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NASA admits it doesn’t have the funding to land humans on Mars
- John23832 9y agoI think anyone who remotely follows space exploration or NASA knew this.
- 52-6F-62 9y agoDefinitely. I've been in a number of discussions (read: arguments) about NASA's state of funding -- with some preferring to claim Trump has raised NASA's funding for space exploration substantially. It takes 5 minutes on Google to find historic data of % of spending budget. To get to the moon ("and the other things") Kennedy/LBJ-era funding was between 1.19% and 4.7% if I recall correctly. During Obama's admin I think it reached a low of 0.46% after the recession. Trump raised that to 0.5x% I believe. Not exactly a windfall on NASA's scale... I know I'm using relative figures here, but maybe somebody who's more informed can assess the reliability of a % of budgetary spending's impact on r&d in these cases vs. hard dollar figures which are probably a bit easier. USA budgets are not my strength. I just want to see Mars happen ("and the other things").
- valuearb 9y agomore manned money for NASA is just more pork for Alabama.
- maxxxxx 9y agoI have been watching this since 2000. New president comes in, scraps old programs, declares new "vision". NASA does a few incoherent things and the whole thing restarts after a few years. It's pretty sad. I wish they would commit to something and actually finish it.
- Nanite 9y agoNASA programs typically span multiple decades and run in the billions of dollars, The political pendulum sways from one side to the other side every 4-8 years, every new administration is looking for ways to cut down taxes. It's amazing they get anything done imho.
- mikeash 9y agoI'm pretty sure the big reason Apollo was successful was that they had enough support to get the job done within that 8-year period. And, no surprise, Nixon's election heralded the end, although inertia kept it moving for a few years.
- ApolloFortyNine 9y agoThe Soviet Union pretty much quitting a year or so after the US landed on the moon is what did it.
- gozur88 9y agoBut the same people were in Congress, pretty much. The problem is the public lost interest in the moon. It's a big dusty rock with nothing much to recommend the billions we were spending to go there.
- Thaxll 9y agoThey should cut the defence budget. 611B/year it's a joke.
- Tepix 9y agoSeriously! "The U.S. military budget is higher than the nine other biggest military budgets in the world combined." It's insane. Btw for 2017 it's 773.5 billion USD.
- maze-le 9y agoTo get an idea of whan a mind-bogling number that is: Its about the amount of the GDP of the Netherlands. The whole economic output of a 1. World country with 17M inhabitants is slightly smaller than this budget. [0]: http://databank.worldbank.org/data/download/GDP.pdf http://databank.worldbank.org/data/download/GDP.pdf
- Tepix 9y agoIt's also Congress' fault because they insist on extremely expensive programs such as SLS and Orion. See https://arstechnica.com/science/2010/04/obama-resuscitates-orion-leaves-it-on-life-support/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2010/04/obama-resuscitates-o... and https://arstechnica.com/science/2009/10/nasa-panel-argues-for-flexible-path-mission-to-asteroids/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2009/10/nasa-panel-argues-fo... Quote: "The committee has concluded that NASA now has plans that don't reflect any sort of budgetary reality". This is back in 2010. More recommended reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System#Criticism
- maxxxxx 9y agoYeah. You can see it two ways: The SLS is an embarrassment or an admission by Congress that they don't care at all about spaceflight.
- gozur88 9y agoIt's absolutely the latter. Congress has never really cared about spaceflight - to your Congressman it's just an opportunity to bring federal dollars to his district, because that will get him reelected.
- digikata 9y agoBut why not make real plans and actually get something accomplished, then you can point to something truly concrete during re-election, and even bump the funding even more.
- maxxxxx 9y agoAnd if you want to push money to your districts make sure it's useful.
- gozur88 9y agoThe money you get from contractors for reelection is going to help more than anything you can actually point to. House seats are up every two years, and you don't accomplish much in aerospace in two years.
