Aviation Week & Space Technology, 10/31/2005, page 21
Edited by Frank Morring, Jr.
NASA's new stripped-down human exploration plan stops at the Moon, and doesn't carry a "funding wedge" to move on to Mars. Nor does the plan's $104-billion price tag include money for more than a couple of lunar "sorties" a year.
Douglas Stanley, a Georgia Tech engineering researcher who headed the Exploration Systems Architecture Study that produced the NASA plan, says his team used a wedge of 2-3% per year--essentially an adjustment for inflation--to calculate long-term exploration affordability. While the back-to-the-Moon plan sets the technology stage for a mission to Mars, "when you try to fit within a wedge like that, you're not going to have a human Mars program if you extend that out," Stanley told participants at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Fukuoka, Japan, Oct. 21. "So at some point, Congress and a future administration would have to decide if they want to fund it."
The plan does recognize that long-term operating costs on the Moon would be prohibitive without a greater degree of reusability in its transportation systems, a point made by more than one paper presented at the IAC (AW&ST Oct. 24, p. 26). The NASA planners hope to extract rocket fuel for reusable landers from the lunar regolith to cut those costs. "I think that's essential if we're going to establish a long-term human presence," Stanley says.
I'd have to agree--NASA's ambitious program, directed by the President of the US, does not have the funding to fly the missions. Parallel efforts to complete the International Space Station, replace the shuttle and develop a new heavy lift launch vehicle (an absolute must for any serious lunar or Mars effort) dervied from shuttle hardware are critical to mission success. Further, the efforts to devlop NTR and space power reactors just do not seem to be there. The only thing that seems to be even remotely on schedule is the crew exploration vehicle, the derivative of which will replace the shuttle as the primary US means of transporting crews to and from the space station. I hate to be the pessimist, but it seems that the program of late is flailing...
To get the job done right, and do it in a reasonable time, then NASA must become aggressive. To do that, they must build and test a lot of hardware. They must fly vehicles, test ideas, push the envelope as they once did in the early 1960's. They must take the experimental lead and show the way. And to do that will take a hell of a lot of money--and that takes a commitment by the tax payers to force Congress and the President of the United States to put us back on the right path.
