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HARMS: US SPACE PROGRAM IS IN STAGNATION



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HARMS: US SPACE PROGRAM IS IN STAGNATION
NASA IS AIMLESS, PREVENTING A MARS MISSION-Kluger '00

[Jeffrey; WILL WE LIVE ON MARS?; Time; 10 April 2000; page 60]


Even for a supposedly spacefaring people, dreaming of Mars is dreaming big. Back when Apollo astronauts were routinely bunny-hopping on the nearby moon, Mars seemed like an obvious next goal. But during the past 25 years, the best we've been able to muster has been a few unmanned Martian probes. After the two most recent ones famously flamed out, and after last week's scathing report blaming nasa mismanagement for the failures, even that seems beyond us.
ALL ATTEMPTS TO MAKE NASA DESTINATION-DRIVEN ARE THWARTED BY EFFORTS FOR THE SHUTTLE AND ISS INSTEAD-Zubrin '09

[Robert; President of the Mars Society; The moon–mars initiative: Making the vision real; Futures; October 2009; page 541]


NASA's attempt to become a destination-driven space agency is being placed on hold, and thus at severe risk, because the funds needed to get it up and running are being diverted to Shuttle and Station instead. This should not be. We need to admit that the ISS is a mistake, and that expenditures on it do not support reaching the goals that we have for the space program. Shuttle flights to ISS thus cannot be justified either. In reality, the only future Shuttle flight that can be honestly justified is that to upgrade and repair the Hubble Space Telescope, because that stands on its own merits as a program of world-historic scientific value.
MUST ABANDON THE SHUTTLE MODE THINKING TO MAKE MARS POSSIBLE-Zubrin '09

[Robert; President of the Mars Society; The moon–mars initiative: Making the vision real; Futures; October 2009; page 541]


The key to success come from rejecting the policy of continued stagnation represented by senile Shuttle Mode thinking, and returning to the destination-driven Apollo Mode method of planned operation that allowed the space agency to perform so brilliantly during its youth. In addition, we must take a lesson from our own pioneer past and from adopt a “travel light and live off the land” mission strategy similar to that which has well-served terrestrial explorers for centuries. The plan to explore the Red Planet in this way is known as Mars Direct. Here's how it could be accomplished.
NASA IS AIMLESSLY SPENDING MONEY-Zubrin ‘11

[Robert; President of the Mars Society; The Great PJ Media Space Debate; Pajamas Media; 22 May 2011; http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-great-pj-media-space-debate/; retrieved 18 July 2011]


It has been a year since President Barack Obama announced his new space policy. Since that time, NASA has spent something on the order of ten billion dollars on human spaceflight in order to accomplish nothing. This is not surprising. There were no plans to accomplish anything. Nor, if the plan remains in place, will anything be accomplished by 2020, after the expenditure of a further 100 billion dollars. The plan requires zero accomplishment, it aims for zero accomplishment, and it will deliver zero accomplishment.

SHUTTLE MODE WILL NOT PUSH OUR PROGRAM IN ANY SORT OF MEANINGFUL WAY-Zubrin '09

[Robert; President of the Mars Society; The moon–mars initiative: Making the vision real; Futures; October 2009; page 541]


But the blame for this multi-decadal program of waste cannot be placed on NASA leaders alone, some of whom have attempted to rectify the situation. Rather, the political class must also accept major responsibility.

Consider the following. During the same week in September 2003 that House members were roasting former Administrator O’Keefe for his unfortunate advocacy of a destination-free NASA, a Senate committee issued a report saying that a top priority for the space agency was to develop a replacement Space Shuttle system. Did any of the Senators who supported this report explain why? Why do we need another Shuttle system? To keep doing what we are doing now? Is that what we actually want to do?

Is our primary aim to keep sending astronauts on joyrides in low Earth orbit? In that case, a second generation Shuttle might be worth building. But if we want to send humans to the Moon or Mars, we need make that decision, and then design and build a hardware set that is appropriate to actually accomplish those goals.

Advocates of the Shuttle Mode claim that by avoiding the selection of a destination they are developing the technologies that will allow us to go anywhere, anytime. That just is not true. The Shuttle Mode will never get us anywhere at all. The Apollo Mode got us to the Moon, and it can get us back, or take us to Mars. But leadership is required.