- Bartweiss 9y ago> I wish they would commit to something and actually finish it. I think this is pretty well hopeless at the moment. Major NASA projects have a timeline and cost operating on a 10+ year scale, but their budget changes annually and their priorities change with presidential election. Really the only way I can see things improving is if a president managed to stake out a task that couldn't be taken away from them by the next one. I'm not sure how you'd achieve that, either - budget it all up front and tell them to buy gold bars with the money they'll need later?
- maxxxxx 9y agoIt may work if during one administration they planned a program that is coherent and actually funded. All the initiatives over the last decade(s?) didn't make sense and were not even funded. In short, they didn't even try. For some reason the unmanned missions are managed much better. I do a lot of reading about them and all the decisions, trade offs and plans seem to be the result of careful and realistic planning.
- nfriedly 9y ago> For some reason the unmanned missions are managed much better. I think it's largely because they don't have so much safety-related red tape. Loosing a robot is not nearly as big of a deal as loosing a human.
- Robotbeat 9y agoYou can blame Congress. Congress insists on zip-code engineered space hardware whose primary mission is to ensure profit for contractors in their districts. The Administration, no matter who heads it, generally doesn't buy that approach, which is why you see the old programs scrapped (because they weren't going anywhere). (Putting the Earth-science thing aside for the moment.) It really is a mostly non-partisan divide, here. NASA has its own problems. A culture of risk averseness that is incompatible with new approaches like reusable rockets (although NASA will use them if they're proven by others). A culture of safety-uber-alles which is even more incompatible with expanding the capability of human space exploration in particular. But for all that, NASA still accomplishes great things. NASA has been critical for the success of SpaceX (around 2008 in particular) and even has helped Blue Origin considerably. NASA has completed the International Space Station (the largest spacecraft ever built by far) and kept it inhabited since 2000. No one under the age of 20 remembers a time when there wasn't at least a couple people aboard the Space Station. This program has built up a level of experience with long-term human spaceflight that, in aggregate, exceeds all other such programs. We have experience manufacturing in space and leveraging ISS for launching commercial satellites (Planet.com in particular), helping pave the way for the current wave of smallsat launchers. There are now half a dozen active satellites (half from NASA, but all with assistance from NASA) in orbit around Mars, two active on its surface, plus a probe around dwarf planet Ceres, Jupiter, Saturn, and another probe, New Horizons, which has visited Pluto for the first time and is now on its way to other destinations deeper in the solar system. This is all just scratching the surface of NASA's accomplishments in this time. (And next year are slated the launch of two commercial crew vehicles that NASA has been funding, SpaceX's Dragon 2 and Boeing's Starliner.)
- bdamm 9y agoAlso next year; James Webb Space Telescope.
- spiritomb 9y agosuch a waste of time and (other ppl's) money.
- snappyTertle 9y agoAgreed. There's more important things to spend public money on at the moment (like servicing the $20T in debt). Let private companies, like SpaceX, voluntarily spend R&D on it.
- JshWright 9y agoA not insignificant amount of SpaceX's funding (especially considering the critical time of that funding) is from NASA. They are also leveraging decades of NASA research in their engine and rocket design. I'm a huge fan of SpaceX, and think they (and other like them) represent the future, but they have a little ways to go before they are completely financing their own R&D (at the moment they're still spending a lot of public dollars).
- giobox 9y agoGiven the huge investments NASA has made in SpaceX to date, I'm not entirely convinced that the split between public and private money in this space is as black and white as you suggest. SpaceX arguably wouldn't be here today without NASA's cash. https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/04/without-nasa-there-would-be-no-spacex-and-its-brilliant-boat-landing/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/04/without-nasa-there-w...
- Tepix 9y agoNASA paid $1.6b and got 12 flights to the ISS for it. Rather cheap in my book. I'm not aware of any other "huge investments" ... there were some smaller ones, however. Looks like both NASA and SpaceX got a good deal.
- amelius 9y agoSounds a bit like the story of how Microsoft saved Apple, back in 1997. https://www.wired.com/2009/08/dayintech_0806/ https://www.wired.com/2009/08/dayintech_0806/
- veeragoni 9y agoBill Nye have a different argument. https://youtu.be/5ekUbzciyKg https://youtu.be/5ekUbzciyKg
- hueving 9y agoDoes Bill Nye have any relationship to NASA that would give him more knowledge than what is in this report?
