FYI... There's some good wisdom in this, it deserves attention.

Mars Society Statement on Bush Space Initiative
January 24, 2004

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 ú 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 website at
www.marssociety.org

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