WITHOUT A GOAL LIKE MARS, WESTERN CIVILIZATION FACES THE RISK OF TECHNOLOGICAL STAGNATION-Wilson '98

[Jim; Bringing Life To Mars; Popular Mechanics; November 1998; page 30]


"In the future there will be two major sources of energy," predicts would-be Martian Edward B. Kiker, "nuclear power and Robert Zubrin." Zubrin is an astronautical engineer whom Kiker and 750 other founding members of the Mars Society believe has the right stuff to lead them to the red planet. Watching Zubrin expend some of that energy as he outlines his Mars Direct plan at the society's founding meeting, it is easy to catch their enthusiasm.

Why Mars? "The rate of progress within our society has been decreasing, and at an alarming rate," says Zubrin. "The technological innovations from 1963 to the present are insignificant. Without the opening of a new frontier on Mars, continued Western Civilization faces the risk of technological stagnation."


ONLY THING BETWEEN US AND A MARS MISSION IS THE POLITICAL DECISION TO GO-Portree '97

[David S.F.; The new Martian chronicles; Astronomy; August 1997; page 32]


Until they get the nod, the Mars partisans have to find ways to keep busy. Research teams from NASA and the Mars Society (a private advocacy group) are conducting expeditions to Devon Island in the Canadian Arctic--a place about as similar to the freeze-dried Martian wasteland as you're likely to find anywhere on Earth--to practice survival skills and exploration techniques. Teams at the Johnson Space Center are refining their mission scenarios and crunching their numbers to keep the costs as low as possible. "For now," says Zubrin, "the only thing between us and Mars is a political decision to go." That kind of hurdle, of course, is often the highest of all.
CURRENT MINDSET IS A RECIPE FOR NO EXPLORATION-Zubrin ‘11

[Robert; President of the Mars Society; The Great PJ Media Space Debate; Pajamas Media; 22 May 2011; http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-great-pj-media-space-debate/; retrieved 18 July 2011]


It is clear that a mission-driven space program should be more optimal for actually accomplishing missions, but why should it be so much better at technology development than one that allegedly purports to be technology-driven? The reason is, that in the absence of a defining plan which identifies the required technologies, the “technology-driven” plan actually becomes a constituency-driven plan, with various communities lobbying NASA HQ or Congress for funding their own pet projects. These are not necessarily relevant, don’t fit together, and thus merely constitute a random set of time and money wasters that don’t enable us to go anywhere.

HARMS: NASA MINDSET STUCK IN COMPLEX, WASTEFUL MISSIONS


IN SHUTTLE MODE, MONEY IS SPENT IN A USELESSLY INEFFICIENT WAY-Zubrin '09

[Robert; President of the Mars Society; The moon–mars initiative: Making the vision real; Futures; October 2009; page 541]


Comparing these two records, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that that NASA's productivity in both missions accomplished and technology development during its Apollo Mode was at least ten times greater than under the current Shuttle Mode.

The Shuttle Mode is the expenditure of large sums of money without direction by strategic purpose. That is why it is hopelessly inefficient. It is remarkable that the leader of any technical organization would tolerate such a senile mode of operation, but in the absence of course-setting mandate, Shuttle-era NASA administrators have come to accept it. Indeed, during his first 2 years in office, Administrator Sean O’Keefe explicitly endorsed this state of affairs, repeatedly rebutting critics by proclaiming “NASA should not be destination-driven.”


THE COMPLEXITY OF PREVIOUSLY CONSIDERED MARS PLANS HAS STOPPED NASA FROM CONSIDERING THEM-Salotti '11

[Jean Marc; Professor of Computer Science, Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Cognitique, Institut Polytechnique de Bordeaux; Simplified scenario for manned Mars missions; Acta Astronautica; September-October 2011; page 266]


A critical point of manned missions to Mars is the total payload that has to be sent to the planet [16]. Its impact on complexity, risks and cost is very high. In the last Design Reference Architecture (DRA) for manned missions to Mars from NASA, it is suggested that at least seven launches of an Ares V class launcher are required to assemble different rockets in LEO (Low Earth Orbit) and send them to Mars [9]. While many aspects of the architecture have been clearly justified, the organization as a whole seems very complex. It probably explains why no manned mission is currently planned by NASA.
MARS DOESN'T OFFICIAL FUND RESEARCH ON HUMAN SPACEFLIGHT TO MARS-Pendick '09

[Daniel; Next step MARS?; Astronomy; August 2009; page 30]