- FiatLuxDave 9y agoBill Nye is CEO of the Planetary Society, which has a very close relationship with NASA.
- mcguire 9y ago"... put humans in orbit around Mars... ' "
- Tepix 9y agoNASA has enough funding, they are just spending it on SLS and Orion(¹). It appears that if they were to pay the "new space" companies to get them to Mars, the money would be enough. (¹) because Congress wants them to, because ... jobs (as if "new space" companies weren't creating jobs, too... even competitive ones)
- RugnirViking 9y agoHow do you propose we would get man to mars without a heavy lift rocket or manned capsules? EDIT: the previous comment used to say that SLS and Orion was a 'waste of money'. I accept that spaceX proposals among others are cheaper, however NASA, the US government, and many scientists also have a vested interest in keeping at least some orbital capability in the public sphere, even if only for military reasons
- Tepix 9y agoUse Falcon Heavy by SpaceX or New Glenn by Blue Origin for a fraction of the cost of SLS. Orion may be worth keeping. It is limited to 4 astronauts which is probably too small a crew for a 2.5 year Mars mission. I do think that it could be built much cheaper, however.
- DiThi 9y agoI don't think FH is enough for manned mars missions. It has enough delta V to land there but not to come back.
- bravelystunning 9y agothey admitted to something that is publicly available to anyone who cares to look? stunning and brave
- FiatLuxDave 9y agoI had a conversation a few years ago with Buzz Aldrin. He was talking about his idea for a Mars Cycler which would travel continuously between Earth and Mars. I told him that I thought it was a great idea (especially as it would be investing in 'permanent' space infrastructure instead of a single-shot mission) but that I thought it was unlikely that the government would allocate enough resources to build it. He seemed very disappointed with me, as if by making a realistic assessment of today's politics that I was voting in that way. I'm all for spending money in Chryse Planitia instead of Helmand province. So is almost everyone I know. But I feel like the chance of the US government actually funding something serious in space is pretty much nil. And I have no idea how to go about changing that.
- stevoo 9y agoCreating interplanetary projects like the one above are extemely expensive. As the ISS showed is that costed !150 billion USD to construct making massive leaps into space should not be burden to a single country. With that the funding would be less, and the return even smaller. I believe a global space agency should be formed where each country can allocate the money they wish and set goals by panels to the direction that they wish to proceed. ( very hard i can assume ). That will ease the financial burden of countries and create project on a global scale that will unite the world instead of finding new reasons be patriotic about.
- philipov 9y ago> That will ease the financial burden of countries and create project on a global scale that will unite the world instead of finding new reasons be patriotic about. Which is the opposite of what world leaders actually want. Jingoism is the name of the game right now.
- specializeded 9y agoOpposite of what lots of us want too, kumbaya circles didn’t fuel the space race!
- 9y ago
- ninguem2 9y agoFrom the body of the article, it seems that landing humans on Mars is not the problem. It's bringing them back.
- indigo0086 9y agoAnd it should never have the funding. Let the private sector invest in that venture.
- Sir_Cmpwn 9y agoThe private sector can't afford it, either. We need both sectors to work together.
- ncallaway 9y agoThe private sector can only make significant moves in this area (at the moment) with investments and funding from NASA. NASA has been a massive customer / subsidizer for entrants in the new space arena. I'm a huge fan of private sector space innovation, but having a large and well-funded public entity helps make that innovation possible. Advocating blanket defunding of NASA would put the private space sector into jeopardy.
- indigo0086 9y agoNASA is made up of people, they can move freely. I just don't beleive in blind forced investment in a stagnant organization.
- euyyn 9y ago> NASA is made up of people, they can move freely. I don't understand what point are you trying to make with this.
- skinnymuch 9y agoWhen NASA funds private sector projects, the people aren't the funding, the money is. Maybe I'm misunderstanding your point. I don't get what you're saying.
