration will have a choice. By making
clear that the
fundamental purpose of the human spaceflight program
is to allow
humans to FLY ACROSS SPACE (the Apollo era vision) to
explore other
worlds, rather than to allow humans to EXPERIENCE
SPACE (the Shuttle
era vision), the Bush policy (should it be sustained
by either his
reelection or the concurrence on this issue of an
alternative 2005
administration) effectively precludes the commitment
of NASA to a
second generation Shuttle ("Shuttle 2") as its next
major
program.

As recently as a few months ago, substantial factions
within space
policy circles in both congress and NASA projected
such a Shuttle 2
program as the agency's next major project after ISS.
Had that
occurred the future would have looked like this: the
present decade
would be consumed with returning the Shuttle to flight
and building
ISS. The next decade would be devoted to extending the
life of
Shuttle and developing Shuttle 2. The 2020's would
then be a
repeat of the 1980's, attempting to make Shuttle 2
operational,
leading to a decision in 2030 on the next major
project, which
probably would have been ISS-2. Thankfully, this
"Groundhog
Day" scenario for perpetual stagnation in space has
now been
foreclosed on.

The decision to punt the responsibility for
implemention, and thus
the control, of the program to the 2009 administration
promises to
make the next five years an extremely interesting time
for space
advocates. In his speech, Mr. Bush defined human
expansion into the
solar system as NASA's goal, and posed the idea of a
lunar base
initiated by 2020 as the strategy by which this
objective might be
approached. That is one plan, but the next five years
will see other
plans put forward for consideration by the political
class as
efficient means by which the desired overall goal can
be achieved
with maximum speed, reliability, and at minimum cost.
The great
debate on what our strategy for reaching the Moon and
the planets
should be has thus not been closed by Bush's speech,
but opened.

The victory in this healthy battle of ideas will go to
those people
who convince the players, not merely of today, but of
2009 and
beyond, of the merit of their concepts. The Mars
Society welcomes
this challenge, and will seek to actively participate
in this
discussion to contribute its technical expertise and
to convey an
understanding to the political class, the technical
community, the
press, and the public that within the context of the
new space
policy, that the near-term human exploration of Mars
is feasible,
affordable, and truly worthy of the efforts and risks
required.

In transitioning from one kind of space program to
another, every
effort should be made to prevent unnecessary
collateral damage to
valuable parts of the old program. The decision
announced by NASA
headquarters late last week to abandon the planned
Shuttle mission to
upgrade and reboost the Hubble Space Telescope (HST)
is an example of
the kind of mistake that needs to be avoided. The
Cosmic Origins
Spectrograph and Widefield Camera 3 designed to bring
the HST to its
full potential have already been built and tested, and
promise an
enormous scientific return upon delivery to orbit. If
the Bush plan
were to stand down the Shuttle immediately, and save
the $24 billion
required to operate it through 2010 so as to initiate
the Moon/Mars
program with substantial funding immediately, that
would be one
thing. But given the decision to return the Shuttle to
flight,
canceling the Hubble upgrade would only save about
$200 million, or
1% of the Shuttle program's budget, while destroying
about 90% of
its scientific value. This is extremely foolish.

Safety arguments won't wash either; if the Shuttle is
safe enough
to fly to the ISS, its safe enough to perform its
mission to Hubble.
Indeed, while Shuttle missions to the Hubble may lack
the on-orbit
safe-haven of the ISS, the low-inclination of Hubble
flights enables
launch aborts to warm tropical waters, where crew
survival chances
are much better than in the frigid north Atlantic
abort sites
required by ISS launches. Moreover, it is difficult to
understand how
an agency which is too risk adverse to undertake a
Shuttle mission to
Hubble could possibly be serious in considering a
mission to the Moon
or Mars.

The cancellation of the Hubble mission can thus only
be described as
a serious mistake, apparently committed in the name of
the desire to
appear "decisive" in breaking from the old paradigm in
favor
of the new. In addition to the harm done to astronomy,
it would be a
very bad thing for the infant new space policy to
begin its life with
a such a distasteful record. Under no circumstances
should the
alleged impending availability of the James Webb Space
Telescope be
accepted as a rationale for abandoning Hubble, either.
That would be
to repeat the mistake NASA made in abandoning the
Saturn V for the
supposedly superior Shuttle, or Skylab for the ISS
errors which
set back the space program by decades of time of tens
of billions of
dollars. If NASA's leadership will not see reason on
this issue,
Congress should take forceful action to reverse this
very bad
decision.