Right now, NASA does not officially fund research on human spaceflight to Mars. But scientists and engineers within and outside the agency continue to explore the challenge of martian EDL. It's a terrific test case for their students, and it may have applications for coming robotic missions to the Red Planet. The basic challenge of EDL is to slow down from hypersonic speed to a standstill in less than 10 minutes. Failing in this task could end with the payload at the bottom of a new crater on the martian surface.
NASA COMMITTED TO SPACE NUCLEAR POWER INITIATIVES TO SUPPORT INCREMENTAL MISSIONS-Morring '02

[Frank, Jr.; Mars Is The Destination; Aviation Week & Space Technology; 16 December 2002; page 59]


Lawmakers in both houses have already voted to fund NASA's space nuclear power initiative, a direct offshoot of the four-year-old NEXT planning process. Administrator Sean O'Keefe picked up the space nuke plan as soon as he showed up at NASA almost a year ago, and plugged it right into the agency's Fiscal 2003 budget request. Final action is due in January, when lawmakers return to take up the unfinished business of the 107th Congress, but the deal is done.

O'Keefe sometimes leaves his sincerity open to question, as when he habitually starts his response to some congressional zinger with the words “thank you for that question, senator.” But he does go out of his way to insist the space nuclear power initiative is intended for civil space, and is not a backdoor way to get some more taxpayer money over to his pals at the Pentagon to use on space-based radars and directed-energy weapons.


HARMS: LOSING FOCUS ON MARS HURTS US SPACE CREDIBILITY


ABANDONING THE CONSTELLATION PROJECT MEANS LOSING THE SPACE LEADERSHIP RACE TO OTHER NATIONS-Spotts '10

[Pete; Obama NASA plan: Mars shot as next generation's Apollo mission; The Christian Science Monitor; 15 April 2010; http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0415/Obama-NASA-plan-Mars-shot-as-next-generation-s-Apollo-mission; retrieved 15 June 2011]


Rep. Rob Bishop (R) of Utah, where Alliant Techsystems is a prime contractor for the Ares 1 rocket NASA was building under the Constellation program, accused the administration "of relinquishing our position as the global leader in space and missile defense to Russia, China, and India."
UNITED STATES LEADERSHIP IMPORTANT IN A MARS MISSION TO COMPETE WITH THE CHINESE SPACE PROGRAM-Coile '04

[Zachary; Budgeteers bushwhack president's Mars plan; They say the U.S. can't afford new space ventures; San Francisco Chronicle; 14 January 2004; page A15]


Some proponents of Bush's plan said the United States must continue to push the envelope of space exploration to avoid falling behind other nations that are now developing their own space programs, particularly China.

"The Chinese have just recently put a man in space, and they have a goal to go to the surface of the moon within five years, or to go to at least an orbit of the moon within five years," Rep. Nicholas Lampson, a Houston Democrat, whose district includes the Johnson Space Center, said in a recent radio interview. "That's a fairly fast goal. And I hope that we are not a nation that gets to sit back and say, 'Ah, been there, done that.' Let's say, 'We're better than that, we can be there. And why don't you come and join us?' "


CURRENT PLANS WILL LEAVE THE UNITED STATES WITHOUT LEADERSHIP IN SPACE EXPLORATION-Zubrin ‘11

[Robert; President of the Mars Society; The Great PJ Media Space Debate; Pajamas Media; 22 May 2011; http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-great-pj-media-space-debate/; retrieved 18 July 2011]


The American space program is a unique enterprise in the history of the human race. It is the ornament of our age, and one of the things for which our time will be most highly regarded. Future ages will remember us, because this is when we first set sail for other worlds. Up until now, America has been leading the way. The United States comprises 4 percent of the world’s population, yet has been responsible for about 90 percent of the successful probes and 100 percent of the human expeditions beyond Earth orbit. In doing so, we have made a terrific demonstration of the power of freedom and creativity to transcend all limits to human aspirations.

This is an extraordinary achievement, accomplished through the ingenuity, courage, and commitment of a broad technical community with NASA at its helm. To impose a scheme to lobotomize the helmsman and leave this great venture rudderless, adrift, and wandering towards wreck is not just a mistake, it is a crime – a crime against America, against science, and the pioneer spirit itself. Every patriot needs to reject this plan.

The American people want and deserve a space program that really is going somewhere. It is time set that goal and commit to it. Humans to Mars.