- indigo0086 9y agoI quickly and poorly tried to make a point, so let me just state what I envision. NASA is one giant government entity bogged down by bureaucracy like any other govt org. The private sector can grow, and become competitive for the greatest minds, more efficient tech, and more networked understanding of what is needed to accomplish this mission. Each company will do what is in the best interest of their company and invest as such. NASA will take the money out of our pockets, dump it in these projects, and will waste a certain amount, and may not even come out with tech as effective as had the private sector had done it. The reason I trust the private sector over NASA is that NASA is a "too big to fail" org. It can lull for a few decades but because it's a federal org, if a new need arises they'll try to solve it by dumping money into it. I mean I'm sure persistence is a great quality on an individual level, but when our dollars are at stake, I'd at least like to be ensured that the entire process up until the final product is created is invested privately as it puts pressure on a smaller scale. If they fail at doing it then we waisted the dollars that could have been spent elsewhere more effectively, while a private company will be able to re-structure, support and collaborate with others with their knowledge. I just don't have this blind trust that dumping money into NASA will produce a result, let alone the best one. The people at nasa if they are smart can freely go to a company that can do it better without the government waste or abuse, NASA is merely a department with people, they're not shackled to their desks and must only use their minds on American Space Ventures.
- jankotek 9y agoBetter science could be done with automated machines. We could explore entire solar system for a price of single mission.
- ceejayoz 9y agoAs automation and robotics advances, I'm sure that'll be true. Right now, if you compare something like Curiosity against a geologist with a shovel and access to a small lab, the geologist's gonna win.
- mcguire 9y agoKeeping a geologist alive on the way and while there, and returning them, are a little expensive, though.
- Kazamai 9y agoI don't see the purpose of landing people on Mars. Just to say, "we did it". Wouldn't it be a much more rewarding goal to research and execute systems that could send humans one way to planets in our galaxy. Even seeding organisms on other planets in the hope that they evolve into intelligent life.
- gallerdude 9y agoMost people see Mars as great potential for a "back-up" for the human race. If something catastrophic happens on earth, humanity will continue.
- RugnirViking 9y ago'Wouldn't it be a much more rewarding goal to research and execute systems that could send humans one way to planets in our galaxy' Presumably a precursor to this is creating ships that can get to planets within our solar system, for example mars. This is just one step in a long line of potential goals as we learn what's possible
- CydeWeys 9y agoI don't see much purpose in the Wright brothers' airplane either, but it was a necessary intermediate step between not being able to fly and today's modern commercial jetliners. In space travel as in software engineering, you need incremental progress.
- gorkonsine 9y agoVery soon after the Wrights demonstrated their warped-wing technology worked, they were already trying to sell planes to the military. It didn't take long at all for people to figure out they could use airplanes for surveillance and bombing. There's no such obvious commercial use to going to Mars. If you want resources, they're much more easily available in nearby asteroids.
- thearn4 9y agoI'm a bigger fan of putting a semi-permanent ISS 2.0 on the surface of the moon vs. boots on Mars. I don't work directly in exploration systems, but I'm not the only one at NASA who feels this way. But more than anything I think we and the other executive agencies would take any strong commitment on an exploration and human spaceflight direction from congress that survives across presidential administrations over any specific technical consideration. I.e. we're waiting for strong elected leadership.
- computerex 9y agoI am a fan of that too, but I don't know how practical it is. What would we get out of having a manned station around the moon? It's a desolate piece of rock with little to no activity in the core. It's dead by all means, and the probes we have in orbit + instrumentation that was left by Apollo and the tons of moon rock we brought back I think already gave us an abundant amount of data to work with. But alas, I am a computer programmer and that's just what I think. I could very well be wrong and there could be a lot of value in having a manned lunar station.
- ceejayoz 9y agoThe Moon has water ice in spots (and its low gravity and lack of atmosphere make that pretty easy to get into orbit) that could potentially be used to stock up a refueling depot for exploration further out in the system.