Technological Issues
The right way to do a program whose objectives
encompass both a
permanent lunar base and the human exploration of Mars
is to design a
set of transportation hardware that can accomplish
human Mars
missions, a modified modular subset of which can be
used to support
lunar activities. Approaching the problem in this way
can save a
great deal of time and money, as only one hardware set
needs to be
developed instead of two. It also maximizes the value
of the Moon as
a testing ground for Mars, since under this approach
to Moon missions
will be done using the Mars hardware, and serve
directly to shake it
out. Provided this is the approach adopted, a program
initiated in
2009 could easily achieve piloted lunar landing by
2015 and launch
the first human Mars expedition by 2018. The build up
of a permanent
lunar base and continued Mars missions could then
occur
simultaneously. Since it is only possible to launch to
Mars every
other year in any case, the implications of a running
concurrent
programs are simply that the lunar program launch rate
would be
reduced somewhat during Mars launch years. Concurrent
launch programs
would also serve to minimize launch costs by
maximizing the rate of
production of the booster production lines, as the
cost of running a
launch vehicle manufacturing facility increases only
marginally with
a higher production rate. To use a mundane analogy, it
takes very
little extra labor to cook two steaks instead of one,
provided you
cook them both at the same time. In the production of
launch
vehicles this kitchen parable holds even more force,
as labor costs
overwhelmingly dominate those of materials.

Within the context of such a well-planned Moon/Mars
program, there
are certain technologies that are essential. We
address only two of
the most critical, heavy lift boosters and ISRU.

Heavy Lift Boosters
The key technical instrumentality required to make
lunar bases and
Mars missions feasible is a heavy lift vehicle with a
hydrogen/oxygen
upper stage capable of throwing payloads in the
50-tonne class on
Trans-lunar or Trans-Mars injection. This is the
capability
demonstrated during the 1960's by the Saturn V. Once
such a
vehicle is available, roundtrip Lunar missions or
one-way delivery of
habitations and other heavy payloads to the lunar
surface can be
readily accomplished with a single launch. Piloted
Mars missions can
also be accomplished using multiple discrete
Trans-Mars launches of
such a system, with no on-orbit assembly, as shown by
the Mars Direct
plan (Zubrin and Baker, 1990), the Stanford Mission
plan (Lusignian,
et al 1992), or the JSC Design Reference Mission 3
(Weaver et al,
1994).

Such Saturn V class launch systems can be readily
created at this
point either by converting the Shuttle launch stack
through
elimination of the orbiter and its replacement with a
LOx/H2 upper
stage, or the creation of new, all-liquid propulsion
booster systems.
The Mars Society was recently shown plans by one major
aerospace
company for evolving its existing line of medium lift
boosters to
create a family of modular heavy lift boosters with
payloads ranging
through quarter, half, and full Saturn V capabilities.
Based on this
company's experience with previous successful launch
vehicle
developments, the entire development program to create
the whole
family of boosters could be accomplished in five years
with a
development cost of about $4 billion. The recurring
launch cost for
the Saturn V class system design was $300 million per
launch, or less
than $1000/lb for payload delivery to LEO. The methods
of creating
such booster families are obvious to experienced
launch vehicle
engineers, and we have no doubt that this company's
competitors
have plans for creating similar hardware sets with
comparable
development costs and schedules.

The claims by certain pundits opposed to any
exploration initiative
that a new heavy lift booster would cost tens of
billions to develop
can thus readily be shown to have no basis in fact.
Such heavy lift
vehicles would also have many applications outside of
the human
exploration program.

ISRU
Both lunar bases and Mars expeditions are strongly
benefited through
the use of in-situ resource utilization (ISRU)
techniques for the
production of return propellant, human consumables,
and vehicle
fuels and oxygen for use in extended missions on a
planetary surface.
The mission mass savings for either lunar bases or
Mars missions
resulting from ISRU has been demonstrated in numerous
studies, and
significantly exceeds that offered by advanced
propulsion concepts
with much higher development and recurring system
costs.