MARS MISSION PUSHES PEACEFUL, COOPERATIVE EXPLORATION OF SPACE-Rampelotto ‘11

[Pabulo Henrique, Department of Biology, Federal University of Santa Maria (UFSM), Brazil; Why Send Humans to Mars? Looking Beyond Science; The Journal of Cosmology, 2011, http://journalofcosmology.com/Mars151.html; retrieved 29 July 2011]


Furthermore, the benefits of close cooperation among countries in space exploration have been made clear on numerous missions. International crews have been aboard the Space Shuttle many times, and the Mir Space Station has hosted space explorers from many nations. After the realization of the International Space Station, human exploratory missions to Mars are widely considered as the next step of peaceful cooperation in space on a global scale. Successful international partnerships to the human exploration of the red planet will benefit each country involved since these cooperation approaches enrich the scientific and technological character of the initiative, allow access to foreign facilities and capabilities, help share the cost and promote national scientific, technological and industrial capabilities. For these reasons, it has the unique potential to be a unifying endeavor that can provide the entire world with the opportunity for mutual achievement and security through shared commitment to a challenging enterprise.
IF WE WAIT ON MARS, ANOTHER COUNTRY WILL GO INSTEAD AND REAP THE MASSIVE TECHNOLOGY BENEFIT-McLane ‘10

[James C.; Associate Fellow in the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics; The Space Review; 1 June 2010; http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1635/1; retrieved 25 July 2011]


If America discards its hard-won preeminence in human spaceflight, another nation is likely to appreciate the opportunity, take the challenge, go to Mars, and become the new world leader.

Some suggest we should wait for better technology to arrive so we can make a human trip to Mars safer. How very silly! What if Columbus had decided not to travel across the Atlantic until he could go on a steamship? Ironically, the risk of human death for a manned Mars landing is probably in the same order of magnitude as the danger Columbus faced 500 years ago. Today, the knowledge that’s needed to put a hero on Mars either exists right now, or is close at hand. Such a voyage and the founding of an outpost will be very difficult and, in fact, it is just barely possible. That’s one of the exciting attractions of the effort.

The aerospace industry must get behind this concept before it is too late. A permanent human presence on Mars would generate so much new work that the profits would seem as if the fat years of the Cold War had returned. But, this time, instead of building secret weapons that bring us closer to our own destruction, we would work together to expand humanity out into the solar system where we naturally belong.

Either we pursue this effort now and reap enormous benefits, or discouraging scenarios will develop. Our current staff of expert practitioners will disperse, thus squandering the billions of dollars the US has spent over the past 50 years becoming the world leader in human space flight. If we wait a decade or two, the ever-increasing capability of smart robots could well mean that humans will never go to live on another planet. If humanity ceases to dare to explore and move out into a new wilderness, we lose a thing that makes us special and different from all other life. If America discards its hard-won preeminence in human spaceflight, another nation is likely to appreciate the opportunity, take the challenge, go to Mars, and become the new world leader. I hope we do not have to watch that happen.


INHERENCY: CURRENT NASA MARS VISIONS ARE TOO COMPLEX AND EXPENSIVE
NATION WON'T SUPPORT EXTRAVAGANT EXPENDITURES FOR THE MARS MISSION IN LIGHT OF DEFICIT PROBLEMS-USA Today '04

[Astronomical venture; USA Today; 12 January 2004; page 12A]


Yet President Bush seems oblivious to the budget's woes. This week, he plans to announce a new space mission that is as extravagant as it is daring. His proposed manned mission to Mars and permanent base on the moon evoke President Kennedy's stirring -- and ultimately successful -- call 43 years ago to put a man on the moon.

In 1961, however, the nation was willing, even eager, to spend fortunes in a race with the Soviet Union that had as much to do with military security as space exploration. While the nation's space ambitions remain important today, so too are its down-to-earth needs to rein in a ballooning deficit.


COMMITMENT POLITICALLY IS THE KEY FACTOR STOPPING A PROGRAM LIKE MARS DIRECT FROM HAPPENING-Zubrin '96

[Robert; President of the Mars Society; Mars on a shoestring; November/December 1996; page 20]


Now it's time to come back to earth. The greatest obstacle to gaining a foothold on Mars won't be found in the engineering details of a human Mars mission. It won't be found in the rigors of the journey or the long days exploring a new world. It won't be found on Mars. The greatest obstacle to sending humans to Mars resides here on our home planet in the guise of earthly politics. How can we raise the money needed to get the program off the ground?
COST OF A MARS MISSION MEAN THERE IS NO POLITICAL WILL FOR IT-Venezia and Harrison '04

[Todd and Bridget; MANNED JOURNEY FACES MISSION IMPOSSIBILITIES; THe New York Post; 3 March 2004; page 9]


And despite Bush's call for a mission, the political will is not there, he said.