- c22 9y agoYou could build a telescope there. Also managing infrastructure, survival, and resupply would grant loads of experience applicable to habitating Mars with cheaper fuel costs and a slightly easier abort option should something go wrong.
- thearn4 9y agoI think that it would be a good place to develop ISRU capability, to enable us to do further exploration targets in the future.
- 9y ago
- BlackjackCF 9y agoIs it possible for NASA to Kickstart this? I'd throw money at them.
- paulcole 9y agoGoal: Land humans on Mars. Stretch Goal: Bring them back!
- 0xffff2 9y agoYou jest, but if I ever get the opportunity I will take a one-way trip to Mars without hesitation.
- nobleach 9y agoI don't doubt your dedication.. I just try to imagine a week later after the initial "I'm standing on MARS!!!" wears off... ok... so... there's nothing here...
- 0xffff2 9y agoOk, fair point. There would obviously need to be a mission plan that involved a bit more than "go to Mars", but I think even thoroughly monitoring my slow death by radiation over the course of a few months would be sufficiently scientifically worthwhile that, along with the sheer fact of going to another planet, for me to volunteer.
- qbrass 9y agoIt's not worth it to science to justify the cost of sending you.
- Tepix 9y agoA better stretch goal would be to build a permanent presence there.
- 0xffff2 9y ago
- habosa 9y agoIn many science fiction books we assume that if an alien planet ever got a whiff of us they'd quickly board their space ships and come see us. It's somewhat comforting to think the alien planet could also be in a perpetual bureaucratic budget crisis and they've dismantled their space program to make more room for tax cuts. Politics could save us from an alien invasion!
- tempay 9y agoThat would be nice, it's a shame it could just as easily result in an increase of military spending to fund a space program to come invade.
- ComodoHacker 9y agoLet me anthropomorphically assume there will always be a closer target to spend excess planetary resources on.
- ethbro 9y agoYes, but the closer target doesn't look alien. How often do countries go to war with people who are similar to them? Now how often with people who are the other? (Whatever definition fits)
- ItsDeathball 9y agoWell, 1930s Germans were pretty similar to Poles and the Dutch, and even more similar to German Jews. Indians and Pakistanis are also not exactly space aliens to each other, nor are Iraqis and Iranians, Russians and Ukrainians, or Syrians and other Syrians. I'd say the historical rule for warfare is that the belligerents are so similar that tiny differences seem irreconcilable. Proximity and competition for resources also seem more important that otherness.
- gorkonsine 9y agoExactly. I can't think of many wars where the belligerents were really different from each other. American Civil War: many were actual relatives! ("brother vs. brother") WWI: English are descended from Germanic tribes, French are closely related to Germans too. WWII: Same as WWI mainly; Italians aren't very different from French/English/Americans. Americans/Japanese were a pretty big difference though. But Japanese/Chinese isn't that big a difference, relative to non-easterners. The people who promote wars frequently try to cast the enemy as alien, in order to rile up support for the war and to get soldiers to participate.
- Robotbeat 9y agoThe main thing NASA needs to land people on Mars (or the Moon for that matter) is a lander. NASA does not have one, nor is one being funded. All the other details for Mars can be done with variants of what already exists or will fly shortly (commercial crew vehicles or even Soyuz, ISS modules for a transfer craft, launch vehicles like the EELVs used by the military or Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy, in-orbit docking and propellant transfer which is commonly used on the Space Station, etc). If you see a lander being developed and tested, then you know you have a serious human space exploration program. NASA has sufficient funding for accomplishing a human Mars landing. But not the political freedom to direct that funding where it's most critical (i.e. a lander). SpaceX, on the other hand, is developing this technology for a lander. Their reuse technology for Falcon 9 proved for the first time the feasibility of supersonic retropropulsion, a CRITICAL technology needed for a human-scale Mars lander. A vertically landing reusable upper stage, which SpaceX intends to develop next (after block 5 Falcon 9) as part of their Mars rocket plans, is essentially a Mars lander prototype. SpaceX, even though they have less funding and have to rely on funding from commercial launches (as well as capital used for developing commercially viable hardware, like the constellation) to develop their Mars lander, is thus on a better and surer path to Mars than NASA. This is SpaceX's Mars architecture in a nutshell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qo78R_yYFA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qo78R_yYFA In order to pay for it, they will develop a smaller (but still tremendously huge) and more economical version of the rocket shown in that video to replace Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy. They will use it to launch and maintain their 12,000 satellite megaconstellation (thousands of satellites per year), something that would BARELY be feasible with their partially reusable Falcon architecture (but not feasible with expendable rockets) but which fits nicely and economically into the capability of their subscale Mars rocket. This way, they can leverage capital they'll raise for their megaconstellation to build the primary pieces of their human Mars transportation architecture.