Effective ISRU require both chemical processing
systems and reliable
sources of power, for which space nuclear systems
offer the greatest
promise. We therefore strongly commend the
administration for its
Prometheus project to create such space nuclear
systems. However we
note that up until now, the sole applications
considered by NASA for
its space nuclear power systems have been spacecraft
power and
nuclear electric propulsion (NEP). Without dismissing
the important
value of NEP for outer solar system robotic missions
and other
missions involving large velocity changes undertaken
across extended
time frames, we note that the size of NEP units
required to supply
propulsion for human exploration missions are on the
order of 10,000
kilowatts. In contrast, when used to produce chemical
propellants on
planetary surfaces, the required reactor size to
support human
exploration is reduced to about 100 kilowatts. This is
because a much
smaller reactor stationed on a planetary surface
making propellant
can emit energy over a long period of time prior to
flight, store it
as chemical propellant, which then can release the
energy as fast as
it is needed under flight conditions. The mission mass
leverages
achieved by such ISRU supported chemical propulsion
options are
greater than those offered by NEP, while for inner
solar system
missions, the flight times are less (two orders of
magnitude less for
Lunar applications). In addition, the ISRU-supported
chemical systems
can be used not only for orbital transfer, but for
planetary ascent.

Thus while space nuclear power is enabling for ISRU,
it is ISRU that
greatly reduces the cost, and increases the value of
space nuclear
power in supporting human exploration. The two
technologies should
thus be pursued in parallel, and an appropriate
fraction of the
Prometheus budget applied towards bringing ISRU
applications of space
nuclear power to flight status, and to support robotic
missions
demonstrating such technology on the Moon and Mars.

Furthermore, requirements should be written into the
Prometheus
program to insure that the power systems developed are
compatible for
operation on the surface of the Moon and Mars, since
their use on the
planetary surface to produce propellants and
consumables represents
by far the most advantageous method of employing them
to support near-
term human space exploration, and their power is
needed on the
surface to support base operations in any case.

Both ISRU technology and heavy lift booster
development should thus
be central priorities of the Code T effort over the
immediate period.

Other systems should be developed with similar concern
for maximum
commonality of hardware and technology across lunar
and Mars mission
applications.

Political Implications
The train of events set in motion by the new space
policy will create
a decision point circa 2009 that will offer three
alternatives for
future action. These are;
a) The 2009 administration could choose to abort
the Moon/Mars
program altogether, and simply use the Crew
Exploration Vehicle (CEV)
as a capsule launched atop expendables as a way of
continuing to
visit the ISS. This would lead to a Mir-type extended
ISS program,
conducted at lower cost than possible using Shuttle
launches, but
with no discernable purpose. This would result in
stagnation in space
for however long such a programmatic decision
prevailed, and probable
retrogression on heavy lift, ISRU, and other programs
necessary for
human exploration.
b) The 2009 administration could decide to
proceed in accordance
with idea of building a lunar base, starting 2020,
without concern
for the Mars mission except to make claims that lunar
experience will
no doubt be useful later when others contemplate going
to Mars. This
would result in the development of mostly incompatible
lunar program
hardware (except the booster), making it necessary to
start
developing an entire new hardware set circa 2030, or
possibly 2040,
given the budgetary entanglements such a stand-alone
lunar program
would create, making it likely that the first Mars
landing would not
occur before the middle of the 21st Century.
Alternatively, given the
limited interest provided by repeated dead-end Lunar
expeditions, the
program could simply expire.
c) The 2009 administration could decide to launch
a humans to
Mars program, with the objective of reaching Mars
within ten years,
with expeditions to the Moon using a modified subset
of the Mars
flight hardware beginning around program year 7.
Because only one
hardware set would need to be developed instead of
two, and because
in aerospace cost equals people times time, this
represents a much
lower cost approach to achieving the goals set forth
in the new space
policy than alternative (b). Moreover, it is the only
approach that
will result in human explorers walking on Mars within
the working
lifetime of any adult today.

It is therefore imperative that everyone who wishes to
see the human
exploration of Mars become a reality do everything he
or she can to
fight for the bold course represented by option C. In
the labs and
engineering organizations, in the press, in the
classroom and the
committee room, in the Arctic and in the desert, in
the halls of
congress, and in every venue of public opinion ranging
from books and
technical papers to internet newsgroups and late night
talk radio,
each will need to play their part.

A door has been opened, and a battle of ideas that
will determine the
shape of the human future for many years to come has
now been truly
joined. Where it will lead is up to us. Contending
visions that two
weeks ago were mere hypothetical debates among space
activists have
now entered the center of political discourse. We
welcome the
challenge. For as reason is our witness and courage is
our guide, we
shall prevail.

For further information about the Mars Society, visit
our webiste at
www.marssociety.org