"It's cost. It's resources. We have a deficit approaching a couple of trillion dollars. It takes money away from other projects . . . and there's no promise of extra money to pay for this."

Experts put the price tag on a manned Mars mission at roughly $100 billion dollars - that's more than three times the Department of Homeland Security's 2005 budget and a quarter of the defense budget.
NASA MARS PROGRAMS ARE RIDDLED WITH COST OVERRUNS WHICH BECOME TOO BIG TO CANCEL-Vergano '08

[Dan; Technical glitches force delay of Mars mission; USA Today; 5 December 2008; page 2A]


MSL is "a marvelous mission, it will do wonderful things. But at what cost?" said Keith Cowing, editor of the NASA Watch website. "And how often do we have to watch cost overruns on these NASA missions where projects get too big to cancel?"

CURRENT MARS DESIGN REFERENCE MISSION IS MUCH MORE EXPENSIVE THAN MARS DIRECT-Pendick '09

[Daniel; Next step MARS?; Astronomy; August 2009; page 30]


NASA followed Zubrin's lead with its Design Reference Mission (DRM), drawn up in the 1990s by scientists and engineers at Johnson Space Center. The DRM, like Mars Direct, is not a detailed set of spacecraft designs and procedures. NASA bills it as a general framework for developing, comparing, and improving architectures for a future Mars mission.

The DRM adopts Mars Direct's split-mission strategy and the "live off the land" philosophy that uses ISRU technology to manufacture propellent. An important difference, however, is that NASA's plan separates the return trip into two legs. The crew would blast off from the martian surface in a Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) and then transfer to a waiting interplanetary vehicle placed in orbit by a previous cargo flight.

In a 1998 update to the DRM, NASA planners abandoned the direct-to-Mars launch approach, opting for a strategy sometimes called Mars Semi-Direct. Doing so would eliminate the need to develop an expensive new launcher that could send NASA's heavy 200-ton-plus payloads hurtling to Mars. An 80-ton launcher would lift payload and propulsion stages into low Earth orbit, where they would dock and leave for Mars. This would require a minimum of six launches to get the first crew on Mars.

The NASA mission to Mars involves more and heavier hardware than Mars Direct, but it takes essentially the same approach. And like Mars Direct, the DRM helps make Mars exploration look a lot more feasible. NASA offered no official cost estimate for the DRM, but most likely it would be less than the $500 billion Bush initiative.


HUMAN NEEDS WILL ALWAYS TRUMP FAR AWAY SPENDING LIKE THE MARS EXPLORATION PROGRAM-Morring '02

[Frank, Jr.; Mars Is The Destination; Aviation Week & Space Technology; 16 December 2002; page 59]


There is no known El Dorado to drive space exploration, no Spice Islands in space or oil reserves on Mars that we know of. The Cold War is over, but peace hasn't exactly broken out to pay a dividend. Simple human needs for food, clothing and shelter on Earth will always outweigh the abstract attraction of the unknown. Still, human curiosity is a powerful need too, and the science addressed by the NEXT studies can help meet it.
TRADITIONAL MARS MISSIONS ARE TOO COSTLY AND GIANT TO CONSIDER-Zubrin '96

[Robert; President of the Mars Society; Mars on a shoestring; November/December 1996; page 20]


The usual proposals for launching a human mission to Mars, be they from the 1950s or the 1990s, call for enormous spaceships hauling to Mars all the supplies and propellant required for a two- to three-year round-trip mission. The size of these spacecraft means that they must be assembled in earth orbit--they're simply too large to launch from the earth's surface in one piece. Thus a virtual "parallel universe" of gigantic orbiting dry docks, hangars, cryogenic fuel depots, checkout points, and crew quarters must also be placed in orbit to enable assembly of the spaceships and storage of the vast quantities of propellant.

Such a mission to Mars would be exceedingly costly and would have to incorporate orbital construction and other technologies that won't be available for another 30 years. One such plan, known as the "90-Day Report," developed in response to President Bush's 1989 call for a Space Exploration Initiative, produced a cost estimate of $450 billion. Sticker shock in Congress doomed Bush's program and has deterred most people from seriously considering a humans-to-Mars program ever since. Continuing this trend, President Clinton announced in September that he would postpone any such mission until its cost could be justified.


INHERENCY: OTHER PATHS TO MARS EXPLORATION STALLED

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