- beisner 9y agoLander aside, the biggest limiting factor is getting astronauts back from Mars! We already know how to get things there, and I think the lander issue is relatively easy to solve, but getting all the equipment and -- most importantly -- fuel for the return flight is the hardest problem to solve economically. Of course we could send like, 12 missions to deliver all the required components, but coordinating the assembly of a rocket on Mars is no walk in the park.
- shams93 9y agoLanding humans on other planets is the wrong way to go, at least at this stage of technological development. You combine tele-present robots with upcoming quantum teleportation of photons and you have instant communication between the drone on Mars and the human operator on Earth. Its going to cost even more to terraform Mars to make it even remotely do-able for human habitation.
- clxsi 9y agoI don't think we've proven that quantum mechanics will allow for FTL information transmission.
- coss 9y agoI like to imagine a world where tax payers can choose where they wish to allocate their taxes.
- squarefoot 9y agoIf the bean counters at NASA read "Buy Jupiter!" by Isaac Asimov they'd already have the solution at hand. Ok, building flying billboards is still a bit hard, but advertising is the point. What about sending probes and ships named after the highest bidder name/company? Of course they would have also a name for the scientific community and those of us who would never ever accept saying "Coca Cola has landed on Mars".
- dsfyu404ed 9y agoJust doing sponsors like in auto racing would go a long ways. "Mobile 1 the official grease of $a_bearing_on_mars!!!!" is pretty damn good advertising.
- Asdfbla 9y agoWhile this would certainly be a blow for science in general, I don't understand why people are so enamoured with human space travel and think it's a realistic avenue for humanity to get out of the responsibility we have for Earth (there's the strange defeatist sentiment on the internet that we have to leave this planet in the foreseeable future). Fact is, the laws of physics probably dictate that we won't ever leave the solar system and in our solar system there's not much we can work with to make the other planets habitable. It's comparatively soooo much easier to simply make life sustainable on Earth and then figure out space travel in the thousands/millions of years we have left until some external disaster (asteroid, exploding sun, whatever) threatens us. In the meantime, we can explore space efficiently with robots.
- Tepix 9y agoYou don't know how much time we have left before desaster strikes. Also, don't take it for granted that humanity has enough resources to build a colony on another planet in the far future. Resources are only getting more scarce. Technology doesn't advance by itself. It's smarter to start right now instead of waiting.
- hildaman 9y agoIf NASA doesn't have the funding for landing humans on Mars, this isn't "news" to them. This is whole article is actually designed to get attention at a time when the CJS (Commerce Justice and Sciences) appropriations bill is being marked up[1]. The CJS subcommittee (of the House and Senate Appropriations committee) decided how NASA money is spent. It is no surprise that articles like this are popping up - at literally the same time as CJS Appropriations bill is being marked up. The way things work, is at times like this, even if NASA had the money to go to Mars, they would never admit to it - because appropriators might start cutting (do more with less... yada yada yada...) I say this as a big fan of science and space exploration, but thought that fellow HN'ers might appreciate a look behind the curtain to better understand what is really going on here. [1] https://appropriations.house.gov/calendar/eventsingle.aspx?EventID=394933 https://appropriations.house.gov/calendar/eventsingle.aspx?E...
- kilroy123 9y agoOf course, they don't have the money. They literally need up to 100 billion UDS to make it happen. Alternatively, partner with China and a few other countries. We could wait until private enterprises can get us there but that probably wouldn't be a far a long time. http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/NASA-finally-talks-Mars-budget-and-it-s-not-6562388.php http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/a...
- princetontiger 9y agoLast I checked, Bolden/NASA has spent time gallivanting around the world trying to be inclusive (Middle East, Asia, Africa, etc.). NASA is a larger allegory for the USA. This entire country is toast in 100 years. It's similar to the last Spanish galleons leaving Cordoba. In 2011, we have a similar Galleon Moment. STS-135 will end up being the flight from NASA, ever. To digest this fact makes me extremely sad. There is a reason that the UK did not have a space program, but lead the exploration of the West in the 1800s. Britons had intestinal fortitude during the Victorian era, and this same urge moved to Americans after WW2.
- beachbum8029 9y agoShouldn't we be researching ways to terraform Mars from afar rather than ship a couple humans to go live in the middle of red rocks for a few decades and then die?
- Tepix 9y agoThat's even more expensive.
- MightyPowerful 9y agoCome on Trump! Are you a man or what? Are you really going to allow other countries to beat us in yet another thing? Get these guys the funding we need to make America great again!
- Navigator 9y agoConsidering NASA costs next to nothing (about 0.5% of the US govt's total budget), and the studies I've seen referenced show its return on investment to be about $10 for every $1 used (granted, it's a difficult figure to calculate, but even if assuming a huge error margin that's still great ROI), it's no wonder you chose to post that anonymously.
- Tepix 9y agoA $10 return for $1 spent sounds nice. As far as SLS is concerned, the numbers are probably not that great: https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/03/new-report-nasa-spends-72-cents-of-every-sls-dollar-on-overhead-costs/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/03/new-report-nasa-spen...
- louithethrid 9y agoNSA admits it does have the funding to land humans on Mars - but lacks the A to go there
- valuearb 9y agoIf NASA built their manned space program around the SpaceX Falcon Heavy and Blue Origin New Glenn (and future uprated versions of both), they could start launching crewed vehicles into deep space next year at less than 1/10 the cost of the SLS that won't be launching humans for at least 4 years. It's not just that they have been held hostage by congress to build the SLS as a pork delivery service. They've also become risk averse. The Saturn V was built with "all up" testing, rushed to testing a completed rocket instead of focusing on component testing. They only flew two Saturn V unmanned missions before they launched one with men on it. Today, SpaceX has launched the Falcon 9 over 20 times, and has a capsule with the safest abort mode ever, and NASA still hasn't man-rated it. NASA could take a fraction of the money they are spending on the SLS, and start doing monthly deep space launches by the end of next year. They could use 140,000 lb capacity Falcon Heavies and Dragon Capsules to do lunar missions. They could put astronauts back on the moon, build a constantly manned moon base, develop and test rovers and other equipment they want to use on mars. Astronauts would be lined up to volunteer, even if the Falcon Heavy only has unmanned two test flights. They are far more rational judges of what the safety levels should be than the PR department at NASA. Then within a few more years, NASA could shift to doing Mars missions when SpaceX and Blue Origin or anyone else can start giving them 300,000+ lb cargo capacity launches for less than $1,000/lb. At that price again they could average a dozen or two dozen launches a year. All that launch capacity would enable them to launch a group of Aldrin Cyclers to provide regular transport to mars and back with heavy radiation shielding, supply storage and room for big crews. Other robot launches can pre-cache supplies, equipment and return fuel on Mars. But they can never do it using the SLS path. It's going to start off costing near $20,000 per lb for LEO access, and even the later versions will still cost over $10,000 per lb. That just makes Mars missions almost economically impossible. The SLS could only do an Apollo style program, where a decade from now they launch a handful of all-in-one missions (two orbiters, a couple that land) before congress wilts under the enormous costs.
- tdsamardzhiev 9y agoNo, they just said they can't give you a date. When did ArsTechnica start abusing clickbait titles?